Summer of '49: The Yankees and the Red Sox in Postwar America (19 page)

Unfortunately, Cronin was Tom Yawkey’s closest adviser. Here was the real virus in the Boston organization: cronyism. Yawkey had bought the Louisville Colonels for $195,000 for one reason—to gain the rights to its young shortstop. But Cronin managed to ignore Reese’s obvious talent. What he saw instead was his size, or lack thereof. The first thing he said when he saw Reese was, “So that’s the guy who’s going to take my place. He’s too small.” From then on he kept up a steady drumbeat with Yawkey to get rid of Reese. Reese started the 1939 season slowly, and orders came down from Boston for Billy Evans, who was in charge of the Boston farm system, to sell Reese. Evans resisted as long as he could. Soon Reese began to play well, and Evans begged Cronin to send someone down to look at him. “I’m not interested in Reese,” Cronin told Evans. In Brooklyn, Larry MacPhail, a shrewd judge of talent, was watching these events, his mouth watering. He finally bought Reese from Boston for $75,000. Yawkey, who did not need the money, had virtually given away a diamond of a player without even giving him a shot at the major leagues.

Not long afterward a very drunk Yawkey called Evans one night and fired him. Evans told friends that Cronin had been behind this move as well. Had I been out that night at the movies, or had I called him the next day when he was sober and asked for my job back, I could have had it,
he told friends. Instead he was pleased to leave. Enough was enough.

Such stories were typical of the Red Sox at the time. It was, for better or worse, an extension of owner Tom Yawkey’s whims. If a group of business-school professors might have chosen the Yankees as an exemplary model of cold-blooded organizational skill, then they would have been equally appalled by the Red Sox organization. George Weiss was a hired hand who ran the Yankees as a business; he had a vested interest in maximizing the profit. With very few exceptions he treated his athletes as potential adversaries who would take advantage of any kindness bestowed upon them, and who performed best only when they were hungry. He had no desire to get close to them, and there was no doubt in his mind that he was more important to the success of the Yankees than they were.

If Weiss paid below the going rate, Yawkey, one of the richest if not the richest owner of his generation, made sure that he paid above it. The implicit motto of the Red Sox was that whatever happened, the ballplayers should never be made unhappy.

Yawkey, the heir of a Michigan timber and mining family, had come into a large part of his inheritance when he was thirty, and four days later he bought the team. He was the last of the breed of wealthy owners known in the press of the day as “sportsmen.” He idolized his ballplayers. A shy, rather lonely man, his life was simple. He lived during the winter months in the Pierre Hotel in New York. When the baseball season started he moved from New York to Boston, and took up residence in his apartment in the Ritz. There he adhered to a basic routine. He would get up late, eat in his room, then be driven to the ball park by his chauffeur. He would go to his box at Fenway with a few of his close associates, watch the game, start drinking in the later innings, particularly if the Red Sox were losing, and then be driven back to the hotel by his chauffeur, where once again
he would eat in his room. Those times when he actually appeared in the Ritz dining room were rare indeed.

Clif Keane, the Boston sportswriter, watched him with fascination all those years. Yawkey was a man, he thought, who loved sports, loved baseball, and loved the people who played it, yet was utterly afraid of them. In 1975, during the memorable World Series between the Red Sox and Cincinnati, Keane turned to Yawkey after one game. “Hey Tom, I’m going over to the Reds’ dressing room to talk to Sparky [Anderson]. Want to come along?” “They don’t want to meet me, Clif,” he answered. “Of course they do, Tom,” said Keane, and so they went. Anderson, possibly the most charming and ebullient man in baseball, went out of his way to be gracious to Yawkey. The latter was thrilled. “Clif,” he kept saying when he left, “that was grand—just grand. What fun! What a grand fellow!” “Come on, Tom,” Keane wanted to say, “what’s it all about? Why can’t you just be a real person, go out and talk to the baseball people all around you, be human, be natural. They’d all like you, you know.”

But Yawkey’s shyness, almost pathological, had profound organizational consequences. He drank quietly but steadily in his solitude. He had very few friends, and those with whom he was truly close were such men as Eddie Collins, Joe Cronin, Haywood Sullivan, and Mike Higgins, all of whom worked for him. Obviously, this situation was unhealthy. There was a constant blurring between professional matters and friendship. Yawkey’s management staff became small and incestuous. They made him, as he once said of Sullivan, laugh. Some of them became expert at playing to him, at knowing what he wanted to hear, what subjects were forbidden, and how to get what they wanted from him. He liked, for instance, to arm wrestle with Mike Higgins, and Higgins knew when to lose and when to win. It was a matter of instinct and survival.

In notes to himself in the mid-sixties, a time when such
problems seemed even more severe, Boston sportswriter Harold Kaese wrote, “Who would ever advise a friend to take a job under the present alcoholic axis of Yawkey and [Mike] Higgins?” A few years later, Higgins, who had held virtually every job in the Red Sox organization, was sentenced to a four-year prison term in Louisiana for negligent homicide after his car hit and killed a Louisiana state highway department worker and injured three others.

Yawkey was a generous man, but on his own terms. He was quick to reward players for exceptional performances. Boo Ferriss in his rookie year made $700 a month for five months, or a total of $3,500. He was also pitching brilliantly. He won his first eight starts. Cronin kept telling him, “Don’t worry about the money—whatever you do, that’s not a problem. Mr. T will take care of you.” At the end of the season Yawkey called Ferriss in and gave him a bonus of $10,000. There were endless stories like that. He handed Mike Kelley, the head of his Minneapolis farm team, an envelope after Ted Williams had spent a year there. Inside the envelope was a note that said, “Thanks, Mike, for making a ballplayer out of Williams,” and $10,000 in cash.

But Yawkey could also act like a spoiled child. Once when a Boston sportswriter mentioned some of the things about the team that bothered Boston fans, Yawkey’s temper quickly flashed. “Just remember, I have the last word,” he said. “I always have the last word.” Generally, if a sportswriter wrote a story that annoyed him, he would rant that by God the next day he was going to buy the paper and put the SOB out of work.

Some thought Yawkey was merely trying to have a belated childhood by playing with grown-up toys. When Earl Johnson first arrived at spring training in 1940, he noticed a heavyset man dressing at the locker next to him. How can that fat guy play baseball? Johnson thought. That’s disgraceful—he’s way out of shape. Just then the man spoke. “Aren’t you Earl Johnson?” “Yes,” answered the rookie.
“I’m Tom Yawkey,” said the man. He stuck out his hand. “Nice to meet you, Mr. Yawkey,” mumbled Johnson. “Cut out that Mister stuff, my name’s Tom,” Yawkey said. In fact, the owner liked nothing better than to put on a Red Sox uniform and, with a handful of substitute players helping out and local urchins running down the balls in the outfield, take batting practice. At these times no one else was around in his own ball park, and there was a hard rule: No photographers were ever to capture this moment. The batting-practice pitchers were under orders to groove the ball on all occasions (according to Kaese they substituted tightly wound, hopped-up balls—Phillips 99 balls they were called—so that the ball would carry and hit the wall). The ball boys were handsomely tipped for their efforts. The scorer was at best biased: Anything Yawkey hit, no matter how flagrant the mishandling in the field, was a hit; anything hit by others and mishandled by others was an error. The bench players who participated were considered sycophants by their teammates (the “ass-kisser all-stars” was the exact nickname).

Though he loved his players and the idea of being a part of the game, Yawkey became increasingly reclusive. He had been close to Grove and Foxx and that generation of stars, for they were his own age and would go on hunting and fishing trips with him. But by the time of the Williams-Pesky generation, he was close only to Williams, the superstar. Dick O’Connell, one of the front-office men, would push Yawkey to get out and visit with the other players, which he did, though somewhat reluctantly. He would invariably spot Eddie Pellagrini, a utility infielder. “Eddie, how are you,” he would say. “Gee, he really likes me, doesn’t he?” Pellagrini would say, beaming, to Dick O’Connell after one such visit. “Eddie,” answered O’Connell, “you’re the only one he knows.”

All of this showed in the attitude of the team, and also in the bottom line. The Yankees in those days were, by
outside estimate, making an annual profit of about 5 or 6 million dollars. In 1948, despite the feverish pennant race and the fact that Boston set an attendance record, the Red Sox showed a profit of only $55,000. That meant that without the profits from the playoff game, the Red Sox might have run in the red. In only four of Yawkey’s sixteen years did the team show a profit. Perhaps Yawkey did not want to make a profit because he would only have ended up paying more income tax. But the statistic says something important: He never regarded baseball as a business.

Despite their encouraging victory over the Yankees in May, in June the Red Sox continued to slip. McCarthy was becoming irritable. He could not wait to unload Sam Mele, who had played a fair amount for him in right field in 1948. After one game the previous year in which Mele had not gotten to a ball, McCarthy turned to the bench and said, “Henrich would have stuck that in his ass.” The criticism had stung, for it was an unfavorable comparison with the Yankees. The next day Mele went into McCarthy’s office to order some bats. “I thought you might want to order a glove, not bats,” McCarthy said.

In May, still looking for a right-fielder, Boston bought Al Zarilla, a skilled outfielder, from the hapless St. Louis Browns. Zarilla was following in the footsteps of Kramer, Stephens, and Kinder. The price tag was said to have been between $125,000 and $150,000.
THE BOSTON BROWNS
, the Red Sox should now be called, the
Globe
said in a headline. Luke Sewell, a former Browns player and then manager with the Reds, said of the Red Sox, “They must have the most profitable franchise in baseball. It’s the only club that’s supporting two teams in the same league—their own and the St. Louis Browns.” But even the purchase of Zarilla did not seem to improve the way the Red Sox were playing. They were impressive at home and in games where they
established big leads early, but they had trouble in close games.

McCarthy responded by spending more time at the end of the bench with Gus Froelich, the trainer who had come up with him from the Yankees. One of Froelich’s jobs was to keep a towel discreetly wrapped around a bottle of whiskey and, when things were going badly, to make himself available to the manager.

In early June the Red Sox went on the road and lost two of three to the Indians. Nothing seemed to go right. Lemon beat Kinder 8-3. Kinder had given up ten hits and didn’t even make it through the third inning. With a record now of 4-3, he seemed on his way to a most ordinary season. The next day Early Wynn beat Dobson 8-1. On the train from Cleveland to Detroit, McCarthy walked through the Pullman cars to find his players slumped and asleep in their seats in broad daylight. “What the hell is this?” he shouted with reporters within hearing distance. “If they had to play a doubleheader after a night game there might be some reason for this—for sleeping in the daytime.”

Detroit turned out to be even worse. Parnell started in the first game and at one point Boston led 7-1. But, bothered by what he felt was a flat mound, Parnell lost his control. McCarthy went to Tex Hughson, whom he did not like. By the eighth Boston was still ahead, 9-6, and McCarthy called on Earl Johnson. Johnson was one of the better relief pitchers on the Red Sox—a sinker-ball, screwball pitcher who made hitters hit the ball down. In 1948, he had been 10-4. But McCarthy had never, in Johnson’s view, hidden his contempt for him. On this day Johnson was sick with an intestinal flu, and had not even wanted to come to the ball park. When McCarthy told him to go down to the bullpen, Johnson felt he could barely walk. He gave up a hit to George Vico, and then walked three men in a row, forcing in Vico. That made it 9-7, with the bases loaded. He had never walked three men in a row before in his life.
As Johnson walked to the bench, McCarthy never looked at him. But his voice was very clear: “Big-league pitcher my ass! Can’t even get the goddamn ball over.” Having your manager talk like that in front of your teammates, Johnson thought, was like dying a little. Next, Ellis Kinder came in from the bullpen. He gave up an outfield fly, which scored a run and made it 9-8. Then he walked a man, and the bases were loaded. He gave up a single, which made it 9-9. Up came a pinch hitter named Connie Berry, who was hitting .085 at the time. Kinder walked him on five pitches and the Tigers had the lead and the game, 10-9.

The next day there was a doubleheader. Joe Dobson asked to pitch the first game and won 5-3. But in the second game Mickey Harris started. His arm hurting him, he gave up 7 runs in the first six innings. By the eighth inning it was 7-2. With the game virtually gone, McCarthy again called on Johnson, who was still sick. He stood out there, weak and feeble, and, in his own words, pitched as if it were batting practice. He gave up 6 hits and 4 runs in one inning. McCarthy left him out there. When Johnson walked back to the dugout, again he heard McCarthy’s voice: “Christ sake, if you kept them from scoring we might actually win a game sometime.” This time Johnson turned and said, “I’ll tell you one fucking thing—at least I didn’t walk anyone this time.” Johnson knew he was finished on the team.

McCarthy could not control himself. He was furious at Johnson. He was furious at Kinder. Kinder was always breaking rules; he was always the last man on the bus and he looked like the party had been going on all night and was still going on. He was going to learn. A day after the Detroit defeat, McCarthy imposed a midnight curfew, the first curfew he had ever given the team. Kinder was hardly bothered by it. He had decided that McCarthy ruled by a double standard: one for the stars and another for the other players. He had no intention of observing the curfew.