The Victory Season Page 16

  An exception was Buffalo, where Bisons fans cheered Robby and presented him with gifts that included watches, travel bags, and, sometimes, straight cash. Special trains from Chicago brought in loads of black fans, and they took advantage of Offermann Stadium’s lack of segregation codes to get close-up looks at their champion.

  But Baltimore continued to resist progress. On several occasions, Mobtown fans swarmed the field, rioting and requiring police interaction. Robinson would retreat to the dugout, his teammates forming a protective cordon until the boys in blue could quell the crowd.

  On June 7, Robinson went hitless as the Royals beat the Orioles 5–2. After the game, according to the Sporting News, “a riot broke out. Fans swarmed the field. Robinson had already reached the clubhouse, but the rednecks waited outside until one in the morning. ‘Come out here Robinson, you son of a bitch,’ they taunted. ‘We know you’re up there. We’re gonna get you.’ Teammates Spider Jorgensen, Marvin Rackley and Tom Tatum stayed with him until the crowd went home.”

  Robby kept a lid on the magma that threatened to bubble over, but it was becoming more and more difficult to do so. The pressure was building, the season was wearing on him, and there were still months to go.

  Chapter 17

  The Brat

  Some major league violence broke out in Brooklyn on May 22. With the Cubs in town and the game tied at one in the tenth inning, Chicago shortstop Lennie Merullo slid into Brooklyn second baseman Eddie Stanky with spikes high, and the two former teammates began swinging. A huge brawl erupted. Merullo got mixed up in the dirt with Reese, Pee Wee slugging him from behind and giving Merullo a black eye. Cubs pitcher Claude Passeau, a tough hombre who once whipped a ball in fury at Durocher in the dugout, came together with the manager and ripped Leo’s jersey clean off. Order was finally restored, and the Brooks won it in thirteen innings.

  The next day, ill will remained. During batting practice, Merullo approached Reese to show Pee Wee his new shiner and asked the Dodgers shortstop to hit him again, this time while Merullo was looking, so he could break Reese’s neck. Dixie Walker overheard the tough talk and whacked Merullo from behind, getting in the second blindside hit on the Cubbie in as many days.

  This one didn’t work out so well. Merullo ran after Dixie, got him to the ground, and whaled on him as Walker’s nine-year-old boy looked on, wailing “Daddy!” Merullo showed no sympathy, knocking out one of Dixie’s teeth and breaking another. Both sides came together in another melee, with the police centering attention on Cubs first baseman Phil Cavarretta, the reigning NL MVP. “The husky Cub” took on several cops and half the Brooklyn roster, according to various reports, causing the Tribune to accuse the police of “protecting the Dodgers.” He would later outrageously deny partaking in the fight, though when asked directly if he had slugged Durocher in the nose, Cavarretta fell silent and grinned.

  When order was finally restored, five policemen were stationed in each dugout to prevent a rekindling of emotions. Half the players were ejected, and Reese, Walker, Cavarretta, and Merullo were fined. Most important, the Dodgers won in extra innings once again.

  On-field brawls were unusual for Dixie Walker, but they were second nature for Eddie Stanky, whose very name invoked his character. He was perfectly happy to roll around in the filth if that’s what it took to come out on top. Durocher, who saw plenty of himself in Stanky, summed up his worth to the team.

  “He can’t hit, can’t run, can’t field. He’s no nice guy…all the little SOB can do is win.”

  Billy Herman, an aging star back from two years in the navy, started the season as the Dodgers second baseman, mostly out of respect, but Stanky was too good, or perhaps too much of a nudge, to be kept out of the lineup. He crowded the plate, so beanings were frequent. A particularly nasty one back in the minors had fractured his skull and kept him out of the war. Then in his very first at bat in the majors in 1943, he was conked on the melon once again. But he rose to play as hard as he could. That was the type of grit that earned him the loyalty of the hardscrabble Brooklyn fans, who honored him with an “Eddie Stanky Day” late in the ’46 season.

  They called him “the Brat from Kensington” at first, in reference to his Pennsylvania upbringing. But Stanky’s persona was too irritating to be limited in scope, so he became simply “the Brat.” Like his manager, winning was all that mattered to Stanky, and any and all behavior could be countenanced toward that end. He would grab runners by the belt as they raced from second to third, tag them in the face with extra relish, and accidentally-on-purpose drill runners with throws if they got too close.

  He was well known for the “Stanky Maneuver,” his habit of jumping up and down and waving his arms at second base in hopes of distracting the hitter. That was soon outlawed, as was a less-remembered stratagem. When on third base, Stanky would stand several feet behind the bag. On flies hit to the outfield, he would time the flight of the ball and sprint forward, hitting the bag just as the ball was caught, thus tagging up at full speed.

  Offensively, Stanky’s game was centered around drawing walks. To him, it was a battle within the greater war, and he delighted in frustrating opponents by getting on base after protracted at bats. In modern baseball, his grinder approach would be highly prized, as teams have learned the value of wearing down opposing pitchers. Back then, he was simply viewed as an irritant, if a highly effective one.

  During a game in Pittsburgh in early June, Stanky drew three walks, then bragged to teammates, “I’ll make ’em walk me again.” He then taunted pitcher Johnny Lanning, dancing around the plate, crowding it, never remaining still in the batter’s box. He fouled off pitch after pitch, working the count. The umpire warned him to behave, but Lanning was rattled by then. Finally, Stanky walked for the fourth time that afternoon. He then rubbed it in in his usual manner, carefully dropping his bat at the catcher’s feet across home plate, and “trotted smugly” down to first. Pirates catcher Al Lopez broke his toe venomously kicking the bat off the dish. Stanky would come around to score the winning run in a 7–6 victory. As a rival player hissed to Time, “First you ‘lose’ Stanky [walk him], then you lose your head. First thing you know, you’ve lost the ball game.”

  He set a record by earning 148 free passes in 1945, when he also scored more often than anyone in the NL. In ’46 he would draw 137 walks, which augmented his mediocre .237 batting average enough to allow the Brat to lead the league in on-base percentage at .436. It was just about the only department in which Musial wasn’t tops in the NL.

  If Stanky was beloved in Brooklyn, then Dixie Walker was worshipped. They called him “the Peeple’s Cherce” (“the People’s Choice” when translated from Brooklynese). Back in ’41, when MacPhail ran the Dodgers, the team had splashed out for veteran slugger Joe “Ducky” Medwick, believing Fred Walker, aka Dixie, wasn’t the answer. Dixie, his pride wounded, batted .308 to lead the team, while his clutch hitting delighted the Brooklyn faithful. Fans mobbed him wherever he went in the borough, cars driving up onto sidewalks to get his attention.

  He was, of course, Harry’s elder brother; more to the point, he was Ewart’s son. The original “Dixie” Walker was a pitcher for the Senators in the first decade of the century. He passed along his athletic genes, but it took a summer in a Birmingham steel mill to fully infuse Fred with the desire to escape that life for baseball.

  He was incredibly gifted and always being tabbed as the “next big thing,” but it wasn’t until he came to Brooklyn in 1939, after several years in the bigs, that he became a star. He had an excellent 1940, leading the team in hitting, though it was his dominance of the hated Giants that really endeared him to the Flatbush fans. The season was one of misfortune, though—his four-month-old daughter, Mary Ann, died of pneumonia that May.

  He had knee and shoulder injuries that kept him from service, and Walker hammered wartime pitching, winning the batting title in ’44 with a .357 average and the RBI crown in ’45 with 124. He was back to raking the ball in ’46—th
e day of his suspension for brawling, Walker was hitting .365 with 25 RBIs, second in the league in both categories.

  Walker was now Public Enemy No. 1 in the Windy City. Two weeks after the brawl, the Dodgers visited Wrigley Field. Fans pelted him with rotten fruit and other assorted refuse. A set of false teeth was shipped to the visiting clubhouse special delivery, and a huge banner reading TOOTHLESS was unfurled when Dixie came to the plate.

  A few days earlier, the Braves had come to Brooklyn for a doubleheader. In the second game, a Boston outfielder named Carvel “Bama” Rowell slugged one to right that smashed the Bulova clock that sat over the scoreboard. Shattered glass showered on Dixie. Bama was awarded a ground-rule double. The episode may have inspired the scene in the movie The Natural, where Roy Hobbs homers into the light stanchion to win the NL pennant for the New York Knights. The teams split the double-dip, and the Brooks closed out May with a 25–12 record, two games ahead of the heavily favored Cardinals.

  Clearly, strange and beautiful things were afoot in the “Borough of Churches.” More tangible positives abounded as well. The mortgage on Ebbets Field had just been paid off. Rickey was making money hand over foot. He took a healthy cut of player sales, which brought $250,000 to the team’s coffers that summer. He sold TV rights to broadcast a handful of the team’s games for $6,000, well more than the Yankees got. In all, the team’s profit in 1946 was close to half a million bucks (a shade under $6 million today).

  Rickey and other Lords of the Game should have been sleeping just fine. But then Jorge Pasquel opened his checkbook once again. And a dark shadow fell across the game.

  Chapter 18

  Paralysis

  Late on the night of May 22, St. Louis second baseman Red Schoendienst lay in his bed at the Knickerbocker Hotel in New York, talking with his roommate, who was pitching phenomenally well. He had started six games and won them all, going the distance each time, his 1.93 ERA explaining his record. Red prophesied that his roomie would have at least eleven wins by July 4.

  Max Lanier thought otherwise. “I’ve pitched my last game for this club,” he told the startled redhead.

  Lanier was making $10,500, penny-ante stuff for a starter of his quality. On Breadon’s roster, however, that qualified as rich. Musial was the highest-paid Cardinal, pulling down all of $14,000. Few squawked, for the farm system initiated by Rickey meant there were always two or three guys ready to step up and replace whoever didn’t get with the program. “If you complained too much, you’d be back in Rochester,” said Marion. After Breadon had sold off so many pitchers that spring, however, Lanier’s hand was strengthened. He and Breadon had battled over salary all spring, with Lanier holding out for more than ten grand. Dyer even went to his owner to ask him to pay Lanier, a long limb for a new manager to walk out on. Breadon replied, “I’ll give him $500 more. He can take it or go home.”

  Everywhere Lanier looked, workers were holding out for more money. In January, eight hundred thousand steel workers had paralyzed the nation’s heavy industry by staging the largest strike in history. One thousand mills shut down across the United States. Two hundred thousand meatpackers were on strike, along with glass workers, electricians, machinists, telephone operators—name the job, and most likely some of its workers held a picket sign that year. Hawaii’s sugar plantations were completely shut down by massive strikes. Back in St. Louis, schoolteachers walked, giving seventy thousand grateful kids a holiday. In Oakland, a minor picketing of a local department store inflamed when police broke up the rally and set up machine guns to intimidate sympathizers. It didn’t work. Instead, nearly the entire city walked off the job, 130,000 of 200,000 Oaklanders. “These finky gazoonies who call themselves city fathers have been taking lessons from Hitler and Stalin,” said one striker whose epithets were as colorful as he was steadfast. “They don’t believe in the kind of unions that are free to strike.”

  On April 1 came another tremendous body blow, when John L. Lewis led the United Mine Workers in a shutdown, knocking out the steel and auto plants that needed coal to operate. Ford and Chrysler closed their plants, and electrical power was down 50 percent in some cities. The Evansville Courier called the strike “the most momentous event in the country’s peacetime history.” The Truman administration was seemingly impotent to stop it all. “We are doing everything we can,” the president would meekly repeat week after week. According to David McCullough’s 1992 biography, Truman wrote his mother saying he wouldn’t mind going out on strike himself.

  With no union to get his back, and no one to arbitrate his worth other than Sam Breadon, Lanier was stuck. Coming out of the service and with few career options other than playing ball, Lanier was forced to take the “take it or go home” offer, as so many other players had been.

  But his superb start caught the eye of Jorge Pasquel. Pasquel had just convinced the Cards second baseman, Lou Klein, to jump, along with rookie pitcher Fred Martin. But Lanier, the best pitcher in the National League at the moment, would be a huge coup, and would make the press that had scoffed when Stephens returned to the Browns drop their cynicism. Pasquel asked Klein to help him recruit Lanier.

  The second baseman did so enthusiastically, practically begging his teammate to go with him into the unknown. He brought Lanier over to see Pasquel at the Commodore Hotel (the Cards were in New York to play the Giants at the Polo Grounds), and the Mexican magnate laid it on thick. He offered Lanier double his $10,500 salary, a four-year deal, and a $30,000 signing bonus. Lanier, who like Klein was thirty years old and unsure how much earning power remained in his right arm, did the math in his head and realized that was more than he was likely to make over the rest of his career, regardless of how well he pitched. He agreed to jump.

  “I went there for one reason,” Lanier explained years later. “Money. I received it.”

  Back at the Knickerbocker, Schoendienst, who fell asleep figuring his roommate was joking, woke up to the harsh truth, courtesy of a note in the bathroom. “I’m leaving and keep hitting line drives. Hope to play against you. Max.”

  That wasn’t the day’s only bad news. The Cards managed to best the Giants to sweep a two-game series, but then the trouble started, courtesy of the Brotherhoods of Engineers and Trainmen.

  The railroads that were so pivotal to the functioning of the country were operated by an amalgamation of twenty separate unions, all of which were hankering for better pay and working conditions. They asked for a raise of $2.50 and “perks” such as cold drinking water, awnings on cabooses to keep them out of weather, and not having to pay to clean their own official railroad watches. Eighteen of the unions had reached tentative agreements with the various railroad operators that employed them, but the Engineers and Trainmen were holdouts. Despite the intervention of the White House in negotiations, nothing was settled by the agreed-upon strike date, May 23.

  So the Cardinals left Harlem for Grand Central, only to discover that there were no trains operating to take them to Cincinnati, their next stop. Traveling secretary Leo Ward reacted swiftly and managed to charter a flight the next day, ahead of the onslaught of people seeking planes when they realized the rails were shut down. The airlines were swiftly overloaded, and bus companies were too, despite “putting everything with four wheels” on the roads to serve the marooned public.

  The train strike immediately shut down the country, making the steel workers’ walkout look like a minor league fuss. More than 45,000 trains were idled by the 250,000 workers who walked off the job. Commuters were stranded with no way to get home. The final trains to run resembled cattle cars. Life ran a photo of the last train out of Grand Central bound for the New York suburbs. A woman was jammed headfirst into an open window, with only her heels and the bottom of her coat visible, the rest of her inside the train. Traveler’s Aid stations were swamped, and hotels overrun. All mail immediately stopped. Steel, automobile, and other industries reliant on the trains to move freight shut down large facets of their operations, putting many thousands m
ore out of work. Even Life was forced to temporarily raise its newsstand price, from ten to fifteen cents.

  One seventy-two-year-old conductor had to hitchhike from Union Station in St. Louis to Ohio. An Asbury Park, New Jersey, man was stranded at the altar when his bride couldn’t get a train to the site of the wedding. One airport clerk told the AP that a man offered her six pairs of nylons (worth far more than their weight in gold at that point) in exchange for a seat on a flight to Philadelphia. “If only he’d throw in a pound of butter I’d take him there myself,” she said. Cabbies and enterprising civilians with automobiles were getting $25 to ferry folks from New York to Washington. Some passengers stuck in Indianapolis simply lived aboard their halted train for several days. Many thousands more sat down in train stations or, in more remote locales, trackside, and waited. The army deployed thousands of troops at rail depots across the nation, anticipating riots, while General Eisenhower was ordered back to the Pentagon from vacation due to the crisis.

  Unlike previous strikers, whom the nation generally tolerated, if not sympathized with, the railroad unions were castigated far and wide. Truman compared their leaders to the “foreign enemy” that had attacked at Pearl Harbor. “It is painful to see these two railway brotherhoods, which have long enjoyed universal public respect, invite public opinion to turn against them,” wrote the New York Daily News, and the Times concluded, “They are gambling with the entire future of the labor movement in this country, and it ought not to take many hours or days to convince them of that fact.”