Cloudy Crystal Balls and Humor

from a Season Like No Other

Last in a four-part series about the 1951 baseball season

By Glenn Guzzo

Here’s a scene from the real 1951 baseball season that Strat-O-Matic fans can appreciate:

Trying to stimulate fan interest in the St. Louis Browns, new owner Bill Veeck allowed the grandstand fans to make strategy decisions in a game Aug. 24. There wasn’t a lot of risk – the hapless Browns entered the game with a 37-81 record en route to another finish in the cellar, 46 games out of first place.

The 3,925 fans in attendance did just fine, too. They made lineup choices, set the infield at times, and more. Although staff ace Ned Garver put his team in a first-inning, 3-0 hole against the visiting Philadelphia Athletics, the fans made choices that helped the Browns to a 5-3 victory.

The fans chose catcher Sherm Lollar to start over Matt Batts and Hank Arft to play at first base over Ben Taylor. Lollar delivered a single, double and home run, scoring three runs and driving in two. Arft also drove in a pair of runs.

During the game, fans held up cards choosing to play the infield back with runners at first and third. Philly’s Pete Suder promptly rapped into a double-play.

This unorthodox episode was one of many amusing oddities in the 1951 season that gamers will get to experience by replaying Strat-O-Matic’s latest historic-season re-creation. A season known for its extraordinary pennant races also had more than its share of unique humor, cloudy crystal balls and other amusements that made it a season like no other.

A Tale of Two Base-runners

White Sox rookie Minnie Minoso electrified the American League with his blazing speed and his daring use of it. In addition to leading the AL with 31 steals, Minoso disrupted defenses with his adventures between bases on hits – and even on routine outs. One episode helped make Minoso’s reputation for his speed and his joy of the game. It added a laugh, too, as the rookie was also making a transition from his native tongue, Spanish, to the American game.

On third base against the Red Sox, Minoso tagged up on a fly ball no more than 30 feet beyond second base. If the shallow fly – not more than a popup, really – wasn’t argument enough against running, the clincher was in who was catching it. Boston’s Dom DiMaggio was regarded as the league’s surest-throwing outfielder. As an undeterred Minoso took off, his third base coach screamed, “No! No! No!”

“Too late!” Minoso yelled. “I gone.”

A moment later Minoso had slid home safely – comfortably ahead of DiMaggio’s throw.

“Hokay?” Minoso asked his astonished coach.

A notably slower runner, first baseman Rocky Nelson, had a different excuse for his daring base-running.

With his cellar-dwelling Pirates down several runs and none out, Nelson was, according to press accounts, “out by mile” trying to steal home. Manager Bill Meyer confronted Nelson at the dugout steps

“What were you thinking about?” Meyer demanded to know.

“That’s why they call me Rocky,” Nelson replied.

Be Careful What You Put in Writing

Sometimes, the humor was unintended.

In The Sporting News, no writer was a more extreme homer than Phillies beat writer Stan Baumgartner. A former major leaguer, Baumgartner could not bring himself to pen a discouraging word until after the defending National League champs had finished fifth, under .500 and 23 ½ games out of first place.

His optimistic tone undiminished during a second-half losing streak, Baumgartner wrote, “Except for the fact that they are not winning, the Phils are playing good ball.” No word on whether he also authored the infamous quip, “Otherwise, Mrs. Lincoln, what did you think of the play?”

It was Baumgartner who wrote the story in the Feb. 7, 1951 issue of The Sporting News quoting unidentified Phillies veterans saying “it ought to be easy” to repeat as NL champs, identifying the weaknesses of all the other clubs. The over-confident prognosticators didn’t foresee that rookie flashes and veterans who had career years in 1950, when the Phillies did not win the flag until the final day, wouldn’t be just as good this time. The Phils never entered the ’51 race, and finished 73-81.

At least Baumgartner and his anonymous Phillies were making their calls seven months in advance. As late as mid-September, the National League scribes were having trouble calling the pennant race, as this Sporting News headline shows:

Big Contrast Between Giant

’37 Champs, ’51 Runners-up

First Polo Grounds Team to Come Home Second in 14 years

All Set for Flag Drive Next Season

Crystal Balls Worthy of Paperweights

Crystal-ball manufacturers ought to have recalled batches of them during 1951, for even the game’s insiders had a blurred view, especially when it came to envisioning the future of the sport.

Several team owners forecast the game’s doom because of night baseball and televised home games. They had reason to worry for the short-term, since 1951 attendance dropped by 7 percent in the majors and 16 percent in the minors. But as the Senators, the Reds and other owners cut back sharply on the number of games they allowed to be televised, attendance only suffered more. The long-term vision about the role of TV in baseball obviously was fuzzy.

Lamenting salaries that had reached $75,000 for four-time batting champ Stan Musial, $100,000 for Joe DiMaggio, a peak $125,000 for Ted Williams and $30,000 for Yogi Berra – “unprecedented for a catcher” – Sporting News publisher J.G. Taylor Spink suggested a $35,000 cap on salaries. That would be $299,000 in inflation-adjusted dollars today – not much more than half the major-league minimum.

In July, Boston Braves President Lou Perini finally addressed persistent rumors of move a possible Braves move to Milwaukee (the Braves had farm clubs in both Milwaukee and Atlanta):

“I believe that someday Milwaukee may have a major league franchise, but that will not come to pass until the entire structure of baseball is changed. I can assure everyone that the franchise Milwaukee may obtain eventually will not be the Braves’ franchise … I will go further and say that as long as there is major league baseball, there will be a Braves franchise in Boston.”

By structure, Perini may have been referring to increasingly popular suggestions that the minor-league Pacific Coast League become a third Major League. Whatever, a season and a half later, with the structure of baseball intact, the Braves became the first of five major-league teams to relocate in the 1950s. They moved to Milwaukee.

No Respect for Ted

Truth be told, the brass wasn’t much better evaluating the present, at least as far as on-field talent was concerned.

By the start of 1951, Ted Williams was a two-time Triple Crown winner, a four-time batting champion, the star of a steady pennant contender and the highest-paid player in baseball. To hear American League owners, however, he was not worth having.

They criticized his fielding, scorned his selfish batting (won’t move runners, won’t hit to left against the shift, won’t swing for RBIs if he can get a walk on a pitch a micrometer off the plate), doubted his leadership, cringed at his relationship with teammates and fans, worried about his age (33) and shuddered at his salary.

This was newsworthy in January 1951, because rumors that lasted the entire calendar year had Williams on the trading block.

One by one, every other American League team discarded the notion of trading anything of value – or trading at all – for Williams.

The Tigers needed another left-handed power-hitter, but Tigers bullpen coach Rick Ferrell said he wouldn’t trade their 30-year-old left-fielder even-up for Williams. Hoot Evers had hit .323-21-103 in 1950 with 35 doubles, 11 triples and 100 runs scored. Oops. The ’50 season was Evers’ last productive season. In 1951, the Tigers sunk to fifth because Evers barely hit .200 for most of the season before rallying to finish at .224-11-46. (With Williams serving in the military in 1952, the Tigers did trade Evers to the Red Sox in a nine-player deal.)

Athletics General Manager Arthur Ethers dismissed suggestions that his perennial second-division team would trade powerless 1B Ferris Fain, plus pitchers Lou Brissie, Joe Coleman and Bobby Shantz for Williams.

“We’d give four players for Ted any time, but not those four,” Ethers said. He didn’t think long about an alternative swap: “What would we use to pay his (major-league-best $125,000 salary)?”

(Slick-fielding Fain won the ’51 AL batting title at .344. He also had a mere 57 RBIs and the fewest homers (6) of any regular AL first baseman. The nifty Shantz won 18 games. But Coleman was 1-6 and Brissie was traded to Cleveland after two starts. The A’s finished sixth.)

Inter-league trading was all but forbidden in that era, but after Williams hit .318-30-126 in 1951 (top four in all categories), the rest of the AL turned their backs when the Red Sox made it clear Williams could be theirs. The Sox needed infield help, catching help, pitching help.

White Sox Manager Paul Richards said he wouldn’t trade flashy-fielding, light-hitting Chico Carrasquel even up for Williams.

Senators owner Calvin Griffith say they wouldn’t trade young third baseman Eddie Yost even up for Williams

Even frequent-trader Bill Veeck said his Browns wouldn’t trade pitching ace Ned Garver even up for Williams.

The Indians, who said they were very interested in Williams, said they wouldn’t include their swift, high-average second baseman, Bobby Avila (.304-10-58 with 14 SB) in a trade for the Splendid Splinter and weren’t sure they could part with their 30-year-old catcher, Jim Hegan, either.

After their third straight pennant and fourth in five seasons, Yankees players said flat out they wouldn’t put up with Williams as a teammate.

The Scoop That Wasn’t

All of baseball was stunned by the June 16 trade that sent the Cubs’ one superstar, outfielder Andy Pafko, to the Dodgers for a collection of spare-part players: sometimes-effective P Joe Hatten, backup C Bruce Edwards, utility IF Eddie Miksis and benched OF Gene Hermanski. The Cubs even threw in several of their spare parts.

A week later, The Sporting News’ Spink startled the sport again by reporting the untold story. A front-page story written by Spink himself and carrying a rare copyright notice cited a reliable source that the Dodgers would send star CF Duke Snider to the Cubs in 1952 to complete a deal that otherwise was described as “the biggest ‘steal’ since Harry Frazee dealt off his Boston stars to the Yankees.”

It never happened. Nor did any other Dodgers-Cubs deal happen.

Ultimately, the evidence that crystal balls were faulty in 1951 was plainest on the final play of the National League playoff, when Dodgers Manager Chuck Dressen decided homer-prone Ralph Branca was the better choice (over Clem Labine and Carl Erskine) to face the Giants’ Bobby Thomson.

Eddie Gaedel’s Short Story

Perhaps none of the head-shaking humor of 1951 compares to the legendary tale of Eddie Gaedel.

In this year of the Giants, a midget stole the spotlight for one day.

That was Aug. 19. Promoter extraordinaire Veeck, who recently had become the new owner of the St. Louis Browns, attracted more than 20,000 fans, the largest home crowd for a Browns game in four years, for what he billed as the Browns’ 50^th birthday party.

Lured by free cake and ice cream, bands, clowns and antique autos, the crowd was in a celebratory mood. The Day before, the Browns set the franchise record for runs in a 20-9 victory over Detroit.

The Browns lost the first game of a doubleheader on Aug. 19. So they started the nightcap with a pinch-hitter – for their leadoff hitter in the first inning. Instead of highly touted rookie OF Frank Saucier, a 3-foot-7 office worker with a thyroid condition stepped to the plate sporting a jersey with the number 1/8.

Under strict orders not to swing (some say Veeck threatened to shoot him if he lifted the bat from his shoulder), Eddie Gaedel crouched to create a strike zone measurable only with a microscope and promptly walked on four pitches from Detroit left-hander Bob Cain. OF Jim Delsing pinch-ran for Gaedel, but did not score, and the Browns lost that game, too.

Saying he couldn’t find anything in the rule book about how tall a player had to be, Veeck quarreled tongue in cheek the next day with AL President William Harridge’s swift ruling that Gaedel be banned from further games.

“While he didn’t exactly say so,” Veeck wrote, “I suppose Mr. Harridge banned Gaedel because he is so small – on the grounds that he’s so tough to pitch to that he presents an unfair advantage for the Browns over our opponents.

“Well, if that’s the case, I want to protest right now that visiting clubs that play such men as Larry Doby and Ted Williams present an unfair advantage over us. In fact, more so than when we played our midget against Detroit. For Gaedel drew a base on balls, good for one base, while the other fellows hit homers against us …

“We’re paying a lot of guys on the Browns’ roster good money to get on base, and even though they don’t do it, nobody sympathizes with us …

“It’s not fun for the fans to come out to the park and see the Browns take a shellacking night after night, so I decided to give them their money’s worth in entertainment … Surely you can’t accuse me of embarrassing the American League by drawing crowds to Browns’ games at Sportsman’s Park, a baseball graveyard for several years.”