Game 73: My Old School

As the Dodgers and Yankees saw their paths cross in both the 1955 and '56 World Series, there was a movement beginning to take shape beneath the surface which would ultimately change the face of Major League Baseball and foreshadowed what would become a major trend in American society in the second half of the twentieth century, the second time in less than a decade they were ahead of the societal curve.

Just as the Dodgers were the first team to break the race barrier in baseball, they and the Giants were the first franchises to put down roots significantly west of the Mississippi when they shipped out to California after the 1957 season (the A's had moved to Kansas City three seasons prior). As the years went by, more and more baseball teams would add African-American players to their rosters until the league was completely integrated. Similarly, more and more citizens would flee the urban metropolises of the East Coast, causing the population to disperse into suburbs both along the eastern seaboard and into the western expanses of the country.

Of course, today, California is the most populous state in the union and there are five baseball teams in it, in addition to five more clubs - the Rangers, Astros, Mariners, Diamondbacks and Rockies - spread out over the western portion of the nation.

Why did the Dodgers flee the city that was home to their team since 1884 on the heels of their first World Series victory over the Yankees? As we've seen with countless sports franchises (including the Yankees), while Ebbets Field was becoming outdated if not untenable in the 1950's, the ownership group, headed by Walter O'Malley, threatened relocation so as to exert leverage upon the city in the negotiations for a new stadium. The team played seven regular season games at Roosevelt Field in Jersey City in 1956, which management thought would get the attention of and possibly frighten policy makers in Brooklyn into caving to their stadium-related demands, but their posturing was largely ignored.

O'Malley already had a 1/4th ownership stake in the franchise that he acquired when he became the team's lawyer in 1944, but it wasn't until the beginning of the next decade that he took full control of the club. The Bronx-born Giants fan bought out the ownership shares of Branch Rickey and John L. Smith after Smith's death in 1950, and through a series of complicated and somewhat shady transactions, took a majority stake in the team.

While Rickey was the driving force behind bringing Jackie Robinson to Brooklyn (along with creating the farm system), the move to Los Angeles probably never would have happened with him at the helm. He was considered far more conservative than O'Malley and the two frequently butted heads in board of directors meetings, disagreeing on everything from the construction of Dodgertown (O'Malley thought it was ostentatious although he came to embrace and modernize it when he became full owner) to whether or not the team should accept money by taking on an official beer sponsor (Rickey was against it). It seemed unlikely that the two would agree on a move this major, but with Rickey out of the picture in 1956, word got out that Los Angeles was looking for a baseball team and O'Malley was quick to let them know that he might be interested in making that leap.

At the time, professional baseball was limited to the eastern half of the country and unquestionably centered in New York. From 1936 to 1956, the three New York teams combined for 26 World Series appearances, seven of those 21, as Matt has been meticulously detailing, featuring the Yankees and the Dodgers and a smaller portion (3/21) pitted the Yanks and the Giants against one another.

When the City of Angels offered O'Malley something that New York could not - the opportunity to buy land to build a park on and the ability to own the facility - it was only a matter of time before New York went from having three baseball teams to just one.

At the time, the Giants were playing in the badly outdated and structurally-suspect Polo Grounds and were in the market for a new stadium as well. Knowing that he needed another team to make the jump to California with him, O'Malley convinced the owner of the Giants, Horace Stoneham, to relocate to San Francisco. In just one year, National League baseball had evaporated from New York City and the MLB had been stretched from sea to shining sea.

=====

Like O'Malley, Joe Torre grew up a New York Baseball Giants fan. He was raised in Brooklyn and according to legend, was in the stands when Don Larsen threw his perfect game in the 1956 World Series. Like O'Malley, baseball also caused him to leave New York for Los Angeles, albeit under very different circumstances.

By all accounts, Torre didn't want to leave the Yankees and has said as recently as yesterday that the performance-based incentives were what most made him turn down the offer from the Yankees that day in Tampa, get back on the private plane he flew in on, and leave his twelve year career with the team behind him.

Perhaps it was best for both parties. The Yankees now have a top-notch skipper in Joe Girardi who has already led them to another World Series title and Torre, with his wheatgrass and his longboard, seems to be getting along just fine out in Hollywood. Managerial tenures aren't meant to last forever and even though Joe said he would have preferred to stay, he acknowledged yesterday that his time in the Bronx seemed to have run its course:

I stayed there a long time. Maybe too long. But you don't know that until you stay there too long.

With exceptions of Alex Rodriguez and to a lesser extent, Brian Cashman (relationships which were strained mostly because of what was written in The Yankee Years), the Joe Torre Era - and by extension, Torre - still inspires fond memories for supporters of the Yankees. There is a much deeper bond with many of the players who were a part of those twelve seasons, particularly Jeter, Pettitte, Rivera, Posada and Joe Girardi, who all spoke glowingly of their old skipper when they met with the media Wednesday.

Tonight is going to be a little odd for everyone involved. There will surely be plenty of talk on the broadcast about Torre and Don Mattingly and "how strange it is to see them in another uniform", but at this point it would be significantly more odd to see them back in their old Yankee duds.

It will of course be bittersweet to see two significant parts of the franchise - guys that we felt connections to that transcended baseball - in the opposing dugout. There are Yankee fans of a wide swath of ages who grew up idolizing Donny Baseball and for whom Joe Torre almost seems like a distant relative.

It's probably best to look at those two like we would some childhood friends or old roommates from college. The bond is there, without question, but with the feelings of nostalgia comes a realization that the era during which you were extremely close is now gone. The circumstances that brought you together were extraordinary while they existed and should be reflected upon fondly even if they are never going to come back.

Well I did not think the girl, could be so cruel.
And I'm never going back, to my old school.

California tumbles into the sea,
That'll be the day I go back to Annandale,
Tried to warn you, about Chino and Daddy G,
But I can't seem to get to you through the U.S. Mail,
Well, I hear the whistle but I can't go,
I'm gonna take her down to Mexico,
She said "Oh no, Guadalajara won't do".

[Song Notes: Walter Becker and Donald Fagen (the two members of Steely Dan) first met when they, along with Chevy Chase, were both students at Bard College, located in Annandale-on-Hudson, just north of Kingston, NY. The full story behind this song can be found in this article in Entertainment Weekly from 2006, but here's a partial explanation of why they were "never going back" to Bard, starting with a quote from Fagen:

Bard hired a lawyer and bailed out the 50 or so students who'd been hauled in during the raid. Problem was, Becker and White weren't technically students at the time. ''I asked them to bail my girlfriend out,'' says Fagen. ''She had nothing to do with this and was just visiting me. And they refused to do it. So when graduation time came I protested by not going. My case had already been dismissed—they had withdrawn the charges, actually. So I was sitting on a bench in front of Stone Row with my father and lawyer, just watching the graduation. A lot of the students were also angry because apparently the school had let an undercover policeman be planted in the building and grounds department. Their cooperation with the investigation was despicable.

After the incident, Becker and Fagen moved to Brooklyn and divided much of the rest of their careers between New York City and Los Angeles.]

-Lineups-

Yankees:

Derek Jeter SS
Curtis Granderson CF
Mark Teixeira 1B
Alex Rodriguez 3B
Robinson Cano 2B
Jorge Posada C
Nick Swisher RF
Brett Gardner LF
CC Sabathia LHP

Dodgers:

Rafael Furcal SS
Russell Martin C
Andre Ethier RF
Manny Ramirez LF
Matt Kemp CF
James Loney 1B
Casey Blake 3B
Jamey Carroll 2B
Vicente Padilla RHP

10 Days Until Spring Training: Phil Rizzuto

The 1956 celebration of Old Timer's Day took place on August 25th. At that point, Phil Rizzuto was already a bit of an old timer himself, nearly 40 years old having spent 13 seasons with the Yankees and served 3 years in the Navy during World War II. Scooter had lost his position as everyday shortstop for the Yanks to Jerry Coleman and Willie Miranda starting back in 1954 and had struggled in the plate appearances he was given in '56, hitting only .231/.310/.231. It was clear that his career was nearing its end, but the way that it came to a close blindsided Rizzuto.

Before the game against the White Sox that day, Casey Stengel called Phil into his office. The Yankees had just acquired Enos Slaughter from the Kansas City Athletics off of waivers and Stengel began discussing ways in which he could fit him on the 25 man roster. He had Rizzuto read down the roster and suggest players that could be moved to make way for Slaughter. Scooter would read off a name and Stengel would reject the idea. He kept looking over the roster until it was clear that Stengel was trying to get him to chose his own name. Naturally, Rizzuto was less than pleased with the way the Yankees had gone about this.

Stengel and general manager George Weiss assured Rizzuto that he would be added to the World Series roster as a back up for Gil McDougald should the Yankees make it that far. But adding to the fire, Weiss and Stengel reneged on their offer, eventually choosing Billy Hunter instead. Scooter felt betrayed and that broken promise very nearly ended Rizzuto's relationship with the Yankees. Fortunately for generations of fans of the Bombers, Rizzuto was the bigger man, forgave the team and went on to become one of the most recognizable ambassadors of the franchise for the next 50 years.

Rizzuto's Yankee career began almost twenty years before the infamous Old Timer's Day event and it might not have begun at all if it weren't for Casey Stengel. A Brooklyn native, Rizzuto explained that he grew up rooting for the Dodgers because it was easier to sneak into Ebbets Field than Yankee Stadium. Fresh out of high school, Rizzuto showed up at Ebbets Field to fulfill his childhood dream and try out for the team. The Old Perfessor was managing the Dodgers at the time, took a quick glance and Scooter's 5'6" frame and famously told him to "go get his shinebox" because that was the only way he was going to make a living.

Although dejected by the dismissal, Rizzuto didn't give up. Shortly thereafter, the Yankees invited him to a one week tryout camp. Even at that early age, Scooter was already and adept fielder, bunter and base stealer. Those skills, along with a home run that he hit during one of the scrimmages netted him a deal with the team.

Rizzuto spent the next four years in the minor leagues, jumping from D to B to AA-ball and maintaining an average over .300 wherever he went. During his 1940 season in Kansas City, he hit .347 and was named Sporting News minor league player of the year. He made his major league debut on April 14th, 1941.

As a 24 year old rookie, Scooter started 128 games a shortstop, hit .307 and finished 20th in the MVP voting. The Yankees went on to win the World Series against the Dodgers that year, although Rizzuto only manged 2 hits in 21 plate appearances. He was named to the All-Star team the following year and the Yankees made it back to the World Series but lost to the Cardinals.

In 1943, he was drafted into the Navy. Scooter never saw active duty and instead played on the Navy baseball team alongside Dodger's shortstop Pee Wee Reese, Dom DiMaggio, Don Padgett and Benny McCoy. He served for three years, missing the '43, '44 and '45 MLB seasons.

When he returned to the Yankees, it took Rizzuto a few years to regain his form as a hitter. He struggled through three below average seasons before Casey Stengel took over the reigns as manager. In 1949, Stengel moved Rizzuto from the bottom of the line up to the top, which coincided with a bump in his performance and a second place in the MVP vote behind Ted Williams. More importantly though, the Yankees won their first of 5 consecutive World Series, this one again over Rizzuto's childhood team, the Dodgers.

In 1950, Scooter finally put it all together, hitting .324/.418/.439 and winning the AL MVP. It was especially sweet with Stengel as manager - the most emphatic way possible that Rizzuto could have proved his offhanded dismissal of him at Ebbets Field years before was wrong.

After his MVP campaign, Rizzuto played two more years as the Yankees' full time shortstop before eventually becoming a part time player. While he was never a force offensively, he was better than most shortstops of his time. His career OPS+ was 93, but the a big reason that the Yankees were able to have the success that they did during Rizzuto's time in Pinstripes was that he offered roughly league average production from a premium defensive position. And Scooter's defense was well renowned. His former teammate Vic Raschi once said, "My best pitch is anything the batter grounds, lines or pops in the direction of Rizzuto."

After his unceremonious dismissal from from the Yanks in 1956, Rizzuto considered severing ties with the team. He felt spurned but eventually set his pride aside and joined the organization as a broadcaster the following year.

He was added to a booth with veterans Mel Allen and Red Barber and didn't initially fit in very well. Rizzuto felt that the two resented him for his inexperience. It would be precisely that lack of finish that endeared him to Yankees fans over his 40 year career in the booth.

While Rizzuto was known for his ability to play baseball the right way and lauded for his alertness in the field, his broadcasting style was much of the opposite. He was prone to miss things that happened during the game and interjected the broadcast with moments of personal levity and downright goofiness, such as "Bouncer to third, they'll never get him! No, why don't I just shut up!". He would openly advertise the fact that he was leaving the game early to beat the traffic over the George Washington Bridge and take time to wish friends and family a happy birthday over the air.

Rizzuto's success as a player earned him great respect throughout baseball but his trademark broadcasting style endeared him to generations of Yankees fans in a way his on-the-field play never could have. By narrating tens of thousands of games to people in driving in the cars or sitting in their living rooms, he became a familiar part of their lives. By sharing intimate details about his likes (golf, canolis) and dislikes (spiders, traffic, lightning) he was more than just a disembodied voice coming through the radio and eventually the television set.

The Yankees retired his number and dedicated a plaque in Monument Park to him on August 4th, 1985. He was passed on for the Hall of Fame repeatedly by both the writers (15 times) and the Veteran's committee (11 times) but eventually gained entrance in 1994 partially because of a persuasive speech given by Ted Williams. During it, Williams said that if the Red Sox had Rizzuto, they might have been the ones who won those pennants in the 40's and 50's.

By all accounts, Rizzuto was one of the kindest and friendliest personalities in all of baseball. When he passed away in 2007 at 89 years old after a few years of declining health, the Yankee community lost one of its pillars. He was the oldest living Hall of Famer at the time of his death.

Yogi Berra used to visit Scooter in the nursing home where he lived on a regular basis during the final years of his life. As a tribute to his best friend, he appeared briefly in the broadcast booth that night. It was difficult for Yogi as he was choked up for most of the appearance, but he went through with it as a way to honor all the years that Scooter spent in the booth. Earlier that day, Yogi talked about his lifelong pal during a lengthy media session in the Yankees dugout with Joe Torre at his side: