Baseball Used To Be Serious

"Stick it in his ear!..."

Leo Durocher was for a time manager of the Brooklyn Dodgers, then switched over to manage the New York Giants. “Branch Rickey had the best description of Leo. He said, 'Leo is the only person I ever met who can walk into an impossible situation and immediately make it worse.'” I guess he was baseball's most-hated man. The players, both his and his opponents', hated him. “Durocher wanted to win through any means possible, legal or illegal. He stole signals. He screamed obscenities...from the dugout. Occasionally he ordered our pitchers to throw at the opposing hitters.



Babe Pinelli

“After Leo defected to the...Giants, he ran into two problems at the same time: Carl Furillo [the Dodgers' giant outfielder] and Babe Pinelli. Babe was the most mild-mannered umpire you'd ever see, so mild he was almost meek. He'd call a borderline strike and then apologize. ...He was as nice as Durocher was arrogant. And he was another Durocher hater.

“During one [Dodgers vs. Giants] game Durocher's pitcher, Ruben Gomez, hit Carl [with a pitched ball], and as Furillo...was standing at first base, he looked into the Giants' dugout and saw that Durocher seemed to be beckoning to Carl with his index finger. That was all Carl needed. He asks the umpire, Pinelli, for time and then bolts toward the New York bench. Durocher, who never ducked, comes charging out—behind Monte Irvin and Jim Hearn. But Furillo simply bowls those two over, grabs Durocher, and body-slams him to the ground.

"Both benches emptied...and I was on the fringes making sure I didn't do anything stupid like getting hurt. Furillo is on top of Durocher with his fingers around Leo's throat and he's choking him. Leo is turning white; I'm afraid the guy is going to die. And there's Babe Pinelli, Mr. Nice Guy—in all his umpire's neutrality—yelling, 'Kill him, Carl! Kill him!'”

Duke Snider, in The Duke of Flatbush

*

I always kind of liked Leo Durocher. Daddy and I used to listen to the games on the radio. Dizzy Dean mispronouncing everyone's name. I guess Dizzy did as well as anyone could, pronouncing "Red Schoendienst."