After nine years making enemies of Giant fans as manager of the Brooklyn Dodgers, Leo Durocher replaced Mel Ott as manager of the New York Giants halfway through the 1948 season. To rub the salt in deeper, when the season ended, he traded Willard Marshall, Sid Gordon and Buddy Kerr to Boston for Eddie Stanky and Alvin Dark.
Giant fans were stunned. Marshall, an outfielder, had hit thirty-six home runs in 1947, the year the Giants set the then-record of 221. Gordon, another power-hitter, had hit only thirteen home runs in 1947, because most of his long drives went to left center field, which in the Polo Grounds rolled on like the steppes of Central Asia. But in 1948, Red Kress, Giant batting coach, turned Gordon into a pull hitter; Gordon’s batting average went up thirty points, his slugging average a hundred points and he hit thirty home runs.
I’d idolized all three, but Buddy Kerr, one of the best fielding shortstops ever, was my special favorite. Tall, long armed, big chaw of tobacco in his pitted cheek, he specialized in going far to his right, snagging ground balls and making the long throw to first in time to catch the runner. I was in my teens back then and played shortstop with a big chaw of bubble gum in my cheek.
I’d always disliked Durocher both because of his obstreperous personality and because I disliked everyone on the Dodgers. I resented that Durocher had replaced Mel Ott and that he’d traded three of my favorite players. I suspected he’d traded Kerr because Kerr had gone sixty-eight straight games without an error during 1946/47, which broke the record Durocher had set playing short for the Gashouse Gang in St. Louis.
I soon changed my mind though, and came to see that Durocher wanted to change the Giants from slow, static, long ball hitting nice guys into a 1950s version of the Gashouse Gang which had, in turn, modeled themselves on the 1890s John McGraw, Wilbert Robinson, “Hit ‘em where they ain’t,” Wee Willie Keeler Baltimore Orioles. With Stanky and Dark in the lineup, Durocher introduced bunting, stealing bases and using the run and hit, (better known as ‘the hit and run.’) That had been against the DNA of the home-run-addicted-Giants owner Horace Stoneham.
Although Dark didn’t cover as much ground as Kerr or throw as well, he was a much better hitter, and he and Stanky were great at turning double plays. With Durocher as manager, Dark as captain and shortstop, and Stanky on second, not only did the Giants become a much more exciting team to watch, but they won more games, often by demoralizing other teams they faced.
Stanky was the ringleader. While he was on the Dodgers, both owner Branch Rickey and Durocher were quoted as saying Stanky couldn’t hit, run or throw, but was the most valuable man on the team because he knew how to win. Short, muscular, nasty, he’d been a boxer and was always looking for a fight—not randomly–-but as part of a calculated strategy of getting into the other team’s heads and infuriating them. Angry teams made mistakes; mistakes lost ballgames.
As leadoff hitter, Stanky would get to first base—he didn’t care how–then on the first pitch to Dark, who batted second, Stanky would fake a steal to see which infielder moved to cover second. Once he saw who moved, Stanky ducked back to first.
On the next pitch, Stanky would really run to second. If it was the shortstop who’d lunged on Stanky’s fake, Dark, an excellent place-hitter, hit a ground ball to the spot the shortstop vacated. If it was the second baseman, Dark placed the ball to that position. An easy ground ball was turned into a base hit, and with a running start, Stanky would pass second and go all the way to third. In the very first inning, the Giants would have men on first and third, nobody out and hitters like Don Mueller (another place hitter), Monte Irvin, Whitey Lockman, Bobby Thomson, and the young Willie Mays coming to bat.
To fool Stanky and Dark, the opposing shortstop and second baseman might switch base-covering assignments from pitch to pitch, but they’d have to signal that to the catcher, the pitcher, and the other infielders, hope that each of them caught their signal, hope that Stanky, Dark or Durocher didn’t steal their signal, and that Dark didn’t do the opposite of what they expected him to do.
Now, instead of fielding their positions, the other team was trying to outguess Stanky and Dark. That wasn’t playing baseball. That was playing Stanky Ball and nobody beat Eddie Stanky at Stanky Ball.
To be continued
Herb L
oldtimewritewr.com
