Читать книгу Summer of Shadows - Jonathan Knight - Страница 18

Cleveland’s Early Wynn faced White Sox ace Billy Pierce, and for three innings they engaged in the kind of pitchers’ duel expected from a pair of contending teams—and the kind of performance Indians fans had become familiar with over the past five seasons. Unlike most ballclubs, which boasted one true pitching ace on whom the team could always depend for a solid performance, the Indians had three: Bob Lemon, Early Wynn, and Mike Garcia.

By the time their careers were over, this trio would combine to win more than 600 major-league games, and both Wynn and Lemon would be inducted into the Hall of Fame. Lemon had been with the team the longest—despite being perhaps the unlikeliest player in Cleveland history to become a star on the pitcher’s mound.

At the tail end of the 1942 season, reporter Ed McAuley of the Cleveland News sat down to interview a pair of minor-league call-ups, both twenty-one-year-old infielders. Most of McAuley’s attention was spent on first baseman Eddie Robinson, whom the Indians had purchased prior to the season. But toward the end of the session, McAuley tossed a question to the quiet young man sitting beside him, a third baseman who had hit twenty-one home runs in the minors that summer. “Don’t bother with me,” Bob Lemon replied. “I’m in the Navy.”

The Indians hadn’t bothered much with Lemon in the five seasons since they’d signed him at the age of seventeen, despite an almost ethereal connection between the young ballplayer and his new team. Lemon had been born in San Bernadino, California, in September of 1920, while the Indians were in a heated pennant race that would result in their first world title. Lemon’s father, a semipro ballplayer at the time, was enthralled with the Indians, particularly the way they persevered after their star shortstop Ray Chapman had been killed when hit in the head by a pitch a month before. With his wife and three-week-old Bob in tow in a small basket, Earl parked himself outside the local newspaper office for a week that October to “watch” the World Series through a play-by-play billboard posted on the front of the building. When the Indians dispatched the Brooklyn Dodgers, Earl Lemon was so moved he decided that his young son would not only one day play professional baseball, but that he would sign with no other team but Cleveland.

Yet once the Indians had him, they didn’t know quite what to do with him. He’d made nine late-season plate appearances in 1941 and 1942, collecting just one hit, and was on his way into the service. When he returned for the 1946 season at twenty-five, it appeared his window of opportunity for becoming a big leaguer had passed. Veteran third baseman Ken Keltner held out during spring training, and Lemon was given a golden opportunity to win the starting position. He blew it, Keltner returned, and Lemon was shuffled to the outfield in the hopes of finding a niche. He started in center field on opening day and made a dazzling catch to save a 1–0 victory for Bob Feller, but he struggled at the plate, unable to raise his batting average above .200. He rode the bench and could hear the clock ticking down on a once-promising baseball career.

Killing time, Lemon began throwing batting practice, and his natural delivery drew attention from the coaching staff. He’d originally been signed by the Indians as a pitcher, after he’d led his high school team to a state title, but at his first stop, in Oswego, he saw a roster loaded with pitchers. Eager to play anywhere he could, he turned himself into a solid infielder. He hit well, batting .309 in New Orleans in 1939, then .301 at Wilkes-Barre in 1941. He switched back to pitcher for some intramural games in the Navy but returned to the Indians determined to find a spot in the everyday lineup. With the ’46 Indians wallowing in sixth place in late June and in desperate need of reliable pitching whenever Feller wasn’t on the mound, manager Lou Boudreau came up with a crazy idea. When the Yankees came to town, Boudreau asked catcher Bill Dickey what he thought about turning Lemon into a pitcher. Dickey, who’d played with Lemon in the Navy, thought it was a great idea. Meanwhile, Indians owner Bill Veeck had other plans. He had agreed to sell Lemon to Washington just before Boudreau made the switch. But when Senators owner Clark Griffith prematurely announced the deal, Veeck called it off and kept Lemon. It turned out to be perhaps the smartest thing Veeck did in his colorful stint in Cleveland.

Lemon wasn’t crazy about switching to pitcher, but over the remainder of the season he appeared in thirty-two games, primarily in relief. Though his 4–5 record was not remarkable, his 2.49 ERA showed promise. Working with pitching coach Mel Harder, Lemon evolved. His stubby fingers gave him one of the most devastating sinkers in baseball, and he developed a fastball and a sharp curve to go along with a natural slider, a pitch he didn’t even know he was throwing until someone pointed it out to him. He became a regular starter midway through the 1947 season and wound up winning eleven games. And in 1948, he found his stride, winning twenty with a 2.82 ERA, and helped the Indians capture the pennant. Along the way, he pitched a no-hitter against the Tigers, and then went on to win two games in the World Series against the Boston Braves. It was the beginning of a period of pitching dominance matched only by Bob Feller in the annals of Cleveland history.

Over the next seven years, no pitcher in baseball had a better record than Lemon. His 1948 campaign was the first of three consecutive twenty-win seasons, followed by two more in 1952 and 1953. On a long plane ride during this period, Cleveland coach Herold Ruel, sitting next to McAuley (who eight years earlier had all but ignored Lemon in their first interview), motioned to Lemon sleeping behind them and said, “If he isn’t the best pitcher in the business, I’d like to know who is.”

Ironically, the man sitting beside Lemon in that interview with Ed McAuley in 1942 wound up helping the Indians acquire the second member of the Big Three. Eddie Robinson became Cleveland’s starting first baseman and helped the Indians win the 1948 pennant, but two months later he was traded to Washington along with two other players for Senators’ All-Star first baseman Mickey Vernon and a mediocre pitcher with the unusual name of Early Wynn.

Wynn had been a workhorse over ten seasons with the Senators, pitching more than 1,200 innings. On the mound, he was nothing but business, working quickly, often taking less than ten seconds between pitches. But with a career record of 72–87 and an ERA near 4.00, the twenty-eight-year-old Wynn certainly was expendable. He boasted one of the most impressive fastballs in the game but had no other pitches to complement it. As he’d done with Lemon two years before, Mel Harder transformed Wynn from a thrower to a pitcher. He helped him develop a curve, a slider, a changeup, and even introduced him to the knuckleball, which would become a valuable weapon over what would become a very long career. With an arsenal of pitches surrounding it, Wynn’s fastball became legendary, and he became one of the most feared pitchers in the game.

Wynn won eleven games for the Indians in 1949, but his career took a dramatic turn in 1950, as he went 18–8 with a league-best 3.20 ERA. He only got better over the next two years, going 23–12 in 1952 with a 2.90 ERA while becoming a bona fide candidate for league MVP. Pitching with constant pain in his shoulder in 1953, Wynn saw his ERA balloon a full point, but he still managed to collect seventeen wins. In the offseason, doctors recommended he lower his intake of protein and a meatless diet was prescribed. Gradually, his arm got better, and after a sterling spring, Wynn would be the Tribe’s opening-day starter, looking to rebound from what he felt was a sub-par season.

The final member of the Tribe’s triumphant trio rose to prominence almost in perfect harmony with Wynn. Edward Miguel Garcia, better known as Mike, had never aspired to be a baseball player growing up on a ranch in the San Joaqin Valley. Hard as this was to believe later, Garcia was a bit of a runt as a teenager, and he dreamed of becoming a jockey and riding horses to fame. As he developed physically, so, too, did his baseball skills. Originally signed by Cleveland in 1942, Garcia made his major-league debut in garbage time during the final game of the 1948 regular season as the Indians were getting pounded by Detroit, blowing the Tribe’s chance to clinch the pennant that day and forcing a one-game playoff in Boston. In adverse conditions, Garcia pitched two shutout innings and set the tone for a breakout year in 1949. Like Lemon and Wynn, Garcia had been molded into an effective pitcher by Mel Harder, who taught him a nifty curve to complement his slider and power fastball. He made his first big-league start in May. He was bombed, and then sent back to the bullpen. Three weeks later Early Wynn developed hives just prior to a doubleheader against the visiting Yankees, and Lou Boudreau thrust Garcia into an emergency start. Before 77,000 fans at Municipal Stadium, Garcia held the Yankees to one run and once again earned a spot in the starting rotation. This time, he kept it. Posting a 2.36 ERA—best in baseball—Garcia went 14–5. After a slight backslide the following year, he rebounded with back-to-back twenty-win seasons, including six shutouts in 1952. Another great year followed in 1953, along with his second All-Star selection.

Things continued to look good for the man teammates called “The Bear,” so named both because of his thick black hair and because of his portly resemblance to a grizzly—he generally weighed more than 220 pounds despite standing just over six feet tall. Embracing the nickname, Garcia bought a dry-cleaning shop in Parma and renamed it “Big Bear Cleaners.”

Yet 1954 got off to a sour start for The Bear. He gave up ten runs in two innings in his first appearance in spring training, and for the rest of March, he was rocked around the Cactus League, allowing forty-one hits and twenty-nine runs in his first eighteen innings. Though he claimed his fastball had returned just as camp broke, Garcia’s disastrous spring and 11.35 ERA led many to wonder if he had passed his prime—and for that matter, if the Indians could still rely on the Big Three, all of whom were now in their thirties. It appeared as though Cleveland’s remarkable good fortune when it came to pitching, which dated back two decades to the arrival of Bob Feller, may finally be waning. As Feller’s career began to wind down after his final twenty-win season in 1951, the rise of Wynn and Garcia, along with Lemon’s continued run of excellence, kept the Indians in contention. In 1952 and 1953, the Big Three had combined for 123 victories, and the law of averages, combined with the knowing voice of baseball common sense, suggested that the Big Three had just about fished their lake dry.