Читать книгу Summer of Shadows - Jonathan Knight - Страница 25

A Sporting News poll of baseball writers after the ’53 season labeled Doby as the “Most Nervous on the Field,” “Most Temperamental,” and “Unhappiest” player, along with the unenvied title of “Least Friendly to Fans.” He did little to curb this impression by holding out prior to 1953, waiting for a better offer as his teammates reported to spring training. Following the season, Art Ehlers, GM of the St. Louis Browns (on their way to Baltimore to become the Orioles) made a trade proposal for Doby, offering modest outfielder Vic Wertz. Hank Greenberg wisely turned him down, not knowing a year later Wertz would become the greatest acquisition of his career.

As the 1954 season dawned, teammates and reporters noticed a change in Doby, though he would later say he felt no different that year than in any other. For starters, when Greenberg traveled to Cuba with a 1954 contract for Doby, who was playing winter ball, he signed without argument. Then Doby traveled to Hot Springs for special conditioning with Dodgers’ catcher Roy Campanella a month before spring training. And once the Indians assembled in Tucson, they quickly realized this was not the same “moping” Larry Doby. Part of the reason may have been the symbolic gesture offered by the Santa Rita Hotel, the Indians’ spring training headquarters, which for the first time allowed the black players to stay there—as long as they didn’t use the elevator or sit in the lobby. Even the swing through the South didn’t get him down. Smiling and relaxed, Doby appeared eager for 1954.

“If I had him on the Yankees,” Casey Stengel would say that summer, “our sixth pennant would be a cinch.” It was a bold comment, not only considering the amount of talent Stengel already had, but also that the Yankee roster was made up entirely of white players. Al Lopez countered much of the mainstream baseball media by saying he preferred Doby to Willie Mays. “For my money,” Lopez said, “there isn’t a ball that Mays can catch that Larry can’t.” And now that Doby had apparently turned a new leaf, perhaps it would help the Indians turn a corner as well.

However, though his heroics saved the Tribe from defeat in its Baltimore debut, the Orioles triumphed the next night as Mike Garcia was “H-bombed off the mound” as the Press put it, allowing three runs without recording an out. And things only got worse over the weekend in Detroit. For starters, the Indians’ equipment trunks were in advertently dropped off in Pittsburgh on the train journey from Baltimore, delaying the start of Friday afternoon’s game an hour as the trunks were whisked to Detroit by cargo plane. As it turned out, the Indians didn’t need the contents of the trunks, as they were thumped by the Tigers on Friday and Saturday. With Detroit eyeing a sweep to strengthen its hold on first place, the Indians found themselves in the American League cellar, holding the worst record in baseball. “Victims of another case of assault and battery, the Indians’ clinical report today is this,” Harry Jones wrote in the Plain Dealer, “condition critical, sinking rapidly.”

Soundly beaten in six of their last seven games, the Indians resorted to desperate measures—what the Cleveland writers would call “The Big Switch.” To ignite the slumping offense and, as Franklin Lewis put it, “rescue the Indians from the chasm of ridiculousness,” Lopez shifted Rosen from third to first base and inserted spring training superstar Rudy Regalado into the lineup at third for his first major league start. Rosen, who had never played first before, borrowed a glove from Detroit’s Walt Dropo for Sunday’s game. The Big Switch paid off as Regalado reached base four times, scoring three runs, including the go-ahead run on a tenth-inning homer by previously slumping Dave Philley. Cleveland won the nearly four-hour marathon, 10–9, to avoid the sweep and stop the bleeding for at least a day. Yet the victory had taken a dramatic lineup shift and the use of all three members of the starting pitching trio. Though no longer in last place, the Indians looked like anything but contenders. Especially to Casey Stengel.

The Indians then traveled to Boston and sat around for two days as a hard rain pounded New England. Killing time in the lobby of the Hotel Kenmore, Lopez contemplated the Tribe’s immediate future. If they ever got out of Boston, their next stop was New York for their first encounter with the Yankees. The good news was that the rain allowed Lopez to reshuffle his pitching rotation to ensure that Bob Lemon and Early Wynn would start the two games at Yankee Stadium.

Lopez’s thoughts were interrupted when he was paged for a telephone call—long distance from New York.

“Hello, Al,” said the friendly voice on the other end. “This is Red Patterson.”

Lopez smiled. He’d known Patterson, the Yankees’ often-swarmed press agent, for years.

“Hi, Red. What’s up?”

“Casey wants to know who you’re pitching in New York Friday and Saturday,” Patterson said.

Lopez’s smile curled further in amusement as he thought of his crafty old friend. What the hell was Casey up to?

“Oh, he does, does he?” he asked with a chuckle. “You tell Stengel to go jump in the lake. If he tells me who he’s pitching, I’ll tell him who I’m pitching.”

Despite his joking, Lopez was thinking there was something strange about the call. It was one thing for a manager to try to figure out who his opponent is going to pitch, but it’s another to make a straightforward phone call and ask your primary rival for privileged information.

But Patterson’s reply was both dry and quick, as if the request were not unusual at all.

“Casey’s going to pitch Morgan and Miller,” he said. “At least that’s what he said yesterday.”

Lopez almost dropped the phone. All background noise in the bustling hotel lobby faded away, leaving just the sound of the rain pounding on the sidewalks and streets outside and the buzzing in Lopez’s ears. Morgan and Miller? That’s who Stengel was going to pitch against the team that was his main adversary for the pennant? April or not, both managers knew that every game against a fellow pennant contender was crucial and, as Lopez had done, they try to maneuver their rotations so that their best pitchers start as many of these key encounters as possible.

Going into the season, unproven Tom Morgan and Bill Miller had twenty career wins between them—compared with Wynn’s and Lemon’s combined 301. Why in the world wouldn’t Stengel pitch at least one of his two aces against his primary contender?

Then the dime dropped for Lopez. That’s exactly what Stengel had done. Whitey Ford and Ed Lopat were going to pitch against Chicago that week. He had indeed used his two aces against the team he saw as his primary contender. After the Indians’ poor start, and perhaps their three straight September swoons, Stengel was announcing loud and clear that he no longer saw Cleveland as a team the Yankees needed to worry about.

“Well,” a flustered Lopez barked into the phone, “you tell Casey I’m going to pitch a couple of young fellas against his club, too. Lemon and Wynn.” He slammed down the phone and stormed back to the lobby, stewing and steaming over the slight his club had just received.

One thing was for sure—the Indians would go to Gotham that weekend with something to prove. Nobody from Cleveland would tolerate that kind of insult.