(The beginning of this memoir goes back to 1949 for those scrolling back)

                                  HAMMERIN’ HANK GREENBERG: MENSCH

Big Moe

     Hank and I had a natural friendship right off because we were fellow Jews in a game where there was hardly a handful of us in all of organized ball, much less the big leagues. Hank was a sophisticated man and had good taste in everything—books, clothes, restaurants, women. At that time he was a bachelor, a tall, handsome man, cultured, reserved, far more polished than most of the guys who played in that era, what you call a classy person. He dated Ziegfeld Follies girls. He always had a book to read. His philosophy on hitting was unique and on the money for a power hitter.

     What I remember about him most was how hard he worked to make himself a better defensive player. Although he was one of the best average and power hitters in the game, he was like Gehrig in that fielding did not come naturally to him, and he worked as hard on his fielding as he did his hitting. He’d get the clubhouse boy, a coach, or anybody he could find connected to the club to hit him grounders after a game. He’d take groundball after groundball and throws in the dirt, sweating for hours long after everybody else went home. He made himself a good fielder because he wouldn’t settle for mediocrity at any part of his game.

     When it came to the Jew bating, Hank, unlike me, didn’t have the reputation of nailing a guy in a heartbeat if he heard somebody make a dirty comment about Jews, but at the same time he drew the line when it came to putting up with that kind of bullshit. He was not the trained boxer and fighter I was, but people knew better than to mess with him. He was a proud, serious Jew, and he didn’t like it any better than I did when the front office brought down the rosary beads to the clubhouse. Hank was too successful a player, too big a name to screw with once he established himself as a Hall of Fame caliber player.

     He was the first ball player to join up when the war started.

     Back in 1955 he wrote me when he was General Manager of the Cleveland Indians. He wanted me to manage a bunch of kids they’d signed for the California League up in Visalia, wanted me to teach and groom these kids for the big leagues, and at the same time he wanted to groom me for the manager’s job at Cleveland in a year or two, no more. He promised me that job. He trusted me, knew I understood the game and had the respect of the players and was a good teacher.

     But I had to turn him down. I was doing too well in business. I was stable and in one place and didn’t want to leave home and beat the bushes and drive around in buses, and even if I got the Cleveland job there was no telling what would happen if I had a bad year because players weren’t ready. Hank could get the axe himself or quit out of frustration from putting up with the idiots in the front office, and then I’d be left high and dry, out of work, at the mercy of the baseball fraternity, the organizations. You have to try and hook on with somebody else as a base coach, or hang on as a scout or minor league manager or a front office toady, and that’s the last thing I needed in my life, so I had to turn my old friend down, and he understood.

     As it turned out, Kirby Farrell, a pretty sound baseball man, got the Visalia job and managed the big club in ’57 and lasted one year and of all people was replaced by the biggest front office ass-kisser of all, Bobby Bragan. Hank didn’t hang around long either. He was too smart to. We weren’t great friends. We never hung out together, because he was gone in 1942. What we had in common was that we were ball players, and big city kids, and Jews, and there would always be that trust, that bond, landsmen, and that was enough.

     (Next Sunday installment: College baseball 102)