(Scrolling back to
1949 in this memoir will provide baseball junkies with the very essence of the
game and the father/son relationship to it)
“I’VE BEEN GOOD TO
BASEBALL, BASEBALL HASN’T BEEN GOOD TO ME”
BIG MOE,
Bucky Harris and
Gabby Hartnett were fine players in their days and a pair of true gentlemen.
Hartnett was a Hall of Fame catcher, a guy I watched growing up in Chicago , and Harris
played and managed half a century. They were almost too nice to be in baseball.
In 1946, when I
returned from the service, they were at spring training with the Tigers down in
Lakeland and were going to manage and coach our
farm team in Buffalo .
I’d had a great spring, hitting over .400, got myself into great shape after a
3 year layoff. The general manager, Jack Zeller, called me into his office and
told me they wanted to send me to Buffalo and
start the season with Eddie
Lake
I asked to be
traded. Zeller said he’d work on it, which was more bullshit. Hartnett and
Harris told me to cool down and come up to Buffalo and play for them. Rumor was very
strong they were both going to the Yankees the next season, with Harris as
manager, and he promised he wouldn’t go to New York without taking me along. He’d
always liked me, believed in me, and he told Rose that, and tried to get her to
persuade me to go with them, and SHE wanted me to go, too, but, like I said, I
was too mad and fed up with the Detroit
organization by that time to keep playing for a prick like Spike Briggs.
Harris and
Hartnett understood and told me not to give up hope, because the Yankees wanted
a Jewish ball player with some hitting punch to play third and utility. There
was a huge following of Jewish fans in the Bronx .
A perfect situation. When you’re in a line-up with guys like DiMaggio and
Henrich and Rizzuto, your batting average automatically goes up thirty points.
But hell, time
was running out on me. I was 32 years old and felt Detroit
would never trade me to New York ,
because they knew damn well I’d come back to hurt them and make them look
stupid. So I was stuck between a rock and a hard place, really getting the
shaft. Going to Buffalo at this point was
humiliating, and so I got an offer to jump the big leagues and go down to Mexico for a
lot more money than I’d make in the big leagues, and I took it, and told Briggs
to stick it up his ass. A local sportswriter interviewed me and I told him,
“I’d always been good to baseball, but baseball had never been good to me, and
I had to do financially what was best for my wife and son.” I’d had enough of
getting handed rosary beads before games and watching donkeys play my position.
In professional
baseball, sometimes it’s not just about playing the game, although it should be
that way. I’m no Alibi Ike and I don’t believe in sour grapes and I always look
forward to the next step and never let the bad breaks bother me and made the
best of a situation, but sometimes you’re in the wrong place at the wrong time
and have no control over things and have to sit and watch the prime years of
your career go down the drain, wasted.
I had good years
in Mexico , and in Cuba , had a
great time, but still, it wasn’t the big leagues. And sure enough, in ’47,
Harris goes to the Yankees as manager and they win a World Series! If I’d
listened to Rose, things would be different now. We’d probably be New Yorkers.
But that’s all water under the bridge, and you should never forget there’s a
lot of heartbreak in baseball, especially if you love the game and will go
anywhere, under any conditions, to play.
And especially if
the money’s better.
(Next Sunday
installment: The Kid’s Blowing Smoke Up My ass.”)
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