For He's A Jolly Good Fellow

(It is not completely illusory to say that if that trade hadn't been made I'd have been able to move my St. Louis Browns into Milwaukee, and the history of baseball—to say nothing of the history of Bill Veeck—would have been materially changed, possibly even for the better.)

Stoneham then won the 1954 pennant and World Series with another steal, when he plucked John Antonelli from the Braves for Bobby Thomson. Antonelli was a strong young pitcher just coming to form. Thomson, his best years behind him, was a good ballplayer whose reputation had been enhanced out of proportion to his true ability by the glamour of the Homer of 1951. Lou Perini of the Braves, always Stoneham's pigeon, had just finished his first glorious season in Milwaukee and he was eager to reward the fans and strengthen his team's pennant chances by bringing in Thomson.

He didn't want to give up Antonelli but Stoneham kept throwing the young pitcher's name into the conversation between drinks, while vowing that he would never give up Thomson. Whitey Lockman they could have, but Thomson? Never. The Hero of '51, he insisted, was part of the folklore of the big city, the idol of all Giant fans, a civic monument to whom the tourists came as to a shrine.

The more Perini couldn't get Thomson, the more his mouth watered. He no longer made any attempt to keep Antonelli but simply tried to get Thomson instead of Lockman in return. Which was precisely what Horace had in mind all along.

But it is the 1962 pennant, being most recent, that best illustrates Stoneham's technique.

It is an axiom in baseball—which only means that everybody keeps saying it—that the best trade is the trade that helps both sides. In the overall picture, it may even be true. Everybody says that he wants the player he has traded away to have the best possible season, a most noble, commendable sentiment. I recommend it highly to others. Lurking in the murky shoals of every trader's heart, however, lie dreams of pure larceny. The best trade is not the trade in which you give up something to get something, the best trade, if we will face up to this like men of the world, is the trade in which you give up nothing and get everything. At least, if I were given a choice that's the one I'd take.

Horace's great attraction to us all is that he looks so innocent and vulnerable and, to get right down to fundamentals, that he is so well and favorably known for his drinking habits that he inspires baseball operators with an almost missionary zeal to get him drunk and steal him blind.

At every winter meeting they come trooping into Horace's suite with the bottled goods in their hot little hands and a message of mutual gain on their lips. Exuding fellowship and greed, they pour the drinks for Horace until they have him drunk enough to force upon him the players who are going to go on and win the Giants another pennant. Because what they forget is that while they are pouring for Horace, Horace is also pouring for them. Many an unwary voyager has foundered on Horace's Scotch on the rocks or bottles of bubbly. Liquor befuddles some people and fortifies others. Stoneham's great virtue is that he appears to be most befuddled when he is most fortified. Horace, in short, can outdrink them all.

When Horace is going good—and there is nothing like trading talk to get the metabolism flowing—he can drink through a whole week, with small pause for either food or sleep. I take no stock in the beer-hall talk that Horace has a wooden leg. My own theory is that his giblets are made of sponge. When the time comes for his scheming guests to snap the trap on their little red-checked lamb, they find a bushy red-tailed fox gleefully snapping the trap on them.

The building of the 1962 pennant winner can serve as a textbook example of piecing a pitching staff together while giving up absolutely minimum in exchange. In December 1958, Roy Hamey, a delightful man who was then general manager of the Phillies, marched into Horace's domain, ordered a few Jeroboams and coolers and talked his host out of Ruben Gomez in return for Jack Sanford, a strong-armed right-hander who was better known as a junior member of the Phillies' band of night riders than for exceptional pitching prowess.