Tales Of Leo And Larry

Turned out she was a nightclub singer. Got herself a lot of publicity and was promptly hired by a Cincinnati club that billed her as the only woman ever to come to bat in a big-league ball game.

As soon as MacPhail came to Brooklyn—in 1938, the same year I did—things began happening there, too. He started by getting permission to play night games, making Ebbets Field the second major league park to install lights. In our first night game the opposing pitcher was Johnny Vander Meer, who had pitched a no-hitter his previous time out. So what does he do in the first night game played at Ebbets Field but become the only man ever to pitch two consecutive no-hitters. And now a question for all you trivia fans: Who do you think made the 27th out? Right. In the ninth inning Vander Meer walked three men, and there I was with the bases loaded and two out. I hit the ball just as good as I could hit it, a line drive which Harry Craft, the Reds' fine centerfielder, caught off his shoe tops.

The only thing Larry didn't have was a ball club. We were awful. With three weeks left in the season Burleigh Grimes told me that he wouldn't be coming back as manager. "Leo," he said, "why don't you apply for the job?"

I wanted it so bad I could taste it. Still, there are certain amenities that must be observed in baseball. I said, "No, you're the manager of this ball club, Burleigh. I can't."

To which he said, just as I had anticipated that he would, "I'm already gone, Leo. MacPhail just told me."

When I went in to see Larry, he looked at me like I had 22 heads. "What makes you think you can manage a ball club?" he roared. "You've never managed one before. What makes you think you can handle 24 other players? You can't even handle yourself. What makes you think you're smart enough to handle a ball club?"

Well, there was one thing I knew I had, and that was confidence. And that's the main thing you need when you apply for your first managerial job. When you walk in there like that, what you really are saying is that you have the brains, the experience, the leadership ability and the will to win. Larry obviously didn't think I had anything but gall. "Well, I can't prove it to you sitting here in this chair," I told him. "The only way I can prove it is out there on the field."

I never had been able to handle myself responsibly? So what? That isn't what players look for or respect you for. They're not college students, they're professional athletes. Physical men. They respect the pitcher who knocks them down and the base runner who bowls them over. They respect the guy who picks up the big pots in the card games. They respect the guy who lives hard and flies high.

All I needed was the opportunity, I had told MacPhail, and he had made it perfectly clear that I wasn't going to get it from him. "You a manager?" he said. "That's the funniest thing I ever heard." But remember what I said. If you have never been a manager before, it's all a matter of being in the right place at the right time. Since I knew I wanted to manage eventually, I had got into the habit of going to baseball meetings whenever they weren't being held too far from my home in St. Louis. Just to show myself. Just to stand around and talk to the men who were going to be in a position to hand out one of those precious 16 jobs.

The Cubs, of course, were in the 1938 World Series. I had already spent a couple of days hanging around the lobby of the Congress Hotel in Chicago when a message came to me to go up to MacPhail's suite. I walked in and found him there with one of his relatives. Larry turned to him and out of a clear blue sky he said, "I want you to shake hands with the new manager of the Brooklyn Dodgers."