By C. Philip Francis
This week’s question: Who is the only manager to win a World Series in both leagues?
Chatter from the Dugout readers may recall the name of JimMorris, a pitcher who left the game in 1989 when he could not make it beyond Class C in the minors. He went into teaching, but last year he attended a Major League tryout because of a bet with his students. He surprised everyone by receiving a minor league contract, and was soon brought up by the Tampa Bay Devil Rays last fall. Following arm problems he was sent home to rest.
Morris did make the Opening Day roster as a relief pitcher, and remains on the team as of late April. He is making $200,000, far less than many other big league players now make, but probably much more than his teaching colleagues in Brownswood, Texas.
This column has often discussed the so-called “Called-Shot”, the incident that occurred in Game Three of the 1933 World Series between the Yankees and Cubs, when Babe Ruth “pointed” at the center field as if the next ball would be sent over that outfield fence. At that moment Ruth unknowingly created a celebrated moment that has been debated for over 60 years with some calling it a myth, some a fact, and some a combination of both.
An item in a December, 1999 issue of the USA Today Baseball Weekly reported on a man by the name of Harold Warp who had attended only one baseball game in his life, and that was the famous Called-Shot game. Harold had taken his 16-millimeter camera to the game, and had it rolling when Ruth hit his home run off the Cub’s Charlie Root. Warp often showed Ruth’s homer to friends, but not to baseball officials until it was recently presented to the public by ESPN, the sports cable company.
The baseball publication indicates that Ruth pointed at the Chicago dugout, not center field, thus claiming that there never was a “called shot.”
Early in the 20th century many baseball officials recognized the severe problem of umpire abuse. Not only were the umpires a target for unhappy fans, but visiting players were also cursed and defamed in the infamous “player parades.” Before Brooklyn Dodgers owner Charles Ebbets was able to convince the National League to establish dressing rooms for the visiting teams in 1906, the players dressed in hotel rooms and taken to the ballpark in horse-drawn open carriages that were called “player parades.” This gave the local baseball buffs the opportunity to either throw unkind words or more solid missiles at the enemy ballplayers as they passed by on their trip to the ballpark, and also as they returned to their hotel in the same manner - this time smelly and dirty. By 1909 the event was prohibited, and the parades are now just a footnote in the history of baseball.
Some great ballplayers apparently play with things other than balls and bats. Joe DiMaggio, “the perennial Lionel fan”, promoted the Lionel Company’s tiny trains in his first television show, and also by demonstrating the toys in thirteen Saturday afternoon programs. The company, founded by Joshua Lionel Cowen, encouraged “a boy feel like a man and a man feel like a boy” by paying Joe $125,000 for his efforts. DiMaggio was called the “The hero of train-age boys and buying-age fathers”, and said to be as fond of the trains as of the money. The cover of the December, 1939 issue of Model Builder, price 10 cents, shows a 25-year-old DiMaggio on the floor inspecting a New York Central steam engine.
The New York Yankees did not have a monopoly on their players having fun with the bantam electrical trains. The Brooklyn Dodgers had their own model railroad buff in Roy Campanella who got his first train at age eleven saying that he had always wanted a bicycle, but never got one. The Dodger catcher remembered getting up in the morning to find a Lionel train that had been set up by his older sister’s boyfriend. Campy once remarked that after the pressures of a big league baseball game, he found it relaxing to play with his trains.
In 1953 Campanella was scheduled to show off his Long Island, NY home during the second half of Edward R. Murrow’s first Person-to-Person television show, and the tour would include his model train display. When the Lionel people found out, they asked for and received permission to set up a special layout by their own company men in Roy’s basement. The Lionel publicity people were most unhappy when Campanella never once mentioned the company during the show.
Answer: Sparky Anderson with the Cincinnati Reds (NL) in 1975 and ’76, and the Detroit Tigers (AL) in 1984.