Mel Stottlemyre was a great pitcher and coach, and a firm believer in doing the right thing

By Larry Stone
https://www.seattletimes.com/sports/mariners/mel-stottlemyre-was-a-great-pitcher-and-coach-and-a-firm-believer-in-doing-the-right-thing/
January 14, 2019


Mel Stottlemyre (AP)

When I was working at the Yakima Herald-Republic in the early 1980s, I did a story on Harlond Clift, a former major-league star who in his old age was living a lonely life of near-poverty in a trailer home in Yakima.

It wasn’t until years later I found out that Mel Stottlemyre, another former major-league great abiding in Yakima, had been moved to action by that article. He took it upon himself to visit Clift (with his sons in tow) and help him out, starting a relationship that he maintained for years.

When I was covering Mel’s son, Todd, with the Oakland A’s in 1995, he told me that story. He said his dad simply felt an obligation to aid a fellow major-leaguer, a fellow product of the Yakima Valley – a fellow human being who had hit hard times.

The anecdote encompasses Mel Stottlemyre, who died Sunday after a long battle with cancer – compassionate, loyal, proud of his Washington state roots, and a firm believer in doing the right thing, for its own sake.

He passed on those values to his three sons – Mel Jr., Todd and Jason – all of whom were youth baseball standouts in Yakima when I worked there. Mel Jr. and Todd would go on to pitch in the major leagues. Jason died of leukemia at age 11, a scar that everyone in the family carried with them forever after.

The Stottlemyres were royalty in Yakima. Mel came out of the tiny Yakima Valley town of Mabton, population 900, where he first strode onto a mound, and where Mel met his beloved Jean, to whom he was married 55 years.

Then he became a star with the New York Yankees, under the brightest lights in baseball. Stottlemyre palled around with Mickey Mantle, Whitey Ford and the rest. He made three starts against Bob Gibson as a rookie in the 1964 World Series – and beat him in one of those games.

But most of Stottlemyre’s career, which spanned from 1964-74, was spent in a dreary stretch of Yankees history, between the Bronx Bombers dynasty of the 1950s and ’60s and the Reggie Jackson-led revival in the mid-1970s. He never made it back to the postseason, though he was often the best thing the Yankees had going for them in those days. Stottlemyre won 20 games three times, pitched 40 shutouts (the same number as Sandy Koufax) and made five All-Star teams.

In 1975, Yankees general manager Gabe Paul led Stottlemyre to believe he’d have all the time he needed to come back from a rotator-cuff injury. Instead, the Yankees released him in spring training. Stottlemyre never pitched in the majors again.

For 20 years, Mel held a deep grudge against the Yankees. When I did stories on him in Yakima – which was a common occurrence – you could barely get him to spit out the word “Yankees.” He boycotted their old-timers games, which killed him, and cut off communication with then-owner George Steinbrenner. His moral compass didn’t have any place for that kind of deceit.

“I was lied to by Gabe Paul,” Stottlemyre told me in a 2002 interview for this newspaper. “I had a real chip on my shoulder when it came to the Yankees, and it stayed with me for a long period of time. I got through that.”

In the interim, Stottlemyre ran a sporting-goods store in Yakima. He instructed a generation of youngsters at Stottlemyre baseball camps in Yakima and Ellensburg. He spent a stint as a roving instructor with the fledgling Mariners, and even worked as a television color man for Dave Niehaus for a few games in their inaugural season of 1977. Mel tinkered with his younger brother (by 18 years) Jeff, a pitcher in the Mariners organization.

He also nurtured the burgeoning careers of his sons, but always unobtrusively. Stottlemyre was never one of those pushy dads who flaunted his stature in baseball, though he easily could have. In January 1985, when Mel Jr. and Todd became the first brothers picked in the first round of the now-defunct secondary draft by Houston and St. Louis, respectively, I stopped at Stottlemyre’s Athletic Supply to pick up Cardinals and Astros caps for them to wear in the newspaper photo.

In 1983, the Mets coaxed Stottlemyre back to a full-time baseball gig as their pitching coach under Davey Johnson. It was the perfect time to join the Mets, with the likes of Dwight Gooden, Ron Darling, David Cone and Sid Fernandez on their way up. Mel earned a World Series ring in 1986.

Four years earlier, another Yakima resident had won a World Series title as pitching coach – Hub Kittle of the 1982 Cardinals. Mel and Hub had a warm relationship, delighted that this quiet town was a hub of such renowned pitching knowledge.

In 1996, Joe Torre took over as manager of the Yankees after Buck Showalter’s loss to the Mariners in the 1995 playoffs sealed his fate with Steinbrenner. Torre wanted Stottlemyre as his pitching coach.

Mel still wanted nothing to do with the Yankees. Steinbrenner placed a phone call to Stottlemyre to make amends for past indiscretions by himself and the organization. That’s what Stottlemyre had been waiting to hear. He took the job.


(Brian Bahr/Getty Images)

Stottlemyre’s 10-year stint under Torre with the Yankees was the great joy of his baseball life. They won four World Series titles. He worked with a glittering array of pitchers who he loved, from Andy Pettitte to Mariano Rivera – and they loved him back. The coaching trio of Torre, Don Zimmer and Stottlemyre became inseparable lifelong friends.

“I’ve never been in a better surrounding,” he told me in that 2002 interview. “Gosh, I don’t know how things could have gone any better than the way it has here. The people I’ve had to work with, the material we’ve had here, arm-wise. People like, Joe, Zim, Willie (Randolph), the other coaches. I’ve gotten along great with Brian Cashman, the general manager. George has treated me fantastic. It’s going to be a difficult situation to leave.”

Stottlemyre was going to leave because his 2000 bout with bone-marrow cancer, which resulted in stem-cell surgery and chemotherapy as part of a year-long ordeal, had left him with a desire to slow down, spend more time with family. But at the end of the 2002 season, Stottlemyre felt so good that he rescinded his retirement and stayed on with Torre for three more years.

Finally, in 2005, Stottlemyre got tired of Steinbrenner’s meddling and stepped down, this time following through. Mel went back to Issaquah, where he and Jean had settled. In 2008, Mariners manager John McLaren lured him out of retirement once more to be his pitching coach in Seattle, at age 65, but that lasted just one season before the entire staff was let go.

A few years later, the cancer that had long been in remission came back with a vengeance. Stottlemyre’s courage and strength in fighting it off for these past eight years has been truly heroic. There was more than one occasion when the family thought the end was near, but he always pulled through.

In 2016, Mel Jr. became pitching coach of the Mariners, and moved in with Mel and Jean during the season. Partly, it was to help with his care but mostly to bond and absorb the wisdom of the man Mel Jr. called his mentor, role model and best friend. I’ve rarely seen a closer-knit family than the Stottlemyres.

That year, I went out to the house to do a Father’s Day story. It was a good day for Mel, and he was in high spirits. Most days weren’t like that. At the time, Mel Jr. told me, his dad was dealing with internal infections, heart and thyroid issues, hip problems, a torn Achilles tendon that couldn’t be operated upon because of the chemo, a broken rib and a form of diabetes. All without complaint or bitterness.

But on this day, Mel was feeling pretty good, he said. He was cheerful and optimistic. And emotional when he paid tribute to Jean for her selfless care and advocacy over the years. He said Mel Jr. and Todd were as perfect as two sons could be. He talked of his fervent desire to find a cure for multiple myeloma – too late for him, he realized, but for others.

I learned of the pride Mel felt watching his son follow in his steps as a pitching coach.

“I can’t tell you how good that made me feel,” he said. “It was sort of a stamp of approval of what I had done with my life.”

Mel Stottlemyre’s life ended Sunday, but his legacy, and shining example, will endure long after.

Larry Stone: 206-464-3146 or lstone@seattletimes.com; on Twitter:@StoneLarry. Larry Stone calls upon more than 30 years as a sportswriter to offer insight, wisdom, opinion, analysis - and hopefully some humor - regarding the wide world of sports. Topics include the thrill of victory, the agony of defeat, and, especially, the people responsible for either outcome, as well as the wide chasm between.

Stottlemyre rose above Yankees noise to become an inspiration

By Ken Davidoff
https://nypost.com/2019/01/14/stottlemyre-rose-above-yankees-noise-to-become-an-inspiration/
January 14, 2019


Joe Torre and Mel Stottlemyre

Time has covered up the level of chaos that reigned over the Yankees from March 10 to May 18 of 1999. It hardly felt like the midpoint of a dynasty.

Joe Torre, the beloved Yankees manager and magical Steinbrenner whisperer, took a leave of absence to treat his prostate cancer. Don Zimmer, Torre’s bench coach and behavioral opposite, became the interim skipper and took turns engaging in public battles with George Steinbrenner, Darryl Strawberry, Hideki Irabu and an achy knee that required a replacement.

Behind all that noise, Mel Stottlemyre ran the Yankees’ pitching staff, taking on additional media responsibilities in Torre’s absence, while covering up his own level of personal chaos.

Stottlemyre died Sunday at age 77 after battling multiple myeloma, the blood cancer, for more than a quarter of his life. Doctors first detected the disease during that frenzied stretch in 1999, and Stottlemyre kept quiet for nearly a year until its advancement forced him to miss time with the 2000 Yankees as he underwent treatment.

This was a death sentence. Stottlemyre knew it. Yet he treated the diagnosis as a challenge to conquer and an opportunity to inspire others. Missions accomplished and then some.

Torre, in a statement Monday, called Stottlemyre “the toughest man I have ever met,” and good luck finding someone who met Stottlemyre, who had a heck of a pitching career before joining the coaching ranks, and would disagree. It didn’t start with his John Wayne act with those 1999 Yankees, who straightened out to win their second World Series title and third in four years. No, that setback occurred some 18 years after Stottlemyre suffered every parent’s worst nightmare, the loss of a child, as his 11-year-old son Jason died of leukemia.

In my years of covering Stottlemyre — his entire run as Yankees pitching coach from 1996-2005 and occasional subsequent contact — it’s not like I ever sat down with him in a therapist’s office and psychoanalyzed him. But he conducted himself like a man who had been through hell and wouldn’t be intimidated by anything — or anyone — in his path. He was fearless.

As the Yankees’ fortunes turned after 2000, the championship spigot turned off and postseason disappointments becoming the new norm, Stottlemyre treated The Boss’ increasingly frequent public harangues with a mixture of contempt and defiance. Having already been estranged from the Yankees for over two decades following his 1975 release — in the interim, he worked as the Mets’ pitching coach from 1984-93 and won a ring in 1986 — he didn’t give Steinbrenner the satisfaction of firing back with insults. Rather, he would smile and offer variations of “I’ve been through worse.”

He still enjoyed the work even when the parades stopped. I recall sitting next to him at a Newark Airport gate, both of us traveling to Tampa for the start of Yankees spring training in 2003, and talking through the entire roster; he loved having Raul Mondesi’s arm in right field for his pitchers. We realized that we rented condominiums in the same Tampa development, and he talked about how much, after a long day at the ballpark, he loved fishing on the property’s waterfront. Even though I never ran into Mel carrying his fishing pole, I occasionally glanced at the waterfront and envisioned him enjoying his earned tranquility.

I last spoke with Stottlemyre in the summer of 2016, when I worked on an oral history of the legendary Subway Series two-stadium doubleheader in 2000. He joked about how the cancer had clouded his memory, yet he still recalled working with Dwight Gooden in the bullpen as Doc, Mel’s old Mets charge, somehow fooled the Mets for five innings to win Game 1, his only Shea Stadium appearance as a visitor. Then Stottlemyre ran through the timeline of the Roger Clemens-Mike Piazza feud, as Mets pitcher Shawn Estes threw at Clemens in 2002 to retaliate belatedly for Clemens beaning Piazza in Game 2.

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He loved his time in uniform. He made baseball a better place. The game could use more calming forces, more inspirations, don’t you think?

Mel Stottlemyre, New York baseball legend, dead at 77

By Bill Madden
https://www.nydailynews.com/sports/baseball/yankees/ny-sports-mel-stottlemyre-mets-yankees-obit-20190114-story.html
January 14, 2019



He was a New York baseball legend – on both sides of the Triborough Bridge.

Mel Stottlemyre, the lonely ace of the Yankee pitching staffs in the 1965-71 pre-George Steinbrenner lean years who then went on to an equally distinguished career as one of the pre-eminent pitching coaches in baseball with the world champion ’86 Mets and Joe Torre’s multiple-ringed Yankee staffs, died Sunday in Seattle after a long battle with bone marrow cancer. He was 77.

A five-time All-Star and three-time 20-game winner for the Yankees and later the tutor for Doc Gooden, Ron Darling, Sid Fernandez, Andy Pettitte and Roger Clemens among others, Stottlemyre was first diagnosed with multiple myeloma, for which there is no cure, in the spring of 1999, his third season as Torre’s pitching coach. He underwent an experimental treatment for the disease that included a stem-cell transplant, four months of chemotherapy, and as many as 24 pills a day, after which doctors told him there was still no way of knowing if or when the disease would come back.

Long after he retired from baseball, he nevertheless continued to fight the dreaded disease, out-living the doctors’ most optimistic prognostications. On Old-Timers’ Day, June 20, 2015, after getting his doctors’ permissions, he made the cross-country trip to Yankee Stadium where the Yankees bestowed a surprise honor on him – a plaque in Monument Park. In an emotional, heart-rending speech reminiscent of the doomed Lou Gehrig’s address to a packed-house Stadium crowd some 77 years earlier, Stottlemyre provided one of the great moments in the team’s storied tradition.

“Today in this Stadium, there is no one that’s happier to be on this field than myself,” he said, choking up. “This is such a shock to me because the era I played in is an era where, for the most part, the Yankees have tried over the years, I think, somewhat to forget a little bit...If I never get to come to another Old-Timers’ Day, I will take these memories and I’ll start another baseball club, coaching up there, whenever they need me.”

Stottlemyre grew up in the tiny town of Mabton (population 900), Wa., 150 miles southeast of Seattle and signed with the Yankees out of Yakima Valley Community College in 1961 for $400 per month by a scout named Eddie Taylor, who told the Yankees, “he might not be overpowering, but he’s got great determination and a will to learn.” It wasn’t until August of 1964, however, after developing a new grip on his sinkerball, that Stottlemyre got the Yankees’ attention. In a desperate pennant race fight with the Chicago White Sox and their pitching beset by injuries, particularly a hip ailment to Whitey Ford, the Yankees reached down to their Triple A Richmond club where Stottlemyre, who wasn’t even on their 40-man roster, was 13-3 after reeling off 10 straight wins.

It is no exaggeration that Stottlemyre saved the ’64 season for the Yankees. Starting with a 7-3 complete game victory over the White Sox in his first major league start, Stottlemyre went 9-3 with a 2.06 ERA in 12 starts down the stretch. He was almost as brilliant in the World Series against the St. Louis Cardinals after Ford developed an arterial blockage in his arm in losing Game 1. With Ford out, Stottlemyre had to make three starts in the Series against Cardinals’ future Hall-of-Famer Bob Gibson. He won the first matchup with a complete game seven-hitter and was trailing 2-0 when lifted for a pinch hitter in the seventh inning of Game 5. With no other starter he could trust, Yankee manager Yogi Berra brought Stottlemyre back on two days rest to face Gibson again in Game 7, but this time he just didn’t have it and was bounced in the fifth inning.

“I finally got real nervous for the first time all that season because I suddenly realized there was no tomorrow…that the whole season hinged on that one game,” Stottlemyre said in a 2002 interview with the Daily News.


(Mandatory Credit: ESPN.com)

Stottlemyre had no way of knowing that ’64 World Series loss was the end of the Yankee dynasty. The next year, it was as if everyone on the team got old at once as the club was sold by Dan Topping and Del Webb to CBS. But though they endured four losing seasons in the next five and would finish higher than fourth only once from ’65-’73, Stottlemyre soldiered on as Ford’s top-of-the-rotation successor, with a 20-9 record and a league-leading 291 innings in his first full season, ’65, and back-to-back All-Star seasons of 21-12 and 20-14 for fifth-place Yankee teams in ’68 and ’69. Overall, he was named to five All-Star teams. He also achieved one of the rarest hitting feats in baseball when, with the bases loaded on July 20, 1965, he hit a long ball into the left-center field gap at Yankee Stadium off Boston’s Bill Monboquette. As the ball went all the way to the wall, Stottlemyre huffed and puffed around the bases to become the first pitcher to hit an inside-the-park grand slam since Pittsburgh’s Deacon Phillippe in 1910.

On June 11, 1974, Stottlemyre was pitching against the California Angels at Yankee Stadium when, on a curve ball to Frank Robinson, he felt something pop in his shoulder. He had torn his rotator cuff. In those days, they didn’t have the technology to either detect or correct it. Instead, he was told to shut it down until the following spring when Yankee GM Gabe Paul assured him he’d be given all the time he needed until May 1 before the Yankees made a decision on him. But once Paul learned they’d have to pay him $30,000 in severance if they kept him on the roster after March 31, they released him. Stottlemyre’s career, 164-139, 2.97 ERA, in which nine of his 11 seasons he logged 250 innings or more, was over. Even though Steinbrenner was under suspension that year, and it was Paul’s decision to so rudely cut an honored and popular Yankee, Stottlemyre remained bitter at the only organization he’d known, especially after Steinbrenner promised – but never paid him - $40,000 to go to a kinesiology doctor friend of his at Michigan State to have his shoulder worked on.

Stottlemyre did not forgive them until the fall of 1995 when Yankee VP Arthur Richman, who’d been traveling secretary with the Mets when he was pitching coach for them from 1983-93, called him on behalf of Steinbrenner to tell him the Yankees wanted to hire him as pitching coach. Stottlemyre was at first skeptical, but a few days later Steinbrenner himself called and apologized for the way he’d been treated in 1974. Stottlemyre accepted the job, but was able to also extract his pound of satisfaction by getting Steinbrenner to agree to an additional $40,000 signing bonus.

By then, Stottlemyre had earned baseball-wide acclaim for his work with pitchers, having been in the forefront, as Davey Johnson’s right hand man, with the pitching-rich Mets teams in the mid-‘80s. All of those Mets’ pitchers — Gooden, Darling, Fernandez, Bobby Ojeda, Rick Aguilera, David Cone — praised Stottlemyre for his attention to detail, his ability to adjust to their individual styles and for not trying to tinker with them. With the Mets and his first couple of years with the Yankees, Stottlemyre would personally catch his pitchers’ pre-game bullpen sessions in order to get a better read on their stuff that day. With the Yankees, from 1996-2005, Stottlemyre’s more established staffs won four more world championships, but all was not always copacetic. Steinbrenner’s penchant for meddling, such as periodically calling in minor league pitching coordinator, Billy Connors, to work with the Yankee pitchers especially irritated Stottlemyre, as well as Torre, and led to another falling out with the organization and his decision to resign after the 2005 season.

“It’s very sad for me. I have been here for 10 years and I hate to go,” he said, “but it’s time for me to leave.”

Stottlemyre is survived by his wife, Jean, and two sons, Todd and Mel, Jr., both of whom pitched in the major leagues. A third son, Jason, died in 1981 of leukemia.

Related: Joe Torre pays homage to Yankees legend Mel Stottlemyre »

From the Babe to 'The Big Fella'

By Jacqueline Cutler
https://www.nydailynews.com/features/ny-fea-babe-ruth-book-20181014-story.html
October 14, 2018





He made things bigger just by being part of them.

Baseball, the Yankees, even New York – everything grew in his presence. George Herman Ruth Jr. – the Babe, the Bambino, the Sultan of Swat – connected with all of them as easily as his bat connected with the ball.

And sent them all soaring.

But, as Jane Leavy's "The Big Fella" explains, if Ruth's adult life was large and joyous, his childhood was small and mean. Born in Baltimore in 1895, he saw six of his seven siblings die in childhood. His father beat him. His mother drank.

George Jr. rebelled, playing pranks and stealing sips of beer at his dad's saloon. So the old man sent him to St. Mary's Industrial School for Boys, home for orphans and the "incorrigible or vicious." Little George was seven.

It turned out to be an unexpected blessing.

Run by the Xaverian Brothers, St. Mary's was far from comfortable. The boys got gruel for breakfast, soup for lunch and dinner. Meat was a once-a-week treat – hot dogs on Sunday. "I was always hungry," Ruth remembered later.

But there was baseball.

The school's Brother Matthias was a passionate fan, and fielded teams so good the Baltimore Orioles sometimes sent over scouts. In 1914, the team's owner, Jack Dunn, even came by to check out one young player. Still, he needed more than a slugger.

"Can he pitch?" Dunn asked.

"He can do anything," Brother Matthias said.

Dunn signed the 19-year-old Ruth for the 1914 season, for $600. Because Ruth was underage, and a ward of St. Mary's until he turned 21, Dunn also had to agree to become his legal guardian.

And that's how Ruth entered the major leagues. "Jack Dunn's Baby," as his new teammates cracked. The Babe.

Things moved quickly after that. The Orioles sold Ruth to the Boston Red Sox. He married a teenage waitress who had served him breakfast. And he pinch-hit in the 1915 World Series against the Phillies, which the Sox won, four games to one.

Ruth used his share of the Series bonus, $3,780.25, to buy his father a new bar. The Babe was simply unable to hold a grudge or do anything halfway.


Babe Ruth, 1918 (Library of Congress)

By 1920, he was with the Yankees, hitting home runs and making $20,000 a year. Within ten years, he was making four times that. He wore silk shirts once, and threw them away. He had 18-egg omelets for breakfast, and four steaks for dinner. Beer came in by the barrel.

His hunger for women was just as huge. Ruth strolled around Manhattan with a chorus girl on each beefy arm, and flirted with flappers on the road. After sex, he'd light up a big cigar. In the morning, the hotel ashtray would always be full.

Childishly trusting, cheerfully irresponsible, the Babe in some ways, was a patsy, ripe for conmen. Luckily for him, he met Christy Walsh.

If Ruth were a unique figure in sports, Walsh remains nearly as rare – a cautious and devoted manager. Beginning as Ruth's press agent in 1921, he quickly expanded his duties. He put the player's earnings in safe investments. He arranged movie roles, merchandizing deals, personal appearances.

By 1927, Ruth was making more money off the field than on it.

Babe Ruth was now a business, and Walsh protected it fiercely. The only nagging annoyance was the popular Baby Ruth candy bars. Although Walsh sued for a share of the profits, the manufacturer successfully argued he named the confection after the long-dead daughter of former President Grover Cleveland.

Yeah, right.

But if it were still difficult to trademark the man, you could control the image. Walsh set up his own national feature syndicate, supplying papers with photos and articles. No one seemed to mind that much of it was posed or faked, including a column Ruth supposedly wrote, but probably never even read.

Controlling the Babe himself was more difficult. Prohibition didn't stop his drinking any more than marriage had stopped his dating. Pictures of one mistress even made the front page of the Daily News. Later, a paternity case – eventually dismissed – would loom.

Some rumors were uglier.

Opposing players sometimes yelled racial slurs at Ruth, who tanned easily. People called him ugly things since St. Mary's, and he was offended. Ruth was friendly with Negro League players and, when he visited hospitals, pointedly visited black ones as well and posed for publicity photos no white paper would run.

Some rumors may have been true. In 1921, an infant daughter suddenly appeared, although Ruth and his wife were vague about the details. Later, after the couple separated, Helen Ruth claimed the child was from one of her husband's affairs. But the couple stayed married until 1929, when Helen died in a house fire.

The Babe quickly remarried, and his new bride put him on an allowance and a diet. Some people are eternal optimists.

But nothing, of course, was likely to restrain the Babe or diminish the affection of his fans.

His popularity drove up Yankees revenues by roughly 20%; their new stadium really was "The House That Ruth Built." Post-season he toured the country with teammate Lou Gehrig, playing exhibition games that were often interrupted when souvenir hunters ran onto the field to grab balls still in play.

By the early '30s, though, Ruth was slowing down. He was no longer limber enough to field well, and his batting average – which had peaked, in 1923, at an amazing .393 – had slipped to .288 by 1934. It was his last year in pinstripes. He hit a sad .181 the next season with the Boston Braves, and announced his retirement from playing.

But not from baseball, or so he hoped. It was the only job he had ever had, and he was still only 40. Maybe someone needed a manager.

But his reputation preceded him, and the image that Walsh had protected, and had served Ruth so well as a player, the big, overgrown kid, left owners unimpressed. The guy listened to nobody. How would he ever get players to listen to him?

The game had moved on.

Other, private disappointments followed. For years, Ruth had been friends with Gehrig, gently teasing the younger man about his shyness and intense devotion to his mother.

But Mama Gehrig didn't approve of the new Mrs. Ruth, and when Babe told Lou his mother should mind her own business, the loyal son stalked off. It was only years later -- on July 4, 1939, when an ailing Gehrig gave his "luckiest man" speech at Yankee Stadium -- that the two reconciled with a hug at home plate.


Babe Ruth and Lou Gehrig in the dugout before Game 2 of the 1939 World Series. (AP)

Within a few years, Ruth was ill too, although he still greeted fans and raised money for charities, including St. Mary's. By the time his authorized biopic, 1948's "The Babe Ruth Story" debuted, he was riddled with cancer. Too full of morphine to follow the story, he left the premiere after 20 minutes.

He died the next month. He was 53.

But the Babe is immortal, as long as somewhere some kid is throwing a ball, slamming a triple, making a catch. Or sliding quickly, deliriously, into the safest home there is.

New Babe Ruth Bio Tells Powerful American Economic And Social History

By David Seideman
https://www.forbes.com/sites/davidseideman/2018/10/29/new-york-times-strikes-out-with-weak-review-of-new-babe-ruth-bio/#5d658ca31cf5
October 29, 2018

I wish that the venerable The New York Times Book Review treated Jane Leavy’s magnificent new biography, The Big Fella: Babe Ruth and the World He Created, with more respect. I love the Book Review, which I've been reading since I was 10 years-old. It does a great job of  providing in-depth, well-written criticism on a weekly basis at a time when other newspapers have been unable to afford to keep book reviews.

In fact, two of my career highlights have been being reviewed by the Book Review twice, favorably, and writing for it a few times.

But I'm afraid that John Swansburg, a senior editor at The Atlantic, misses the book's powerful American and baseball history.  And he doesn't appreciate Leavy’s serious scholarship and fresh, deep and nuanced portrait of Ruth.

 I also believe that Swansburg blows two minuscule mistakes in a 620-page book completely out of proportion. Leavy has 78 pages of “Note and Sources,” spent eight years on research, and conducted 250 interviews.

Leavy is a national treasure who deserves to share a pedestal with luminaries like Robert Caro, Doris Kearns Goodwin, and Ron Chernow. The Big Fella is far more than a baseball biography; it is a deep and riveting study of social, political, and economic issues that still resonate today. If you care about our country’s direction, put down your Trump-related book for a moment and read Leavy’s.

Let’s start with the American Dream and the antiquated notion of upward mobility. A  tremendous part of Ruth’s appeal stemmed from his quintessentially American rags-to-riches rise from Baltimore’s nadir to New York City’s zenith. Leavy describes his wretched childhood in Dickensian detail. 

She is the first to plumb the true depths of his parents’ awful divorce; his alcoholic mother slept with the bartender who worked for his father, a bar owner. At age seven, Ruth was shipped off to a reform school. “The school was so overcrowded that there were 130 boys sleeping in dorm rooms meant to house 90,” Leavy writes. “The [Xaverian Brothers running the school] were forced to place beds in dorm hallways.”

In his first Lyndon Johnson biography, Robert Caro took a sandwich and a sleeping bag to camp out at a spot near the Johnson’s ranch in the Texas Hill Country to recreate the environment the president grew up in. Likewise, Leavy roamed the streets of downtown Baltimore for months to get a sense of the city at the turn of the last century, using ancient insurance maps and other ancient documents to guide her.

“Baltimore was the largest unsewered city in the country: every lower-city privy and every upper-city cesspool drained into the back basin and percolated into sea-level streets,” she writes. “An indolent tide kept the human detritus close. A ‘mephitic’ municipal stench blossomed every spring, a smell [H.L.] Mencken likened to ‘a billion polecats’ in summer.”

Reading this, it’s hard not to be reminded of the health crisis in Flint, Michigan or the Trump administration’s current gutting of the Environmental Protection Agency, launched in 1970 by the Nixon administration (insufficiently revered for its many domestic achievements) to safeguard clean air and water. Heaven knows what bacterial diseases spread from Baltimore’s flowing excrement before the city finally installed a sewer system in 1904.

Ruth’s upbringing may explain his sympathy for children and blacks. He adored the former and associated with the latter. The Babe upset the racist baseball commissioner Kennesaw Mountain Landis by going on a 21-day, circus-like barnstorming exhibition tour with Lou Gehrig after the 1927 World Series against Negro Leaguers and other touring black ball clubs. Landis maintained the “color line,” preventing integration until Jackie Robinson broke it in 1947 three years after Landis' death. The Negro Leaguers, in turn, deeply appreciated the respect Ruth paid them. Ruth was being supportive of those leagues by lending his talent and box office draw to the games. 

At the same time, he constantly wrestled with rumors about his “black blood,” based on his “big lips and wide nose.” During the 1922 World Series at the Polo Grounds, a vicious Giants bench warmer named Johnny Rawlings shouted “racial slurs from the home dugout in a voice loud enough to be heard on the other side of the Harlem River, where construction on Yankee Stadium was under way.”

After the game,  Ruth charged into the Giants’ locker room, a violation of baseball etiquette, to confront the slanderer dropping the N word.  A lot of shouting ensued and a fist fight nearly broke out.

“Ruth noticed a cohort of baseball writers looking on.

‘Gee, fellows. I didn’t know you were here. Please don’t write anything about this. Please! I’m sorry I came in.’

As he turned to go, he looked at Rawlings and said, “But lay off that stuff. I don’t mind being called a —— or a — —but none of that personal stuff.’

The Giants howled. [emphasis mine].

In his 1974 biography, Babe, [Robert Creamer] filled in the blanks: a prick and c-k s-r.”

Imagine an era when the nation’s most famous figure was unable to defend himself against a public racial onslaught.

And being powerless didn’t just happen on the field. Leavy unearths fresh evidence of how much baseball players were exploited until Marvin Miller unionized them, beginning in the 1960s. At contract time, untutored players were mailed take-it-or-leave-it contracts or were forced to negotiate alone in a room with ball-busting management.

“Roger Maris wasn’t even permitted to bring his brother along with him to negotiate his 1962 contract with the Yankees after breaking Ruth’s home-run record the year before,” Leavy writes.

She devotes an entire page to a Westbrook Pegler column in which the largely forgotten Christy Walsh, Ruth’s marketing agent and PR consigliere, gave him a crash course on the art of negotiation in a train’s drawing room. It’s worth the price of the book.

“I am supposed to say, ‘I want a three-year-contract at $100,000 or I will retire from the great national game,’” Mr. Ruth replied brightly. If they came at the Babe with anything about his debt to baseball, the Babe was to remind them of the seasons when he filled the ballparks all around the leagues for $25,000 and $52,000.”

Though Walsh wisely invested for Ruth and his family for the long haul, the final years of Ruth’s life are a tragic tale. “I know no words for his despondency,” his wife, Claire Ruth, later wrote. Major league baseball turned its back on him as it did on Honus Wagner and Lou Gehrig.

Organized baseball failed to fulfill his dream to become a manager, though he had phenomenal instincts for the game and would have been a supportive teacher. In short, he was abandoned in retirement as he was as a boy.

“Ruth went to very few ball games,” Leavy writes. “The Yankees never gave him a lifetime pass to the Stadium. He had to pay his way into American League ballparks until 1936, when both leagues created a program of passes for ten-year veterans.”

While I interviewed her, the author pointed out a photo in her book of Ruth a month after his retirement. He’s dressed in ridiculous Napoleonic-era military garb as a publicity stunt. I previously reported on Ruth outfitted in a silly 1939 NY World’s Fair uniform, tossing signed balls into crowds while riding on a parade float and shilling for the Fair at business meetings in his uniform.

I had thought he did these publicity stunts for the money, but Leavy, who recounts many of them, such as hitting balls into the ocean at Coney Island for fans to retrieve, maintains that he did them because he still loved pleasing crowds and had nothing better to do.

Today, Ruth in retirement would be paid more than Bill Clinton for his speeches ($200,000+ in 2016) and be honored at every All Star game, and, if he wanted, revel in adulation at autograph shows where he could name his price. And I bet he wouldn’t charge extra to pose for photos for fans, as most of today’s stars do. He would do so for the sheer joy.

As I wrote in my previous post about Ruth’s impact on baseball: “The Big Fella is a must-read for Babe Ruth fans, baseball history buffs, and collectors. Above all, it is a major work of American history by an author with a flair for mesmerizing story-telling.” (Harper Collins, $32.50, available on Amazon and at all bookstores).

Buy it, savor it, and spread the word.

Judge reality made McCutchen trade an absolute necessity

By Larry Brooks

https://nypost.com/2018/09/01/judge-reality-made-mccutchen-trade-an-absolute-necessity/

September 1, 2018

Aaron Judge and Andrew McCutchen (Paul J. Bereswill; Getty Images)

This was a throwback day for the Yankees, who reached into the National League to pick up a once-prime time player in a late season, post-waivers trade for the pennant push the way they once did routinely through the late 1940s, 1950s and early 1960s.

George Weiss was the general manager when the Yankees picked up slugging first-baseman Johnny Mize from the Giants in late ’49, Johnny Sain from the Braves (for a young Lew Burdette) in late ’51, Sal Maglie from the Giants in late ’57, Luis Arroyo from the Reds in late ’60 and Pedro Ramos from the AL Indians in ’64.

On Friday, it was Brian Cashman channeling Weiss in engineering the deal that brought Andrew McCutchen from the Giants in exchange for expendable prospects Juan De Paula and Abiatal Avelino on the final day of the post-waivers trade period.

This was not an icing-on-the-cake move. With Aaron Judge’s absence now at five weeks and counting, the Yankees were in desperate need of a right field bat of some pedigree. McCutchen, who is expected to be in the lineup for Saturday’s game against the Tigers, checks that box.

“We’re getting a really good player, and I think that’s exciting for us,” manager Aaron Boone said Friday, before Luis Severino went six innings and struck out 10 in a 7-5 win over Detroit at the Stadium. “It’s a really big deal for us.”

Mize, Sain, Maglie and Arroyo were all near the ends of their respective careers when they helped the Yankees to multiple pennants and World Series victories. McCutchen is somehow only 31, five years removed from his MVP season in Pittsburgh, but in his third year of precipitous decline from those heights.

Still, he represents a substantial presence. We’ve all known McCutchen for years and we know that even if he is not what he once was, he is sure no Shane Robinson, the overmatched journeyman with whom the Yankees had been trying to paper over the outfield when Boone has had need to give one of his guys a blow or didn’t want to use career infielder Neil Walker in right.

Boone insisted the Yankees still expect Judge, whose ETA was originally set at three weeks when he suffered a fractured wrist when hit by a pitch on July 26, to return at some point in September. The manager said acquiring McCutchen did not imply otherwise. Still, it is unlikely that Cashman would have pulled this deal if Judge were healthy.

“Andrew helps us in the here and now and he absolutely will be an everyday player,” Boone said. “But I believe Aaron will absolutely be back.”

But No. 99 has yet to swing a bat while continuing to rehab. Minor league seasons are ending, so there will be no rehab games available.

There is no telling how effective Judge will be when — presuming it’s not, if — he does rejoin the lineup. Judge’s absence has not only created a void in the order, it also has left a hole in the team’s identity. There are a number of accomplished athletes on the roster, but it took less than a year following his midsummer 2016 promotion for Judge to become the face of the Yankees.

This was expected and projected to be a special team. Other than the 17-1 run into the second week of May, it has been less than that. The Yankees have coped with injuries to high-profile players such as Judge, Gary Sanchez (who will be in the lineup Saturday), Didi Gregorius and Aroldis Chapman, and they are still on pace to win 102 games (which would be more than 12 of the 13 pennant-winners under Weiss), but they have meandered in halting fashion through much of the summer. They seem as tired as the overworked Brett Gardner. This has been no walk in the park for the Yankees, even as they are nine games clear of a postseason berth.

Indeed, the Yankees look like a team that could use a bit of a jolt. McCutchen, who has a slash line of .255/.357/.415 with 15 homers and 55 RBI, may well provide that. He remains a marquee name, renowned for his dedication and contributions to the community. He is a perfect fit in the clubhouse.

“His reputation precedes him,” said Boone. “He’s as high as character person as we have in the game.”

No one expects McCutchen to be the player he was in 2015. He doesn’t have to be. And no one expects him to be Judge. He can’t be. But the Yankees need him to be more than window-dressing. They need McCutchen now just the way they once needed Mize and Sain and Arroyo and Ramos.

FILED UNDER AARON JUDGE ,  ANDREW MCCUTCHEN ,  BRIAN CASHMAN ,  NEW YORK YANKEES