Saturday, February 19, 2005 |
The Long Tail Of Larry Doby
Jackie Robinson proved that blacks could play baseball, yet teams of the post-Robinson era simultaneously felt that, while they couldn't exclude blacks from play, neither could they have too many. Boston was probably the worst offender in that count; at one point, a Boston scout
decided that it wasn't worth waiting through a stretch of rainy weather to scout any black player. That decision killed the possibility that Mays and Ted Williams might have played in the same outfield for the Red Sox.And so was "the curse" actually born, not of any voodoo about the Babe or suchlike, but stubborn refusal to join the postwar revolution. The sentiment was unfortunately common, even among teams that weren't owned by men like Sam Yawkey. Not even the Dodgers were completely free of the clouded thinking that prevented them from using all their resources to win. In the 1955 season, a 19-year-old Sandy Koufax came up to "replace perennial borderline prospect Tommy Lasorda," writes Glenn Stout in The Dodgers: 120 Years of Dodger Baseball.
For the most part, [Koufax] kept his mouth shut and gave the veterans on the club a wide berth, doing little more than pitching batting practice. He was ostracized by his age, his status, and his Jewish background. Alston barely acknowledged his presence. Koufax later described his experience in 1955 as being "with the team, not of it."So, here was this Jewish Thor -- idle! -- in 1955. Alston would set his starts weeks apart; the inadequate playing time would retard Koufax's craft for years. Present-day fans of affirmative action might miss the irony that in those days, the point of quotas was exclusion; no more than nine black players were allowed on a team. More than that, and it "might reflect badly" on the organization. Thus did the Dodgers quietly allow Roberto Clemente to go unprotected in 1954. In today's Times, former Dodgers, Angels, and Padres GM Buzzie Bavasi talks about this surprising and ignoble footnote in Dodger history:Yet Koufax had the most precious commodity in all baseball, a really fast fastball. His gift was from the gods, for his left arm could throw a baseball nearly 100 miles per hour... Other pitchers learn to survive with guile and trickery, but the pitcher with the phenominal fastball needs to learn only how to control the gift, to throw the ball where he wants to.
Bavasi said he [regretted] his inability to protect Roberto Clemente on the Dodgers' major league roster in the Rule 5 draft of 1954, and that it was basically a racial decision by a club that had broken baseball's color barrier with the signing of Robinson. Bavasi said two O'Malley partners, Jim Mulvey, then president of United Artists Studio, and John Smith, chairman of Pfizer, were reluctant to put more minorities on the club. Clemente would have brought the club's minority representation to 40%.There are none so blind. Signing Jackie Robinson didn't give the Dodgers a free pass on race matters; winning matters, and accomplishing it means looking beyond the superficial. If, in these quarters, sabermetricists are sometimes lampooned as jumping through too many hoops to come to their obscure conclusions, at least we may know this: following their methods, the likelihood of making such a gaffe is less likely, provided we follow the numbers wherever they may lead. Losing Clemente was no small thing, as the post-Koufax Dodgers desperately needed sluggers, and he reliably turned in OPS+ numbers exceeding 100 throughout his career. Surely, racism -- like all shallow thinking -- is the province of losers."Mulvey and Smith operated companies that had a lower minority ratio," Bavasi said. "They felt that if the Dodgers went to 40% it would have reflected badly on their own companies."
Clemente, who had played only one season in the Dodger minor-league system, was selected by the Pittsburgh Pirates, whose general manager was former Dodger general manager Branch Rickey. He might have upheld a private arrangement with Bavasi to allow Clemente to slide through, according to Bavasi, if Rickey and O'Malley had not engaged in a heated argument during a National League meeting before the draft.
Clemente, of course, went on to produce a Hall of Fame career, and the Dodgers could only grieve.
"We would have won four more pennants," said Bavasi, still pained by the would-haves, the regrets, but insistent that his passion for the game and love of talking about it remain stronger than ever.
Newer› ‹Older
 |
Post a Comment
Note: Only a member of this blog may post a comment.