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A salute to the Dodgers GM
who led his team to history
By MAURY ALLEN
of TheColumnists.com
I loved him even before I met him.
I was a 22-year-old kid sitting in an Army
barracks in Tokyo, Japan on October 4, 1955 when I heard over
Armed Forces radio Red Barber’s call, “Howard hits
a ground ball to short, Pee Wee has it, the throw to Hodges...The
Brooklyn Dodgers have won the World Series.”
Wow. It was Gil Hodges and Jackie Robinson and Duke Snider and
Roy Campanella and especially Johnny Podres, who won two games
and shut the Yankees out 2-0 in the last one, that freed all
of us Brooklyn kids from the trauma of October depression.
The Yankees had won every time from 1941 on, the first Series
I can remember, until 1955 deliverance.
Buzzie Bavasi, a New York kid, had put that team together as
the general manager and deserved a lot of the credit for that
redemption.
He had developed Don Newcombe and Roy Campanella as a GM in the
minors at Nashua, New Hampshire and brought all the other Boys
of Summer along, recommended Walt Alston as manager and brought
up two pitchers that 1955 season, Roger Craig and Don Bessent,
when the staff stumbled.
It was Craig and Clem Labine who won a game each and Podres,
who won two games, that brought Brooklyn its only title.
“If I had one game to win, I would pitch Podres,” Bavasi
once said, ignoring the fact that he also recommended the Brooklyn
signing of a kid out of Brooklyn and the University of Cincinnati
named Sandy Koufax.
I first met Bavasi in 1959 when I was working for Sports Illustrated
and he led the now Los Angeles (boo, boo) Dodgers to another
title.
He was smart, charming, honest and interesting in all the conversations
and controversies through the years.
When colleague Stan Isaacs led a rescue party in 1959 to free
the 1955 Series flag, Bavasi admitted he was not upset. Isaacs
asked him why he didn’t search for the flag.
“Why bother? We had another one made. It only cost $92,”
Bavasai said.
Bavasi led the Dodgers in Brooklyn and Los Angeles to four World
Series titles and eight pennants before leaving the team to take
over the new San Diego Padres.
He always stayed close to his Brooklyn roots. In his early 90s,
he often could be found at his La Jolla, California home tapping
out messages on his computer to old Brooklyn Dodgers, Snider,
Podres, Ralph Branca and Podres.
He had arranged for the most emotional night in Los Angeles Dodger
history when more than 90,000 fans filled the old Los Angeles
Coliseum for a tribute in 1959 to recently injured Roy Campanella.
There wasn’t a dry eye in the place as Pee Wee Reese wheeled
the damaged Campanella out on the field before the adoring throng.
Bavasi always told wonderful Brooklyn stories to old Brooklyn
fans.
“I remember when the Dodgers were considering the move to
California,” Bavasi recalled. “There were eight of
us on the Board of Directors with owner Walter O’Malley.
I led the opposition to the move because I thought something
could be worked out. The vote was 8-1. O’Malley’s vote
to move was the only one that counted. I guess it was all about
making money.”
Edd Roush was the only known baseball player to sit out an entire
season in a salary dispute when he chose to stay home in 1930
instead of playing for John McGraw’s New York Giants.
Sandy Koufax and Don Drysdale threatened the same thing in 1966
when they held out together. They wanted to break the artificial
salary barrier of $100,000. Bavasi got Koufax to accept $125,000
and Drysdale took $110,000.
“We were going to pay them that anyway,” Bavasi said.
Bavasi always said the 1952 Brooklyn Dodgers--Roger Kahn’s
Boys of Summer--was his best team even though they didn’t
win the Series.
He also said his greatest disappointment came with Ralph Branca’s
home run pitch to Bobby Thomson in 1951.
“It was my mother’s birthday and we had a big party
set that night,” he said. “Then Thomson hit that home
run. We cancelled the party. How could we have a party after
that tragedy?”
Bavasi is gone now at the age of 93 but the memories linger on.
He was a great baseball GM, a wonderful guy and a terrific story
teller.
Thanks, Buzzie, for 1955. That alone is worth a free ride through
those Pearly Gates.
©2008 by Maury Allen. The Maury Allen caricature is ©2001
by Jim Hummel. THe Buzzie Bavasi photograph is courtesy of Wikipedia,
the online encyclopedia. This column first posted May 5, 2008.
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