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BY THE BOOK |
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the 1950s |
 EARL TORGESON ...a run-in with young Maury |
Book recalls a fabulous
era for baseball: The 1950s
By MAURY ALLEN
of TheColumnists.com
There are famous fighters among them like Billy Martin,
Clint Courtney and Ruben Gomez and perfectionists like Don Larsen
and assassination survivors like Eddie Waitkus.
There are victims of racism such as Larry Doby, Satchel Paige
and even Willie Mays and victims of tragic deaths such as Roberto
Clemente, Don Hoak and Dick Howser.
There are stand-up comedian types like Pete Whisenant and Moe
Drabowsky and sit down comics like Jimmy Piersall and there are
simply legendary figures of the time such as Stan Musial, Ted
Williams and Sandy Koufax.
All of these icons, hangers-on and over the hill gang members
are connected and collected in print in a breezy, funny, entertaining
work called "Baseball Players of the 1950s: A Biographical
Dictionary of All 1,560 Major Leaguers" (McFarland &
Co., $55) by Rich Marazzi and Len Fiorito.
The coffee table book is filled with photos of the guys then
and now and covers the lives and careers of 1,560 players whose
names appeared in box scores in the big leagues in the 1950s.
It is 450 delightful pages of fun for anyone who ever put a bubble
gum card of a ball player in his school notebook or stared at
his radio when Bobby Thomson hit the Shot Heard Round The World.
This is not a book about the runs, hits and errors these players
compiled. It is a book about the fun in the sun, when baseball
was mostly a day game, and salary levels from $6-16,000 a year
were considered big time bucks.
Maybe it is old age or nostalgia kicking in but this book really
explains what a lot of us in advanced middle age have always
believed about baseball. There was no time like the 1950s for
the game.
World War II was fading into history. Everybody was entitled
to a car. Girls wore short skirts. A skinny singer named Sinatra
was becoming bigger than Bing.
Baseball was really all about New York in those days because
the Yankees, Brooklyn Dodgers and New York Giants were the teams
getting October attention. The country was at peace, the economy
was strong and after Truman decided he wouldn’t go again
in 1952, everybody liked Ike.
Some of the tales are warm and wonderful, some are sad and depressing.
The lives of these guys who happened to be good enough to get
a big league day or more mirrored society, some good, some bad
and most in between.
A bespectacled player named Earl Torgeson, a first baseman in
Boston, triggered my first memory of a 1950s big leaguer in person.
Marazzi used the tale in his book.
I had gone to a Brooklyn game against the Braves in the late
1940s as a teenager. I sat on my subway seat, looked up from
my scorecard and noticed Torgeson, easily recognizable because
of those thick glasses, sitting opposite me.
I was too nervous to ask for an autograph until my stop approached.
I finally got up the courage to approach the big leaguer. “Mr.
Torgeson, “I stammered, “could you sign this?”
“Get the fuck out of here, kid,” bellowed Torgeson,
the leading hitter with a .389 average in the 1948 World Series.
I cried all the way home.
Twenty years later I attended a baseball promotion for spring
training as a New York Post sportswriter. Opposite me that day
was a gorgeous girl called Miss Tampa. We started talking about
players who weren’t too friendly and I recalled the Torgeson
story.
“Yep, “she said, “that was my dad.”
Her name was Ina Torgeson and she indicated that my scouting
report on her feisty father was pretty accurate.
Marazzi and Fiorito have produced this wonderful book with about
25 years of effort.
“This is the kind of stuff I always saved as a kid when
I read about these guys in the papers,” said Marazzi. “When
I became a writer and a broadcaster myself I got a lot of new
stories. I also took pictures of all these guys when I met them.”
There is a New York restaurateur named Jerry Casale. He pitched
in the big leagues with Boston, Los Angeles and Detroit from
1958-1962. He was sent out by Boston to the minor leagues and
screamed at his manager for that affront after proving his big
league skills.
“They sent me to their minor league club in San Francisco
in 1956,” recalled Casale. “They told me they wanted
me out there because I was Italian and they had a lot of Italians
in San Francisco. I screamed at the manager, Pinky Higgins, who
was drunk when he was telling me all this. Then the GM, Joe Cronin,
said I had to go or would be out of the game. “Are those
Italians in San Francisco different than the ones in Boston?”
It didn’t help a bit. Casale won 19 games in the old Pacific
Coast league but was drafted for the next two years. It cost
him a full baseball pension because players had to have five
years in the big leagues then to qualify. Now they need only
one day.
Maybe it is just this book and these hysterical stories that
make the difference now. Players today seem more interested in
the million dollar salaries and dates with their business managers
than they do in telling these great old tales that make up the
heart of this book.
Marazzi and Fiorito have done a service for young readers as
well as nostalgic old ones. This is a good look at what the game
was like half a century ago. It’s still three strikes you’re
out and four balls for a walk but so much of the fun is gone.
Barry Bonds doesn’t sit around telling jokes to sportswriters
now. His off time is spent with his managers, agents, investment
counselors and body caretakers.
This book is good for a thousand laughs. We can all use more
of that.
©2004 by Maury Allen. The Maury Allen caricature is ©2001
by Jim Hummel.
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