Perfect: Don Larsen's Miraculous World Series Game (36 page)

Hulo returned to the farm in Roxboro, North Carolina, that one of Enos’ brothers bought for them, and Slaughter remembered being lonely in that first season of professional baseball. But it did not affect his performance. He made a respectable showing and earned a promotion the following season to the Cardinals’ farm team in Columbus, Georgia.

The dream of making the major leagues began to evaporate at the beginning of that second season. Enos was batting a meager .220 and feeling very sorry for himself. During one game, he trotted in from right field after an inning and then slowed down to a walk when he passed first base. Eddie Dyer, the thirty-five-year-old manager, did not hide his disappointment when Enos came into the dugout. “Listen,” he said to his twenty-year-old player, “are you too tired to run all the way? If you are,” he added with obvious sarcasm, “I’ll get some help for you.”

The message could not have been more clear. “From then on,” Enos remembered, “I kept on running.” And not just from the outfield after the end of the inning. He would run to his position in the outfield when the inning began. He would run to first base if he got a walk. And he would expend whatever energy it required to quickly get to wherever else he had to go on the field.

It was a trait that would eventually capture the attention of his teammates, his manager, and even the press. “He is,” said one sportswriter after Slaughter had been with the Cardinals for more than seven years, “perpetual motion on the ball field.” (Slaughter’s hustle also caught the eye of Pete Rose, who later set a major-league record for lifetime hits and became known as “Charlie Hustle” because of his aggressive base running. “I used to watch the Cincinnati Red games on television,” Rose told a reporter after his rookie year in 1963. “One day, the Reds were playing the Cardinals. Slaughter drew a walk and ran hard to first base. I decided right then and there,” said Rose, “that was what I was going to do as long as I played ball.”)

Slaughter’s newfound energy in that second season of minor-league ball invigorated his game as well. By the time the 1936 season ended, he had a .325 batting average and the league lead in triples. Although his baseball career appeared to be on track, his marriage was not. Hulo gave birth to a daughter named Rebecca that October, but she died after six days. That misfortune only compounded the problems encountered by the young couple, and by the following summer Hulo was living with her parents in Roxboro while Enos continued his ascent to the big leagues.

The 1937 season brought him closer to his goal. Enos played with the Cardinals’ American Association farm team in Columbus, Ohio, and distinguished himself as the league’s dominant hitter. He hit twenty-six home runs and led the league in batting average (.382), hits (245), and runs (147). Sportswriters began to refer to him as “slugger extraordinary” and “one of the brightest minor league stars of the year.”

Slaughter’s exploits on the field made him a fan favorite, and one Columbus sportswriter conducted a contest that asked the reading public for suggestions on a nickname that could be affixed to the town’s star player. One of the more popular proposals was “Country,” and Slaughter—the sole judge of the contest—agreed that “Country” was indeed the best choice. By the time he reached the major leagues in 1938, teammates and sportswriters alike were referring to the twenty-two-year-old player as Country Slaughter.

The 1938 Cardinals were no longer the hard-charging troupe that had gained fame as the “Gashouse Gang” when they won the 1934 World Series. Manager Frankie Frisch had hoped that constant practice during spring training might enable the team to recapture the glory of that championship team, but it was not to be, and the team finished sixth. (“You can take a doggone mule,” outfielder Pepper Martin explained to Frisch, “and work him forty days and forty nights. He ain’t going to win the Kentucky Derby.”) Still, there was one bright spot amidst the frustration: Enos Slaughter.

Even before spring training had concluded, sportswriters were singing his praises. “Slaughter can throw with about as much force and accuracy,”
The Sporting News
reported in March, “as any outfielder the Redbirds have had in years.” Enos opened the 1938 season in center field and validated his promotion in the very first game. In the first inning, the New York Giants’ batter hit a long drive to center field that seemed destined to be an extra-base hit. “Slaughter was off with the crack of the bat,” said one sportswriter. “He turned his back to the grandstand and ran, and when he had gone about as far as he could go without interfering with concrete, he turned, reached out with his glove, and hauled down the drive.” Slaughter also made his mark in those first games with a bat by hitting over .300 in the first few weeks of the season (and would finish with a .276 average). By May, the
St. Louis Post-Dispatch
was saying that Slaughter’s “potential brilliance may well take some of the sting out of a season already marked by many disappointments for the St. Louis Cardinals.”

Slaughter returned to Roxboro after the season ended, pleased with his accomplishments and eager to enjoy life on the farm before he resumed his new life in the major leagues. But unexpected events transformed the homecoming into a tragedy. Shortly before the New Year, he and his father went hunting, caught about twenty-five rabbits, and brought them home to be cleaned for eating. During the process, Zadok cut his finger—in other circumstances, a minor blemish easily disregarded. But, unbeknownst to Zadok and his son, the rabbits were infected with the tularemia bacteria, which produce a condition commonly called “rabbit fever.” Zadok contracted the fever, which the local doctors were unable to diagnose. The family took the elder Slaughter to a hospital in Durham, but, as Enos remembered, “his temperature went up to 107 degrees, and when the fever broke, he went with it.”

Ironically, Enos himself soon became infected with the disease, suffering from high fever, dizzy spells, and large swellings under his left arm that prevented him from straightening it out. But he would not disclose the ailment to the Cardinals as he prepared to leave for spring training in February. He had secured a new contract for $3,300, and he did not want the team to have any second thoughts about its decision.

Slaughter’s silence on his health did not have any adverse impact. He played in 149 games during the 1939 season, batted .320 with 193 hits (fourth in the league), and hit a league-leading fifty-two doubles. That performance helped to lift the Cardinals into a second-place finish and buoyed Enos’ spirits. In his first year, he had been intimidated by the atmosphere and almost afraid to converse with the other players. After all, Ducky Medwick, Johnny Mize, and many of the other Cardinals were household names in baseball. “Me being off the farm,” Slaughter later said of that first year, “I didn’t have too much to say.” But no longer. “I wasn’t in awe of the big shots on the club anymore,” he remembered. “In fact, the way I was contributing to the success of the ball club, I considered myself to be among them.”

There was no change in Slaughter’s status as the years progressed. In 1940, he again batted over .300 with thirteen triples and seventeen home runs. By August 1941, he had a .312 batting average, thirteen home runs (the most on the club), and seventy-one runs batted in (second in the league). From all appearances, it would be his best year in the big leagues. But in an afternoon game at Sportsman’s Park, a Pirate batter lined a drive into right center field. Slaughter and Cardinal center fielder Terry Moore converged on the ball and, as he realized that Moore was about to make a diving catch, Slaughter tried to jump over his teammate—but landed on his shoulder in the process. Billy Southworth—now the Cardinals’ manager—ran out to the field. “Are you okay, Eno?” he asked. Slaughter, ever the stoic, assured his manager that he was fine. But when Southworth asked him to throw a ball, the Cardinal outfielder came up short. And for understandable reasons. An X-ray later showed that Slaughter had broken his collarbone—an injury that sidelined him for the rest of the season and certainly contributed to the Cardinals’ inability to overtake the Dodgers for the league lead.

Slaughter and the Cardinals got their revenge in 1942. The Redbirds took the pennant by winning 106 games, and no one was more instrumental in that achievement than the North Carolina native. Slaughter batted .318 (second in the league) with a league-leading 188 hits, a league-leading seventeen triples, and a league-leading 292 total bases.

The Cardinals defeated the Yankees in the five-game World Series, and Slaughter added to his growing reputation with a sterling play in the field. After losing the first game, the Cardinals had rebounded to take a 4-3 lead in the second game at Sportsman’s Park. But the Yankees appeared to be on the verge of coming back. Catcher Bill Dickey lined a single to start the top of the ninth inning, and Yankee manager Joe McCarthy sent in Tuck Stainback, his fastest runner, to run for Dickey. Bomber first baseman Buddy Hassett then drove another single into the right-field corner, and Stainback raced past second base with the obvious expectation that reaching third would be easy. But the Cardinal right fielder backhanded the ball quickly, whirled around, and made what one New York sportswriter called “the greatest throw I ever saw.” The ball traveled in a perfect arc to Cardinal third baseman Whitey Kurowski, who tagged Stainback out with yards to spare. The Yankee rally died, and the Cardinals won the second game (as well as the next three).

However much he wanted to bask in the glory of that World Series Championship and his burgeoning baseball career, Slaughter knew that a change was required. The nation was at war, and in August 1942 he had enlisted in the Army Air Corps. In January 1943, the twenty-six-year-old outfielder donned a military uniform and abandoned any hope of playing in Sportsman’s Park for the foreseeable future. But it was not to be a lonely life. He had met Josephine Begonia, a young woman from Chicago, on a trip to Peoria, Illinois, to make an off-season appearance for the Cardinals after the 1942 season ended. She was playing the piano in the orchestra at the hotel where Enos was staying. The two young people began to talk, a rapport was established, and in March 1943, they were married.

The army assigned Slaughter to be a physical training instructor at what is now the Lakeland Air Force Base in San Antonio, Texas. It was a life devoid of combat, and, as victory became imminent in early 1945, he joined a troupe of major-league baseball players in touring the Pacific Islands and entertaining the troops. Even then, however, Enos would not spare any effort to succeed, on one occasion ripping his leg while sliding on a field made of sand and filled with coral. (“These guys are dying for me,” he later told a reporter. “The least I can do is give them my best.”) He ended his tour on the tiny island of Tinian and was there when—unbeknownst to him—the
Enola Gay
took off one August morning for the flight to Hiroshima.

On February 1, 1946, Slaughter was discharged from military duty and joined the Cardinals for spring training in Florida. But Josephine was no longer with him. The relationship had soured before Enos had been shipped overseas, and, shortly after he arrived at the Cardinals spring training camp in St. Petersburg, he began spending time with Mary Peterson Walker, a widow from Galesburg, Illinois, whose husband had been killed in the war (and who would soon become Enos’ third wife and give him a daughter named Patricia).

The changes in his social life may have contributed to Enos’ successful transition back to professional baseball. He played that 1946 season without any indication that he had lost any of his skill at the plate or on the field. Chicago Cubs general manager Jim Gallagher grudgingly acknowledged that consistency when he watched Slaughter beat a throw to first base in a game at Wrigley Field. “That big baboon drinks beer, goes away for three years,” said Gallagher, “and comes out running faster” (Gallagher not realizing that Slaughter did not drink at the time). Opposing pitchers could have had the same lament. Slaughter batted an even .300 while hitting a career-high eighteen home runs and driving in a league-leading 130 runs. Not surprisingly, those achievements brought him considerable media attention when the 1947 season began. “A throwback to the Gashouse Gang,” said one article published in May, “Enos Slaughter is a professional who hustles like a starry-eyed amateur. Ignoring illness and injuries, he plays some of his greatest games when he should be home in bed.”

Slaughter’s renewed status as a national figure was not the only change in that 1947 season. Jackie Robinson, the Dodgers’ new first baseman, had broken the color line. There were, of course, players and managers who objected to racial integration in baseball, and some did what they could to prevent the experiment from succeeding. And so it was easy to accept the credibility of rumors that circulated at the beginning of the season that the St. Louis Cardinals—whose roster included many players from the South—would go on strike when the Dodgers made their first visit to Sportsman’s Park in May.

Before that visit,
The New York Herald Tribune
reported that Cardinal owner Sam Breadon had heard about the strike and had traveled to New York City to confer with National League President Ford Frick about possible solutions. Frick, it was said, had responded by sending a telegram to the Cardinal players to warn them about the repercussions if any strike occurred. “If you do this,” the telegram reportedly read, “you will be suspended from the league. You will find that friends that you think you have in the press box will not support you, that you will be outcasts. I do not care if half the league strikes. Those who do it will encounter quick retribution.”

It was, to be sure, an eloquent endorsement of sound social policy. Initial reports also indicated that Frick had called several of the Cardinal players, but
The New York Times
soon corrected that impression. “I didn’t have to talk to the players myself,” Frick reportedly said. “Mr. Breadon did the talking to them. From what Breadon told me afterward, the trouble was smoothed over. I don’t know what he said to them, who the ringleader was, or any other details.”