Perfect: Don Larsen's Miraculous World Series Game (38 page)

Slaughter’s retention of the energy to maintain that high level of play was not a matter of happenstance. It was based on a disciplined lifestyle. His consumption of alcohol was minimal. Although he chewed tobacco, he never smoked cigarettes. He had a daily intake of sunflower seeds and vitamins. He thrived on boiled lean meat, never had anything fried, and rarely ate hamburger meat or pork. He also had a liking for a drink that consisted of skim milk and raw eggs. And—while he had purchased a home in the St. Louis suburb of Belleville, Illinois—he tried to stay in shape during the winters by hunting, fishing, chopping wood, or engaging in some other physical activity. (He did not devote the same attention to his teeth, and many years later—long after he had retired—his daughters would remember with amusement one dinner when he tried to bite into something hard. His false teeth popped out and sailed across the dining room table.)

There was little evidence of Slaughter’s age in his performance during the 1953 season. True, he hit only six home runs in 143 games, but he hit thirty-four doubles, drove in eighty-nine runs, and batted a respectable .291. His record and stature also led to his selection for the National All-Star team for the tenth consecutive season (which he more than justified by getting two hits, driving in two runs, stealing a base, and making what one sports historian called “a spectacular diving catch” in the National League’s 5-1 triumph over the American League—causing Casey Stengel, who had managed the American League team, to say afterward, “The old feller done us in”).

The Cardinals appeared to appreciate Slaughter’s dedication and his seemingly ageless talent. The Anheuser-Busch company, makers of Budweiser and other popular beers, had purchased the team midway through the 1953 season, and Slaughter received special attention when he signed his next season’s contract in December. “This is the first Cardinal player contract I’ve ever handled,” President Gussie Busch told a smiling Enos Slaughter at the press conference. “I want you to know that you’ll be here as long as I am.” Kind thoughts that would not survive spring training.

The North Carolina native was sitting in the dugout in April during the Cardinals’ final exhibition game when manager Eddie Stanky approached him. “Slaughter,” he said without emotion, “you can go ahead and get dressed. The general manager would like to see you in his office.” Slaughter did what he was told and strolled into the office of Cardinal general manager Dick Meyer—“totally unprepared,” as he later recalled, “for the news I was about to receive.” “Eno,” Meyer began, “all good things must come to an end.” And then the surprising disclosure: “We’ve traded you to the New York Yankees.”

Slaughter could not believe the words he had heard. He loved the Cardinals. He had been with the organization for his entire career. He had a .305 lifetime batting average in thirteen seasons, and he knew that he was still capable of making a contribution to the team’s success. He could not understand why the Cardinals would throw him out.

The answer came in a press conference held later that day. Gussie Busch acknowledged that the club had “just traded one of the greatest baseball players in the history of the St. Louis Cardinals.” But the team, he explained, had to look to the future. “We have several very promising outfielders with the Cardinals and in our system,” said Busch. “They are knocking at the door of the Cardinals right now and we have to make a place for them.”

Busch’s explanation was of little solace to Slaughter. Only days shy of his thirty-eighth birthday, the longtime Cardinal right fielder was in tears as he faced the press, repeatedly wiping his eyes with a handkerchief. “This is the biggest shock of my life,” Slaughter said. “I’ve given my life to this organization, and they let you go when they think you’re getting old.”

The trade was not the only change in Slaughter’s life. He had divorced Mary a few years earlier. (“Her parents had come down to our house and started to get into our affairs,” Slaughter later explained. “I think that’s what broke up our marriage more than anything else.”) He subsequently met Ruth Rohleder, a small-time actress who used the name Vickie Van, while he was in Los Angeles on a barnstorming tour after the season had ended. She soon became Enos’ fourth wife and traveled with him to New York.

Slaughter was with the Yankees when they opened the 1954 season, and he was eager to show his new team that he was a long way from retirement. “One thing I did when I played ball, regardless of what uniform I wore,” Slaughter later told writer Peter Golenbock, “I gave one hundred percent.”

Of course, the Yankees were not just any team. They were perennial winners. Still, coming to New York was a mixed blessing. To begin with, Slaughter was not happy with Casey Stengel’s platoon system, which often required him to sit out games that included left-handed pitchers and often relegated him to the role of pinch hitter. “My boy,” Stengel responded when Slaughter registered his complaint, “you play when I want you to play and you’ll be here for a long time.” His desire to play was further handicapped by injury—in chasing a long fly ball in Yankee Stadium, he crashed into the scoreboard and broke his arm in three places. The injury required four weeks of recuperation before he could resume play and then additional time for him to regain his batting form. By the time the season ended, he had played in only sixty-nine games and had hit a meager .248 in 125 at bats with only one home run. Not the kind of All-Star season Enos Slaughter had produced year after year when he was with the Cardinals.

Slaughter’s adjustment to the Yankees was made that much more difficult by his focus on his statistical record over the course of his long career. He could recite virtually every statistic from his record in both the minor leagues and the National League, and he was not shy about displaying that knowledge. “He always knew his stats,” said Hank Bauer, who shared outfield duty with Slaughter. (Bauer, however, agreed that Slaughter “was a great ballplayer,” and, when asked at a baseball fantasy camp which ballplayer he would most like to emulate, Bauer pointed to Slaughter.)

Slaughter’s record was certainly impressive, but that focus on statistics was not the Yankee way. The Bombers took pride in giving little or no attention to statistics. While Bauer may have been willing to overlook Slaughter’s focus on statistics, other Yankees were not. “He talked about himself a little bit,” said Bobby Richardson, “where most Yankees didn’t do that.”

And then there was Slaughter’s habit of running everywhere. The Yankees knew, of course, that he had built his reputation on a ceaseless commitment to hustling. But sometimes they could not help but suspect that he used that reputation and his hustle to humiliate them. Gil McDougald remembered the occasion. They were playing in Yankee Stadium, and the Yankee second baseman began his trot toward the dugout on the right side of the field when the inning concluded. Then, seemingly out of nowhere, he felt someone else’s spikes on top of his shoe and turned to see Slaughter, who had been playing right field (and presumably would reach the dugout after the second baseman did). McDougald had an explosive temper when wronged, and he did not mince words with his new teammate. “If you ever do that again,” he told the former Cardinal, “I’ll kill you.”

Slaughter understood the resentment that existed among certain Yankees. (“I hustled all the time, ran out every play, ran to and from my position every inning,” he later said. “Some players resented that, called me a showboat.”) And so he was understandably elated when he learned that the Yankees had traded him to the Kansas City Athletics shortly after the 1955 season began. It was a new club near St. Louis, and, more than that, the Athletics did not have the same abundance of talent as the Yankees. In Kansas City, he hoped, he would have a chance to play more regularly. “The news of the trade really had the adrenaline flowing in me,” he told one sportswriter.

He was not disappointed with his second American League club. He batted .322 while playing in 108 games and found himself being appreciated far more than he was in New York. “The people in St. Louis had always been great to me,” he later said, “but I never had bigger ovations than those I received in Kansas City’s Municipal Stadium.” The fans voted the former Cardinal as the team’s most popular player and rewarded him with a Chrysler Imperial on the last day of the season.

Enos hoped that he would finish his career playing with the Athletics, and, until August 1956, it appeared that those hopes would be satisfied. Then, as he was getting out of the shower after a game, manager Lou Boudreau asked him to stop by his office after he had dressed. “How would you like to go back to the Yankees?” Boudreau asked when Slaughter came to the office. “I’m satisfied here in Kansas City,” he replied. But it was really a rhetorical question. The Yankees, desperate for a left-handed hitting outfielder, had already purchased his contract and released Phil Rizzuto, who could no longer make the long throws from shortstop or get the hits that had made him so valuable earlier in his career.

Slaughter made his first appearance with the 1956 Yankees at a doubleheader with Detroit and quickly vindicated the decision to release Rizzuto. The North Carolina native got five hits, including a home run and a triple, to help his new team win both games. In that final month of September, Slaughter hit close to .300 and finished the season with sportswriters still marveling at his commitment to the game. “Although Enos has not been quite as robust this season as he was last year,” said one sportswriter shortly after the trade to the Yankees, “he still was an odds-on favorite who could be counted on to give everything.” Slaughter too was pleased with his contribution to the Yankees in that last month of the season. “I really think,” he later said, “I helped them win the pennant.”

 

Enos Slaughter is no doubt hoping he can help the Yankees win another game as he waits for Sal Maglie’s pitch in the bottom of the seventh inning of the fifth game of the 1956 World Series. After working the count to two balls and a strike, Slaughter swings. “There goes a fly ball,” Bob Wolff tells his listening audience with some excitement, “and Amoros is going back for it.” There is a pause in the commentary, a signal that the fate of the fly ball is uncertain. But Wolff ends the suspense by saying, “And makes the catch on the cinder path in left field.” A few feet more and that fly ball would have been a home run instead of the second out in the inning.

As Slaughter retreats to the Yankee dugout, Billy Martin steps into the batter’s box. Martin takes a ball, watches a curveball go by for a strike, and then slams a hard ground ball between Jackie Robinson and Pee Wee Reese that shoots into left field for a single. The Yankees now have their fifth hit, and Gil McDougald comes to the plate. The Yankee shortstop walks on four pitches, and, with runners on first and second bases, the stadium crowd starts to stir. Perhaps this is the beginning of another Yankee rally. But it is not to be. Maglie throws a fastball that forces Andy Carey, the next batter, to jump back from the plate. The Yankee third baseman looks to Babe Pinelli for a ruling that the pitch had hit him, but the home plate umpire shakes his head. Carey steps back into the batter’s box and gets ready for the next pitch. Carey swings helplessly at a curveball, fouls off another pitch, and then sends a sharp ground ball to shortstop. Reese fields it cleanly, flips the ball to Junior Gilliam for the force-out of McDougald at second base, and the seventh inning is over.

15

I
t should have been a happy homecoming. Joan Hodges’ husband was coming back from a long trip on the road with the Brooklyn Dodgers. On this last day of August in 1950, they had been married less than two years, and she was still struggling to adjust to the long absences. Still, she had hoped that Gil would remember the gift he had promised—a reward of sorts for her patience. But the twenty-six-year-old Dodger first baseman was no doubt more focused on the fortunes of his club—then vying with the Philadelphia Phillies for the National League pennant—than a shopping trip to find that gift. He came back empty-handed.

The oversight did not sit well with Joan, and she did not hide her disappointment. “It was a pretty one-sided quarrel,” she remembered. “I did all the complaining, and Gil remained quiet, keeping everything bottled up inside him.” That was, after all, his way. A stoic man not given to outbursts of emotion. But he did give Joan a kiss as he left for the night game at Ebbets Field and said he would look forward to seeing her at the ballpark after the game. But Joan was not yet ready to turn to other matters. “You’ve been away so long,” she replied in a petulant matter that she would later regret, “one more night won’t make any difference.” And so her husband left the Brooklyn home they shared with her parents without the usual good wishes and walked the few blocks to Ebbets Field in the muggy air.

Gil’s mother, still living with his father and older brother in the small town of Petersburg, Indiana, knew nothing of the young couple’s squabble when she arrived home that evening. But she did know that the Dodgers were hosting a game against the Boston Braves. It was not something she wanted to miss.

The family did not have a radio to receive a broadcast of a game hundreds of miles away in Brooklyn. Instead, the family had to rely on reports from a local store that had a news ticker. Mrs. Hodges—knowing that her husband was still at work—therefore had only one thought as she walked in the house that August evening. “Call down,” she asked her son Bob, “and find out how the game is going.” “I was just gonna call you,” said the man at the store when he received Bob’s call. “He hit one, and Brooklyn’s leading 3-1.”

Within a short time the man at the store called again. “He hit another one,” he told the older brother, “and they’re leading 10-1.” Bob Hodges did not have to wait long for the next call. The man on the phone was sputtering with excitement. “He’s got another,” he shouted into the phone, and the Dodgers were winning 14-1. Three home runs in one game. Yankee first baseman Lou Gehrig had hit four home runs in a nine-inning game in 1932, but no one in the National League had ever matched that feat in the twentieth century. But now Gil Hodges had a chance. It was only the sixth inning.