Everybody's Ballplayer

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Next to winning, John J. McGraw liked feuding. During his 30 years as manager, his rough, tough, smart New York Giants won ten National League pennants and seldom finished out of the first-division money. Knockdown, drag-out feuds brightened most of those 30 years.

The McGraw-managed internecine wars packed the parks with cash customers, especially the Polo Grounds when the Brooklyn Dodgers were there. And whenever McGraw led his Christy Mathewsons and Frankie Frischs into Brooklyn, he always made it plain that his club was on a slumming party. By & large, the Giants beat the Dodgers' brains out in those days.

Not long after Bill Terry stepped into McGraw's shoes, he made a classic contribution to baseball's best-paying feud. Asked what he thought about the Dodgers, Terry cracked: "The Dodgers? Are they still in the league?" Terry's Giants won three pennants before Brooklyn took the play away from them.

In 1941 Brooklyn won the pennant and the Giants got a new manager: Melvin Thomas Ott, the club's slugging right fielder with a peculiar but potent cocked-leg stand. The feud was and still is in flower, but hard as they tried, the Flatbush faithful could not hate stumpy, boyish Mel Ott. The Dodgers have outclassed the Giants in recent years, but they still respect Enemy Agent Ott.

Barrels & Records. A softspoken, brown-eyed little (5 ft. 9 in.) guy with a passive Southern accent and an active taste for Crayfish Bisque New Orleans style, Playing Manager Mel has long been a favorite of fans everywhere. More important than his batting records, he had something that made people like him.

He even got along with umpires--until arguing with umpires became part of his managerial business. Umpire Bill Klem once called a doubtful third strike on him, and added: "You can't hit 'em without swinging at 'em, you Mississippi runt." Ott replied: "That kind of hurts me. . . . Everyone ought to know I come from Louisiana." In his 20 years with the Giants (one more than any other National Leaguer has spent with one club), his easy manner and boyish smile have been almost as effective as his big bat.

By last week, the smile that helped make Ott everybody's ballplayer was being strained to the limit. After racing to the longest lead of any big league team in a quarter century (25 wins against seven defeats), his Giants fell flat on their faces. They lost 21 out of 29 games (including a doubleheader with the hopeless Phillies), crashed from first to fifth place in eight days. The astounding Brooklyn Dodgers, who had once been doped as pitiful or worse, had taken a three-and-a-half-game lead--with the Cardinals, Pirates, Giants, Cubs and Braves in a bunch behind. Ott's nervous stomach, which put him to bed for two weeks when his 1943 Giants slumped into last place, began acting up. He cajoled, threatened, finally fined players. The only thing still left untried: hiring a hackman to drive a wagonload of barrels (a traditional omen of good luck) around the Polo Grounds. But there was a shortage of barrels.

This season, despite the wear & tear of managing, his batting average is a hefty .341. One reason: his 36-year-old legs are behaving. For years, his heavy thigh muscles have been popping one Charley horse after another. At first, he nursed them with massage and vitamin injections. Finally he tried a cure popular in his grandfather's day--an olive-oil rubdown.

With his game legs soaked in oil, he is clearly the best of the few remaining big leaguers. Some record-breaking reasons:

P: The next home run he bangs into the right-field stand will be No. 498, his ninth of the season--one more notch on his own National League record. He is already three past the late larruping Lou Gehrig, and Jimmy Foxx's 531 is within reach. Babe Ruth's tremendous 714 is clearly out of sight (on catching up, Ott once said: "Somehow I wouldn't want to see anybody break the Babe's record").

P: He long since topped Rogers Hornsby's runs batted in mark. His 39 this year have boosted his grand total to 1,816.

P: Early this year, he broke Honus Wagner's mark of 4,888 total bases, now has 4,923 to his credit.

P: He has had more walks (1,672), scored more runs (1,825), made more hits (2,809), and more extra base hits (1,048) than any player who ever wore a National League uniform.

Neither his popularity nor his bag of alltime records has expanded his chest measurement (39). Last week, when General Eisenhower went out to the Polo Grounds to see the Giants play the fast-stepping Braves, Mel couldn't remember exactly what the General said to him. "I was too nervous," Ott explained. "Boy, were my hands shaking."

Bright Eyes & Springtime. Modest Mel has always been a country boy at heart--with a determination to make good in the big city. He was born in Gretna, deep in Louisiana's bayou country, the second of three children. His father and Uncle Hugh were semi-pro baseball players. At 16 he and a schoolmate crossed the Mississippi to New Orleans to ask the Pelicans' Owner Alex Heinemann for a job.

After one look at runty Ott, Heinemann growled, "I'll hire your friend, but you're too small." That same year, setting his boyish sights miles higher, Ott took a friend's tip, his father's straw suitcase and a one-way ticket to Manhattan and applied for a job with the New York Giants. McGraw showed no interest, but Ott wangled an oversize uniform and a chance at bat. He promptly cocked his right leg into the air and smacked the ball out of the park. After giving the boy from the bayous a $400 bonus for signing a Giant contract (Detroit's Dick Wakefield got a record $52,000 in 1941), McGraw ventured one of his rare superlatives: "Don't tell him, but that kid's got the finest natural batting form I've ever seen."

The next year (1926), the rookie who had never taken a batting lesson (and never did) stepped up to a big-league plate for the first time in his life--and struck out. But after that unspectacular start, he progressed in a hurry: the next season he walloped one home run, hit 18 the next, an eye-opening 42 the next.

Whenever he made one of his circus catches in right field, bashful Mel doffed his cap to the cheering bleacherites, was always rebuked by the veteran Giants: "If you'd been standing in the right place, you wouldn't have had to run so hard." In the locker room he got two nicknames, "Bright Eyes" and "Little Springtime." Furiously denying that he ever received "mash notes from girls," he learned to snap wet towels back at his tormentors. The sport writers dubbed him "Master Melvin."

Stunts & Speed. He had no flashy crowd-catching tricks. Terry once tried to sell him on the stunt idea. "But what shall I do?" asked Ott. "Anything," said Terry, "do anything. Get drunk . . . disappear ... lie down and roll over when you catch a ball . . . slide home when you hit one out of the park." Replied Ott: "Aw, gee, Bill. I couldn't do that. I'd look silly."

Lacking one important asset of a top-grade outfielder--speed--Ott made up for this deficit by learning to get the jump on a fly ball the split-second it leaves the bat. He is the master of three outfielding arts: 1) on a long fly ball over his head, he takes one look, turns his back and digs for the spot where the ball will drop; 2) he has patiently acquired the knack of picking caroms off the tricky right-field wall at the Polo Grounds; 3) his buggy-whip arm has enabled him to set a league record for starting double plays from the outfield (twelve in one season).

Legs & Lefties. The only player who holds an edge over the little Giant as a right fielder is the mighty George Herman ("Babe") Ruth, whose big bat always obscured his prowess afield. But at bat and in the field, 173-lb. Mel gives the 215-lb. Bambino a good run for it.

Ott squares away to a pitch as though he were going to beat a rug. Crowding the plate with feet apart, he rears up his front leg (not unlike a dog leaning into a hydrant), pulls back his bat, then steps forward and swings. Whenever he faces a high-kicking pitcher, the game looks as leggy as ballet.

Southpaw Slugger Ott says he never stopped to figure out what makes him a great hitter. He thinks maybe it's timing or coordination. There is no mystery about the times when Ott strikes out, pops up or dribbles to an infielder; generally it means that the pitcher has outguessed him, and sneaked in a fast ball when Mel was set for a curve or vice versa.

Dollars & Oysters. Gradually, Ott got used to the idea of being the No. 1 Giant.

His paychecks grew to the point where he needed investment advice (his 20 years in baseball have earned him nearly $300,000), and he found that he had time and money for other things. He married Mildred Wattigny, a New Orleans girl.

They have two daughters, a four-room Greenwich Village apartment and a home in Metairie, outside New Orleans.

During the season Mel spends many of his evenings talking shop -- often at Toots Shor's, 51st Street restaurant in Manhattan. He is a movie, crossword puzzle and gin rummy addict, and hankers for the better eating places that specialize in bouillabaisse and oyster Rockefeller. He has also been known to fritter away a few dollars, between seasons, on the ponies.

He plays a lot of middle-70 golf (he bats and chops wood lefthanded, golfs and throws right-handed).

Rules & Responsibilities. When Terry decided to make him field captain in 1938, Ott objected: "Why Bill, I don't know the rules. How can I be captain?" Terry threw a rulebook at him and ordered: "Study them. You're captain." Soon Ott's bleacher friends, who always shouted advice to their favorite right fielder, noted the little difference that responsibilities made and began calling him Ottie. So did the players and the management. Then Terry quit the bench for a front-office job. The Giants' secretary, fidgety, coffee-drinking Eddie Brannick, had an idea: "God gave us some thing. Let's use it." Giants' President Horace Stoneham agreed. Ott was the surprise something.

Skeptics wondered if he was too mild-mannered. But Mel convinced himself that he had to be "as tough a bastard as his players forced him to be." He has been tough enough since, but has not be come a managerial giant. A third, eighth and fifth place finish in three years is not much of a record. The club's current collapse is all but a managerial disaster.

Ott's apparent inability to straighten out his star pitcher, Bill Voiselle, who be gan by winning eight straight and then lost six in a row, is a case in point. After being twice knocked out of the box, Voiselle was leading the Cardinals 3-to-1, with two out in the ninth, when a 53-minute rain interrupted proceedings. Instead of putting in a game-saver for the thoroughly cooled-out Voiselle, Ott left him in, and the Cardinals won the game. Afterwards, Ott fined Voiselle $500 for not wasting an out side pitch after getting a 2-0 count on the batter, who would have been the third out.

When Ott, in desperation, rescinded the fine last week, Voiselle responded by being knocked out of the box the first inning.

Far from bailing out the culprit pitchers, as Ottie hoped, the hitters have flopped too. Disaster is contagious. If Ott didn't know that 37-year-old Ernie Lombardi couldn't go on hitting home runs right & left, and that 38-year-old Phil Weintraub was a chronic slumper (and a strictly minor-league first baseman), he was whistling alone in the dark.

Prospects & Prejudices. It will be quite a miracle if Manager Mel brings order out of his current chaos. If not, his job is probably in no immediate danger; the Giants' management is notoriously paternalistic, and prone to dream sweet dreams about the future.

Clearly enough, the future has its bright aspects. Besides question-mark Voiselle, there are two top sophomores on the present club: Third Baseman Napoleon Reyes (25), and Shortstop Johnny Kerr (22). Cuban-born Reyes is a flashy, high-stepping crowd-pleaser. Lanky Johnny Kerr is a speedster, and already one of the top short fielders in the game.

Some day, too, Sluggers Johnny Mize and Babe Young will come home from the wars. Meanwhile, Carl Hubbell's new farm system should produce some help. Whether or not Mel Ott can eventually build the really big-time club the Polo Grounds' potential million-a-year customers deserve is another matter.

His prejudiced boss, wealthy Horace Stoneham, still thinks Ott is the best manager in baseball. There are more & more doubters every day, but even the doubters go on cheering for Master Melvin. So long as his legs and eyes hold out, Ottie will go on typifying baseball's big efforts to go on with the show.

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