The Lip

(See Cover)

In the land beyond the Brooklyn Bridge, where 2,800,000 real human beings live among baby carriages, delicatessens, and streets of all-alike houses, spring was beginning to stir. Robins and forsythia blossoms appeared in Prospect Park. From Red Hook to Canarsie the sound of baseball bats flung to the pavement and the scuffing of feet skedaddling after fly balls could be heard in nearly every block. At Ebbets Field, the infield shone emerald-green for next week's opening game. Everything was in order but the Dodgers--and because of them there was little joy in Brooklyn.

One block west of Ebbets Field, at the Left Field Bar & Grill, a grim conversation was in progress. One voice said: "Dixie Walker ain't hittin', huh?" A dime bounced on the bar and a voice replied: "He'll hit ... but whaddya get from Durocher? He ain't lookin' over the rookies. Who's gonna be on first? Third base's wide open. Only three positions sewed down. The jerk! Gimme a libation, Eddie."

The beer spigot foamed. Another citizen spoke: "It's a phony. Leo's just putting on a big act, but then, ya can't tell . . . maybe he's in love." Like a breath of spring, a faint note of optimism crept in; somebody mentioned that old Hughie Casey had concocted a new and very secret pitch. "Gonna win twenty games, he says." But it was just a breath and it died on the next remark: "What ya been smokin', bud, mario-wanna?"

First, or Sixth? This week, rednecked from Cuban sun, the question-mark Brooklyn Dodgers rolled north by ship and Pullman. They looked neither bad nor good, only perplexed. One of their deepest perplexities was the conduct of their manager, Leo Durocher. A bridegroom for the third time, he was acting as if he had never been on a honeymoon before. Some days he hadn't even showed up for practice. Other days, chewing gum thoughtfully, he spent most of the time gazing up at his screen-actress bride, Laraine Day, sitting in a box and chewing gum too.

What was to become of the Brooklyn Dodgers? Sports-page experts hazarded guesses of anywhere from first to sixth place. Those St. Louis Cardinals had everybody wide-eyed. And the Braves would be hard to stop. As opening day drew near, the Brooklyn Dodgers had become the mystery team of the National League. And most of the mystery involved the rough-&-tough Leo Durocher, highest-paid manager in baseball, natty and noisy friend of the notorious, and great field general of America's national game.

Invitation to a Haymaker. At 40, Leo Ernest Durocher is the most talked-about and most unloved man in baseball. From heavy-lidded eyes he stares a perpetual challenge to the world. He fears no man. His square chin juts an open invitation for somebody to hit it--and about half of baseball's players and umpires, at one time or another, have resolved to do just that thing some day.

At the Polo Grounds one day, The Lip declared, with a flip of his hand: "I don't want any nice guys on my ball club. The nice guys are over there on the Giants' bench, and where are they? In last place!"

Singlehanded, Leo Ernest Durocher has probably set sport's code of fair play back a hundred years. His fits of anger rise and blow away like gusty March winds over Greenpoint. He uses these gusts to advantage. Durocher's credo is: "You've got to win in this game, and how you do it isn't too important."

An essential part of the act is to rile the umpire, and in doing so to rile the other team. This is not considered out-of-the-way in Brooklyn, where it was a custom to chant Three Blind Mice as the umpires walked on field.

From a long study of umpires, Lippy has divided all quarrels with them into three categories, and has an appropriate technique for each. When an umpire really calls one wrong, Leo strides out of his dugout menacingly, and patiently diagrams to him what happened. The fans see all the apparently angry pointing, and imagine admiringly what is being said. Confesses Leo: "Sometimes, the ump admits to me, 'I missed that one,' before I even start to tell him what a woodenhead son-of-a-bitch he is. But I keep on talking ... maybe I'm telling him I'll buy him a beer after the game."

Where the umpire's decision was close but right, The Lip is apt to make far more noise. "I'm just putting up a smoke screen," he admits. "Maybe the ump will call the next close one my way."

Sometimes one of his Dodgers gets too deep in debate with an umpire, and that calls for Technique No. 3. The trick is to take over the fight. He thrusts out his chin, wags a threatening finger under the ump's nose, and as a final insult kicks sand on the umpire's shoes. Says Durocher: "Sure, I get bounced but my player stays in."

Durocher knows umpires--and they know him. Beans Reardon deflates Leo by saying, "Stop putting on your act, little boy." The most awe-inspiring of umpires is large, red-faced George Magerkurth, who swells up with majestic rage when his dignity is pricked. Leo's arguments with him are Brooklyn legend. "The Mage," says Leo fondly, "is one of the best umpires in baseball." It is a slow season when The Lip gets less than five notices from National League headquarters. Sample: "For prolonged argument, delaying the game, use of violent, profane language, you are fined $100. . . ."

Man of Tastes. When he wants to be nice, which means when he is off the field, Durocher can be a kind of pugnacious Prince Charming--garrulous, tart-witted, persuasive. He talks to kids as though they were grownups. He talks to chorus girls and Powers models as though they were kids. They all like it.

At an estimated $60,000 a year, baseball's highest-salaried manager earns enough to keep up with his extravagant tastes. His Manhattan headquarters is a plushy terrace apartment on fashionable East 64th Street. Its built-in bar (for guests; Durocher seldom touches liquor) has stools made of catcher's mitts on baseball bats. Leo has a passion for racy autos, fancy ties and $175 suits made by Cinemactor George Raft's tailor.

There are some public-relations experts who dispute Barnum's dictum that any publicity is good publicity. But few of these heretics work for ball clubs. The Lip gets in print oftener, and apparently without trying, than any other five baseball managers put together. Not until this year has anyone seriously questioned the sales value of this publicity.

Yet some of the headlines have not been the kind that look well in a scrapbook. There were the headlines in Philadelphia when Leo slugged a reporter. And the headlines about what happened in Leo's apartment while Leo was away: when Screen Tough George Raft won $18,000 from a gullible manufacturer in a wild-&-woolly crap game.

There was also the Dodger Rebellion, when the team refused to take the field one day until Durocher explained away a crack about Pitcher Bobo Newsom. And the time Leo was charged with bashing a Brooklyn heckler (who was later paid $6,750). Leo was acquitted of criminal charges after testifying meekly that the heckler had "a tremendously loud voice."

But the headlines he made in Hollywood last winter, when he saw the one woman for him, were the worst yet. The fact that she also happened to be his host's wife caused him no hesitation. He wooed & wedded the girl despite the continuing objections of a California court. Sweet-faced Laraine Day was only 26, a girl of strict Mormon upbringing who neither drinks, smokes nor swears. The Leo & Laraine Page One stories did neither Durocher nor baseball any good. The Catholic Youth Organization of Brooklyn (50,000 members) is boycotting the Dodgers so long as Durocher runs them.

But ten years from now, according to Leo's simple philosophy, the public would only remember who won and who lost. So that was all right. Said the triumphant bridegroom: "My God, I came west to play golf and I end up with a wife and three kids."

Man of Color. Leo Durocher, the holler guy, has added very little to baseball's respectability. But at a time when sport was empty of color--and the splashes of color made by Babe Ruth, Jack Dempsey and Walter Hagen had faded--he was as refreshing to the bleachers as a bottle of beer on an August afternoon.

In Brooklyn, where the fans are practiced in spotting phonies, color is something that cannot be faked, and a phony is someone who has color but not ability. Durocher has immense ability. In his day he was a crack fielding shortstop, and in eight years as manager he won Brooklyn its first pennant in 21 years (in 1941) and finished worse than third only once.

Brooklyn is a city with an inferiority complex and 22 "chambers of commerce," and it takes its baseball seriously. Manhattan may have taller skyscrapers and Washington more skillful politicos, but in any kind of fair fight--say of nine men on a ball field--Brooklyn expects to hold its own. The great moments in Brooklyn's rowdy baseball tradition have usually been accidental: the time Hack Wilson was hit on the head with a fly ball while sassing the bleachers; the time three Dodgers slid into the same base at the same time; the day Babe Herman almost started a fire because he forgot to douse his cigar before putting it in his pocket. Under Durocher, such rowdyism is a deliberate way of life.

What Durocher lacks as a manager is supplied by his wily and pious boss, Branch Rickey, known as The Brain. It is Rickey who assembles the circus, Ringmaster Durocher who snaps the whip. Boss Rickey has a great gift for spotting young talent, signing them up hastily, and training them wisely. In four years he has made Brooklyn's farm system baseball's biggest, outspreading the famed St. Louis Cardinals' system, which he built. The tree that Rickey is growing in Brooklyn (see chart) has 25 branches. This year 450 of its finest fruits were processed in Rickey's new training school at Pensacola.

According to Rickey's "plan" (regarded with some cynicism in Brooklyn, where every loser chants "Wait till next year, we'll moider 'em"), the postwar Dodgers were not expected to win their first pennant until 1948. The Dodgers were a disorganized team last year, full of old men and greenhorns, but with them Durocher almost upset the plan. The Dodgers were in first place on the Fourth of July, by which time, according to an old but questionable tradition, pennant races are decided. (Durocher Dodgers, better at the start than in the stretch, have been first on the Fourth five years out of eight.) They stayed on top, and lost to a better team, the Cardinals, only after a postseason playoff. To do it, Durocher used no less than four first basemen, four second basemen, eight third basemen, nine outfielders, four catchers, and an endless parade of pitchers. It was a remarkable performance, but by Durocher's own standards he was no hero in Flatbush; he lost the championship.

Man of Tactics. Leo seldom appears on the ball field until just before the umpire calls, "Play ball!" He holds court until game time in his office or his private box at Ebbets Field, usually cluttered with his Broadway and Hollywood cronies (including Danny Kaye, Jack Benny, and a blonde or two).

As a tactician (once the game has started), Durocher is unsurpassed; as a yearlong strategist, says Rickey, "he ain't." Durocher has an instinct for knowing just what his players can do in any situation. He yanks pitchers quicker than any other manager, and the results usually bear out his judgment. Pete Reiser stole home so often on Durocher's orders (seven times in 1946) that rival pitchers got the jitters every time he reached third base. Brooklyn scored more runs last season on squeeze bunts than any other club. Says Leo: "I play hunches . . . maybe other managers are afraid to take chances."

With Leo dashing on & off the field, it usually takes the Dodgers longer than any other club to play a nine-inning game. The Dodgers seem to thrive on continuous hubbub; their rivals don't. Explains Leo: "When I'm out on that field I like nobody but the guy who's got Dodger written on his chest. Now afterwards, sure, I'll take one of the other team out and buy them dinner, but during the game I hate them."

Sometimes, he does not even seem to like the Dodgers; he hurt rather than helped three promising players by tongue-lashings that shook their confidence; last season, Little Vic Lombardi hardly dared pitch a ball without looking to the dugout for Leo's nod. Leo's smart assistant, Coach Chuck Dressen, now with the Yankees, spent much of his time reinflating egos. (Some belittlers, exaggerating Dressen's importance, think the Dodgers won't be the same without him.) But Leo's lip also pays off. Against the Chicago Cubs last season, the day was getting dark and Brooklyn's pitcher was weakening. As his club came to bat, still leading 2-to-0, Durocher snapped to the bench: "Listen, you guys! I'm gonna stir up a rhubarb.* He began heckling the Cubs' catcher, Mickey Livingston: "Yeah, you! Grimm never used you this year until the pennant race was over, did he? Couldn't take a chance with a bum like you when the chips were down!" Catcher Livingston headed toward the Dodger bench angrily, and the ensuing brawl with an umpire lasted long enough for Durocher's purposes. It was soon too dark to continue the game. The game ended: Dodgers 2, Cubs 0.

"I'll Beat You." Says Branch Rickey: "Leo can't be found mollycoddling a situation. He has marvelous aptitude--whether shooting pool, playing golf or squash or gin rummy--but no classical education. His marks in deportment may not have been too good. He came out of a pretty tough neighborhood in Springfield, Mass. with great energy which boiled down to three words: 'I'll beat you, I'll beat you.' "

The Durochers' home in West Springfield, Mass, was just a few blocks from the roundhouse where Leo's railroading father worked. It was a self-respecting if tough neighborhood. Of French descent, Leo went to St. Louis Roman Catholic Church. But two years as an altar boy did not soften him noticeably. At 17, Leo was the best pool shot in town (though his habit of talking to his opponent while the latter was lining up a shot was not considered ethical), and the brassiest guy on the Wico Electric Co. baseball club.

Five years later he was on the New York Yankees, and hanging around the great Babe Ruth. Ruth was making $70,000 a year, and Durocher $4,500; Leo did his best to spend as if they were equals, and soon owed nearly everybody. He was a whiz in the field, but Ruth warned him: "You ain't stayin' in this league long, buddy. You gotta be able to hit to stick up here."

Already known as Lippy, young Leo Durocher insolently replied: "Yeah? Listen, you big slob, I've got a brain. All you got is a strong back. We'll see who stays in the big leagues the longest." Durocher was thrown off the gentlemanly Yankees, bounced in Cincinnati, and came down to earth in St. Louis with the famed Gashouse Gang (Pepper Martin, Dizzy Dean and Frankie Frisch).

Branch & Leo. The shepherd of St. Louis' wild flock was Branch Rickey the Bible quoter, who dutifully shunned the ball park on Sunday, the day the turnstiles clicked most merrily. Rickey considered himself a molder of character, and Leo became his pet reclamation project.

One year, the Naval Academy asked Rickey to lend them a ballplayer as advisory coach. Rickey decided to chance it with Leo. He laid down laws for Durocher's behavior at Annapolis: 1) no profanity before the middies; 2) no chasing around with women; 3) no card-playing with Academy officers; 4) take no pay. Leo, who knows how to behave when he has to, brushed elbows with Academy brass and picked up little bits of polish. His photographic mind* absorbed some fringes of etiquette.

He did well, but it was no lasting conversion. In St. Louis, the Central Trades and Labor Union voted to boycott Cardinal ballgames because The Lip had reportedly popped off with anti-union talk. Says Rickey: "I have times of great quandary. Whenever I get him to the point where he's giving a bucket of milk, I tell myself I'll get this one to the creamery. Then bang! he kicks it over and it never gets there. He has an amazingly fertile talent for making a difficult situation immediately worse."

This season Leo Durocher cannot afford to be immediately worse. After the bad Leo & Laraine publicity, one sports columnist predicted that by July 1 Durocher would no longer be managing the Dodgers. But Branch Rickey summoned a press conference, glowered: "I am a Durocher man." Never needlessly sentimental, Branch Rickey is for Durocher because he expects Durocher to bring home a pennant.

Privately, Rickey laid down the law to Leo. In spring training at Havana, Leo the Leopard has been changing his spots. No dice rolled off his fingertips. When one of his old nodding acquaintances, a Brooklyn gambler, came up to chat friendly like in the dining room of Havana's plush Hotel Nacional, Leo gave him a brief and explicit greeting. "Go away," said Leo. Durocher gave up smoking, even joined the Book-of-the-Month Club.

After the Ifs. Whether Durocher's Dodgers can beat the Cardinals (or even finish in the first division) is a question strewn with ifs. They have the pitching. If Pete Reiser's lame shoulder mends, and if Carl Furillo and Bruce Edwards are as good as they were last year, and if Veteran Dixie Walker comes through, they will have hitting. First-base problem will not be settled until Rickey decides whether to let Jackie Robinson become the first Negro in the big-leagues.

The rest will be up to Leo Ernest Durocher. Shrewd old Branch Rickey did not seem to be worried, even by the baneful influence of Love. Said he last week: "Leo is acting like a high-school boy . . . but it'll be all right."

* Brooklynese for squabble.

* Once he won $10 from a doubting newsman who didn't believe Durocher could recall every play of a doubleheader in Philadelphia.

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