Welcome to Baseball History Podcast, featuring baseball biographies. I’m your announcer Bob Wright.
This is game 08 of the 2011 baseball season.
In the first inning let’s take a look at This Week in Baseball History for the 4 week of February.
February 24
1948 The White Sox trade Ed Lopat to the Yankees for Aaron Robinson, Bill Wight and Fred Bradley.
Edmund Walter Lopat (originally Lopatynski), nicknamed “The Junk Man,” but better known as “Steady Eddie”, was born June 21, 1918 in New York, New York.
Lopat teamed with fireballers Vic Raschi and Allie Reynolds to be one of the Big Three starting pitchers on the New York Yankees’ five straight World Championship clubs from 1949 through 1953. He turned his lack of a fastball into an advantage, keeping hitters off stride with an assortment of slow breaking pitches thrown with cunning and accuracy. To frustrated hitters he was the Junk Man.
His high school didn’t have a baseball team, so he played with outside teams. His usual position was first base. From an early age he had been a Yankee fan, having grown up with the Bombers of 1927 and beyond. He dreamed of playing for the Yankees one day.
He attended a tryout held by the New York Giants but was told he wouldn’t do; he couldn’t make the throw to second base. He went to a Dodger tryout, and they signed him to a minor league contract in 1936.
After two years in the minor leagues, his .229 batting average wasn’t making it. While playing in Jeanerette, Louisiana and warming up with a catcher before a game, he put a little something on the ball. His manager, Carlos Moore, noticed this and told him to throw a curve. Lopat did. Moore told him that with the right coaching he would become one of the best pitchers in the league.
Exit the first baseman, enter the lefthanded pitcher. In his first mound appearance, in relief, he allowed just two hits in 6 2/3 innings.
Still, he bounced around the minors for seven years. In 1939 he started experimenting with a screwball, which would later become his best pitch. He finally caught the attention of the Chicago White Sox, who agreed to take Lopat on a thirty-day trial basis.
It was 1944, and big-league teams were desperate to replace players who had gone into military service. It is not known how Lopat escaped the draft. He may have been exempt for medical reasons; he suffered from time to time with ulcers and other gastrointestinal ailments that would later require surgery.
In his debut, on April 30, 1944, he lost to the St. Louis Browns, as the Browns charged toward their only American League pennant. In his next start, May 4, he beat the Cleveland Indians, 2-1, and went on to establish himself as a major-league pitcher. He also established his mastery over the Indians; he compiled a 40-13 career record against the team the Yankees often had to beat to win the pennant.
Over the next four seasons Lopat won 50 and lost 49 for a White Sox club that never had a winning record. He developed a simple and direct philosophy of pitching: “Get the ball over the plate and make them hit it.”
In 1946 future Hall of Fame pitcher Ted Lyons returned from the war, and Lopat sought his advice. Lyons showed him the slow curve and the short-arm and long-arm deliveries, which gave Lopat twice as many pitches, and generally put the finishing touches on a pitcher who had already achieved some success.
The New York Yankees who had been watching Lopat, acquired him from the White Sox on February 24, 1948, in return for three players.
The Yankees didn’t win the pennant that year, but Lopat compiled an 18-11 record with a 3.65 Earned Run Average. He continued to experiment on the mound, often getting to the ballpark earlier than anyone else so he could work on old deliveries and new ones, refining this pitch, figuring out new wrinkles on that pitch, adding still another delivery to his constantly expanding repertoire.
For his teammates, Lopat was an extra pitching coach. He worked closely with coach Jim Turner; Turner handled the mechanics while Lopat concentrated on the mental aspects of the art and science of pitching. Lopat showed Allie Reynolds how to slow down his delivery and change speeds. He pinpointed a problem for rookie Whitey Ford. Ford was getting racked up, and first baseman Tommy Henrich told him, “You know, that first base coach is calling every pitch you’re throwing.” The next day Lopat and Turner took Ford to the bullpen and had him throw from the stretch, and Lopat immediately spotted the problem: Ford had his glove hand in one position for the fastball and in another when he was going to throw a curve. The problem was quickly solved.
There were differing views of his pitching motion. Some said he looked like a robot or a wind-up doll in need of some WD-40. Others described his delivery as smooth, easy, stylish. Most used the same word to characterize it: deceptive. Ted Williams, when asked to name the five toughest pitchers he had faced, placed Eddie Lopat at the head of the list.
Lopat once told Allie Reynolds, “Take four pitches – the fast ball, the curve, the slider and the screwball. Now throw these at different speeds and you have 12 pitches. Next, throw each of these 12 pitches with a long-armed or short-armed motion, and you have 24 pitches.”
And he kept adding new ones. In 1953 he unveiled the “slip pitch,” a variation on the palm ball taught by White Sox manager Paul Richards. And what was that pitch? The lefthander explained, “Get a knuckleball grip and throw the slider with it.”
In 1949, under new manager Casey Stengel, the Yankees began their historic run of five straight World Championships. Lopat won 15 games in ’49, then 18, then 21.
In l952 he was shelved by arm trouble. Diagnosed with tendinitis in his shoulder, he underwent what was considered a radical treatment-a series of ten x-rays. When he came off the disabled list, he won five of his next eight starts. He finished the season with a 10-5 record and a 2.54 Earned Run Average, the lowest of his career to that point. But he was approaching his 35th birthday and never again made as many as 25 starts in a season.
The next year he lowered his Earned Run Average to 2.43, best in the league, and also led with a winning percentage of .800 on 16 wins against 4 losses. In 1954 he managed a 12-4 record, but his Earned Run Average swelled to 3.55.
He won four and lost eight in the first half of the 1955 season. Shortly after he turned 37 the Yankees traded him to the Orioles for pitcher Jim McDonald.
During the Yankees’ five-year championship run, Lopat won 80 games, plus four more in seven World Series starts, to 92 victories for Raschi and 83 for Reynolds. He later told writer Peter Golenbock in Dynasty, “We had an esprit de corps on that ball club. There wasn’t one jealous bone on that whole ball club… Also, the older players used to reprimand the younger ones for lack of hustle. If they didn’t put out, we’d say, ‘you’re playing on this club and you’d better put out, because that’s the way we play ball here.’”
When Lopat arrived in Baltimore, manager Paul Richards, who prided himself on his ability to teach pitching, showed the veteran a grip and a motion and said, “If you do this, I think it will help you.” Lopat said, “This? Oh, I’ve got that here, here, here and here” – and demonstrated four different spins and release points. And then he rubbed it in with, “What do you think I’ve been getting you out with all these years?”
He pitched ten times for the Orioles, posting a 3-4 record, then retired. Over his 12-year American League career, Lopat won 166 games, losing 112 with an Earned Run Average of 3.21.
In 1956 the Yankees hired him to manage their Triple-A Richmond club. He ran the team for three years, including the first year as playing manager, when he went 11-6 with a 2.85 Earned Run Average. In 1960 the Yankees made him their pitching coach.
Lopat left when Ralph Houk replaced Stengel as manager after the 1960 World Series. In mid-1961, his longtime teammate Hank Bauer became manager of the struggling Kansas City Athletics. He promptly hired a new pitching coach, Eddie Lopat, and kept him through the 1962 season. But Bauer couldn’t lift the A’s out of ninth place, and Lopat succeeded him as manager in 1963.
The team fared little better, with a 90-124 record under Lopat, and by mid-1964 he spilled out of owner Charlie Finley’s revolving door. He stayed with the Athletics as a scout until they moved to Oakland in 1968.
Lopat never left the game, remaining as a coach, manager, general manager, and scout. He formed a friendship with Commissioner Fay Vincent, even though he confessed that he had taught the whole Kansas City pitching staff to throw the spitball.
Eddie Lopat died on June 15, 1992 in Darien, Connecticut.
A large part of this biography comes from the SABR Baseball Biography Project written by Zita Carno. It can be found online at http://bioproj.sabr.org
As a side note, I want to tell you about an iPad app called Pennant. It gives you every team and very play going back to 1952. And, they way it does it it really easy and cool. I purchased it a couple of days ago and had a little problem when I tried to open it. I found the developer’s email and contacted him with the problem. Within an hour I received a response telling me how to make it work, and it did. He also kindly pointed out that the fix was listed at the app store site. I appreciated the service so much that I thought I would mention it here on BHP. Great app and I’m not being compensated for this, I just appreciate good service.
Leave a comment at the BHP web site at baseballhistorypodcast.com or write a review on iTunes, search for Baseball History Podcast.
You can email me at baseballhistory@gmail.com.
Well, that’s it for today’s Baseball History Podcast. I’ll see you later at the ballpark.
