Baseball History Podcast

Welcome to Baseball History Podcast, featuring baseball biographies.  I’m your announcer Bob Wright.

This is game 17 of the 2011 baseball season.

In the first inning let’s take a look at This Week in Baseball History for the 1 week of May.

May 2

1939 Fred Hutchinson makes his Major League debut for the Detroit Tigers.

The 19-year-old Hutchinson crafted a storybook season in 1938 pitching for the Seattle Rainiers of the Double-A Pacific Coast League.  In his professional debut, Hutch went 25-7 with 29 complete games and a 2.48 Earned Run Average, leading his team to second place and prompting The Sporting News to name him the country’s minor-league player of the year.

Near season’s end, the New York Yankees’ Col. Jacob Ruppert rejected a demand by Rainiers owner Emil Sick for $250,000 and 10 players in exchange for the rookie.  The off-season scramble to sign Hutch tempered only a bit, as the Detroit Tigers outbid the Yankees, Pittsburgh Pirates and Chicago Cubs, securing him for a still whopping $50,000 and four players.

His first action as a Tiger — three innings in an intra-squad game in Lakeland, Florida, and one day after Liberty hit the newsstands — was inauspicious. Hutch couldn’t find the corners of the plate, giving up five runs and six hits, including two triples and a homer. Though writers predicted otherwise (“Much of the success of the Detroit pitching situation depends upon young Freddy Hutchinson,” opined Wind Up magazine), Hutch endured a weary wait for his official big-league entrée.

A full two weeks after opening day in 1939, Hutchinson finally got into a game.  Hutchinson’s major league debut came late in the game on May 2, 1939 against the New York Yankees, who were without their star outfielder, Joe DiMaggio due to a strained ankle.  Far more notable was the absence of another Yankee star.  After a jaw-dropping record 2,130 consecutive games, first baseman Lou Gehrig finally sat out.  Fired up, the Yankees devoured Detroit pitching, scoring six runs in the first inning, and led 13-0 by the top of the seventh when, with the bases full and no outs, the call went to Hutchinson.  He lasted just two-thirds of an inning, giving up four hits and five walks.  Under deep pressure, Hutchinson, strictly a control pitcher, had lost his control.  In his short outing the Yankees scored their final nine runs, seven of which were tagged to Hutchinson, resulting in a rout with the football score of 22-2.

The next day, the Tigers banished Hutch to their Double-A team, the Toledo Mud Hens.  Hutch told the New York Herald Tribune, “I’ve never had trouble like this before.  Control is the one thing which never bothered me.”  He refused to admit that pressure could crack his determination and went on to say, “I’m not trying too hard to live up to all those headlines.  I just cannot explain it.”

Over the next two and a half months, Hutchinson went 9-9 for the last-place Mud Hens.  He rebounded to Detroit on July 21, posting a 3-6 record for the fifth-place Tigers.

Hutchinson’s 1940 performance was not much better: 3-7 with Detroit, and the reverse for the Tiger’s Double-A affiliate.  Even his one-inning stint in the World Series, while not crucial to the Tigers’ 4-0 sixth game defeat or the overall outcome, was marred by a homer over the left field fence by Cincinnati hurler Bucky Walters.

Talk turned to whether Hutchinson should revert to his childhood positions of outfield or first base, so that he might play daily.  But then came a 1941 Bisons season in which he posted a 26-7 won-loss record, 31 complete games, 171 strikeouts against only 47 walks, and a 2.44 Earned Run Average.  Hitting in 72 games, twice the number in which he pitched, Hutchinson batted .385, with 13 doubles, a triple, two homers and 23 Runs Batted In. The International League MVP was a sure bet to join the Tigers full-time in 1942 but that was not to be.

After the Pearl Harbor attack, Hutchinson sidestepped the draft by joining a Navy physical conditioning program led by heavyweight boxing champ Gene Tunney.  He played for four years on teams in Norfolk, Seattle and Honolulu.  Playing outfield as much he pitched, he told The Sporting News, “When the war is over, I want a real try for about three or four years just to see whether or not I really can pitch major league ball.  If I can’t pitch, and if I’m not too old, then I’d like to try it in the outfield. … I like to hit that ball, you know, but I like to throw it, too.  It’s a lot of fun to fool a smart batter.”

With World War II’s end, Hutchinson joined other servicemen in returning to former teams.  He entered the most stable period of his playing career, sticking with pitching and winning 87 games for the Tigers, against 57 losses, from 1946 to 1951.  With Hal Newhouser, Dizzy Trout, and Virgil Trucks, Hutchinson anchored a powerful staff and pitched many crucial games.  Perhaps his biggest was a startling, 8-0 home victory over New York on July 18, 1947, after a one-month hiatus due to shoulder pain — a gem in which Hutch faced 28 batters, gave up two singles, struck out eight, walked none, batted 3 for 4, and denied the Yankees an American League record 20 consecutive wins.

Tenacity became Hutchinson’s identity and his “angry scowl a fearsome calling card.  After a bad outing, the dozen light bulbs lining the narrow tunnel to the Briggs Stadium clubhouse fell victim to his fists.  He unleashed similar fury at other ballparks.  Yankees catcher Yogi Berra classically observed, “I always know how Hutch did when we follow Detroit into a town.  If we got stools in the dressing room, I know he won.  If we got kindling, he lost.”

Hutchinson was elected by his teammates to be their delegate to the fledgling player union, and in 1948 was elevated to American League player rep.  In four-plus years in that post, he helped secure from owners a $25-per-week spring-training expense fund, a $5,000 minimum salary, and designation of radio and TV All Star Game and World Series proceeds to the players’ pension fund.

His player-rep stint ended only because of a further promotion in July 1952, to management.

Hutchinson was undergoing the worst arm trouble of his career as the Tigers stagnated in last place.  Five weeks shy of his 33rd birthday, he was hired to replace Red Rolfe as manager.  Though he pitched and pinch-hit in 21 more games through the 1952 and 1953 seasons, Hutchinson largely devoted himself to managing, inching the cellar dwellers to sixth place in 1953 and fifth in 1954, and nurturing promising rookies, such as 18-year-old future Hall of Famer Al Kaline.

Kaline later recalled of Hutchinson, “The one thing he demanded was a 100 percent effort, no alibi-ing at all.  He was a guy who didn’t like to be embarrassed, and maybe that one word might be what he really stood for.  He wanted his teams to be competitive and not embarrass themselves when they play.  If they lose, fine.  Lose in the right way.  But don’t embarrass yourself…  When you played for him, you knew what to expect.  There was no behind the back.  He let you know, and you knew where you stood all the time, which is really what anybody really likes to know.  He was an up-front type guy.”

Hutchinson’s fiery temper was not vented at his or opposing teams’ players so much as at the men in blue.  The Sporting News delighted in reporting that Hutchinson’s first managerial beef with an umpire came just 26 minutes into his first game on the job.  He lost the appeal but stayed in the game — which was not his fate in countless later beefs in which umps gave him the boot.

When Hutch resigned his Detroit post after the Tigers denied him a two-year contract at the end of 1954, he accepted an offer by Seattle General Manager Dewey Soriano, a childhood pitching chum, to manage the team on which he earned his first national fame in 1938.  Aware of Hutchinson’s famous fury, Soriano installed at Sick’s Stadium a heavy punching bag on which was painted the glowering cartoon face of an umpire.  “The punishment the bag took was comparatively light,” joked The Sporting News, because despite 67 player transactions and no 20-game winner or .300 hitter, Hutchinson pieced together a team that ran away with the 1955 Pacific Coast League title.

However, Hutchinson was eager to return to the major leagues.  He switched to the National League when he hired on as St. Louis skipper from 1956 through 1958, witnessing landmark feats of future Hall of Famer Stan Musial, including his National League record-breaking 823rd straight game.  Plans for another Musial milestone wound up altered by Hutchinson’s winning resolve.  On May 13, 1958, the Cardinals had opted to sit Musial from the last game of a series at Chicago’s Wrigley Field so that he could record his 3,000th hit back home. But with the Cardinals trailing 3-1 in the sixth, Hutchinson needed a pinch-hitter.  Musial obliged with a double to left field, igniting a rally that turned the game in St. Louis’ favor.

Hutchinson steamed, however, in his relationships with St. Louis General Manager Frank Lane and hands-on team owner August Busch.  Hutchinson didn’t hesitate to call his bosses onto the carpet. In July 1957, Lane fumed when Hutchinson stuck with lefty Vinegar Bend Mizell to pitch to righty Gil Hodges, who homered to trigger a Brooklyn win.  In a closed meeting, Hutchinson lashed out, “I’ve got to be left alone to do my job.  It’s hard enough to fight the opposition on the field every day without answering to my own front office in the newspapers.  Criticize me all you want.  Second-guess me in private.  I get paid to take that.  But when your criticism hits every newspaper in the country, it can wreck the morale of this ball club.  That’s one thing we can’t stand.”

One year earlier, Busch had ordered Hutchinson to insert awkward first baseman Tom Alston into the Cards lineup, and the manager refused, telling the owner during a meeting with Lane, “Mr. Busch, do you want me to say what I really think or what you want to hear?  If I wanted to play a clown, I’d go hire Emmett Kelly.”  After Hutch left the room, Lane told Busch, “That man is worth a million dollars to you because he always tells the truth.”

The sad truth, however, was that by the end of 1958, the Cardinal team that had climbed to second place under Hutchinson the year before had slumped to fifth, and ten games before the season’s end became Busch’s sacrificial lamb.

Welcomed back to Seattle, he took the helm of the Rainiers in 1959 and was cajoled to serve as General Manager, as well.  By this time, though, long-independent Seattle had linked with the Cincinnati Reds, and when the parent team foundered in seventh place in July and the brass wanted to replace Mayo Smith, they called on Hutchinson.

Hutchinson’s years with Cincinnati were to be both his most challenging and triumphant.  He failed to take a team loaded with talent above fifth place in 1959 or sixth in 1960.

Hutchinson told players his first day at Crosley Field “I like to win.  That’s the only way to play this game, to win.  We’re all like that. …  Some people say you’ve been playing a little too conservative, that you don’t bump heads enough on the field.  All I got to say to that is if somebody bumps your head, the only thing to do is bump back.  Now, I’m not going to say to you pitchers that you should knock somebody down just because they’re takin’ a shot at you.  I can’t say that, and I won’t say that.  But I don’t care if you brush a hitter back once in a while.  Just to let ‘em know you’re out there.  … I’m glad to be up here with you.  We’re going to start winning.  We might as well start tonight.”

When they truly started winning was in 1961. No one had pegged them as contenders, but Hutchinson achieved his biggest thrill in baseball by leading the Reds to a 93-61 season and the National League flag.  Once again, he was named National Leage Manager of the Year.

However, in the World Series the Reds ran into one of the best-ever Yankee teams, sparked by the Maris/Mantle home-run derby.  Cincinnati dropped the Series 4-1.

The Reds carved a record equally impressive during the new, 162-game schedule of 1962 yet fell to third place.  In 1963, when Hutch guided Pete Rose to Rookie of the Year, the team won ten more games than it lost but slipped two slots to fifth.

A week before New Year’s, 1964, Hutchinson felt soreness and swelling on the right side of his neck.  He flew to his hometown to be examined by his surgeon brother, Bill.  The diagnosis was unequivocal: the 44-year old Hutch, a smoker of three to four packs of cigarettes a day since his Navy stint two decades prior, had inoperable lung cancer.

In a January 3 press conference he divulged his disease to the world, and — just eight days prior to the first Surgeon General’s Report on Smoking and Cancer — it became big national news.  As Hutchinson spoke, his matter-of-fact tone belied his heartbreaking words. “It’s like having the rug jerked out from under you.  You’re feeling fine, then somebody tells you that you have cancer.  You just don’t know what to think. …  Naturally, with the thing like this, you’re bound to be concerned.  But you don’t feel you’re alone in it, either.”

Fitting in radiation and rest, Hutch surrounded himself with Reds players and staff.  To supervise at spring training, he perched in a lifeguard chair and tooled around in a golf cart.  In the regular season, Cincinnati became a contender.

His health failing, Hutchinson nevertheless managed the Reds through July 27, when he was hospitalized.  He returned to the dugout August 4, but his gradual weight loss was hard to miss.  By his 45th birthday on August 12, when the Reds honored him in a pregame tribute, his left eye, drooped by a distended tumor, jarringly did not match his right.  The next day, he officially took a leave of absence, as coach Dick Sisler stepped in as acting manager.

With their manager now critically ill, the inspired Reds caught fire and won 29 out of their last 47 games as the first-place Philadelphia Phillies collapsed, but the team finished in a tie with the Phillies for second, one game behind the Cardinals.

In a True magazine essay co-written by Al Hirshberg titled, “How I Live with Cancer,” Hutchinson detailed the discovery of the disease, his treatments, and his attitude toward it all.  Hutchinson professed to worry more about the Reds’ chances in 1964 than his own diagnosis.  He said in the article, “If I was going to die, of course, worrying wouldn’t save me.  And if I was going to live, worrying was a waste of time.  One thing was sure.  I wasn’t going to worry myself to death.”

Hutch returned to Crosley Field on October 4, when, in a 10-0 drubbing by the Philadelphia Phillies, his Reds lost the 1964 pennant.  In the clubhouse afterward, Sisler nodded in Hutchinson’s direction and told reporters, “I’m only sorry we couldn’t have won it for that gentleman there.”  Perhaps coldly but true to the winning drive he tried to instill, Hutchinson replied, “I’m only sorry they couldn’t have won it for themselves.”

Fred Hutchinson died November 12, 1964, at age 45, in Bradenton, Florida

Never blessed with a blazing fastball, Hutchinson used his control and domineering glare to amass a 95-71 record and 3.73 Earned Run Average in ten seasons with the Tigers, pitching in a World Series and an All-Star game.  An anchor of the pitching-rich, postwar Tigers, he notched 18- and 17-win totals in 1947 and 1950, respectively.  He completed nearly half the games he started.  He was also versatile, his .263 batting average reflecting and justifying Hutchinson’s frequent use as a pinch hitter.  In his last at-bat as a pitcher, in 1953, he homered.

The story of Hutchinson, however, is far more than his stats.  His most memorable feats were those of character.  Of an athlete driven to win.  And, in the end, of a mortal who lived the final year of his life with the countenance of an everyday hero.

In February 1965, Sport magazine named him “Man of the Year.”  Sportswriters created the Hutch Award, honoring perseverance in the face of adversity.  The Seattle based award luncheon raises hundreds of thousands of dollars each year for the renowned Fred Hutchinson Cancer Research Center, founded in Hutchinson’s name and opened by his brother, Bill.

A large part of this biography comes from the SABR Baseball Biography Project written by Clay Eals.  It can be found online at http://bioproj.sabr.org

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Well, that’s it for today’s Baseball History Podcast.  I’ll see you later at the ballpark.