Total Baseball (1994 Edition)/Total_Baseball_1994_Edition_Creative_Multimedia_1994.iso/dp/0002/00029.txt

Text File | 1994-02-24 | 27KB | 471 lines

$Unique_ID{BAS00029}
$Title{Lives of the Players:  D}
$Author{}
$Subject{Dandridge Dawson Day Dean Delahanty Dickey Dihigo DiMaggio Doby
Doerr Drysdale Duffy Dunlap Durocher Dykes}
$Log{
Andre Dawson*0017101.scf
Dizzy Dean*0017301.scf
Ed Delahanty*0017501.scf
Bill Dickey*0018101.scf
Dom DiMaggio*0017901.scf
Joe DiMaggio*0018001.scf
Larry Doby (left), Early Wynn, and Bob Kennedy*0018301.scf
Bobby Doerr*0018201.scf
Don Drysdale (1968)*0019001.scf
Hugh Duffy (1894)*0019101.scf
Fred Dunlap*0019401.scf
Leo Durocher (left) and Fred Fitzsimmons*0019601.scf}

Total Baseball:  The Players


Lives of the Players:  D


Ray Dandridge
Third Baseman, Negro Leagues, 1933-48, Detroit Stars, Newark Dodgers,
Newark Eagles, New York Cubans

Dandridge, old-timers from the Negro Leagues say, could field like Brooks
Robinson and hit like Pie Traynor and George Kell.  Even allowing for
hyperbole, Dandridge was a terrific third baseman--perhaps the best never to
play in the white major leagues.
     Ray was so bowlegged that "You could drive a freight train through
there," Monte Irvin says, "but not a baseball."  He was a marvelous fielder,
cat-quick, with a powerful arm.
     Not a power hitter, Dandridge concentrated on hitting the ball where it
was pitched.  He hit .347 against white big league pitching in barnstorming
exhibitions.  His best mark in the Negro National League was .370 in 1944.
     Much of Ray's career was spent in the Mexican League and in the Cuban
winter league.  He spurned an offer from Cleveland in 1948 because it didn't
carry a bonus.  The next year he signed with the New York Giants, who sent him
to the Minneapolis Millers of the American Association.  He said he was
twenty-nine; in actuality, he was past thirty-six.
     He was AA Rookie of the Year in '49 and the league's MVP the next year
when he hit .311 for the champion Millers.  The Giants brought other players
with lesser records to the majors but--perhaps because of his age--kept
Dandridge in the minors, a great disappointment to him.  He retired after the
1955 season.
     In 1987 he was named to the Baseball Hall of Fame.


Andre Dawson
Outfielder, Mon (N) 1976-86, Chi (N) 1987-92, Bos (A) 1993-

Rookie of the Year in 1977, Dawson played ten full seasons in Montreal. He
earned a reputation as an excellent fielder and dangerous hitter. In the
early 1980s major league players voted him the best all-around player in the
NL. He also earned bad knees and several operations on Expo Stadium's
artificial surface. When he became a free agent in 1987, he sought out the
Chicago Cubs, signed a blank contract, and told them to fill in the figure.
Despite his uncertain knees, he could have signed with other teams for
considerably more money. But Wrigley Field had real grass, reachable walls,
and Dawson had hit .346 in Chicago over the preceding ten years. The Cubs
acquired a bargain. Dawson hit only .287, but smashed 49 homers and drove in
137 runs, both NL highs in '87. He was voted the MVP Award and signed a new
(much more lucrative) contract for 1988.


Leon Day
Pitcher, Negro Leagues, 1934-50, Bacharach Giants, Brooklyn Eagles,
Newark Eagles, Baltimore Elite Giants

The five-seven 140-pound Day was an all-around performer who pitched and
played second base and center field.  Although many statistics are missing, it
is known that he hit over .300 in nearly every season.  But his fame rests on
his pitching.  Day holds the Negro League record with 18 strikeouts in one
game in 1940--one of his victims was Roy Campanella (who fanned three times).
Day won three of four games he pitched against the legendary Satchel Paige,
including victories in the East-West (All-Star) Game and the 1942 Negro World
Series.
     Day's career was interrupted by World War Two service in Europe.  In 1945
he defeated Ewell Blackwell for the European Service Championship before
50,000 G.I.'s in Nuremberg.  In his first game back home in 1946, he tossed a
no-hit game with 17 strikeouts.


Jay Hanna "Dizzy" Dean
Pitcher, StL (N) 1930-37, Chi (N) 1938-41, StL (A) 1947

After winning 20 games for the 1933 Cardinals, Dizzy was joined on the St.
Louis staff by his younger brother.  "Me and Paul will probably win 40 games,
" Dizzy predicted for 1934.  He was wrong.  They won 49, with Diz winning 30
to lead the Cards to the pennant.  "It ain't braggin' if yuh can do it,"
explained Diz.  In the World Series, each brother won two games.  Always the
headline maker, Dizzy broke up a double play while pinch-running in Game Four
by blocking the relay with his forehead.  It was feared he might be lost for
the remainder of the Series until the next day's headline reported:  X-RAY OF
DEAN'S HEAD REVEALS NOTHING.  At least, that's the way they tell the story,
and if it isn't true, it should be.
     Dizzy clowned, bragged, and pitched his way to immortality.  Even his
marvelous work on the mound was sometimes overshadowed by colorful "Dean
stories."  Supposedly, one day he was interviewed by three different
reporters, one after the other.  He told each a new "story of Dizzy's life"
with different birthdates, birthplaces, and even gave himself three different
Christian names.  "All those felluhs wanted a exclusive," he explained.
     In 1935 Dean won 28 and followed with 24 in 1936.  He was in the midst of
another fine year in 1937 when a line drive off Earl Averill's bat in the
All-Star Game broke his toe.  He tried to come back too soon, altered his
motion to favor the toe, and ruined his arm.  He was twenty-six and had won
134 games.
     Traded to the Cubs in 1938, he used a "nuffin' ball" to sore-arm his way
to a 7-1 record for the pennant winners.  In a courageous World Series
appearance, he held the mighty Yankees at bay for seven innings before the
roof fell in.  It was his last hurrah.
     After retiring, Diz became a colorful national play-by-play announcer who
enriched the English language with exciting new grammar, such as "He slud into
third."  Brief though his career was, it was so brilliant at its height and
Dean himself brought so much more to baseball than his pitching talent, that
he was elected to the Hall of Fame in 1953.


Ed Delahanty
Outfielder, Phi (N) 1888-89, 1891-01, Cle (P) 1890, Was (A) 1902-03

The Phillies had the trio of Delahanty, Billy Hamilton, and Sam Thompson in
the same outfield from 1891 to 1895.  They all were magnificent hitters and
all three are in the Hall of Fame.  Did the Phillies destroy the rest of the
league?  They did not; they finished fourth four times and third in '95.
Makes you wonder about the rest of the team, doesn't it?
     "Big Ed" Delahanty weighed only about 170 pounds, but he went up a couple
tons when he had a bat in his hands.  He is the only man to lead both major
leagues in batting, topping the NL with .410 in 1899 and the AL with .376 in
1902.  His lifetime .346 is the fourth-best of all time.  From 1894 to 1896,
he hit .407, .404, and .397.  That .407 was only fourth-best in the league,
and it was a period of high batting averages, still . . .
     Oldest of four ball-playing brothers, Ed hit with power and speed; his 19
homers in 1893 was one of the highest totals of the nineteenth century.  In
1896 he became the second man to hit four home runs in one game.
     A notorious bad-ball hitter, Ed "often" stepped across the plate to smash
a fat pitch, according to legend.
     And try this one.  He once reputedly knocked a baseball in half.  They
sure don't build 'em the way they used to!
     Tall tales aside, Delahanty was a magnificent hitter who went into the
Hall of Fame in 1945.
     Unfortunately, he was also a drunk.  Beset by drinking, debts, and
divorce, he was suspended by his team in the summer of 1903.  He caught a
train from Chicago for New York, got boisterously loaded, and was kicked off
the team train at Niagara Falls.  Still drunk, he staggered onto a bridge,
fell into the river, and was swept over the falls.  He was thirty-five years
old.


Bill Dickey
Catcher, NY (A) 1928-43, 1946.  Manager, NY (A) 1946

Dickey's reputation appears to have slipped of late, but it's a trick of
perception.  He was a great catcher, but there have been several great
catchers since, and new statistical techniques indicate some of Dickey's
contemporaries (and some of those who followed) may have been better than
anyone realized at the time.  So the question that used to be so
popular--who's the greatest catcher, Dickey or Cochrane?--has a few more
multiple choices.
     Then, too, there's the out-of-sight, out-of-mind philosophy.  Dickey
caught his last game in 1946.  The people who watched him half a century ago
figured they were looking at something special in catchers.  They could cite
several facts to prove their eyes weren't playing tricks.
     Dickey caught 100 games or more for thirteen straight years, a record.
His .362 batting average in 1936 was a record for a catcher.  He had a career
average of .313, with 202 home runs and 1,209 RBIs.  He was on eleven AL
All-Star teams, and the first game wasn't played until his fifth year as a
regular.  He played in eight World Series, hit 5 homers, and his 24 World
Series RBIs are the eighth-highest total ever.  Dickey knew how to make 'em
count.  He had several clutch World Series hits.  His ninth-inning single won
the Opening Game in 1939.  And his two-run homer won the Game Five in 1943.
     Defensive prowess is hard to prove--next to impossible with a catcher
--but Dickey got raves when he played and was called in later to show Yogi
Berra the way to do it.
     Dickey wasn't the rah-rah type.  He led quietly, but the point is, he
led.  One day in 1932 he took exception to the way a runner slid in at home,
so he flattened the guy and broke his jaw.  It was out of character for Dickey
and got him fined and suspended, but it probably made the next fellow sliding
home against the Yankees think twice about how he did it.
     If there's an argument against him, it's that Dickey played on so many
winning teams that he was bound to look good.  How's that for a Catch-22? It's
kind of like the Yogi-ism that "Nobody goes there 'cause it's too crowded."
Would the Yankees have been good with another catcher?  Sure.  Would they have
been as good?  Hah!
     Dickey was named to the Hall of Fame in 1954.


Martin Dihigo
Pitcher/Outfielder, Negro Leagues, 1923-45, Cuban Stars (East), New York
Cubans, Homestead Grays, Hilldale, Darby Daisies

Dihigo was one of the most versatile athletes in the history of baseball.  In
a career that lasted from 1923 to 1950, he starred as a pitcher, as a hitter,
as an outfielder, and occasionally as an infielder.
     As a pitcher, counting several seasons in Mexico, Venezuela, and the
Dominican Republic, Dihigo was 256-136.  His stock in trade was a blazing
fastball.
     As a batter, he hit over .400 three times in Cuba and the States.  He led
the Eastern Colored League in homers in 1926 and the American Negro League in
batting with .386 in 1929.  Reportedly, his longest home run came in
Pittsburgh in 1936, a 500-foot shot that landed on a hospital roof.
     In the outfield, he had exceptional range, and his throwing arm was
claimed to be among the best ever.  Supposedly, a contest was once held in
Cuba wherein a jai alai player, using his basketlike cesto, slung a ball from
home plate against the center field wall on one bounce.  Dihigo threw the ball
over the wall.
     As a manager, he led the New York Cubans to the Negro National League
playoff in 1935 and starred both on the mound and at the plate.
     Dihigo was a big man (six-three, 220 pounds), but he was amazingly agile.
Friendly, extremely popular, and with a great sense of humor, in 1977 he
became the first Cuban ever to be elected to the Baseball Hall of Fame.


Dom DiMaggio
Outfielder, Bos (A) 1940-42, 1946-53

Red Sox fans used to sing:  "He's better than his brother Joe--Dominick
DiMaaaggiiiooooh!"  Well, he wasn't.  Dom was five-nine and 168 pounds, about
90 percent Joe's size and he was about 90 percent the player Joe was.  But 90
percent of Joe DiMaggio is better than 100 percent of most of the guys who've
ever drawn major league salaries.  Dom wore glasses and because not very many
players wore them he was called "The Little Professor," which is a better
moniker than "Joe's Kid Brother."
     Okay, comparisons are inevitable.  Dom didn't have Joe's home run power;
he was in double figures for homers only twice (in Fenway!) in his career.
Nor did he hit as often; Joe's .325 is 27 points better than Dom's .298.  But
Dom was a leadoff man, and he did that very well.  He led the AL in runs
scored in 1950 and '51.  He was more likely to walk than Joe, pulling his .380
OBA to within 14 points of his big brother's.  Surprisingly, Dom was more
likely to strike out than Joe.  He had 571 strikeouts (to Joe's 369) in a lot
fewer at-bats.  Proving that Joe was a better hitter is kind of like proving
that beans give gas--everybody but Boston already knows it.
     They were both good center fielders.  We can give Dom an edge there. He
led AL center fielders in chances per game three times when one of the other
AL center fielders was Joe.  Some would argue that Dom got less help from his
left and right fielders and had to accept more chances.  The point is, he did
it.
     In the final game of the 1946 World Series, Dom twisted an ankle while
tying the game with a double in the top of the eighth.  Enos Slaughter made
his famous dash all the way home from first in the bottom of the inning to win
the game, but said later he wouldn't have tried it if Dom had still been in
center.


Joe DiMaggio
Outfielder, NY (A) 1936-42, 1946-51

Jolting Joe, the "Yankee Clipper," sells coffee makers, married Marilyn
Monroe, hit in 56 straight games, and was voted baseball's greatest living
player. (Extensive research has failed to uncover anyone who ever wanted to be
known as baseball's greatest dead player.)
     Revisionists blame the New York media for the DiMaggio mystique.  Like
everyone outside the Big Apple thought he was just another ballplayer!
Actually, in some cities around the AL where Yankee-hating was a religious
test, DiMag received a special dispensation.  Fans who would have kicked Tommy
Henrich's dog still cheered for DiMaggio.
     The revisionists miss the point.  Declaring anyone the "greatest"
anything may be pretty silly, but when it's done it comes from the heart, not
from the stats.  DiMaggio warmed more baseball fans' chests than hot-dog
heartburn.  He was adored, idealized, lionized.  The symbol.
     As a symbol, he was handsome, quiet, a little aloof.  They would have
called him a Greek god but he was an Italian.  Even that worked because he was
a symbol for loyal Italian-Americans at a time when Mussolini's fascists stood
for a lot of nasty things.
     And--oh boy!--did he ever look good on the field!  Graceful out there in
center, he wasn't slow but it always seemed as if the film had been slowed
down a bit so you could catch the nuances.  At the plate, he stood with his
feet planted wide apart and his bat ready but straight-up, motionless.  And
when you saw him swing, you never forgot it--no matter where the ball went.
     Joe's stats were terrific, maybe not the best ever, but close enough to
support the emotions of his fans.  He lost three years to the service, but
still ended with 2,214 hits, 361 home runs, 1,390 runs scored, 1,537 RBIs, and
a .325 career batting average.  He led the league in homers twice, RBIs twice,
batting average twice.  When he batted in 155 runs in 1948, he had more RBIs
than games.  Only one hitter has done that since.  He played 13 years and was
named to 13 AL All-Star teams.  He was the AL MVP three times, including the
1941 season, in which he hit in a record 565 consecutive games.
     Joltin' Joe went into the Hall of Fame in 1955, just a year after he was
eligible.  Incredible!


Larry Doby
Outfielder, Cle (A) 1947-55, 1958, Chi (A) 1956-57, 1959, Det (A) 1959.
Manager, Chi (A) 1978

Doby was the first black to play in the AL, joining Cleveland in 1947 as a
second baseman.  He was switched to center field the next season, after
extensive tutelage by Tris Speaker, and helped the Indians win their first
pennant since Speaker played center in 1920.  Doby hit .301 for the season;
his home run off Johnny Sain won Game Four of the World Series that year.
     Although Doby became an outstanding center fielder, he was more feared
for his bat.  He is one of the few men to drive one over the distant center
field wall at Griffith Stadium in Washington (Ruth, Williams, and Mantle are
the others).  Larry was the first black player to lead either major league in
home runs with his 32 in 1952.  He led again with the same total in 1954 and
also topped the AL in RBIs with 126, as the Indians won the pennant with an AL
record win total of 111.  He ended his career with 242 homers, 969 RBIs, and a
.283 batting average.
     In addition to power, speed, and consistency, Larry had a temper that
sometimes brought criticism but in the long run probably earned respect for
blacks.  With the black Newark Eagles, Larry teamed with Monte Irvin in 1946
to win the black world championship over Satchel Paige's Kansas City Monarch
     Doby had a brief stint as interim manager of the Chicago White Sox in
1978.


Bobby Doerr
Second Baseman, Bos (A) 1937-44, 1946-51

The Red Sox of the late 1940s won more games than any team in baseball, but
kept coming up just short of a pennant--except in 1946 when they blew the
World Series.  No one in his right mind ever blamed Doerr for the shortfalls
that gave Bosox fans short falls.  From the day he took over Boston's second
base in 1937 until a chronic bad back forced him to hang up his glove at
thirty-three in 1951, he was a rock--so reliable in the field they should have
checked his glove for a 23-jewel movement.  In 1948, smack in the middle of a
pennant race, Bobby went almost three months--414 chances--without an error.
Doerr didn't make spectacular plays.  He didn't have to.  He anticipated and
was already in position.  He's still in the all-time top ten second basemen in
putouts and assists, surrounded by guys who played longer.
     Bobby was no slouch with a bat either.  He adjusted to Fenway's Green
Monster early, so that his numbers in Boston are way better than on the road,
but that's a way of life for righthanded Red Soxers.  Averaging it out, he hit
solid .288, with 223 home runs and 1,247 RBIs.  In 1944--admittedly a war
year--he got his average up to .325 and led the AL in slugging average.  Doerr
was named MVP that season.  During his career, he played in nine All-Star
Games.
     Doerr had a knack for the clutch, though it sometimes was wasted.  He hit
.409 in the 1946 Series.  In the do-or-die ninth inning of the seventh game,
with the Sox down, 4-3, he singled the tying run into scoring position. The
next three men made outs.  In 1949, in the final game against the Yankees,
with the pennant on the line, he slugged a three-run triple against Vic
Raschi.  The Sox lost anyway.
     In 1986 the Veterans Committee put him in the Hall of Fame at
Cooperstown.


Don Drysdale
Pitcher, Bkn (N) 1956-57, LA (N) 1958-69

     When Drysdale pitched for the Dodgers, the batters had to be dodgers.
The big righthander could have written Winning Through Intimidation.  At
six-five, he delivered his 90-plus m.p.h. fastball with a big sidearm
motion--"all spikes, elbows, and fingernails"--that made righthanded batters
think they were under a rocket attack from third base.  They say that, halfway
through some of his games the groundskeeper had to come out and sprinkle sand
in the batter's box.  Batter's fears were justified.  Big Don hit 154 batters,
about 1 every 22 innings. It's the all-time record.  Off the field, Drysdale
was always a considerate gentleman; but when he walked onto the field he was
Freddy on Elm Street.  He broke one batter's hand and was suspended for
throwing beanballs.  He threatened to sue and was reinstated.  Adding to the
terror, Don had a temper and everyone knew it.  After giving up one home run,
he threw the ball into the stands.  He claimed that it "slipped."
     Through the 1960s, Drysdale and Sandy Koufax were the Dodgers' one-two
mound punch.  One year they negotiated their contracts as an entry.  Together,
they put Los Angeles in three World Series during the decade.
     Don compiled a 209-166 record over his fourteen-year career.  His ERA was
2.95 and he totaled 2,486 strikeouts, three times leading the NL.  He won the
Cy Young Award in 1962 with a 25-9 mark.  In 1968 he threw six straight
shutouts on his way to a record of 58 consecutive scoreless innings which
stood until Orel Hershiser surpassed it in 1988.
     He was named to the Baseball Hall of Fame in 1984.


Hugh Duffy
Outfielder, Chi (N) 1888-89, Chi (P) 1890, Bos (AA) 1891, Bos (N) 1892-1900,
Mil (A) 1901, Phi (N) 1904-06.  Manager, Mil (A) 1901, Phi (N) 1904-06,
Chi (A) 1910-11, Bos (A) 1921-22

Pint-sized Duffy had the biggest batting average ever, .440 (originally
thought to be .438) in 1894, the hottest-hitting year ever, when the entire
league batted .309.  Hugh hit 41 percent better than average, which isn't the
record, but is pretty darned good.  He also tied for the home run lead with 18
and led in RBIs with 145.  It helped put him in the Hall of Fame in 1945.
     Rejected by the White Sox in 1889 as too small ("We've got a batboy," Cap
Anson said), Duffy was signed by the Bostons in 1892.  There he joined another
New England Irishman now in Cooperstown, Tommy McCarthy, to form the best
defensive duo of the era.  Boston fans called them the "Heavenly Twins."
Frustrated batters called them less printable things.
     Duffy ended his seventeen-year career with a .324 batting average, 1,553
runs scored, 1,299 RBIs, and 574 stolen bases.


Fred "Sure Shot" Dunlap
Second Baseman, Cle (N) 1880-83, StL (U) 1884, StL (N) 1885-86, Det (N)
1886-87, Pit (N) 1888-90, NY (P) 1890, Was (AA) 1891.  Manager, Pit (N) 1889

Dunlap was the biggest star of the one-year Union Association, which is sort
of like being the most coveted Cracker Jacks prize.  Labeled the "King of
Second Basemen" in the 1880s, he was a noble hitter and fielder, but what set
him above infield commoners was a powerful arm, which earned him the nickname
"Sure Shot."  Reportedly, he didn't so much throw the ball as sling it.  He
was an established NL star who'd twice hit .300 for Cleveland when Union
Association dollars persuaded him to move to that ill-fated league and made
him the highest-paid player in baseball.
     Dunlap hit .412 in 1884 and led the Union Association in almost
everything--batting average, slugging average, hits, runs, home runs, and
every second base fielding category but errors-as his St Louis team won the
only ever UA flag.
     When the UA folded the next year, Fred folded as a slugger.  Back in the
NL, his batting average plunged 100 points.  He never hit .300 again, but he
continued his reign at second for several more seasons.


Leo "The Lip" Durocher
Manager, Bkn (N) 1939-46, 1948, NY (N) 1948-55, Chi (N) 1966-72,
Hou (N) 1972-3 Shortstop, NY (A) 1925, 1928-29, Cin (N) 1930-33,
StL (N) 1933-37, Bkn (N) 1938-41, 1943, 1945

Loud-mouthed, pugnacious Leo was the Billy Martin of the 1940s.  He baited
umpires, picked fights, won more games than Stengel, and made his lifelong
credo--"Nice guys finish last"--a part of the American language.
     He broke in with the 1928 Yankees as a scrappy good-field-no-hit
infielder, who delighted in getting Babe Ruth's goat.  His gung-ho attitude
and gone-south bat earned him the moniker "The All-American Out."  By 1934 he
was with the Cards, regarded as the best-fielding shortstop in the NL.  He
reportedly gave them their Gas House Gang nickname and helped spark them to
the 1934 pennant.
     In 1939 Brooklyn boss Larry MacPhail, a firebrand himself, tapped
Durocher to lead the Dodgers.  Lippy punched a golf caddy, fought with
MacPhail, gambled, was fired, rehired, and raised the Bums from sixth to
third, to second, and finally to first in 1941.
     In 1946 Leo feuded with MacPhail, then owner of the Yanks, consorted with
gangster Bugsy Siegel, married movie star Larraine Day upon her divorce, and
finally was suspended for 1947 by Baseball Commissioner Happy Chandler.
     Leo returned to the Dodger helm in 1948 but was let go in midseason. He
shocked his fans by moving over to the hated Giants.  He had his greatest
success in New York.  In 1951 he nurtured young Willie Mays through a
horrendous career-opening slump and won one of the most thrilling pennant
races in history, as Bobby Thomson sank the Dodgers with his "shot heard
'round the world."
     Three years later Leo won his third flag, his first World Series--and his
third Manager of the Year Award.  After the 1955 season, he worked for several
years in television.
     In 1966 Leo returned to the dugout as manager of the Cubs, where he
served until late in the 1972 season.  Although he brought the Cubbies into
contention, he was unable to get them over the hump.  Then he managed Houston
at the end of 1972 and all of '73.
     Many have written that Durocher was no more than an ordinary manager with
a poor or noncontending team, but that he could ride a winner down a hot
pennant race better than any other skipper.
     Leo's 2,010 victories rank him sixth all-time among managers.  His 1,710
losses are seventh.


Jimmy Dykes
Manager, Chi (A) 1934-46, Phi (A) 1951-53, Bal (A) 1954, Cin (N) 1958,
Det (A) 1959-60, Cle (A) 1960-61.  Third Baseman, Phi (A) 1918-32,
Chi (A) 1933-39

Dykes managed for twenty-one years in the major leagues and never won a
pennant.  His teams finished in the first division only eight times and never
higher than third.  Yet he was regarded as an outstanding manager who got more
out of his often-talentless teams than could reasonably be expected.  Patient,
humorous, knowledgeable, he lost 1,538 games--ninth all-time--but won a
creditable 1,407.  A quotable, nonstop talker, he said that winning without
good players was like trying to steal first base.  His best-known statement
was to label Yankees' skipper Joe McCarthy a "push-button manager," meaning
that McCarthy had only to push the right button to trot out another .300
hitter or quality pitcher.  Dykes, of course, had few buttons.
     Dykes was an infielder with the Philadelphia A's throughout the 1920s and
played on the championship teams of 1929-31.  A good and versatile fielder, he
performed mostly at third base, but played extensively at second and
occasionally at short and first.  Initially a poor hitter, he developed into a
reliable batsman and finished his career with a .280 batting average, 2,256
hits, and 1,071 RBIs.