Pants on fire! McDougald didn’t kill Score’s career

[EasyAce]

Herb Score's real career-killing injury happened well after he survived Gil McDougald's 1957 line drive.
By Yours Truly
https://throneberryfields.com/2019/04/11/pants-on-fire-mcdougald-didnt-kill-scores-career/


The real story of Herb Score and Gil
McDougald isn’t as simple as you might
still think.

When Anthony Rizzo lined a base hit off Jameson Tallion’s head Monday, there must have been those who’ve watched baseball since before I was born who had two names in the center of their minds: Herb Score and Gil McDougald. As you might imagine they pop into those minds any time they’ve seen a pitcher drilled by a liner back to the box, in the head or otherwise.

Because, well, everybody knows that when McDougald, the Yankee jack-of-all-trades of the 1950s, caught hold of Score’s heater and drilled it right into the face of the Indians lefthander, that 7 May 1957 afternoon, that was it, kiss it goodbye for Score’s promising career. Right?

Wrong. Stop saying that, once and for all. Because that wasn’t quite it for the popular, talented pitcher who eventually became an even more popular Indians television broadcaster with a Yogi Berra-like flair for malaprops. (A classic: He makes the catch for the final out. And after three, the score, Cleveland 4 and the Indians 2.) And, a reputation as a gentleman who wouldn’t harm the proverbial fly.

“He’s such a nice guy,” one-time Indians third baseman Buddy Bell said of him, “that I’ll bet he makes the bed in his hotel when he wakes up in the morning.”

This is what is true: Until that afternoon, Herb Score was, essentially, Sandy Koufax before Koufax became Koufax. He’d just led the majors in strikeouts back-to-back, the 245 he punched out shattering Grover Cleveland Alexander’s record for a rookie pitcher and standing as the rookie record until Dwight Gooden broke it in 1984. His 9.7 strikeouts-per-nine rate led the majors, and he won the American League’s Rookie of the Year award pretty handily.

Score struck out 263 in 1956, again leading the majors as did his 9.5 strikeouts per nine and his 2.78 fielding-independent pitching rate. (ERA minus defense behind you.) He was also a 20-game winner in ’56. His rookie wins above a replacement-level player were 5.6, considered All-Star level or better; in ’56, he had 7.3, just shy of what WAR considered a Most Valuable Player-caliber season. He was an All-Star both those seasons, and his only blemishes seemed to be walks and wild pitches; he led the majors in the latter both years.

“Herb Score is the toughest pitcher I’ve faced,” Hall of Famer Mickey Mantle was quoted once as saying. “I just can’t hit him.” (Not entirely true: Mantle hit .250 against Score lifetime, with two homers, five runs batted in, and an .859 OPS.)

Score was in his fifth game of the 1957 season when McDougald’s liner flattened him. He had 39 strikeouts, a 9.8 strikeouts-per-nine rate, and a nifty 2.00 earned run average against his 2.50 FIP, not to mention 39 strikeouts in 36 innings.


Score in motion, long before the fateful line drive . . .

Score was pitching in the top of the first and had just gotten rid of Hank Bauer on a ground out to third base when McDougald, playing shortstop that day, came up. On 2-2 he caught hold of a low fastball and drilled it, and Score hit the mound in a heap with his hands over his face after the ball ricocheted.

But every eye in Cleveland’s old Municipal Stadium (a.k.a. the Mistake on the Lake) was on the stricken Score. Indians outfielder Rocky Colavito, Score’s roommate and best friend, hustled in and slid his glove under Score’s head after Score turned in agony from his left side to his back.

Score was taken by ambulance to a hospital. Hall of Famer Bob Lemon relieved Score and finished the game, the Indians winning, 2-1, with Colavito himself pushing both Indian runs home: in the seventh, when his sacrifice bunt attempt turned into a throwing error to third allowing Vic Wertz to score the tying run (Bauer had an RBI single in the top of the seventh); and, in the eighth, when he worked out a bases-loaded walk.

McDougald finished the game, but couldn’t contain his grief, either.

“I heard the thud of the ball hitting his head,” he remembered in 1994, to New York Times columnist Ira Berkow, “and then saw him drop and lie there, bleeding, and I froze.  Someone hollered for me to run to first. When Score was taken off the field on a stretcher, I was sick to my stomach. I didn’t want to play anymore.”

Yankee manager Casey Stengel insisted McDougald stay in the game. McDougald obeyed his manager but added, “If Herb loses his eye, I’m quitting baseball.”

Score didn’t lose his eye as things turned out happily enough, but McDougald incurred a truckload of fan abuse over the liner, fans often yelling “Killer” at him when he batted during Yankee road games. Score wasn’t one of his judges, though. Indeed, when the two men met for the first time after Score’s hospitalisation, as Score himself told a reporter, “I talked to Gil and told him it was something that could happen to anyone. It’s just like a pitcher beaning a batter. He didn’t mean it.”

Score’s sister, Helen, was living in Florida at the time and didn’t know what happened to her brother until after the game ended and she returned home from her government job. “When I got home, a lady said my mother had been calling,” she told the Palm Beach Post in 2018. “I got in touch with her and Mom said, ‘It’s bad, but he’s got the finest doctors in the world and they will do everything that they can. You need to go down to the church and say your prayers for Herb, but more than that to pray for Gil McDougald. That man is a hurting man’.”

McDougald tried to get updates from the hospital but personnel claimed they were ordered not to say a word to him or even to let him visit Score. (The only visitor Score was allowed, the Post said, was his fiancee, Nancy; the couple moved their planned 1957 wedding date up from October now that Score’s season was over.)

The versatile Yankee’s only reported solace came from Score’s mother, who told him likewise it wasn’t his fault. (A grateful McDougald visited Mrs. Score for years after their careers ended, whenever he was in Florida, the Post said.) But without losing his sight Score recovered and returned to the Indians in 1958.

After a pair of rough starts to open, he had a scoreless relief appearance to earn a save, then threw a shutout at the White Sox which included thirteen strikeouts, very much vintage Score. In his next game Score suffered a loss from an eight-and-a-third inning start in which he was tagged for three earned runs, but he suffered something a lot worse.

As Score himself would remember long after his career ended, it was a cold and wet night and he started feeling forearm soreness. In the seventh inning, he said, he bounced a pitch in front of home plate and his elbow flared on him.

Told he’d torn an elbow tendon, Score sat it out on doctor’s orders for thirty days, then took a relief turn against the Senators in Washington, where he’d first incurred the injury. The game started well, with Score striking out five of his first eight batters, until with two out in the ninth he “felt like someone stabbed me in my left arm.” He got a pop out to end the game on a lob of a pitch, but only pitched on and off the rest of 1958 hoping an off-season’s rest would resolve the elbow.

It didn’t. The theories began abounding; you can get the drift just from broadcaster Jimmy Dudley: “I still insist Herb never got over the effect of that blow to the eye. That would change anyone, and he changed his motion so he would protect his eye. I firmly believe that.”

Score firmly rejected that theory for the rest of his life. The evidence—you know, that pesky evidence—backs him completely. The elbow tendon tear, not the McDougald liner,  was the injury that ultimately finished him as a pitcher. His pitching motion changed trying to overcome any lingering elbow issue. Put down all the juicy speculations and lamentations and let Herb Score tell it himself:

Before I hurt my arm, I could go through an entire season and never scuff the toe plate [of his spiked shoe]. Later, I was ripping up a toe plate every game because I was dragging my foot . . . I couldn’t get out of the habit of dragging my foot, and that wrecked my entire motion to home plate . . . The reason my motion changed was because I hurt my elbow, and I overcompensated for it and ended up with some bad habits.

Score was never again the pitcher he was in 1955-56. After a very down 1959 and a 7.61 spring training ERA in 1960, there were those who believed the Indians gave him special coddling, including a few teammates, with only Rocky Colavito standing up for him.

Score actually had the infamous Colavito-for-Harvey Kuenn trade to thank for getting a trade of his own to a place he dearly wanted to go if the Indians’ infamous then-general manager, Frank Lane, wanted to be rid of him almost as badly as he wanted Colavito out of his sights. To the White Sox, whose manager Al Lopez was Score’s first Indians manager, and whom Score believed could help him get back on the right pitching track.

According to Terry Pluto, in The Curse of Rocky Colavito, when Indians vice president Nate Dolin asked Score if he’d like to go to the White Sox, Score didn’t flinch:

I told him that it would be the best thing that could happen at this point in my career. Al Lopez had caught more games than anyone in major league history until Bob Boone broke his record . . . Al Lopez had had as much success with pitchers as any manager ever. I knew if anyone could help me, it was Al Lopez.

If it wasn’t for Dolin, Score and Lopez wouldn’t have their reunion. Lane was only too willing to deal Score—but not to Lopez, who’d resigned as the Indians manager after the 1956 season. Lopez accused the team’s management of not standing up for injury-addled third base star Al Rosen, who’d played through injuries down the stretch to furious booing from the stands and criticism in the press.

Pluto also wrote that Lane may have feared that Lopez could indeed revive Score, and that a revived Score could haunt the Indians for seasons to come. But in the heat over the Colavito trade, Dolin confronted Lane:

[Dolin] said something like, “If you have just one ounce of compassion in that bucket of venom you call a heart, you’ll send Herb to the White Sox.” Lane knew that because of the Colavito trade, Dolin still wanted to tear his limbs off and feed them to a family of hungry grizzlies.

For his part, Lane couldn’t let Score go to the White Sox without taking a gratuitous and  nasty slap at the clean-living, forthright pitcher:

Herb’s troubles are more psychological than physical. Maybe a change of scenery will help him. Lopez won’t be any more sympathetic toward Herb than [Indians manager Joe] Gordon was. But Herb will think he is and that may make a difference. Herb has a great imagination.

Colavito’s annual tangles with Lane over contracts, to say nothing of Colavito believing and telling the GM to his face that he was a proven liar (Pluto has cited chapter and verse), made him trade bait. But Score though there was another reason Lane was so anxious to be rid of the pair: “Part of it,” he said, “was that Lane believed ballplayers should be rowdy, hard-living, hard-drinking guys. But that wasn’t Rocky or myself.”

Lopez couldn’t help Score as things turned out, and Score spent the rest of his career between the White Sox and the minors until he bottomed out at Triple-A Indianapolis in 1963.

People asked me why I went to the minors to pitch. I still believed that my arm might come back. I was only thirty. I didn’t want to be sitting somewhere when I was sixty and wondering, ‘What if I had pitched one more year, would I have found it?’ Now I know. I have no doubts. I tried everything, and I pitched until they pretty much tore the uniform off my back.

The only place Herb Score sat at sixty was the same place where he began sitting in 1964, in the broadcast booth doing Indians games on television, until the end of the 1997 World Series. Voices of the Game author Curt Smith quoted a friend thus: “So what if he’s never been a Hall of Fame announcer? Look at it this way. Wouldn’t the city of Cleveland have turned somersaults over the last twenty years just to have ball clubs as decent as their announcer?”

Gil McDougald wouldn’t be quite the same player after the line drive, either. After a pair of very down seasons in 1959 and 1960, the Yankees left McDougald available for the expansion draft that created the second Washington Senators and the Los Angeles Angels. But McDougald elected to retire before that draft, exhausted, he said eventually, of the travel “and the attitude of the baseball people . . . they acted like they owned you and that they were giving you the moon and the stars.”

In fact, his own fate was hit by a line drive two years before his own nailed Score. McDougald was hit behind his left ear by a batting practise liner, in a genuine freak accident, as he eventually told Berkow, while he was behind a screen at second base talking to Yankee coach Frank Crosetti.

I saw a ball lying on the ground nearby and reached to pick it up, my head going just beyond the screen. Just then Bob Cerv hit a ball that hit me in the ear. I collapsed and everyone came running over. They carried me off the field, and I was out of action for a few games.

The doctors told me I’d be all right. Well, I wasn’t. The blow had broken a hearing tube. At first it just affected one ear, my left. One time I’m getting needled by some fan at third base, and I turned to [Phil] Rizzuto . . . and said, “Too bad I didn’t get hit in the right ear, then I wouldn’t have to hear this guy.”

A father of four, McDougald already had a dry cleaning business doing well. He eventually became Fordham University’s baseball head coach—until his right ear went deaf as well, ending his coaching career and forcing him to sell his dry cleaning and building maintenance business.

Berkow told McDougald’s story in 1994 with sad grace in “McDougald, Once a Quiet Yankee, Now Lives in Quiet World.” That, plus the happy followup Berkow wrote after McDougald underwent a successful cochlear implant to restore his hearing enough to allow him to function again, are collected in Berkow’s Summers in the Bronx: Attila the Hun and Other Yankee Stories.

If you think Herb Score spent the rest of his life lamenting what Gil McDougald didn’t take away from him, after all, think again, as Score told Pluto in 1993:

People tell me that I was unlucky. Me? Unlucky? I started with a great team in the Indians and played under a great manager in Al Lopez. Then I went from the field to the broadcasting booth at the age of thirty, and thirty years later I’m still doing the games. If you ask me, that’s not unlucky. That’s a guy who has been in the right place in the right time.

McDougald spent the last years of his life advocating for the hearing-impaired and for the manufacturer of his cochlear implant. After the implant surgery, during an office visit to the audiologist who programmed it after he healed from the procedure, with his wife and one of his children at his side, McDougald wept for joy.

As he told Berkow later, while his home bustled with children and the grandchildren “who came to see Grandpa hear,” as his wife put it, he found the words to describe the gift: “They’ve turned the music on.”

Score retired after the 1997 World Series. He survived a near-fatal 1998 road accident, but then suffered a stroke in 2002, and died in 2008. McDougald died of prostate cancer two years later.


It wasn’t for publicity alone when Score shared this
handshake with McDougald later in 1957.
---------------------------
@Polly Ticks
@Machiavelli
@AllThatJazzZ
@AmericanaPrime
@andy58-in-nh
@Applewood
@Bigun
@catfish1957
@corbe
@Cyber Liberty
@DCPatriot
@dfwgator
@Freya
@GrouchoTex
@Jazzhead
@Mom MD
@musiclady
@mystery-ak
@Right_in_Virginia
@Sanguine
@skeeter
@Skeptic
@Slip18
@SZonian
@TomSea
@truth_seeker

[SZonian]

What a story.

Thanks!

[EasyAce]

What a story.

Thanks!

@SZonian

There was another "pants on fire!" incident in between Al Lopez quitting as the Indians' manager and the Herb Score injury. Kerby Farrell managed the Indians in 1957 and Bobby Bragan managed them in 1958. Bragan went a little less gently than Farrell did . . . so much so that a legend sprang up that Bragan put a curse on the Indians to the effect that they'd never win again as long as he was alive. When Bragan was canned late in the season, Frank Lane told him, "Bobby, I don't know how we're going to get along without you, but starting tomorrow we're going to try."

Bragan denied putting a hex on the Tribe to his dying day. In his own memoir, he said this about the alleged curse: "I didn't put a hex on the club. Having Frank Lane as the general manager was curse enough."

Anyone who needs more evidence against the so-called Bragan curse has only to look at the Indians starting in the 1990s and through 2010: five straight American League Central titles from 1995-1999 including a World Series appearance; a sixth AL Central title in 2001, making for six in seven seasons; and, another AL Central title in 2007.

Why through 2010? Bobby Bragan died in 2010. He couldn't possibly have put any kind of curse on the franchise to last the rest of his life, if the Indians finally won seven division titles and went to a World Series before his death.

Frank Lane began the wreckage of the Indians with his apparently insatiable habit for making trades. The Indians were probably foolish to hire him in the first place since, in his previous gig as GM of the Cardinals, he actually had a deal on the table to unload Hall of Famer Stan Musial that was stopped only by the intercession of then-owner Gussie Busch. When he came to the Indians, Lane's trade happiness went into triple overdrive:

* Only three weeks after the Indians hired him, Lane traded Hall of Fame pitcher Early Wynn plus Al Smith to the White Sox for Minnie Minoso and Fred Hatfield. That deal finished the breaking-up of the Indians' once vaunted Big Four starting rotation, after Hall of Famers Bob Feller and Bob Lemon retired, leaving only a fading Mike (The Big Bear) Garcia (he'd actually been the American League's arguable best pitcher in the 1954 pennant season, leading the league with both his 2.64 ERA and his 2.55 fielding-independent pitching) from the four.

Wynn got his revenge in September 1959---he beat the Indians to win his 21st game of the season, and it knocked the Indians out of the pennant race. Prior to the game, manager Joe Gordon had said he would resign at the end of the season over Lane's trigger-happy trading, his earlier threat that Gordon "had a 50-50 chance" of returning in 1960, and Lane's attempt to talk Leo Durocher into taking the job for 1960, which prompted Gordon himself to say he'd quit at season's end. After Wynn beat the Indians to knock them out of the race, Lane told Gordon not to think about leaving at the end of the season: he fired Gordon on the spot, leaving pitching coach Mel Harder to manage the team the rest of the season. Inexplicably, Lane changed his mind the next morning and announced the best man to succeed Gordon was Gordon.

Just as inexplicably, the Indians handed Lane a new three-year contract despite the Indians blowing the pennant. How did Lane celebrate his new deal? He traded pitcher Cal McLish, infielder Billy Martin, and a prospect named Gordy Coleman to the Reds for second baseman Johnny Temple, who was starting to look like a very old 31-year-old. The deal did a huge favour to the Reds: McLish and Coleman would be key men on the Reds' surprise 1961 pennant winner.

* He made 31 trades in 1958 and almost made another one---he had a deal on the table to send Garcia, McLish, and Rocky Colavito to the Senators for Eddie (The Walking Man) Yost, Jim Lemon, and Pedro Ramos. The problem was, the Indians were due to play the Senators the same day Lane told his three players the deal would be on. Perhaps naturally enough, Colavito had a horrible game, Garcia was brought in in relief in the eighth and the Senators hit everything he threw them. After the game, the deal was off. What a surprise.

* He tried to trade Colavito to the Kansas City Athletics in a seven-for-one deal; the A's thought it over and said no, even though Colavito would eventually play for them, in the mid-1960s.

* He traded three players including a kid named Roger Maris to the A's for two of the players he hoped to bag in the aborted Colavito deal, Vic Power and Woodie Held. When Maris ultimately ended up with the Yankees, that was when Lane blew his stack and thundered that if he'd known that would happen he never would have dealt Maris. Nobody in Cleveland bought that for a minute.

* He sold Hall of Fame relief pitcher Hoyt Wilhelm to the Orioles after he blamed Wilhelm for a knuckleball escaping catcher Russ Nixon and letting the winning run score from third, fuming he'd never let the Indians lost a game again "because of a damn knuckleball pitcher."

* During spring training 1960, after Rocky Colavito signed his season's contract and Detroit's Harvey Kuenn ended his own holdout, Lane first denied he was thinking about a Colavito-for-Kuenn deal. Publicly. Then, the day before the Indians would open the season at home against the Tigers, the Tribe played an exhibition with their Memphis farm. Colavito homered his first time up and reached on a force play his next time up. Colavito was surprised to see Gordon come out to him at first base---to tell him he'd been traded for Kuenn. Gordon lifted him for a pinch runner and Colavito went to the bullpen to talk to his bestie Herb Score, who thought he and Colavito might be dealt in a package.

* Score said not only that Lane didn't like clean-living players such as Colavito and himself, but Lane resented that Colavito was the single most popular Indian player in Cleveland. And team VP Nate Dolin may have ordered Lane not to trade Colavito but Lane did the deal against such direct orders. Dolin himself said he was hoping Lane would sooner trade for badly needed pitching.

* The day after Colavito-for-Kuenn, Lane gave Score his wish and traded him to the White Sox for another pitcher, Barry Latman.

* Gordon publicly endorsed Colavito-for-Kuenn like a good soldier. That'd teach him. Lane ultimately traded Gordon . . . to the Tigers, for their manager, Jimmy Dykes. Sort of. The rules of the time made managers' contracts non-assignable. So the Indians canned Gordon and hired Dykes, after the Tigers canned Dykes to hire Gordon. Don't ask.

* Harvey Kuenn was actually damaged goods. (Not to mention not being even half as run productive as Rocky Colavito despite the gaudy batting averages that enchanted Lane in the first place.) He did finish fifth in the 1960 batting race but he missed most of September with another of his increasing leg injuries. And at the end of 1960---after swearing Kuenn was "untouchable" and signing him to a new 1961 contract---Lane did, indeed, trade Kuenn, to the Giants, for outfielder Willie Kirkland and fading pitcher Johnny Antonelli.

* Lane essentially traded the Indians into mediocrity, and after the Indians refused his request for a contract extension he resigned to take the GM slot in Kansas City---where the new manager for 1961 would just so happen to be Joe Gordon. He lasted two years before moving on to the NBA for a spell.

* Lane said this about his time with the Indians: "People think that the best deal I made was [Hall of Famer] Larry Doby for Tito Francona. I would have traded Doby for a dozen bats. The best deal I made for Cleveland was Roger Maris for Woodie Held and Vic Power."

He wasn't even close to kidding.

Except that Maris went on to the Yankees and won back-to-back MVPs in 1960-61. Held missed a third of 1960 on the disabled list. Power provided Gold Glove work at first base but didn't hit much and produced about 153 runs including with ten homers . . . while Colavito hit 35 homers for the Tigers, though his RBIs went far down for one good reason: the Tigers had practically nobody able to reach base consistently ahead of him.

Not until 1964 did Lane admit he made a mistake trading Colavito, calling it "the most unfortunate I ever made---not from a baseball standpoint but from the fans' standpoint. The gals loved that boy with his boyish grin."

It never crossed Lane's mind that the fans not only loved Colavito's pleasant personality but the 119 homers he hit in four full Indians seasons, including his league-leading 42 in 1959, not to mention the 201 runs he produced that season. (Rocky Colavito lifetime per 162 games: 187 runs produced. Harvey Kuenn, lifetime per 162 games: 143 runs produced. And Lane said of making the trade, "I've just traded hamburger for steak.")

When Lane died in 1981, only one baseball person went to his funeral---ironically, it was Bobby Bragan, who didn't want to do it but did so at then-commissioner Bowie Kuhn's request, since the funeral would be in Dallas, not far from where Bragan was then working in the Rangers' front offices.

[Maj. Bill Martin]

@EasyAce

I know Herb was popular among some fans for sentimental reasons, but I couldn't stand him as an announcer.  He was truly awful.  I remember him referring to Omar Vizquel as Felix Fermin for years after Fermin was long gone.  Back in the old days you might be trying to find the station on the dial, and you'd go right past the game because Herb was in the middle of 15 seconds of dead air.  He'd say ridiculous things like "It's a two-hopper to the shortstop who grabs it on the first bounce"....he was awful.  And while it may have been somewhat amusing when the Tribe stank, but when they got good in the 90's, you'd had to suffer through the innings assigned to Score while the outstanding Tom Hamilton was silent.  Lots of great 9th inning comebacks were butchered by Herb.

The kicked for me in terms of losing patience with him was when I read an article interviewing both he and Hamilton, and Hamilton said how he'd replay his broadcasts back multiple times to see how he sounded, how he could improve his calls of the game, etc..  Score said "I never listen to the tapes.  I have to listen to my crap once when it is going out - I'm not going to listen to it again."

Gee, thanks Herb for all the effort you put into your job.

[EasyAce]

@EasyAce

I know Herb was popular among some fans for sentimental reasons, but I couldn't stand him as an announcer.  He was truly awful.  I remember him referring to Omar Vizquel as Felix Fermin for years after Fermin was long gone.  Back in the old days you might be trying to find the station on the dial, and you'd go right past the game because Herb was in the middle of 15 seconds of dead air.  He'd say ridiculous things like "It's a two-hopper to the shortstop who grabs it on the first bounce"....he was awful.  And while it may have been somewhat amusing when the Tribe stank, but when they got good in the 90's, you'd had to suffer through the innings assigned to Score while the outstanding Tom Hamilton was silent.  Lots of great 9th inning comebacks were butchered by Herb.

The kicked for me in terms of losing patience with him was when I read an article interviewing both he and Hamilton, and Hamilton said how he'd replay his broadcasts back multiple times to see how he sounded, how he could improve his calls of the game, etc..  Score said "I never listen to the tapes.  I have to listen to my crap once when it is going out - I'm not going to listen to it again."

Gee, thanks Herb for all the effort you put into your job.

I imagine San Diego Padres fans had similar experiences with Jerry Coleman, who came up with such gems as . . .

Winfield goes back to the wall, he hits his head on the wall! And it's rolling all the way back to second base!

Mike Caldwell, the Padres' right-handed southpaw, will pitch tonight.

He slides into second with a stand up double.

There's a hard shot to LeMaster and he throws Madlock into the dugout.

They throw Winfield out at second and he's safe.

Challenge from Herb Score:

There's a long drive down the left field line — is it fair? Is it foul? It is!

A standing ovation here from the fans in Baltimore for their hero. Yaz played 23 years for the Orioles/

This is Steve Lamarr, signing off for Herb Score. Good night, Tribe fans.

He once referred to an Indian relief pitcher, Efrain Valdez, as Efrem Zimbalist, Jr.

Score's announcing career included eight other broadcast partners, only two of whom (Tom Hamilton and Nev Chandler) lasted more than five years. Score retired after 34 years on the air, outlasting all his partners. Except for one year when he was foolish enough to accept an offer to try managing the Padres, Coleman stayed on the air 42 years with the Padres, outlasting all his partners, too. And, apparently, in both men's cases, the senses of humour of some fans.

Fair disclosure: I did radio myself for six years---five as a news anchor/reporter, one doing a comedy show. I didn't listen to my playbacks for a very good reason: I was more concerned about knowing what I was talking about than about the sound of my own voice, and I didn't want to become a robot. (I'd read where Edward R. Murrow took some heat inside CBS when he was building that great World War II reporting team because they didn't "sound like announcers," and he rejoined, "I'm not looking for announcers, I'm looking for people who know what they're talking about," and that impressed the hell out of me, considering the targets of the "don't sound like announcers" critique: Eric Sevareid, Charles Collingwood, Richard C. Hottelet, and company.) I'd tried listening to my playbacks for awhile when I started, until I noticed I started sounding the absolute same every time out, which was taking away from sounding properly informed. So I quit listening to my playbacks and concentrated on my preparation strictly. It worked far better for me, and people who met me and had heard me gave me the kind of feedback that told me I was right.

Malapropper though he was, I think it's fair to assume Herb Score was more concerned about knowing what he was talking about than the sound of his voice. Just because you're one of those creatures who can't stand hearing his own voice on playback doesn't mean you're not prepared to go when the mike goes on. And even the best-prepared people on the air can be prone to malaprops, although they're not always as funny as the malaprops of Jerry Coleman and Herb Score. (You can only be grateful for their sake that Yogi Berra never thought about baseball announcing, because he'd have left Coleman and Score choking on his dust!)

[goatprairie]

@SZonian

There was another "pants on fire!" incident in between Al Lopez quitting as the Indians' manager and the Herb Score injury. Kerby Farrell managed the Indians in 1957 and Bobby Bragan managed them in 1958. Bragan went a little less gently than Farrell did . . . so much so that a legend sprang up that Bragan put a curse on the Indians to the effect that they'd never win again as long as he was alive. When Bragan was canned late in the season, Frank Lane told him, "Bobby, I don't know how we're going to get along without you, but starting tomorrow we're going to try."

Bragan denied putting a hex on the Tribe to his dying day. In his own memoir, he said this about the alleged curse: "I didn't put a hex on the club. Having Frank Lane as the general manager was curse enough."

Anyone who needs more evidence against the so-called Bragan curse has only to look at the Indians starting in the 1990s and through 2010: five straight American League Central titles from 1995-1999 including a World Series appearance; a sixth AL Central title in 2001, making for six in seven seasons; and, another AL Central title in 2007.

Why through 2010? Bobby Bragan died in 2010. He couldn't possibly have put any kind of curse on the franchise to last the rest of his life, if the Indians finally won seven division titles and went to a World Series before his death.

Frank Lane began the wreckage of the Indians with his apparently insatiable habit for making trades. The Indians were probably foolish to hire him in the first place since, in his previous gig as GM of the Cardinals, he actually had a deal on the table to unload Hall of Famer Stan Musial that was stopped only by the intercession of then-owner Gussie Busch. When he came to the Indians, Lane's trade happiness went into triple overdrive:

* Only three weeks after the Indians hired him, Lane traded Hall of Fame pitcher Early Wynn plus Al Smith to the White Sox for Minnie Minoso and Fred Hatfield. That deal finished the breaking-up of the Indians' once vaunted Big Four starting rotation, after Hall of Famers Bob Feller and Bob Lemon retired, leaving only a fading Mike (The Big Bear) Garcia (he'd actually been the American League's arguable best pitcher in the 1954 pennant season, leading the league with both his 2.64 ERA and his 2.55 fielding-independent pitching) from the four.

Wynn got his revenge in September 1959---he beat the Indians to win his 21st game of the season, and it knocked the Indians out of the pennant race. Prior to the game, manager Joe Gordon had said he would resign at the end of the season over Lane's trigger-happy trading, his earlier threat that Gordon "had a 50-50 chance" of returning in 1960, and Lane's attempt to talk Leo Durocher into taking the job for 1960, which prompted Gordon himself to say he'd quit at season's end. After Wynn beat the Indians to knock them out of the race, Lane told Gordon not to think about leaving at the end of the season: he fired Gordon on the spot, leaving pitching coach Mel Harder to manage the team the rest of the season. Inexplicably, Lane changed his mind the next morning and announced the best man to succeed Gordon was Gordon.

Just as inexplicably, the Indians handed Lane a new three-year contract despite the Indians blowing the pennant. How did Lane celebrate his new deal? He traded pitcher Cal McLish, infielder Billy Martin, and a prospect named Gordy Coleman to the Reds for second baseman Johnny Temple, who was starting to look like a very old 31-year-old. The deal did a huge favour to the Reds: McLish and Coleman would be key men on the Reds' surprise 1961 pennant winner.

* He made 31 trades in 1958 and almost made another one---he had a deal on the table to send Garcia, McLish, and Rocky Colavito to the Senators for Eddie (The Walking Man) Yost, Jim Lemon, and Pedro Ramos. The problem was, the Indians were due to play the Senators the same day Lane told his three players the deal would be on. Perhaps naturally enough, Colavito had a horrible game, Garcia was brought in in relief in the eighth and the Senators hit everything he threw them. After the game, the deal was off. What a surprise.

* He tried to trade Colavito to the Kansas City Athletics in a seven-for-one deal; the A's thought it over and said no, even though Colavito would eventually play for them, in the mid-1960s.

* He traded three players including a kid named Roger Maris to the A's for two of the players he hoped to bag in the aborted Colavito deal, Vic Power and Woodie Held. When Maris ultimately ended up with the Yankees, that was when Lane blew his stack and thundered that if he'd known that would happen he never would have dealt Maris. Nobody in Cleveland bought that for a minute.

* He sold Hall of Fame relief pitcher Hoyt Wilhelm to the Orioles after he blamed Wilhelm for a knuckleball escaping catcher Russ Nixon and letting the winning run score from third, fuming he'd never let the Indians lost a game again "because of a damn knuckleball pitcher."

* During spring training 1960, after Rocky Colavito signed his season's contract and Detroit's Harvey Kuenn ended his own holdout, Lane first denied he was thinking about a Colavito-for-Kuenn deal. Publicly. Then, the day before the Indians would open the season at home against the Tigers, the Tribe played an exhibition with their Memphis farm. Colavito homered his first time up and reached on a force play his next time up. Colavito was surprised to see Gordon come out to him at first base---to tell him he'd been traded for Kuenn. Gordon lifted him for a pinch runner and Colavito went to the bullpen to talk to his bestie Herb Score, who thought he and Colavito might be dealt in a package.

* Score said not only that Lane didn't like clean-living players such as Colavito and himself, but Lane resented that Colavito was the single most popular Indian player in Cleveland. And team VP Nate Dolin may have ordered Lane not to trade Colavito but Lane did the deal against such direct orders. Dolin himself said he was hoping Lane would sooner trade for badly needed pitching.

* The day after Colavito-for-Kuenn, Lane gave Score his wish and traded him to the White Sox for another pitcher, Barry Latman.

* Gordon publicly endorsed Colavito-for-Kuenn like a good soldier. That'd teach him. Lane ultimately traded Gordon . . . to the Tigers, for their manager, Jimmy Dykes. Sort of. The rules of the time made managers' contracts non-assignable. So the Indians canned Gordon and hired Dykes, after the Tigers canned Dykes to hire Gordon. Don't ask.

* Harvey Kuenn was actually damaged goods. (Not to mention not being even half as run productive as Rocky Colavito despite the gaudy batting averages that enchanted Lane in the first place.) He did finish fifth in the 1960 batting race but he missed most of September with another of his increasing leg injuries. And at the end of 1960---after swearing Kuenn was "untouchable" and signing him to a new 1961 contract---Lane did, indeed, trade Kuenn, to the Giants, for outfielder Willie Kirkland and fading pitcher Johnny Antonelli.

* Lane essentially traded the Indians into mediocrity, and after the Indians refused his request for a contract extension he resigned to take the GM slot in Kansas City---where the new manager for 1961 would just so happen to be Joe Gordon. He lasted two years before moving on to the NBA for a spell.

* Lane said this about his time with the Indians: "People think that the best deal I made was [Hall of Famer] Larry Doby for Tito Francona. I would have traded Doby for a dozen bats. The best deal I made for Cleveland was Roger Maris for Woodie Held and Vic Power."

He wasn't even close to kidding.

Except that Maris went on to the Yankees and won back-to-back MVPs in 1960-61. Held missed a third of 1960 on the disabled list. Power provided Gold Glove work at first base but didn't hit much and produced about 153 runs including with ten homers . . . while Colavito hit 35 homers for the Tigers, though his RBIs went far down for one good reason: the Tigers had practically nobody able to reach base consistently ahead of him.

Not until 1964 did Lane admit he made a mistake trading Colavito, calling it "the most unfortunate I ever made---not from a baseball standpoint but from the fans' standpoint. The gals loved that boy with his boyish grin."

It never crossed Lane's mind that the fans not only loved Colavito's pleasant personality but the 119 homers he hit in four full Indians seasons, including his league-leading 42 in 1959, not to mention the 201 runs he produced that season. (Rocky Colavito lifetime per 162 games: 187 runs produced. Harvey Kuenn, lifetime per 162 games: 143 runs produced. And Lane said of making the trade, "I've just traded hamburger for steak.")

When Lane died in 1981, only one baseball person went to his funeral---ironically, it was Bobby Bragan, who didn't want to do it but did so at then-commissioner Bowie Kuhn's request, since the funeral would be in Dallas, not far from where Bragan was then working in the Rangers' front offices.

I remember Lane, and I remember when he traded Colavito. I believe his quote was, "all Rocky does is hit home runs."
I remember at the time believing, like every other baseball fan, that a player's batting average proved something. Kuenn had a lifetime BA over .300, so he had to be a good player.
Somebody like Eddie Yost had a lifetime BA fifty points lower.
So we thought Harvey was obviously a superior offensive player.
But now Yost is thought to be the more productive player, and it's hard to argue with the fact that he scored more than 100 runs five times while mostly playing for the lousy Senators, while Kuenn only had one season where he scored 100 runs or more despite his gaudy BAs.
The Walking Man had the last laugh. Just getting on base is more important than we thought.

[EasyAce]

I remember Lane, and I remember when he traded Colavito. I believe his quote was, "all Rocky does is hit home runs."
I remember at the time believing, like every other baseball fan, that a player's batting average proved something. Kuenn had a lifetime BA over .300, so he had to be a good player.
Somebody like Eddie Yost had a lifetime BA fifty points lower.
So we thought Harvey was obviously a superior offensive player.
But now Yost is thought to be the more productive player, and it's hard to argue with the fact that he scored more than 100 runs five times while mostly playing for the lousy Senators, while Kuenn only had one season where he scored 100 runs or more despite his gaudy BAs.
The Walking Man had the last laugh. Just getting on base is more important than we thought.

@goatprairie
So did Rocky Colavito. His lifetime on-base percentage is actually two points higher than Harvey Kuenn's. Kuenn struck out half as often as Colavito . . . but Colavito walked almost twice as often! (Harvey Kuenn averaged 52 walks per 162 games; Rocky Colavito averaged 84 walks per 162. You tell me whom the pitchers hated to face more.)

Now, let's look at what I call their real batting averages---not just the hitting averages that the traditional batting average really is, because traditional batting average factors only your total hits divided by your official at-bats, and makes the mistake of treating all your hits as being of equal value. A real batting average would add your total bases, walks, and sacrifices,  everything you do at the plate, and then divide by your total plate appearances.

Let's have a look:

Rocky Colavito---.566
Harvey Kuenn---.461

Frank Lane didn't trade hamburger for steak---he traded steak for hamburger.

And Colavito also didn't get to have the honour of being the final out of two of Sandy Koufax's no-hitters including the 1965 perfect game.