I didn't know the extent of his disfunction till I read your Milt Pappas piece. Man .... what a piece of work.
I was first made aware of Durocher's dysfunction when I read the
Life article by William Barry
Furlong, "How Durocher Blew the Pennant," when it was collected in Jim Bouton's splendid (and
probably forgotten) anthology of writings on baseball managers,
"I Managed Good But Boy, Did
They Play Bad." Then, in 2000, came David Claerbaut's
Durocher's Cubs: The Best Team
that Didn't Win. Strictly in baseball terms, Leo Durocher's Cubs had a number of flaws that
were never addressed seriously so long as he managed the team:
* Durocher's old school bit him in the ass when he refused to seek any leadoff hitter superior
to Don Kessinger---merely because Kessinger was a middle infielder (and a terrific one defensively)
and, well, that's where the middle infielders
always hit, Durocher himself having been one
in his playing days. (Could you imagine a team now putting a lifetime .314 on-base percentage
in the leadoff hole? Bud Harrelson's on-base percentage wasn't much better than Kessinger, but
the 1969 Mets's manager Gil Hodges wasn't fool enough to bat him early in the order all that
often, either.) Glenn Beckert, the second baseman who usually batted behind Kessinger, wasn't
all that much better. (His 1971 season---in which he hit a whopping [for him] .342 with a .367
OBP---was a fluke season.) And
neither Kessinger nor Beckert was any real use on the
bases---they were no threat to steal and would have broken arrest records if they did it too
often. (Both men had sub-.500 stolen base percentages.) Durocher's failure to see what
they were, rather than what he thought they were supposed to have been, cost the Cubs
quite a pile. (The Yankees of the late 1960s to middle 1960s might have had a similar quandary
with Bobby Richardson except for two things: Richardson was an even more impossible
strikeout, and he was a flat-out contact hitter who made enough contact to survive, even if
his lifetime OBP isn't much different than the two subsequent Cubs.)
* Durocher overworked his starting rotation as long as he could get away with it and they
had blood counts and breath in their bodies. With veterans like Ferguson Jenkins it was one
thing; with a guy like Bill Hands---who was close to Jenkins's age but got thrown into a fire
under Durocher's hand after he came over from the Giants (in the same trade that made a
Cub out of catcher Randy Hundley) it was something else entirely. Hands pitched through
back trouble often enough, even in his big years with the Cubs; which leads to Durocher's
next flaw:
* He treated injuries like affronts to himself and the team. As happened often with Gene
Mauch's Phillies after the infamous 1964 collapse, Cub players under Durocher often
feared speaking up when they were injured to avoid one of Durocher's tongue-lashing
accusations of "quitter!" if and when they did. It's impossible now to count how many
Cubs were playing foolishly through pain.
* Durocher almost never gave his regulars adequate in-season rest. What a surprise that
most of them were burned out when the stretch drive turned critical mass come Septem-
ber 1969.
* Durocher rarely sought and was never offered much in the way of bullpen depth. He
might have kept his starters from exhausting themselves by stretch time if he had. He
had one very hot hand come his way early in 1968---Phil [The Vulture] Regan. Naturally,
Durocher rode Regan hard and put him to bed wet. (Literally, in a sense: the Vulture was
notorious for throwing a spitter nobody could detect.) Until the umpires finally got wise
to Regan's, shall we say, Staten Island sinker (after several years beginning with his
career year 1966, with the Dodgers, someone finally noticed Regan's secret: He tended
to sweat heavily enough, even on his arms, and he'd let the sweat roll down his arm
to let him load one up), Regan was probably in danger of washing himself up completely
otherwise. Regan went 10-5 for the Cubs with 25 saves in 1968 and 12-6 with 17 saves
in 1969, at a time when a closer's average assignment could go as many as four
innings. Sure enough, Regan began to wither in 1970; two seasons later, he was
finished, after landing with the White Sox. And neither Durocher nor the front office
made as much effort as they might have to develop or acquire worthy bullpen reinforcements,
especially knowing Regan was 31 when they acquired him.
(Irony: Regan might eventually have been bagged for the wet one, but earlier in his career
he had an amusing run-in with umpire Chris Pelekoudas: Pelekoudas called fourteen illegal
pitches on the Vulture for no good reason other than their movement---and Regan protested
to then-National League president Warren Giles. The balls from that game were examined
and nothing untoward was found on any of them. It only helped Regan's reputation as
a lancer in the end: always remember that if the hitter merely
thinks you throw a
great spitter, you just shaved about 1.00+ off your ERA. And Regan ultimately
did learn his sweat ball . . .)
* Durocher habitually shifted some lineup positions without bothering to tell the players
in question until they saw the lineup cards. (Shades of Matt Williams, helping to dig his
own grave with the Washington Nationals last year.) He'd usually do this when players
hit slumps---never mind his blissful unawareness that his burning them out too soon
might have had something to do with those slumps. (Ron Santo was a notorious such
victim in 1970, and it turned Santo---who'd once been one of Durocher's staunchest
defenders---into another somewhat alienated player.)
* Durocher so despised unusual pitching or hitting styles that he dumped one of his
best relief pitchers, the submarine pitcher Ted Abernathy, in a trade with the Cardinals
for a reserve infielder. Abernathy had a successful 1970 in St. Louis and made the Cubs
look extremely foolish. Abernathy had proven his durability and losing him was a big
mistake with Phil Regan beginning to show the effect of his own overwork.
* Tank-like catcher Randy Hundley (it was he, not Johnny Bench, who was the first
major league catcher to catch one-handed, tucking his throwing hand behind his
back until the ball was in the mitt) was
so hard-nosed a player that he
ended up with knee issues that wore him down before his time at a point where
the Cubs had nobody in the pipeline prepared to spell or succeed him.
Additional personality issues:
* He so alienated his younger players that Ken Holtzman, one of his better pitchers,
couldn't wait to get away from the Cubs; Burt Hooton, who looked so promising
in early 1972 when he threw a no-hitter at the Phillies, ended up with back issues
later in the season due to Durocher's peculiarities.
* Durocher seemed to go out of his way to alienate Ernie Banks himself---even if
Banks
was aging, he'd earned certain respect---at a time when the only
consistent Cub five-tooler behind the aging Banks was fellow Hall of Famer
Billy Williams . . . and Williams just wasn't enough to carry a club.
* Acquiring a revolving door of patchwork or exhausted veterans and green kids
in foolish deals didn't do Durocher any favours. Of the few such veterans that
did prove useful Cubs, Joe Pepitone---the very haunted ex-Yankee---finally
couldn't take any more clashes with Durocher and walked out on the team
early in 1972, after he'd remade himself into a contact hitter who usually
picked up his base hits when they could move runners as well as score them.
(A wrist injury had sapped his once-formidable long-ball power.)
* Durocher had a habit of leaving the team unexpectedly and allowing wild
stories to be made up about it until he returned. It might have amused the
press but it couldn't have helped his standing in the clubhouse. (He did it
even during the heat of the 1969 pennant drive.)
