Damn Yankees by Edward Drobinski - HTML preview

Damn Yankees

Page 26

reputation of a clown and who had never had a major league team finish in the top half of the standings. Stengel's major league baseball involvement had been in the National League, and there were several American League parks in which he had neither managed nor played.

Stengel tried to keep a low profile during the 1949 Yankee spring training at St. Petersburg, Florida. But there was considerable media attention as Stengel shuttled rookies from one position on the field to another, and endlessly shuffled his lineup. He had the advantage of diminished expectations, as

DiMaggio, the Yankee superstar, was injured with a bone spur in his heel, and few picked New York to win the pennant. There were other injuries once the season began, and Stengel, who had initially planned a conservative, stable lineup in his first American League season, was forced to improvise. Although

platooning, playing right handed batters against left handed pitchers and the reverse, against whom they are on average more able to hit, had been known for some years, Stengel popularized it, and his use gave the practice its name.

After the team blew leads and lost both ends of a doubleheader in Philadelphia on May 15th, Stengel called a team meeting in

which he criticized the players responsible for the two losses, but also predicted greatness for them, and told the team it was