Clem and the Whiz Kids: I met Casey Stengel in an elevator of Milwaukee’s Schroeder Hotel when I was eleven years old, in the summer of 1962. ”The old professor” was the then first year manager of the expansion New York Mets, but already a legend. “Say hello to Mr. Stengel,” my mother said. I recognized the name and man and he nodded to me and smiled. But as I remember it, he never asked whether I could play baseball: a conceit he allowed himself as he poked fun at a team that stands as one of the worst in baseball history.

I mention Stengel because I was reminded of him, the other night, when I channel-surfed right into the beginning of a  Twilight Zone episode from 1961. The Twilight Zone was one of my favorite shows as an eleven-year-old, in large part because it not only scared the bejesus out of me (honestly), but also because it was the last show I was allowed to stay up and watch on a Friday night filled with great shows — Route 66, Rawhide, Palladine and Gunsmoke. In that order.  

“Mr. Dingle, The Strong” features Don Rickles and Burgess Meredith, with Meredith playing “a much abused everyman” who is suddenly given tremendous physical powers by visiting unseen aliens. That’s not the point: the point is that the reason Rickles picks on Meredith (they’re in a bar) is that Meredith disagrees with Rickles over who has “better stuff” — Clem Labine or Robin Roberts. When Meredith hesitantly says “Roberts” (he knows this is not what Rickles wants to hear) he is summarily punched in the nose. It is only when he is given the gift of superhuman strength by the visiting invisible “Martians” that Rickles learns his lesson.

But who in their right mind would ever believe that Clem Labine had better stuff than Robin Roberts.

Labine was a servicable reliever who has gotten more attention than most servicable relievers deserve, in large part because he was a part of those great Brooklyn Dodger teams of the mid-1950s. Back before the save was acknowledged as an important stat, Labine led the Dodgers in saves — and the league.

But Roberts was a behemoth. He was the leader of the 1950 Phillies (the “whiz kids”) and winner of twenty games in five consecutive seasons. Towards the end of his career he pitched for the Orioles, Astros and Cubs, but those so-so years never detracted from what he did for the Phillies. He was inducted into the Hall of Fame in 1976. And for good reason. His stats are breathtaking: 305 complete games and 45 shutouts.

Of course, I am quite sure that there are Labine partisans out there, especially among that particular baseball breed that views the Brooklyn Dodgers as the center of the baseball universe and are quick to dismiss all the rest of us as mere hobbyists.  Even so, if you love the Dodgers so much that you think that Clem Labine had better stuff than Robin Roberts you, like Luther Dingle, live your life with one foot in your mouth — “and the other in the Twilight Zone.”

Snakebit: It’s hard to feel sorry for the no-account D’Backs, particularly given their early season cheering section. One month into the season Baseball Tonight’s genetically incoherent Steve Philips dubbed the snakes “the team to beat” in the National League, which I cite as one of the reasons for their subsequent collapse. The D’Backs are well-built: great draft picks, a better-than-average pitching staff (including Brandon Webb, Micah Owings and Randy Johnson), good upper management and a stellar farm system. But it’s hard to ooh and ahh over a team that would now get into the playoffs while compiling more losses than wins. And let’s be honest. All that talk about their great young players is a little overdone: Justin Upton is hitting .242, Chris Young .236, and Alex Romero (we just can’t stop talking about Alex Romero) a breathless .243.

Then there’s the bevy of other players — dubbed “the D’Backs wealth of great young talent”: shortstop Stephen Drew (.256) and third baseman Mark Reynolds, who is hitting an anemic .255. Orlando Hudson is the only guy who has really met the team’s expectations; he’s hitting .302. Of course, the D’Backs have been beset by injuries, but that kind of whining doesn’t go down well in Anacostia. (Stop your whining and learn to hit a curve.) It would be great to sweep these guys, but that’s going to be tough, especially when you note that our beloved Nats have to come onto the field against, arguably, the best pitcher in baseball.

One of me droogs really gave it to me at poker last night, saying a friend of his looked for a good explanation of the Elijah Dukes-Manny Acta dust-up on these pages, but without finding it. “He had to go to the Washington Times blog,” he said. So today I checked out what Mark Zuckerman had to say about the incident at PNC and it was pretty much along the lines of what we said — with some added speculation. Still, what Zuckerman has to say is more than passably interesting: 

“Close observers of the Nationals note at least three suspect situations involved Dukes in the last month alone. On May 12 at Shea Stadium, he started up the infamous dugout chant that had Mets pitcher Nelson Figueroa referring to the Nationals as ’softball girls.’ Last week at Nationals Park, he gestured toward plate umpire Doug Eddings upon hitting a game-winning homer, a move that upset both Eddings and uniformed personnel (including Acta). Zuckerman says, a little further down in the story:

“His image within the Washington clubhouse has to come into question, too. Though Dukes does have a group of supporters among his teammates and coaches, a sizeable number of uniformed personnel have soured on him and question whether the player with the checkered past really has turned his life around at all.”

So, having heard the explanation from Mark Zuckerman (and wanting to close the book on this angry exchange) we put our crackerjack staff on this story. Their conclusion probably tells it best: Manny and Elijah are like oil and water, from different backgrounds and different experiences and the friction between them finally boiled over in Pittsburgh. The differences between the two are not likely to be resolved anytime soon. The question is, can they learn to get along, or does Elijah get shipped down — or (more likely) out. For now they’ll try to coexist and maybe things will get better. The reason for that, as Ray Knight said on the Nats broadcast from Pittsburgh, is that “between the white lines,” Elijah Dukes’ talent is undeniable.

Between the white lines.

The Test In Seattle: The three game tilt that begins tonight when the Nats sail into Seattle should be interesting. The Mariners are sinking fast, with manager John McLaren’s neck on the line. The guy I respect the most on the bench is former Cubs manager Jim Riggleman, who might get a shot when (not if) McLaren goes. My guess is the Mariners will try to run themselves out of their current troubles, with Ichiro testing Jesus Flores’ arm every chance he gets. If Nick and Ryan were healthy, these three games might not be much of a contest.

The great hope of the Mariners this season was Eric Bedard, the off-season acquisition who was supposed to vault them into contention with the Belinski’s. Bedard is 4-4 and his last game he couldn’t get into the sixth inning. The rumors in Seattle is that it’ll take one more losing streak — and McLaren’s ouster — before a mid-summer firesale strips Seattle of Bedard, Johjima, and Sexson. What the Mariners’ would get for any of them is anyone’s guess. There will be takers for Bedard, Johjima is a heck of a player (in my humble opinion), but Richie is probably done.

Homage to Carl Furillo: Last night one of me droogs asked who played right field for the Dodgers in the 1950s. One of our number (a real Dodger fan — and now a Mets partisan, with all that implies) knew the answer instantly. “It was Carl Furillo.” The questioner was non-plussed. He said that he did not follow the game anymore, since he had “grown out of it.” Not me buddy boy. I’m still the kid I was back when Carl Furillo was playing the caroms off of the wall in Ebbets Field.

Furillo is one of baseball’s forgotten talents, a player who had a very good career, seemed never to be injured, and was a heckofa clutch hitter. His final numbers are pretty impressive: a .299 career batting average, with 192 home runs. He hit .344 in 1953, and in 1955 he hit 26 home runs. He had a gun in right field — hence his nickname, “the Reading Rifle,” which he assumed in the minor leagues.

Furillo was one of Roger Kahn’s famous Boys of Summer. Kahn caught up to him after he left baseball and he was working on installing elevators in the World Trade Center. Kahn got the impression that Furillo was embittered. He had reason to be: he was released by the Dodgers just before he qualified for a pension, because he tore his calf muscle. He later sued the team and was awarded back pay. But he was also embittered because he thought that no one in baseball really remembered or honored him or his career — that the Dodgers might be remembered by their fans, but he wasn’t.

That certainly didn’t seem to be true last night. Furillo died in 1989 at the age of 66.

Back in 1965, Bobby Bragan had to be the most hated man in Wisconsin. This had nothing to do with Bragan himself, you understand, but with the fact that he was the manager of the lame duck Milwaukee Braves — who had announced before the beginning of the season that they would be abandoning County Stadium for the greener pastures of Atlanta. The city was stunned. Why would anyone want to leave Milwaukee for a city that was still recovering from Sherman’s well-deserved burning? Worse yet, the Braves were so desperate to leave that they offered Milwaukee $500,000 to let them out of their stadium lease. The city turned them down.

The Braves’ move was even more surprising because the team had just arrived from Boston in 1953, complete with a bevy of young talent that would bring them to the National League Pennant and a World Series within five years. They won it all in 1957, behind the pitching of Lew Burdette – with his famous spitter — who compiled three complete game wins and an ERA of 0.67. Crandall, Torre, Schoendienst, Mathews, Logan, Covington, Bruton and Aaron are still, for my money, one of the great World Series teams of all time.

Just so: eight years later, the folks who ran the Braves decided it was time to leave and so it was that every time Bragan emerged from the dugout he was booed mercilessly. Bragan feigned disinterest — but everyone knew he was thin-skinned.  Bragan’s reputation had preceded him. Back when Branch Rickey decided that Jackie Robinson would be baseball’s first black player, Bragan led a revolt of Dodgers’ who threatened to sign a petition saying that if Robinson played, they woundn’t. Bragan reportedly led the cabal that included Dixie Walker, Eddie Stanky, and Kirby Higbe. Dodger manager Leo Durocher got wind of this during Spring Training and called an early morning team meeting. Showing up in his pajamas and bright yellow bathrobe, Durocher told his players what he thought: “I hear some of you players don’t want to play with Robinson,” he said, “and that you have a petition drawn up that you are going to sign. Well boys, you know what you can do with that petition. You can wipe your ass with it. I hear Dixie Walker is going to send Mr. Rickey a letter asking to be traded. Just hand him the letter, Dixie, and you’re gone. GONE. I don’t care if a guy is yellow or black or if he has stripes like a fuckin’ zebra. I am the manager, and I say he plays.”

While the Bragan petition was dropped, Bragan’s reputation as being anti-Robinson was sealed, despite his later claim after “just one road trip, I saw the quality of Jackie the man and the player. I told Rickey I had changed my mind and I was honored to be a teammate of Jackie Robinson.”In any event (and putting aside Bragan’s later reputation as a steller minor league administrator), Milwaukee’s fans (and especially their African-American fans) never let Bragan forget what they thought of him. Bragan returned the favor: during one hot August game, Braves left fielder Rico Carty misplayed a ball in left field (not an oddity, as I recall) and Bragan came out of the dugout and headed to the mound. But instead of replacing the pitcher, he waved Carty into the dugout: the only time I have ever seen a manager so publicly humiliate a player. By the end of the game, the fans at County Stadium (and there weren’t many of them) were standing and clapping: “Rico, Rico, Rico.” (We might only imagine what the fans might have done had Bragan decided to replace the guy in right field — Henry Aaron — but not even Bragan would dare do that.)

Bragan’s stillborn petition might have divided the Dodgers between a pro-Robinson group and a sullen and silent cadre of Bragan supporters, but it didn’t. That the Dodgers went on the win the 1947 Pennant was attributable to the play of Robinson, who was voted Rookie of the Year, but also to Pee Wee Reese — who made a point of welcoming Robinson to the club and standing by him during some of the worst moments of the season. Bragan had expected Reese, a southerner, to be one of the petition signers, but Reese refused. In Cincinnati, where a large number of Reese fans showed up to shout epithets at Robinson, Reese walked across second base to chat with Robinson and put his arm around him.

Crosley Field went deathly still. If “the Little Colonel,” as his legion of fans called him, could welcome Jackie Robinson to the big leagues, well then so could they. Reese was a great personality. He held down an announcing spot on the “Game of the Week” with Dizzy Dean for years, back when the Yankees dominated the game and his color commentary was a thing of beauty. He was never a great baseball player — and partisans of Ron Santo point to Reese as an example of why the Cubs Captain should take his place in the Hall. But Reese wasn’t voted into the hall because he was a great player: he was voted into the Hall because of what he did for Jackie Robinson and baseball. Reese was elected to the Hall of Fame by the Veterans Committee in 1984. The last line of his plaque reads: “Instrumental in easing acceptance of Jackie Robinson as baseball’s first black performer.”