Stengel ruins Bearden’s good thing
Superstar sluggers and pitchers are usually destined for the Baseball Hall of Fame. The late Gene Bearden had an incredible year as a left-handed knuckleball pitcher with the Cleveland Indians in 1948. Come to think of it, so did most of the other Indians. They won the World Series that year.
In bits and pieces of seven seasons with Cleveland, Washington Senators, Detroit Tigers, St. Louis Browns and Chicago White Sox, Bearden went 45-38. Born Sept 5, 1920, in the southeast Arkansas town of Lexa, Bearden was 27 before appearing in a big-league game, and was 28 before joining Bob Lemon (20-14), Bob Feller (19-15) and Steve Gromek (9-3) in Cleveland’s rugged rotation and going 20-7.
Bearden led the American League in ERA that year at 2.43. He pitched seven shutouts. His pitching broke a one-game tie with the Boston Red Sox. For the full season, he batted .256, including two home runs.
Feller opened the first game of the 1948 Series by pitching a twohitter against Johnny Sain of the Boston Braves, but Sain beat him 10 on a two-hitter. In the third game, Bearden pitched a 2-0 shutout, facing only 30 batters. In two relief stints, Bearden earned a victory and a save, plus two doubles while
1 batting .500. He pitched 10 / scoreless
3 innings, as the Indians stifled the Braves in six games.
Before Bearden landed in the majors, he pitched for Casey Stengel when he was managing the Oakland club in the Pacific Coast League in 1947. Bearden, considered a first-rate prospect, then landed with Cleveland in 1948, and put up his wonderful stats.
In 1949, the New York Yankees hired Stengel as their manager. Bearden had played well for Stengel in Oakland, but (according to Bill Veeck and others) Stengel had noticed — two years earlier — that Bearden’s delivery would usually wind up out of the strike zone. Instructions would go like this: “Don’t swing until you get a strike.”
Ideally for Stengel, Bearden would usually be behind in the count and have to resort to his very ordinary fastball. By 1953, Bearden was out of the game.
Stengel, incidentally, became the Yankees manager at 60. He managed Yankees and Mets another 15 years and won 10 pennants.
Warren Spahn, a great lefthanded pitcher, and Ted Williams, a great left-handed hitter, were good friends, but Williams was far more likely to spring a practical joke, according to Spahn.
During spring training, in St. Petersburg, Fla., 25 or more years ago, Spahn, by then a minor-league manager in the St. Louis Cardinals system, was telling a few visitors about what Williams did to him in some other long-ago spring training camp.
“Ted saw me working [pitching] one morning and a day or two later in some other park, he asked me how the ‘new pitch’ was coming along,” Spahn said. “I was shrugging it off, but he insisted it might prolong my career several more years.
“A few days later, the [Boston] Red Sox and Braves were playing an exhibition. When Ted stepped in to hit, I decided I’d give him a good look at the pitch I’d been fooling around with. Well, he hit it about 500 feet over right field. He was already laughing when he trotted around first base.
“As he was rounding second, I yelled, ‘You [expletive], you set me up.’ He nodded and laughed all the way to the plate. He said later, ‘I’m sorry, Warren. But think about it this way: That’s one pitch you won’t have to worry about again.’ ”