Ned Garver: 'Against All Odds' (BFC retweeting the very best obits)

Against All Odds: Ned Garver and the ’51 Browns

MARCH 13, 2017 BY FRANK JACKSON 3

Ned Garver completed 24 of his 30 starts in the 1951 season. (h/t Hardball Times).

Few fans today remember seeing Ned Garver pitch. For one thing, when he died late last month, he was 91 and more than a half century removed from major league baseball. For another, in his prime he pitched for the little-watched St. Louis Browns.

But he has a special distinction, centered on his 1951 season.

Given the prevalence of five-man rotations, pitch counts and relief specialists, the 20-game winner is rare even on a dominant team today. Winning 20 games for a losing team is highly unlikely but it can be done (e.g., R.A. Dickey won 20 games and the NL Cy Young Award for the 74-88 Mets in 2012).

Winning 20 games for a last-place team is tough in any era, but it does happen.  Since the American and National Leagues broke into divisions, finishing last could mean anything from fourth to sixth place. Famously, Hall of Famer to-be Steve Carlton went 27-10 for the 59-97 Phillies of the NL East in 1972 and won the NL Cy Young Award. Two years later Nolan Ryan (also now in the Hall) went 22-16 for the 68-94 Angels of the AL West. Roger Clemens, not in the Hall of Fame but not for lack of credentials, went 21-7 for the 76-86 Blue Jays in 1997 and also got the AL Cy Young Award.

Through the first six decades of the modern era, finishing last meant eighth place (or 10th in the AL in 1961 and both leagues from 1962 to 1968). During those pre-division days, winning 20 games for a bottom-feeding team was particularly rare. A couple of pitchers who did so also flirted with 20 losses, as Noodles Hahn went 22-19 for the last-place Reds in 1901, and Scott Perry went 20-19 for the cellar-dwelling Philadelphia A’s of 1918.  The totals are particularly impressive considering the Reds played just 139 games (52-87), while the A’s ended at 128.

During a standard 154-game season, in 1923, Howard Ehmke went 20-17 for the 61-91 Red Sox. One year later, Hollis “Sloppy” Thurston of the White Sox went 20-14 for the 66-87 White Sox.

But the real standout of the bunch was Ned Garver of the 1951 St. Louis Browns (52-102, 46 games behind the pennant-winning Yankees), for whom he went 20-12. All these years later, Garver remains one of only two pitchers to win 20 games for a 100-loss team. (The other was Irv Young, who won 20 — and lost 21 — for the 1905 Boston Beaneaters.)

Born on Christmas Day in 1925, Ned Franklin Garver was signed by the St. Louis Browns. As a modest-sized right-hander (5-foot-10, 180 pounds.), Garver would probably receive little attention from scouts today.

Exempt from military duty due to flat feet, he made his pro debut in 1944 (the year of the Browns’only pennant) with the Newark Moundsmen (no, the team was not composed entirely of pitchers; the name derives from nearby Indian mounds) of the Class D Ohio State League. He turned heads with a 21-8 record and a 1.21 ERA.

He moved up to Single-A Elmira (Eastern League) and then on to Double-A Toledo (American Association) in 1945, and spent 1946 and 1947 with Double-A San Antonio of the Texas League. In the latter year he went 17-14 in 257 innings.

The Browns took notice. Having returned to their traditional pre-war status as doormats (59-95, good for last place and a total attendance of 320,474, in 1947), they were in the market for young pitchers.

Garver’s 1948 rookie year resulted in a 7-11 record in 198 innings. On a team like the Browns, however, just reaching double figures in victories qualified a hurler as an ace. In 1948 only two Browns pitchers surpassed Garver: Cliff Fannin with 10 wins and Fred Sanford with 12.

The next year Garver himself qualified as the Browns ace, leading the staff in victories with a 12-17 record. His ERA of 3.98, was no show-stopper, but given the staff ERA of 5.21, it was laudable.

In 1950, it was more of the same, as Garver went 13-18. More importantly, he improved his ERA to 3.39 while hurling 260 innings and tied Early Wynn for the league lead in complete games with 22. The staff ERA remained the same (5.20), and the team finished 58-96, ahead of only the hapless Philadelphia A’s. Attendance, never the Browns’ strong suit, sagged to 247,131, inspiring a number of quips. Garver’s stock line was “Our fans never booed us.  They wouldn’t dare.  We outnumbered them.”

By 1951, Garver was primed to take center stage. Opening Day on April 17 was less than encouraging, however, as the White Sox trounced the Browns by a 17-3 score at Sportsman’s Park. Garver didn’t make it through the second inning.  Four days later, however, Garver went the distance in a 9-1 victory over the Indians in Cleveland. From that point, he was almost invincible through midseason.

After defeating the White Sox 4-1 in the second game of a July 11 double-header, his record was 11-4 on the brink of the All-Star game. He had half of his team’s victories.

Garver made it easy when the time came to pick the Browns’ representative for the July 10 All-Star game in Detroit. Casey Stengel not only chose Garver for the roster, he chose him to start the game. Garver did not embarrass himself, pitching three innings and giving up just one unearned run on an error by Nellie Fox.

Garver started the second half of the season in fine fashion with a 3-1 victory over the Red Sox in the first game of a double-header at Sportsman’s Park on July 15. The Garver/Browns ratio of victories held up, as both now had 12. Over the next two months, however, the Browns would inch ahead.

Midseason 1951 was the beginning of the Bill Veeck era. Always open to promotional possibilities, Browns owner Veeck was well aware of the marketability of a potential 20-game winner on a dismal team. His nickname for Garver was “The Team,” and after his 20-win season, he signed him to a $25,000 contract – a handsome annual salary in those days.

Garver enhanced his chances to win 20 games because he was rarely taken out for a pinch-hitter. According to Veeck, Garver was the best hitter on the team, which might sound like classic Veeck moonshine, but he wasn’t far off the mark.  The Browns hit .247 in 1951, but Garver, who sometimes was slotted sixth in the batting order, hit .305 in 95 at-bats.  Of all the other players on the roster, only outfielder Earl Rapp had a higher average (.327).

At any rate, it was obvious that playing to win was not as important as playing for Garver to win. Consequently, Garver appeared in three games in relief in 1951 in addition to his 30 starts.

No doubt manager Zack Taylor, who went along with all of Veeck’s stunts, was happy to give Garver every possible chance to achieve 20 victories. Given the Browns’ deplorable record, Taylor was hardly subject to the sort of second-guessing that the manager of a contending team might have to deal with.

On Aug. 19, when 3-foot-7 Eddie Gaedel made his famous sole major league appearance, waddlngb up to the plate at Sportsman’s Park during the second game of a double-header against the Tigers, Garver’s record stood at 14-8. Having just lost the day’s first game  he had gone 2-6 in the preceding five weeks.

The Browns lost the Eddie Gaedel game (6-2), so they were 0-2 for the day in front of their largest crowd of the season (18,000-plus ). On a day when the Browns were celebrating the 50th birthday of the American League as well as the birthday of their sponsor, Falstaff Beer, the team’s performance was less than festive and largely devoid of Falstaffian gusto. At the end of the day, Garver winning 20 games was not out of the question, but the odds were less favorable.

On Aug. 24, he notched his 15th victory in Veeck’s famed Grandstand Managers game, in which the fans voted on managerial decisions by holding up “Yes” or “No” signs. The fans retired with a 1.000 winning percentage as Garver and the Browns defeated the A’s by a 5-3 score.

On Sept. 13 at Fenway Park, Garver was on the losing end of the score (5-4) after a Red Sox walk-off victory in the 10th inning.  Garver’s record stood at 16-12, a superb season by Browns standards, but winning 20 was a longshot, since the Browns had just 17 games left on the schedule. But Garver was about to recover the mojo he enjoyed during the first half of the season. It didn’t hurt that in his final starts, he would be facing three teams (the Senators, Tigers and White Sox) that were out of the AL pennant race.

On Sept., Garver took the mound for the second game of a double-header at Griffith Stadium in Washington and came away with a 3-2 victory over the Senators. His 17th victory didn’t come easily; he had to labor 10 innings to get the complete-game victory.

Four days later, he had an easier time at Comiskey Park, defeating the White Sox 5-1 for his 18th victory. He had only two starts left but the Browns were finishing the season at home.

On Sept. 26, he had a relatively easy time against the Tigers, coming away with a 7-1 victory. So one start left, one victory needed for 20.

There was one other question to be answered at the end of the season. The Browns stood at 51-99 at the beginning of the final series of the season, a four-game set against the White Sox. Could they stave off a 100-loss season?  The suspense was immediately extinguished as the Browns lost the first game of the series plus two more for good measure.

So on the last game of the season, the only question  non Mound City minds was whether Garver could notch No. 20. The Cardinals, who rented Sportsman’s Park from the Browns, would finish the NL season at 81-73, good enough for third place, but well behind the Giants and Dodgers, who had a date with destiny at the Polo Grounds a few days later.

When Garver took the mound on Sept. 30, it did not go well initially. He was not effective in the early going and the two teams were tied at 4 after the top of the fourth inning. Then Garver took matters into his own hands.  He hit a solo homer in the bottom of the inning to give the Browns a lead they never relinquished. Final score: Browns 9, White Sox 5, with Garver garnering not only his 20th victory but his league-leading 24th complete game of the year. The second “winningest” pitcher on the squad was Duane Pillette with six.  Garver had racked up 38.4 percent of his team’s victories (impressive, but in 1972 Steve Carlton had 45.8 percent of the Phillies’ victories).

It was not only a superb way for Garver to wind up his season but also a merciful ending for Zack Taylor, who was managing his last game. It was arguably the most positive event of his managerial career (he also had a 16-year playing career as a catcher). His tenure with the post-war Browns had resulted in a 235-410 (.364 winning percentage) record.

At season’s end, Garver came in second in AL MVP voting behind Yogi Berra. If you’re wondering about the Cy Young Award, that must remain a matter of conjecture, as the award was not instituted for another five years.

Though Garver played 10 more seasons, 1951 was the high-water mark of his career. He never experienced a pennant race.  Indeed, he never played for a first-division team.

In August 1952 he was traded to the Tigers, who finished last that year. Battling assorted injuries, he remained with them through 1956, and while they escaped from the cellar, and even played above .500 in 1955 and 1956, fifth place was the best they could do.

After the 1956 season Garver was traded to the Kansas City A’s, who re-acquainted him with the hopeless atmosphere of Browns-like ineptness for four seasons. His reward was to be left unprotected in the 1960 expansion draft.

At age 35 he rounded out his career with the Los Angeles Angels, going 0-3 with a 5.59 ERA in 12 games before he was released. He finished with 129 victories and 157 defeats. His career ERA of 3.73 was the same as in his 20-game winning season. Today he is a member in good standing of a rapidly shrinking fraternity: former St. Louis Browns.

It is doubtful that Garver’s 1951 achievement will ever be matched. In 1996, the U.S. Postal Service honored Garver on the 45th anniversary of his 20-game season with a commemorative postmark at his hometown of Ney, Ohio.

Today 20-game winners are rare enough with teams that win 100 games, much less teams that lose 100 games. Yet when the topic of baseball conversation turns to the 1951 Browns, the first name that pops up is Eddie Gaedel, whose career consisted of one plate appearance.

Gaedel died just 10 years after his major league career began and ended. But, 64 years after the franchise played its last game in St. Louis, 15 other men who wore the Browns uniform survive.

Among them is George Elder turned  96 last week. It’s interesting to note that Jim Rivera is 95 and Don Larsen is 87, as they were not noted for behavior conducive to longevity. Other familiar names are Billy DeMars (91), a longtime coach with the Phillies; Roy Sievers (90) and Billy Hunter (88).

 200

« Previous: The Young Legs of Spring

About Frank Jackson

Frank Jackson writes about baseball, film and history, sometimes all at once. He has has visited 47 major league parks, many of which are still in existence.

This Brownie had the lowest ERA of any Jewish pitcher, Koufax Included

His name was Barney Pelty.  He was a mainstay of the Browns starting pitching staff from his debut in late 1903 through 1912. He pitched almost his entire career with the Browns (and closed out his career in a relief role for the Senators in 1912). He has the lowest career ERA of any Jewish pitcher, 2.63, which is 0.12 lower than the great Sandy Koufax of the Dodgers.   Barney was something of a hometown hero, too, since he was born, raised (and eventually passed away) in Farmington, Missouri some 60 miles south of St. Louis (but still in the St. Louis Metropolitan Statistical Area).

Another oddity about Barney is that he attended the infamous Blees Military Academy in Macon, MO.  It was built in a grand Romanesque style but the Academy itself only lasted eight years. However, Blees' Academic Hall........................ 

....................... and Gymnasium 

......are on the National Register of Historic Places.

We only told you a few oddities about Barney Pelty, the "Yiddish Curver".  Check out his SABR bio if you want to learn more about his career with the Browns and his Jewish background. 

Ned Garver: The Winningest-Most for the Least-Last.

Editor's Note: Ned Franklin Garver, the only pitcher in the 166-year history of baseball to win 20 games, and have a winning record for a team that lost 100, died February 26 near his hometown of Ney, Ohio. Ned was one of the best friends of the effort to remember the St. Louis Browns in 1984 through the founding of this Fan Club.  Friend Ned will be properly memorialized in our next issue of our quarterly magazine, Pop Flies.  In the meantime, we offer our condolences to Dolores, Don, Ned Jr. and Cheryl, and we present some of the more important obituaries written about this world-reknown figure of baseball lore.  H/T: The Washington Post.

Sports

Ned Garver, star player for one of baseball’s worst teams, dies at 91

Ned Garver of the St. Louis Browns, right, with Bob Feller of the Cleveland Indians on Opening Day at Sportsman’s Park in St. Louis, April 19, 1949. (AP/ASSOCIATED PRESS)

By Matt Schudel March 4 at 5:54 PM 

Ned Garver, who was a standout player on one of baseball’s worst — and most colorful — teams, the old St. Louis Browns, and was the last major-league pitcher to win 20 games in a season for a team that lost 100 games, died Feb. 26 at a hospital in Bryan, Ohio. He was 91.

He had kidney disease and died of a heart attack, said a son, Don Garver.

Mr. Garver spent parts of five seasons with the hapless Browns, from 1948 to 1952. During that time, the team never finished higher than sixth place in the eight-team American League.

A sturdy 5-foot-10 right-hander, Mr. Garver was recognized as the Browns’ best player, “a jewel in a pile of rocks,” sports writer Rich Westcott wrote in his book “Splendor on the Diamond,” “a thoroughbred among nags.”

In 1950, despite a record of 13-18, Mr. Garver finished second in the American League in earned run average, behind Hall of Famer Early Wynn of the Cleveland Indians. The Browns finished in seventh place, 40 games behind the pennant-winning New York Yankees.

St. Louis Browns pitcher Ned Garver presents a trophy on behalf of his teammates to owner Bill Veeck after Veeck fired Rogers Hornsby as manager of the club in 1952. (AP/ASSOCIATED PRESS)

The next year, they were even worse. The team often drew fewer than 2,000 fans per game.

“The crowd didn’t dare boo you,” Mr. Garver once said. “The players had them outnumbered.”

At the midseason break for the All Star Game, the Browns had won only 22 of their 74 games; exactly half of those victories were credited to Mr. Garver. He was named the American League’s starting pitcher at the All Star Game and allowed one unearned run in three innings.

In July 1951, the Browns were bought by Bill Veeck, a renegade owner and one of baseball’s greatest showmen. He promptly signed 45-year-old former Negro Leagues pitcher Satchel Paige, who became one of Mr. Garver’s closest friends on the team.

Veeck also offered a one-game contract to 3-foot-7 Eddie Gaedel. On Aug. 19, 1951, Gaedel came to the plate for the Browns as a pinch hitter, wearing uniform No. 1/8. He walked on four pitches, then trotted to first base, bowing to the roaring crowd.

The American League president condemned Veeck for making a “mockery of the game,” but the Gaedel episode has entered baseball lore as perhaps the most remarkable crowd-pleasing stunt of all time.

The same month, Veeck placed a newspaper advertisement for a “grandstand manager” and received more than 4,000 responses.

On the night of Aug. 24, 1951, with Mr. Garver on the mound against the Philadelphia Athletics, two fans donned Browns uniforms as the team’s nominal managers. Taylor, the regular manager, sat in a rocking chair in street clothes, smoking a pipe.

The Browns printed signs for 1,115 fans, with a green “Yes” on one side and a red “No” on the other. When the grandstand managers pondered a point of strategy, a Browns official held up a sign with a question — “Infield Back?” or “Shall We Steal?”

The fans responded with what can be called democracy in action or perhaps one of the earliest examples of crowdsourcing.

In the first inning, after Mr. Garver allowed a three-run homer, the crowd was asked, “Shall We Warm Up Pitcher?”

Overwhelmingly, the fans held up their “No” cards.

“It was the strangest thing I have ever seen in baseball,” Mr. Garver told ESPN the Magazine in 2014. “When I saw all the ‘Nos,’ I appreciated that.”

When Mr. Garver went on to pitch a complete-game 5-3 victory for the Browns, more than 1,000 managers could claim some credit.

By mid-September, Mr. Garver had a record of 16-12 and needed to win four more games to reach 20, a benchmark of baseball excellence.

“The odds of you winning four in a row with the Browns in 1951 were damned slim,” he told the St. Louis Post-Dispatch in 2001.

Yet he won his next three starts before taking the mound against the Chicago White Sox on the final day of the season. With the score tied 4-4 in the bottom of the fifth inning, Mr. Garver — one of his team’s best hitters as well as its finest pitcher — came up to bat.

“And, son of a biscuit,” he said in 2001, “I hadn’t hit a home run all year, but I hit a home run over the Sealy Mattress sign in left field.”

The Browns won, 9-5, to secure Mr. Garver’s 20th victory, which he called “the greatest feeling I ever had as a player.” His 24 complete games led the American League.

On a team that finished with a record of 52-102, no other pitcher won more than six games. The only other pitcher in baseball history with 20 victories for a team that lost 100 games was Irv Young of the 1905 Boston Beaneaters.

Ned Franklin Garver was born Dec. 25, 1925, in Ney, Ohio. He grew up on a farm and played baseball on semipro teams in Ohio and Indiana.

He enlisted in the Navy during World War II but was discharged because of flat feet. After four years in the minor leagues, he made his major-league debut with the Browns in 1948. As a rookie, he finished fourth in the league in earned run average.

In 1952, Hall of Fame hitter Rogers Hornsby was named the Browns’ manager, but he proved to be a taciturn, uncommunicative team leader. Within weeks, he had alienated his team.

He was fired by owner Veeck, who visited the players in the locker room.

“A happier group you’ve never seen,” Veeck wrote in “Veeck as in Wreck,” his 1962 autobiography. “I made a little speech in which I apologized to them for hiring Hornsby in the first place. When I finished, Ned Garver whipped out a two-foot silver loving cup and presented it to me on behalf of the club.”

The inscription read: “To Bill Veeck. For the greatest play since the Emancipation Proclamation, June 10, 1952. From the St. Louis Browns.”

But the team continued to flounder, and Mr. Garver was traded to Detroit later that season. He went 14-11 with a 2.81 ERA for the Tigers in 1954, then pitched for the Kansas City Athletics and Los Angeles Angels before retiring in 1961 after 14 seasons. His career record was 129-157, with a 3.73 ERA.

Mr. Garver’s highest salary as a player, his son said, was $29,000. During the offseason, he worked in factories, drove school buses and refereed basketball games. He later scouted for the Cincinnati Reds and spent 18 years as personnel director of a meatpacking company. He also served eight years as mayor of Ney (prouncounced “Nay”) before settling in the nearby town of Bryan.

Sports Daily newsletter

Sports news with a focus on D.C. area teams.

His first wife, the former Dorothy Sims, died in 1995 after 51 years of marriage.

Survivors include his wife since 2001, the former Dolores Hart of Bryan; three children from his first marriage, Don Garver and Ned. A. Garver, both of Bryan, and Cheryl Garver of Defiance, Ohio; three stepchildren; four grandchildren; and a great-granddaughter.

After the 1953 season, Veeck sold the last-place Browns, and the franchise became the Baltimore Orioles.

Although Mr. Garver played for other teams, he always considered himself a St. Louis Brown.

“It was the best time of my life,” he told the Associated Press in 2002. “The Browns gave me my chance. If it hadn’t been for baseball, I’d have been milking cows.”

Bill McCurdy's obit of Ned Garver

h/t The Pecan Park Eagle https://bill37mccurdy.com/2017/03/02/rip-ned-garver-dead-at-91/

The Pecan Park Eagle

Astros, Baseball History, and other Musings of Heart and Humor

---

« Time Travel to Favorite Astros Moment

RIP: Ned Garver Dead at 91

Ned Garver, 5’10”, 180 lbs.
Born: in Ney, OH, 12/25/1925
AL RHP: 1948-1961
Won 129, Lost 157, ERA 3.73
Died in Bryan, OH, 2/26/2017
At 91, Rest in Peace, Sweet Ned!

Ned Garver was a much better role model than Fiction’s Joe Hardy

As a baseball card collecting, sandlot baseball playing, and summer Game of the Day listening kids of the Post World War II era, many of us were blown away by the accomplishments of pitcher Ned Garver during the 1951 season.

And how could we not be?

As a smaller sized right handed pitcher for the lowly St. Louis Browns, all Ned did in 1951 was win 20 games for a club that finished eighth and dead last in the American League while still losing 102-games as a club – in spite of all that one fellow named Ned Garver did to play the game as though he had a chance to help his club reach the World Series. If it did nothing else, the Garver accomplishment managed to get through its message to thousands of us who could only follow major league baseball from the boondocks via radio, The weekly Sporting News, and whatever our local newspapers cared to print for us on a daily basis.

The 1951 Garver accomplishment was loud enough to reach and capture many of us out here – even converting many us to scattered allegiant, sometimes quietly so, followers of the St. Louis Browns. In 1951, the kids in our town followed the Texas League Houston Buffs, a farm club of the NL St. Louis Cardinals. The City of Houston was no fertile ground for the cultivation of Browns fans, after all, for another good reason, One of our big Texas League rivals, the San Antonio Missions, were a farm club of the St. Louis AL club. When the Missions came to play our Cardinal-dressed out Buffs, they came dressed out in the brown and ornage apparel of their own mother ship club.

Ned Garver did not turn us against our Houston own, but he did convert some of us kids into Browns fans who already had bought into the message that those things in life we give our hearts to full bore have a chance to succeed. Nobody in baseball modeled that belief better than Ned Garver did back in 1951. To me, he will always be the man in reality to beat out the fictional Joe Hardy from “Damn Yankees” – or even Roy Hobbs from “The Natural” – for what’s possible when, in the real world, the qualities of talent, commitment, determination, luck, and the blessing of the baseball gods come together, but only when they can all get behind the lead force of individual heart. With heart, we may all be able to push beyond the horizon of our current perspective and find the real potential of our possibilities. Without our own heart involvement , all the forces of support we can think of, all blowing as a mighty gale behind us, will not get us there.

Bill McCurdy (L) and Ned Garver
Annual St. Louis Browns Luncheon
St. Louis, MO
May 1996

Garver Career Stats

http://www.baseball-reference.com/players/g/garvene01.shtml

Ned and Dolores Garver
St. Louis Browns Banquet
St. Louis, MO
2007

Garver Obituary

http://www.bcsn.tv/news_article/show/763548?referrer_id=878183

Garver the Humorist

Over the years, New Garver served as either the toastmaster or lead speaker at just about every annual St. Louis Browns Fan Club Luncheon we held in St. Louis. We  have neither the time or space to cover all the things he said here, but this one example should support the point we are hoping to make about their spontaneous (or well planned) quality. Asked once by a dinner guest if the fans in St. Louis ever gave the Browns a hard time for their losing ways, Garver just smiled as the guest concluded his somewhat bloviated version of the same idea. “Our fans never booed us,” Ned Garver offered, in that same straightforward  midwestern tone he always used. Then he added: “They wouldn’t dare to boo us. – We outnumbered them.”

Our Loss

The St. Louis Browns, the Game of Baseball, the State of Ohio, the USA, and People Everywhere, especially including those of us who came to realize the influence he had come to be in our lives, all of us – just took a big loss in the passing of this good man, Ned Garver. The thing we get to keep is all the love that came with the life lesson gifts he instilled in so many of us by simply being all of the caring human being he really was born to be. And so lived to be. For 91 years, 2 months, nd 1 day.

Bob Feller (left) and Ned Garver; Two of our favorite pitchers of all time
Photo by Associated Press

An Aside to Bill Veeck

“Hey, Bill! Here comes the guy who helped make your legend what it grew to be. Maybe you really did explain your reason for not granting Ned Garver a raise after 1951 because “we (the Browns) could’ve finished last without you”, but maybe not. All we know, Mr. Veeck, is that you personally could never have left the planet as the most magical owner in baseball history without the earlier presence of Ned Garver on your 1951 Browns club.”

Rest in Peace, Ned Garver

We shall miss you – and love you – forever.

____________________

Like this:

Like Loading...

Tags: RIP: Ned Garver Dead at 91

This entry was posted on March 2, 2017 at 3:11 am and is filed under Uncategorized. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.

1. Al Doyle Says:
   March 2, 2017 at 4:40 am | Reply

   Garver got a raise to $25,000 after the ’51 season according to what he told me when I interviewed him for a Baseball Digest feature. Garver’s salary was the largest in Browns history, which is comparable to being the biggest Chihuahua in town.

   • Bill McCurdy Says:
     March 2, 2017 at 5:14 am | Reply

     Al Doyle, old friend, how are you? So good to hear from you after too long a gap in contact about baseball, life, or the possible resurrection of the Oshkosh textile industry. – Thanks too for the confirmation of Ned’s actual raise in 1952. Also proving again that legends always fly further than facts – and that the Veeck alleged raise refusal line, “we could have finished last without you”, simply was a sterling example of support for the general proposition. – Stay in touch,

2. Robert McAuliffe Says:
   March 2, 2017 at 3:54 pm | Reply

   Ned had a fresh-faced farm-boy-handsome look to beat the band didnt he?

'Brownie for Life,' Fan-Club Favorite Ned Garver Passes at 91

New York Times Obituary

https://nyti.ms/2mBC2eR

A Short History of the St. Louis Browns, 1902-1953

© 2012 Emmett McAuliffe

1902 St. Louis A.L.

Although the name "St. Louis Browns" will forever be associated with futility, that certainly was not the plan originally.  The “Brownies” began play with the fresh hope and optimism befitting a new century, and a brand-new league, the American League. Founded in 1901 by Ban Johnson from the remnants of a 19th century minor league (the old Western League), the “Junior Circuit" began play without teams in both New York and St. Louis. But it was unthinkable to compete against the National League without these two major cities in the fold. And St. Louis was the fourth-largest city in America and about to host a World's Fair.  Within two years, Johnson moved the Baltimore franchise to New York to become the Yankees and moved the Milwaukee Brewers to St. Louis. Although “The St. Louis Brewers” would have been a fitting nickname for the country's number-two brewery town, and Browns president Ralph Orthwein was a cousin of the Busch family by marriage, the name Browns was still etched in the minds of St. Louisans from the days when an earlier St. Louis Browns, owned by a thick-accented German saloonkeeper named Chris Von Der Ahe, dominated the old American Association, winning four consecutive pennants and competing in the first version of the World Series against the National League. The nick-name "Browns" had become identified with St. Louis Baseball (just like the "Reds" with Cincinnati and "the Orioles" with Baltimore). Thinking perhaps that the diamond the old Browns played on must have had some magic too, they purchased Sportsman's Park on Grand Avenue, which would later be known as Busch Stadium, which by 1902 had dilapidated to a shoot-the-chutes operation and a race track. In the beginning, the Browns spent freely, luring star players from the National League Cardinals to "jump" leagues and signing Christy Mathewson. They introduced the first PA announcer, electronic scoreboard and retractable roof (made of canvas tent). In 1909, they rebuilt Sportsman's Park using the then-novel material called steel.

And for a while, the innovating (and heavy spending) paid off. In their first season, the Browns finished in second place (one of only two second-place finishes in their history). In 1904, they flipped one of those former Cardinals who had been lured away, Jesse Burkett, to the Red Sox for George Stone who would win a batting championship for the Browns (a rarity in Browns history reserved only for guys named "George"). In the year referred to by baseball historians as Crazy '08, the Browns purchased perhaps the wackiest player ever to make the Hall of Fame: Rube Waddell who came in and led the league in K/9 for the 8th straight time and gave the Browns a neat 19 wins on their way to their best total ever, 83.

As Waddell's legal problems mounted (he went through two divorces while with the Browns) and his skills dropped, so did the Browns' fortunes. The Browns went down in the second-division for a decade. But popularity-wise, it didn't matter much. The Cardinals were down too, and had failed to deliver a pennant since they brought National League baseball to town back in 1892. In 1914-15, both teams had to battle a third rival: the Federal League St. Louis Terriers. But the Browns had a more modern ballpark than the Cardinals. For at least two-decades, St. Louis was referred to as an "American League town" and St. Louisans, as strange as it may sound today, bled "Brownie brown" more so than "Cardinal red."

But then, the Cardinals got revenge for the Great Roster Raid of 1902.  In 1920, the Cardinals convinced the Browns to let them share Sportsman's Park. A Tom Sawyer deal if ever there was one. Cardinals attendance immediately doubled. Meanwhile, Branch Rickey a former Browns catcher back in the "aughts", who had risen to Browns General Manager, could not get along with new Browns owner (former Federal League owner Phil Ball), and was ankling the Browns to move to the Cardinals. The Cards' owners sunk the money that they saved on stadium upkeep into the idea Rickey had originally germinated with the Browns: the minor league "farm system".  In the late teens and 20s, the resurging Browns, with squads featuring names like Urban Shocker, Ken Williams, Jack Tobin, Baby Doll Jacobson and Gorgeous George Sisler could not quite top a talent-rich American League with names like Ruth, Cobb, Foxx, Speaker and Walter Johnson.  Meanwhile, Branch Rickey's farm system was starting to pay dividends and the Cardinals were cleaning up on the weak National League talent.  In 1926, it was the Cardinals and not the Browns who brought St. Louis its first baseball championship since those storied days of the American Association Brown Stockings.

Then, the Great Depression hit, and the St. Louis sports fans' dollar was stretched thin.  Unlike Chicago with a Northside and a Southside team, the Browns and Cards played in the same northside park.  Increasingly, St. Louisans preferred seeing winning baseball, albeit of the National League variety, and started to sequester their visits to Grand & Dodier to when the Cardinals were in town. Browns attendance sank like a rock. Competing with the Cards' famous "Gas House Gang" became an increasingly daunting task for a Browns team owned during the depression, not even by a man but by a man's estate (the Ball estate that could find no ready buyers).  A downward-spiral had taken hold.  It was somewhere about this time that the image of the bitter, downtrodden, accursed, (but always-loyal!) Browns fan became etched in the national consciousness.  

By 1940, The Browns had become firmly synonymous with losing.  But this was all to change …  however briefly.  In 1942 the Browns had a winning record for the first time since the 1920s.  World War II was beginning to wreak havoc on the rosters of major league baseball as players became soldiers.  The Browns sensed an opportunity. In 1944, it looked like their moment had arrived, as the Browns won their first nine games of the season.    Owner Donald Barnes, skipper Luke Sewell and a GM named Bill DeWitt had assembled a deft wartime mix of grizzled veterans, 4-Fs and weekends-only pitchers whose first duty was a war plant.  But as the ’44 season wore on it looked like it was going to be another tale of heartbreak for the beleaguered Browns fan.  On Friday, September 29, 1944 the Browns found themselves in second place, facing the New York Yankees  for a season-ending four-game series.   The Browns had won seven of their last eight games, but that was not good enough.    Could they somehow sweep the storied Yankees,  who had won the pennant more times than they could count, and secure the top rung of the ladder for the first time in their history?  Only 6,000 showed up  for the Friday doubleheader which the Browns swept.    On Saturday, attendance almost tripled as 17,011 saw the Browns shut out the Yanks for the second straight game.   On Sunday, the attendance would double to a nearly 36,000 – over capacity.  The excitement was described as “near delirium”, as St. Louis fans beheld a sight they thought they would never see:  the Browns playing a last-day game not to go home but to go on.  It wouldn't be easy. True to form, the pinstripes jumped ahead 2-0,. That lead which held through three.   18 more outs and it would be another also-ran finish. But the Browns tied it up in the fourth. Then took a two-run lead in the fifth!  The crowd howled with every Yankee out from there on.  (Not as baying hounds but as a dog finally having his day.)  Two homers by "nights and weekends only" outfielder Chet Laabs, a dinger by All-Star shortstop Vern Stephens and an inspired pitching performance by a bottle-challenged veteran named Sig Jakukci gave the Browns their first pennant-clincher in history.

As the fans ran onto the playing field field and mobbed their victorious Brownies, the irony dawned: the Browns would have to share the “St. Louis love” with their tenants the Cardinals, who were on their eighth title.  And in order to gain their first-ever world championship, the Browns are going to have to get past the likes of Stan Musial and Marty Marion.  Oh what a revolting development.  

Nevertheless,  the city founded as a French fur trading post in 1764, which had the World's Fair in 1904, now had the World's Series in 1944 - all to itself.   A "streetcar" series! But who would the city root for?  Which team would have the "home-field advantage" when both were playing in their home ballpark?  Musial noticed that more fans were rooting for the underdog Browns than his Cardinals.  After jumping out to a two games to one lead, the Browns crumbled, and dropped the series four games to two.  It was a pitchers duel, in icy October temperatures … and the Browns had the short end of the stick.  

Despite losing the World Series, the team had confidence going into spring training in 1945 that they had essentially the same group of guys and the rest of the American League was, if anything, weaker due to the draft.  But as the Browns tried to repeat, the national spotlight was on them for a different reason:   the bringing up from the minors of a .333-hitting outfielder named Pete Gray.  This would normally not be controversial except this .333 hitter had lost an arm at age six when he was thrown from a truck. The Browns fell behind in the standings early in the season as the one-armed Gray struggled to hit major league curve-balls. And although they recovered to within 3-1/2 games back at the Labor Day milepost, they could finish no better than third place. In the Fall of '45, the Browns surrendered possession of the AL crown for the last time (and missed a chance at a Browns-Cubs World Series!).

As the boys of summer marched home from "over there", the Browns resumed their role as the shirttail cousins to the Yankees and Tigers.  As America rebuilt from the war, it was also time for the Browns to sink some money into infrastructure.   A ballpark renovation in the Browns top farm club San Antonio was quoted at $300,000 but ended up costing $720,000.    Despite the attendance boost from playing winning baseball, the Browns were poor ... again! .... and had to start unloading expensive contracts or selling off players for cash just like they had during the Depression. Stephens and Jack Kramer (who had 0.00 ERA in the World Series) were sold to the Red Sox. (Kramer promptly went 18-5 for the 'Sox).   Many more were to follow. On occasion, the players hired in to replace the players sold-off were less than savory: like Blackie Schwamb, a scary, six-foot-six, beanpole of a guy who threw the ball as hard as anyone in baseball but had a long police record, and after a half-season with the Browns was convicted of separate robberies and a murder.  

Yet the Browns scouting/farm system of the postwar period, was above-average for baseball at the time. Featuring scouts such as Jim Russo (who would later become known as “SuperScout”), the Dewitt-led front office was doing many things right, even on a shoe-string budget. It churned out many players who would go on to be All-Stars: perennial stolen base leader Bob Dillinger, World-Series Perfect Game pitcher Don Larsen, Yankee starters Bob Turley and Ryne Duren, and Tito Francona. The Browns narrowly missed signing Yogi Berra and Mickey Mantle (for want of $500 in bonus money and a rain-free day, respectively). Tommy Lasorda spent his first major-league spring training with the Browns. Two Brownie farm products won rookie of the year titles: Roy Sievers and pugnacious catcher Clint “Scrap Iron” Courtney.  One product, 5’ 10” righthander Ned Garver, pulled off a feat that had never been accomplished and some say will never be repeated: managing 20 wins, with a winning record, for a team that lost a 100 games and finished in last place. And last but not least, although he was far from an All-Star, a 30-year old pitcher who was languishing in the International League, was plucked by a Browns scout and became the only major league pitcher in the modern era to throw a no-hitter in his first start: Bobo Holloman. Despite these heroics, the late 40s and early 50s was a period in which fiscal woes predominated.

Yet there was one last chance to solve the post-war fiscal woes. It came in the form of a man who himself was a brave war veteran and not scared 'a no Cardinals: new owner Bill Veeck. Upon purchasing the Browns in 1951, Veeck announced in “High Noon” fashion that St. Louis was not big enough for two major league baseball teams and that he was prepared to run the Cardinals out of town.  It seemed an impossibility to run the more popular, more successful and better-funded team out of town.  But if he and his new wife, an Ice Capades promoter, worked hard, and got a couple lucky breaks, Veeck figured, “It could happen”. Veeck had served three years in an artillery unit in World War II and had lost his leg. His amputation got progressively worse and had to undergo 36 operations. He was a five-pack-a-day smoker who jocularly used a cup cut into his wooden leg for an ashtray.  None of these wounds (afflicted or self-afflicted) seemed to slow Veeck down, however. He fathered nine children, six of them after age 37.  In order to be on 24-hour call, Veeck moved his family into a specially-built apartment underneath Sportsman’s Park (that would later be occupied by a young August Busch III.)  Veeck worked 20-hour days, read a book a day, and would speak at a community group nearly every night that the Browns didn’t have a night game in an attempt to resell the Browns to St. Louis. And in his “downtime” he would cook up wacky promotions to make the ballpark “fun”, as he put it. Like Grandstand Manager’s night where the fans used placards to make strategic decisions in place of the manager.  A fan never knew when Veeck was going to offer free beer and soda. His ultimate gimmick was in 1951 when, on a the ruse of celebrating  the 50th anniversary of the American League, he had a midget named Eddie Gaedel pop out of a giant birthday cake and then proceed to take a spot in the lineup as a pinch hitter. Wearing elf-like shoes and a 1/8 as his uniform number, Gaedel walked on four straight pitches.  He was then pulled for a pinch runner and rode off into the history and was hardly heard from again. Veeck even took the "show" to the fans' living rooms, allowing home games to be televised every day.

Veeck’s showmanship worked for a while.  Browns attendance for 1952 increased dramatically during an era when baseball attendance was in a slump.  Even the play on the field improved with the Browns upping their record by 12 games on the win side and pulling themselves out of the basement.  A wheeler-dealer, Veeck acquired several future All-stars: Vic Wertz, 20-game winner Virgil Trucks, Dale Long, shortstop Billy Hunter (another future Yankees first-stringer) ... and even one Hall of Famer: Satchel Paige.

In April 1952, Veeck got just the kind of break he was looking for: Cardinals owner Fred Saigh had been indicted for tax evasion.  The Cardinals might have to be sold.  In the off-season of 1952-3, it became clear that Saigh was going to jail and that the Cardinals would have to be sold.  But no credible St. Louis-based buyer appeared.  Rumors swirled that the desperate Saigh would be selling the team to Houston interests.  It looked like Veeck might actually pull it off and get St. Louis and Sportsman’s Park all to himself.  But then, in a pique of civic pride, Saigh took less money to sell the team to Anheuser-Busch.  The era of corporate-owned baseball teams was dawning and the era of the entrepreneur-owner without an independent fortune, like Veeck, was beginning its decline.  And Veeck knew he could not compete against a corporation. In 1953 the Browns opened the season winning five of their first six games. But in June, Veeck had to sell opening day starter Trucks to the White Sox just to raise $75,000 cash. (Trucks would end up winning 20-games that season.) Then Veeck sold the whole team for cash .... to Baltimore interests, at the end of the season.  

The Baltimore owners did not keep any of Veeck’s wacky promotions, retired the whimsical elf “Louie” from the jerseys, released Satchel Paige and sold off his bullpen rocking chair, and changed the name from Browns. The Braves, Giants, Dodgers and A’s would move and keep their historic names.  But the name Browns will forever be associated with St. Louis … and baseball of a simpler era.  

1953 St. Louis A.L.

Post Script from the Author.
The "shoulda, woulda, couldas" of the Browns staying in St. Louis are legion:

• What if the Browns had kept Christy Mathewson rather than returning him as a peace offering (and maybe the Browns win four pennants instead of the Giants)?
• What if Branch Rickey and (the inaptly named) Phil Ball had gotten along?
• What if George Sisler's Browns had nipped the Yankees and won the pennant in 1921, thereby winning the race to deliver St. Louis its first Worlds Series championship?

All of these could have had an influence on which St. Louis team stayed and which one moved, although they are considerably "up river" from the date of the Exodus of 1954.  

But more apropos perhaps is the near miss of Mantle and Berra. I would like to think that the St. Louis city fathers would never have allowed a team that featured home-towners Berra, Turley and Sievers, Missourian Long, plus "the Mick" (from the other side of the Oklahoma state line from Joplin, MO) in center-field, to leave town.  Then add Lasorda into the mix (Veeck wanted to keep him but could not afford the option price).  You could have had a 1950s version of the Gas House Gang! Add-in a cross-state, intra-league rivalry with the Kansas City Athletics in 1955, and the fact that the Cardinals of the 1950s were mostly dead-wood except for Stan Musial, and surely the turnstiles would have begun spinning again.  That team would have won a lot of ballgames and had a lot of fun doing it, with a fillip of local pride: "Game over? Will it be spaghetti and meatballs at the Berra house on the Hill or sauerkraut and brats at the Sievers, Mick?"

Return to Top