Leo Durocher was baseball’s Zelig AND Forrest Gump
A Hall-of-Fame manager was so much more
I remember watching Woody Allen’s 1983 film “Zelig” way back when, in which the title character seemingly showed up in famous and memorable circumstances. ‘Forrest Gump’, a 1986 novel by Winston Groom and Academy Award winning 1994 film starring Tom Hanks, also had the title character showing up at historical events in America.
As a player Durocher played on World Series winners including the 1928 New York Yankees and 1934 St. Louis Cardinals and was the manager of the WS winning New York Giants in 1954. The amount of incredible baseball history surrounding Leo Durocher is astounding!
Leo Durocher didn’t have a sunny personality
Improperly labeled with the ‘Nice guys finish last’, the Mets won the World Series following the 1969 MLB season and Leo Durocher was the manager of the rival Cubs, the team the Mets passed in the standings to win the first NL East Division crown. Consequently, I did not much like Leo Durocher who seemed old, crotchety, and cantankerous. He did not seem like a nice guy. I had no idea of his career as player and then manager where he had day-to-day contact with so many of the greatest players to ever wear an MLB uniform.
Durocher WAS history all by himself!
A future Hall-of-Fame manager (elected three years after his death in 1991), 19-year-old Leo Durocher joined the New York Yankees in 1925 for 2 games, one plate appearance and one pinch running appearance in which he scored a run and was driven in by future HOFer Earle Combs. Two seasons removed following their first World Series championship, the 1925 Yankees finished 69-85-2, which was good enough for seventh place in the American League. In that 1925 season 100 years ago, Walter Johnson and the Washington Nationals won their only WS that season.
There were other future Hall-of-Famers who were Durocher’s teammates on the Yankees, like Babe Ruth, Lou Gehrig, Herb Pennock, and Waite Hoyt.
But in 1925, all but Gehrig had subpar seasons at the same time, with Gehrig being a rookie just coming into his own. Another teammate of Leo’s was 37-year-old Fred “Bonehead” Merkle, unfairly tagged with being the goat in 1908 when ‘Merkle’s boner’ cost the New York Giants a trip to the World Series by losing the NL pennant to the eventual World Champion Cubs.
Durocher’s impact spans nearly 140 years
Fred Merkle was born in 1888. Leo Durocher in his final season as a manager, led the 1973 Houston Astros where he managed 22-year-old Mike “Hit Man” Easler who was born in 1950 and will be 75 years old this year. I bet the ‘Hit Man’ has a quite few stories he can share about Leo the Lip!
Oh, the people he met and played with and who played for him
After a 3 ½ year stint in Cincinnati, Durocher played for the famed World Champion 1934 St. Louis Cardinals who were known as the “Gashouse Gang”. Future HOFer Frankie Frisch, (traded for future HOFer Rogers Hornsby in 1927), future HOFers Joe ‘Ducky’ Medwick and Dizzy Dean, were in their primes, and 40-year-old future HOFer Jessie Haines and 43-year future HOFer Dazzy Vance were still important members of the Cardinals. To boot, the last grandfathered-in spit-baller, future HOFer 40-year-old Burleigh Grimes, was playing his final MLB season. Leo was 28 years old and the starting shortstop.
Durocher was moved to the Brooklyn Dodgers for the 1938 season, where Burleigh Grimes had taken over as manager. Along the way, Durocher played with future HOFers Arky Vaughn, Paul Waner, Medwick (again), future HOFers Kiki Cuyler, Waite Hoyt, and 19-year-old future HOFer Gil Hodges, who would be the rival manager of the Mets in 1969. Leo took over as player manager of the Dodgers at age 33 in 1939 and led them to their first World Series in more than 20 years in 1941 where they lost to the Yankees.
A darker period - suspended for the 1947 season
Durocher would have been HOFer Jackie Robinson’s first MLB manager had he not been suspended by MLB for the entire 1947 season. But he had a major impact on Jackie’s first season with Brooklyn that year.
During spring training 1947, Durocher became involved in a very unpleasant feud with Larry MacPhail, who had become a new co-owner of the Yankees. The Yankee boss had hired away two coaches from Durocher's 1946 staff (Chuck Dressen and Red Corriden) during the off-season, causing friction. Then, matters got worse.
In person, Durocher and MacPhail exchanged a series of accusations and counteraccusations, with each suggesting the other invited gamblers into their clubhouses. In the press, a ghostwritten article appeared under Durocher's name in the Brooklyn Eagle, seeking to stir the rivalry between their respective clubs and accusing baseball of a double standard for Chandler's warning him against his associations but not MacPhail or other baseball executives.
Chandler was pressured by MacPhail, a close friend who was pivotal in having him appointed commissioner, but the commissioner also discovered Durocher and Raft might have run a rigged craps game that swindled an active ballplayer of a large sum of money. (The player's identity was never confirmed officially, but former Detroit Tigers pitcher, Elden Auker, wrote in his 2002 memoir that it was Tigers pitcher Dizzy Trout.) Chandler suspended Durocher for the 1947 season for "association with known gamblers"
Before being suspended, however, Durocher played a noteworthy role in erasing baseball's color line. In the spring of 1947, he let it be known that he would not tolerate the dissent of those players on the team who opposed Jackie Robinson's joining the club, saying:
“I do not care if the guy is yellow or black, or if he has stripes like a f-in' zebra. I'm the manager of this team, and I say he plays. What's more, I say he can make us all rich. And if any of you cannot use the money, I will see that you are all traded.”
Leo had a way with words and often those words were right on target.
After managing the Dodgers how could Leo Durocher move to the rival NY Giants?
During the 1948 season Leo was traded. Well not really traded but he did move in-season as manager of the Dodgers to the Giants who were their greatest rivals. Dodger boss Branch Rickey orchestrated the deal with the Giants in which Durocher was let out of his contract after a 35-37 start for the Dodgers. Three year later, the Giants would forge the famous comeback in 1951 to reach the World Series for the first time in 14 years. Before reaching that series, the most famous postseason playoff series of all time was played (a three-game series), between the Giants and Dodgers, and was punctuated by Bobby Thomson’s legendary home run off Ralph Branca.
Durocher would claim his only World Series championship as manager in 1954 in which future HOFer Willie Mays made his own historic play, catching a bomb hit by Cleveland’s Vic Wertz in game one of the series. The Giants would go on to sweep that series and they wouldn’t win another until 2010! Leo passed away in 1991 at age 86 and was not around to see that one.
After managing his eighth season with the Giants, Durocher left the team and became an executive at NBC where he became a color commentator for MLB. He also hosted ‘The NBC Comedy Hour’. Leo the Lip never struck me as the comedic type, so I did not know that he appeared on What’s My Line. The Munsters, as well as the Beverly Hillbillies!
Seven years managing the Cubs
Out of baseball for 11 years, Leo came back in 1966 to manage the Cubs following their disastrous experiment in employing a “College of Coaches”. Durocher would have none of that, declaring that he was in charge and nobody else was. Aside from the Cubs failed run to the NL East pennant in 1969, Leo managed future HOFers Fergie Jenkins, Billy Williams, Ernie Banks, and Ron Santo. In 1972 Durocher was fired by the Cubs after 90 games and ended up managing the Houston Astros for the final 31 games of their season. Could you imagine a manager today managing two different teams in the same season?
Leo’s last managerial round-up
Leo would come back to manage the Astros again in 1973 leading them to an 82-80 record and managing a young J.R. Richard and some fine MLB players like Jim Wynn, Cesar Cedeno, and Bob Watson, in addition to Mike Easler.
Durocher finished his managerial career with a 2,008–1,709 record for a .540 winning percentage. He posted a winning record with each of the four teams he led and was the first manager to win 500 games with three different clubs.
Nice Guys Finish Last
Durocher’s autobiography Although “Nice Guys Finish Last” is the title of Durocher’s autobiography, it is not something he originally said. Leo did make a reference to it when in 1946 he was quoted saying “The nice guys are over there in seventh place” which then was 2nd to last in the league. Later it was rendered as a newspaper headline as “’Nice Guys’ Wind Up in Last Place, Scoffs Lippy”
Leo Durocher was part of many of the most memorable moments in baseball history and should be remembered as more than a ‘mouth that roared’! (Apologies to Phillies manager Dallas Green who had an autobiography with that title).
Leo was a man with a big personality who forged an amazing baseball career!
About the Author: Mark Kolier along with his son Gordon co-hosts a baseball podcast called ‘Almost Cooperstown’. He also has written baseball-related articles that can be accessed on Medium.com and Substack.com. Mark can be reached on x and bluesky @almostcoop and almostcooperstown@gmail.com