Silence on the Diamond: The Demise of Infield Chatter and Bench Jockeying

Bench jockey John McGraw with Hall of Famer Christy Mathewson

Forget the DH and the money and everybody swinging for the fences. The biggest difference between baseball as it used to be and the game today is the silence on the diamond.

Gone are the days when coaches and players on the bench rode opposing batters and pitchers to distract them, get them angry and break their concentration.

The Death of Bench Jockeying

Even the term “bench jockeying” is obsolete. When I asked players in the 1990s if they experienced any bench jockeying, they didn’t know what I was talking about.

After I explained it to them, one said, “It is not the norm to get on anybody, unless a player violates the players’ code of ethics” -- whatever that is. “Otherwise there’s a lot more respect these days.”

Hall of Famer Joe Morgan, an ESPN commentator, agreed:

“Nobody does it now. I guess they are more sophisticated or something. Sitting in the broadcast booth, I don’t hear a peep, except for the cracking of sunflower seeds on the bench.”

Morgan was a member of the last of the noisy benches that players and umpires can recall – Sparky Anderson’s Big Red Machine of the 1970s.

“We were always talking it up,” Morgan said. “Boosting our own hitters: ‘Come on, Johnny . . . base hit here . . . you can do it . . .’ that sort of thing, as well as ragging the other team. Nothing vicious, no slurs, but plenty of noise.”

There has long been a rule against razzing opposing players.

It read: “No manager, player, substitute, coach, trainer, or batboy shall at any time, whether from the bench, the coach’s box or on the playing field or elsewhere: (2) use language which will in any manner reflect upon opposing players, an umpire or any spectator . . .”

But it was rarely enforced in bygone years.

If it had been, folks like John McGraw, Art Fletcher, Leo Durocher and benches full of Cubs, Dodgers and Cardinals would have been suspended for more games than they would have played, coached or managed.

Babe Ruth - pretty chatty in his own way

The Usual Suspects

McGraw was profane, abusive, and often effective.

Longtime Yankees third base coach Art Fletcher was the same. Al Simmons, after his playing days, was a third base coach who rode opposing pitchers.

The number of opposing players who wanted to – and sometimes did – go after them attests to their effectiveness.

They and others picked on physical features, ethnic backgrounds, weight, embarrassing incidents, religion – anything to get a player flustered.

If ever there was a son of McGraw, it would be Leo Durocher, who actually learned the art while with the Yankees.

His tutor was manager Miller Huggins, who is usually thought of as a mild-mannered little guy.

But Huggins fed Leo the lines that earned him a reputation as a brash obnoxious kid and earned him the nickname of “The Lip.”

As the Brooklyn Dodgers’ and later New York Giants manager, Leo would holler at his pitcher from the dugout, “Stick it in his ear!” loud enough for the hitter to hear it.

Brooklyn pitcher Rex Barney recalled the 1948 no-hitter he threw against the Giants soon after Durocher had switched from Ebbets Field to the Polo Grounds to manage the Giants.

“I had pitched for him in Brooklyn, but that didn’t make any difference.

Leo called me everything he could think of from the third base coach’s box all during the game.  But afterward he came up to me and congratulated me.”

“Don’t Show Your Emotions”

If you were the object of the riding, the advice was: never let it show. “Pay no attention,” Durocher told his players. Don’t let your riders know they hit their mark; otherwise, you’ll just invite more abuse.

Some players could talk back without it meaning they’d been stung.  

Everybody liked Babe Ruth, but that didn’t stop them from calling him ”beer belly” or “baboon.”

Nothing fazed him as long as they laid off what he called “personal stuff.” He could swap insults all afternoon while swatting home runs.

Pitcher Bobo Newsom was unflappable.

One day he was pitching for the Philadelphia Athletics and Washington pitchers Ray Scarborough and Sid Hudson were riding him about his advanced age.

Scarborough had a big nose; Hudson was a tall string bean. Bobo stalked over to the Senators’ dugout and said, “Well, well, you two sure remind me of a fire truck – hook and ladder.”

Then he went back to work.

Touching a Nerve

The basic strategy was to find a sensitive subject and harpoon away at it. Trouble with the law or a woman, religion, ethnic background, physical attributes, a fouled-up play or innocent error – anything was fair game.

The targets were often the most respected players; the idea was to upset the biggest stars who could hurt you the most, and let the .220 hitters rest in peace. 

 Sometimes it backfired. Ty Cobb became even more unstoppable when he got angry. 

Abuse for Jewish Players

In the 1930s and ‘40s Jewish ballplayers were subjected to as much verbal abuse from players and fans as Jackie Robinson would endure in postwar American ballparks.

Phil Weintraub was an outfielder/first baseman with the New York Giants in the decade before Robinson’s debut. 

“A lot of things get said in the heat of battle,” he told me. “I think they weren’t actually knocking my religion.

They were looking for the most vulnerable spot to knock me down, get my goat, so I would get angry and not play as well.

They did it more to hit a vulnerable spot than anything else. The ones who did it, when we became teammates, we were good friends.

It always got me fired up and I tried to answer them in the best way I could, with the bat. 

“I was a power hitter in the American Association. The Milwaukee manager told his team, “If you mention anything about religion to him, it’ll get him fired up. So don’t disturb him. Let him alone.”

“I heard anti-Semitic remarks as much from teammates as opponents. If you were quiet and a pussycat, you had no problem, but I stood up to it and got involved.

I knew that many of them were raised saying those things. They had heard them during their raising in the south, or in Polish neighborhoods like the one where I grew up.

“Some fans would give it to me as a Jew. Sometimes I wanted to go after them, but that’s the worst thing you can do. Most of it was inspired by my hurting them with the bat.”

Other Notable Jibes

Country Slaughter had been married a few times, and there were reports that he had roughed up one of his wives.

The jockeys called him “Tommy Manville,” an oft-wed millionaire of the 1930s, and suggested he “go home and beat your wife.”

In 1934 Schoolboy Rowe made the mistake of asking his wife during a national radio interview, “How’m I doing, Edna?” He never heard the end of it.

It was always open season on Southerners who were sensitive about the final score of the Civil War.

John McGraw could set a player to fretting by yelling, “You dirty bum. I’ll trade for you and ship you to Timbuktu.” Today he’d be hauled in for tampering.

The Pitcher and The Trumpet Player

In the fall of 1908 rookie pitcher Harry Coveleskie of the Phillies beat the Giants three times in one week, forcing the famous playoff game against the Cubs.

The furious McGraw vowed to dig up some dirt on him.

Somebody tipped off McGraw about Covey’s blighted love affair in his home town. It seems the girl was fond of music, so Coveleskie played the drums in the town band while a rival suitor played the trumpet.

Covey lost the girl to the trumpet player.

Thereafter, whenever he pitched against the Giants in 1909, McGraw marched around the third base coach’s box beating an imaginary drum while the bench jockeys hollered “boom boom boom” and “ratatattat.”

The whole league took it up and Coveleskie was driven back to the minors, resurfacing five years later in the American League where he became a big winner.

One of the weapons used by the Boston Braves to sweep the favored Athletics in the 1914 World Series was the needle, especially on Eddie Collins.

In the third game, one of the A’s said to Evers, “You fellows have done a great job. You deserve credit.”

Evers shot tobacco juice on the ground. “We don’t take praise from yella dogs.”

The 1930’s Chicago Cubs

The Cubs of the 1930s were the loudest, sharpest needlers of the time.

The Cubs and Yankees never let up on each other, culminating in the supposed Babe Ruth’s “called shot” home run in the 1932 World Series (another story for another blog).

Three years later in the Cubs vs. Detroit Tigers World Series, things got so nasty between the Cubs and umpire George Moriarty, Commissioner Landis hauled them into his office and fined them all, including the umpire. 

And when the Cubs and the St. Louis “Gashouse Gang” Cardinals squared off, the verbal mayhem matched the flashing spikes on the base paths.

Frankie Frisch, Dizzy Dean, Leo Durocher, Joe Medwick never shut up.

Ten years later Frisch was managing the last-place Pirates and Durocher was leading the up-and-coming Dodgers.

Frisch was an avid gardener and was proud of his prize petunias.

When he went out to argue with an umpire, the Dodgers dugout rang with, “Go home and water your petunias.”

The Philly Athletics: Accomplished Hecklers

The 1929-1931 Philadelphia Athletics were accomplished hecklers, led by Jimmy Dykes.

Later, Dykes was managing the White Sox when a young, brash Ted Williams said he would just as soon be a fireman as a ballplayer.

When the Red Sox came to Chicago, Dykes equipped his players with fire helmets, sirens – the works.

When the 1940 Cleveland Indians publicly complained about their manager, Oscar Vitt, and asked the club to replace him, they become known as the Crybabies and were razzed around the league.

Everywhere they played they saw clotheslines hung with diapers, baby bottles and carriages. In Detroit, somebody pushed a baby carriage in front of the Cleveland dugout.

They were taunted: “Who’s appointed to insult Oscar today . . . Did you executives allow Vitt into your team meeting?” They tightened up and lost the pennant by one game.

Riding can be nonverbal.

The Subtle Knife

In the late 1970s Reggie Smith of the Dodgers needled the sore-shouldered, weak-armed Giants pitcher John “The Count” Montefusco by dropping Band-Aids on the mound as he came in from the outfield.

Smith might have been the last player whose mouth regularly inspired brawls after pitchers drilled him to shut him up. 

Not all the noise on the diamond was harassment of the other side. Infielders from Eddie Collins to Nellie Fox kept up a patter of encouragement to their pitchers and teammates.

Maybe the last was Jackie Gutierrez, a Red Sox and Orioles utility infielder in the 1980s, who emitted a steady shrill whistling that could be heard in the bleachers.

“Everybody thought he was crazy,” said a veteran umpire. “It just wasn’t done anymore.”

Too bad.