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Next to winning, John J. McGraw liked feuding. During his 30 years as manager, his rough, tough, smart New York Giants won ten National League pennants and seldom finished out of the first-division money. Knockdown, drag-out feuds brightened most of those 30 years.
The McGraw-managed internecine wars packed the parks with cash customers, especially the Polo Grounds when the Brooklyn Dodgers were there. And whenever McGraw led his Christy Mathewsons and Frankie Frischs into Brooklyn, he always made it plain that his club was on a slumming party. By & large, the Giants beat the Dodgers' brains out in those days.
Not long after Bill Terry stepped into McGraw's shoes, he made a classic contribution to baseball's best-paying feud. Asked what he thought about the Dodgers, Terry cracked: "The Dodgers? Are they still in the league?" Terry's Giants won three pennants before Brooklyn took the play away from them.
In 1941 Brooklyn won the pennant and the Giants got a new manager: Melvin Thomas Ott, the club's slugging right fielder with a peculiar but potent cocked-leg stand. The feud was and still is in flower, but hard as they tried, the Flatbush faithful could not hate stumpy, boyish Mel Ott. The Dodgers have outclassed the Giants in recent years, but they still respect Enemy Agent Ott.
Barrels & Records. A softspoken, brown-eyed little (5 ft. 9 in.) guy with a passive Southern accent and an active taste for Crayfish Bisque New Orleans style, Playing Manager Mel has long been a favorite of fans everywhere. More important than his batting records, he had something that made people like him.
He even got along with umpires—until arguing with umpires became part of his managerial business. Umpire Bill Klem once called a doubtful third strike on him, and added: "You can't hit 'em without swinging at 'em, you Mississippi runt." Ott replied: "That kind of hurts me. . . . Everyone ought to know I come from Louisiana." In his 20 years with the Giants (one more than any other National Leaguer has spent with one club), his easy manner and boyish smile have been almost as effective as his big bat.
By last week, the smile that helped make Ott everybody's ballplayer was being strained to the limit. After racing to the longest lead of any big league team in a quarter century (25 wins against seven defeats), his Giants fell flat on their faces. They lost 21 out of 29 games (including a doubleheader with the hopeless Phillies), crashed from first to fifth place in eight days. The astounding Brooklyn Dodgers, who had once been doped as pitiful or worse, had taken a three-and-a-half-game lead—with the Cardinals, Pirates, Giants, Cubs and Braves in a bunch behind. Ott's nervous stomach, which put him to bed for two weeks when his 1943 Giants slumped into last place, began acting up. He cajoled, threatened, finally fined players. The only thing still left untried: hiring a hackman to drive a wagonload of barrels (a traditional omen of good luck) around the Polo Grounds. But there was a shortage of barrels.