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This season, despite the wear & tear of managing, his batting average is a hefty .341. One reason: his 36-year-old legs are behaving. For years, his heavy thigh muscles have been popping one Charley horse after another. At first, he nursed them with massage and vitamin injections. Finally he tried a cure popular in his grandfather's day—an olive-oil rubdown.
With his game legs soaked in oil, he is clearly the best of the few remaining big leaguers. Some record-breaking reasons:
¶ The next home run he bangs into the right-field stand will be No. 498, his ninth of the season—one more notch on his own National League record. He is already three past the late larruping Lou Gehrig, and Jimmy Foxx's 531 is within reach. Babe Ruth's tremendous 714 is clearly out of sight (on catching up, Ott once said: "Somehow I wouldn't want to see anybody break the Babe's record").
¶ He long since topped Rogers Hornsby's runs batted in mark. His 39 this year have boosted his grand total to 1,816.
¶ Early this year, he broke Honus Wagner's mark of 4,888 total bases, now has 4,923 to his credit.
¶ He has had more walks (1,672), scored more runs (1,825), made more hits (2,809), and more extra base hits (1,048) than any player who ever wore a National League uniform.
Neither his popularity nor his bag of alltime records has expanded his chest measurement (39). Last week, when General Eisenhower went out to the Polo Grounds to see the Giants play the fast-stepping Braves, Mel couldn't remember exactly what the General said to him. "I was too nervous," Ott explained. "Boy, were my hands shaking."
Bright Eyes & Springtime. Modest Mel has always been a country boy at heart—with a determination to make good in the big city. He was born in Gretna, deep in Louisiana's bayou country, the second of three children. His father and Uncle Hugh were semi-pro baseball players. At 16 he and a schoolmate crossed the Mississippi to New Orleans to ask the Pelicans' Owner Alex Heinemann for a job.
After one look at runty Ott, Heinemann growled, "I'll hire your friend, but you're too small." That same year, setting his boyish sights miles higher, Ott took a friend's tip, his father's straw suitcase and a one-way ticket to Manhattan and applied for a job with the New York Giants. McGraw showed no interest, but Ott wangled an oversize uniform and a chance at bat. He promptly cocked his right leg into the air and smacked the ball out of the park. After giving the boy from the bayous a $400 bonus for signing a Giant contract (Detroit's Dick Wakefield got a record $52,000 in 1941), McGraw ventured one of his rare superlatives: "Don't tell him, but that kid's got the finest natural batting form I've ever seen."
The next year (1926), the rookie who had never taken a batting lesson (and never did) stepped up to a big-league plate for the first time in his life—and struck out. But after that unspectacular start, he progressed in a hurry: the next season he walloped one home run, hit 18 the next, an eye-opening 42 the next.