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There are some public-relations experts who dispute Barnum's dictum that any publicity is good publicity. But few of these heretics work for ball clubs. The Lip gets in print oftener, and apparently without trying, than any other five baseball managers put together. Not until this year has anyone seriously questioned the sales value of this publicity.
Yet some of the headlines have not been the kind that look well in a scrapbook. There were the headlines in Philadelphia when Leo slugged a reporter. And the headlines about what happened in Leo's apartment while Leo was away: when Screen Tough George Raft won $18,000 from a gullible manufacturer in a wild-&-woolly crap game.
There was also the Dodger Rebellion, when the team refused to take the field one day until Durocher explained away a crack about Pitcher Bobo Newsom. And the time Leo was charged with bashing a Brooklyn heckler (who was later paid $6,750). Leo was acquitted of criminal charges after testifying meekly that the heckler had "a tremendously loud voice."
But the headlines he made in Hollywood last winter, when he saw the one woman for him, were the worst yet. The fact that she also happened to be his host's wife caused him no hesitation. He wooed & wedded the girl despite the continuing objections of a California court. Sweet-faced Laraine Day was only 26, a girl of strict Mormon upbringing who neither drinks, smokes nor swears. The Leo & Laraine Page One stories did neither Durocher nor baseball any good. The Catholic Youth Organization of Brooklyn (50,000 members) is boycotting the Dodgers so long as Durocher runs them.
But ten years from now, according to Leo's simple philosophy, the public would only remember who won and who lost. So that was all right. Said the triumphant bridegroom: "My God, I came west to play golf and I end up with a wife and three kids."
Man of Color. Leo Durocher, the holler guy, has added very little to baseball's respectability. But at a time when sport was empty of color—and the splashes of color made by Babe Ruth, Jack Dempsey and Walter Hagen had faded—he was as refreshing to the bleachers as a bottle of beer on an August afternoon.
In Brooklyn, where the fans are practiced in spotting phonies, color is something that cannot be faked, and a phony is someone who has color but not ability. Durocher has immense ability. In his day he was a crack fielding shortstop, and in eight years as manager he won Brooklyn its first pennant in 21 years (in 1941) and finished worse than third only once.
Brooklyn is a city with an inferiority complex and 22 "chambers of commerce," and it takes its baseball seriously. Manhattan may have taller skyscrapers and Washington more skillful politicos, but in any kind of fair fight—say of nine men on a ball field—Brooklyn expects to hold its own. The great moments in Brooklyn's rowdy baseball tradition have usually been accidental: the time Hack Wilson was hit on the head with a fly ball while sassing the bleachers; the time three Dodgers slid into the same base at the same time; the day Babe Herman almost started a fire because he forgot to douse his cigar before putting it in his pocket. Under Durocher, such rowdyism is a deliberate way of life.