Much more to Rhodes than Tacoma saw
JOHN MCGRATH; THE NEWS TRIBUNE
The obituaries for Dusty Rhodes, the unlikely legend of the 1954 World Series who died Wednesday at 82, fail to note where he finished his pro baseball career. This is understandable, for the three unremarkable seasons Rhodes spent in Tacoma were not prominent in a life that took him from rural Alabama to the bright lights of New York City.
At one time or another, Rhodes worked as a tugboat captain, a Pinkerton guard, a butcher, a wine salesman, a sheet-metal worker, a roofer, and a cotton picker. The 358 games he played in Tacoma, after the Pacific Coast League returned here in 1960, remain an obscure footnote in the saga of a pinch-hitting specialist responsible for one of the most stunning upsets in postseason history.
Rhodes averaged 16 home runs and 58 RBI during his three seasons with the Tacoma Giants. Always indifferent about his glove – perhaps he figured he’d done enough work in the field picking cotton – Rhodes’ defense was not helped by the fact Cheney Stadium was built on a swamp, which meant he often was standing in an ankle-deep pond in left field.
And yet, Rhodes won a fan vote as Tacoma’s most popular player during the Giants’ inaugural season of 1960. He also was voted most popular in 1961, and in 1962, his final year in baseball.
On a team that featured such future big-league stars as Jose Cardenal and Hall of Fame pitcher Gaylord Perry, the fans at Cheney Stadium decided their favorite player was a 35-year-old, part-time outfielder who hit .215.
Dusty Rhodes once recalled that he never bought a drink in New York after going 4-for-6, with two homers and seven RBI, during the Giants’ World Series sweep of the seemingly invincible 1954 Cleveland Indians. But he was no less admired in Tacoma, where he retired as a castaway long seen as irrelevant by the San Francisco Giants.
“The team needed a player everybody could recognize,” Clay Huntington, the broadcasting pioneer and driving force for a PCL franchise in Tacoma, said Thursday. “Our general manager, Rosy Ryan, thought Dusty was that guy. People still knew him from that World Series. Right way, he clicked. He always signed autographs, and was friendly to everybody. He really endeared himself to the fans.”
Long before Rhodes ended up in Tacoma, he endeared himself to Leo Durocher, his manager with the New York Giants. But the synergy was complicated: Dusty was a night owl. If his favorite two words were “Play Ball!,” the two words he most despised were “Last Call!” Leo was not without his foibles himself, but he didn’t drink, and he had no tolerance for players nursing hangovers.
Midway through an exhibition trip the Giants took to Japan in the winter of 1953, Durocher cornered owner Horace Stoneham in the hotel lobby and said of Rhodes: “Horace, we’ve got a good ballclub here. We might win the whole thing next year. But I can win it with this man on the club. He’s a rotten apple, Horace. I want him out of here.”
Stoneham, who didn’t share Durocher’s aversion to liquor, kept Rhodes on the roster. What happened the following summer is the sort of delicious history that makes baseball so fascinating.
Rhodes, whose career average was .253, went on an inexplicably insane tear in 1954. He hit .341, which would’ve put him in a photo-finish for the batting title won by teammate and dear friend Willie Mays – he finished at .345 – but Dusty’s 164 at-bats were not nearly enough to qualify. Still, Rhodes produced 15 homers and 50 RBI.
During a doubleheader that season, Rhodes sat on the bench until the seventh inning of the opener. When his day was done – Durocher allowed him to play the field in the nightcap – Rhodes had two doubles, two triples and two home runs.
But it was Rhodes’ work in the World Series, a month later, that defined his career, and, really, his life. A pinch-hit home run in the 10th inning of the opener landed clear of the short right-field foul pole at the Polo Grounds. The ball didn’t travel 300 feet, and when Indians pitcher Bob Lemon watched it go into the seats – not far from second baseman Bobby Avila, giving chase on an apparent pop up – Lemon threw his glove in disgust.
“Lemon threw his glove,” Rhodes would later say, “farther than I hit the ball.”
Rhodes followed up on his short-porch shot with a pinch-hit single and mammoth home run off of the great Early Wynn in Game 2, and two more RBI, again as a pinch hitter, in Game 3.
“There’s talk of calling off the fourth game,” New York sports columnist Red Smith wrote, “so that Dusty Rhodes can give an exhibition of walking on water.”
The fourth game was played, and Rhodes remained on the bench. Didn’t matter. By then, the Indians were begging for the knockout punch to put them out of their misery.
There was no such thing as a World Series MVP trophy in 1954, so Rhodes wasn’t officially designated as the difference-maker. Then again, he wasn’t a memorabilia buff. He probably would have given the thing away, content to fill in the details with stories told until the barkeep’s last call.
“Dusty,” said Clay Huntington, “was a character.”
A cotton-picker before baseball, a tugboat captain after baseball, he is remembered as the major league mediocrity who excelled on the brightest, loudest, most gaudy baseball stage in the world. And he is remembered in Tacoma as the household name who gave a fledgling franchise credibility
“I always said,” he once bragged, “I could get up out of a coffin and get a base hit.”
Your move, Dusty.
john.mcgrath@thenewstribune.com
