September 13, 2024 • 39 mins
Leo Durocher would stop at nothing to win. The baseball player-turned-manager was a skilled tactician and famously tough. But he also cheated, intimidated umpires and was violent; he was even known to beat up fans. Durocher was famous for coining the phrase "nice guys finish last" - but is that really true?
Tim Harford and David Bodanis examine lessons from the life of a ruthless, pugnacious baseball star. This is the first episode of a four-part series about how to succeed without being a jerk. It's based on David's book The Art of Fairness: The Power of Decency in a World Turned Mean.
For a full list of sources, see the show notes at timharford.com.
See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.
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Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Speaker 1 (00:15):
Pushkin. Hello listeners, exciting news. Today you can enjoy a
double dose of malefactors and meltdowns. In honor of my
new mini series on the Art of Fairness, I have
not just one, but two cautionary tales for you. Straight
after this episode, you'll be able to listen to another
(00:37):
story on this feed, all about an astonishing race to
build a skyscraper in just thirteen months. And now on
with our first episode. Nineteen twenty eight and Leo du
Rocha is a new player on the feigned New York
Yankees baseball team. He's slight in build and not especially fast,
(01:01):
and now rounding first base and heading as quickly as
he can to second, he can see his opponent glove
ready is about to slam his foot down on the base.
If he does that before de Rochia gets there, then
de Rochia is out. Darrocha can try diving head first
at the base to get there before his opponent, but
(01:22):
he knows he's not going to be fast enough, so
he takes a different approach. He has sharp spikes on
the bottom of his shoes, ostensibly just for grip as
he runs, but they can also serve as a powerful weapon.
He leaps feet forward towards the base. As he hits
the ground and slides, he raises his feet high. When
(01:45):
he makes contact, the spikes gouge hard into his opponent's leg,
tearing open the skin, hitting the bone. Darochia stands up,
brushes himself off. He's made it, but he's gained something
more important than second base. He's gained a reputation. Next time,
(02:07):
his opponents are going to think twice about even trying
to get in his way. Leo de Rocha became one
of the best known baseball managers of the twentieth century,
famous for saying that nice guys finish last. But is
that true? That's what I'll explore today with help from
(02:30):
my friend David Bandanas. He's written about this idea in
his book The Art of Fairness, The Power of Decency
in a World Turned Mean. David also has some first
hand experience with Derochia. For everything came to a test
in nineteen sixty nine when Derochia was managing in Chicago
(02:53):
and David Bandanas was there. I'm Tim Harford, and you're
listening to cautionary tales. This is cautionary tales, and I'm
(03:24):
joined in the studio by David Bandanas himself. Welcome David, Hello, sir.
Now you were never formally introduced to Derosha, but I
understand you spent lots of time at games that he managed. Right.
Speaker 2 (03:36):
Oh, nineteen sixty nine was a beautiful year. I was
in my last year of elementary school and school was
a bit boring, so I spent a lot of time
with my friends going down to watch the Cubs games.
It was a rougher area where the stadium was. It's
a little bit scary, but we got used to it,
and before long we weren't scared. We were accepted. And
we'd stay laid after the games to help clean the stands.
(03:58):
That got us free tickets for the next day.
Speaker 1 (04:00):
That's not a bad gig. So what was it like
seeing Derosia in action?
Speaker 2 (04:04):
It was exciting. It was the peak of our life
to that time. Often and we'd stop what we were
doing cleaning up in the stands, and we'd look down
and we'd watch him do interviews after the game. It
was a beautiful, beautiful setting. The field was empty below us.
There was just open green space right in the middle
of Chicago. He'd be alone with the journalists or sometimes
(04:27):
a single camera crew. At other times, when we got
there early, we'd come right to the edge of the
field and we'd watch him organizing the players. He'd comment
on batting practice, stuff like that, one of the star
pitchers was from Canada. Well, my dad had grown up
in Canada. And a couple of times I got his
attention and the picture would smile at me. I kind
(04:48):
of like to imagine that Derocher saw that and frowned.
He always looked ticked off if anyone interrupted what he
was doing. But honestly, that could just be a later memory.
Speaker 1 (04:58):
But Deroch hadn't begun in Chicago, had he.
Speaker 2 (05:01):
No, We always thought of him as a New Yorker.
That's where he had played, That's where he'd coached when
he was younger. Chicago had strong players, but we hadn't
made it to the World Series. In ages, there was
a lot of pain being a Cubs fan. We had
a beautiful field. It was the oldest and the National League.
It dated from before World War One. There were old
(05:22):
red bricks, there was ivy on the outfield wall. The
scoreboard was actually turned by hand, and there were no
big parking lots outside. You were right next to city apartments,
and they crowded in right to the edge of the stadium.
People who lived in those buildings were really lucky. They
would sometimes rent out their windows or rent out their
(05:42):
roof space so cheapskates could get a view. So we
had all this beautiful stadium, good players, but we never
ever won. Leo du Rocher was brought in to fix that.
Speaker 1 (05:55):
So as it had to say that he was your hero.
Speaker 2 (05:57):
He really really was. I was twelve and Chicago was
proud of being a solid blue collar city, and so
here was this guy. He was tough, he was matter
of fact. He looked exasperate almost all the time, but
then he'd sort of ease up. He'd almost be smiling
at his own exasperation. We thought that was kind of cool.
Sportswriters really liked him, at least most of the time.
(06:20):
There's a feeling he might be a son of a bitch,
a curmudgeon, but he was a lovable one, and everyone
knew his quote that nice guys finish last. It seemed
pretty likely his approach would work. In Midsummer, our cubs
were way in front.
Speaker 1 (06:35):
Okay, and forgive me that I'm not a baseball expert.
So for people like me who might not know, just
remind me how the baseball season works.
Speaker 2 (06:44):
That is a totally fair question. If you asked me
about rugby or soccer, I would not know. I would
even use the wrong word for soccer. Baseball starts in
the spring, it goes through an incredibly hot summer, especially
if you live in Chicago, and it finishes usually in September,
and then there's playoffs in October. Well, to get ahead,
Chicago needed to be first in their division. That would
(07:06):
get us to the playoffs, and if we won those,
then we could make be getting to the World Series. Okay, well,
it was a good time. We were in front and
there wasn't much competition. The second place team was the
New York Mets. They were really, really far behind. Also,
the manager of the Mets was the opposite of DeRosier.
His name was Gil Hodges, and he was known as
(07:27):
the nicest man in baseball. We weren't worried, but there
was something else for me on the line too. I
had a girlfriend at the time, or a young lady
who went with our group to the Cubs games, and
I hoped she'd be a girlfriend and I was confident
she would because she whispered to me that I was
going to get a kiss, my very first kiss if
(07:49):
the Cubs won.
Speaker 1 (07:50):
Wow. Okay, so this is the crucial summer. It's the
test of Derosha's maxim that nice guys finished last. Hodges
is a nice guy, Derosha isn't. And it looked like
Hodges would lose and Derosha would be proven right about
nice guys. But with that kiss on the line, that
(08:11):
was still time for everything to change. David, you got
me curious about Derotion Now. What was he like when
he started out.
Speaker 2 (08:17):
As a kid. I had no idea. Later, as adults,
I looked back, I researched. It turned out he grew
up on the East Coast in the nineteen tens. His
parents were from Quebec, so as a kid he only
spoke French when he went to school. He couldn't speak
a word of English.
Speaker 1 (08:33):
But he was good at sports.
Speaker 2 (08:34):
Boy was he good. He was good in a particular way.
He was a small guy, but he had good reflexes
and he could hustle. He was really fast. And the
thing is the big thing, he never gave up anything
that would help him when he would do. He cheated,
he tried to intimidate umpires as we saw. He was
famous for using his spikes to gouge opponents when he
(08:56):
slid into.
Speaker 1 (08:57):
Base and did that kind of thing work.
Speaker 2 (08:59):
Boy, did it work. Even with his limited talent, he
managed to get on one of the most famous teams
of all time, the nineteen twenties New York Yankees. Babe
Bruce was the star of the team, and he used
to say that Durocher couldn't hit the floor if he
dropped a cigarette. It's harsh, but accurate. He was a
terrible hitter, but he kept hustling and threatening and taking shortcuts.
(09:22):
He used to say, I'd knock over my mother if
she was rounding a base and I needed the winning run. Later,
he became manager with other teams in New York, and
he led the New York Giants to two championships and
mellowed in your dreams. He got his players to act
just like him. It's kind of attractive when somebody's a
(09:42):
bit of a jerk and leading your way and being
a jerk wins. You're allowed to be who you've always
wanted to be. He had his pitchers throw fastballs. They
would go right at the other team's heads. At one
point this was brilliant. He set up a hidden telescope
to steal the signals of his opponents right in the
middle of the game, and all the time he kept
(10:02):
on trying to intimidate umpires. He'd also always have his
players gouge opponents when they could. All that was always
going on. He even liked saying that he meant it
about his mother. He would describe how when he went home,
she was terribly hurt what he said, and as he
put it, for the rest of my life, as long
as I visited, she'd walk around with an injured air.
(10:23):
And I guess she had a right to God rest
your soul. Mom, I'm afraid I would have knocked you over.
Speaker 1 (10:30):
It doesn't sound like a very attractive man. So where
does that lovable curmudgeon reputation come from.
Speaker 2 (10:36):
Well, you have to think of it from the outside.
None of us really knew all the horrible details, certainly
not in Chicago. And to be honest, most baseball fans
across America, and someone who seems tough, it's pretty appealing
if they're on your side. When he managed the Brooklyn Dodgers,
in the nineteen forties. The fans loved him. He was
salt of the earth, working hard. They like to think
(10:59):
they were salt of the earth, and boy, blue collar
jobs in America at the time were really hard work. Well,
it was the same thing in my Chicago in the
nineteen sixties. They used to say that when in America
made half the steel in the world, Chicago made half
the steal in America. We were so proud of that.
People would go to the game's earthy fingers, sweaty literally
blue shirts. Du Rocher was one of us.
Speaker 1 (11:22):
And de Rocher brought the first black player into the league, didn't.
Speaker 2 (11:25):
He That's the other thing. If your strong willed in
one direction, you can be strong willed in another. In
nineteen forty seven he was with Brooklyn and he brought
Jackie Robinson into the league, the very first black player
in professional baseball. There was really nasty segregation going on
till then. Black players just weren't allowed in the main leagues.
(11:46):
But now, especially after World War Two, seemed ridiculous.
Speaker 1 (11:49):
And how did it go over well?
Speaker 2 (11:52):
Most of de Rocher's players were pretty decent about it,
but some were from the South. They did not like
having a black man anywhere near them. So they signed
a petition, and that petition said get rid of Jackie Robinson.
We will not play on a team with him. De
Rocher couldn't stand that. He knew what it was like
to be picked on. He grabbed the players who signed
(12:12):
the petition and he yelled at them, and he screamed
at them they could go f themselves as well as
at effing petition if they didn't unsign it right now,
they were fired. That was going to happen, No apology,
no excuse. Robinson stayed and he was a great player.
De Rocher wanted to win.
Speaker 1 (12:30):
Okay, So toughness lets you get things done, and not
only winning, but forcing through these big symbolic steps towards
racial justice. So Durocher had a point. It doesn't always
pay to simply be nice. If you want to get
things done, you might need to be a little bit hard,
even to be a bit obnoxious.
Speaker 2 (12:50):
You're right, but it isn't the full story. De Rocher
loved it in New York, but something was about to
happen there, something that would change everything for him.
Speaker 1 (12:59):
And we'll hear all about that. When cautionary tales returns
in a moment. We're back. I am in the studio
with David Badani's author of the Art of Fairness, and
(13:23):
we're talking about whether Leo de Rocha was right that
nice guys finished last. David, We've known each other a
very long time, and you've been interested in these ideas
for I think as long as I've known you twenty
five years or so.
Speaker 2 (13:38):
Yeah. To really write about something well, or to write deeply,
at least for me, I have to really care about it.
And I think it comes from way back when I
was a kid. I really hated the idea that terrible
people could succeed. Bullies succeeding at school, dictators succeeding in politics.
I grew up in a Jewish neighborhood in Chicago. Not
long after World War Two. A huge number of people
(14:02):
who survived the death camps were all around us. They
had tattoos on their forearms, my barber people's, the law store,
pretty much everybody, and they weren't old. They were in
their thirties. Anyways, history showed that terrible people often win,
so I thought maybe I was being naive about wanting
the other side to succeed. That's what made me get
(14:23):
into this book, The Art of Fairness. I wanted to
find out what are the actual limitations of being a jerk,
of being horrible? And then the other side, what are
the strengths of, if not being merely nice, at least
being fair, what are those strengths? And since I knew
about d Rocher from first hand experience, that's what brought
me to the story.
Speaker 1 (14:43):
I remember when you first told me this idea for
a book, and I just idolized you. Then, David, I mean,
of course I still idolized you, but you know, I
hadn't written a book, and I just thought to write
a book would be the coolest thing ever. One of
the early ideas was that you were going to have
it reversible, So one side said nice guys finish first,
and the other side said nice guys finish last. And
(15:04):
you were going to explore these different ideas in the end,
of course, it ended up being called The Art of
fair It's such a rich topic for a book. There's
so much to explore because there's just no one way
to answer the question.
Speaker 2 (15:18):
Well, that's actually true, and if we're honest about ourselves,
the kindest people have jerky sides underneath. Unless somebody is
a total psychopath, they'll often be kind or reasonable. Yeah,
the idea of a book that would open from different sides.
They used to do that with science fiction books in
the fifties and sixties and the cheap magazines. And I
got the idea from William Blake Songs of Innocence, Songs
(15:39):
of Experience. You take the same project and come in
in different directions. I was always fascinated about that.
Speaker 1 (15:46):
Yeah, But as we discussed it at the time, I
was doing into game theory, so there's a mathematical way
of thinking about cooperation, and of course there is that
side to it, and you can approach it as a
mathematician or as a scientist, as an economist, but you
can draw in all of these other possible stories as well,
and bring the arts, bring history into this topic.
Speaker 2 (16:07):
That actually threw me at the beginning. In my own
background was in math, and I tried to do it
very formally this book. I tried to go through the
logic behind it, and I found that didn't really hold.
There's a subtlety of human interaction, so in a sense,
you can only learn from experience. It's really weird. I
remember when I was a kid, I was really irritated.
(16:28):
I would say to people, well, tell me exactly why
and what to do, and it follows. It was like
you plug numbers into a math equation and the results
are automatic. Why couldn't I plug certain principles into my
own life and everything would be good.
Speaker 1 (16:41):
I have some very friendly people on YouTube who will
happily sell you three or five or ten principles that
will sort out your life. But it never works like that,
does it.
Speaker 2 (16:49):
It never never works to plug a good advice into
what we actually do. That's what's hard. Advice is easy
to state, but really hard to carry out. You need
practical experience.
Speaker 1 (17:02):
But at the risk of introducing spoilers, I am guessing,
since you've written an entire book about the art of fairness,
I'm guessing that Derosia's max him nice guys finish last.
That's not always right, even if sometimes it works well.
Speaker 2 (17:17):
My greatest pleasure was finding the exceptions. When my oldest
boy was a teenager, he asked me before going into
the world. He said, Dad, all the stuff we've learned,
is it true? And I genuinely didn't know. I've done
very little in the outside world. So I said, I'll
take a look. And he was young, and I even
believed that I would find out. Anyways, this book is
(17:37):
part of the story, and it turns out when you
start acting like a jerk, it can be really hard
to stop. You get used to doing whatever you want
to getting your way just by pushing, just by pushing
hard against other people.
Speaker 1 (17:51):
So, speaking of other people, Derochia had a rival. He
had this rival manager, and this rival had a very
very different approach to Deroshia.
Speaker 2 (17:59):
Ah. That was Gil Hodges. Now in nineteen sixty nine,
he was the manager of the New York Mets. That
was our arch competitor. Oooh boo hiss. But he actually
knew Derocher really well. Hodges was a little bit younger
than Durocher, and back in the nineteen fifties he'd been
a player on one of de Rocher's teams. But yet
he was a totally different character in what way De
(18:22):
Rocher I think was born with something wrong with him.
Gil Hodges was a coal miner son and he'd served
in World War Two. He was a decorated combat marine.
Everything he had always done was about solidarity, about cooperation,
about working together as a player, he'd take the time
to coach others who needed it. He was aggressive enough
when he was hitting and running. He was a really
(18:43):
good player, but he never mocked teammates who were having
a bad stretch. De Rocher always had to cheat to succeed,
not Hodges. He could get by on pure talent. He
never jabbed his spikes into anyone's legs. And of course
he interrupted his playing career and lost several years of
salary to serve in World War Two. That was something
mister Durocher very carefully avoided. When de Rocher was a manager,
(19:08):
hughes Hodges because Hodges was talented, but he never understood
why Hodges insisted on those soft attitudes, being helpful to others,
playing a game by the rules, even being willing to
serve your country.
Speaker 1 (19:21):
Goodness me And so later on, when Hodges himself was
a manager, how did he behave? Then?
Speaker 2 (19:26):
One of the great things is, as you know, tim,
a lot of people, power goes to their head. Hodges
stayed the same guy. He stayed the opposite to Durocher.
Now again, that doesn't mean he was soft. That's what
Durocher and people like him kept getting wrong. Coal mining families,
combat marines. These are not weak people. The thing is
(19:47):
Hodges was fair. It always meant a lot to him.
When he was managing the New York Mets in that
big year of nineteen sixty nine, one of his star
players in the outfield was slacking off. It was near
the end of a long night game. Well, that was
unfair to the other players. Hodges knew that. So he
walked all the way across the field in front of
the fans, in front of the TV cameras, and then
(20:09):
with that player he walked all the way back. A
replacement was going to take his place. Well, it was
embarrassing for the player, but Hodges didn't rub it in.
That was the fair thing. He said that from the
next day on, the incident would be entirely forgotten. That
he had treat the player with as much respect as ever,
And he did. That player, Cleon Jones, he knew he
(20:31):
had messed up. He played as hard out for the
team after that.
Speaker 1 (20:34):
So Hodges sounds firm but fair, and he sounds like
someone who could quietly earn respect rather than demanding it
by screaming yes.
Speaker 2 (20:43):
That's the contrast with Durocher. Hodges wouldn't pick on someone
weaker than him. But Durocher he loved doing that. Remember,
he was terrified of finishing last in anything. There must
have been some internal weakness he needed to dominate. One time,
right at the end of World War Two, a fan
was mocking him. Durocher hated that sort of thing, so
(21:04):
he got an off duty policeman to lead the fan
to a little room behind the dugout. It was secluded,
it was out of sight, and then Durocher gave a signal.
The policeman was going to double the fan over, so
he hit him with a blackjack.
Speaker 1 (21:17):
Well it's a blackjack.
Speaker 2 (21:18):
A blackjack is like a truncheon, but much meaner and
often with a big, heavy metal tip. Well, after the
policeman did that, the fan was weak, so Derochier got
to work. He started punching him in the face. The
fan tried to get away, but he was a veteran
actually of World War two. He was wounded. He had
a damaged leg. So de Rocher kept a hold with
one hand and with the other hand he pulled his
(21:41):
fist back and he punched him in the face. And
he punched him in the face over and over, breaking
his jaw. I have had the joy and misfortune of
spending a certain amount of my life around boxing rings.
It takes a lot of work to break somebody's jaw.
Even the policeman thought that was too much. What are
you doing, Leo, he said, that's from his testimony in court.
(22:01):
Later he repeated it, what are you doing? But even
the policeman was too scared of Durocher to stop him.
The fan was an hospital for weeks.
Speaker 3 (22:10):
It went to court, which means it's all over for Derosia. Surely, yeah, right,
This was New York City. Almost all the jurors were
Brooklyn Dodgers fans. They determined and thought about the case
for something like eleven minutes. Durocher was cleared.
Speaker 1 (22:24):
Deroche was cleared. I suppose that figures. So he got
away with it, and his treatment of his players sounds
very different to the way Hodges behaved too.
Speaker 2 (22:35):
It certainly was a Durosier had a lot of baseball
knowledge to share, and one of the strengths about being
a jerk is that you can actually be objective. If
a famous player was weak, he'd bench him. If an
unknown player was strong, he'd let him play. So that
part of it was good. On the other hand, he
couldn't stop from booling everyone, absolutely everyone, including players on
(22:57):
his own team. And since he loved spending money and
he had his tendency to get married and then divorced,
and then married and then divorced, he did that about
three or four times. From all that, he was in
debt a lot. So he started cheating when he played
cards with his own players, and he'd cheat when he
played craps games with them, throwing the dice. He knew
a little about how to do that already, but he
(23:18):
liked hanging out with gangsters and he learned more.
Speaker 1 (23:22):
So he learned more about how to cheat.
Speaker 2 (23:24):
He certainly did. He got really good at it. And
you know what, he found cheating against guys who were
grown up, who have been playing ball lived in New
Yorker big cities for a while. Those guys were really
hard to hustle. So he looked at sweet boys just
coming in from the farms. America was much more rural
than it is now, and he would tell these boys,
you want to make it in New York City, here's
(23:46):
an easy way. There's a card game. The rules are
very simple, but you got to bet big kid, you
gotta bet big, so he would start cheating, not on
small bets but for huge stakes. Finally, the baseball commissioner
got rumors of this and he told him to stop.
Leo du Rocher was unimpressed when anybody told him to stop.
He kept going. In one craps game, he rigged the
(24:07):
dice so much that he nearly in corrupted a leading pitcher.
But that was against Hicks. When he tried keeping up
with professional gamblers, he wasn't so lucky. He kept on losing,
and he kept on losing, and it meant he needed
to rig games even more than he ever had before.
And whenever the administrators tried to rein him in, well,
(24:28):
he let sports writers know what he felt about the
big wigs in the offices. Because of that, in the
late nineteen forties, de Rocher got suspended for an entire season.
He was allowed back the following year, but that was
his big weakness. He'd really set up an enemy. The
powers that be had it in for him because of
the gambling, mostly, but also because of the way he
(24:48):
kept doing whatever worked. In nineteen fifty three, for example,
there was an opposing team that had a player who
was very effective. A player was Carl Ferrillo.
Speaker 1 (24:57):
He was the.
Speaker 2 (24:57):
Best hitter in the National League, a dangerous opponent for
Derosier's team. Well, de Rocher wanted to get him out
of the game, so he had his own pitcher hit
Forrilla with a pitch and then de Roucher wagged his
finger at him, mocking what had happened. Forrilla was furious,
he charged into the dugout. That was exactly what Durocher hoped,
(25:18):
and so in the safety of the dugout, du Rocher
or maybe some players he'd arranged in advance, they very
quickly shattered Forerrillo's wrist. The poor guy was out for
the entire season. The competition was now easier.
Speaker 1 (25:31):
Wow. So he sounds like someone who would stop but
absolutely nothing to win.
Speaker 2 (25:36):
He was, but that meant winning was the only thing
he had to offer. The moment he stopped winning, nobody
was going to give him a second chance. There was
no loyalty, there was no friendship. So when the New
York Giants that he was managing, when they had a
poor season in nineteen fifty five, he was out fired.
He'd bit in New York since Babe Ruth Yankees back
(25:56):
in the nineteen twenties. So what was he going to
do now? Other teams didn't want to hire him, or
at least the top teams didn't. The gambling, the violence,
They knew about that. It was too much, and he
wasn't going to let anyone see him be weak, So
he wasn't going to beg What he said instead was
I've had enough, I'm retiring from baseball.
Speaker 1 (26:15):
But by nineteen sixty nine, when you are about the
turn thirteen, Deroche's back on the scene with the Chicago Cubs.
Speaker 2 (26:22):
Right, that's it. When he was fired in New York,
there wasn't a lot he could do. He tried broadcasting
and he wasn't bad at it, but it didn't mean
much to him. Not after being right at the center
in the stadium. He was actually in an episode of
a TV show with a talking horse.
Speaker 1 (26:37):
Oh classy.
Speaker 2 (26:38):
Curiously, I remember that show and I remember that horse.
My poor parents had to sit while we enjoyed it. Anyways,
for Durocher, that sort of episode was enough. Late in
nineteen sixty five, he was sixty one years old, he
signed up to manage the Chicago Cubs. My Chicago Cubs.
Speaker 1 (26:56):
So what did you make of all this.
Speaker 2 (26:57):
At the time, I was a kid, so I really
only had the faintest hint. He was famous. He'd played
with Babe Ruth, He'd led New York teams to the
World Series. There was talk that he was rough, maybe
too rough, But remember this was Chicago. We were proud
of that, and he didn't do much his first year
nineteen sixty six. The Cubs weren't that impressive a team yet.
(27:18):
They had one star player, Ernie Banks, but they had
barely had a winning season in twenty years. Like I said,
we Cubs fans knew pain, we were used to it.
But the thing is, he was a jerk. He was
a curmudgeon, et cetera, et cetera. But he really was skilled.
He brought up promising youngsters. He knew tactics very well.
In nineteen sixty seven they did better. Nineteen sixty eight
(27:41):
was also good, and then came nineteen sixty nine. That
was your summer that it was. I was twelve, I
was about to turn thirteen. The city had been through
a lot. Just the year before, there were terrible riots.
I remember on a big street just a few yards
from my home, watching jeeps with barbed wire on them,
National Guard troops with machine guns and a really fierce
(28:03):
look in their face going down the street to where
the riots were going to be. Well, we were kind
of a blue collar city. We liked the idea that
we were tough, but we also liked the idea that
we hung together. This new manager, he seemed to be
showing that was possible. Being tough could unite everybody.
Speaker 1 (28:20):
And you were hanging out. You were going to watch
every game, although when you're you supposed to be at.
Speaker 2 (28:24):
School, school, schmool. We thought of it more as guidelines.
The team got off to such a good start back
in nineteen sixty nine, starting in April, it was kind
of hard to resist. And then in the summer when
we were still ahead and there was no school, we
were almost living there. And also there was that promise
of the kiss if the Cubs won the division. Now
(28:46):
in mid August, that seemed certain. I was a very
very happy twelve year old. Hodge's New York Mets were
well behind. The season was just six weeks from ending.
They would have to undergo the greatest losing streak in
the history of American baseball to miss out.
Speaker 1 (29:04):
Hm Well, there is about to be a showdown between
Hodges de Rochia, and there's a kiss on the line.
More on all of that after the break, we're back.
(29:27):
I'm in the studio with David Bananas and David casting
your mind back to being twelve years old, that amazing summer,
the romance, the excitement, that the thrill of being on
a winning team. That's how it seemed to you. Then
what have you learned since then?
Speaker 2 (29:44):
Well, there are a lot of things I didn't realize.
It's kind of nice being twelve years old and very,
very innocent. One of the things I didn't know was
how callous Durocher could really be, breaking that veteran's jaw
hanging around with gangsters, and these gangsters were pretty nasty people.
One of the men in a circle was Buggsy Siegel
of Gangster, famous for organizing contract killing and helping the
(30:07):
mafia take over early Las Vegas. Another thing I didn't
realize was how much this season meant to Durocher. There
were financial bonuses if you won, and they were even
bigger bonuses if you got into the World Series. He'd
lost a lot of money and gambling, and he had
his big lifestyle with all those divorces, and he needed
his cash.
Speaker 1 (30:27):
So what about his attitude to his players? Is there
any sign that he was starting to mellow.
Speaker 2 (30:32):
Well, that's also what I had no idea about at
the time. At batting practice, he'd swear a little bit,
but this was Chicago who didn't swear. What I missed
was how vicious he was to the players. The shortstop
Ron Santo was Italian American, and I also had diabetes
in that era. He had to hide it well. Durocher
kept on riding him and swearing right up to his face,
(30:55):
calling him weak, using really vicious insults about Italian Americans,
but not in a sort of joky way that some
people might do for bonding. It was deep, it was biting.
Santo was a calm guy, but even he cracked in
the clubhouse. One time he grabbed du Rocher by the
throat and he wanted to kill him. His teammates had
to pull him off.
Speaker 1 (31:14):
So Deochia, he's famous for bringing the black player Jackie
Robinson on the team, but he's using these slurs against
Italian Americans. I'm trying to work it. Was he a racist?
Was he not a racist?
Speaker 2 (31:26):
It was probably mixed. He was a derosierist. Everyone knew
about him bringing on Jackie Robinson. That was good. But
the thing is he didn't bring Robinson on because he
was standing up for the principles of racial equality. Derochier
never stood up for any principles. He didn't even especially
like Robinson. He just wanted to win. Robinson was a
great player. Turned out a little bit later, Robinson had
(31:48):
a problem with his weight, and de Rocher started insulting
him so hard and so NonStop that even Jackie Robinson
ended up hating him just as much as everyone else did. Now,
a true racist puts their race first. Derochier was simpler.
He just put himself first.
Speaker 1 (32:06):
And above all, he wanted to win. So did all
this bullying help.
Speaker 2 (32:10):
That's what gave me such pleasure when I looked into
it properly for the book. No, the bullying did not help.
He would demand too much, he would go too far.
Durocher kept his players going without replacement much much longer
than he should have. Chicago's really hot in the summer,
and it could be near one hundred percent humidity, feels tropical.
(32:31):
But day after day, week after week, he wouldn't allow replacements.
Speaker 1 (32:35):
That seems so counterproductive.
Speaker 2 (32:36):
You're right. I think he'd liked seeing his players get
weaker and weaker. It's kind of weird, but it made
him feel strong. And then there were the umpires, exactly
in front of the TV cameras. He'd ham it up,
he'd stand toe to toe, he would yell at them.
It seemed like a game, but it was more than
a game. In quieter moments when he was alone away
from the cameras, he'd really tried to undermine the umpires,
(33:00):
saying the most personal things he could find out about
their private lives. Now, you've got to remember there were
barely any video reviews of calls. Then.
Speaker 1 (33:08):
The umpires had a lot of discretion, and making an
enemy of them wasn't smart.
Speaker 2 (33:13):
It certainly was that. One sports writer wrote about it later.
Quote Whether or not Leo ever united the Cubs against
the Empires, he certainly united the umpires against the Cubs unquote.
And then well, Durocher also encouraged the most unruly of
the fans, people I knew pretty well to throw metal
(33:34):
bolts or sometimes small stones at opposing players. The other
teams hated that, and when they complained, du Rocher professed
complete innocence.
Speaker 1 (33:44):
Even so, despite all the counter productive bullying, by mid August,
the season is going to be over early October. By
mid August, as you said, Chicago was way ahead, I
think nine games ahead. So the only way they could
lose would be if hodges Met had one of the
greatest winning streaks in baseball history and Derosia's Cubs had
(34:06):
one of the greatest losing streaks in baseball.
Speaker 2 (34:09):
You had to remind me to him, didn't you. It
was a mess, it was a catastrophe. It's still I
swear to god, it still hurts. The umpires hated to Rocher,
and opposing players hated d Rocher and his own team
really really hated him because he needed to feel strong
and humiliate them, and he wouldn't give the starters a rest.
They were getting exhausted. It's not that they totally gave up.
(34:31):
They still had some pride. They're professional athletes. But by then,
the constant bullying, the yelling, the unfairness, it was too much.
Everyone else was bringing their strongest game against Chicago. Our
players had to be on top. They weren't. When it
first began to happen, the losing, we didn't realize what
was going on. Every team loses a bit, and so
(34:52):
that was okay. But it kept on, and when we
hung out at the field edge during batting practice before
the games, there was this feeling that something was different.
The players were in a different zone. There was less
joking between them. There was a kind of doggedness as
they practice. We shared it too when my friends and
I and the other kids from around the city, when
(35:12):
we cleaned the stadium after the games, if anyone who
was lifting the seats and sweeping down the garbage started
to say hey, they'd be okay, we don't look at him,
you didn't talk about it. If we were very quiet
and very ordinary, maybe we'd all go away.
Speaker 1 (35:26):
And obviously it did not all go away.
Speaker 2 (35:30):
We'd been in first place for one hundred and fifty
five consecutive days and then we lost it all. Everything
fell apart. The city was going to be united, and
me and my school friends we were getting more united.
But these players, we'd look up to, the cubs, who
are going to make up for the past and finally
finally go all the way they lost it. Who could
(35:51):
we trust? Everything felt different at school, at home, everywhere.
The Mets won the division, and the kiss pleased. We
were friends, we were kids in a sense, it would
have been nothing. We even stayed friends, but at the
time just made everything worse.
Speaker 1 (36:06):
And how far did Gil Hodge's team go?
Speaker 2 (36:09):
Well after beating us to take the National League East,
they won the playoffs for the entire National League, and
then they were into the World Series against Baltimore. I
was listening to the series on the radio. Now the
player that Hodges publicly reprimanded, Cleon Jones. In the fifth game,
he gave his all in a spectacular catch that won
the series for the New York Mets. Mister de Rocher
(36:34):
and my cubbies were nowhere to be seen.
Speaker 1 (36:37):
David, my heart bleeds. It is a tragedy, but on
caution details We try to learn from tragedy. So what
is your conclusion from this story.
Speaker 2 (36:46):
It's pretty simple. Being too soft will not work, but
being too harsh that's easily counterproductive too. There is a
path in between being fair like Hodges, not a bully
like Derocher. This really can be the way to finish.
Speaker 1 (37:02):
First David, it's been enjoyed. Thank you so much for
joining me.
Speaker 2 (37:06):
A great pleasure.
Speaker 1 (37:09):
David Bardanas's wonderful book is the Art of Fairness. It
is available at all good bookshops, naturally full of great stories,
and every single one has a lesson about how to
succeed without being a jerk. We're going back to our
usual format next episode, but we will be telling several
stories inspired by the Art of Fairness. So join me
(37:31):
for stories of villains undone by their villainy, monstrous, self
devouring egos, and accounts of the extraordinary power of decency
next time on Cautionary Tales. Cautionary Tales is written by
me Tim Harford with Andrew Wright. This mini series is
(37:53):
based on David Bandanas's book The Art of Fairness, The
Power of Decency in a World Turned Mean, and it
was written with David Bandanas himself. For a full list
of our sources, see the show notes at Timharford dot com.
The show was produced by Alice Fines, with Marilyn Rust.
The sound design and original music for the work of
(38:14):
Pascal Wise. Sarah Nix edited the script. Cautionary Tales features
the voice talents of Ben Crowe, Melanie Guttridge, Stella Harford,
Jemma Saunders and rufus Wright. The show wouldn't have been
possible without the work of Jacob Weisberg, Ryan Dilly, Greta Cohen,
Eric Sandler, Carrie Brody, Christina Sullivan, Kira Posey and Owen Miller.
(38:39):
Cautionary Tales is a production of Pushkin Industries. It's recorded
at ward Or Studios in London by Tom Gerry. If
you like the show, please remember to share, rate and review.
It doesn't really make a difference to us and if
you want to hear the show ad free, sign up
to Pushkin Plus on the show page on Apple Podcasts
(39:01):
or at pushkin dot fm, slash plus. The present is
Pushkin. Hello listeners, exciting news. Today you can enjoy a
double dose of malefactors and meltdowns. In honor of my
new mini series on the Art of Fairness, I have
not just one, but two cautionary tales for you. Straight
after this episode, you'll be able to listen to another
(00:37):
story on this feed, all about an astonishing race to
build a skyscraper in just thirteen months. And now on
with our first episode. Nineteen twenty eight and Leo du
Rocha is a new player on the feigned New York
Yankees baseball team. He's slight in build and not especially fast,
(01:01):
and now rounding first base and heading as quickly as
he can to second, he can see his opponent glove
ready is about to slam his foot down on the base.
If he does that before de Rochia gets there, then
de Rochia is out. Darrocha can try diving head first
at the base to get there before his opponent, but
(01:22):
he knows he's not going to be fast enough, so
he takes a different approach. He has sharp spikes on
the bottom of his shoes, ostensibly just for grip as
he runs, but they can also serve as a powerful weapon.
He leaps feet forward towards the base. As he hits
the ground and slides, he raises his feet high. When
(01:45):
he makes contact, the spikes gouge hard into his opponent's leg,
tearing open the skin, hitting the bone. Darochia stands up,
brushes himself off. He's made it, but he's gained something
more important than second base. He's gained a reputation. Next time,
(02:07):
his opponents are going to think twice about even trying
to get in his way. Leo de Rocha became one
of the best known baseball managers of the twentieth century,
famous for saying that nice guys finish last. But is
that true? That's what I'll explore today with help from
(02:30):
my friend David Bandanas. He's written about this idea in
his book The Art of Fairness, The Power of Decency
in a World Turned Mean. David also has some first
hand experience with Derochia. For everything came to a test
in nineteen sixty nine when Derochia was managing in Chicago
(02:53):
and David Bandanas was there. I'm Tim Harford, and you're
listening to cautionary tales. This is cautionary tales, and I'm
(03:24):
joined in the studio by David Bandanas himself. Welcome David, Hello, sir.
Now you were never formally introduced to Derosha, but I
understand you spent lots of time at games that he managed. Right.
Speaker 2 (03:36):
Oh, nineteen sixty nine was a beautiful year. I was
in my last year of elementary school and school was
a bit boring, so I spent a lot of time
with my friends going down to watch the Cubs games.
It was a rougher area where the stadium was. It's
a little bit scary, but we got used to it,
and before long we weren't scared. We were accepted. And
we'd stay laid after the games to help clean the stands.
(03:58):
That got us free tickets for the next day.
Speaker 1 (04:00):
That's not a bad gig. So what was it like
seeing Derosia in action?
Speaker 2 (04:04):
It was exciting. It was the peak of our life
to that time. Often and we'd stop what we were
doing cleaning up in the stands, and we'd look down
and we'd watch him do interviews after the game. It
was a beautiful, beautiful setting. The field was empty below us.
There was just open green space right in the middle
of Chicago. He'd be alone with the journalists or sometimes
(04:27):
a single camera crew. At other times, when we got
there early, we'd come right to the edge of the
field and we'd watch him organizing the players. He'd comment
on batting practice, stuff like that, one of the star
pitchers was from Canada. Well, my dad had grown up
in Canada. And a couple of times I got his
attention and the picture would smile at me. I kind
(04:48):
of like to imagine that Derocher saw that and frowned.
He always looked ticked off if anyone interrupted what he
was doing. But honestly, that could just be a later memory.
Speaker 1 (04:58):
But Deroch hadn't begun in Chicago, had he.
Speaker 2 (05:01):
No, We always thought of him as a New Yorker.
That's where he had played, That's where he'd coached when
he was younger. Chicago had strong players, but we hadn't
made it to the World Series. In ages, there was
a lot of pain being a Cubs fan. We had
a beautiful field. It was the oldest and the National League.
It dated from before World War One. There were old
(05:22):
red bricks, there was ivy on the outfield wall. The
scoreboard was actually turned by hand, and there were no
big parking lots outside. You were right next to city apartments,
and they crowded in right to the edge of the stadium.
People who lived in those buildings were really lucky. They
would sometimes rent out their windows or rent out their
(05:42):
roof space so cheapskates could get a view. So we
had all this beautiful stadium, good players, but we never
ever won. Leo du Rocher was brought in to fix that.
Speaker 1 (05:55):
So as it had to say that he was your hero.
Speaker 2 (05:57):
He really really was. I was twelve and Chicago was
proud of being a solid blue collar city, and so
here was this guy. He was tough, he was matter
of fact. He looked exasperate almost all the time, but
then he'd sort of ease up. He'd almost be smiling
at his own exasperation. We thought that was kind of cool.
Sportswriters really liked him, at least most of the time.
(06:20):
There's a feeling he might be a son of a bitch,
a curmudgeon, but he was a lovable one, and everyone
knew his quote that nice guys finish last. It seemed
pretty likely his approach would work. In Midsummer, our cubs
were way in front.
Speaker 1 (06:35):
Okay, and forgive me that I'm not a baseball expert.
So for people like me who might not know, just
remind me how the baseball season works.
Speaker 2 (06:44):
That is a totally fair question. If you asked me
about rugby or soccer, I would not know. I would
even use the wrong word for soccer. Baseball starts in
the spring, it goes through an incredibly hot summer, especially
if you live in Chicago, and it finishes usually in September,
and then there's playoffs in October. Well, to get ahead,
Chicago needed to be first in their division. That would
(07:06):
get us to the playoffs, and if we won those,
then we could make be getting to the World Series. Okay, well,
it was a good time. We were in front and
there wasn't much competition. The second place team was the
New York Mets. They were really, really far behind. Also,
the manager of the Mets was the opposite of DeRosier.
His name was Gil Hodges, and he was known as
(07:27):
the nicest man in baseball. We weren't worried, but there
was something else for me on the line too. I
had a girlfriend at the time, or a young lady
who went with our group to the Cubs games, and
I hoped she'd be a girlfriend and I was confident
she would because she whispered to me that I was
going to get a kiss, my very first kiss if
(07:49):
the Cubs won.
Speaker 1 (07:50):
Wow. Okay, so this is the crucial summer. It's the
test of Derosha's maxim that nice guys finished last. Hodges
is a nice guy, Derosha isn't. And it looked like
Hodges would lose and Derosha would be proven right about
nice guys. But with that kiss on the line, that
(08:11):
was still time for everything to change. David, you got
me curious about Derotion Now. What was he like when
he started out.
Speaker 2 (08:17):
As a kid. I had no idea. Later, as adults,
I looked back, I researched. It turned out he grew
up on the East Coast in the nineteen tens. His
parents were from Quebec, so as a kid he only
spoke French when he went to school. He couldn't speak
a word of English.
Speaker 1 (08:33):
But he was good at sports.
Speaker 2 (08:34):
Boy was he good. He was good in a particular way.
He was a small guy, but he had good reflexes
and he could hustle. He was really fast. And the
thing is the big thing, he never gave up anything
that would help him when he would do. He cheated,
he tried to intimidate umpires as we saw. He was
famous for using his spikes to gouge opponents when he
(08:56):
slid into.
Speaker 1 (08:57):
Base and did that kind of thing work.
Speaker 2 (08:59):
Boy, did it work. Even with his limited talent, he
managed to get on one of the most famous teams
of all time, the nineteen twenties New York Yankees. Babe
Bruce was the star of the team, and he used
to say that Durocher couldn't hit the floor if he
dropped a cigarette. It's harsh, but accurate. He was a
terrible hitter, but he kept hustling and threatening and taking shortcuts.
(09:22):
He used to say, I'd knock over my mother if
she was rounding a base and I needed the winning run. Later,
he became manager with other teams in New York, and
he led the New York Giants to two championships and
mellowed in your dreams. He got his players to act
just like him. It's kind of attractive when somebody's a
(09:42):
bit of a jerk and leading your way and being
a jerk wins. You're allowed to be who you've always
wanted to be. He had his pitchers throw fastballs. They
would go right at the other team's heads. At one
point this was brilliant. He set up a hidden telescope
to steal the signals of his opponents right in the
middle of the game, and all the time he kept
(10:02):
on trying to intimidate umpires. He'd also always have his
players gouge opponents when they could. All that was always
going on. He even liked saying that he meant it
about his mother. He would describe how when he went home,
she was terribly hurt what he said, and as he
put it, for the rest of my life, as long
as I visited, she'd walk around with an injured air.
(10:23):
And I guess she had a right to God rest
your soul. Mom, I'm afraid I would have knocked you over.
Speaker 1 (10:30):
It doesn't sound like a very attractive man. So where
does that lovable curmudgeon reputation come from.
Speaker 2 (10:36):
Well, you have to think of it from the outside.
None of us really knew all the horrible details, certainly
not in Chicago. And to be honest, most baseball fans
across America, and someone who seems tough, it's pretty appealing
if they're on your side. When he managed the Brooklyn Dodgers,
in the nineteen forties. The fans loved him. He was
salt of the earth, working hard. They like to think
(10:59):
they were salt of the earth, and boy, blue collar
jobs in America at the time were really hard work. Well,
it was the same thing in my Chicago in the
nineteen sixties. They used to say that when in America
made half the steel in the world, Chicago made half
the steal in America. We were so proud of that.
People would go to the game's earthy fingers, sweaty literally
blue shirts. Du Rocher was one of us.
Speaker 1 (11:22):
And de Rocher brought the first black player into the league, didn't.
Speaker 2 (11:25):
He That's the other thing. If your strong willed in
one direction, you can be strong willed in another. In
nineteen forty seven he was with Brooklyn and he brought
Jackie Robinson into the league, the very first black player
in professional baseball. There was really nasty segregation going on
till then. Black players just weren't allowed in the main leagues.
(11:46):
But now, especially after World War Two, seemed ridiculous.
Speaker 1 (11:49):
And how did it go over well?
Speaker 2 (11:52):
Most of de Rocher's players were pretty decent about it,
but some were from the South. They did not like
having a black man anywhere near them. So they signed
a petition, and that petition said get rid of Jackie Robinson.
We will not play on a team with him. De
Rocher couldn't stand that. He knew what it was like
to be picked on. He grabbed the players who signed
(12:12):
the petition and he yelled at them, and he screamed
at them they could go f themselves as well as
at effing petition if they didn't unsign it right now,
they were fired. That was going to happen, No apology,
no excuse. Robinson stayed and he was a great player.
De Rocher wanted to win.
Speaker 1 (12:30):
Okay, So toughness lets you get things done, and not
only winning, but forcing through these big symbolic steps towards
racial justice. So Durocher had a point. It doesn't always
pay to simply be nice. If you want to get
things done, you might need to be a little bit hard,
even to be a bit obnoxious.
Speaker 2 (12:50):
You're right, but it isn't the full story. De Rocher
loved it in New York, but something was about to
happen there, something that would change everything for him.
Speaker 1 (12:59):
And we'll hear all about that. When cautionary tales returns
in a moment. We're back. I am in the studio
with David Badani's author of the Art of Fairness, and
(13:23):
we're talking about whether Leo de Rocha was right that
nice guys finished last. David, We've known each other a
very long time, and you've been interested in these ideas
for I think as long as I've known you twenty
five years or so.
Speaker 2 (13:38):
Yeah. To really write about something well, or to write deeply,
at least for me, I have to really care about it.
And I think it comes from way back when I
was a kid. I really hated the idea that terrible
people could succeed. Bullies succeeding at school, dictators succeeding in politics.
I grew up in a Jewish neighborhood in Chicago. Not
long after World War Two. A huge number of people
(14:02):
who survived the death camps were all around us. They
had tattoos on their forearms, my barber people's, the law store,
pretty much everybody, and they weren't old. They were in
their thirties. Anyways, history showed that terrible people often win,
so I thought maybe I was being naive about wanting
the other side to succeed. That's what made me get
(14:23):
into this book, The Art of Fairness. I wanted to
find out what are the actual limitations of being a jerk,
of being horrible? And then the other side, what are
the strengths of, if not being merely nice, at least
being fair, what are those strengths? And since I knew
about d Rocher from first hand experience, that's what brought
me to the story.
Speaker 1 (14:43):
I remember when you first told me this idea for
a book, and I just idolized you. Then, David, I mean,
of course I still idolized you, but you know, I
hadn't written a book, and I just thought to write
a book would be the coolest thing ever. One of
the early ideas was that you were going to have
it reversible, So one side said nice guys finish first,
and the other side said nice guys finish last. And
(15:04):
you were going to explore these different ideas in the end,
of course, it ended up being called The Art of
fair It's such a rich topic for a book. There's
so much to explore because there's just no one way
to answer the question.
Speaker 2 (15:18):
Well, that's actually true, and if we're honest about ourselves,
the kindest people have jerky sides underneath. Unless somebody is
a total psychopath, they'll often be kind or reasonable. Yeah,
the idea of a book that would open from different sides.
They used to do that with science fiction books in
the fifties and sixties and the cheap magazines. And I
got the idea from William Blake Songs of Innocence, Songs
(15:39):
of Experience. You take the same project and come in
in different directions. I was always fascinated about that.
Speaker 1 (15:46):
Yeah, But as we discussed it at the time, I
was doing into game theory, so there's a mathematical way
of thinking about cooperation, and of course there is that
side to it, and you can approach it as a
mathematician or as a scientist, as an economist, but you
can draw in all of these other possible stories as well,
and bring the arts, bring history into this topic.
Speaker 2 (16:07):
That actually threw me at the beginning. In my own
background was in math, and I tried to do it
very formally this book. I tried to go through the
logic behind it, and I found that didn't really hold.
There's a subtlety of human interaction, so in a sense,
you can only learn from experience. It's really weird. I
remember when I was a kid, I was really irritated.
(16:28):
I would say to people, well, tell me exactly why
and what to do, and it follows. It was like
you plug numbers into a math equation and the results
are automatic. Why couldn't I plug certain principles into my
own life and everything would be good.
Speaker 1 (16:41):
I have some very friendly people on YouTube who will
happily sell you three or five or ten principles that
will sort out your life. But it never works like that,
does it.
Speaker 2 (16:49):
It never never works to plug a good advice into
what we actually do. That's what's hard. Advice is easy
to state, but really hard to carry out. You need
practical experience.
Speaker 1 (17:02):
But at the risk of introducing spoilers, I am guessing,
since you've written an entire book about the art of fairness,
I'm guessing that Derosia's max him nice guys finish last.
That's not always right, even if sometimes it works well.
Speaker 2 (17:17):
My greatest pleasure was finding the exceptions. When my oldest
boy was a teenager, he asked me before going into
the world. He said, Dad, all the stuff we've learned,
is it true? And I genuinely didn't know. I've done
very little in the outside world. So I said, I'll
take a look. And he was young, and I even
believed that I would find out. Anyways, this book is
(17:37):
part of the story, and it turns out when you
start acting like a jerk, it can be really hard
to stop. You get used to doing whatever you want
to getting your way just by pushing, just by pushing
hard against other people.
Speaker 1 (17:51):
So, speaking of other people, Derochia had a rival. He
had this rival manager, and this rival had a very
very different approach to Deroshia.
Speaker 2 (17:59):
Ah. That was Gil Hodges. Now in nineteen sixty nine,
he was the manager of the New York Mets. That
was our arch competitor. Oooh boo hiss. But he actually
knew Derocher really well. Hodges was a little bit younger
than Durocher, and back in the nineteen fifties he'd been
a player on one of de Rocher's teams. But yet
he was a totally different character in what way De
(18:22):
Rocher I think was born with something wrong with him.
Gil Hodges was a coal miner son and he'd served
in World War Two. He was a decorated combat marine.
Everything he had always done was about solidarity, about cooperation,
about working together as a player, he'd take the time
to coach others who needed it. He was aggressive enough
when he was hitting and running. He was a really
(18:43):
good player, but he never mocked teammates who were having
a bad stretch. De Rocher always had to cheat to succeed,
not Hodges. He could get by on pure talent. He
never jabbed his spikes into anyone's legs. And of course
he interrupted his playing career and lost several years of
salary to serve in World War Two. That was something
mister Durocher very carefully avoided. When de Rocher was a manager,
(19:08):
hughes Hodges because Hodges was talented, but he never understood
why Hodges insisted on those soft attitudes, being helpful to others,
playing a game by the rules, even being willing to
serve your country.
Speaker 1 (19:21):
Goodness me And so later on, when Hodges himself was
a manager, how did he behave? Then?
Speaker 2 (19:26):
One of the great things is, as you know, tim,
a lot of people, power goes to their head. Hodges
stayed the same guy. He stayed the opposite to Durocher.
Now again, that doesn't mean he was soft. That's what
Durocher and people like him kept getting wrong. Coal mining families,
combat marines. These are not weak people. The thing is
(19:47):
Hodges was fair. It always meant a lot to him.
When he was managing the New York Mets in that
big year of nineteen sixty nine, one of his star
players in the outfield was slacking off. It was near
the end of a long night game. Well, that was
unfair to the other players. Hodges knew that. So he
walked all the way across the field in front of
the fans, in front of the TV cameras, and then
(20:09):
with that player he walked all the way back. A
replacement was going to take his place. Well, it was
embarrassing for the player, but Hodges didn't rub it in.
That was the fair thing. He said that from the
next day on, the incident would be entirely forgotten. That
he had treat the player with as much respect as ever,
And he did. That player, Cleon Jones, he knew he
(20:31):
had messed up. He played as hard out for the
team after that.
Speaker 1 (20:34):
So Hodges sounds firm but fair, and he sounds like
someone who could quietly earn respect rather than demanding it
by screaming yes.
Speaker 2 (20:43):
That's the contrast with Durocher. Hodges wouldn't pick on someone
weaker than him. But Durocher he loved doing that. Remember,
he was terrified of finishing last in anything. There must
have been some internal weakness he needed to dominate. One time,
right at the end of World War Two, a fan
was mocking him. Durocher hated that sort of thing, so
(21:04):
he got an off duty policeman to lead the fan
to a little room behind the dugout. It was secluded,
it was out of sight, and then Durocher gave a signal.
The policeman was going to double the fan over, so
he hit him with a blackjack.
Speaker 1 (21:17):
Well it's a blackjack.
Speaker 2 (21:18):
A blackjack is like a truncheon, but much meaner and
often with a big, heavy metal tip. Well, after the
policeman did that, the fan was weak, so Derochier got
to work. He started punching him in the face. The
fan tried to get away, but he was a veteran
actually of World War two. He was wounded. He had
a damaged leg. So de Rocher kept a hold with
one hand and with the other hand he pulled his
(21:41):
fist back and he punched him in the face. And
he punched him in the face over and over, breaking
his jaw. I have had the joy and misfortune of
spending a certain amount of my life around boxing rings.
It takes a lot of work to break somebody's jaw.
Even the policeman thought that was too much. What are
you doing, Leo, he said, that's from his testimony in court.
(22:01):
Later he repeated it, what are you doing? But even
the policeman was too scared of Durocher to stop him.
The fan was an hospital for weeks.
Speaker 3 (22:10):
It went to court, which means it's all over for Derosia. Surely, yeah, right,
This was New York City. Almost all the jurors were
Brooklyn Dodgers fans. They determined and thought about the case
for something like eleven minutes. Durocher was cleared.
Speaker 1 (22:24):
Deroche was cleared. I suppose that figures. So he got
away with it, and his treatment of his players sounds
very different to the way Hodges behaved too.
Speaker 2 (22:35):
It certainly was a Durosier had a lot of baseball
knowledge to share, and one of the strengths about being
a jerk is that you can actually be objective. If
a famous player was weak, he'd bench him. If an
unknown player was strong, he'd let him play. So that
part of it was good. On the other hand, he
couldn't stop from booling everyone, absolutely everyone, including players on
(22:57):
his own team. And since he loved spending money and
he had his tendency to get married and then divorced,
and then married and then divorced, he did that about
three or four times. From all that, he was in
debt a lot. So he started cheating when he played
cards with his own players, and he'd cheat when he
played craps games with them, throwing the dice. He knew
a little about how to do that already, but he
(23:18):
liked hanging out with gangsters and he learned more.
Speaker 1 (23:22):
So he learned more about how to cheat.
Speaker 2 (23:24):
He certainly did. He got really good at it. And
you know what, he found cheating against guys who were
grown up, who have been playing ball lived in New
Yorker big cities for a while. Those guys were really
hard to hustle. So he looked at sweet boys just
coming in from the farms. America was much more rural
than it is now, and he would tell these boys,
you want to make it in New York City, here's
(23:46):
an easy way. There's a card game. The rules are
very simple, but you got to bet big kid, you
gotta bet big, so he would start cheating, not on
small bets but for huge stakes. Finally, the baseball commissioner
got rumors of this and he told him to stop.
Leo du Rocher was unimpressed when anybody told him to stop.
He kept going. In one craps game, he rigged the
(24:07):
dice so much that he nearly in corrupted a leading pitcher.
But that was against Hicks. When he tried keeping up
with professional gamblers, he wasn't so lucky. He kept on losing,
and he kept on losing, and it meant he needed
to rig games even more than he ever had before.
And whenever the administrators tried to rein him in, well,
(24:28):
he let sports writers know what he felt about the
big wigs in the offices. Because of that, in the
late nineteen forties, de Rocher got suspended for an entire season.
He was allowed back the following year, but that was
his big weakness. He'd really set up an enemy. The
powers that be had it in for him because of
the gambling, mostly, but also because of the way he
(24:48):
kept doing whatever worked. In nineteen fifty three, for example,
there was an opposing team that had a player who
was very effective. A player was Carl Ferrillo.
Speaker 1 (24:57):
He was the.
Speaker 2 (24:57):
Best hitter in the National League, a dangerous opponent for
Derosier's team. Well, de Rocher wanted to get him out
of the game, so he had his own pitcher hit
Forrilla with a pitch and then de Roucher wagged his
finger at him, mocking what had happened. Forrilla was furious,
he charged into the dugout. That was exactly what Durocher hoped,
(25:18):
and so in the safety of the dugout, du Rocher
or maybe some players he'd arranged in advance, they very
quickly shattered Forerrillo's wrist. The poor guy was out for
the entire season. The competition was now easier.
Speaker 1 (25:31):
Wow. So he sounds like someone who would stop but
absolutely nothing to win.
Speaker 2 (25:36):
He was, but that meant winning was the only thing
he had to offer. The moment he stopped winning, nobody
was going to give him a second chance. There was
no loyalty, there was no friendship. So when the New
York Giants that he was managing, when they had a
poor season in nineteen fifty five, he was out fired.
He'd bit in New York since Babe Ruth Yankees back
(25:56):
in the nineteen twenties. So what was he going to
do now? Other teams didn't want to hire him, or
at least the top teams didn't. The gambling, the violence,
They knew about that. It was too much, and he
wasn't going to let anyone see him be weak, So
he wasn't going to beg What he said instead was
I've had enough, I'm retiring from baseball.
Speaker 1 (26:15):
But by nineteen sixty nine, when you are about the
turn thirteen, Deroche's back on the scene with the Chicago Cubs.
Speaker 2 (26:22):
Right, that's it. When he was fired in New York,
there wasn't a lot he could do. He tried broadcasting
and he wasn't bad at it, but it didn't mean
much to him. Not after being right at the center
in the stadium. He was actually in an episode of
a TV show with a talking horse.
Speaker 1 (26:37):
Oh classy.
Speaker 2 (26:38):
Curiously, I remember that show and I remember that horse.
My poor parents had to sit while we enjoyed it. Anyways,
for Durocher, that sort of episode was enough. Late in
nineteen sixty five, he was sixty one years old, he
signed up to manage the Chicago Cubs. My Chicago Cubs.
Speaker 1 (26:56):
So what did you make of all this.
Speaker 2 (26:57):
At the time, I was a kid, so I really
only had the faintest hint. He was famous. He'd played
with Babe Ruth, He'd led New York teams to the
World Series. There was talk that he was rough, maybe
too rough, But remember this was Chicago. We were proud
of that, and he didn't do much his first year
nineteen sixty six. The Cubs weren't that impressive a team yet.
(27:18):
They had one star player, Ernie Banks, but they had
barely had a winning season in twenty years. Like I said,
we Cubs fans knew pain, we were used to it.
But the thing is, he was a jerk. He was
a curmudgeon, et cetera, et cetera. But he really was skilled.
He brought up promising youngsters. He knew tactics very well.
In nineteen sixty seven they did better. Nineteen sixty eight
(27:41):
was also good, and then came nineteen sixty nine. That
was your summer that it was. I was twelve, I
was about to turn thirteen. The city had been through
a lot. Just the year before, there were terrible riots.
I remember on a big street just a few yards
from my home, watching jeeps with barbed wire on them,
National Guard troops with machine guns and a really fierce
(28:03):
look in their face going down the street to where
the riots were going to be. Well, we were kind
of a blue collar city. We liked the idea that
we were tough, but we also liked the idea that
we hung together. This new manager, he seemed to be
showing that was possible. Being tough could unite everybody.
Speaker 1 (28:20):
And you were hanging out. You were going to watch
every game, although when you're you supposed to be at.
Speaker 2 (28:24):
School, school, schmool. We thought of it more as guidelines.
The team got off to such a good start back
in nineteen sixty nine, starting in April, it was kind
of hard to resist. And then in the summer when
we were still ahead and there was no school, we
were almost living there. And also there was that promise
of the kiss if the Cubs won the division. Now
(28:46):
in mid August, that seemed certain. I was a very
very happy twelve year old. Hodge's New York Mets were
well behind. The season was just six weeks from ending.
They would have to undergo the greatest losing streak in
the history of American baseball to miss out.
Speaker 1 (29:04):
Hm Well, there is about to be a showdown between
Hodges de Rochia, and there's a kiss on the line.
More on all of that after the break, we're back.
(29:27):
I'm in the studio with David Bananas and David casting
your mind back to being twelve years old, that amazing summer,
the romance, the excitement, that the thrill of being on
a winning team. That's how it seemed to you. Then
what have you learned since then?
Speaker 2 (29:44):
Well, there are a lot of things I didn't realize.
It's kind of nice being twelve years old and very,
very innocent. One of the things I didn't know was
how callous Durocher could really be, breaking that veteran's jaw
hanging around with gangsters, and these gangsters were pretty nasty people.
One of the men in a circle was Buggsy Siegel
of Gangster, famous for organizing contract killing and helping the
(30:07):
mafia take over early Las Vegas. Another thing I didn't
realize was how much this season meant to Durocher. There
were financial bonuses if you won, and they were even
bigger bonuses if you got into the World Series. He'd
lost a lot of money and gambling, and he had
his big lifestyle with all those divorces, and he needed
his cash.
Speaker 1 (30:27):
So what about his attitude to his players? Is there
any sign that he was starting to mellow.
Speaker 2 (30:32):
Well, that's also what I had no idea about at
the time. At batting practice, he'd swear a little bit,
but this was Chicago who didn't swear. What I missed
was how vicious he was to the players. The shortstop
Ron Santo was Italian American, and I also had diabetes
in that era. He had to hide it well. Durocher
kept on riding him and swearing right up to his face,
(30:55):
calling him weak, using really vicious insults about Italian Americans,
but not in a sort of joky way that some
people might do for bonding. It was deep, it was biting.
Santo was a calm guy, but even he cracked in
the clubhouse. One time he grabbed du Rocher by the
throat and he wanted to kill him. His teammates had
to pull him off.
Speaker 1 (31:14):
So Deochia, he's famous for bringing the black player Jackie
Robinson on the team, but he's using these slurs against
Italian Americans. I'm trying to work it. Was he a racist?
Was he not a racist?
Speaker 2 (31:26):
It was probably mixed. He was a derosierist. Everyone knew
about him bringing on Jackie Robinson. That was good. But
the thing is he didn't bring Robinson on because he
was standing up for the principles of racial equality. Derochier
never stood up for any principles. He didn't even especially
like Robinson. He just wanted to win. Robinson was a
great player. Turned out a little bit later, Robinson had
(31:48):
a problem with his weight, and de Rocher started insulting
him so hard and so NonStop that even Jackie Robinson
ended up hating him just as much as everyone else did. Now,
a true racist puts their race first. Derochier was simpler.
He just put himself first.
Speaker 1 (32:06):
And above all, he wanted to win. So did all
this bullying help.
Speaker 2 (32:10):
That's what gave me such pleasure when I looked into
it properly for the book. No, the bullying did not help.
He would demand too much, he would go too far.
Durocher kept his players going without replacement much much longer
than he should have. Chicago's really hot in the summer,
and it could be near one hundred percent humidity, feels tropical.
(32:31):
But day after day, week after week, he wouldn't allow replacements.
Speaker 1 (32:35):
That seems so counterproductive.
Speaker 2 (32:36):
You're right. I think he'd liked seeing his players get
weaker and weaker. It's kind of weird, but it made
him feel strong. And then there were the umpires, exactly
in front of the TV cameras. He'd ham it up,
he'd stand toe to toe, he would yell at them.
It seemed like a game, but it was more than
a game. In quieter moments when he was alone away
from the cameras, he'd really tried to undermine the umpires,
(33:00):
saying the most personal things he could find out about
their private lives. Now, you've got to remember there were
barely any video reviews of calls. Then.
Speaker 1 (33:08):
The umpires had a lot of discretion, and making an
enemy of them wasn't smart.
Speaker 2 (33:13):
It certainly was that. One sports writer wrote about it later.
Quote Whether or not Leo ever united the Cubs against
the Empires, he certainly united the umpires against the Cubs unquote.
And then well, Durocher also encouraged the most unruly of
the fans, people I knew pretty well to throw metal
(33:34):
bolts or sometimes small stones at opposing players. The other
teams hated that, and when they complained, du Rocher professed
complete innocence.
Speaker 1 (33:44):
Even so, despite all the counter productive bullying, by mid August,
the season is going to be over early October. By
mid August, as you said, Chicago was way ahead, I
think nine games ahead. So the only way they could
lose would be if hodges Met had one of the
greatest winning streaks in baseball history and Derosia's Cubs had
(34:06):
one of the greatest losing streaks in baseball.
Speaker 2 (34:09):
You had to remind me to him, didn't you. It
was a mess, it was a catastrophe. It's still I
swear to god, it still hurts. The umpires hated to Rocher,
and opposing players hated d Rocher and his own team
really really hated him because he needed to feel strong
and humiliate them, and he wouldn't give the starters a rest.
They were getting exhausted. It's not that they totally gave up.
(34:31):
They still had some pride. They're professional athletes. But by then,
the constant bullying, the yelling, the unfairness, it was too much.
Everyone else was bringing their strongest game against Chicago. Our
players had to be on top. They weren't. When it
first began to happen, the losing, we didn't realize what
was going on. Every team loses a bit, and so
(34:52):
that was okay. But it kept on, and when we
hung out at the field edge during batting practice before
the games, there was this feeling that something was different.
The players were in a different zone. There was less
joking between them. There was a kind of doggedness as
they practice. We shared it too when my friends and
I and the other kids from around the city, when
(35:12):
we cleaned the stadium after the games, if anyone who
was lifting the seats and sweeping down the garbage started
to say hey, they'd be okay, we don't look at him,
you didn't talk about it. If we were very quiet
and very ordinary, maybe we'd all go away.
Speaker 1 (35:26):
And obviously it did not all go away.
Speaker 2 (35:30):
We'd been in first place for one hundred and fifty
five consecutive days and then we lost it all. Everything
fell apart. The city was going to be united, and
me and my school friends we were getting more united.
But these players, we'd look up to, the cubs, who
are going to make up for the past and finally
finally go all the way they lost it. Who could
(35:51):
we trust? Everything felt different at school, at home, everywhere.
The Mets won the division, and the kiss pleased. We
were friends, we were kids in a sense, it would
have been nothing. We even stayed friends, but at the
time just made everything worse.
Speaker 1 (36:06):
And how far did Gil Hodge's team go?
Speaker 2 (36:09):
Well after beating us to take the National League East,
they won the playoffs for the entire National League, and
then they were into the World Series against Baltimore. I
was listening to the series on the radio. Now the
player that Hodges publicly reprimanded, Cleon Jones. In the fifth game,
he gave his all in a spectacular catch that won
the series for the New York Mets. Mister de Rocher
(36:34):
and my cubbies were nowhere to be seen.
Speaker 1 (36:37):
David, my heart bleeds. It is a tragedy, but on
caution details We try to learn from tragedy. So what
is your conclusion from this story.
Speaker 2 (36:46):
It's pretty simple. Being too soft will not work, but
being too harsh that's easily counterproductive too. There is a
path in between being fair like Hodges, not a bully
like Derocher. This really can be the way to finish.
Speaker 1 (37:02):
First David, it's been enjoyed. Thank you so much for
joining me.
Speaker 2 (37:06):
A great pleasure.
Speaker 1 (37:09):
David Bardanas's wonderful book is the Art of Fairness. It
is available at all good bookshops, naturally full of great stories,
and every single one has a lesson about how to
succeed without being a jerk. We're going back to our
usual format next episode, but we will be telling several
stories inspired by the Art of Fairness. So join me
(37:31):
for stories of villains undone by their villainy, monstrous, self
devouring egos, and accounts of the extraordinary power of decency
next time on Cautionary Tales. Cautionary Tales is written by
me Tim Harford with Andrew Wright. This mini series is
(37:53):
based on David Bandanas's book The Art of Fairness, The
Power of Decency in a World Turned Mean, and it
was written with David Bandanas himself. For a full list
of our sources, see the show notes at Timharford dot com.
The show was produced by Alice Fines, with Marilyn Rust.
The sound design and original music for the work of
(38:14):
Pascal Wise. Sarah Nix edited the script. Cautionary Tales features
the voice talents of Ben Crowe, Melanie Guttridge, Stella Harford,
Jemma Saunders and rufus Wright. The show wouldn't have been
possible without the work of Jacob Weisberg, Ryan Dilly, Greta Cohen,
Eric Sandler, Carrie Brody, Christina Sullivan, Kira Posey and Owen Miller.
(38:39):
Cautionary Tales is a production of Pushkin Industries. It's recorded
at ward Or Studios in London by Tom Gerry. If
you like the show, please remember to share, rate and review.
It doesn't really make a difference to us and if
you want to hear the show ad free, sign up
to Pushkin Plus on the show page on Apple Podcasts
(39:01):
or at pushkin dot fm, slash plus. The present is
Host
Tim Harford
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