Junkman Ed
| 2
|
by LouGehrig
by Harold Friend
Ed Lopat was 5'10" tall and weighed 185 pounds. He was one of the best left-handed pitchers in Yankees' history but is rarely mentioned anymore. Yankees' general manager George Weiss acquired Ed Lopat from the White Sox on February 24, 1948 in exchange for catcher Aaron Robinson and young pitchers Bill Wight and Fred Bradley. The trade was one of the most one-sided in baseball history.
Before the era of free agency, general managers had to evaluate their team, their opponents teams, and individual players. They didn't get orders from the owner to sign a super star free agent that any seven-year-old in the stands could evaluate. Few were better at making trades than George Weiss
Thirty one year old Aaron Robinson had an excellent season with the Yankees in 1946, batting .297 with 16 home runs and 64 RBIs in 100 games. He was a fine defensive catcher but he tailed off in 1947, batting .270 with only 5 home runs and 36 RBIs in 82 games. Weiss knew that he had a young player named Yogi Berra who played the outfield and was being groomed as the next Yankees' catcher, so Robinson was expendable. Weiss and the Yankees' scouts felt that Wight and Bradley were borderline major leaguers at best and they wanted Lopat, who had done well with the White Sox.
From 1948 to 1955 Lopat won 113 games for the Yankees while losing 59 for a winning percentage of .657. He started 202 games and completed 91 of them, which was good in the late 1940s and early 1950s but which would be amazing today. Robinson did poorly for the White Sox but he was part of another of the great one sided trades in baseball history when the White Sox traded him to the Tigers for young left hander Billy Pierce, who became one of the finest pitchers in White Sox history. Wight drifted from team to team, never reaching his potential while Bradley appeared in only 9 games in his major league career.
It is fascinating how important complete games used to be. When Lopat was traded, sportswriter Roscoe McGowan wrote that in 1947, when he still with the White Sox, "Lopat needed relief only nine times...in 31 starts, thus gaining a second place tie with Early Wynn of Washington. Hal Newhouser, Detroit southpaw, was tops with 24 but was driven to cover a dozen times."
Completing games was a vital part of evaluating pitchers because pitchers were taken out of games only when they lost their effectiveness. The fact that Hal Newhouser didn't complete twelve of his starts was a huge negative. Lopat was not a big, strong man but he had the stamina to complete what he started. He was nicknamed "The Junkman" because he changed speeds off his fast ball, which was not especially fast. He rarely gave the batter a good pitch to hit and Yankees manager Casey Stengel called Lopat "The Swindler" because of the different ways he fooled the hitters.
Lopat's first season as a Yankee was decent. He won 17 and lost 11 with a 3.65 ERA but batters made contact off Eddie and in 226 2/3 innings he yielded 246 hits. Lopat always had excellent control and he walked only 66 batters. The Yankees didn't win the pennant in Lopat's first season.
The 1948 season saw one of baseball's great pennant races. The Yankees, Red Sox, and Indians were in a three-way tie for first on September 25. The Yankees faltered and the Indians and Red Sox were tied when the season ended on October 3. There would be a one game playoff in Boston on October 4 to determine the pennant winner.
Cleveland's playing manager Lou Boudreau announced that he was starting rookie lefty Gene Bearden, who had won 19 games. It sounds like an easy choice but it was quite controversial because both Bob Feller and Bob Lemon were vastly more experienced and the second guessers had a field day because Bearden started the game on ONE'S DAYS REST.
It was bad enough in 1948 but imagine what would happen to a manager in 2004 if he started a pitcher with one day's rest in a game that would decide the pennant. When Arizona Diamondbacks manager Bob Brenley started Curt Schilling on "only" three days of rest in the 2001 World Series, he was roundly criticized. When Schilling pitched a great game, few gave Brenley any credit.
Bearden won the game, pitching a 5 hitter, Boudreau hit two home runs, and Cleveland went on to the World Series, where they again beat Boston, but this time it was the Boston Braves. Boston hates Bucky Dent, Aaron Boone, and even Mookie Wilson but Boston fans seem to forget about the Cleveland achievement in 1948 over BOTH of Boston's teams.
The following season was the first in what became the greatest championship-winning streak in baseball history. The Yankees and Red Sox battled to the sweet end (read that "bitter end" if you are a Red Sox fan). Cleveland had fallen out of the race while the Yankees trailed the Red Sox by a single game going into the final two days of the season. The Yankees would host the Red Sox on Sunday and Monday.
The teams had been tied for first on Saturday but the Philadelphia Athletics beat Ed Lopat 4-1 on a three run Ferris Fain home run. Now the Yankees would have to win two against the Red Sox. They did.
Nineteen forty nine was the only year in which each league's pennant winner was determined on the last day of the season. The Yankees beat Boston while the Dodgers beat the Phillies to maintain their one game lead over the Cardinals to win the title. The Yankees would face their fiercest rival, the Brooklyn Dodgers in the World Series.
It was really Allie Reynolds' series as he pitched a shutout in beating Dodgers rookie Don Newcombe 1-0 in Game 1 and then saved Game 4 for Lopat. The Dodgers won Game 2 behind Preacher Roe, 1-0, but the Yankees won Game 3 and Lopat went to the mound for Game 4 at Ebbets Field, which was not a friendly park for left handed pitchers.
The Yankees got Lopat a 6-0 lead going to the Dodgers' half of the sixth inning. With two outs and PeeWee Reese on third, the Dodgers launched a barrage of five straight singles to chase Lopat and make the score 6-4. Yankees' manager Casey Stengel brought in Reynolds, who shut the Dodgers down without a hit for the final 3 1/3 innings. The next day, the Yankees won Game 5 to end the series.
Lopat won 18 games and lost only 8 in 1950. The Yankees faced the Phillies in the World Series and swept them. Lopat started Game 3, allowed 2 runs in 8 innings, and left trailing 2-1. The Yankees tied the game with a run in the eighth inning and Tom Ferrick retired the Phillies in the top of the ninth to preserve the tie. With two outs and no one on base, consecutive singles by Woodling, Rizzuto and Coleman off Russ Meyer resulted in a 3-2 Yankees win.
In 1951 Lopat demonstrated his value. He won 21 while losing only 9 with a 2.91 ERA. The Yankees won the pennant by a slim margin over the Indians but it was Lopat who was the difference in the World Series against the miracle Giants, who overcame a 13 ½ game deficit to tie the Dodgers for the pennant and then overcame a 4-1 Dodgers lead when Bobby Thomson hit a home run off Ralph Branca in the final playoff game.
Giants little left hander Dave Koslo beat Allie Reynolds in Game 1 at Yankee Stadium. The Giants looked unstoppable but Lopat beat Larry Jansen 3-1 in crucial Game 2, pitching a complete game 5 hitter to even the series. The next day the teams moved to the Polo Grounds where the Giants roughed up Vic Raschi and convincingly won by a 6-2 score. The Giants had momentum and the next two home games but fate intervened. It rained, which gave Reynolds a third day of rest (Yes, pitchers pitched every fourth day). The Super Chief pitched a complete game, beating Sal Maglie 6-2.
With the Series tied at two games each, Lopat hurled another complete game 5 hitter in coasting to a 13-1 win. In Game 6, Hank Bauer hit a bases loaded triple, Raschi held the Giants to a single tally in six innings, and the Yankees won the World Series.
The streak was now three straight World Championships. In 1952 the Yankees won their fourth straight pennant. Lopat suffered arm problems in the middle of the season but still managed to win 10 while losing 5 with an ERA of 2.53. The Yankees faced a Dodgers team that many considered the best of all Dodgers team for the World Championship.
The Series went the full seven games. Lopat started Game 3 at home against Preacher Roe and lost, 5-3, which put the Dodgers ahead, two game to one.
With the Series tied at three games each, Lopat started Game 7 in Brooklyn. He pitched effectively against the Dodgers' right handed power packed lineup for the first three innings,, but Duke Snider, Jackie Robinson, and Roy Campanella hit consecutive singles in the fourth to load the bases with no outs.
Stengel brought in Allie Reynolds, who had relieved Vic Raschi in Game 6 and who had pitched a complete game shut out in Game 4, to face Gil Hodges. It makes one wonder why pitchers could work so often and effectively in the past and why today's bigger and stronger pitchers need so much more rest. Or do they?
Reynolds got out of the jam, allowing only one run. The Yankees went ahead 2-1 in the fifth inning on a Gene Woodling home run but the Dodgers promptly tied the game in their half of the inning when PeeWee Reese singled home Billy Cox. Mantle untied the game when he homered in the sixth. The Yankees scored one more run, Billy Martin saved the game with a magnificent catch of Jackie Robinson's bases loaded, wind blown pop up, and the Yankees won their fourth consecutive World Championship, tying the 1936-1939 Yankees as the only teams to win four straight, a record they would break the following season.
The next championship would be the last of the streak. Lopat won 16 while losing only 4 and led the league with a 2.42 ERA. The Yankees won the pennant handily over the Indians and again faced the Dodgers in the World Series. While beating the Dodgers was never easy, this time it was done in six games.
The Yankees won the first game and sent Lopat to the mound for Game 2 against Preacher Roe. Eddie pitched a complete game in beating the Dodgers, 4-2 but the tenacious Dodgers, one of the greatest teams ever assembled, won Games 3 and 4 to tie the Series.
There were no travel days in those days which meant that Stengel had start seldom used Jim McDonald in pivotal Game 5. Stengel had anticipated such a situation and had given McDonald a few starts near the end of the season which paid off as McDonald pitched into the eighth inning, Mantle hit a grand slam home run off Russ Meyer, who had come in to relieve Johnny Podres, and the Yankees won a sloppy game by the score of 11-7. Stengel started Whitey Ford in Game 6 which the Yankees won when Billy Martin singled home Hank Bauer in the bottom of the ninth with the winning run, giving the Yankees their fifth straight World Championship, a record that still stands today.
Eddie Lopat was an integral part of the Yankees during one of their greatest eras. Baseball experts continually preach that pitching and defense, not offense, wins championships. The Yankees had three outstanding pitchers in Lopat, Reynolds and Raschi who were as tough as nails when the games were on the line. In five World Series, resulting in twenty Yankees wins, the trio accounted for fifteen of them. Reynolds won six, Raschi won five, and Lopat won 4. To paraphrase Casey Stengel, DiMaggio, Mantle, Berra, Rizzuto, Bauer, Woodling, Collins, and Mize couldn't have won it without the pitchers. And Lopat was one of the best.
References:
Daley, Arthur. (October 2, 1953). Junkmen's holiday. New York Times, p. 25.
Drebinger, John. (October 5, 1953), Yankees 4 homers beat dodgers, 11-7 for 3-2 series edge. New York Times, p. 1.
McGowen, Roscoe. Yankees get lopat for three players. New York Times, p.30
Baseball Reference
