Before the Machine. Mark J. Schmetzer

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СКАЧАТЬ to do. He had us out there until our tongues were hanging out and we were screaming for mercy. But then he would come around and work on my arm, and that made up for all his tortures. He had real strong hands and he was able to massage my arm and dig down deep and break up the knots that always formed in the arm, and he got it in good shape.”

      Not right away, though. Robinson missed some time in spring training because of his arm, exasperating manager Fred Hutchinson, who had no room for Robinson at first base with Gordy Coleman ready to take over.

      “He’s had enough trouble with that arm to know by now how to take care of it,” Hutchinson growled to reporters, pointing out that Robinson consistently unleashed long throws from the outfield instead of hitting cutoff men and, in the view of the manager, didn’t warm up properly. “Damn it, I want his arm ready to go for the season. If Robinson isn’t ready to play the outfield, he’ll sit on the bench until he is—and he’ll take a [pay] cut.”

      Douglas, who also possessed a commercial pilot’s license, was one of three newcomers to Hutchinson’s coaching staff. Antioch, Tennessee, native Jim Turner, who’d pitched on Cincinnati’s 1940 World Series-championship team and spent eleven seasons as pitching coach for the Yankees, returned to the majors as the Reds pitching coach after spending the 1960 season as general manager and manager of the Class A minor league team at Nashville. Turner, known as “The Colonel,” replaced Cot Deal as the Reds’ pitching coach.

      Another newcomer was hitting coach Dick Sisler, an outfielder in his playing days who was most famous for the tenth-inning home run he hit off of Brooklyn’s Don Newcombe in the last regular-season game of the 1950 season to help the Philadelphia Phillies—the “Whiz Kids”—clinch their first National League championship since 1915 and their last until 1980. Sisler had spent three seasons as Nashville’s manager before taking Hutchinson’s old job as manager at Seattle in 1960. Sisler replaced Wally Moses as the Reds hitting coach.

      Also missing from the previous season’s staff was Whitey Lockman. The only holdover coach was Cuba native Reggie Otero, who was helpful in communicating with Latin American players such as infielders Elio Chacon and Leo Cardenas.

      Visa problems, which hamper players and coaches trying to get to baseball training camps from outside of the country, teamed up with airline labor issues to keep Otero and several players from reporting on time, but the other coaches had no problems getting there and gleefully participating in Hutchinson’s ambitious workout schedule. The schedule for February 28, the first day the entire squad was due, called for the players to workout from 10 a.m. to 3 p.m., with a half-hour lunch break.

      “Fred Hutchinson had his Redlegs sweating this spring,” Sports Illustrated observed. “They ran, did push-ups, ran some more, worked on fundamentals, did more running and even went to night school. Hutchinson’s reasoning was simple. The Reds last year were a dead team. They finished sixth—comfortably. If they finish sixth again this season, as far as Hutchinson is concerned, they will do it uncomfortably.

      “The running that took place at the end of each practice was enough to drop a tough Marine. In spring training running usually consists of a friendly jog of perhaps 50 yards across the outfield, then a leisurely walk back over the same course. Generally, the players are left to themselves: they decide when they have run enough. But at Tampa Jim Turner, the old Yankee pitching coach, stood beside the outfield fence, a counting device in his hand, his cool blue eyes surveying the drooping athletes. When some of them cut the length of the course from, say, 50 yards to 30, old Jim told them to stretch it out again. When one of them insisted that the 20 laps he was supposed to run had been completed, old Jim just smiled and said that his indicator had registered only 17. When the running was finally over and the exhausted athletes walked to the clubhouse 100 yards away, they looked as if they would never make it.”

      “Yeah, I’d say things are a little different this spring,” O’Toole told reporters.

      On several days, the work didn’t end with the end of the workouts. Fundamentals such as hitting cutoff men also were primary focuses of several night classes convened by Hutchinson in Cincinnati’s 1961 spring training. They were mostly closed to the media, except for one newspaper photo showing the skipper operating a film projector. He also diagrammed on a blackboard the proper ways to execute rundowns and pickoff plays and which players should be backing up which bases in different situations.

      Fred Hutchinson puts his players through rigorous exercise during spring training.

      The camp looked more like one Vince Lombardi might have run for the NFL Green Bay Packers than a baseball camp. The only things missing were helmets, shoulder pads, footballs, and tackling dummies.

      “Hutch was a good teacher,” O’Toole recalled. “The night classes were game situation fundamentals—don’t miss the cutoff man—that could lose a ballgame. Actually, it seemed like there was always some innovation.”

      If nothing else, the innovative approaches and increased focus on conditioning and fundamentals broke up the usual monotony and stirred some excitement in the Cincinnati camp. The off-season deals had left many of the players unsure about what to expect when they showed up at aging Plant Field, which had been built by Henry B. Plant in 1899 as an area to provide activities for guests staying at his Tampa Bay Hotel. The Reds worked out at Plant Field before moving to Al Lopez Field for Grapefruit League exhibition games, clearing the way for Cincinnati’s minor league teams to start their camps.

      “For a minute, I thought I had the wrong camp,” outfielder Gus Bell said shortly after arriving for spring training. “There sure are a whole lot of fellows here I don’t know.”

      “When we went to spring training, you would wait to see who’s coming through the door,” Maloney said.

      Several players expected the faces to change as camp progressed. Going into camp, general manager Bill DeWitt believed Hutchinson’s biggest challenge would be developing a second base combination out of the mix of Cardenas, Chacon, Eddie Kasko, and Jim Baumer. Cardenas, twenty-two by then, was generally regarded as an outstanding defensive shortstop, but he’d hit just .232 in forty-eight games with the Reds in 1960 after being called up from Jersey City of the International League on July 24. Cardenas replaced Chacon, twenty-four, who’d made the Reds out of spring training in 1960, but he hit just .181 in forty-nine games before being sent to Jersey City.

      The twenty-eight-year-old Kasko had been named the Reds Most Valuable Player in 1960 after hitting .292 while playing mostly third base, which automatically became Gene Freese’s spot after DeWitt acquired him from the Chicago White Sox in a December trade.

      Kasko, who played with Freese for St. Louis in 1958, also was a possibility at second base, though the favorite going into camp was Baumer, a former prospect who’d broken into the major leagues at the age of eighteen with the White Sox in 1949. He appeared in eight games with Chicago that year and then didn’t return to the majors until 1961 at the age of thirty.

      Baumer had been picked by the Reds out of the Pittsburgh system in the 1960 Rule 5 draft after hitting .293 at Salt Lake City the previous season. Salt Lake City general manager Eddie Leishman was on record as believing the right-handed-hitting Oklahoman could hit .260 and drive in runs at the major league level.

      “I think I can do better than that,” Baumer said.

      “He’ll have to play his way off this ballclub,” DeWitt said.

      Catcher Hal Bevan, who played for Seattle against Baumer in the Pacific Coast League in 1960, also respected Baumer’s potential.

      “He’s СКАЧАТЬ