Pistol Pete Reiser

Pete Reiser, promise of might have been

 

            It was always a surprise each year when I’d see Pete Reiser at spring training in Arizona and he remembered who I was. It was our intention to grill him intensively about the hectic summer of 1941  when the long  awaited “next year” finally came in Brooklyn

            But something always got in the way. Then last spring he wasn’t there and  now he’s gone for good.

            Pete died of a respiratory illness, the story said this week, but he left a Hall of Fame career on the concrete walls of National League parks many years before. Pete had a penchant for running into immovable objects in pursuit of uncatchable fly balls. You couldn’t convince the guy.

            They said if it hadn’t been for that, he would have been a cinch for the Hall of Fame... But, of course, if he hadn’t played the game with reckless abandon, he wouldn’t have been Pete Reiser.

            They talk about the area of great centerfielders in New York when Mickey Mantle played for the Yankees, Willie Mays for the Giants and Duke Snider for the Dodgers. Some contend even today such discussions have been academic, if Pete hadn’t run into so many walls. Those who saw him say he was Pete Rose and Mickey Mantle all in one.

            Pete, who signed for a $100 bonus after being freed from bondage with the Cardinals by Commissioner Judge Kennesaw Mountain Landis, was carried off the field on a stretcher a dozen times, mishaps which broke both ankles, a collarbone, and resulted in numerous concussions.

            Even with these mishaps, he managed 10 seasons in the major leagues. But none of those years compared to the first one, which he somehow managed to avoid without challenging a wall. In those day barriers weren’t padded and warning tracks were few, if any.

            In 1941, Reiser broke in with a .343 batting average and led the Dodgers to its first pennant since 1920. To Brooklyn fans, that seemed like an eternity, but they always consoled themselves with “wait until next year.”

            It was an exciting, explosive year for Reiser   who played for the George Steinbrenner-Billy Martin love/hate relationship of the day, Dodger General Manager Larry M cPhail and Manager Leo Durocher.

            Durocher was brash and irreverent. MacPhail was temperamental and volatile and innovative .He brought night ball to the major leagues while at Cincinnati, but showed earlier promise for imagination when he attempted to kidnap the Kaiser at the end of WW1. Reiser’s style of play seemed to be a reflection of the two. One year he stole home seven times, which a record that, I think, still stands.

            Typical of the controversy that swirled around the 1941 Dodgers came when the pennant was clinched in Boston. The team steamed back to New York by train for the victory parade. It was supposed to stop at the 125^th Street station in the Bronx , pick up MacPhail for the festivities downtown.

            Durocher apparently didn’t know. At any rate, he ordered “No Stops”and a fuming MacPhail was left on the station platform as the victory express roared by.

            Of course, he fired Leo on the spot. And hired him back the next day.

            Pete’s association should have lasted longer, but there were those walls.

            Pete talked like he played, If you didn’t know him, he was gruff and brusque, but the love and attention he showed for his daughter, who was what they called today a gifted child, gave him away.