My Pal Dizzy Dean

Jerome Herman Jay Hanna “Dizzy” Dean is in the Baseball Hall of Fame. He is there because of his pitching, but also because of his career. They didn’t call him Dizzy for nothing.

He preceded Yogi Berra in being a public figure (i.e., baseball star) in part for his sayings. And for what people said about him.

St. Louis Cardinals teammate Pepper Martin once said: “When ol’ Diz was out there pitching, it was more than just another ball game. It was a regular three-ring circus and everybody was wide awake and enjoying being alive.”

Others get some credit for this remark, but I heard it first from Dizzy: “It ain’t braggin’ if you can back it up.”

In one Cardinals game, he told the fielders to sit down on the field, he was going to strike out the side. He did. He was the last National League pitcher to win 30 games in one season.

You will note that this article began with Dizzy’s several names. Some say his legal name was Jerome Herman Dean, others said Jay Hanna Dean. One story about Diz’s legal name is that he gave conflicting information to three different sportswriters in quick succession. A teammate asked him about it and he replied: “I wanted to give each of them fellas an exclusive story.”

Ol’ Diz once said: “It puzzles me how they know what corners are good for filling stations. Just how did they know gas and oil was under there?”

If you have some time on your hands, Google DIZZY DEAN QUOTES for laughs similar to those that ensued when Yogi said things like: “Nobody goes to that restaurant anymore. It’s too crowded.”

This is a story about Dizzy Dean after his last days on the baseball diamond. But before I get to my friend (this is a stretch, of course, as you will see), let’s review some of the things that earned him entry into Cooperstown.

He was born January 16, 1910, in Lucas, Arkansas. He was just 64 when he died (July 17,1974, in Reno, Nevada). When he died, I was 40 and really felt I had lost a good friend. Actually, I hardly knew him. I knew him mostly as thousands did. But that’s for later.

He pitched for the Cardinals (1930-1937), the Chicago Cubs (1938-1941) and briefly for the St. Louis Browns (1947). I saw that game. I was 13 years old. But again, I am getting ahead of myself.

Dizzy was best known for leading the 1934 “Gashouse Gang” Cardinals to win the World Series in seven games over the Detroit Tigers. He had a 30-7 record, a 2.66 ERA in the regular season. His brother, Paul (they called him “Daffy”; that’s a fact), also pitched for the Cardinals. They both won two World Series games that year. Dizzy won the National League’s Most Valuable Player Award that year, and he was runner-up in the voting the next two years.

While pitching for the National League in the 1937 All-Star game, he faced Earl Averill of the American League Cleveland Indians. Averill hit a line drive back at the mound, hitting Dizzy on the foot. Told that his big toe was fractured, he replied: “Fractured, hell!! The damn thing’s broken!”

It was said he came back to pitching too soon from the injury, which caused him to change his pitching motion to avoid landing so hard on his sore left big toe. As a result, the story went, he hurt his arm and he lost his fast ball. By the next year, when he was with the Cubs, his arm was just about shot, but he kept at it for three more years. That year, 1938, he pitched well enough to help the Cubs win the pennant and he pitched gamely in the second World Series game before losing to the Yankees in what became known as “Ol’ Diz’s Last Stand”.

It was said that between ages 23 and 27, Dizzy was the best pitcher in baseball. By 28, he was just another pitcher, and at 31, it was all over. Except for that time in 1947 when I saw him pitch for real.

My Dad worked for Western Union and occasionally he would be assigned to Sportsmans Park for the baseball game. Using his telegrapher’s “bug”, he would transmit baseball results to other cities, and receive them for local consumption. Sometimes he would take me along, and I would be able to walk the bridge into the press box where my Dad worked along with sportswriters, the official scorer, and so forth, and Dizzy Dean and Johnny O’Hara in the radio booth.

Need I tell you? There was no security. I could walk all through the pressbox, including the radio booth. I was 10 years old. The year was 1944, and both the Cardinals and the Browns were in first place, and ultimately played each other in the World Series that year. It was a heady time for me, of course.

One night, I was standing behind Johnny and Dizzy, listening to them. Occasionally, they would look back at me, smile but not shooosh me away.

From my vantage point, I could not see all of the field, and a batter lofted a high fly to right field. It looked like it was going over the Mississippi River. I could not help myself. I was a kid. I started hollering WOWWWWWWWW!

The right fielder caught the ball.

Johnny was doing the play-by-play. He turned around and so did Dizzy. They said nothing. I have thanked them quietly ever since. I got into no trouble that I know of, and I never told my Dad. And I guess that was the start of my radio career, as that was the first word I ever said on the radio.

It was quite a while before I had the courage to return to that position in the pressbox.

And actually, it was because of my familiarity with my new-found friends in the pressbox that I had the courage to go to the radio booth one Sunday afternoon after a thunderstorm had caused a rain delay. This day, the Browns were scheduled to play a double-header, and before the first game, they had a “Long Ball Hitting Contest”, involving star players from both the Browns and the Detroit Tigers. I remember Chet Laabs was one of the Brownies’ stars and pitcher Dizzy Trout was one of the Tigers hitters.

The first game was interrupted early. While I had been sitting in the grandstand behind third base, when the rain stopped play, I went up to the pressbox, worldly as I was, of course, at age 10. And, of course, already fascinated with radio work, I headed for the radio booth.

Johnny O’Hara and Dizzy were just sitting there with the radio engineer, not on the air. Their broadcast had been returned to the studio during the rain delay. I think Johnny and Dizzy wanted to remind me about hollering about a high fly to right, but they didn’t bring it up. They started talking with me as though I was an adult.

Dizzy started really talking about the long-ball hitting contest. He asked me if I had seen it. I had. He asked me who I thought should have won. I think I said Chet Laabs. I remember, however, vividly what Dizzy came back with: “Dizzy Trout hit the HARDEST home run. That line drive would have gone through a mule!” I agreed. Dizzy wasn’t through. “He’s a pitcher, you know!!!” I said yes, I know he is a pitcher. Dizzy always told his radio audience what a great hitter he was.

The story is not finished. I had no place to go, doncha know, so I stayed right there as we waited out the rain delay. But the rain never stopped. Eventually, the umpires called off both games. And here came the bad part. The stadium announcer said all fans could get refunds at the streetside ticket windows WITH THEIR STUB for today’s admission.

I reached in my pocket to find my ticket stub. I pulled out four stubs. Obviously, I wore the same pants to several games, and never threw my stubs away. My mother always had clean clothes for me, but most likely I wore and wore the same pants to ballgames.

I held the stubs in my hand to show Dizzy. I asked: “How can I tell which stub is for today?”

As you know, they didn’t call him Dizzy for no reason. He replied, to his 10-year-old friend, “Turn all of ‘em in. You’ll get alot more money! They won’t be able to tell.”

It sounded good to me. I went downstairs to the ticket windows, and stood among the throng in front of the windows. There were no lines; it was just fight-your-way-up-there.

When I finally made it to the window, I turned in the four stubs. The woman ticketseller took my four stubs, and for the next two or three minutes, panic was starting to set in. She showed the stubs to another ticketseller, and then came back to the window, and in a tone similar to a school teacher, she asked, no, she demanded to know: WHERE DID YOU GET THESE?

As God is my witness, I broke into tears and replied rather frantically: DIZZY DEAN TOLD ME I COULD TURN THEM IN!

DIZZY DEAN TOLD YOU!!! she hollered as all fans within earshot roared with laughter.

I realized it was too farfetched a story to continue. So I just kept crying. She actually identified the one good ticket for the day, and gave me a refund. God Bless Her for not having me arrested for fraud. I know she never believed my answer. Nor did the nearby fans. Sneaky kid. Got caught.

Actually, Dizzy was pretty famous as a baseball broadcaster. He first started with the Cardinals and Browns in 1941 right after his playing days were over. In those days, the broadcasters did not travel with the teams but Ol’ Diz had a good deal for the season, as, when one team left town, the other team came home. Dizzy was both funny and colorful, partly for butchering the English language, much to the chagrin of St. Louis English teachers.

When Al “Zeke” Zarilla tripled, he described how Zarilla “slud into third”. When the English teachers complained, Dizzy simply enjoyed more opportunities to say “slud”.

An English teacher once wrote to him that he shouldn’t use the word “ain’t” on the air, as it was a bad example to children. He responded to the teacher on the air, not so elegantly: “A lotta folks who ain’t sayin’ ‘ain’t’ ain’t eatin’. So Teach you learn ‘em English, and I’ll learn ‘em baseball.”

Dizzy advanced to join Pee Wee Reese on the CBS-TV Game of the Week each Saturday, which he did from 1955 to 1965.

And yes, I enjoyed actually seeing Dizzy Dean pitch in an official baseball game. His last, so to speak. It was September 28, 1947. He was 37 years old.

By this time, Dizzy was well-known for his broadcasting. The story has been that he had been doing the St. Louis Browns’ games, enduring several poor pitching performances in a row, and he got so frustrated, he blurted out on the air: “Doggone it, I can pitch better than nine out of the ten guys on the staff!!!” The wives of the Browns pitchers complained, and team management, needing to sell tickets any way they could, took him up on his offer and had him pitch the last game of the season.

I thought Sportsman Park would be filled and got there soon after the gates opened. Sad to say, it was far from a sellout. But Dizzy did not disappoint. He pitched four innings, allowed no runs and got a single in his only at-bat. Rounding first base, he pulled his hamstring, ending his experiment.

Returning to the broadcast booth later on, he told his radio audience: “I said I can pitch better than nine of the ten guys on the staff, and I can. But I’m done. Talkings my game now. I’m just glad that muscle I pulled wasn’t in my throat.”

So that’s my story about my pal Diz. Now don’t forget to Google QUOTES BY DIZZY DEAN. Here are two that clearly identify him:

“I won 28 games in 1935 and I couldn’t believe my eyes when the Cards sent me a new contract with a cut in salary. Mr. Rickey said I deserved a cut because I didn’t win 30 games.”

And….. “Anybody whosoever had the privilege of seeing me play knows I am the greatest pitcher in the world.”