Carl Erskine and the Boys of Summer

Carl Erskine won 122 games and many fans in his 12-year career with the Dodgers, and many more hearts after it for how he and wife Betty raised Jimmy, their special needs son, rather than institutionalize him.

Erskine died this month at age 97, the last surviving member of the 13 Brooklyn Dodgers author Roger Kahn profiled in his book The Boys of Summer (anyone who has happened on this site knows what I think of the book. It’s the Babe Ruth of baseball books.)

The book was published nearly two decades after the first season Kahn covered the team, and it’s typical of Erskine that he gave a pep talk to the author. When Kahn was struggling as much to find the right words as he might have been to hit the pitcher’s renowned curveball, Erskine told him, “If you don’t finish this book, then how do you think you’ll feel when Dick Young comes out with it next year.”

Kahn, perhaps imaging himself in a race with his former Daily News rival, sometimes antagonist, finished.

That wasn’t Erskine’s only contribution to the book, or to the 1950s Dodgers. A few thoughts on Carl Erskine and the Boys of Summer:

• Erskine won two games in the World Series, and both were memorable. He set the Series record for strikeouts with 14 in the second, Game 3 in 1953. But his first Series win, in 1952, was a better anecdote. Tied 2-2, the Dodgers staked Erskine to a 4-0 lead in Game 5. He lost it all in the fifth inning, giving up five runs. Erskine from the book: “The numbers are against me. October fifth. My fifth wedding anniversary. The fifth inning. I’ve given the Yankees five runs. Five must be my unlucky number. (Manager) Charlie (Dressen) says to give him the ball. … I’m through. The fives have done me in. Suddenly Dressen says, ‘Isn’t this your anniversary? Are you going to take Betty out and celebrate tonight? I can’t believe it. There’s seventy thousand people watching, as many as in all Anderson (Indiana) now, and he’s asking me what I’m doing that night. I tell him yes, I was planning to take Betty someplace quiet. ‘Well,’ Dressen says, ‘then see if you can get this game over before it gets dark. He hands me the ball back.'” It was about the best decision Dressen ever made. The Yankees never put another man on base. The Dodgers tied the game in the seventh, took the lead in the 11th, and with some help from his outfield defense, Erskine retired 19 Yankees in a row; of the 11 innings he pitched on Oct. 5, 1952, nine were hitless. The Dodgers won, 6-5, in 11, and took a 3-2 Series lead. In the seven Series meetings between the Dodgers and Yankees from 1941-56, it’s the only one Brooklyn led, 3-2. And the Erskines celebrated 62 more anniversaries. Betty died in 2015 at age 90.
• Erskine’s win was saved by two home run-robbing catches over the short fence in right field: by Andy Pafko on Gene Woodling in the second inning and defensive replacement Carl Furillo on Yogi Berra in the 11th. (link here: the catch by Pafko is at approximately 50 seconds, Furillo at approximately 4:25. Both are repeated at the end.) After the game, Kahn walked through Yankee Stadium with his father, for whom he had gotten a ticket from the Yankees. He asked about the catches, his father answered about Erskine. As they walked through the stadium to exit, they passed the seat his father had sat in. The overhanging press box had obstructed the view of his father and other fans from the goings-on in the outfield 400 feet away. Kahn: “My father was not commenting on the catches because he hadn’t seen them.”
• Erskine’s second Series win was just as tense. Leading, 3-2, in the ninth, he fanned Don Bollweg leading off for his 13th strikeout, tying Howard Ehmke’s 1929 Series record. Then he fanned pinch-hitter Johnny Mize — who had homered off him in the 1952 win — for the record-breaking No. 14. But Erskine still had an out to go and he walked pinch-hitter Irv Noren. That brought up Joe Collins, who in his own way had contributed to Erskine’s record by fanning four times. Erskine from Boys of Summer: “All I can think is that right-field wall is 297 feet away and Collins is a strong left-handed hitter who has struck out four times. Baseball is that way. One swing of the bat. … He goes from goat to hero. … What I don’t know is over on the Yankee bench Mize and the others have been kidding Collins. They tell him the World Series goat record is five strikeouts. One more and his name goes in the book forever. He goes to the plate entirely defensive. He’s choking up six inches on bat. He’s using it like a flyswatter.'” It was all Collins could do to tap a grounder back to Erskine for the final out. Erskine from the book: “Think of the two minds. It ends with me scared to death of the long ball and Collins scared to death of striking out. He doesn’t get to hit the long ball and I don’t get to strike him out.'”
• Times have changed department: Erskine started three games in the 1953 World Series, even though there were no off days. He gave up four runs in the first inning in Game 1 and was removed for a pinch-hitter in the second, took a day off, pitched the complete-game record setter in Game 3, took two days off, and started Game 6, giving up four runs in four innings before departing for a pinch-hitter (who was Hall of Fame manager Dick Williams). Erskine started half the games in the Series and pitched 14 innings in six days, as if the World Series was an American Legion tourney.
• Erskine’s strikeout record held for a decade, until Sandy Koufax broke it in 1963, the Erskines watching on TV in Indiana.. Erskine from Boys of Summer: “‘And one of the boys, looking real blue, says, ‘Don’t feel sad, Dad. You still hold the record for righthanders.'” Erskine held that for five more years, until Bob Gibson fanned 17 Tigers in 1968.
• Erskine was 26 when he fanned the 14 Yankees, having won 20 games and pitched 246.2 innings (260.2 including the Series). By the end of the decade his career was over. He was 32 and in pain when he retired. There’s a crisis in present-day baseball with the breadth of pitchers’ injuries, and it’s real. But it also wasn’t always better way back when. Erskine from Boys of Summer: “When I was pitching and I had the constant arm pain, I went to Johns Hopkins and a famous surgeon said I should pitch sidearm. … I kept pitching overhand and it kept hurting, but I got a dozen years in the big leagues.” Yes, he pitched for a dozen years in the big leagues. His arm probably hurt for half of them.
• Erskine threw two no-hitters, but he jokingly would say the best pitch he ever threw was one that didn’t count. He was warming up in the bullpen the day in 1951 when Bobby Thomson homered off Ralph Branca to win the pennant, win the pennant, win the pennant, as Russ Hodges might say, for the Giants. Branca was in the game, in part, because Erskine bounced a curveball in the bullpen. Coach Clyde Sukeforth, watching Erskine and Branca, saw the former’s wild curveball and told Dressen Branca had better stuff. That bounced curveball, Erskine insisted, was the best pitch he ever threw.
• Erskine retired with a sore arm and a sore hip, the result he thought, of the force of landing his leg while pitching. He walked normally but in great pain. No one asked him how he felt. A surgeon said he could relieve the pain with an operation that would leave Erskine with a limp. Erskine had the procedure. He limped but didn’t hurt. Now well-wishers, seeing the limp, expressed concern for his well-being.
• A comedian of the era named Phil Foster did a bit about Erskine and what it was like to pitch in Brooklyn. It led Kahn’s chapter. Erskine has loaded the bases, “and the archetypal Dodgers fan rises in Ebbets Field. ‘Come on Oiskine … these guys stink.'” Ball one. “‘Don’t worry … I’m witcha.'” Ball two. “‘Hang in there. … You can do it, Oisk.'” Ball three. “‘Go get ’em … We love ya, Oisk, baby.'” Ball four, forcing in a run. “‘Hey Dressen … take that bum out.'” It’s a funny bit. Years later, I worked with a writer who had interviewed Erskine at a charity golf tournament at one of his previous stops. He said Erskine self-deprecatingly regaled him with the comedian’s bit. It was probably even funnier when Erskine delivered it.
• Dodgers Hall of Fame GM Branch Rickey was nicknamed “El Cheapo” by New York Daily News columnist Jimmy Powers, and it’s true that the Dodgers of the 1940s didn’t spend with the abandon of the franchise 80 years on. But Rickey wanted Erskine so badly he signed him twice. He had to because he broke the rules. The first time, Erskine asked for a $3,000 bonus. Rickey from Boys of Summer: “‘Carl … we won’t give you three thousand.’ Pause. ‘We’re going to give you a bonus of three thousand, five hundred. What do you think of that?'” The last of the big-time spenders. Commissioner Happy Chandler thought the signing was illegal because Erskine was in the navy, and servicemen were off limits. Chandler negated the signing, and according to the book, Rickey asked if he could get the Dodgers’ money back. Buyer beware said Chandler. Erskine was a free agent again, and typical of him and perhaps the era, signed a second time with the Dodgers, even though he had better offers. The second time the bonus was $5,000. Erskine from Boys of Summer: “‘I got the five thousand … which makes me the only man in history to collect two bonuses from Branch Rickey, but what I didn’t know was that the second time, instead of settling for five thousand, I could have gotten thirty thousand.'”
• Late in his life, former Boston Celtics great Bob Cousy, after years of reflection, wrote a letter to teammate Bill Russell and apologized for not doing more to protest the segregation and racism Cousy watched Russell endure while they were teammates. Erskine felt likewise, and questioned why he didn’t do more to support Jackie Robinson. Erskine from Boys of Summer: “‘Now here’s what bothers me. He (Robinson) wins a game. We got to the next town. We’re all on the train, a team. But leaving the station, he doesn’t ride on the team bus. He has to go off by himself. He can’t stay in the same hotel. But I didn’t do anything about it. Why? Why didn’t I say, ‘Something’s wrong here. I’m not going to let this happen. Wherever he’s going, I’m going with him.’ I never did. I sat like everybody else, and I thought, ‘Good. He’s getting a chance to play major league ball. Isn’t that great.’ And that’s as far as I was at that time.'” It’s an indication of how entrenched oppressive systems are that even an individual as fundamentally decent as Erskine — or Cousy — conformed and didn’t protest further on behalf of teammates they respected and admired.
• After his playing days Erskine enrolled in the local college in Anderson, Ind. He was 32, and he says in the book when he arrived for freshmen English, his fellow students thought he was the professor. He studied for the next four years and dropped out after his father died. Erskine from the book: “‘I wasn’t only a thirty-two-year-old freshman. I became a thirty-six-year-old dropout.'”
• The chapter on the Erskines and son Jimmy is the most poignant in the book, the tenderness evident. It’s the kind of love and groundbreaking care that won Erskine recognition and honors. The language — mongoloid, retard — is anything but. That’s no fault of Kahn’s, since he was using the nomenclature of the times. It’s another reminder that the good old days were often not that great.