Leo Ernest Durocher (French spelling Léo Ernest Durocher) (; July 27, 1905 – October 7, 1991), nicknamed "Leo the Lip" and "Lippy", was an American professional baseball player, manager, and coach. He played in Major League Baseball (MLB) as an infielder. Upon his retirement, he ranked fifth all-time among managers with 2,008 career victories, second only to John McGraw in National League history. Durocher still ranks thirteenth in career wins by a manager. A controversial and outspoken character, Durocher's half-century in baseball was dogged by clashes with authority, the baseball commissioner, the press, and umpires; his 100 career ejections as a manager trailed only McGraw when he retired, and he still ranks third on the all-time list. He won three National League pennants and one world championship. In 25 years as a manager, Durocher had only 4 losing seasons.
Durocher was posthumously elected to the Baseball Hall of Fame in 1994.
Early life Leo Ernest Durocher was born on July 27, 1905, in West Springfield, Massachusetts, the youngest of four sons born to French Canadian parents. His mother was a hotel maid, and his father was a railroad engineer. His parents were immigrants from Quebec, and both they and Durocher's older brothers spoke only French; Durocher began attending elementary school without knowing how to speak English.
The Durochers lived only two blocks from Rabbit Maranville, who taught Durocher the game of baseball and gave him a glove. Durocher became a good athlete while in high school and was offered a scholarship to Holy Cross, but was suspended from school after he hit a teacher, and never returned. Durocher became a prominent semi-professional athlete, with several Springfield-area employers competing to have him play on their company teams.
Professional career Minor leagues After being scouted by the New York Yankees, Durocher broke into professional baseball with the Hartford Senators of the Eastern League in 1925.
New York Yankees (1925, 1928–1929) Durocher was called up to the Yankees and played in two games. Durocher spent two more seasons in the minors, playing for the Atlanta Crackers of the Southern Association in 1926 and St. Paul Saints of the American Association in 1927.H. W. Wilson Company, Current Biography Yearbook, 1968, page 266
Durocher rejoined the Yankees in 1928. A regular player, he was nicknamed "The All-American Out" by Babe Ruth.Joe Niese, Burleigh Grimes: Baseball's Last Legal Spitballer, 2013, page 189 Durocher was a favorite of Yankee manager Miller Huggins, who considered Durocher a potential managerial candidate for his competitiveness, passion, ego, and facility for remembering situations. Durocher's outspokenness did not endear him to Yankee ownership, however, and his habit of passing bad checks to finance his expensive tastes in clothes and nightlife annoyed Yankee general manager Ed Barrow.
Durocher helped the team win their second consecutive World Series title in 1928, then demanded a raise.
Cincinnati Reds (1930–1933) Durocher was later sold to the Cincinnati Reds on February 5, 1930. Durocher spent the remainder of his professional career in the National League.
St. Louis Cardinals (1933–1937) After playing three seasons with the Reds, Durocher was traded to the St. Louis Cardinals in mid-1933. Upon joining the Cardinals, he was assigned uniform number 2, which he wore for the rest of his career, as player, coach, and manager. That team, whose famous nickname "Gashouse Gang" was supposedly inspired by Durocher, were a far more appropriate match for him; in St. Louis, Durocher's characteristics as a fiery player and vicious bench jockey were given full rein. Durocher remained with the Cardinals through the 1937 season, captaining the team and winning the 1934 World Series (their third title in nine years) before being traded to the Brooklyn Dodgers.
Brooklyn Dodgers (1938–1941, 1943, 1945) Primarily a shortstop, Durocher played through 1945, though his last year as a regular was 1939; after that year he never played more than 62 games in a season. He was known as a solid fielder but a poor hitter. In 5,350 career at bats, he batted .247, hit 24 home runs, and had 567 runs batted in.
Durocher was named to the NL's All-Star team three times, once with St. Louis and twice with the Dodgers. In the 1938 game in Cincinnati, Durocher hit the only Little League home run in All-Star Game history.
Also in 1938, Durocher made history of a sort by making the final out in Johnny Vander Meer's second consecutive no-hitter.
Managerial career Brooklyn Dodgers (1939–1946, 1948) After the 1938 season—Durocher's first year as Brooklyn's starting shortstop—he was appointed player-manager by the Dodgers' new president and general manager, Larry MacPhail. The two were a successful and combustible combination. MacPhail spared no expense in purchasing and trading for useful players (and sometimes outright stars), such as Dolph Camilli, Billy Herman, and Kirby Higbe. He also purchased shortstop Pee Wee Reese from the Boston Red Sox. By the middle of the 1940 season, Reese impressed Durocher enough that he gave up his spot as the regular shortstop so Reese could get a chance to play, though Durocher would make "cameo" appearances in the lineup in 1943 and 1945. Other major purchases by MacPhail included another young star, Pete Reiser, when he was ruled a free agent from the Cardinals' farm system. MacPhail found stalwarts such as American League veterans Dixie Walker and Whitlow Wyatt off the waiver wire.
In his first season as player-manager, Durocher came into his own. The most enduring image of Durocher is of him standing toe-to-toe with an umpire, vehemently arguing his case until his inevitable ejection from the game. Durocher's fiery temper and willingness to scrap came to epitomize the position for which he was to become most famous. As manager he valued these same traits in his players. His philosophy was best expressed in the phrase for which he is best, albeit inaccurately, remembered: "Nice guys finish last" (Durocher's actual phrasing "Nice guys, finish last" was a pair of clause fragments describing a team). Durocher once said, "Look at Mel Ott over there. He's a nice guy, and he finishes second. Now look at the Brat (Eddie Stanky). He can't hit, can't run, can't field. He's no nice guy, but all the little son-of-a-bitch can do is win."
Durocher was also notorious for ordering his pitchers to hit batters. Whenever he wanted a batter hit, he would yell, "Stick it in his ear!"
In 1939 the Dodgers were coming off six straight losing seasons, but Durocher led a quick turnaround. In 1941, his third season as manager, he led the Dodgers to a 100–54 record and the National League pennant, their first in 21 years. In the 1941 World Series the Dodgers lost to the Yankees in five games. They bettered their record in 1942, winning 104 games but just missing out on winning a second consecutive pennant.
Despite all the success of his first three years, Durocher and MacPhail had a tempestuous relationship. MacPhail was a notorious drinker and was as hot-tempered as his manager. He often fired Durocher in the midst of a night of drinking. The following morning, however, MacPhail inevitably hired Durocher back. Finally, at the end of the 1942 season, MacPhail's tenure with the Dodgers came to an end when he resigned to rejoin the United States Army. His replacement, former Cardinal boss Branch Rickey, retained Durocher as skipper. Durocher managed the Dodgers continuously through 1946 (having ceased as a player during the 1945 season) and led Brooklyn to the first postseason NL playoff series in history, which they lost to the Cardinals, two games to none.
Durocher also clashed regularly with Commissioner Albert "Happy" Chandler. Chandler, who had been named to the post in 1945, warned Durocher to stay away from some of his old friends who were gamblers or bookmakers or had mob connections, and who had a free rein at Ebbets Field. Durocher was particularly close with actor George Raft, with whom he shared a Los Angeles house, and he admitted to a nodding acquaintance with Bugsy Siegel.
Durocher, who encouraged and participated in card schools within the clubhouse, was something of a pool shark himself and a friend to many pool hustlers. He also followed horse racing closely. Matters came to a head when Durocher's affair with married actress Laraine Day became public knowledge, drawing criticism from Brooklyn's influential Catholic Youth Organization. The two later eloped and married in Texas in 1947. In the 1950s, Day hosted a radio program called Day with the Giants and later authored a book by the same title describing the life of a manager's wife.
Nice guys finish last
The saying "nice guys finish last" is a condensation by journalists of a quotation by Durocher—he did not originally say this himself, though it has often been attributed to him, and he did appropriate it as his own. The original quotation was "The nice guys are all over there, in seventh place" (July 6, 1946)N.Y. Journal American, 1946 July 7The Yale Book of Quotations, Fred R. Shapiro, Yale University Press, 2006, p. 221 about the 1946 New York Giants—seventh place was next to last place in the National League. This was shortly afterwards rendered as "'Nice Guys' Wind Up in Last Place, Scoffs Lippy",Sporting News, 1946 July 17 thence its present form.
In his autobiography, Nice Guys Finish Last (1975), Durocher quoted himself incorrectly, 29 years afterward, as his sayings were contradicted by the contemporary records (see references above), although they show his philosophy, as epitomized in this maxim:
Durocher is also credited with popularizing the metaphorical use of the phrase "capture lightning in a bottle" in a baseball context—it had previously been used to literally refer to Benjamin Franklin's kite experiment.
Suspension During spring training 1947, Durocher became involved in a very unpleasant feud with Larry MacPhail, who had become a new co-owner of the Yankees. The Yankee boss had hired away two coaches from Durocher's 1946 staff (Chuck Dressen and Red Corriden) during the off-season, causing friction. Then, matters got worse.
In person, Durocher and MacPhail exchanged a series of accusations and counter-accusations, with each suggesting the other invited gamblers into their clubhouses. In the press, a ghostwritten article appeared under Durocher's name in the Brooklyn Eagle, seeking to stir the rivalry between their respective clubs and accusing baseball of a double standard for Chandler's warning him against his associations but not MacPhail or other baseball executives.
Chandler was pressured by MacPhail, a close friend who was pivotal in having him appointed commissioner, but the commissioner also discovered Durocher and Raft might have run a rigged craps game that swindled an active ballplayer of a large sum of money. (The player's identity was never confirmed officially, but former Detroit Tigers pitcher Elden Auker wrote in his 2002 memoir that it was Tigers pitcher Dizzy Trout.) Chandler suspended Durocher for the 1947 season for "association with known gamblers".
Before being suspended, however, Durocher played a noteworthy role in erasing baseball's color line. In the spring of 1947, he let it be known that he would not tolerate the dissent of those players on the team who opposed Jackie Robinson's joining the club, saying:
I do not care if the guy is yellow or black, or if he has stripes like a fuckin' zebra. I'm the manager of this team, and I say he plays. What's more, I say he can make us all rich. And if any of you cannot use the money, I will see that you are all traded.
He greatly admired Robinson for his hustle and aggression, calling him "a Durocher with talent."