George Pipgras Interview: Recalling Miller Huggins and the 1927 Yankees

George Pipgras: Didn’t look like he took many prisoners

George Pipgras was a right-handed pitcher for the 1923-1933 Yankees, leading the league with 24 wins and 301 IP in 1928. Pipgras was 3-0 in three World Series.

After he broke his arm in 1934, he became an American League umpire for nine years.

He reminisced with me about his playing and umpiring days while sitting in a wingback chair in his home in Inverness, Florida, in July 1985. - Norman L. Macht

Babe Ruth

Despite the presence of so many Hall of Famers -- Ruth and Gehrig and Lazzeri and Combs and Dickey and Hoyt and Pennock - and Bob Meusel belongs there, too -- there were no rivalries.

I never saw any kind of friction in the clubhouse.

Babe Ruth's heart was as big as he was.  But us young players risked a thousand dollar fine if we went out partying with him. He was considered hazardous to our health.

With all that power in the lineup, we pitchers didn't feel any pressure. We paced ourselves and pitched a lot of complete games. We'd get ahead and let up, still putting something on the ball but letting them hit it.

When I was sold to the Red Sox in 1933 and had to pitch to Ruth, I copied the way Ted Lyons used to pitch to him: get behind in the count, then throw a strike or two past him.

One day I faced him with the bases loaded. The count went full, and then I gave him a big motion and threw a slow curve. He was way out in front, figuring fastball. He could be fooled that way.

Miller Huggins as a Manager

Miller Huggins was a very nervous manager but a good guy. I was sitting alongside him on the bench one day and he put a pitcher, Joe Bush, in to pinch hit.

Bush hit it out of the park, but Hug never saw it. He had his head down. He says to me, “What did he do, George? What did he do?” I said, “He just hit one out of the ballpark.”

Huggins was also very demanding.

In 1928 I had 22 wins by September but after I lost one he called me into his office. “I'm not going to tell you how good you are,” he said. “I'm going to tell you how lousy you are.”

Then he explained the mistake I had made on the pitch that cost me the game. “You think it over,” he said and the meeting was over.

I left there thinking, “I've won 22 so far; what else do you have to do around here?”

Hug was a little guy, five six and a half, and weighed 140 pounds. He never came out on the field to change pitchers, but sent out a coach.

I rarely saw him argue a call or get thrown out of a game. Once, in 1922, he was coaching first base when the leadoff man, Whitey Witt, beat out a bunt.

But the umpire, Bill Guthrie, a burly 240-pound Irishman from Chicago, called Witt out.

Witt lit into him and was thrown out of the game. When Huggins got into it, Guthrie jerked a thumb in his direction and said to Witt, “And take da batboy wid ya.”

Guthrie was fired soon after that, but they brought him back in 1928. In the meantime, Bill ran a flower shop in Chicago.

One day somebody came in and asked for some bachelor buttons, and Bill says, “Dis is not a tailor shop; dis is a flower shop.”

I have two world championship rings and a wristwatch. I also had a pocket watch from the 1923 world champions, but it was stolen.

It was a Gruen with a gold chain and a little gold baseball for a fob. In the spring of 1926 I had to change trains in Memphis and while I was waiting outside the station two stickup men robbed me.

I started to chase them, but one guy turned around and I was looking down the barrel of a pistol that looked as big as a cannon. That was the last I saw of them or the watch.

[The watch turned up in the shop of a Virginia memorabilia dealer three years after Pipgras died in 1987.]

Transitioning to Umpiring

I never argued with an umpire. Herb Pennock once told me, “Remember, you make more mistakes than they do.”

The first year I became an umpire the players didn't say much to me. The second year they started in a little. It's the third year where you make or break yourself.

That's when they found out I wouldn't take anything from a player. One day in a Browns-White Sox game in 1940 I cleared both benches, seventeen players.

I was behind the plate one night in Cleveland. Bob Feller and Elden Auker were the pitchers. Suddenly the air was full of Canadian butterflies that came in off the lake.

It was like snow falling on the field. When you walked you heard them crunching under your feet. I told both pitchers and catchers I didn't want to hear any squawks out of them that night, and I didn't.

One day in Philly I was working first base and there came a play where I called the runner safe, but under the photo in the paper the next day it said he was out.

The caption said, “Pipgras misses another one.”  I took the picture to league president Will Harridge and said, “How would you call this?” He said, “Out.” I said, “I called him safe.”

He said, “Show me how.” I showed him, and told him that the best evidence that I was right was that nobody on the field squawked at my call.

I called a balk on one of Connie Mack's pitchers one day.

The 1927 Yankees line-up - including Babe Ruth and Miller Huggins

The pitcher stood back of the rubber and made a motion like he was going to pitch, then turned and threw and caught the runner fifteen feet off the bag.

After the game Mack and one of his coaches came into the umps' dressing room and said he didn't think that was a balk and I showed him where it was in the rule book.

The coach pulls out a dog-eared book and says he can't find it in his book and I said, “What year you got?”  It was about fifteen years old. They turned and walked out.

Umpires aren't infallible. Pants Rowland was the worst umpire I ever saw. He had no minor league experience.

One day he said to his partner, Bill Dineen, “I had a good day today. I didn't miss one.'” And Bill said to him, “You missed a hundred.”