Travis Jackson: Playing for John McGraw

Travis Jackson: Understood the incomparable John McGraw

Hall of Fame shortstop/third baseman Travis Jackson spent his entire 15-year career (1922-1936) with the New York Giants, and coached for them (1938-1948), interrupted by a five-year battle with tuberculosis.

A .291 lifetime batter, he played in four World Series. Despite injuries to both knees, he led the NL in assists four times.

We visited Jackson, a lifelong resident of Waldo, Arkansas, at his home on July 23, 1985 – Norman L Macht.

Starting out life at the Giants

When I went up to the Giants nobody told me anything. John McGraw didn’t teach you anything on the bench. I had to sit and watch and learn and see things I could try in order to improve myself.

In 1923, when the third baseman broke his leg, I played third.

A few days later, the shortstop got pneumonia and I shifted to short. Now that they knew I had to come through to win the pennant, they paid a little attention to me. Frankie Frisch was the second baseman.

He never tagged a man out at second base. He’d get the ball and jump straight up in the air.

The umpire would call a man out, but I’ve seen him miss the tag that far. One day in 1926 he and John McGraw got into an argument in St. Louis. Frisch went home.

In December he was traded for Rogers Hornsby. Hornsby didn’t get along with the Giants’ business manager, so he went the next year. McGraw tried hard to find a good Jewish ballplayer.

He got Andy Cohen to replace Hornsby, but he wasn’t good enough. He had trouble hearing in his right ear. I’d be giving him vocal signs as to who would take the throw at second base and he’d just stand there kicking his feet together, not hearing a word I said.

Finally, I gave up and took all the throws at second myself. Then came Hughie Critz, a slick fielder who couldn’t hit.

After Frisch was traded we told our pitchers to bear down on him his first time at bat, because if he didn’t get a hit his first time up, then he’d drag it for the rest of the game.

But if you let him get a hit, especially an extra-base hit, that first time up, then he’s going to kill you the rest of the day.

So we said, “Give him everything you’ve got, get him out some way, that first time up.” And it worked out that way.

McGraw’s abrasive ways

John McGraw was a rough customer to play for. But he knew the ones he could get tough with and the ones he couldn’t.

Highpockets Kelly was our team spokesman, hardheaded and didn’t hold back anything. Catcher Earl Smith and McGraw would go to it, shouting back and forth.

Smith would needle him, call him Muggsy just to make him madder, and the rest of us would be hiding our laughter.

Handling pitchers

The hardest thing a manager has to do is handle the pitchers.

McGraw could not handle pitchers. That was his weakness – when to take them out.

He’d let his Irish temper get the best of him, leave a pitcher out there to take a 10-12 run beating when he should have been out of there in the second inning and maybe we’d won the ball game.

He’d be mad at a pitcher and make him pitch the whole game.

McGraw called all the pitches. One day Rosy Ryan was pitching. Every time he threw a fastball, somebody hit it good. McGraw had enough. He started calling curve ball, curve ball – 18 or 19 straight curve balls.

Everybody knew he was doing it for meanness. If a pitcher didn’t like it, he’d be in Indianapolis the next day.

I made some mistakes sometimes but he didn’t get on me. Later, when I was the team captain, it was my responsibility to position the fielders. One day at the Polo Grounds a rookie, Jimmy Welsh, was in the outfield.

Somebody hit a line drive and he was in the wrong place and it went for a triple. When we went into the dugout, McGraw was just frothing at the mouth, cussing Jimmy out. And Jimmy said, “Mr. McGraw, Jackson moved me.”

McGraw said, “Did you move him?”

I said, “Yep.”

McGraw said, “Forget about it, Welsh.” And that’s all there was to it.

I’ve seen him get mad at players on other clubs. He’d say to them, “I’ll trade for you and when I get you, I’ll send you down to Timbuktu.”

He was a part owner of the Giants.

He paid the newspaper writers’ expenses on the road. If he didn’t like what they said about him, he’d leave them at home.

Shanty Hogan

We had a catcher, Shanty Hogan. Six-foot-one, weighed around 240, a giant of a man.

We used to eat at the Dutchman’s, over by Yankee Stadium. We’d pick out our own steaks. When he got through he’d go back and pick out another one.

To look at him you’d wonder how he could be a catcher. You’d think there would be a lot of passed balls. But you couldn’t throw one by him. He’d smother it one way or another.

He was a tough catcher for the shortstop and second baseman to work with, he had such a hard throw to handle. The ball would come in just as heavy as lead and knock your glove off. That made us move a little closer to the base and leave a bigger space for the hitter.

We had to get there to get set for the throw; if you tried to catch it on the move it’d just eat you up. He was a good hitter too and batted over .300 for us for five years.

One year in spring training McGraw ordered him to lose some weight or get fined for every pound he was overweight.

He worked so hard at it but when we got to the Polo Grounds he was still 18 pounds over. We knew how hard he’d tried, so the players got together and paid his fine for him.

The best all-around, down-to-earth manager in the National League that I followed closely was Bill McKechnie. Everything he did was on the way to being right. When I first started out, I would have liked to play for him.

The Bill Terry era

Bill Terry was the right man to replace McGraw [in 1932].

Newspapermen didn’t like him. He was blunt, to the point.

The 1933 World Series

In 1933 I hadn’t played much on account of my bad knees. In the fourth game of the World Series against Washington, we were tied in the eleventh inning.

I said to Terry, “”I’m going to get on base one way or another. But you send in a runner for me.”

He said, “You get on down there and I’ll have a runner for you.”

I beat out a bunt and made it to first and looked around for my pinch runner.

Nobody. Mancuso sacrificed me down to second. I was hobbling more than running. And I thought sure now somebody would come in to run for me. I got up dusting myself off. Here comes my pinch runner, I thought.

Nobody. Blondy Ryan came up and pulled a hit to left field. The coach waved me home. I gave it all I had and just did make it, but if the ball hadn’t been thrown five or six feet up the first base line, I wouldn’t have made it.

I went into the dugout and said to Terry, “Bill, what is the matter with you? You said I was going to have a pinch runner.”

“Yeah,” he says, “Bernie James is the fastest man I’ve got but he’s got no experience. When I told him he was going to pinch run, he started shaking.

I’d rather have you out there. You know what you’re doing. He’d have been caught off first base and that was the winning run.”

Winding down his playing career

When my knees got worse, I moved to third and we got Dick Bartell to play shortstop. I’d just as soon play with him at short as anybody I ever played with.

He was aggressive and a fighter. We were both holler guys. He was the first shortstop I ever saw cover third base on a bunt down the third base line with a man on second.

They do it nowadays but he started it as far as I know. He’d start on the pitch and beat the runner to third. We got some putouts that way.

I wasn’t supposed to play in 1936. I was going to be a coach. Terry and I went down to Pensacola to a baseball school we held there.

Afterwards, Terry told me to go home for a few weeks, so I did. When I got to spring training, they were to play an exhibition game but they didn’t have a third baseman on the roster.

Terry asked me to fill in. After a few days, I said, “I’m not here to get into playing shape. I’m a coach.”

“Well,” he said, “we’re trying to trade for a third baseman. But we want a good one, not just anybody.”

That went on for the whole season, and I wound up playing in 126 games.

The one and only Dizzie Dean

For about twelve years there, the Cards, Cubs, Pirates and Giants battled it out for the pennant every year. St. Louis pitcher Dizzy Dean was the only man I knew who would make big brags like he did and go through with it.

He’d tell you what he was going to throw to strike you out and he’d do it. When he threw at hitters, it was usually because the guys in the Cardinals’ dugout were needling him to do it. 

When Diz threw at our leadoff man, Joe Moore, Moore’s roommate, outfielder Hank Lieber, told Diz to stop throwing at Moore or he’d break every bone in his body.

Diz quit throwing at Moore. One hot Sunday Diz threw at one of our hitters. When Diz came up to bat, our catcher, Gus Mancuso, stood on home plate, bouncing the ball off it.

He said, “Diz, look down there in the bullpen.” There stood Roy Parmelee. He could throw as hard as Dean but was wild. didn’t know where it was going.

“If you throw at another man, Terry’s going to bring in Parmelee, and we’re going to start with you, and we’re going to knock every one of you flat on your ass.” Diz didn’t throw at anybody else that day.

St. Louis was the hottest place to play, and the infield was almost all skin, just a little patch of grass here and there. They never had time to work on it because the Browns would play there when the Cards were on the road.

It was hard and the dust would kick up on a ground ball. But it made for good hops on grounders. I usually charged all ground balls – any time you lay back on it you’re going to boot it – but it was too uncertain on that infield.

I saw this happen one day at the Polo Grounds: We’re playing the Reds. We had the winning run on second in the ninth inning. Reds manager Charlie Dressen waved Babe Herman to play in close in left field.

The next batter hit a single over the shortstop’s head. Herman could have thrown out the runner, but he just picked up the ball, stuck it in his pocket and turned and headed for the clubhouse out in center field.

Here comes Dressen with those short legs right behind him, trying to catch up with him!