Who Was Billy Southworth?
Of the score of managers in baseball’s Hall of Fame, probably the least known – even among devoted students of the game’s history – is Billy Southworth.
This is despite the fact that, in nine full and four partial seasons, he won four pennants, had six 90-win seasons, and has the fourth-highest winning percentage - .597 – for managers with over 10 years.
The Outfielder
Billy Southworth broke in as a right fielder with Cleveland in 1915, then played 11 years in the National League with Pittsburgh, Boston, New York and St. Louis. He was a speedy outfielder, twice leading the league in putouts, and a consistent .300 hitter.
During his two years 1924-25 with the Giants, Southworth joined John McGraw’s rowdy, night-life contingent and began a reputation as a heavy drinker. It never affected his game, and was not a constant condition. But it did recur from time to time, especially when tragedies arose in his personal life.
The Giants traded him to the Cardinals in June 1926. The Cards were in third place in a pennant race in which only 10 games separated first and eighth place. St. Louis went on to win by a two-game margin.
In Game 2 of the World Series against the Yankees, Southworth hit a game-winning 3-run home run in the seventh inning, and hit .345 in the Cards’ seven-game victory.
The Manager
In 1928 the Cardinals asked the 35-year-old Southworth to be a player-manager at their top minor league club, Rochester in the International League. He led a team of young prospects to the pennant while hitting .361. But the season also included a personal tragedy: his wife gave birth to stillborn twins and nfever regained her health.
His success at Rochester earned him a promotion to the Cardinals; at 36 he became the youngest manager in the league. It was a mistake. Only two years before, he had been one of the boys on and off the field.
Billy Southworth experienced personal tragedy during his time as a manager
Club owners wanted a strict disciplinarian running the team. But that wasn’t Southworth’s style, and his former teammates didn’t respect him
They didn’t like his long, intensive spring training sessions. The pitchers pretty much ignored him. It didn’t help that the players took their complaints to the general manager, Branch Rickey.
Although they were in first place in mid-June, it didn’t last; they fell to fourth and were two games under .500 when Southworth was demoted to Rochester in July.
The Minor Leagues
Southworth thrived in Rochester, winning pennants in ’30 and ’31. The Cardinals now had a team in Columbus, Ohio, and in mid-1932 they moved him to the Columbus club. He could live at home, but it was not a good situation.
His wife was sick and would die in the fall. Billy was drinking again. He was out of baseball for two years. In 1935 Cardinals general manager Branch Rickey took a chance on him and hired him to manage the Class B club in Asheville, NC.
Back with the Cardinals
Back in baseball and happily remarried, Billy thrived again. He won in Asheville, moved up to Class A Memphis, and by 1939 was back in Rochester. The Cardinals got off to a poor start in 1940.
They were in 7th place in June when club owner Sam Breadon, without consulting general manager Branch Rickey, turned to Billy Southworth. This time, Breadon assured him, he could be his own man, without Rickey’s interference.
And what kind of man was he? New managers are often asked what influences they brought to the job from managers they had played for. For Southworth, the answer was easy: NOT to be another John McGraw.
There would be no bed checks, no detectives trailing players at night, no spy in the clubhouse, no tyrant in charge. Billy was a soft-spoken man with a gentle disposition. He would get to know his men, invite them to come to him with any concerns or problems.
His style of game strategy depended on the talent he had; if they were fast, spray hitters, good baserunners, strong pitchers, he would play for one run at a time. If he had a team of sluggers or a weaker pitching staff, he would play for the big inning. He would not hesitate to platoon his men to get the most out of his roster.
The 1940 Cardinals were young and fast. They had one slugger, Johnny Mize, who led the league with 43 home runs. They responded to Southworth by going 69-40 the rest of the way to a third-place finish. In 1941 they won 97 games and finished second, 2 ½ games behind the Dodgers.
With the addition of Stan Musial in ’42, they added a bat and speed, but lost their only slugger, Mize, to the service. Relying on pitching and speed, they began a three-year pennant sweep, winning 105 or 106 games each year, splitting two World Series with the Yankees and defeating the St. Louis Browns in the Browns’ only World Series appearance in 1944.
Stan Musial, Billy Southworth and Danny Litwhiler
Tragedy struck Billy Southworth’s life again on February 15, 1945. His son, Billy Jr., a promising minor league outfielder before the war, was now Major Southworth, a B-29 bomber pilot.
He took off from a Long Island field that morning and immediately encountered engine problems that forced him to make an emergency landing at nearby LaGuardia Airport that abutted Flushing Bay.
He reached the runway but a wing hit the water and the big plane flipped and burst into flames before falling into the bay. Southworth was killed, it took five months before his body was discovered.
The loss of his son did not touch off an immediate drinking problem, but it may have contributed to a delayed response down the road. The Cardinals lost Stan Musial to the service and suffered a lot of injuries in ‘45, but they battled the Cubs to the finish before settling for second, 3 games back.
In 1946 they won their fourth pennant and third World Series in five years. Billy Southworth was not there.
Boston Braves
The Boston Braves hadn’t won a pennant since 1914, hadn’t even finished in the first division since 1934. In 1929 the club owner, German-born lawyer Emil Fuchs, had had so little money he had managed the last-place team himself. His successor, veteran baseball operator, Bob Quinn, barely kept the club going until his shoestrings ran out.
In 1945 a trio of wealthy New England contractors, led by Lou Perini, bought the team. They kept Quinn’s son John as general manager. John’s first recommendation was to try to hire Billy Southworth away from the Cardinals. It took a three-year contract for a total of $100,000 – high for those days.
The Braves had finished sixth, 30 games behind the Cubs, in 1945. With virtually the same team, Southworth moved them up to fourth, just one game behind the third-place Cubs. Home attendance doubled to almost one million.
Bob Elliott
At the end of the season, Southworth began to remake the Braves. He traded four players to Pittsburgh for third baseman Bob Elliott. Elliott was a dependable .300 hitter with little power, but the leading RBI man of the Bucs.
A three-time All-Star, he was a quiet, laid-back, go-through-the-motions sort of player – no admirer of the fiery Pirates manager Frankie Frisch. He had slumped to .263 with just 5 home runs and 68 RBIs in ’46.
Billy Southworth’s star player, Bob Elliott
In the spring of ’47 Southworth used psychology to light a fire under Elliott. “You’re a very fine ballplayer,” he said. “All you need to achieve true greatness is the added sparkle of more hustle. If you hustle, I believe you can win the MVP award.”
Elliott responded with 22 home runs and career highs of .317 and 133 RBI, and was named the NL Most Valuable Player. The Braves finished third, 8 games behind the first-place Dodgers. Southworth was rewarded with a raise and a new five-year contract.
Building a Winner
Pioneers in the signing of Negro League players, beginning with Jackie Robinson in 1947, followed by Roy Campanella and Don Newcombe, the Dodgers were poised to dominate the National League. They would finish first or second in eight of the next nine years. But 1948 would not be one of them.
Billy Southworth smelled a return to the top. With Bob Elliott as his anchor and two strong young pitchers in 21-game winners Johnny Sain and Warren Spahn, he set about rounding up every potentially productive malcontent he could find: not necessarily manager haters, but guys who didn’t like any authority or thought they knew more than the manager, or were troublemakers in the clubhouse.
He already had one in Sain, who didn’t think any manager knew anything about pitching. Sain’s clubhouse demeanor was an occasional grunt.
Southworth’s first move was a trade in November 1947 for two refugees from Frankie Frisch in Pittsburgh: outfielder Jimmy Russell and catcher Bill Salkeld, who became Sain’s favorite catcher. Russell would prove to be a valuable contributor until heart problems curtailed his season.
Next in his sights was Jeff Heath, a brawny slugger who was a loud-mouthed bench jockey and had a temper that would erupt against teammates, writers, even fans occasionally, especially when he had had an unproductive game. If a teammate picked one of his bats, he would go into a rage, maybe even break the tainted bat.
He had been one of the leaders in the Cleveland “Crybabies” revolt against manager Oscar Vitt in 1940 (though he later denied that he had led it) that probably cost them the pennant. He had been traded twice since then. The Braves bought him from the St. Louis Browns on December 4.
During spring training in 1948, Branch Rickey, now with the Dodgers, let it be known that second baseman Eddie Stanky was available, Southworth eagerly snapped him up for two players and $100,000.
Leo Durocher said of Eddie Stanky, “He can’t run, can’t hit, can’t throw. All he can do is beat you.” He was a hotheaded, aggressive scrapper who would do anything to gain an edge, an extra base, a run. Never the hitter or baserunner that Ty Cobb had been, he was in all other respects the most Cobbian player of his time.
Players on base would pick up handfuls of dirt to remind them not to put their hands down when they slid. After they slid, they dropped the dirt. Not Stanky; he’d throw it in the second baseman’s face.
He got on teammates who didn’t hustle enough to suit him, which didn’t endear him to them. He didn’t care; he was there to win, not make friends. But he proved to be a beneficial influence on the Braves’ rookie shortstop, Alvin Dark.
Stanky also thought of himself as a future manager, Southworth gave him permission to call his own hit and run plays when at bat with a runner on first – not always to Southworth’s satisfaction.
The Braves had a 2 ½-game lead on July 4. In a game on July 8 at Brooklyn, Stanky was on third base. Dark hit a ground ball to third. Diving back to the base, Stanky spiked third baseman Bruce Edwards and in the process severely sprained his ankle and had to be carried off the field.
He was hitting above .300 for the only time in his career and was slated to start in the All-Star Game, but he wound up out of action for two months. Two weeks later they had stretched it to 8 games. Then they lost Jim Russell for the rest of the season to what was later determined to be a heart condition.
Their lead reached 8 games, then began to melt. By August 21 the Dodgers and Cardinals were tied for second, only 1 game out. But they rallied and by Labor Day it was back up to 4 games. Boston Post sportswriter Gerry Hern put the Braves’ strategy into a poem whose essence was: “Spahn and Sain and two days of rain.”
It was only a slight exaggeration. It didn’t rain. For the final month Sain was 8-1, throwing 8 complete games in 9 starts; Spahn was 4-2, and rookie righthander Vern Bickford, 11-5 for the year, was 3-0. The Braves finished 6 ½ games ahead of the Cardinals.
Southworth’s platooning had used 14 players who worked in at least 50 games and 11 pitchers who made at least 10 appearances. Bob Elliott led with 24 home runs; Jeff Heath had 20. In an awkward slide on the last day of the season, Heath broke a leg and was out of the World Series.
World Series
Boston fans hoped for an unprecedented all-Boston World Series as the Red Sox finished in a tie with the Cleveland Indians.
But the Indians won the one-game playoff, and defeated the Braves in the six-game World Series. In Game 1, Sain outpitched Bob Feller, 1-0. Spahn also won one game, but the Indians took the Series, 4 games to 2.
Beginning of the End
In 1949 Southworth lost control of the stew of combative temperaments he had put together. They rebelled against the day-long spring training regimen, the curfews and fines for violating them. Heath never recovered from his injury and became more antagonistic.
They fought - physically - with each other, with Southworth, with the press. Stanky was past his prime. Johnny Sain had a sore shoulder and won only 10 games. Though Spahn won 21, he and Sain both wanted nothing to do with Southworth. Only Bob Elliott remained loyal and came close to his 1948 production.
A report in the Boston Globe summed up the situation: “The Braves were an old club, crabby, bitter, set in their ways. Players who could no longer deliver blamed their ineptness on Southworth. Victory, which sugar-coated the bitterness underneath last season, eluded the crippled Braves and left bare the acrid taste of defeat, futility and animosity,”
The turmoil may have driven Southworth to drink again. He complained of headaches. They were in fourth place in August when he was given a “leave of absence” and left the team.
The addition of rookie catcher Del Crandall and outfielder Sam Jethroe and some judicious trades with the Giants produced a younger, calmer team in 1950. Southworth, too, seemed healthier. Spring training regimen eased; there were no more bed checks. There was time for swimming and golf.
Sain and Spahn no longer agitated to be traded, Along with Bickford, they would be good for 59 wins. Bob Elliott continued to be productive. They won eight more games than in ’49, but finished 8 games behind the Phillies’ Whiz Kids, fourth behind the Dodgers and Giants.
In June of 1951 the Braves were plodding along in fifth place when Billy Southworth resigned. His managing career was over. He became a scout for the Braves until he retired in 1956.
