Ron Necciai - A Cautionary Tale

Among the (many) things that long time baseball fans gripe and complain about "baseball today" is that pitchers, and particularly young pitchers, are held to strict limits in regard to innings pitched and even to the number of pitches that they throw in any given game.

"By, God", they say, "Warren Spahn/Bob Feller/Robin Roberts/Fill In the Blank never worried about how many innings they pitched or how many pitches they threw.  They'd throw thirty or more complete games a year and they're in the Hall of Fame."

Well, yeah, they are, but I wonder that for every Bob Gibson and Bob Friend there were, how many contemporary pitchers of theirs were there that we have never heard of because their arms were shot by the time they got to Class C baseball because they were told to pitch 'til their arms fell off.  Ten, twenty, fifty?  No way to know, but that brings me to the tale of Ron Necciai.

If you are a really, really, REALLY longtime Pirates fan, you know the story.  As a nineteen year old phee-nom out of Monongahela High School in 1952, Necciai pitched back-to-back games for the Bristol Twins, the Pirates Class D affiliate in the Appalachian League, where he struck out 27 batters and threw a no-hitter, followed by a two-hitter where he stuck out 24 batters.  He was then promoted to the Carolina League, where he recorded 172 strikeouts in 126 innings pitched.  The numbers are not available to me, but God only knows how many pitches Necciai threw in those 27 and 24 strike out games.

In August of that year, the now twenty year old Necciai was promoted to the Pirates (who stunk and would lose 112 games that season) where he went 1-6 with a 7.08 ERA and had 31 strike outs in 54.2 IP.  He went into the military in 1953, where he was soon released with a medical discharge.  He never pitched in the majors again, kicked around the minors for a few years, dealt with a torn rotator cuff, and was out of baseball after 1955.

The long time Bucco fans look at that 27 K's game of Necciai's and say, "Man, what if he never got injured?  Think of how great he'd have been for the Pirates."

Here's some other points that they should be asking:

• Instead of leaving him in those games to strike out 27 and 24 batters, what if Pirates management, in the person of no less than Branch Rickey, the Old Mahatma himself, had said "Make sure that that boy never throws more that 75-80 pitches in any game"?
• Instead of promoting him to a higher league, what if they kept him at Bristol, reduced his workload, and promoted him to a higher league in 1953 with some expanded IP limits?
• What if they did that to make sure that Necciai was properly prepared for the big leagues when he was, say, 25 years old, in 1957, and he could have joined a staff that included Bob Friend and Vernon Law?

I wonder if Ron Necciai, still alive and 84 years of age, ever wonders the same things.

Of course, maybe Necciai never would have made it, and the medical science of the time when it came to things like torn rotator cuffs was no doubt worlds behind what it is today, but we'll never know what precise damage that heavy workload put on a 19 year old arm back in 1952, nor will we know how many other "Ron Necciais" there were that are now lost in the dust bins of baseball history, but I'll bet there were a lot more of them than there were "Warren Spahns".

The point I am trying to make, I think, is that there is a reason that the Pirates and every team is protecting assets like Jameson Taillon, Tyler Glasnow, and Chan Kuhl when they keep them in the minors for too long (according to all of us experts) or monitor their pitch counts.  We all need to remember that.

Of course, another aspect is the investment that teams have in these guys.  The Pirates invested millions of dollars in guys like Taillon and Gerrit Cole before they ever threw a professional pitch.  Rickey probably signed Necciai for a couple of thousand bucks, if that.  But that is another subject for us Old-Timers to rail about.

Book Review - "Rickey & Robinson"

I received this book as a Christmas gift (and Thank You again, George and Ann!), and finally got around to reading it in the post-holiday, post-vacation slowdown.

One might be tempted to say, "Another book about Jackie Robinson? What new can possibly be written on this topic?"  The one thing that would prompt me to overlook those questions would be the author, Roger Kahn, whose connections and closeness to the Brooklyn Dodgers of that era are well known, as best exemplified by his classic work, "The Boys of Summer".  Also, and I don't think that this can be overstated, the story of Jackie Robinson, Branch Rickey, and the integration of major league baseball is a story that cannot be told often enough, so any contribution to the literature on the subject, especially by so noted an author is welcome.

The book does tell you some things of which one might not be aware, specifically the byzantine workings of the ownership of the Brooklyn Dodgers, how Walter O'Malley came to be a part of it, and his maneuverings that eventually squeezed Branch Rickey out in Brooklyn.

Kahn makes no secret about his admiration for Robinson, as both a ballplayer and a human being, and for Rickey in his role as the instigator of this huge societal change. He also expresses a great deal of admiration for Walter O'Malley, although in the end, Kahn does revert to "Great Satan"-type imagery for O'Malley because he moved the Dodgers out of Brooklyn and out to Los Angeles.  Kahn also uses much of the book as a vehicle for grinding axes against many of his contemporary sports writers, Dick Young in particular.  While his assertions may be and probably are correct, is that really what this book was supposed to be about?  Kahn also lets you know that any other book or writing on this topic pretty much falls short of anything that he, Kahn, has written on the subject.  And for all his admiration for Robinson, at the end of the book he relates a rather prurient story about him, that to my mind had no need to be told.

On balance, though, "Rickey & Robinson" is an interesting and readable book about a part of baseball history that, as I mentioned, cannot be told often enough.

"42"

We spent this afternoon at the movies seeing the just released "42", the story of Jackie Robinson's first season in the major leagues.  I have long felt that the story of Jackie Robinson is one of the most important pieces of American social history in the 20th century, and Robinson himself one of the most important persons, not just an important ballplayer, but important persons of the 20th century, so it is significant and perhaps long past due that an important film maker, Oscar winner Brian Helgeland, who directed and wrote the screenplay, made a movie of this story.

It is a terrific movie.  In fact, I can say that it ranks right up there with the best of all of the baseball movies such as "Pride of the Yankees", "Field of Dreams", and "Eight Men Out" (my personal favorites).  Like the first two of those movies, it weaves a love story, in this case the story of Jack and Rachel Robinson, in among the baseball.  Like the third of those movies, it focuses on a major event in the game's history.  In this one, it is the story of Branch Rickey's breaking baseball's unwritten code of "whites only" in major league baseball.  It is Harrison Ford's Rickey and Chadwick Boseman's Robinson that are the fulcrum and the heroes of the story.  Boseman, with whom I was not familiar, does a great job as Robinson.  Unlike Gary Cooper as Lou Gehrig, he actually looks like a ballplayer, he carries off the baseball scenes, and he hits all the right notes in his portraying the anger, frustration, and heroic stoicism required of Robinson in that first season.  Harrison Ford also pulls off playing the larger than life Branch Rickey, right down to the bushy eyebrows.  in her review the Post-Gazette's Barb Vancheri called this Ford's best performance in years.

Baseball fans who know the Robinson story will see that the movie picks up on all of the pivotal moments....being told by Rickey "not to fight back", the petition of some Dodger players to refuse to play with  him, Leo Durocher laying down the law to the team that they WILL play with Robinson, the rampant racism in the south, and the north, during the period, being targeted by opposing pitchers, the vile racial baiting by Phillies manage Ben Chapman, and Pee Wee Reese putting his arm around Jackie on the field in Cincinnati.  Familiar stories to the avid baseball fan, but expertly told and depicted in the movie.

Now, a word about the baseball in the movie.  I thought that the baseball action in the movie was done well and was believable, but I know that the militant seamheads will no doubt find fault with it. I have already heard people pointing out that Dodgers road uniforms had "Brooklyn" across the front, not "Dodgers" as shown in the movie, and, yes, I know that the scoreboard was not in left centerfield at Forbes Field, nor were there advertising signs along the outfield walls at Forbes, but, please, as our friend Dan Bonk has pointed out, the film makers were "making a movie, not a documentary", and, hey, they did get the Cathedral of Learning right, didn't they?   In any event, the essence of the story is there, and it is told brilliantly, I think, and who cares if occasionally they don't get the exact pitch count correct. 

 "42" will move you, will anger you, will bring you to tears, and in the end, it is an uplifting story.  Be sure you watch the end of the movie when a sort of "Whatever became of...."  montage is shown before the credits.  It is a movie that I plan on owning and will watch regularly in the years ahead.

When I do tours of the Sports Museum, I always highlight the Negro Leagues in Pittsburgh, and I always start with the question "How many of you know who Jackie Robinson was?"  I am always pleasantly surprised by how many kids, even grade school kids, know who Robinson was, and what he did.  It proves that Robinson's story is not just a sports story, but an important American story.  "42" does a terrific job in telling that story.  Everyone should see it.

"A life is not important except in the impact it has on other lives."
                                                                          - Jackie Robinson

"Branch Rickey" by Jimmy Breslin

I have just finished reading the book you see pictured here, "Branch Rickey" by Jimmy Breslin. It is not a lengthy book - you will finish it in one or two sittings - but it is another book that fans of baseball history should read.

There is probably no front office executive in all of baseball history more important or influential that Branch Rickey. He died almost fifty years ago, and casual followers of the game may not know of Rickey's place in the game's history. For that reason alone, it is good that this book was written. People with a sense of baseball history may not learn anything new here, but, if for no other reason, the book is worth reading just to appreciate the way Jimmy Breslin writes.

The main focus of the book centers around Rickey's greatest accomplishment: signing Jackie Robinson for the Brooklyn Dodgers and forcing the integration of major league baseball. One thing I did learn was of a meeting among and a resolution passed by MLB owners after Robinson's 1946 season in Montreal that was aimed to prevent Robinson, or any other "negro player" from ever playing in the major leagues. Also, the shameful silence from white sportswriters, many of whom were in the ball clubs' pockets, regarding the segregation that existed in major league baseball.

But the highlight of the book was the way Breslin wrote of his subjects and the comments that he made. Some samples:

• On Rickey's ability as a spellbinder: When he spoke "the cigar in his right hand provided the smoke and his waving left hand was the mirror."


• On Red Sox owner Tom Yawkey: "(Yawkee) would spend the next twenty years keeping blacks off his teams, and he got what he deserved, which was nothing."


• On Rickey and politics: "Rickey took the sport of baseball into politics, of which nobody in baseball today knows anything beyond giving city council members free box seats."


• On Satchel Paige: "Did he need the money? Whatever Paige had made lasted as long as a puddle in the sun."

I could go on and on with a bunch of great quotes like that about Walter O'Malley, Leo Durocher and many others (for Pirates fans, there are even a few about Bob Prince, Roy Face, and Bill Mazeroski), but you'll enjoy them a lot more by reading the book.