It`s time to say goodbye to Hall-of-Famer Billy Herman, the Cubs` star second baseman of the `30s, the Ryne Sandberg of his day. Herman was a feisty guy, always full of spirit, and sparked three pennant-winning Cub teams-1932, `35 and `38.
When the Cubs traded him to the Brooklyn Dodgers in May 1941, Larry MacPhail, who then operated the Dodgers, crowed: ”We just won the pennant.” MacPhail was right.
”He was my hero, my idol,” recalled Phil Cavarretta, who was among Herman`s Cub teammmates. ”When I was a kid, I used to go the fire station, across from left field, and watch the players come out. I took a liking to him. Maybe it was because he was such a handsome guy.”
In the hairy world of professional baseball, there is a prejudice against good-looking ballplayers. The assumption is they are afraid to roll in the dirt, fearful their pretty-boy faces will be marred.
Herman was an exception. Whenever there was an on-the-field brawl, he usually was the first off the bench. He was the leader in two memorable World Series rhubarbs.
In `32, his second big-league season, he shouted across the Wrigley Field diamond in defiance of Babe Ruth and the mighty New York Yankees. The Yankees were the aggressors; they had accused the Cubs of being ”cheap” because shortstop Mark Koenig, a late-season Cub pickup, had not been voted a full Series share.
It was during this Series, in the third game, that the Babe supposedly hit his ”called-shot home run” off Charlie Root. According to the legend, which has remained one of the biggest myths in sports, the Babe pointed toward the center-field bleachers, as if to say, ”That`s where I`m going to hit the next pitch.”
The Cub players insisted it was nonsense, that he merely was holding up two fingers to indicate the count. Root had two strikes on him.
”If he`d have pointed and hit it there, he`d have been on his butt the rest of the Series,” Herman insisted, meaning the Cub pitchers would have sent the Babe sprawling with a blizzard of knockdown pitches.
”Our bench was on him, calling him everything-a big fat baboon, everything you could think of him,” Herman said in a 1988 interview. ”He was pointing toward our dugout, not to center field.”
Three years later, in the Series against the Detroit Tigers, Herman was fined $200 by Judge Kenesaw Mountain Landis, baseball`s first commissioner, for ”vile language” in another across-the-field shouting match. It was, at the time, the heaviest fine in Series play.
But Herman was more, much more, than a spirited bench jockey. He had a 15-year major-league career and was easily the best hit-and-run man of his time, perhaps of any time. He retired with a .304 lifetime average.
”He was my first roommate,” Cavarretta recalled. ”We were together six, maybe seven years. When I first came up, I was an 18-year-old kid first baseman. Didn`t know anything. Billy showed me how to play the hitters. He moved around the field like it was a checkerboard. He had a great knack for knowing how to play the hitters. He was the leader of our ballclub.
”And I`m not saying this because he was my friend, but he could hit-and- run better than anyone I`ve ever seen.”
Though he batted right-handed, he was a right-field hitter. He batted second in the lineup and had a short swing. Unless he was trying to pull, he waited on the pitch and wouldn`t swing until the ball was within a foot or two from the plate.
”He was an intelligent player, the smartest player I played with,” said Billy Jurges, Herman`s keystone partner. (Jurges, 84, has recovered from a serious illness. He was hospitalized 100 days last year.)
”The two of us were a great second-base combination,” Jurges continued. ”I always knew what he was doing, and he always knew what I was doing.”
Jurges was told that in 1943, when Herman was with the Dodgers, he only had two home runs but, nonetheless, drove in 100 runs.
”Oh, my gosh, did he do that?” Jurges said. ”That`s wonderful.”
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Pee Wee Reese, the Dodgers` Hall-of-Fame shortstop, has vivid memories of Herman.
”I`m sure we traded for him so he could help me,” he said. ”I was just a kid. Leo (Durocher, then the Dodgers` manager) always said Billy was a very intelligent player.”
Herman was also one of the few players who constantly challenged Durocher. Once, when he hit into a double play after Durocher twice had given him the take sign, Herman threw the ball in the dugout and hit Durocher in the head.
Reese laughed.
”I don`t remember that,” he said, ”but more than once, during infield practice, Billy would purposely throw the ball at Leo in the dugout. He hit him a few times, too.”
Several years ago, during the Hall-of-Fame weekend at Cooperstown, Herman was asked if he had seen much of Ryne Sandberg.
”Six or seven times on television,” he replied. ”He must be a hell of a ballplayer. Everyone says so.”
Then Herman asked: ”Does he play every day?”
He was told Sandberg rarely sits out.
”Those are the kind of guys I like,” Herman replied, ”the ones who play every day. You have to be playing hurt when you`re in there every day.” William Jennings Bryan Herman is no longer in the lineup. He died on Sept. 5, at 83, and was buried Tuesday in Jupiter, Fla.