Speaker 1: Pushkin. Hello listeners, exciting news. Today you can enjoy a
Speaker 1: double dose of malefactors and meltdowns. In honor of my
Speaker 1: new mini series on the Art of Fairness, I have
Speaker 1: not just one, but two cautionary tales for you. Straight
Speaker 1: after this episode, you'll be able to listen to another
Speaker 1: story on this feed, all about an astonishing race to
Speaker 1: build a skyscraper in just thirteen months. And now on
Speaker 1: with our first episode. Nineteen twenty eight and Leo du
Speaker 1: Rocha is a new player on the feigned New York
Speaker 1: Yankees baseball team. He's slight in build and not especially fast,
Speaker 1: and now rounding first base and heading as quickly as
Speaker 1: he can to second, he can see his opponent glove
Speaker 1: ready is about to slam his foot down on the base.
Speaker 1: If he does that before de Rochia gets there, then
Speaker 1: de Rochia is out. Darrocha can try diving head first
Speaker 1: at the base to get there before his opponent, but
Speaker 1: he knows he's not going to be fast enough, so
Speaker 1: he takes a different approach. He has sharp spikes on
Speaker 1: the bottom of his shoes, ostensibly just for grip as
Speaker 1: he runs, but they can also serve as a powerful weapon.
Speaker 1: He leaps feet forward towards the base. As he hits
Speaker 1: the ground and slides, he raises his feet high. When
Speaker 1: he makes contact, the spikes gouge hard into his opponent's leg,
Speaker 1: tearing open the skin, hitting the bone. Darochia stands up,
Speaker 1: brushes himself off. He's made it, but he's gained something
Speaker 1: more important than second base. He's gained a reputation. Next time,
Speaker 1: his opponents are going to think twice about even trying
Speaker 1: to get in his way. Leo de Rocha became one
Speaker 1: of the best known baseball managers of the twentieth century,
Speaker 1: famous for saying that nice guys finish last. But is
Speaker 1: that true? That's what I'll explore today with help from
Speaker 1: my friend David Bandanas. He's written about this idea in
Speaker 1: his book The Art of Fairness, The Power of Decency
Speaker 1: in a World Turned Mean. David also has some first
Speaker 1: hand experience with Derochia. For everything came to a test
Speaker 1: in nineteen sixty nine when Derochia was managing in Chicago
Speaker 1: and David Bandanas was there. I'm Tim Harford, and you're
Speaker 1: listening to cautionary tales. This is cautionary tales, and I'm
Speaker 1: joined in the studio by David Bandanas himself. Welcome David, Hello, sir.
Speaker 1: Now you were never formally introduced to Derosha, but I
Speaker 1: understand you spent lots of time at games that he managed. Right.
Speaker 2: Oh, nineteen sixty nine was a beautiful year. I was
Speaker 2: in my last year of elementary school and school was
Speaker 2: a bit boring, so I spent a lot of time
Speaker 2: with my friends going down to watch the Cubs games.
Speaker 2: It was a rougher area where the stadium was. It's
Speaker 2: a little bit scary, but we got used to it,
Speaker 2: and before long we weren't scared. We were accepted. And
Speaker 2: we'd stay laid after the games to help clean the stands.
Speaker 2: That got us free tickets for the next day.
Speaker 1: That's not a bad gig. So what was it like
Speaker 1: seeing Derosia in action?
Speaker 2: It was exciting. It was the peak of our life
Speaker 2: to that time. Often and we'd stop what we were
Speaker 2: doing cleaning up in the stands, and we'd look down
Speaker 2: and we'd watch him do interviews after the game. It
Speaker 2: was a beautiful, beautiful setting. The field was empty below us.
Speaker 2: There was just open green space right in the middle
Speaker 2: of Chicago. He'd be alone with the journalists or sometimes
Speaker 2: a single camera crew. At other times, when we got
Speaker 2: there early, we'd come right to the edge of the
Speaker 2: field and we'd watch him organizing the players. He'd comment
Speaker 2: on batting practice, stuff like that, one of the star
Speaker 2: pitchers was from Canada. Well, my dad had grown up
Speaker 2: in Canada. And a couple of times I got his
Speaker 2: attention and the picture would smile at me. I kind
Speaker 2: of like to imagine that Derocher saw that and frowned.
Speaker 2: He always looked ticked off if anyone interrupted what he
Speaker 2: was doing. But honestly, that could just be a later memory.
Speaker 1: But Deroch hadn't begun in Chicago, had he.
Speaker 2: No, We always thought of him as a New Yorker.
Speaker 2: That's where he had played, That's where he'd coached when
Speaker 2: he was younger. Chicago had strong players, but we hadn't
Speaker 2: made it to the World Series. In ages, there was
Speaker 2: a lot of pain being a Cubs fan. We had
Speaker 2: a beautiful field. It was the oldest and the National League.
Speaker 2: It dated from before World War One. There were old
Speaker 2: red bricks, there was ivy on the outfield wall. The
Speaker 2: scoreboard was actually turned by hand, and there were no
Speaker 2: big parking lots outside. You were right next to city apartments,
Speaker 2: and they crowded in right to the edge of the stadium.
Speaker 2: People who lived in those buildings were really lucky. They
Speaker 2: would sometimes rent out their windows or rent out their
Speaker 2: roof space so cheapskates could get a view. So we
Speaker 2: had all this beautiful stadium, good players, but we never
Speaker 2: ever won. Leo du Rocher was brought in to fix that.
Speaker 1: So as it had to say that he was your hero.
Speaker 2: He really really was. I was twelve and Chicago was
Speaker 2: proud of being a solid blue collar city, and so
Speaker 2: here was this guy. He was tough, he was matter
Speaker 2: of fact. He looked exasperate almost all the time, but
Speaker 2: then he'd sort of ease up. He'd almost be smiling
Speaker 2: at his own exasperation. We thought that was kind of cool.
Speaker 2: Sportswriters really liked him, at least most of the time.
Speaker 2: There's a feeling he might be a son of a bitch,
Speaker 2: a curmudgeon, but he was a lovable one, and everyone
Speaker 2: knew his quote that nice guys finish last. It seemed
Speaker 2: pretty likely his approach would work. In Midsummer, our cubs
Speaker 2: were way in front.
Speaker 1: Okay, and forgive me that I'm not a baseball expert.
Speaker 1: So for people like me who might not know, just
Speaker 1: remind me how the baseball season works.
Speaker 2: That is a totally fair question. If you asked me
Speaker 2: about rugby or soccer, I would not know. I would
Speaker 2: even use the wrong word for soccer. Baseball starts in
Speaker 2: the spring, it goes through an incredibly hot summer, especially
Speaker 2: if you live in Chicago, and it finishes usually in September,
Speaker 2: and then there's playoffs in October. Well, to get ahead,
Speaker 2: Chicago needed to be first in their division. That would
Speaker 2: get us to the playoffs, and if we won those,
Speaker 2: then we could make be getting to the World Series. Okay, well,
Speaker 2: it was a good time. We were in front and
Speaker 2: there wasn't much competition. The second place team was the
Speaker 2: New York Mets. They were really, really far behind. Also,
Speaker 2: the manager of the Mets was the opposite of DeRosier.
Speaker 2: His name was Gil Hodges, and he was known as
Speaker 2: the nicest man in baseball. We weren't worried, but there
Speaker 2: was something else for me on the line too. I
Speaker 2: had a girlfriend at the time, or a young lady
Speaker 2: who went with our group to the Cubs games, and
Speaker 2: I hoped she'd be a girlfriend and I was confident
Speaker 2: she would because she whispered to me that I was
Speaker 2: going to get a kiss, my very first kiss if
Speaker 2: the Cubs won.
Speaker 1: Wow. Okay, so this is the crucial summer. It's the
Speaker 1: test of Derosha's maxim that nice guys finished last. Hodges
Speaker 1: is a nice guy, Derosha isn't. And it looked like
Speaker 1: Hodges would lose and Derosha would be proven right about
Speaker 1: nice guys. But with that kiss on the line, that
Speaker 1: was still time for everything to change. David, you got
Speaker 1: me curious about Derotion Now. What was he like when
Speaker 1: he started out.
Speaker 2: As a kid. I had no idea. Later, as adults,
Speaker 2: I looked back, I researched. It turned out he grew
Speaker 2: up on the East Coast in the nineteen tens. His
Speaker 2: parents were from Quebec, so as a kid he only
Speaker 2: spoke French when he went to school. He couldn't speak
Speaker 2: a word of English.
Speaker 1: But he was good at sports.
Speaker 2: Boy was he good. He was good in a particular way.
Speaker 2: He was a small guy, but he had good reflexes
Speaker 2: and he could hustle. He was really fast. And the
Speaker 2: thing is the big thing, he never gave up anything
Speaker 2: that would help him when he would do. He cheated,
Speaker 2: he tried to intimidate umpires as we saw. He was
Speaker 2: famous for using his spikes to gouge opponents when he
Speaker 2: slid into.
Speaker 1: Base and did that kind of thing work.
Speaker 2: Boy, did it work. Even with his limited talent, he
Speaker 2: managed to get on one of the most famous teams
Speaker 2: of all time, the nineteen twenties New York Yankees. Babe
Speaker 2: Bruce was the star of the team, and he used
Speaker 2: to say that Durocher couldn't hit the floor if he
Speaker 2: dropped a cigarette. It's harsh, but accurate. He was a
Speaker 2: terrible hitter, but he kept hustling and threatening and taking shortcuts.
Speaker 2: He used to say, I'd knock over my mother if
Speaker 2: she was rounding a base and I needed the winning run. Later,
Speaker 2: he became manager with other teams in New York, and
Speaker 2: he led the New York Giants to two championships and
Speaker 2: mellowed in your dreams. He got his players to act
Speaker 2: just like him. It's kind of attractive when somebody's a
Speaker 2: bit of a jerk and leading your way and being
Speaker 2: a jerk wins. You're allowed to be who you've always
Speaker 2: wanted to be. He had his pitchers throw fastballs. They
Speaker 2: would go right at the other team's heads. At one
Speaker 2: point this was brilliant. He set up a hidden telescope
Speaker 2: to steal the signals of his opponents right in the
Speaker 2: middle of the game, and all the time he kept
Speaker 2: on trying to intimidate umpires. He'd also always have his
Speaker 2: players gouge opponents when they could. All that was always
Speaker 2: going on. He even liked saying that he meant it
Speaker 2: about his mother. He would describe how when he went home,
Speaker 2: she was terribly hurt what he said, and as he
Speaker 2: put it, for the rest of my life, as long
Speaker 2: as I visited, she'd walk around with an injured air.
Speaker 2: And I guess she had a right to God rest
Speaker 2: your soul. Mom, I'm afraid I would have knocked you over.
Speaker 1: It doesn't sound like a very attractive man. So where
Speaker 1: does that lovable curmudgeon reputation come from.
Speaker 2: Well, you have to think of it from the outside.
Speaker 2: None of us really knew all the horrible details, certainly
Speaker 2: not in Chicago. And to be honest, most baseball fans
Speaker 2: across America, and someone who seems tough, it's pretty appealing
Speaker 2: if they're on your side. When he managed the Brooklyn Dodgers,
Speaker 2: in the nineteen forties. The fans loved him. He was
Speaker 2: salt of the earth, working hard. They like to think
Speaker 2: they were salt of the earth, and boy, blue collar
Speaker 2: jobs in America at the time were really hard work. Well,
Speaker 2: it was the same thing in my Chicago in the
Speaker 2: nineteen sixties. They used to say that when in America
Speaker 2: made half the steel in the world, Chicago made half
Speaker 2: the steal in America. We were so proud of that.
Speaker 2: People would go to the game's earthy fingers, sweaty literally
Speaker 2: blue shirts. Du Rocher was one of us.
Speaker 1: And de Rocher brought the first black player into the league, didn't.
Speaker 2: He That's the other thing. If your strong willed in
Speaker 2: one direction, you can be strong willed in another. In
Speaker 2: nineteen forty seven he was with Brooklyn and he brought
Speaker 2: Jackie Robinson into the league, the very first black player
Speaker 2: in professional baseball. There was really nasty segregation going on
Speaker 2: till then. Black players just weren't allowed in the main leagues.
Speaker 2: But now, especially after World War Two, seemed ridiculous.
Speaker 1: And how did it go over well?
Speaker 2: Most of de Rocher's players were pretty decent about it,
Speaker 2: but some were from the South. They did not like
Speaker 2: having a black man anywhere near them. So they signed
Speaker 2: a petition, and that petition said get rid of Jackie Robinson.
Speaker 2: We will not play on a team with him. De
Speaker 2: Rocher couldn't stand that. He knew what it was like
Speaker 2: to be picked on. He grabbed the players who signed
Speaker 2: the petition and he yelled at them, and he screamed
Speaker 2: at them they could go f themselves as well as
Speaker 2: at effing petition if they didn't unsign it right now,
Speaker 2: they were fired. That was going to happen, No apology,
Speaker 2: no excuse. Robinson stayed and he was a great player.
Speaker 2: De Rocher wanted to win.
Speaker 1: Okay, So toughness lets you get things done, and not
Speaker 1: only winning, but forcing through these big symbolic steps towards
Speaker 1: racial justice. So Durocher had a point. It doesn't always
Speaker 1: pay to simply be nice. If you want to get
Speaker 1: things done, you might need to be a little bit hard,
Speaker 1: even to be a bit obnoxious.
Speaker 2: You're right, but it isn't the full story. De Rocher
Speaker 2: loved it in New York, but something was about to
Speaker 2: happen there, something that would change everything for him.
Speaker 1: And we'll hear all about that. When cautionary tales returns
Speaker 1: in a moment. We're back. I am in the studio
Speaker 1: with David Badani's author of the Art of Fairness, and
Speaker 1: we're talking about whether Leo de Rocha was right that
Speaker 1: nice guys finished last. David, We've known each other a
Speaker 1: very long time, and you've been interested in these ideas
Speaker 1: for I think as long as I've known you twenty
Speaker 1: five years or so.
Speaker 2: Yeah. To really write about something well, or to write deeply,
Speaker 2: at least for me, I have to really care about it.
Speaker 2: And I think it comes from way back when I
Speaker 2: was a kid. I really hated the idea that terrible
Speaker 2: people could succeed. Bullies succeeding at school, dictators succeeding in politics.
Speaker 2: I grew up in a Jewish neighborhood in Chicago. Not
Speaker 2: long after World War Two. A huge number of people
Speaker 2: who survived the death camps were all around us. They
Speaker 2: had tattoos on their forearms, my barber people's, the law store,
Speaker 2: pretty much everybody, and they weren't old. They were in
Speaker 2: their thirties. Anyways, history showed that terrible people often win,
Speaker 2: so I thought maybe I was being naive about wanting
Speaker 2: the other side to succeed. That's what made me get
Speaker 2: into this book, The Art of Fairness. I wanted to
Speaker 2: find out what are the actual limitations of being a jerk,
Speaker 2: of being horrible? And then the other side, what are
Speaker 2: the strengths of, if not being merely nice, at least
Speaker 2: being fair, what are those strengths? And since I knew
Speaker 2: about d Rocher from first hand experience, that's what brought
Speaker 2: me to the story.
Speaker 1: I remember when you first told me this idea for
Speaker 1: a book, and I just idolized you. Then, David, I mean,
Speaker 1: of course I still idolized you, but you know, I
Speaker 1: hadn't written a book, and I just thought to write
Speaker 1: a book would be the coolest thing ever. One of
Speaker 1: the early ideas was that you were going to have
Speaker 1: it reversible, So one side said nice guys finish first,
Speaker 1: and the other side said nice guys finish last. And
Speaker 1: you were going to explore these different ideas in the end,
Speaker 1: of course, it ended up being called The Art of
Speaker 1: fair It's such a rich topic for a book. There's
Speaker 1: so much to explore because there's just no one way
Speaker 1: to answer the question.
Speaker 2: Well, that's actually true, and if we're honest about ourselves,
Speaker 2: the kindest people have jerky sides underneath. Unless somebody is
Speaker 2: a total psychopath, they'll often be kind or reasonable. Yeah,
Speaker 2: the idea of a book that would open from different sides.
Speaker 2: They used to do that with science fiction books in
Speaker 2: the fifties and sixties and the cheap magazines. And I
Speaker 2: got the idea from William Blake Songs of Innocence, Songs
Speaker 2: of Experience. You take the same project and come in
Speaker 2: in different directions. I was always fascinated about that.
Speaker 1: Yeah, But as we discussed it at the time, I
Speaker 1: was doing into game theory, so there's a mathematical way
Speaker 1: of thinking about cooperation, and of course there is that
Speaker 1: side to it, and you can approach it as a
Speaker 1: mathematician or as a scientist, as an economist, but you
Speaker 1: can draw in all of these other possible stories as well,
Speaker 1: and bring the arts, bring history into this topic.
Speaker 2: That actually threw me at the beginning. In my own
Speaker 2: background was in math, and I tried to do it
Speaker 2: very formally this book. I tried to go through the
Speaker 2: logic behind it, and I found that didn't really hold.
Speaker 2: There's a subtlety of human interaction, so in a sense,
Speaker 2: you can only learn from experience. It's really weird. I
Speaker 2: remember when I was a kid, I was really irritated.
Speaker 2: I would say to people, well, tell me exactly why
Speaker 2: and what to do, and it follows. It was like
Speaker 2: you plug numbers into a math equation and the results
Speaker 2: are automatic. Why couldn't I plug certain principles into my
Speaker 2: own life and everything would be good.
Speaker 1: I have some very friendly people on YouTube who will
Speaker 1: happily sell you three or five or ten principles that
Speaker 1: will sort out your life. But it never works like that,
Speaker 1: does it.
Speaker 2: It never never works to plug a good advice into
Speaker 2: what we actually do. That's what's hard. Advice is easy
Speaker 2: to state, but really hard to carry out. You need
Speaker 2: practical experience.
Speaker 1: But at the risk of introducing spoilers, I am guessing,
Speaker 1: since you've written an entire book about the art of fairness,
Speaker 1: I'm guessing that Derosia's max him nice guys finish last.
Speaker 1: That's not always right, even if sometimes it works well.
Speaker 2: My greatest pleasure was finding the exceptions. When my oldest
Speaker 2: boy was a teenager, he asked me before going into
Speaker 2: the world. He said, Dad, all the stuff we've learned,
Speaker 2: is it true? And I genuinely didn't know. I've done
Speaker 2: very little in the outside world. So I said, I'll
Speaker 2: take a look. And he was young, and I even
Speaker 2: believed that I would find out. Anyways, this book is
Speaker 2: part of the story, and it turns out when you
Speaker 2: start acting like a jerk, it can be really hard
Speaker 2: to stop. You get used to doing whatever you want
Speaker 2: to getting your way just by pushing, just by pushing
Speaker 2: hard against other people.
Speaker 1: So, speaking of other people, Derochia had a rival. He
Speaker 1: had this rival manager, and this rival had a very
Speaker 1: very different approach to Deroshia.
Speaker 2: Ah. That was Gil Hodges. Now in nineteen sixty nine,
Speaker 2: he was the manager of the New York Mets. That
Speaker 2: was our arch competitor. Oooh boo hiss. But he actually
Speaker 2: knew Derocher really well. Hodges was a little bit younger
Speaker 2: than Durocher, and back in the nineteen fifties he'd been
Speaker 2: a player on one of de Rocher's teams. But yet
Speaker 2: he was a totally different character in what way De
Speaker 2: Rocher I think was born with something wrong with him.
Speaker 2: Gil Hodges was a coal miner son and he'd served
Speaker 2: in World War Two. He was a decorated combat marine.
Speaker 2: Everything he had always done was about solidarity, about cooperation,
Speaker 2: about working together as a player, he'd take the time
Speaker 2: to coach others who needed it. He was aggressive enough
Speaker 2: when he was hitting and running. He was a really
Speaker 2: good player, but he never mocked teammates who were having
Speaker 2: a bad stretch. De Rocher always had to cheat to succeed,
Speaker 2: not Hodges. He could get by on pure talent. He
Speaker 2: never jabbed his spikes into anyone's legs. And of course
Speaker 2: he interrupted his playing career and lost several years of
Speaker 2: salary to serve in World War Two. That was something
Speaker 2: mister Durocher very carefully avoided. When de Rocher was a manager,
Speaker 2: hughes Hodges because Hodges was talented, but he never understood
Speaker 2: why Hodges insisted on those soft attitudes, being helpful to others,
Speaker 2: playing a game by the rules, even being willing to
Speaker 2: serve your country.
Speaker 1: Goodness me And so later on, when Hodges himself was
Speaker 1: a manager, how did he behave? Then?
Speaker 2: One of the great things is, as you know, tim,
Speaker 2: a lot of people, power goes to their head. Hodges
Speaker 2: stayed the same guy. He stayed the opposite to Durocher.
Speaker 2: Now again, that doesn't mean he was soft. That's what
Speaker 2: Durocher and people like him kept getting wrong. Coal mining families,
Speaker 2: combat marines. These are not weak people. The thing is
Speaker 2: Hodges was fair. It always meant a lot to him.
Speaker 2: When he was managing the New York Mets in that
Speaker 2: big year of nineteen sixty nine, one of his star
Speaker 2: players in the outfield was slacking off. It was near
Speaker 2: the end of a long night game. Well, that was
Speaker 2: unfair to the other players. Hodges knew that. So he
Speaker 2: walked all the way across the field in front of
Speaker 2: the fans, in front of the TV cameras, and then
Speaker 2: with that player he walked all the way back. A
Speaker 2: replacement was going to take his place. Well, it was
Speaker 2: embarrassing for the player, but Hodges didn't rub it in.
Speaker 2: That was the fair thing. He said that from the
Speaker 2: next day on, the incident would be entirely forgotten. That
Speaker 2: he had treat the player with as much respect as ever,
Speaker 2: And he did. That player, Cleon Jones, he knew he
Speaker 2: had messed up. He played as hard out for the
Speaker 2: team after that.
Speaker 1: So Hodges sounds firm but fair, and he sounds like
Speaker 1: someone who could quietly earn respect rather than demanding it
Speaker 1: by screaming yes.
Speaker 2: That's the contrast with Durocher. Hodges wouldn't pick on someone
Speaker 2: weaker than him. But Durocher he loved doing that. Remember,
Speaker 2: he was terrified of finishing last in anything. There must
Speaker 2: have been some internal weakness he needed to dominate. One time,
Speaker 2: right at the end of World War Two, a fan
Speaker 2: was mocking him. Durocher hated that sort of thing, so
Speaker 2: he got an off duty policeman to lead the fan
Speaker 2: to a little room behind the dugout. It was secluded,
Speaker 2: it was out of sight, and then Durocher gave a signal.
Speaker 2: The policeman was going to double the fan over, so
Speaker 2: he hit him with a blackjack.
Speaker 1: Well it's a blackjack.
Speaker 2: A blackjack is like a truncheon, but much meaner and
Speaker 2: often with a big, heavy metal tip. Well, after the
Speaker 2: policeman did that, the fan was weak, so Derochier got
Speaker 2: to work. He started punching him in the face. The
Speaker 2: fan tried to get away, but he was a veteran
Speaker 2: actually of World War two. He was wounded. He had
Speaker 2: a damaged leg. So de Rocher kept a hold with
Speaker 2: one hand and with the other hand he pulled his
Speaker 2: fist back and he punched him in the face. And
Speaker 2: he punched him in the face over and over, breaking
Speaker 2: his jaw. I have had the joy and misfortune of
Speaker 2: spending a certain amount of my life around boxing rings.
Speaker 2: It takes a lot of work to break somebody's jaw.
Speaker 2: Even the policeman thought that was too much. What are
Speaker 2: you doing, Leo, he said, that's from his testimony in court.
Speaker 2: Later he repeated it, what are you doing? But even
Speaker 2: the policeman was too scared of Durocher to stop him.
Speaker 2: The fan was an hospital for weeks.
Speaker 3: It went to court, which means it's all over for Derosia. Surely, yeah, right,
Speaker 3: This was New York City. Almost all the jurors were
Speaker 3: Brooklyn Dodgers fans. They determined and thought about the case
Speaker 3: for something like eleven minutes. Durocher was cleared.
Speaker 1: Deroche was cleared. I suppose that figures. So he got
Speaker 1: away with it, and his treatment of his players sounds
Speaker 1: very different to the way Hodges behaved too.
Speaker 2: It certainly was a Durosier had a lot of baseball
Speaker 2: knowledge to share, and one of the strengths about being
Speaker 2: a jerk is that you can actually be objective. If
Speaker 2: a famous player was weak, he'd bench him. If an
Speaker 2: unknown player was strong, he'd let him play. So that
Speaker 2: part of it was good. On the other hand, he
Speaker 2: couldn't stop from booling everyone, absolutely everyone, including players on
Speaker 2: his own team. And since he loved spending money and
Speaker 2: he had his tendency to get married and then divorced,
Speaker 2: and then married and then divorced, he did that about
Speaker 2: three or four times. From all that, he was in
Speaker 2: debt a lot. So he started cheating when he played
Speaker 2: cards with his own players, and he'd cheat when he
Speaker 2: played craps games with them, throwing the dice. He knew
Speaker 2: a little about how to do that already, but he
Speaker 2: liked hanging out with gangsters and he learned more.
Speaker 1: So he learned more about how to cheat.
Speaker 2: He certainly did. He got really good at it. And
Speaker 2: you know what, he found cheating against guys who were
Speaker 2: grown up, who have been playing ball lived in New
Speaker 2: Yorker big cities for a while. Those guys were really
Speaker 2: hard to hustle. So he looked at sweet boys just
Speaker 2: coming in from the farms. America was much more rural
Speaker 2: than it is now, and he would tell these boys,
Speaker 2: you want to make it in New York City, here's
Speaker 2: an easy way. There's a card game. The rules are
Speaker 2: very simple, but you got to bet big kid, you
Speaker 2: gotta bet big, so he would start cheating, not on
Speaker 2: small bets but for huge stakes. Finally, the baseball commissioner
Speaker 2: got rumors of this and he told him to stop.
Speaker 2: Leo du Rocher was unimpressed when anybody told him to stop.
Speaker 2: He kept going. In one craps game, he rigged the
Speaker 2: dice so much that he nearly in corrupted a leading pitcher.
Speaker 2: But that was against Hicks. When he tried keeping up
Speaker 2: with professional gamblers, he wasn't so lucky. He kept on losing,
Speaker 2: and he kept on losing, and it meant he needed
Speaker 2: to rig games even more than he ever had before.
Speaker 2: And whenever the administrators tried to rein him in, well,
Speaker 2: he let sports writers know what he felt about the
Speaker 2: big wigs in the offices. Because of that, in the
Speaker 2: late nineteen forties, de Rocher got suspended for an entire season.
Speaker 2: He was allowed back the following year, but that was
Speaker 2: his big weakness. He'd really set up an enemy. The
Speaker 2: powers that be had it in for him because of
Speaker 2: the gambling, mostly, but also because of the way he
Speaker 2: kept doing whatever worked. In nineteen fifty three, for example,
Speaker 2: there was an opposing team that had a player who
Speaker 2: was very effective. A player was Carl Ferrillo.
Speaker 1: He was the.
Speaker 2: Best hitter in the National League, a dangerous opponent for
Speaker 2: Derosier's team. Well, de Rocher wanted to get him out
Speaker 2: of the game, so he had his own pitcher hit
Speaker 2: Forrilla with a pitch and then de Roucher wagged his
Speaker 2: finger at him, mocking what had happened. Forrilla was furious,
Speaker 2: he charged into the dugout. That was exactly what Durocher hoped,
Speaker 2: and so in the safety of the dugout, du Rocher
Speaker 2: or maybe some players he'd arranged in advance, they very
Speaker 2: quickly shattered Forerrillo's wrist. The poor guy was out for
Speaker 2: the entire season. The competition was now easier.
Speaker 1: Wow. So he sounds like someone who would stop but
Speaker 1: absolutely nothing to win.
Speaker 2: He was, but that meant winning was the only thing
Speaker 2: he had to offer. The moment he stopped winning, nobody
Speaker 2: was going to give him a second chance. There was
Speaker 2: no loyalty, there was no friendship. So when the New
Speaker 2: York Giants that he was managing, when they had a
Speaker 2: poor season in nineteen fifty five, he was out fired.
Speaker 2: He'd bit in New York since Babe Ruth Yankees back
Speaker 2: in the nineteen twenties. So what was he going to
Speaker 2: do now? Other teams didn't want to hire him, or
Speaker 2: at least the top teams didn't. The gambling, the violence,
Speaker 2: They knew about that. It was too much, and he
Speaker 2: wasn't going to let anyone see him be weak, So
Speaker 2: he wasn't going to beg What he said instead was
Speaker 2: I've had enough, I'm retiring from baseball.
Speaker 1: But by nineteen sixty nine, when you are about the
Speaker 1: turn thirteen, Deroche's back on the scene with the Chicago Cubs.
Speaker 2: Right, that's it. When he was fired in New York,
Speaker 2: there wasn't a lot he could do. He tried broadcasting
Speaker 2: and he wasn't bad at it, but it didn't mean
Speaker 2: much to him. Not after being right at the center
Speaker 2: in the stadium. He was actually in an episode of
Speaker 2: a TV show with a talking horse.
Speaker 1: Oh classy.
Speaker 2: Curiously, I remember that show and I remember that horse.
Speaker 2: My poor parents had to sit while we enjoyed it. Anyways,
Speaker 2: for Durocher, that sort of episode was enough. Late in
Speaker 2: nineteen sixty five, he was sixty one years old, he
Speaker 2: signed up to manage the Chicago Cubs. My Chicago Cubs.
Speaker 1: So what did you make of all this.
Speaker 2: At the time, I was a kid, so I really
Speaker 2: only had the faintest hint. He was famous. He'd played
Speaker 2: with Babe Ruth, He'd led New York teams to the
Speaker 2: World Series. There was talk that he was rough, maybe
Speaker 2: too rough, But remember this was Chicago. We were proud
Speaker 2: of that, and he didn't do much his first year
Speaker 2: nineteen sixty six. The Cubs weren't that impressive a team yet.
Speaker 2: They had one star player, Ernie Banks, but they had
Speaker 2: barely had a winning season in twenty years. Like I said,
Speaker 2: we Cubs fans knew pain, we were used to it.
Speaker 2: But the thing is, he was a jerk. He was
Speaker 2: a curmudgeon, et cetera, et cetera. But he really was skilled.
Speaker 2: He brought up promising youngsters. He knew tactics very well.
Speaker 2: In nineteen sixty seven they did better. Nineteen sixty eight
Speaker 2: was also good, and then came nineteen sixty nine. That
Speaker 2: was your summer that it was. I was twelve, I
Speaker 2: was about to turn thirteen. The city had been through
Speaker 2: a lot. Just the year before, there were terrible riots.
Speaker 2: I remember on a big street just a few yards
Speaker 2: from my home, watching jeeps with barbed wire on them,
Speaker 2: National Guard troops with machine guns and a really fierce
Speaker 2: look in their face going down the street to where
Speaker 2: the riots were going to be. Well, we were kind
Speaker 2: of a blue collar city. We liked the idea that
Speaker 2: we were tough, but we also liked the idea that
Speaker 2: we hung together. This new manager, he seemed to be
Speaker 2: showing that was possible. Being tough could unite everybody.
Speaker 1: And you were hanging out. You were going to watch
Speaker 1: every game, although when you're you supposed to be at.
Speaker 2: School, school, schmool. We thought of it more as guidelines.
Speaker 2: The team got off to such a good start back
Speaker 2: in nineteen sixty nine, starting in April, it was kind
Speaker 2: of hard to resist. And then in the summer when
Speaker 2: we were still ahead and there was no school, we
Speaker 2: were almost living there. And also there was that promise
Speaker 2: of the kiss if the Cubs won the division. Now
Speaker 2: in mid August, that seemed certain. I was a very
Speaker 2: very happy twelve year old. Hodge's New York Mets were
Speaker 2: well behind. The season was just six weeks from ending.
Speaker 2: They would have to undergo the greatest losing streak in
Speaker 2: the history of American baseball to miss out.
Speaker 1: Hm Well, there is about to be a showdown between
Speaker 1: Hodges de Rochia, and there's a kiss on the line.
Speaker 1: More on all of that after the break, we're back.
Speaker 1: I'm in the studio with David Bananas and David casting
Speaker 1: your mind back to being twelve years old, that amazing summer,
Speaker 1: the romance, the excitement, that the thrill of being on
Speaker 1: a winning team. That's how it seemed to you. Then
Speaker 1: what have you learned since then?
Speaker 2: Well, there are a lot of things I didn't realize.
Speaker 2: It's kind of nice being twelve years old and very,
Speaker 2: very innocent. One of the things I didn't know was
Speaker 2: how callous Durocher could really be, breaking that veteran's jaw
Speaker 2: hanging around with gangsters, and these gangsters were pretty nasty people.
Speaker 2: One of the men in a circle was Buggsy Siegel
Speaker 2: of Gangster, famous for organizing contract killing and helping the
Speaker 2: mafia take over early Las Vegas. Another thing I didn't
Speaker 2: realize was how much this season meant to Durocher. There
Speaker 2: were financial bonuses if you won, and they were even
Speaker 2: bigger bonuses if you got into the World Series. He'd
Speaker 2: lost a lot of money and gambling, and he had
Speaker 2: his big lifestyle with all those divorces, and he needed
Speaker 2: his cash.
Speaker 1: So what about his attitude to his players? Is there
Speaker 1: any sign that he was starting to mellow.
Speaker 2: Well, that's also what I had no idea about at
Speaker 2: the time. At batting practice, he'd swear a little bit,
Speaker 2: but this was Chicago who didn't swear. What I missed
Speaker 2: was how vicious he was to the players. The shortstop
Speaker 2: Ron Santo was Italian American, and I also had diabetes
Speaker 2: in that era. He had to hide it well. Durocher
Speaker 2: kept on riding him and swearing right up to his face,
Speaker 2: calling him weak, using really vicious insults about Italian Americans,
Speaker 2: but not in a sort of joky way that some
Speaker 2: people might do for bonding. It was deep, it was biting.
Speaker 2: Santo was a calm guy, but even he cracked in
Speaker 2: the clubhouse. One time he grabbed du Rocher by the
Speaker 2: throat and he wanted to kill him. His teammates had
Speaker 2: to pull him off.
Speaker 1: So Deochia, he's famous for bringing the black player Jackie
Speaker 1: Robinson on the team, but he's using these slurs against
Speaker 1: Italian Americans. I'm trying to work it. Was he a racist?
Speaker 1: Was he not a racist?
Speaker 2: It was probably mixed. He was a derosierist. Everyone knew
Speaker 2: about him bringing on Jackie Robinson. That was good. But
Speaker 2: the thing is he didn't bring Robinson on because he
Speaker 2: was standing up for the principles of racial equality. Derochier
Speaker 2: never stood up for any principles. He didn't even especially
Speaker 2: like Robinson. He just wanted to win. Robinson was a
Speaker 2: great player. Turned out a little bit later, Robinson had
Speaker 2: a problem with his weight, and de Rocher started insulting
Speaker 2: him so hard and so NonStop that even Jackie Robinson
Speaker 2: ended up hating him just as much as everyone else did. Now,
Speaker 2: a true racist puts their race first. Derochier was simpler.
Speaker 2: He just put himself first.
Speaker 1: And above all, he wanted to win. So did all
Speaker 1: this bullying help.
Speaker 2: That's what gave me such pleasure when I looked into
Speaker 2: it properly for the book. No, the bullying did not help.
Speaker 2: He would demand too much, he would go too far.
Speaker 2: Durocher kept his players going without replacement much much longer
Speaker 2: than he should have. Chicago's really hot in the summer,
Speaker 2: and it could be near one hundred percent humidity, feels tropical.
Speaker 2: But day after day, week after week, he wouldn't allow replacements.
Speaker 1: That seems so counterproductive.
Speaker 2: You're right. I think he'd liked seeing his players get
Speaker 2: weaker and weaker. It's kind of weird, but it made
Speaker 2: him feel strong. And then there were the umpires, exactly
Speaker 2: in front of the TV cameras. He'd ham it up,
Speaker 2: he'd stand toe to toe, he would yell at them.
Speaker 2: It seemed like a game, but it was more than
Speaker 2: a game. In quieter moments when he was alone away
Speaker 2: from the cameras, he'd really tried to undermine the umpires,
Speaker 2: saying the most personal things he could find out about
Speaker 2: their private lives. Now, you've got to remember there were
Speaker 2: barely any video reviews of calls. Then.
Speaker 1: The umpires had a lot of discretion, and making an
Speaker 1: enemy of them wasn't smart.
Speaker 2: It certainly was that. One sports writer wrote about it later.
Speaker 2: Quote Whether or not Leo ever united the Cubs against
Speaker 2: the Empires, he certainly united the umpires against the Cubs unquote.
Speaker 2: And then well, Durocher also encouraged the most unruly of
Speaker 2: the fans, people I knew pretty well to throw metal
Speaker 2: bolts or sometimes small stones at opposing players. The other
Speaker 2: teams hated that, and when they complained, du Rocher professed
Speaker 2: complete innocence.
Speaker 1: Even so, despite all the counter productive bullying, by mid August,
Speaker 1: the season is going to be over early October. By
Speaker 1: mid August, as you said, Chicago was way ahead, I
Speaker 1: think nine games ahead. So the only way they could
Speaker 1: lose would be if hodges Met had one of the
Speaker 1: greatest winning streaks in baseball history and Derosia's Cubs had
Speaker 1: one of the greatest losing streaks in baseball.
Speaker 2: You had to remind me to him, didn't you. It
Speaker 2: was a mess, it was a catastrophe. It's still I
Speaker 2: swear to god, it still hurts. The umpires hated to Rocher,
Speaker 2: and opposing players hated d Rocher and his own team
Speaker 2: really really hated him because he needed to feel strong
Speaker 2: and humiliate them, and he wouldn't give the starters a rest.
Speaker 2: They were getting exhausted. It's not that they totally gave up.
Speaker 2: They still had some pride. They're professional athletes. But by then,
Speaker 2: the constant bullying, the yelling, the unfairness, it was too much.
Speaker 2: Everyone else was bringing their strongest game against Chicago. Our
Speaker 2: players had to be on top. They weren't. When it
Speaker 2: first began to happen, the losing, we didn't realize what
Speaker 2: was going on. Every team loses a bit, and so
Speaker 2: that was okay. But it kept on, and when we
Speaker 2: hung out at the field edge during batting practice before
Speaker 2: the games, there was this feeling that something was different.
Speaker 2: The players were in a different zone. There was less
Speaker 2: joking between them. There was a kind of doggedness as
Speaker 2: they practice. We shared it too when my friends and
Speaker 2: I and the other kids from around the city, when
Speaker 2: we cleaned the stadium after the games, if anyone who
Speaker 2: was lifting the seats and sweeping down the garbage started
Speaker 2: to say hey, they'd be okay, we don't look at him,
Speaker 2: you didn't talk about it. If we were very quiet
Speaker 2: and very ordinary, maybe we'd all go away.
Speaker 1: And obviously it did not all go away.
Speaker 2: We'd been in first place for one hundred and fifty
Speaker 2: five consecutive days and then we lost it all. Everything
Speaker 2: fell apart. The city was going to be united, and
Speaker 2: me and my school friends we were getting more united.
Speaker 2: But these players, we'd look up to, the cubs, who
Speaker 2: are going to make up for the past and finally
Speaker 2: finally go all the way they lost it. Who could
Speaker 2: we trust? Everything felt different at school, at home, everywhere.
Speaker 2: The Mets won the division, and the kiss pleased. We
Speaker 2: were friends, we were kids in a sense, it would
Speaker 2: have been nothing. We even stayed friends, but at the
Speaker 2: time just made everything worse.
Speaker 1: And how far did Gil Hodge's team go?
Speaker 2: Well after beating us to take the National League East,
Speaker 2: they won the playoffs for the entire National League, and
Speaker 2: then they were into the World Series against Baltimore. I
Speaker 2: was listening to the series on the radio. Now the
Speaker 2: player that Hodges publicly reprimanded, Cleon Jones. In the fifth game,
Speaker 2: he gave his all in a spectacular catch that won
Speaker 2: the series for the New York Mets. Mister de Rocher
Speaker 2: and my cubbies were nowhere to be seen.
Speaker 1: David, my heart bleeds. It is a tragedy, but on
Speaker 1: caution details We try to learn from tragedy. So what
Speaker 1: is your conclusion from this story.
Speaker 2: It's pretty simple. Being too soft will not work, but
Speaker 2: being too harsh that's easily counterproductive too. There is a
Speaker 2: path in between being fair like Hodges, not a bully
Speaker 2: like Derocher. This really can be the way to finish.
Speaker 1: First David, it's been enjoyed. Thank you so much for
Speaker 1: joining me.
Speaker 2: A great pleasure.
Speaker 1: David Bardanas's wonderful book is the Art of Fairness. It
Speaker 1: is available at all good bookshops, naturally full of great stories,
Speaker 1: and every single one has a lesson about how to
Speaker 1: succeed without being a jerk. We're going back to our
Speaker 1: usual format next episode, but we will be telling several
Speaker 1: stories inspired by the Art of Fairness. So join me
Speaker 1: for stories of villains undone by their villainy, monstrous, self
Speaker 1: devouring egos, and accounts of the extraordinary power of decency
Speaker 1: next time on Cautionary Tales. Cautionary Tales is written by
Speaker 1: me Tim Harford with Andrew Wright. This mini series is
Speaker 1: based on David Bandanas's book The Art of Fairness, The
Speaker 1: Power of Decency in a World Turned Mean, and it
Speaker 1: was written with David Bandanas himself. For a full list
Speaker 1: of our sources, see the show notes at Timharford dot com.
Speaker 1: The show was produced by Alice Fines, with Marilyn Rust.
Speaker 1: The sound design and original music for the work of
Speaker 1: Pascal Wise. Sarah Nix edited the script. Cautionary Tales features
Speaker 1: the voice talents of Ben Crowe, Melanie Guttridge, Stella Harford,
Speaker 1: Jemma Saunders and rufus Wright. The show wouldn't have been
Speaker 1: possible without the work of Jacob Weisberg, Ryan Dilly, Greta Cohen,
Speaker 1: Eric Sandler, Carrie Brody, Christina Sullivan, Kira Posey and Owen Miller.
Speaker 1: Cautionary Tales is a production of Pushkin Industries. It's recorded
Speaker 1: at ward Or Studios in London by Tom Gerry. If
Speaker 1: you like the show, please remember to share, rate and review.
Speaker 1: It doesn't really make a difference to us and if
Speaker 1: you want to hear the show ad free, sign up
Speaker 1: to Pushkin Plus on the show page on Apple Podcasts
Speaker 1: or at pushkin dot fm, slash plus. The present is