Team chemistry: not always a necessary ingredient for winning club; many big league teams have succeeded in capturing championships despite fights, feuds and persistent dislike among teammates

Baseball Digest, Sept, 2002 by George Vass

NO DOUBT IT'S AN OVERSIGHT, but if you check Bartlett's Familiar Quotations for the wit and wisdom of Bill North you're sure to be disappointed.

Nowhere to be found is North's incisive dismissal of the significance of "team chemistry," that will-o'-the wisp so beloved of analytical sportswriters and other masters of fact or fiction.

To repair Bartlett's inexcusable omission, here's what North, a fiery major league outfielder for 11 seasons (1971-1981), had to say about devotion in the dugout and bonding in the bullpen:

"You don't have to love a guy to play ball alongside him."

North's riposte came after a notorious clubhouse battle with super ego/star Reggie Jackson when both were with the Oakland A's, a team that won three consecutive World Series (1972-1974) in a spirit of dedicated disharmony.

Fussing, feuding and fighting characterized the A's as they put together five consecutive division titles (1971-1975) for despotic owner Charlie Finley whom most of his players feared, despised or hated outright. For that matter, they weren't crazy about their managers, especially the last, Alvin Dark (1974-1975), whom some charged with abjectly toadying to Finley's decrees and whims.

A contemptuous player said dismissively of Dark, who professed to be devoutly religious: "He's all right. He just worships the wrong god--Charles O. Finley."

Chemistry? Only the mischievous variety with which adolescents concoct stink bombs.

Baseball requires collective effort, being a unique blend of team play and individual talent, but it has never demanded mutual esteem. As the A's and other successful teams have proved throughout the game's history, you don't have to get along to get ahead. All contributions are welcome, no matter how disagreeable the source.

Just a couple of years ago, Atlanta Braves closer John Rocker offended an incredibly vast array of minority groups, including immigrants, gays, Hispanics and African Americans, and most of his teammates. Rocker vented racial bias and other prejudices in a national magazine interview as well as off-the-cuff politically incorrect and thoughtless comments.

Rocker's diatribes "bothered a lot of the guys, obviously," said Braves star slugger Chipper Jones. Pitcher Greg Maddox observed, "The guy lost a lot of respect from his teammates."

Nevertheless, despite Rocker becoming a pariah in the Atlanta clubhouse, his 24 saves helped the Braves win their ninth consecutive division title in 2000. It was only after he struggled as a pitcher during the 2001 season that the Braves exiled him with a trade to the Cleveland Indians, who later pawned him off on the Texas Rangers.

The nasty Rocker situation was an extreme case with national interest overtones, of course, but teammate troubles have never been an insuperable barrier to success for either club or player in any era. Like people in all walks of life, ballplayers always have been able to find reasons to detest one another. Sometimes even to their mutual benefit.

Not only are the New York Yankees the most successful of all teams with World Series appearances in every decade from the 1920s on, but they've also been a hotbed of highly-publicized ill-will among their players. Most notable, and perhaps oddest, of their early feuds was a strange clash between their greatest stars of the 1920s and early 1930s, sluggers Babe Ruth and Lou Gehrig.

Woman trouble, as was so often the case for the free-wheeling and loose-living Ruth, was supposedly at the root of the dispute with Gehrig.

But in this instance, it was not the usual tangle Ruth got into with adoring and compliant females.

The antipathy of the Yankee stars was allegedly touched off by a slighting remark Gehrig's mother made about the way Mrs. Ruth dressed their daughter. Claire Ruth was miffed at having her child-rearing ability called into question and turned the Babe against Lou as well as his teammate's mother.

The rift widened to the point the former friends no longer spoke to one another. Or acknowledged each other's home runs with a handshake or a congratulatory smile, deliberately looking away. Not surprisingly, when Ruth left the Yankees after the 1934 season, Gehrig wasn't among the mourners.

The feud simmered until Lou Gehrig Day in 1939 after the first baseman had been diagnosed with the fatal disease to which he succumbed two years later. At that memorable event, Ruth hugged Gehrig to show all was forgiven. He later reenacted the scene in the movie "The Pride of the Yankees" by wrapping his arms around actor Gary Cooper who played the role of his former teammate.

Ruth and Gehrig apparently never exchanged blows, but the Babe had his share of fights with other teammates. The one most often recalled was with Leo Durocher, whom he supposedly beat to a pulp for stealing his watch. Durocher, however, while ignoring the charge of theft, claimed he once shoved a drunken Ruth onto a chair for baiting him, while admitting he couldn't have handled the big man if he had been sober.

The turbulent Durocher was the frequent focus of general disdain and occasional combat on the Yankees for whom he played in 1928 and 1929 before departing to create enemies elsewhere. Significantly, though Durocher was hated by most teammates wherever he went, he contributed his infield skills to such World Series winners as the 1934 St. Louis "Gas House Gang" Cardinals and the 1928 Yankees.