Turn back the clock: memories from former shortstop Joe DeMaestri

Baseball Digest, Sept, 2003 by Norman L Macht

ON DECEMBER 11, 1959 JOE DeMaestri got the best Christmas present of his life. After eight consecutive years as a shortstop for deep second division denizens of the American League, he had had enough. It was time to go home to the family beer distributing business in northern California.

Then he got a call from the Yankees, informing him that he had been included in the seven-man trade that brought Roger Maris from Kansas City to New York. It took him less than ten seconds to change his mind about retiring. Although the Yankees had finished third in 1959, the chance of a World Series payoff was always good.

"It was the best move I ever made," DeMaestri said at his home in Novato, California. "Two years, two World Series. The worst move I made was when I walked away from the Yankees after the '61 season. I could have stayed. The next year they came out and played the Giants in the World Series right in my home town. That's the only regret I have."

DeMaestri quickly learned how different it was to play for the Yankees. "First day of spring training in 1960, I'm sitting at my locker and suddenly there's about five players around me: Bill Skowron, Gil McDougald, Yogi Berra ... One of them said to me, 'Just remember, every time you take the field, you're playing with our money.'

"They weren't used to losing. They expected that extra money every year. I never forgot that. It was an entirely different attitude from what I was used to."

The journey that ended with a World Series ring began in 1947 riding the bus at Class C San Jose for 8140 a month. "Red Sox scout Charlie Wallgren signed me out of high school in '46. Some other guys from my school had signed for big bonuses--$10,000. My mother knew that, so she held out for a bonus for me. I'd have signed for nothing, but she squeezed 8600 out of them."

DeMaestri rose to AA Birmingham and $225 a month in 1950, then was drafted by the White Sox. Two months into the '51 season, he endured the. most embarrassing moment of his career.

"Paul Richards was the manager, the smartest, toughest, most intense manager I ever played for. Ask anybody who played for him; they'll probably tell you the same thing. No conversation. No words of encouragement, Seldom a smile. He never got close to his players. But in a game he was always two, three innings ahead, like he knew what was going to happen.

"Well, this time he didn't know what was about to happen. We're in Boston, June 22, a night game. The White Sox are in first place, three games ahead of the Yankees. I hadn't been playing much, and it was always tough for me to stay in shape sitting on the bench. Some guys can do it; I never could.

"We're down, 6-3, in the fifth inning. Our pitcher, Randy Gumpert, is due to lead off. Richards looks down the bench and says, 'DeMaestri, get a bat.'

"I felt like I was walking on eggs. I'm a 22-year-old rookie. You're whole life suddenly changes. Mel Parnell was pitching for Boston. I swung at a pitch and I knew I hit it pretty good, headed for the Green Monster. I put my head down and I'm running all oat and make the turn at first, don't look at the coach, don't see Ted Williams play it off the wall and fire it in to second.

"All I know is off the wall is a double, right? I round first and get about a third of the way to second and all of a sudden my legs don't want to run anymore. I feel myself leaning forward and fall flat on my face about 20 feet from second. I'm lying there watching Bobby Doerr take the throw at second and turn to put the tag on me. I can't move. "He walks over to me. 'You're hurt,' he says.

"'No.'

"Well, you're out,' he says,

"Now I gotta get up and take that long walk back to the bench. There was a bathroom with a swinging door just inside one end of the dugout. The whole team was trying to cram in there, they were laughing so hard and didn't want Richards to see it. Richards is sitting all alone at the other end, this vast empty bench beside him. When I got there he didn't say a word, didn't even look at me. He didn't have to. His expression told me enough.

"The photo of me lying there in the dirt went all over the country. When I got back to Chicago my wife greeted me with it at the front door. Fifty years later Eddie Robinson, the first baseman on that team, still reminds me of it when I see him."

Richards managed the White Sox to a fourth-place finish, good for a $500 bonus on DeMaestri's $5,000 salary.

In November, DeMaestri was part of a multi-player trade that sent him to St. Louis and the horror of playing for Rogers Hornsby.

"Hornsby got on you about everything. He tried to teach everybody his way. He'd say, 'You can't hit that way,' and grab a bat and show you how he did it, like you could hit .400 doing it his way, too."

Bill Veeck was the Browns' owner, and the ageless Satchel Paige was his best pitcher. "Hornsby hated Paige," DeMaestri said. "His kind of players were tough, scrappy, wild men like Jim Rivera and Clint Courtney, the opposite of Satch. First morning of spring training, we're all sitting on some bleachers while Hornsby's talking--all but Satch. Then we see Satch ambling slowly toward us, trying to sneak in behind Hornsby's back.