Brooks Lawrence to the Rescue (60 Years Ago, Sept. 3, 1956)

To those who might have said that Brooks Lawrence's failure to win any of his six starts in August may have cost the Cincinnati Reds the 1956 pennant: if it was not for his gutsy performance against the Milwaukee Braves on September 3rd, the Reds' pennant chances could well have ended right then and there, and it would have been a two-team Milwaukee vs. Brooklyn race to the end, instead of a three-team duel also involving Cincinnati.  

Brooks Lawrence to the Rescue
(60 Years Ago, September 3, 1956)

Trailing the Braves by 3½ games and tied with the Dodgers in second place, the Redlegs traveled to Milwaukee for a critical four-game series that would start with a doubleheader on September 3. This was their chance to cut into the Braves' lead, or it could have been the death knell to their season. That second scenario looked more plausible when their loss in the first game of their doubleheader on a walk-off win by the Braves dropped the Reds 4½ back, especially since they failed to hold onto a 2-0 lead because Hank Aaron hit home runs in the 4th and 7th innings to tie the game, then doubled and scored the winning run on Joe Adcock's single in the 9th. 

In the second game, the Reds held a 5-2 lead in the 3rd when the Braves loaded the bases with nobody out in the last half of the inning. Due up next were Aaron and Eddie Mathews, followed by Adcock. Aaron had 23 home runs, including his two in the first game, 78 runs batted in, and was batting .327. Mathews had 37 homers and 86 RBIs, and had been red-hot since the end of July, having belted 15 round trippers and driven in 38 runs in 39 games since August 1. Adcock had 34 homers, 93 RBIs, and was batting .305.

Did I mention the bases were loaded and there were no outs? Even with a 3-run lead, Cincinnati manager Birdie Tebbetts had no choice but to remove starting pitcher Larry Jansen from the proceedings, because that 3-run lead was looking very precarious. And the reality was: if the Reds hung on to win, they'd be back to a manageable 3½ games behind. But should they lose, they would be 5½ back. That potential two-game swing in the standings could make all the difference going forward. A 3½-game deficit with just 23 games left to play after this one was not too large to overcome, but 5½ games behind just might be.

So, who was he gonna call? Hersh Freeman was the Reds' relief ace, but Tebbetts probably thought it was too early in the game to call on him. Freeman rarely came into games before the 7th inning, and just once as early as the 5th. Art Fowler had often come into games in the early and middle innings and was rested, having last pitched four days ago, 6 innings of shutout ball to get a win against the Giants. There were a few other options, too, but—

—With the bases loaded, nobody out, Aaron and Mathews up next, Birdie Tebbetts wanted Brooks Lawrence, even though Lawrence had pitched a 9-inning complete-game victory just two days before. That was his 17th win of the year, but his first as a starting pitcher in more than a month (since July 29, to be precise).

In fact, Lawrence would not look back kindly on August 1956. He had won his first 13 decisions of the season, although four them were in games he came in to relieve. He ended the month of July on a high note with a complete-game victory in Pittsburgh in which he allowed just 4 hits. He was 15-2 at the time. His earned run average was 3.32. 

Then came August. Brooks Lawrence made 6 starts in August and lost them all. His earned run average for the month was a rather unsightly 5.89. Lawrence's one win was in relief, on August 9 against the Cubs; he entered a tie game in the top of the 9th with a runner at second and one out, retired Ernie Banks and Monte Irvin, pitched a scoreless 10th, and came out a winner on Gus Bell's walk-off homer. 

Two of Lawrence's August losses were against the Braves, the team out front in the National League. On August 12, pitching in Milwaukee where a victory would have cut the third-place Reds' deficit from two games behind to one, Lawrence gave up six runs before being sent to the showers in the third inning. Eight days after that, Lawrence gave up only 3 runs in 8 innings against the Braves, but was the losing pitcher because the Reds' offense was limited to a solo bottom-of-the-9th home run by Frank Robinson. All three runs Lawrence surrendered scored on homers—a two-run shot by Mathews, who was due up after Aaron in our game in question, and a solo shot by Adcock, due up after Mathews.

Lawrence's most recent engagements with the Braves didn't matter to Tebbetts. Neither did his very bad month of August. What mattered was that the bases were loaded, there were no outs, the Reds' 3-run lead was in jeopardy, the Braves three most dangerous hitters were next up, a loss could be devastating to Cincinnati's pennant chances, AND Brooks Lawrence, for all his August struggles, was his best pitcher.

Brooks Lawrence retired Aaron on a short fly to left and got Mathews to hit into a double play. End of inning. He left the mound with the Reds' 5-2 lead intact. Then he pitched the remaining 6 innings of the game. He gave up 3 runs, but not until after Cincinnati had taken a 5-run lead. And he pitched those 7 innings against the Braves in a must-win game on just one day of rest after pitching a 9-inning complete game. Lawrence was now 18-8, and the Reds were back to 3½ games behind the Braves.

Their season rescued by Lawrence, the Reds won the next two games against the Braves and left Milwaukee in second place, 1½ games behind and half-a-game up on the Dodgers. As of that date—September 5, 1956—there were 134 games down for the Cincinnati Reds and 20 to go. 

Pitching on the three days of rest that were typical for pitching aces back then, and assuming he would get them after this intrepid performance, Brooks Lawrence could still to make as many as 6 starts in those 20 games, not taking into account the times his manager might want to use him—as he did on September 3 in Milwaukee—to pitch critical innings as a reliever in a must-win game. 

Problem was, Lawrence had now pitched 204⅓ innings, and there were still maybe those 6 starts and some relief appearances to go. The most major league innings he had pitched before this was 158⅔ in his rookie season of 1954 with the Cardinals, a total he exceeded in the first week of August, explaining perhaps why August 1956 was not kind to Brooks Lawrence. 

Haney's Hot Hand (More on the 1956 Braves, 60 Years Ago)

Finally. They lost. On June 26, 1956, in Philadelphia, eleven days after the Milwaukee Braves fired Charlie Grimm and replaced him with Fred Haney, the Braves lost for the first time under their new manager. They had won 11 in a row. Sometimes, all it takes is a change in command for the troops to rally and be as good as . . . they were supposed to be.

Haney's Hot Hand (More on the 1956 Braves, 60 Years Ago)

For the most part, the best managers are inextricably linked to the very successful teams they managed. Managers of poor and mediocre teams are not only typically lost to history, but get few subsequent chances. This was particularly true in major league baseball's pre-expansion era.

When Fred Haney was axed by the Pirates after finishing dead last in the National League for the third time in his three years as their manager, it was not obvious that the 60-year-old Haney—so old, he was born in the nineteenth century (but so was the even older Casey Stengel)—would get another chance to manage. His first managerial opportunity was with the St. Louis Browns in 1939, a team that had finished last or next-to-last in each of the four previous years. They finished last in Haney's first year at the helm with 111 losses. He brought the Browns home in sixth place in 1940, but was fired early in the 1941 season with his team having won just 15 of 44 games. A terrible team. 

So too were the Pirates, although they lost fewer games than the year before in each year he was their manager—from 112 losses in 1952 without him to 104 in 1953, to 101 in 1954, to just 94 in 1955. Guess that wasn't improvement enough; his Pirates never winning more than 39 percent of their games doomed his chances to stay on.

Hired by the Braves to be Charlie Grimm's "first lieutenant," Haney for the first time in his managerial career was in position to take over a team that was expected to compete for the pennant, and perhaps even knock off the Brooklyn Dodgers. For all of Grimm's much vaunted "patience"—Sport's Illustration's positive characterization of him in the magazine's 1956 pre-season preview—the Braves' owner lost patience with Grimm because his team, at 24-22 when he was replaced by Haney, was very definitely underachieving.

Milwaukee was in Brooklyn in the middle of a four-game series with the Dodgers when Haney replaced Grimm. They had just lost the first two games to fall 3 back of the Dodgers, who were in 2nd place, a half-game behind, of all teams, the first-place Pirates. The Braves came through for their new manager by winning the Sunday double header at Ebbets Field. Then they won four straight in Pittsburgh. It was back to New York for four games at the Polo Grounds, and Milwaukee won all of those games too. Then back to Pennsylvania, this time to Philadelphia, where the Braves won the first of three before losing to Robin Roberts and the Phillies, 4-2.

What explains Haney's hot hand? The Braves' batters found their hitting shoes after a very lethargic first half of June. No National League club scored fewer runs than the Braves' 47 in the first sixteen days (and 17 games) of June, during which they gave up 68 runs. Outscored by a per-game-average of 4 runs to 2.8, Milwaukee not too surprisingly was only 5-12, costing Grimm his job. They had hit just 8 home runs with a batting average of only .231 in those 17 games. As a result, the Braves dropped from fourth in total runs scored at the end of May to seventh by the time Grimm was let go. Only the 20-31 Giants had scored fewer runs.

In the heart of the Braves' line-up so far in the month of June, Hank Aaron (batting 3rd) hit just .219 with one homer and 7 runs batted in to bring his average down to .303 from .351 at the end of May; Eddie Mathews (batting 4th) hit just .206 with 2 homers and 4 RBIs to bring his batting average down to .247 with a team-leading 10 homers; and Bobby Thomson (batting 5th) hit just .222 without a home run and 6 runs batted in, and was now batting .278 on the year. 

During their 11-game winning streak after Haney took charge, the Braves scored 56 runs—the most of any other NL team since June 16—and gave up only 25. Mathews hit 3 home runs and drove in 12 runs while batting .275, and Thomson had 2 homers and 7 RBIs. Aaron continued to struggle, although his .239 average was still better than in the first half of June. Milwaukee was now back up to third in scoring, trailing only Cincinnati and St. Louis.

After their 11-game winning-streak to begin the Haney regime ended on June 26, the Braves with a 35-23 record were in first place by 1½ games over the second-place Reds, and 2½ over the third-place Dodgers. As was predictable, the Cardinals (5 games behind) and the Pirates (5½ out) were dropping fast out of contention. It was 58 games down and 96 to go. The Milwaukee Braves were looking good.