Dizzy Dean- an American Icon
Born in Lucas, Arkansas on January 16th, 1911, Jay Hanna Dean was destined for great things. It was a sergeant in the army that had nicknamed him Dizzy and it was in the service that he picked up the basics of pitching. When he was discharged he became a star hurler in the semi-pro Texas League for San Antonio. A Cardinals scout discovered him there and he made his major league debut on September 30th, 1930, a 3-1 victory.
The following year saw Dean sent back to Houston of the minor leagues, where he dominated his competition. He recorded 26 victories and struck out 303 overmatched batters. He stuck with the Cardinals in 1932, and as a rookie posted an 18-15 mark, leading the National League in shutouts, strikeouts and innings pitched. The next season he further blossomed, although his record was only 20-18. But it was 1934 that he began to become an icon in the Midwest. His brother Paul was a pitching prospect, also for the Cardinals, and in spring training Dizzy announced that between the pair they would win 45 games that year. He was wrong. They combined for 49; Dizzy winning 30 and Paul, or Daffy as the press dubbed him, 19. The Cardinals won the pennant by 2 games over the New York Giants, on the strength of the Dean Brothers’ contributions, especially in the final week of the pennant race. On September 28th, Dizzy shut out Cincinnati 4-0 to ease the Cards into a tie with the Giants. The next day Paul bested the Reds 6-1 while the Giants lost to the Dodgers. Dizzy, pitching on one day’s rest, returned to again whitewash the lowly Reds while the Giants were again being taken by Brooklyn, handing the Cardinals the flag. Individual honors for Dizzy Dean in 1934 included heading the senior circuit in wins, complete games, shutouts and strikeouts. He became the last National Leaguer to win 30 games in one season and starred in the World Series.
The 1934 Series, featuring the Cardinals and the Detroit Tigers, became a showcase for the Deans. Dizzy pitched the opener and won 8-3. The Tigers evened things up with a twelve inning victory in Game 2, but Paul shut them down 4-1 in the third game. Detroit blasted the Cards in game 4, a tilt that saw Dizzy used as a pinch runner. As he came into second base, a throw conked him on the head, knocking him out cold. When he awoke in the hospital, his first reaction was, “Did we win?” He was also fond of telling the reporters that, “They took X-rays of my head and didn’t find anything!”
The fifth game saw Dizzy beaten by a 3-1 margin, a day after his base path beaning. Paul saved the day by besting the Tigers 4-3 in Game Six, setting the stage for the deciding Game Seven. Again pitching on only a day’s rest, Dizzy Dean shut out Detroit 11-0. The game was famous for an incident that occurred in the top of the sixth inning with the St. Louis nine ahead by the score of 7-0. Cardinals outfielder Joe “Ducky” Medwick slid into third base hard, and came up fighting with the third sacker, Marv Owens. Order was restored, but as Medwick attempted to take his position in left field, the irate Detroit fans began to pelt him with all sorts of fruit, vegetables, and garbage. Finally the Commissioner of Baseball, Kennesaw Landis, who was in attendance, called Medwick and the umpires over and had him removed from the game for his own safety. The crowd was placated, and Medwick had the fodder for one of the great sports quotes ever. “I know why they threw the stuff at me,” he told the press. “What I don’t understand is why they had it with them at the ballpark to begin with.”
What everyone understood by now was that Dizzy Dean was the real thing. He followed up 1934’s successes with another banner year, going 28-12 in 1935. The Cardinals finished in second, four games behind the Cubs, and Dizzy, at age 24, actually had to take a pay cut from general manager Branch Rickey because he didn’t win thirty games again! A 24-13 1936 season gave him a record of 82-32 in his three previous years. Then disaster struck Dizzy Dean, almost literally. Pitching in the 1937 All-Star game, he was hit in the foot by a line drive off the bat of Earl Averill. Coming back too quickly from the broken toe he suffered, he altered his pitching motion to compensate for his injury. He hurt his arm and never regained his fastball. Dean finished the year 13-10, and then was sold to the Cubs, where he would pitch on sheer guts alone for parts of the next three seasons. In 1938, he won a key game in the Chicago drive to the pennant late in September, 2-1, over the Pirates. In the Series, he was handed the ball to start Game Two, and held the mighty Yankees at bay until the eighth inning, when Frank Crosetti and Joe DiMaggio homered off him to beat him 6-3. It was in his own words “Old Diz’s last stand.”
His arm trouble finally ended his career in 1941 at the ageof 31. But baseball had not heard the last of him. He became a broadcaster, and the English language would never fully recover. He used words like “slud”, as in “he slud into second.” He would sometimes sign off from the broadcast saying, “Don’t fail to miss tomorrow’s game.” Once he received a letter from a teacher, scolding him for mangling English and calling him a bad influence on kids listening to him. He responded to her criticism over using the word “ain’t” thusly. “A lot of folks who ain’t saying ain’t, ain’t eating! So teach, you learn ’em English and I’ll learn em baseball.”
Dizzy Dean was elected to the Hall of Fame in 1953 on the strength of his 150-83 lifetime record. He worked as a broadcaster for CBS and NBC for over twenty years. He passed away on July 17th, 1974, in Reno, Nevada at the age of 64.
He will always be remembered for his colorful personality and his confidence in his pitching. He used to ask batters, “What kind of pitch would you like to miss?” He once claimed that, “Anyone who has had the privilege of seeing me knows that I am the best pitcher in the world.” Calling the games of the horrid St. Louis Browns in 1947, he said over the air that he was better right then than most of the Brown’s pitchers were. This upset the wives of these players, but management, always looking to capitalize on a chance to sell tickets, coaxed him out of retirement to prove his statement. On September 28th, 1947, 36 year old Dizzy Dean toed the rubber against the White Sox and pitched shut out ball for four innings, yielding only three singles. He belted a single himself, but, rounding first, he pulled a muscle and left the game. However he had proven his favorite saying. “It ain’t braggin if you can back it up.”
