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  • The View From the Dugout: The Journals of Red Rolfe
  • David Shiner
William M. Anderson, ed. The View From the Dugout: The Journals of Red Rolfe. Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press, 2006. 325 pp. Paper, $22.95.

One cloudless day in June of 1950, Detroit manager Red Rolfe sat in the visiting team's clubhouse in Shibe Park in Philadelphia responding to a letter from a twelve-year-old fan. "I hope that we can stay close to the top and give you something to cheer about all year," the skipper wrote before providing a strikingly objective analysis of his club's pennant chances. A few hours later the Tigers swept a doubleheader from the A's, extending a winning streak that would ultimately reach 7 games and carry the team to the top of the American League.

The beneficiary of Rolfe's letter was a local lad by the name of Billy Anderson. The Detroit skipper's thoughtfulness cemented the boy's affection for the local club and its manager. Half a century later, Anderson secured the journals Rolfe kept during his managerial career. The longtime Tiger fan, now a professional historian, was well positioned to publish and annotate the journals' highlights.

Those highlights have been eagerly anticipated for some time. In the most recent edition of his Historical Abstract, Bill James wrote that Rolfe had produced "hundreds of pages of typewritten notes about American League players of that era, notes which I would love to get my hands on." Unfortunately, it appears that those notes are considerably less informative than James and others had hoped.

The View From the Dugout consists largely of game summaries, with Rolfe's journal excerpts supplemented by Anderson's descriptions of portions of each game that the Tigers' skipper ignored in his notes. Those notes shed little light on Rolfe's subjects or strategies. The entries on opposing players are mostly cursory ("Tipton looks like a low ball hitter"), with almost none on pitchers. It would have been more interesting to see evidence of the tactics that Rolfe plotted and employed against Detroit's opponents, but there are precious few of those. It appears that Rolfe simply did not write much of general interest in his journals.

Those journals reflect their author well. Rolfe was a taciturn man, viewed by most of his players as a poor communicator. Detroit sportswriter Lyall Smith once noted in print that the Detroit skipper "does not allow them [his players] to work their way through the armor he has built around himself. . . . Some of his present players are growling under his iron fist." A number of Tigers respected Rolfe, but it would be a stretch to say that they adored him.

Still, any managerial style earns accolades if the team wins. Rolfe piloted the [End Page 139] Tigers to a much-improved record in 1949, his first year at the helm. The following season his club led the race much of the way before fading to finish second, 3 games behind the Yankees. Rolfe was deservedly named AL Manager of the Year, and the Tigers were expected to contend again in 1951. Instead they self-destructed, finishing below .500. Rolfe was gone by midseason of 1952, his club well on its way to a 100-loss season. He never managed professionally again.

In discussing the collapse of Rolfe's Tigers after 1950, Anderson writes, "Many of his players had career seasons that year [1950] and were aging veterans." He's right on the first count, wrong on the second. Of the six settled positions in the everyday lineup (all but catcher and first base), not a single regular was past thirty in 1950, the average age of those six men being twenty-seven. The pitchers were a bit older, but the team's decline in 1951 was almost entirely due to offensive failures: the Tigers scored 152 runs less in 1951 than in 1950, while allowing 28 more. As it turned out, 1950 was arguably the career year of almost every position player in the Detroit lineup and the last good season for some of their longtime pitching stalwarts, notably Hal Newhouser and Dizzy...

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