Dixie Walker: A Life in Baseball, and: Carl Furillo, Brooklyn Dodgers All-Star (review)

From 1939 to 1957, right field at Ebbets Field was mostly the preserve of Dixie Walker and his successor, Carl Furillo, the two best right fielders in Brooklyn Dodgers history; both were .300 hitters who sprayed line drives in all directions, were dangerous in the clutch, and superior on defense. Furillo, nicknamed “The Reading Rifle,” had the best arm in the league, and both he and Walker fielded tricky caroms off the scoreboard and screen with the aplomb of billiards masters.

Two biographies of Walker and one of Furillo have recently appeared. Lyle Spatz’s Dixie Walker: A Life in Baseball and Ted Reed’s Carl Furillo, Brooklyn Dodgers All-Star are reviewed here. Dixie Walker of the Dodgers: The People’s Choice, by Maury Allen with Susan Walker, was reviewed by Steve Gietschier in the Fall 2011 issue of NINE. Of the two Walker biographies, Allen’s, written with Dixie’s daughter, is richer in Walker’s off-the-field life, whereas Spatz’s volume hews closely to Dixie’s baseball career.

Spatz and Reed each offer clearly written, serviceable biographies, providing needed redress for the reputations of two fine, underappreciated players. Both volumes are filled with details of baseball in the 1940s and 1950s, years in which Larry MacPhail, Branch Rickey, and Walter O’Malley built the Dodgers into the National League’s dominant team. Though we revere the “Boys of Summer,” Spatz demonstrates that we should not discount their “fathers,” the Dodgers who won pennants in 1941 and 1947, while finishing a close second to St. Louis in 1942 and 1946. In 1946, the Cardinals defeated the Dodgers in the first three-game playoff, as Branch Rickey’s old team beat Branch Rickey’s new team. Thereafter, the new team would triumph.

Spatz describes the tortuous path Dixie Walker followed to the Dodgers. Born in Georgia in 1910 and raised in Alabama, Dixie played minor-league baseball from 1928 to 1931 in Birmingham; Albany, Georgia; and Greensville, South Carolina, where he batted .401 and was purchased by the Yankees. They sent him to Jersey City, and later to Ft. Lauderdale, Toledo, and Toronto. In 1932, with the Newark Bears, Walker batted .350 with 15 HR and 105 RBI as the Bears won the International League championship. Finally with the Yankees in 1933, Walker was billed as Babe Ruth’s eventual successor in right field. However, a series of shoulder and arm injuries wiped out most of his 1933–1935 seasons. With the arrival of Joe DiMaggio in 1936, Walker’s usefulness to the Yankees ended. He was sold to the Chicago White Sox, and then to the Tigers, before he was finally claimed on waivers by Larry MacPhail for the Dodgers in 1939.

Walker later said, “All I knew about Brooklyn was that it was some strange outer world. . . . I didn’t know what on God’s great earth to expect” (57). Yet it was in Brooklyn that he blossomed. Playing mostly center field in 1940 and moving to right with the arrival of Pete Reiser in 1941, Dixie endeared himself to the Flatbush faithful by hitting .308 in 1940 (including an average of .435 against the hated Giants) and striking out only 21 times in 605 plate appearances. This performance level continued in 1941 (.316), and in 1944 Walker won the NL batting title with a .357 average. Although wartime pitching was depleted, Walker surpassed Stan Musial by ten points.

Walker also endeared himself to Brooklyn fans off the field. A reporter for the New York Daily Mirror wrote, “He has never turned down a request to make an appearance at a Holy Name Society rally, an Epworth League meeting or a Bar Mitzvah” (151). Red Barber summed up why the fans loved Dixie—“he was a castoff, retread, human” (191). Dixie avowed that in Brooklyn he had known “the finest...