There was no shortage of opportunities to play baseball in San Francisco—or to catch the eye of a major-league scout. The city had proven to be a fertile source of major-league players (including Joe DiMaggio), and scouts were a constant presence at the semipro games around the city. McDougald began to play the infield for the Bayside Braves, a semipro team that had been a traditional recruiting base for the Boston Braves in the National League. In due course the Braves offered McDougald a contract in 1948 but it had no bonus. Joe Devine, a Yankee scout who had been keeping tabs on McDougald since his days at Commerce High, offered the young player something better: a contract with a $1,000 bonus. It was an easy decision, and McDougald was told to report to the Yankees’ farm team in Twin Falls, Idaho.
Gil now had enough faith in his future to marry his former high school sweetheart, an energetic brunette named Lucille Tochilin. Still, success did not come easily to McDougald in those first days at Twin Falls. He did well enough at the plate if it was a fastball, but he had trouble hitting curves. He began to tinker with his batting stance, and he soon found that he could hit curveballs more easily with an open stance that had his left foot placed to the left of his right foot and the bat hanging down rather than being held up. It might have looked strange, but no one could argue with the results. The San Francisco native batted .340 in that first year with Twin Falls and continued the solid hitting with a .344 average the following year with the Yankee farm team in Daytona Beach, Florida.
McDougald was moved up to the Yankees’ farm team in Beaumont, Texas, where his new manager was Rogers Hornsby, the renowned Hall of Fame second baseman who had the highest lifetime batting average (.358) in the National League. Hornsby made no effort to change his second baseman’s unorthodox batting stance. Like McDougald, Hornsby had been criticized for his own stance when he was a player, and he knew that there were times to leave well enough alone. “If you feel comfortable batting the way you do,” he told his young protégé, “go ahead.”
Hornsby had to be satisfied with his positive approach. McDougald batted .336 for Beaumont in 1950 and won the league’s Most Valuable Player award. Not surprisingly, the Yankees invited McDougald to join them at spring training in Phoenix for the 1951 season. The invitation came none too soon—McDougald had told Devine that he would play in the minor leagues for only three seasons. “Joe,” the prospective rookie said, “if I’m not staying with the Yankees, I’ll be seeing you back here in San Francisco. Because that’s it.”
In the beginning, it appeared that Gil might be required to make good on his threat to return to San Francisco. Stengel did not give him any opportunities to play in spring training games, and the young player sat in frustration on the bench. And then someone wanted to take a photo with McDougald, Stengel, and Hornsby, who was with the team. While the photographs were being taken, the Beaumont manager asked his former star how he was doing. “Enjoying the bench,” McDougald sarcastically replied. Hornsby turned to Stengel. “Case,” he said, “he’s the best ballplayer you’ve got on your whole damn ball club and you’re sitting him down?” The next day McDougald was in the lineup.
Still, there was a problem of where to play Gil. He had spent most of his minor-league career at second base, but the Yankees had an established second baseman in Jerry Coleman. Shortstop was not an option because that position was taken by Phil Rizzuto (who had won the league’s Most Valuable Player award in 1950), and Bobby Brown and Billy Johnson had been alternating at third base. Brown was only twenty-six, but Johnson was now thirty-three (an advanced age in those days) and had not been a stellar performer in 1950 (batting only .260). So there was hope that McDougald might make it at third—if he could replace Johnson.
Gil started the season off well. In his first game against the St. Louis Browns (facing Browns’ hurler and future teammate Bob Turley), the twenty-two-year-old rookie had a home run and a double. McDougald continued to hit well when given the chance, but Stengel played him only sporadically. McDougald remained convinced that he was destined for a return to the minor leagues if Johnson remained on the team, and, as the May 15 trading deadline approached, there was no indication that Stengel was planning to get rid of Johnson. “Well,” Gil told Lucille on the evening of May 14, “it looks like we’re heading back to San Francisco, because I’m quitting if he thinks I’m going to Kansas City.”
Convinced that his intuition was correct, McDougald showed up at the Yankee clubhouse early on the morning of May 15 and began to pack up his things. He did not want to discuss his decision with any of his teammates and hoped to be gone before any of them showed up. But Pete Sheehy, the Yankees’ longtime clubhouse manager, was there, and he was surprised to see Gil packing everything up. “What’re you doing?” he asked the Yankee rookie. “I’m cleaning out my locker, Pete. I’m on the way home.” “Oh, no,” Sheehy responded. “What for? Billy Johnson’s been traded to the St. Louis Cardinals. You’re staying.”
From that point forward, McDougald was the Yankees’ regular third baseman, and he fulfilled Hornsby’s predictions, hitting .306 (tops among Yankee players) and slamming fourteen home runs (one more than fellow rookie Mickey Mantle). The Yankees won their third straight pennant, and McDougald found himself starting at third base in every game of the World Series against the New York Giants.
It was a World Series that McDougald would long remember. In the third inning of the fifth game at the Polo Grounds, Yogi Berra was on third base and Joe DiMaggio was on second. The next batter was former Cardinal and Giant slugger Johnny Mize, who was now playing first base for the Yankees. Giant manager Leo Durocher was familiar with Mize’s power from his days in the National League (where Mize once hit fifty-one home runs in a season) and decided that it would be better to pitch to McDougald, who was scheduled to follow Mize. So Durocher ordered the Giants’ pitcher to give Mize an intentional pass to first base (meaning that the bases were now loaded with three players who would later be inducted into the Hall of Fame).
McDougald was prepared to avenge the slight. But as he approached the batter’s box, Stengel called him back to the dugout. McDougald assumed that Stengel was going to lift him for a pinch hitter, and the rookie third baseman was not happy. “I’m ready to bop him over the head if takes me out,” he later recalled. But McDougald’s assumption proved to be incorrect. Stengel only had a request. “Hit one out, Mac,” was all he said. McDougald returned to the batter’s box and proceeded to hit a home run over the left-field wall—thus becoming only the third player in almost fifty years of World Series play to hit a grand slam. (There was one other time when Stengel made a similar request of McDougald. The Yankees were behind 1-0 in a spring training game in St. Petersburg, Florida, against the St. Louis Cardinals. “Don’t you have anybody who can hit?” Cardinal owner Auggie Busch playfully teased the Yankee manager. Stengel called over McDougald, who was the next hitter, and said, “Go on and hit one out.” McDougald then blasted a home run over the left-field wall. “See, Mr. Busch,” Stengel remarked as McDougald returned to the dugout. “It’s no problem if we want to hit.”)
The Yankee victory in the 1951 World Series was capped by McDougald’s selection by the sportswriters as the American League Rookie of the Year. And so, when talk turned to Joe DiMaggio’s retirement at the end of the 1951 season and who would replace him as the Yankees’ “money player,” Connie Mack—the longtime owner and manager of the Philadelphia Athletics—had a quick response: “Why, Gil McDougald, of course.”
With endorsements like that, McDougald was able to bask in the glory of a superb year and talk on the banquet circuit about his plans for the 1952 season. Those plans appeared to get an unexpected lift when Jerry Coleman was called to duty by the Marines. The Korean War had dragged on and the country needed the services of the Yankee second baseman.
McDougald was hopeful that Coleman’s loss was his gain. And so he openly talked with the press about his desire to play second base instead of third. “Around second base,” he explained, “you get more action. You have more fun. You figure in more double plays. At third, you don’t see the signs so often, and the first thing you know, a batted ball comes at you without warning.”
However much he may have understood McDougald’s perspective, Stengel had another second baseman in the wings whom he liked (Billy Martin), and McDougald wound up playing most of the games at third base for the next two seasons (until Martin was drafted into the army). Other decisions by Stengel, however, sometimes seemed incomprehensible. On one occasion in a game against the Washington Senators, the manager lifted McDougald for a pinch hitter with the bases loaded even though McDougald was on a hitting streak. While McDougald simmered in the dugout, the pinch hitter—Johnny Mize—hit a home run. “Right then and there,” McDougald later said, “I figured I’d never second-guess the manager.”
McDougald’s faith in Stengel’s choices did not always ensure a harmonious relationship. In fact, there were points of frustration and anger as McDougald tried to persevere under Stengel’s regime. One matter of contention was McDougald’s batting stance. Although the results had been rewarding in 1951, McDougald could never pull his average above .300 in the years that immediately followed. Stengel kept pressing Gil to make a change, not only to increase his average but also to enhance his ability to move a runner from first to third. McDougald had a tendency to pull the ball, and a hit to left field, Stengel explained, was likely to leave the runner at second. The runner could more often move to third base, he said, if McDougald could “spray the ball” to center field or right field.
At first, McDougald was “mad as heck” at Stengel, but then he too saw that there were benefits in hitting the ball up the middle and to right field. In 1956, he finally yielded to the pressure, changed his batting stance, and batted .311—the second-highest batting average on the team that year and the first time he had batted over .300 since his rookie season. It was enough to make him feel good about his manager— especially because they had already cleared the air on their running feud before the 1956 season began.
It had happened when the Yankees took a goodwill tour in Japan after the 1955 season. Stengel—a man who savored his liquor and liked to keep his players at bay—told them that they were not to congregate in the hotel bars during the trip. That venue was reserved for him (where he would often stay until the early-morning hours, talking with sportswriters or whoever else might be there). But on one evening during the tour, McDougald, feeling warm and thirsty, decided to go down to the bar for a beer. It was about one o’clock, and there was no one there. And then suddenly, out of nowhere, Stengel appeared. McDougald thought the old man might be angry, but the Yankee manager sat down next to him at the bar and began an amiable conversation. It gave the young player the courage to confront Stengel about something that had been troubling him for years. “You must hate my guts,” he told his manager. “Five years now, and there isn’t one thing I’ve ever done that’s made you happy. Why don’t you just get rid of me, and you’ll save a lot of aggravation, and I certainly won’t get an ulcer, which will have to come along.” “Well, I’m not trading you ever,” Stengel responded. Then why, McDougald shot back, “are you getting on my back?” “Very simple,” said Stengel. “You’re a better player when you’re mad.” And he added, “I plan on keeping you mad.” After that disclosure, McDougald understood—and appreciated—the intuition that Stengel brought to his managing role.
The Japanese tour proved to be a turning point for McDougald in other ways as well. Phil Rizzuto did not make the trip, and Stengel asked Gil if he would be willing to try playing shortstop. Rizzuto was thirty-eight years old and showing signs of age. The need for a new shortstop was fast approaching. McDougald was an ideal candidate. He had already established himself as an All-Star third baseman and then, beginning in 1954, as an All-Star second baseman. There was thus ample reason to believe that McDougald could play shortstop as well.
Gil accepted Stengel’s invitation, and by the end of the tour sportswriters were reporting that McDougald “looms as the 1956 shortstop of the Bombers.” For his part, the twenty-seven-year-old player was excited about the prospective change. It was better than either second or third, he later explained, because “you’re at the center of the stage. You see every pitch. It’s easier to position yourself when you see every pitch that’s being called by the catcher. So you’re ready to move in whatever direction you feel according to the pitch and the batter.”
McDougald’s interest in the new position was reflected in his performance. By June, sportswriters were calling him “one of the finest shortstops of the major leagues” and saying that his “spectacular work has counted heavily in making the New York infield the finest producer of double plays in the majors.”
McDougald’s considerable fielding skills are of paramount importance as Don Larsen sends his second pitch to Jackie Robinson in the top of the second inning of the fifth game of the 1956 World Series—a fastball that drifts into the Dodger third baseman’s power zone. Robinson swings hard, and the ball zooms off the bat down the left side of the infield between third and short. Yankee third baseman Andy Carey leaps at the ball but can only tip it with the edge of his glove. The ball sails toward McDougald, who is, as he later recalled, “going into the hole” between third and short because he is not sure that Carey will reach the ball. As the ball flies off Carey’s glove, McDougald tries to catch it for the out. But the ball drops in front of him instead. With lightning speed, he picks the ball up on the short hop and fires it over to Joe Collins at first base. First-base umpire Hank Soar quickly gives the signal that McDougald’s throw has indeed beaten Robinson to the bag. To the veteran umpire, there is no question that Robinson reached first base after the ball did: “His foot was about six inches above the bag when Joe Collins caught the ball.”