JIMMIE REESE : After All Those Years and Fungoes, Angel Coach Will Finally Get His Day

Today, before their game against the New York Yankees, the Angels will honor a man with three years of major league playing experience--during the Hoover Administration--and an unsurpassed knack of hitting with half a bat.

Today, Jimmie Reese, Angel conditioning coach, gets his day.

He last got one 61 years ago. He hit .337 in 1927 for the Oakland Oaks of the Pacific Coast League, so the Oakland management had a “Jimmie Reese Day” and gave him $1,000 and a suitcase full of clothes.

The Angels will honor him for being the best fungo hitter, the nicest man, the greatest guy, the living symbol of baseball’s tradition and charm--stuff like that.

Reese has spent his summers in uniform and in the hire of professional baseball organizations for the last 71 years, since he was an 11-year old batboy for the Los Angeles Angels, circa 1917.

Though these statistics are not kept, it’s very possible that Reese holds the record for on-field service in professional baseball.

Who said Connie Mack?

Mack was involved in playing and managing baseball from 1884 to 1950. You math majors know that gives him 66 years, or 5 fewer than Reese.

Depending on who you are--Reese on one side, a stadium full of friends on the other--what will happen today in Anaheim will be either too much or too little.

For anyone who knows Jimmie Reese and, therefore, considers him a friend, nothing can really suffice.

“Here’s a man who’s committed his whole life to baseball,” said Bobby Knoop, Angel coach. “What can we possibly give him in return?”

But for Reese, this is all a bit mystifying. When Mike Port, Angel general manager, called him into his office a few weeks back, Reese was sure he was going to get canned. When Port told him the Angels’ were going to honor him, he asked why.

All Jimmie Reese ever wanted was baseball. Play, watch, read, teach, talk, baseball. Even when his mother, Rose, forbade him to play because she believed he would be consorting with drunkards and others of questionable morals, he would sneak out of the family home in Hollywood to play ball with his friends.

Even when Rose spanked him, even when his teachers, finding baseball books tucked inside text books, punished him, Reese followed the one passion in his life.

“It’s all I ever wanted to do,” he said. “I don’t know why.”

Who knows why anyone falls in love. The fact is, Jimmie did. And baseball has sustained him for more than 70 years. In good times, when he was rooming with Babe Ruth, and in bad, when he was sent back to the minor leagues for hitting .265 in 1932, baseball and Reese are linked till death do them part.

“I want to die with my boots on,” he said. “I don’t think I could live without the game.”

Reese provides a link to the game’s golden era. He played with the Ruth-Gehrig Yankees and the St. Louis Cardinals’ Gashouse Gang. He played, coached and managed for more than 40 years in the Pacific Coast League, where he saw the beginnings of the careers of Joe DiMaggio and Ted Williams.

“Jimmie Reese is the timelessness of baseball,” Port said. “I think it’s advisable for any young ballplayer to be directed toward Jimmie Reese when they first get to the big leagues. He is emblematic of so much of what baseball was and what it will always be.”

Reese got his first job because he was so lousy at sneaking into Angel games at Washington Park, the team’s home stadium at 8th and Hill streets.

“They caught me every time,” he said. “I think they got tired of throwing me out, so they put me to work.”

Frank Chance, formerly of the Chicago Cubs’ famed Tinker-to-Evers-to-Chance double play trio, was manager of the team and gave Jimmie a dollar and a baseball each Sunday.

In 1924, he had a tryout with the Oaks and was signed to play second base. It was there that he and shortstop Lyn Lary teamed to became the Gold Dust Twins. Reese and Lary were bought by the Yankees for the then-astounding sum of $125,000. Lary was called up to the Yankees in 1929, Reese in 1930.

When Reese arrived, Manager Bob Shawkey figured he might be a good influence on Ruth, so he asked Reese to room with the Babe. In the two years that Reese spent with Ruth, Reese came to the conviction that this was the greatest man he’d ever met.

It’s a testament to Reese that a significant number of people who think the same of him are fond of saying that Reese didn’t room with Ruth, Ruth roomed with Reese.

“I tell him that all the time,” said Mario Dalessi, general manager of the Anaheim’s Jolly Roger restaurant and hotel.

Reese, who hasn’t traveled with the team for several years, stays at the Jolly Roger whenever the Angels are in town. The 100-mile round trip from his home in Westwood got to be too much. Dalessi likes Reese so much--”the best of the best, a man of distinction,”--that he has Reese’s Angel uniform, No. 50, on display on a wall in the hotel lobby.

“We have a lot of great athletes come here,” Dalessi said. “But his is the only uniform that has gone on the wall.”

Reese hit .346 in 77 games in 1930, backing up Tony Lazzeri at second base. Hitting second, and in front of Ruth, guaranteed him a steady flow of fastballs.

“Nobody wanted to walk me with the Babe coming up,” he said.

Ruth and Reese became fast friends. Ruth’s friendship meant Jimmie could walk with the Babe on the streets of New York, akin to taking a stroll with royalty.

“Everybody wanted to be near him,” Reese said. “People would yell or just run up to touch him. A lot of times people would ask for money. Those were hard times. Babe would give a guy $10 and say, ‘OK, you owe me.’ He knew he’d never see the guy again.”

But hanging around with Ruth had its price. One day the pair got to the clubhouse late. Yankee Manager Joe McCarthy who had a tenuous relationship with Ruth, looked right past Ruth and blasted his second baseman.

“Where the hell have you been, Reese?” McCarthy asked.

Ruth turned to Reese and told him to tell McCarthy to go to hell.

“I said, ‘That’s all right for you Babe, but I’m keeping my mouth shut.’ ”

During one game, a pop fly hit between Reese at second and Ruth in right caused the two men to collide. Ruth weighed 75 pounds more than Reese.

They went down in a heap. Trainers, players, coaches ran out to the spot, right past Reese and attended Ruth.

Did Jimmie care?

“I was just hoping I didn’t hurt him,” he said. “If I did, I knew I was out of a job.”

In 1931, Reese’s average dropped to .245 in 65 games. The Yankees traded Reese to the Cardinals, the defending World Series champions. Out from under Lazzeri’s shadow, Reese walked into the dark outline cast by Frankie Frisch, a future member of the Hall of Fame.

He hit .265 in 90 games for the Cardinals, a typical mark for a modern-day infielder. But at the time, there were only 16 major league clubs and more than 70 professional minor leagues with talent just itching for a chance.

“If you didn’t hit .300 back then, you were in trouble,” Reese said.

Reese was back in the Pacific Coast League with the Angels in 1933. Playing second base, he was a member of some of the best minor league teams that ever played.

The 1933 team went 114-73--that’s regular season. The 1934 team, generally considered, along with the 1937 Newark Bears, as the best minor league team, went 137-50 with Reese batting second.

“Those were great teams,” Reese said. “There were a lot of great players on those teams who’d be making a million dollars today.”

Reese set a PCL record for most chances at second base, 9,890, playing on infields that resembled cow pastures. He was named to the all-time PCL team at second base several years ago.

But he never made it back to the majors.

“At first, I didn’t think I could stand it (being in the minor leagues),” he said. “But being able to be around baseball was enough. I never considered leaving it. I just couldn’t do that.”

In 1981, a small package arrived at Reese’s home. It was the baseball from Nolan Ryan’s fifth no-hitter. Ryan and Reese had grown close when Ryan pitched for the Angels. One of Ryan’s sons is named Reese.

In 1984, Reggie Jackson gave him the bat he used when he tied Lou Gehrig on the all-time home run list at 493.

One of the numerous pictures in Reese’s home has 60 small baseballs drawn on it with a date, name of a pitcher and the team the pitcher played for. In the middle is a picture of Ruth following through on a swing. On the picture, Ruth wrote: “My pal Jim, I hope you break this record.”

There are so many pictures in Reese’s home. They range from the great to the gone and forgotten. No matter the reputation, the pictures and people in them get equal play. That’s how Reese treats people. There are no distinctions. Because he’s like that, most of the pictures carry a similar message.

Gehrig: “A prince among good fellows.”

Don Drysdale: “One of the greatest guys I’ve ever met in baseball.”

Joe Rudi: “One of the greatest people I’ve ever met.”

Ralph Kiner: “My favorite coach.”

Gene Mauch: “My idol.”

Next to his personality, Reese’s biggest claim to fame as a coach is his fungo bat. Though statistics aren’t kept on this either, he is generally considered the game’s best fungo hitter.

Hitting fungoes is a way a coach warms up and works out players at their defensive positions. It requires accuracy and bat control to place the ball where the coach wants the player to go. How accurate was Reese?

He used to pitch batting practice with the fungo bat. In 1967, Chuck Tanner, then coaching the PCL club in Seattle, bet Reese that he couldn’t hit a flagpole 100 feet away. Reese hit it on the first try.

Reese’s fungo bat is actually filed so that half of the barrel portion is flat. This allows him to scoop up balls without bending down.

“I think it’s added several years to my career,” he said.

Gary Pettis credits Reese with making him a Gold Glove outfielder. Knoop, who played second base when Reese managed at triple-A San Diego in 1961, credits him with making him a better defensive player.

“There are coaches who use the fungo as a way to be tricky,” Knoop said. “They’ll try to fool you, or make you look stupid. Jimmie hit the ball so you could get to it. He could hit it so you really had to stretch out, but you could get to it. There’s not a malicious bone in the man’s body.”

Which is one reason players, year after year, are attracted to him.

“It’s the most amazing thing to see this older man being treated like just one of the boys by these huge athletes,” Port said.

Another reason is the stories. Reese’s link with so much of baseball’s past makes him a unique direct line to American sport mythology.

“I know that every time a reporter wants to talk to me, the first thing he’s going to ask is, ‘Tell me about the Babe,’ ” he said.

But players say that the same stories are hard to pry out of Reese. They say he’d much rather talk about their hopes or problems than the time he waited in Ruth’s 16-cylinder Cadillac for two hours while the Babe signed autographs.

“To tell you the truth, I think people are much more interested in Jimmie than his stories of the past,” Knoop said. “I have much more admiration for Jimmie than I do for Babe Ruth because I can see Jimmie and talk with him about happy things and sad things. People don’t love Jimmie Reese because he knew Babe Ruth, people just love Jimmie Reese.”