Brave Old World : Eddie Mathews Remembers a Team That Made Milwaukee Famous

If you are a license-plate reader and happen to spot California tag “H 512 R,” you are rubbing fenders with a baseball legend.

The plates denote Eddie Mathews’ home run total in a 17-year major league career that took him to the Hall of Fame. The slugging third baseman is tied with his longtime contemporary, Ernie Banks, for 12th place on the all-time list.

Yet having his plaque in Cooperstown and belonging to the 500 Home Run Club only scratch the surface of memories Mathews cherishes as he looks back on his 40 years in baseball. He is 59 and has been retired since 1989.

Relaxing at his Del Mar home, Mathews, who grew up in Santa Barbara, recalled with particular pleasure the time when the Milwaukee Braves were a powerhouse and the city of Milwaukee was the epitome of baseball hysteria. He is the only man to have played for the Braves in all three of their locales--Boston, Milwaukee and Atlanta.

While reminiscing, Mathews expressed a couple of especially strong opinions.

The best player he has ever seen?

Hank Aaron, the all-time home run king with 755 and Mathews’ long-ball partner in Milwaukee and Atlanta. He and Aaron are the most prolific homer pair in baseball history, having passed Babe Ruth and Lou Gehrig by hitting 863 between them from 1954 through 1966. Mathews hit 421, Aaron 442.

The best team?

The Milwaukee Braves, who won National League pennants in 1957 and 1958, beat the New York Yankees in the 1957 World Series and missed two other pennants when they fell one game short in 1956 and lost a playoff to the Dodgers in 1959.

First, Aaron:

“When Aaron played, you didn’t even know he was around,” Mathews said. “He did everything as well as anybody ever did. Then you take Roberto Clemente and Willie Mays, they were more noticeable because they were flashier. Stan Musial was one of those guys like Aaron. You didn’t realize he was there, either.

“A lot of people take Mays over Aaron, but Hank could do everything Mays could do, and do it better.

“You never knew Hank could run, but I’ll bet he could outrun Mays. He could field as well as Mays, and he could throw a lot more accurately. Mays could throw, but he never hit the cutoff man. We used to send guys home from third because we knew he wouldn’t throw them out.

“Aaron didn’t get the ink in Milwaukee that Mays got in New York. If he had, I think people would have realized he was a better ballplayer.”

And on the Braves as a unit:

“We had as good a team as has ever been put together,” Mathews said. “I know Oakland is very strong today. I can’t really evaluate how strong their club is, but I see guys who couldn’t have played in the big leagues in our day.

“Look at the lineup we had (Billy Bruton, Red Schoendienst, Mathews, Aaron, Joe Adcock, Wes Covington, Johnny Logan and Del Crandall). And our pitching (Warren Spahn, Lew Burdette and Bob Buhl as the big three with Don McMahon as the closer). How can you top that?

“In my mind, we had the best club four years in a row. We should have won it in ‘56, but (Manager) Fred Haney got bunt-happy and (Bobby) Del Greco went crazy in center field in that last series in St. Louis. In ‘59, it shouldn’t even have come down to a playoff. We got screwed out of a game in L.A. (at the Coliseum) when they took a home run away from Adcock.”

In the 1959 game in question, played on Sept. 15, Adcock hit a ball that lodged in the high screen in left field at the Coliseum, which the Dodgers called home after their arrival from Brooklyn in 1958 until Dodger Stadium was finished in 1962.

The ball stuck on the far side of the screen and thus appeared to be a home run, but umpire Frank Dascoli ruled it a double. Adcock didn’t score, and the Dodgers won the game, 8-7. When the Braves protested, National League President Warren Giles flew to Los Angeles and upheld Dascoli’s decision.

“That was a joke,” Mathews said.

Four members of those Milwaukee teams are in the Hall of Fame. Mathews, elected in 1978, was preceded by Spahn and followed by Aaron and Schoendienst.

Granted that admittance to the Hall of Fame is the ultimate honor for an athlete, Mathews cites the final out of the 1957 World Series at Yankee Stadium in New York as the high point of his career. He already had made himself a hero by hitting a game-winning homer in the fourth game, but this was the clincher.

The Yankees had the bases loaded when Bill Skowron hit a smash down the third-base line. Mathews made a backhanded stop and pounced--not stepped--on third base for the forceout that gave the Braves the Series in seven games.

“As far as any particular instant, that was the biggest thing that ever happened to me,” Mathews said. “Hitting 512 home runs was over a long period of time, so you can’t really compare the two things.

“It’s funny about numbers. When Hank and I set the record for most home runs as teammates, we didn’t even know it for two months. We never thought about it, and there was no fanfare. In today’s world, they’d start a countdown two months earlier.”

As for the last out of the Braves’ World Series victory, Mathews recalled that Skowron had hit one of Burdette’s spitballs. Burdette never had confessed to using the illegal pitch, but it was accepted that he did.

“I was protecting the line,” Mathews said. “Skowron wasn’t really a pull hitter, but I knew Burdette was going to throw him a wet one, which sank so much that he had to pull it if he was going to hit it at all. I moved a foot or two to my right, and that’s how I happened to be in position to backhand the ball. He hit it pretty good.

“We had a 5-0 lead, so even a home run wouldn’t have beaten us. If it had been closer, I would have stayed where I was. Every time I’ve seen Skowron since then, he asks me, ‘What were you doing playing me there?’ When I came up with the ball, I jumped on the bag and we all went hog-wild.”

Actually, even the term hog-wild doesn’t adequately describe the reaction in Milwaukee to the Braves’ World Series victory. Minutes after Mathews had made the game-ending play, a parade formed on Milwaukee’s main drag, Wisconsin Avenue. When the Braves’ plane from New York landed that evening, there was such a crowd at the airport that traffic was tied up for hours.

“I don’t think anybody could come close to those years we were in Milwaukee (1953-’65),” Mathews said. “Nobody has matched it before or since. Atlanta (where the Braves have played since 1966) has never made it.

“When we left Boston for Milwaukee in ‘53, it was no big deal because we were all so young and didn’t have any ties. We were just there. But leaving Milwaukee was tough. We lived there and had a lot of friends there, and we hated to move. Still, we hesitated to be too vocal about our feelings, because we were working for the ballclub.”

Just as the Braves could have won four pennants in succession, they could have won two consecutive World Series. They held a 3-1 series lead over the Yankees in 1958, then lost the last three games, even though Burdette started two and Spahn the other.

“I blame myself for that,” Mathews said. “I had a terrible Series (four for 25 with a record 11 strikeouts). I wasn’t hitting toward the end of the season, and I asked Haney to give me some time off before the Series. He said he couldn’t do it because the team we were playing was fighting for second place. So I played right on through the Series and stunk the place out. If I’d been hitting, we would have beaten the Yankees again.”

Mathews was born in Texarkana, Tex., but moved to Santa Barbara at an early age and was a standout baseball and football player at Santa Barbara High.

“I was a linebacker and fullback in football,” he said. “We played St. Anthony of L.A. in the football championship game at the Coliseum, but we lost because they had more first downs. Then we played in the baseball championship game at the old ballpark (Lane Field) in San Diego. I hit a home run, but we lost that one, too.”

Mathews signed with the Braves after his graduation in 1949 and was in the majors three years later.

“I didn’t expect to make the club because I hadn’t deserved it or earned it with minor league experience,” Mathews said. “I was up from double-A (Atlanta, then in the Southern Assn.). But they were dedicated to sacrificing ’52 and bringing in a bunch of kids, so I stuck.”

Mathews hit 25 home runs as a rookie, including three on the final day, and followed that with career highs of 47 home runs and 135 runs batted in during the Braves’ first season in Milwaukee. His 47 homers set a major league record for third basemen that stood until Mike Schmidt hit 48 in 1980.

Mathews also was an excellent fielder. At one time he held major league records for chances and assists by a third baseman.

“I pride myself in the fact that I worked hard,” Mathews said. “I was sitting with Musial at the Hall of Fame ceremony one year, and the talk got around to Pete Rose being called Charlie Hustle. He said, ‘What’s the big deal? I hustled all my life,’ and I said I did, too. That’s the way we played in those days.”

After the 1966 season, the Braves traded Mathews to the Houston Astros. He moved on to the Detroit Tigers a year later and played with them in the 1968 World Series before retiring.

“One day in ’68 I hit my 511th and 512th home runs,” he said. “When I woke up the next day, I couldn’t walk. The pain wouldn’t go away, so I ended up in the hospital for 10 days.

“I came back for the Series, and I could have played another year or two, but I said, ‘We won the pennant and World Series, so why not go out on top?’ I hadn’t been hitting the ball the way I wanted to, so I retired.”

The Tigers asked Mathews to stay as a coach, but he decided to leave baseball and return to Milwaukee.

“I was what they call a manufacturer’s representative,” he said. “I was selling nuts and bolts, which I thought would work. The trouble was, I’d talk baseball for hours and never mention nuts and bolts. I used to hope there wasn’t a parking place, so I wouldn’t have to go in.”

After two years of that, Mathews was happy to be offered a coaching job with the Braves. He rejoined them in 1971, and when Luman Harris was fired in August of 1972, Mathews was named manager. He kept the job until July of 1974 and never managed again.

“That wasn’t a bitter pill, because I never wanted to manage to start with,” Mathews said. “I think the average fan could manage a game. What a manager has to be is a baby-sitter and try to keep 30 people on an even keel with personal problems. I wasn’t into that stuff--curfew, guys not on time, not running balls out, that sort of thing.”

Mathews’ highest salary as a player was $67,000.

“I made $67,000 from ’56 through ‘61,” he said. “Then after I batted .306 and hit 32 home runs, Birdie Tebbetts (Braves’ vice president) cut me $5,000. I got it back later and kept it most of my career.

“As a coach I made $15,000. When they made me manager, they were more generous. They paid me $30,000.”

Mathews had one other offer to manage, that from the Milwaukee Brewers.

“I came out here as a scout for the Braves after I got fired in ‘74,” he said. “Jack Baumer (general manager) of the Brewers called me and wanted to know if I would consider managing. I told him no. He talked about having me move back and being his assistant, or if he could bring back Aaron as manager, would I coach?

“They gave me a three-year contract, so I sold my house in Westlake Village and went to the Arizona Instructional League with the Brewers, but it was a gray area as far as what I was supposed to do. As it turned out, the whole thing blew up, and I moved to Mission Gorge in San Diego as a scout.”

After that, Mathews moved from one organization to another--to the Texas Rangers, to the Oakland Athletics and finally back to the Braves in 1988 as their minor league hitting instructor.

“My most enjoyable time was with Oakland from ’81 to ‘83,” he said. “Billy Martin gave me the job, and that organization was close to being like the Braves were in Milwaukee. It was a family.”

Mathews always traveled in the fast lane, and there were rumors that too much night life might have had something to do with his not staying long in one place.

“I’ve always enjoyed a drink,” he said. “I’ve been fired a few times, but whether that was the reason or not, I don’t know. What I do know is that I always worked hard at my job, and I helped some young ballplayers along the way.”

As a hitting instructor, Mathews’ prize pupil was Jose Canseco, who was with the Medford (Ore.) club in 1983 en route to becoming an All-Star outfielder with the A’s.

“I got a call from Camilo Pascual, an old pitcher who was scouting,” Mathews said. “He said, ‘I’m sending up a kid who I think can play.’ It was Canseco, and he was bashful then. He didn’t say a word.

“The kid was supposed to be a third baseman, but I hit him about 10 ground balls and I said to him, ‘See that grass out there? Go out there and stand.’ From that time on, he was an outfielder.

“He had the swing, he could do everything--run, hit and throw. He even looked good in a hotel lobby.”

Would Mathews go back to baseball if the opportunity arose? Almost certainly not, he said. He just wants to relax at home, attend occasional card shows and old-timers’ games and take trips in his recreational vehicle with his wife of 10 years, Judy.

“I enjoyed my association with baseball, but I don’t know where I’d fit in right now,” he said. “Once you take off your uniform, there isn’t much money in it, and I’m financially good.

“If the Braves wanted me to go to spring training for a few weeks every year, I’d take it, but I’m not about to go on the road again.”