Pee Wee Was a Giant

Pee Wee Reese, the slick-fielding shortstop of the legendary Dodger teams of the 1940s and ‘50s who played a vital role in the team’s acceptance of Jackie Robinson as baseball’s first black player, died Saturday at his home in Louisville, Ky. He was 81.

The cause of death was not announced by the Dodgers, who reported Reese’s passing only hours before the team took the field against the Atlanta Braves. It was known, however, that Reese had battled cancer in recent years. Flags at Dodger Stadium flew at half-staff to mark the passing of a man who was as much of a giant off the field as he was on it.

“He was the heart and soul of the ‘Boys of Summer,’ ” said Vin Scully, the longtime Dodger announcer. “He was the rare man who had the voice of authority and who was still loved by his teammates. I don’t know of a modern-day player who was loved by his teammates as much as Pee Wee was, in all honesty.”

Don Newcombe, a teammate of Reese’s, said the shortstop was always a leader.

“It’s a sad day,” Newcombe said. “The way he held the club together, Pee Wee was always a calming force. I know he helped me immensely to become the winner I was.”

Reese played 16 seasons with the team, missed three years because of World War II, and left with a career .269 batting average, a career fielding average of .962. He was named captain of the team in 1951 by Manager Charlie Dressen and was inducted into the Hall of Fame in 1984.

He was considered by many the best shortstop of his era. He was an all-star in 1942 and in every year from 1947 to 1954. He was also an excellent leadoff hitter, leading the National League in walks with 104 in 1947 and in runs with 132 in 1949. His highest batting average was .309 in 1954.

Reese still holds Dodger records for runs--1,338--and walks--1,210 and is second in hits 2,170 and at-bats with 8,058.

“From the time he put on his uniform until the time he took it off, Pee Wee Reese is the best shortstop I’ve ever seen,” Alvin Dark, a shortstop for the New York Giants, said in an interview in 1953. “That takes in everything--covering ground, throwing, making double plays, power-hitting, bunting, making the hit-and-run play, walking, running bases and stealing. There’s nothing he can’t do.”

But his strongest contribution to the team may have been the role he played in helping Robinson break baseball’s color barrier in 1947 against terrible opposition.

“The fact that Reese, a Southerner, befriended Robinson made a great deal of difference to his Dodger teammates,” said Tot Holmes, a baseball historian who has written several books on the Dodgers and publishes the newsletter “Dodger Dugout.”

Despite the arrival of players from the West Coast like Joe DiMaggio and Ted Williams some years earlier, baseball in the late ‘40s still was populated by players from the South, who played most of the year because of the better weather.

During the spring of 1947, when it was obvious the Dodgers were planning to bring up Robinson from their Montreal farm club, several members of the club, mostly Southerners, passed around a petition saying they wouldn’t play if Robinson joined the team.

Those circulating the petition thought Reese would be a sure thing, but he refused to sign.

“The momentum for the petition stopped right there,” said Roger Kahn, author of the classic history of the Dodgers of that era, “The Boys of Summer.”

Buzzie Bavasi, the Dodgers’ general manager at the time, recalled that any remaining opposition to Robinson on the team seemed to melt away after one incident involving Reese.

“Jackie slid into second base and looked like it hurt himself,” Bavasi said Saturday. “The manager went out to second to check on him and Pee Wee went too. Pee Wee walked Jackie off the field with his arm around his shoulder.”

Bavasi maintains the incident hushed up both the fans and quieted whatever internal opposition was on the team.

“Pee Wee was a man who led by example, not with his mouth,” Bavasi said.

Reese was also not afraid to show his support for Robinson away from Ebbets Field.

Holmes, the baseball historian, recalled an incident in Cincinnati.

“In the first game of a series in Cincinnati the race baiting from the Cincinnati players at Robinson, who was playing first base, was extremely bad,” Holmes said. “Reese had enough of the abuse, called time and walked over to Robinson and simply put his hand on his shoulder. Eyewitnesses said the crowd quieted as if a lightning bolt had struck.”

To be sure, not all players in the league were opposed to Robinson. Stan Musial, the Cardinal great, befriended him. So did Hank Greenberg, who played the last year of his spectacular career with the Pittsburgh Pirates. Greenberg, a Jew, probably recalled the bigotry he faced when he joined the Detroit Tigers in 1933.

But Robinson later said he felt that Reese’s gestures were the most important.

Reese had a wry sense of humor and would kid Robinson when times were tough. Once when the fans were booing Robinson, Reese went over and said to him, “They aren’t booing you because you’re black. They just don’t like you.” Robinson laughed. Reese was the only man on the team who could kid Robinson in such a way.

Reese and Robinson were also friends off the field and often played bridge together.

When Robinson died in 1972, Reese was a pallbearer at his funeral.

“I took it as an honor,” Reese said.

Nothing in Reese’s background would have prepared him to play such a pivotal role in baseball history.

Harold Henry Reese was born in Ekron, Ky., on July 23, 1919, of Dutch and Irish ancestry. His father was a yard detective for the railroad. In 1932, Reese, then 13, became the national marble champion. Because he used the type of marble known as the “peewee,” he eared the nickname “Pee Wee.”

He was an unusually short teenager, which kept him from playing on the baseball team until he was a senior. In that year, he did play as a second baseman in a few games. After high school, Reese went to work as a cable splicer for the phone company but spent his summer weekends playing on the baseball team of the New Covenant Presbyterian Church in his city. In 1937, his team led the church league. Some say it was Reese’s performance in that final game that got him a contract with the Louisville Colonels, an independent minor league team in the American Assn.

The Brooklyn Dodgers purchased him for $75,000--Reese got $7,500 of it-- after the 1939 season, in which he batted .279, led the association in triples with 18 and stolen bases with 35. His play at shortstop was outstanding and he had a fielding percentage of .943. When the country-boy Reese joined the Dodgers he was probably not ready for the interesting cultural climate in Brooklyn.

The Dodgers played in the bandbox of a park called Ebbets Field, which was inhabited by an assorting of characters like the legendary Hilda Chester. Chester, of booming voice and annoying disposition, would yell out to Reese as he took his position: “Have you had your milk today, Pee Wee?” And Reese, who recalled the story years later in a newspaper interview, knew he had to answer her or she would keep asking the question.

“I learned very quickly that I’d better tell her, “Yes, I’ve had my milk today, Hilda,’ ” Reese said.

He also learned that a lot was expected of him. His manager was Leo Durocher, who was also the team’s shortstop and one of the best fielders at his position in the league, until Reese showed up. “The best leadoff hitter in the National League, and if there is a better one in the American League I never heard of him,” Durocher said.

But Reese’s first year was cut short when he broke his heel sliding into second base. In 84 games, however, he batted .272 and had a .960 fielding percentage.

The Dodgers won the pennant in his second season, 1941, but in terms of personal achievement it was a bad season for Reese. He led the league in errors with 47 and his fielding average was .946, the lowest of his career. His batting average also suffered as he hit a career-low .229.

Reese rebounded well in his third season, making the all-star team and leading the league in assists, before leaving baseball to join the Navy during World War II. He attained the rank of chief petty officer, another testament to his leadership, but lost three years of baseball time. He was discharged in 1946 and the next year, the color line in baseball was broken.

In 1953, after Dressen left the team in a dispute over a contract, Bavasi had a secret meeting with Reese and offered him the job. But, according to Bavasi, Reese declined citing his years of friendship with the other players on the team.

But that didn’t keep him from still being the leader in the clubhouse.

And that was no more apparent than before the seventh game of the 1955 World Series.

“We began to think we could never beat the Yankees,” recalled the great Dodger pitcher Johnny Podres. “Then, on that day [Game 7] in the clubhouse, Pee Wee said, ‘It looks like we can beat these guys and show them that we can do it. Today is the day we can do it.’ ”

The Dodgers, and Podres, won the game, 2-0, for their first World Series championship in Brooklyn.

Reese played shortstop until the team moved to Los Angeles in 1958, when he moved to third base and was replaced by Don Zimmer. He played only 59 games in his final season before becoming a coach for the Dodgers in their World Series championship year of 1959.

“I have heard the expression about several former Dodgers that this one or that one was the greatest Dodger who ever lived,” said Hall of Fame outfielder Duke Snider, who rode to the park with Reese every day in Brooklyn. “In my estimation, Pee Wee Reese was the greatest Dodger who ever lived. Without his help, I never would have been a Hall of Fame player. He is the finest person I think I’ve ever met.”

After his retirement from baseball, Reese returned to Louisville, where he had established business interests over the years, including an executive role with Hillerich and Bradsby, the manufacturers of Louisville Slugger bats, and later as a broadcaster with CBS, NBC and the Cincinnati Reds. He will be remembered by many fans as being the broadcasting partner of Dizzy Dean on baseball’s game of the week.

“In the old clubhouse at Ebbets Field, everyone sat on stools in front of their metallic lockers,” Scully recalled Saturday. “He had an armchair. That was really the only thing that set him apart. And the players always teased him good-naturedly. When he’d be getting in the batting cage, you’d hear somebody say, ‘No. 1 on your scorecard and No. 1 in the hearts of America, Pee Wee Reese.’ It was a constant, the love was that obvious.”

The death of Reese leaves only one remaining player from the lineup of regulars from the “Boys of Summer” teams: Snider.

Funeral services for Reese will be Wednesday in Louisville.

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BY THE NUMBERS

16: Seasons played with Dodgers

8: Times he made the All-Star team

7: National League pennants

1: World Championship (1955)

.269: Career batting average

.962: Career fielding percentage

Times staff writer Steve Hymon and Penny Love, a researcher in The Times’ editorial library, contributed to this story.