On Saturday, soon to be Republican Presidential nominee Mittens Romney announced Wisconsin Representative Paul Ryan as his Vice-Presidential running mate. That got me thinking about veeps in the realm of baseball. Who were the best second fiddles? The best undercards, Robbins, Bulwinkles etc?
Of course, baseball doesn’t have an exact parallel, so there’s a little room for interpretation. Let’s take a look back at three of the best sidekicks in baseball lore.
Roger Maris: Maris is an interesting guy to start with because he actually beat out partner Mickey Mantle in the storied home run race of 1961. Mantle was always The Guy on the Yankees–and in New York–and is clearly the ‘president’ in this relationship, despite Maris’s 61 in ’61. Mantle was a superstar, perhaps the biggest of his day, and is rightfully enshrined in Cooperstown and deserved the spot he was awarded on the All-Century team in 1999. The Mick also won the triple crown.
Maris, however, was no slouch. He was the AL MVP in both 1960 and 1961 and, of course, set the single season home run record that would stand until 1998. Not too shabby for a second fiddle. It’s interesting to note that, as second fiddles often do, Maris suffered for his success. To the people of New York, the wild popularity of President Mantle was irreconcilable with VP Maris’s ’61 triumph.
Sammy Sosa: The summer of 1998 was perhaps the best baseball summer of my lifetime. Forget the dark truths later illuminated, in the moment, the Chase for 62 was the most exciting, talked about thing in the country, and was largely responsible for re-ingratiating baseball to a nation still coming to terms with the strike of 1994.
Mark McGwire was obviously the front man, leading the NL in homers all year and eventually finishing with 70 bombs. But McGwire mashing baseballs all year was not what won the hearts and minds of the country. It was the race. Sosa’s own superlative season made 1998 the year we remember. One man’s chase became an action packed rivalry, and that, as we well know, is what fuels America.
But what really washed 1994’s bitter taste from the public’s palate was the nature of the rivalry: Big Mac and Slammin’ Sammy were jovial and friendly, harkening back to the boyhood jocularity that forms the bedrock of the game–and that had been so tainted by the strike. As Maris did Mantle, Sosa spurred McGwire. They wasn’t two enemies on opposite coasts chasing some piece of ancient history, they was two friends (whether or not that’s true is irrelevant) charging towards one of baseball’s most hallowed records.
Sosa, by the way, beat out Big Mac for the MVP in ’98 and finished his career with 609 homers, including three seasons that beat Maris’ old record, and a stretch of four straight years through which he averaged 60 homers.
Don Drysdale: Drysdale pitched for the LA Dodgers from the late 1950s to the late 1960s. In ’62, he won 25 games and the Cy Young. From that point on, however, Big D was the Mr. Spock to Sandy Koufax’s Captain Kirk.
Koufax, nicknamed the Left Arm of God, won the Cy Young in 1963, ’65, and ’66, as well as the MVP in ’63. Together, Koufax and Drysdale won championships in 1963 and ’65. In ’63, Koufax struck out 15 Yankees in Game 1 of the World Series and came back to clinch it in Game 4, but not before Drysdale could pitch a three-hit shutout in Game 3.
In the 1965 World Series against the Minnesota Twins, Drysdale lost Game 1 and Koufax lost Game 2, but they came back to win Games 4 and 5 respectively, before Sandy came back to nail it down in Game 7. From 1962 through 1966, in an unprecedented 5 year run of total dominance, Koufax and Drysdale combined for 2,551 strikeouts, 222 wins, a 2.37 ERA, three Cy Youngs, and two World Series. A more successful pairing there may never have been.
Baseball isn’t like politics; these guys didn’t get to choose their running mates. In baseball, the partnerships arise from circumstance, and the resulting drama is all the richer for it. But the true beauty of these three stories is that competition bred respect and friendship. Koufax and Drysdale starred in movies together and battled for each other in landmark contract negotiations. In a hostile New York climate, Maris and Mantle were close friends, the hero defending the maligned sidekick. And playing on different teams, chasing the same cherished record, Sosa and McGwire formed a bond that inspired a cynical nation. If only politicians could do the same.
Stat of the Day: The last sitting Congressman who was not Speaker of the House to be elected Vice President was John S. Sherman in 1908.
-Max Frankel
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