The approach of a new Major League Baseball season means that the 30 North American teams are trimming their rosters to the mandated 26 players ahead of their Opening Days this month. Some players will be demoted to the minor leagues, traded to other teams or see their careers end.
The people making those decisions are the teams’ general managers, responsible for shaping their rosters now and throughout the year. Many GMs, as they are known, are former players with unique eyes for talent.
One of the best to combine success on the field and in the executive suite was Al Rosen, known as “The Hebrew Hammer” during a 10-year career spent entirely with the Cleveland Indians, primarily as a third baseman. (Several Jewish ballplayers carried this nickname, most prominently Detroit Tigers slugger Hank Greenberg, who happened to be the Indians’ G.M. during most of Rosen’s playing career.)
Rosen played in two World Series and four consecutive All-Star Games, earned the American League’s Most Valuable Player Award in 1953 — one of only four Jewish players to earn his league’s MVP — and twice led the A.L. in home runs and runs batted in, both key measures of a batter’s prowess. He recorded 100 or more RBIs in five consecutive seasons, another impressive feat.
He retired at age 32 due to injuries and went on to a career in business before being appointed president of the New York Yankees by owner George Steinbrenner, a Clevelander who’d been a fan of Rosen the player.
The mercurial Steinbrenner discarded managers and executives like yesterday’s newspaper, and Rosen lasted just one year — but the Yankees won the 1978 World Series championship under Rosen. He then served as president-GM of the Houston Astros for five years and the San Francisco Giants for seven years before retiring in 1992. Under Rosen, the Giants won the National League’s Western Division in 1987, earning him the Executive of the Year Award (the only one going to a former MVP), and reached the World Series in 1989. He was inducted in 1980 to the International Jewish Sports Hall of Fame.
Rosen died at 91 in 2015, and Indians players wore a commemorative patch on their uniform jerseys that season with his number 7.
“Al Rosen has to be part of any discussion when it comes to the pillars of our franchise,” said Bob DiBiasio, the senior vice president of public affairs for the team, now known as the Guardians.
“Al Rosen was as popular a player as the beloved Rocky Colavito — just under Hall of Fame recognition but great players in their short time in the organization, always thought of in reverence and certainly a fan favorite,” said DiBiasio, who has worked for the Cleveland franchise since 1979.
Mickey Morabito, who headed the Yankees’ public relations then, recalled proposing a briefing for select reporters with past and future manager Billy Martin. Rosen approved Morabito’s idea. But Martin made a remark to the reporters that irked Steinbrenner, who hadn’t been informed of the lunch briefing and threatened to fire both Rosen and Morabito. Rosen then told Steinbrenner it was his idea.
“I’ll never forget that Al Rosen took the heat and backed me in that situation,” Morabito said. “That’s the kind of guy Al was.”
Rosen had long stood up for himself, too. In his 2013 documentary about Rosen’s life, Beating the Odds, filmmaker Bill Levy related that Rosen faced discrimination growing up in Miami, including from a high school football coach who questioned his trying out for the team. The coach reportedly told Rosen that Jews should stick to tennis and other non-contact sports. Rosen would excel in boxing and fight in World War II.
Mike Krukow, a former San Francisco pitcher, said that Rosen’s arrival as president-GM “was the switch that turned it all on” in quickly reversing the Giants’ fortunes following 100 losses in 1985, still the only such season in the franchise’s 142 years. It wasn’t just Rosen’s acquiring good players, Krukow said, but his changing the environment from the get-go and working collaboratively with manager Roger Craig. The Rosen-Craig duo “was the gold standard for what a relationship between a manager and general manager has to be like if the franchise is going to be successful,” said Corey Busch, the Giants’ executive vice president then.
Some Giants players, Krukow and Busch said in separate interviews, had complained incessantly about the notoriously windy and cold conditions at Candlestick Park, the team’s home stadium along San Francisco Bay. Rosen put a stop to what he sensed was a defeatist attitude by challenging his players to turn the climatic challenges into an advantage. Krukow bought in, even wearing short-sleeve jerseys when he pitched on cold nights. “Opponents thought I was nuts,” he said.
“There was such a toughness in the clubhouse. That was because of Al. He knew the mindset of a player. Those guys — Roger and Al — were a great 1–2 punch. There was no bullshit allowed. It was just accountability,” said Krukow, who pitched 14 seasons in the majors and has broadcast Giants games since 1990.
But an empathetic man shared the tough guy’s soul. The documentary tells of an incident from Rosen’s playing career: Following a spring-training game in Alabama, a taxi driver refused to take Rosen and Larry Doby — the American League’s first black player — back to the team’s hotel.
When the cabbie used a racial epithet against Doby, Rosen related in the film, he, Rosen, got out “and I flattened him, ’cause I knew the next thing he was gonna say [was], ‘I ain’t taking no Jew-boy, either.’”
Krukow witnessed Rosen’s heart, too.
It occurred during a Giants game in Atlanta on June 4, 1989. Krukow in recent weeks had experienced pain in his right, throwing arm. He could throw only one pitch, and it was at an absurdly slow 76 miles per hour. Krukow somehow got by, but he told Rosen he was considering retiring. In Atlanta, the Braves’ Darrell Evans rocked Krukow for a three-run home run. On that pitch, Krukow felt his shoulder pop and realized he’d thrown his final pitch. Craig removed him from the game.
Krukow went to the dressing room. At his stall stood Rosen. Both knew Krukow’s career was over.
“He pats me on the shoulder and says, ‘You did good.’ I’ll never forget him being at my locker,” Krukow said. “My bond with Al Rosen is deep, so sincere, so much respect you can have for another person. He was that special to me.”
Krukow added: “I’m glad you’re writing this story about Al. … You can wake me up at 3 in the morning, and I’ll speak about Al Rosen.”
Writer-editor Hillel Kuttler can be reached at [email protected].
