They May Have Been A Headache But They Never Were A Bore

The real trouble came when we made him captain of the ball club and he approached his new job the same way he had approached his other challenges in baseball. He jumped into the job of captain with both feet, and he set up an atmosphere of tension that soured a lot of the boys on him.

Walter Alston came to me in the 1965 season and we got to talking about how Maury was tough to handle, and we conceived the idea of making Maury captain as a way of smoothing things over. I remember exactly what I said to Walter. I said, "I know Maury's tough to handle. You two don't think the same way. He's a complex person, full of ideas of his own, and you're not going to change him. He'll go along with what you tell him, but he'll do it begrudgingly. And if you criticize him at all, you're wrong because he's got to be right. And then he'll sulk and pretend he's hurt and take himself out of the lineup. Now, maybe all that will change if you make him captain. But don't give him any authority or you'll have worse trouble!"

Walter and I both figured that Maury would be captain the way Pee Wee Reese had been captain. Pee Wee was captain of the Dodgers for 100 years, and all he ever did was carry the lineup to the plate before the game. It was like an honorary degree. But Maury refused to accept the job for what it was. He felt that the captain should take charge of the team as soon as the first ball was pitched, and we had a hell of a time convincing him otherwise. Once I told him that he was getting a big head, and what do you think he did? He showed up lame for a few days and said he couldn't play. Lord knows he wasn't a bad person, but surely he must have been one of the most sensitive players that ever stepped on a baseball field. He'd take himself out of that lineup at the drop of a criticism. Maury worked to make himself perfect and to make the whole ball club perfect, and if you suggested that he had any flaws whatsoever, he would go into a sulk. But it was hard to stay mad at him, because you knew that at the bottom of it all Maury simply wanted to be the best player on the best ball club in baseball, and when that's the motivation, what's to get mad about?

Maury hadn't been captain long when he came to Walter and announced that he had worked up a system of fines for missed signals, failure to hustle, careless plays, etc. He suggested that Walter appoint a players' committee, composed of Koufax, Drysdale, Wills and anybody else Walter cared to name, to meet after ball games and levy penalties. Well, Walter Alston is the most understanding of men, and he knew that Maury was only trying to do a conscientious job as captain so, against his better judgment, Walter consented to the plan. Two days later Willie Davis misjudged a fly ball, got disgusted with himself and failed to hustle after the ball. The committee met and levied a fine of $100.

Walter said he would go for $50 but not for $100. Maury said that Walter had agreed to the idea of the committee, hadn't he? And Walter said that he had not agreed to give up his authority over the ball club. Walter said that he would be glad to accept recommendations from Maury's committee, but he would reserve the right to decide on the final action in each case.

Maury went off on one of his patented brooding sessions. He told Walter he didn't want to be captain of the Dodgers anymore. He told me the same thing, and I said, "O.K., Maury, put it in writing if that's the way you feel." The next day Walter found a note on his desk saying that Maury was quitting as captain and also wouldn't be able to play that day because his leg was hurting. Walter said nothing, and the next day Maury came into the clubhouse and said that his leg was still too bad for him to play. Right on the spot, Walter called a team meeting, abolished the players' committee by executive decree and told Maury he could keep on sulking as long as he wanted but there was nothing wrong with his leg that hadn't been wrong with it before. The next day Maury suited up and told Walter he wanted his job of captain back. A lesser man might have told him off. Walter said simply, "As far as I am concerned, you never lost it."

But letting Maury stay on as captain didn't solve another problem, which was that a lot of our ballplayers just plain didn't hit it off with him. Maybe he was a little too intense for their taste, I don't know. Nobody talked out loud about it, but there was an atmosphere of tension around him. I guess Willie Davis was the only one who ever put it into words, and that was long after Maury had gone. This year at Vero Beach , Willie was all upset about some personal problems, and when a reporter came up and asked him if the ball club was missing Captain Wills , Willie let fly. "Losing Maury is no big loss," Willie said. "It might even help us. He wasn't a bad guy, but a lot of guys on the team didn't like him, and I was one of them. I think he got a little too big for his pants. He was always trying to exert more power than he should have. I might be saying these things because I don't like him, but I imagine a lot of the other fellows felt the same way. It's just that nobody else has said it. He knows I didn't like him. I told him so. I'm not knocking him as a ballplayer. You've got to give the guy credit. He made himself a major-leaguer, but as a person I couldn't see him."

I was aware that Maury rubbed his teammates the wrong way, and I discussed this more than once with Walter Alston and Walter O'Malley . Finally we began to think in terms of a trade. Nothing definite, mind you, but the idea was up in the air. And then we sort of pushed the thought out of our minds when Sandy Koufax came to me before the World Series and told me he might be quitting. We figured we could stand to lose our most valuable pitcher and we could stand to lose our team captain, but losing them both in one year would be too hard on everybody, including the fans. Then Maury stepped in and forced the issue, and I don't know to this day what got into him.

You'll remember that the Dodgers went barnstorming to Japan after the 1966 season, even though a lot of them didn't particularly want to go. We let Koufax, Drysdale and Wes Parker stay home, and we persuaded the others to make the trip by letting them take their wives to Hawaii for a four-day vacation at the outset and by guaranteeing them $4,000 each for the six-week tour of Japan . I didn't go myself, because in the first place who needs an out-of-shape general manager on a barnstorming trip and, second, my wife Evit and I hadn't had a vacation in 20 years and I had promised her a cruise to the Hawaiian Islands and back.

Evit and I were a day away from sailing when we learned that Maury had gone AWOL in Japan . He was last seen muttering something about his leg and saying that he had to get to a doctor. Well, I wasn't going to let this interrupt my vacation, so Evit and I sailed from Los Angeles . Five days later we get to Honolulu and who is there, playing guitar in a little combo with his old friend Don Ho, but Maury Wills . To tell you the truth, I avoided him. I didn't want to have my vacation interrupted by some silly scene with Maury, and anyway I figured he was seeing a doctor and taking care of his leg. But pretty soon I found out that Maury hadn't seen a doctor in Hawaii and, as far as I know, he didn't see a doctor until a week after he came back to the mainland.