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The View from the Dugout

By Dr. John D. Eigenauer
November 24, 2006

The View from the Dugout: The Journals of Red Rolfe is, as the cover says, “an unparalleled look inside the mind of a major league baseball manager.” Its unique nature arises from Rolfe’s careful daily redaction of game events, managerial strategies, his own scouting reports, and musings about his players’ strengths and weaknesses.

Rolfe’s journals are replete with details that take some care to appreciate. A reproduction of one of the carefully typed pages shows a very dry game account in which Rolfe writes, “Zernial opened the seventh with a double to center. Groth dropped this ball after a hard run and kicked it into right field. Seerey popped to Robinson and Michaels and Souchok went out easily.” Most of the journals are made up of details like this: notes about simple game details. But I sensed that these details added up to important generalizations about his players that Rolfe later used. I speculate that the comment about Groth’s run, for example, reminded Rolfe that he hustled, but that he needed work cutting off balls in the alley.

Editor William Anderson deserves credit for making the book more readable by interspersing extracts from the journals with game summaries and contemporary newspaper accounts. Naturally, he breaks the book up into sections by the years in which Rolfe managed the Tigers (1949, 1950, 1951, and 1952) and labels each entry by game number and date.

Red Dartmouth graduate Red Rolfe enjoyed success as a player with the Yankees, but found the Bronx Bombers invincible as the manager of the Detroit Tigers.

The journals also give insight into Rolfe’s perception of the game’s contingencies. After a spring training loss, Rolfe wrote, “A bad call by [Jim] Duffy on a three and two pitch gave a base on balls and this was followed by a home run by Seerey. Another run was a gift when Kolloway dropped a perfect pickoff throw from Herbert with a runner on third and first.” For fans of old game accounts, these comments provide more detailed insight than can be had from box scores.

These and many other details are related without the slightest hint of emotion, a fact that everyone around Rolfe noticed. As sportswriter H. G. Salsinger wrote, “Robert (Red) Rolfe will never be a victim of illusion. He is a stark realist where baseball is concerned. He knows that two and two still add up to four and not to five or six. He is cold and methodical in analyzing his available resources. Sentiment has no place in his reckoning and does not influence his conclusions.” Indeed, the journals confirm Salisbury’s evaluation on every page: players who were in a slump were to practice harder, spring training exercises were aimed at whipping the players into top condition, winning was to be the single goal, and winning could best be reached through continual striving toward excellence and careful modifications of plans.

Because they are journals, they portray Rolfe without bias. We see a dispassionate, meticulous, rational man who could not relate to the human aspects of the game. He gets frustrated with the talented but lazy Dick Wakefield, but frustrates his players in turn because of his taciturnity and insistence upon singular dedication to improvement. While the journal completely lacked pathos, I couldn’t help but feel sorry for Rolfe. It is obvious from them that he understood the game, and that he was something of a pioneer in his approach; but his dedication and rationality were not enough to help the Tigers win consistently, or to aid him in becoming a memorable manager.

An odd aspect of Rolfe’s observations is that everything was a pattern for him: he consistently finds insight even in the accidental. After his team grounded into four double plays against Ellis Kinder, for example, he wrote that the Tigers ought to play for one run against him. In the absence of scouting reports and video, however, these first efforts to strategize rationally are fairly insightful.

I recommend Rolfe’s journals for serious students of the game (such as members of the Society for American Baseball Research), perhaps for Tiger fans (who will enjoy lots of details about Tiger players during the 1949-1952 seasons), and for historical baseball researchers. Those who think that the journals house intrigue or even personal insights will be disappointed. They are an invaluable historical resource, but are less than entertaining.

John Eigenauer can be contacted at jeigenauer@yahoo.com. A complete list of his reviews and more about him can be found here.