Charles Walter Dressen was born in Decatur, Illinois, on September 20, 1894. As a switchman for the Wabash Railroad and a five feet five and less than 150 pounds, he played for various football and baseball teams for whatever they were paying. He did not have a great arm, but baseball scouts thought his hitting and fielding were.
He signed a pro contract to play for the 1919 Moline (Illinois) Plowboys of the Class B Three-I League, and the following season with Peoria of the same league in 1920.
He returned to Peoria in 1921 and then moved up to the St. Paul Saints of the American Association late in the year, where he played through 1924. The Cincinnati Reds purchased his contract, and he made his big-league debut as a pinch-hitter on April 17, 1925, and had his first hit nine days later.
Dressen had his best major league season in 1927, batting .292, but in 1930, he lost his starting job to young Tony Cuccinello. He split most of 1931 between the Minor League Baltimore Orioles and Minneapolis Millers. He knew he was nearing the end of the line; however, unlike most ballplayers, he was prepared.
In 1932, Dressen had no place to go and no job. When he learned in June that Nashville needed a new manager, he did what few would do: he borrowed train fare from a friend, hopped on a train, met Vols owner Fay Murray, and made an offer Murray couldn’t refuse.
With seventy-seven games left on the schedule—if Dressen failed to win more than half of the remaining contests, Murray wouldn’t owe him a dime.
How about that?
On July 7, 1932, Murray released Joe Klugman as the Vols’ manager, and Dressen became his replacement.
How do you think he did, and did he earn his pay?
On the season’s final day, Nashville’s record under Dressen stood at 38 and 38. Playing the Crackers in Atlanta, the Vols fell behind in the early innings but rallied to win. With a record of 39-38, Dressen got paid for one game more than he needed. Murray also gave him a one-year contract to manage the club in 1933. And he was going to play third base, to boot.
One of the things Murray and business manager Jimmy Hamilton liked about Dressen, and the players did, too, was that, as manager of the Vols, he earned a reputation for a comprehensive knowledge of inclinations and statistics in evaluating players.
In early September of 1933, Dressen left the Vols to play third base for the New York Giants – The Nashville club had a working agreement with the Giants, you see – playing in sixteen games for the pennant-winning Giants and batting .222.
Dressen contracted typhoid fever and entered the hospital on December 26. However, by February 24, 1934, he announced that he would leave the hospital and should be in good shape to resume his position with the team when the club started spring training on March 15. However, not before the New York Giants, who still held an option on him, released him to Nashville on March 7.
A Nashville baseball history highlight occurred on April 7, when Dressen’s Vols won against the New York Yankees 5-4 in a game at Sulphur Dell before a crowd of 3,000.
That was the game when James P. Dawson, a New York Times reporter who was traveling with the Yankees, described Sulphur Dell’s unique feature when he wrote, “The right field here is cut out of a hill and is terraced, making it necessary for a fly-chaser to combine hill-climbing ability with speed and accuracy in fielding the ball.” Dawson wrote that Babe Ruth “almost broke one of his legs catching Rodda’s fly on the climb in the first. The Babe slipped and stumbled but climbed on and came up with the ball”.
By the way, as was Lou Gehrig, Ruth was 2 for 4.
In July, the Cincinnati Reds dealt their player-manager Bob O’Farrell to the Cubs. The team was twenty-nine games under .500, and Dressen was offered the job. He quit his post with the Vols, and on July 28, Dressen was announced as the new Cincinnati Reds manager to take over on July 30.
But it came at a price: Fay Murray sold Dressen to Cincinnati for $15,000 to become the Reds’ manager.
Lance Richbourg, a Nashville outfielder, was named to take Dressen’s place as Nashville manager.
The Reds finished in last place in 1934, sixth place in 1935, and fifth-place finish in 1936. But in 1937, the Reds were in the cellar again, and when Dressen demanded to know his status for 1938, he the Reds let him go with a month left in the season.
On October 9, Dressen was named Nashville Vols manager once more, signing a one-year contract for $10,000, a Southern Association record salary for managing in the league.
Dressen returned to Nashville again because, I believe Murray and Hamilton still knew his familiarity with players and had been somewhat successful, and they took him back. He was an integral part of the administration, too, as on December 5, 1937, at the minor league meetings in Chicago, Nashville Vols business manager Jimmy Hamilton and field manager Chuck Dressen signed a working agreement with the Brooklyn Dodgers.
As a Dodgers affiliate in 1938, Dressen guided the team to a second-place finish.
Larry MacPhail, former Reds general manager and now in a similar role in Brooklyn, added Dressen to Leo Durocher’s staff as a third-base coach for 1939.
To replace Dressen, on November 8, 1938, Fay Murray announced that Larry Gilbert, veteran manager of the New Orleans Pelicans, was the new Nashville Vols manager succeeding Dressen. Murray said that Gilbert, who had been the pilot of the Pelicans since 1923, would become a part owner of the club.
The signing was the most significant coup in the Southern Association’s history and maybe in minor-league baseball. Nashville would enjoy several pennants and Dixie Series championships under Gilbert’s tutelage during the 1940s.
That was the end of Dressen’s run with Nashville. As a side note, for several years, Leo Durocher called the shots for the Dodgers, rarely without input from Dressen. In 1947, Larry MacPhail bought stock in the Yankees and lured Dressen to the new manager, Bucky Harris’ staff.
Dressen served as third base coach and doubled as pitching coach. In 1947, the Yankees won the pennant and World Series.
The Yankees fell in 1948, finishing behind the Indians and Red Sox. Dressen’s protector, Larry MacPhail, sold his share in the team to George Weiss, who never considered Dressen as “Yankee material.” Harris was out the door, too. The new hire was Casey Stengel, with Dressen grabbing the managing job Stengel left with the Oakland Oaks of the Pacific Coast League. Dressen guided the Oaks to a second-place finish in 1949 and a PCL pennant in 1950.
That winter, Brooklyn again called. This time, the Dodgers wanted Dressen to be their manager. He inherited one of the most talented rosters in National League history, one that included Gil Hodges, Jackie Robinson, Pee Wee Reese, Carl Furillo, Duke Snider, Roy Campanella, Don Newcombe, Preacher Roe, and Carl Erskine.
I’ll close out by saying that while Dressen did much of his managing from the third-base coaching box with the 1951 Dodgers, you probably remember the Giants came roaring back from way behind the Dodgers, and, under pressure, the Dodgers dropped six of their last ten to finish the regular season in a first-place tie. A best-of-three playoff ensued, with a coin flip to determine who would get the rubber game if necessary. The Dodgers won, and Dressen opted to play the opener in Ebbets Field, giving the Giants the next two at the Polo Grounds.
The Dodgers were up 4–1 with three outs to go and the series tied one game apiece. The Giants scored a run against Newcombe and had two men on when Dressen called coach Clyde Sukeforth in the bullpen. Branca and Erskine were warming up. Sukeforth reported that Erskine had just bounced a curve. Even though the batter, Bobby Thomson, had homered off Branca in Game One, Dressen chose him to close out the Giants. The rest is history.
Dressen could have walked Thomson, too, but Willie Mays was in the on-deck circle. Would that have made a difference?
During spring training in 1965, Dressen suffered a heart attack. In 1966, a month into the season, Dressen had a second heart attack. While recuperating, he got a kidney infection and subsequently had a third, this time fatal, heart attack. He died on August 10, 1966.
Charlie Dressen’s overall record as a Major League manager with five teams was 1,008-973. He managed two pennant winners, played for a world champion with the 1933 Giants, and coached on World Series winners in 1947 with the Yankees and in 1959 with the Los Angeles Dodgers. As a player, Charlie was active in seven big league seasons, was a regular for four years, and had a career batting mark of .272.
Although he was a nonstop talker and supreme egotist, Dressen was the flesh-and-blood epitome of a baseball lifer—single-minded, resilient, and always thinking three steps ahead.
He is a bit of trivia of Dressen:
After the 1920 baseball season concluded in Peoria, Dressen returned to Decatur, where George Halas recruited him to play for the A.E. Staley Food Starch company football team. He appeared in four league games in 1920 for the Staleys. Do you recognize that name? They were the precursors of the Chicago Bears.
Dressen’s birth date is often mistakenly given as September 28, 1898—my birth date (no, not in 1898). Throughout his baseball career, he was actually four years older than he claimed to be, having been born on September 20, 1894.
Dressen’s father, Phillip, had immigrated from Germany in 1882; his mother, the former Kate Driscoll, had immigrated from England in 1880. The family spelled “Dresen,” which is how Chuck signed his World War I draft card.
In 1947, when the Yankees won the AL pennant, Charlie Dressen became the answer to a baseball trivia question: Who was the only man in uniform for the city’s three baseball teams—the Yankees, Dodgers, and Giants—when they won a pennant?
Chuck, Charlie, or Charley Dressen. He stuck by his players and taught them to win. He studied them, and he played situational baseball. In Nashville, he won over 200 games in four seasons and led the Vols to fourth–, third–, and two second-place finishes. With future major leaguers Slick Castleman, Johnny Gooch, Byron Speece, Lonny Frey, Lance Richbourg, Poco Taitt, Phil Weintraub, Footsie Grantham, Ace Adams, Bert Haas, and Moose Clabaugh, along with Nashville stalwart infielder Bill Rodda in his stables, he became a well-loved, no-nonsense Nashville manager.
© 2024 by Skip Nipper. All Rights Reserved.
