Trade deadline drama? Nothing will top 1960 as far as craziness in Detroit
63 years ago, the Tigers and Indians did the unthinkable.
They were men of derring do, dressed in tweed.
The baseball general managers of their day were cigar smoking, guttural fellows who got their fix by dealing players like trading cards. There were no player agents. No complicated contracts. There wasn’t a no-trade clause, but there was the reserve clause.
That meant that the players were, essentially, indentured servants whose services were bartered like stocks and bonds. There was no leverage if you were a player.
Two of the most boisterous, brash GMs of the day—in this case, 1960—were employed by the Cleveland Indians and the Detroit Tigers: Frank Lane and Bill DeWitt, respectively.
Lane was nicknamed “Trader Frank” and he reveled in wheeling and dealing. His baseball executive career began in 1936 when he was named GM of the Cincinnati Reds’ minor league affiliate in Durham, NC. That led to a stint as the Reds’ assistant GM, before he served two years as president of the American Association.
Lane finally made “the show” as the GM of the White Sox in 1948. That’s when his penchant for trading ballplayers really took off.
To Lane, a trade was like a hit of a narcotic. For seven years in Chicago, Lane remade the White Sox roster, though there wasn’t much change in the team’s fortunes from a standings point of view until near the end of his tenure. But there were trades—lots of them. Some of the players that Lane brought to Chicago via deal were Hall of Famers Nellie Fox and Minnie Minoso. Lane also acquired All-Stars such as Sherm Lollar, Chico Carrasquel and Billy Pierce.
Then it was off to St. Louis for Lane, as GM of the Cardinals. There, he made what was called “his worst trade ever,” when he swapped out the Cardinals’ iconic “birds on a bat” logo for a scripted CARDINALS on the front of the jerseys. Those were gone after one controversial season.
But Lane’s collision course with DeWitt came when he was employed by the Cleveland Indians.
In 1960, Lane traded with DeWitt three times. In the first two, DeWitt—whose reputation as a risk taker preceded also him— got the best of his counterpart on the other side of Lake Erie.
First, on the eve of the ‘60 season, Lane dealt defending HR champ Rocky Colavito to Detroit for defending batting champ Harvey Kuenn. Never before—or since—had such a swap occurred.
Lane crowed to the media, “I feel like we traded hamburger for steak.”
DeWitt, for his part, retorted, “I like hamburger.”
Colavito was a very productive slugger in Detroit from 1960-63, while Kuenn’s numbers quickly went south shortly after the trade.
Shortly after that trade, DeWitt sent a little-known benchwarmer named Steve Demeter to Cleveland. Lane relayed a lefty slugger to Detroit—a player who apparently didn’t fit into the Indians’ plans. Someone named Norm Cash.
Despite being stung twice by DeWitt, Frank Lane came back for more.
It’s appropriate to bring it up now—because not only is tomorrow the MLB trading deadline for 2023, it’s also coming up on the 63rd anniversary of perhaps the oddest big league trade of all. Leave it to Frank Lane and Bill DeWitt to pull it off.
The idea, according to Detroit Free Press sportswriter Hal Middlesworth, was hatched by DeWitt.
“Why don’t we make a really big deal and trade managers?”
Those were the words that DeWitt spoke to Lane sometime in mid-July 1960.
Helming the teams were Joe Gordon in Cleveland and Jimmie Dykes in Detroit.
Both clubs were having disappointing seasons. Why else would such a cockamamie idea even be on the table?
With July nearing its end, DeWitt convinced Lane to indeed swap managers—Gordon for Dykes, even up.
The risk takers who ran big league clubs in those days had one eye on marketing and another on an actual baseball point of view. The Indians-Tigers manager trade was certainly more heavily on the former than the latter.
Gordon, the former Yankees infielder, and Dykes, longtime player for the Philadelphia A’s, were grizzled baseball men who’d seen it all—until Aug. 3, 1960, when the swap was announced.
The manager swap made a lot of news, but little difference in the standings. The Tigers were 44-52 at the time of the trade, and they finished 71-83. The Indians were a little better (50-45) but well out of the pennant race. They limped home at 76-78.
That made the combined records of the two teams 53-64 after the “blockbuster.”
Colavito, for one, gagged at the trade.
“When I heard that Joe Gordon was going to manage the Tigers, I wanted to puke,” Rocky said. “Not that I hated him, I didn’t. I didn’t think he was a good handler of pitchers and that cost us the pennant in Cleveland the year before. I always thought he was kind of a front runner. When a guy wasn’t doing well, he didn’t pay much attention to him but that’s the guy who needs a pat on the back. Jimmie Dykes was one of my favorite managers. He was an intelligent manager and a very nice man. I was very disappointed with that trade.”
So was Gordon.
Shortly after the season ended, Gordon refused to answer his apartment door to any of the Detroit media and quit. He was soon hired by the KC Athletics to manage for 1961, though he lasted in Kansas City only until June 19 that year before being fired. Gordon returned to KC as the first manager of the expansion Royals in 1969. He lasted one season.
As for Dykes, the 65 year-old lasted in Cleveland through 1961 (77-83), then was dismissed.
So maybe Frank Lane got the “best” of Bill DeWitt on this one.
Tigers outfielder “Sunday” Charlie Maxwell, he of Paw-Paw, Michigan, was another who was befuddled by the trade of managers.
“What a fiasco that was,” said Maxwell. “Jimmie Dykes let us play the game. Gordon tried to make everybody a ping pong hitter. Ping the ball over the first or third baseman’s head. He didn’t like the home run hitters. I was disappointed with the trade and really don’t know what the reason was.”
OK, DeWitt got that one wrong, but in addition to the two fleecings of Lane, DeWitt in his brief Tigers tenure (1960-61) accomplished quite a bit.
He hired Ernie Harwell as play-by-play announcer, teaming with George Kell.
He signed Stroh’s Beer as the principal sponsor of the Tigers.
He changed the name of the ballpark from Briggs Stadium to Tiger Stadium effective in 1961.
He invested heavily in the team’s minor league system
He used everything from trampoline acts to dog obedience training to clown acts to entertain the fans along with other promotional schemes.
Today, all the talk is about Scott Harris and what he’ll do before tomorrow’s deadline as the Tigers once again find themselves as “sellers.”
You think he’ll trade AJ Hinch to Cleveland for Terry Francona?
Wanna start a rumor?