A Duck in the Hall
Joe Gordon ’38 has gone unnoticed before. He’s nowhere to be found in Old Oregon’s preview of the 1934 UO baseball season. Though the piece touts the prospective infield, it doesn’t mention the young shortstop from Portland, not even among those who can “fill in when needed.” Gordon did more than fill in. He took over at shortstop as a sophomore and led the Ducks to two straight conference championships, leaving with a .358 career batting average and a reputation as a brilliant fielder.
The New York Yankees noticed, signing Gordon to a contract in the spring of 1936 and, after he spent two years in the minor leagues, installing him as starting second baseman in 1938. In the next six years, the Yankees went to the World Series five times, winning four of them. Gordon was named the American League’s most valuable player in 1942, beating Ted Williams, who led the league in batting average, home runs, and runs batted in. Yankees manager Joe McCarthy, who had also managed Babe Ruth, Lou Gehrig, and Joe DiMaggio, said, “The greatest all-around player I ever saw, and I don’t bar any of them, is Joe Gordon.”
Gordon finished his playing career with the Cleveland Indians, winning another World Series with them in 1948. In his eleven seasons in the majors, he made the All-Star team nine times.
In those days, another great second baseman played for the Yankees’ archrivals, the Boston Red Sox. Bobby Doerr couldn’t claim the championships that Gordon could, but his batting statistics were better in almost every category and his reputation as a fielder was just as strong. Doerr also played in nine All-Star games—six times they were on the team together. Sportswriters and fans loved to argue over who was the preeminent second baseman of that era.
Bobby Doerr, who lives in Junction City, was inducted in baseball’s Hall of Fame in 1986. And Gordon? Passed over, year after year, as the memory of the complete player gave way to the one-dimensional caricature of statistics.
It took another second baseman to stand up for him. “I can’t understand why he didn’t make it in the Hall of Fame twenty years ago,” says Doerr, who is a member of the Hall of Fame Veterans Committee that selects older players to be inducted. Doerr championed Gordon, who died in 1978, as he finally got the necessary votes and was inducted into the Hall of Fame July 26—the first Duck in Cooperstown.
“The other guys hadn’t played with him, against him,” Doerr says. They didn’t understand that the peculiarities of old Yankee Stadium were tough on right-handed hitters and that affected his statistics, he says.
“He was a heckuva player. I hope I was as good a player as he was.” Doerr says. Powerful words from a man whose number 1 is one of only seven retired Red Sox numbers displayed in right field at Fenway Park.
And if all that’s not cool enough, here’s my favorite Joe Gordon story:
In 1947, the Indians, Gordon’s new club, became the first American League team to have an African American player, Larry Doby (Jackie Robinson had been the first in the majors with the National League’s Brooklyn Dodgers a few months earlier). When Doby was introduced to the team, there was a stiff cordiality, and some players even refused to shake his hand.
“I felt all alone,” Doby said. “When we went out on the field to warm up, to play catch, you know the way we always did, no one asked me to play. I just stood there for minutes. It seemed like a long time. Then Joe Gordon yelled, ‘Hey kid, come on. Throw with me.’ That was it. Joe Gordon was a class guy.” A class guy who now joins Doerr and Doby in baseball’s hallowed hall.
I’m not so sure as Harold Toliver [“Numbered Days,” Summer 2009] is that Milton would have written something other than Paradise Lost had he understood nature as we do—its timetable, and so on. Incredibly to some, perhaps, there are many who navigate between scientific findings and their religious moorings quite successfully, not presuming to understand either sufficiently to discount the other out of hand. I think Milton would have been quite capable of writing his great epic in our age, with altered metaphors and such probably but with—surprisingly to some—intact substance.
Norman Davis, Ph.D. ’71
Mantua, Utah
I have read the Editor’s Note [“Ninety and Counting,” Summer 2009] again and again. What intrigued me was your heavy use of the term “spirit.” “That”(Oregon) spirit appears five times and “his” (Jim Warsaw’s) once. Since you say that cannot be reduced to a paragraph or a catch phrase, is it then ethereal, indefinable? However, if it is definable, please explain. (A future issue of the Quarterly would be a good place.) How would our University of Oregon spirit differ from the spirit felt by an Oregon State University alum toward his or her school?
John Vazbys ’57
Mahwah, New Jersey
Editor’s note: The UO spirit is very real, but not easily defined—though indisputedly quite different from Oregon State’s. Readers, send us your thoughts (gmaynard@uoregon.edu) about UO spirit, and we’ll see if we can answer Mr. Vazbys’ questions
I definitely enjoy receiving Oregon Quarterly every three months and generally read it cover to cover as soon as it comes. Thanks! It is a wonderful magazine. However, I noticed a small mistake when talking about Henry Villard [“Mighty Oregon,” Upfront, Summer 2009]. Villard Glacier is located on the east side of the North Sister [not Mount Hood]. Having climbed on this glacier several times (without making the summit), I’m very sure that it exists in this location.
Curt Shaw
San Francisco
My congratulations to Scott Palmer [“Shaking Up Shakespeare,” Old Oregon, Summer 2009] for producing successful Shakespeare in Hillsboro. I wish him all success.
At the same time, I must point out that what he is doing is hardly original. In the 1960s, I studied at Southern Oregon College in Ashland under Angus Bowmer, founder of the Oregon Shakespeare Festival, and was a festival company member for seven years. It was there I developed my preference for “traditional” Shakespeare.
Yet, I have had adventures in the outré when it comes to the Bard. At SOC, I was involved in a production of The Taming of the Shrew in a Wild West setting—not a new idea even then, but an intriguing one. When I was at the UO in the 1970s, one of my colleagues and students was Jan Powell, whose Tygre’s Heart company produced many Shakespeare plays with extremely inventive settings, costumes, and ideas.
For the past twelve years, I have been a volunteer with McNary High School in Keizer. We teach multiple classes and stage four full productions each academic year in our well-rigged Ken Collins Theatre (capacity: 600 seats). We do Shakespeare every year. At first, I stuck to my conventional roots, except for “gender-bending” roles to create more roles for young women.
As time has gone on, I have ventured into more exploratory areas, including Twelfth Night set in 1735 Jamaica among pirates. That production also featured a heavy dose of slapstick and humor from Looney Tunes and two wandering Japanese tourists. Our A Midsummer Night’s Dream was sort of a “kitchen sink” production that featured a playground setting, music spanning 2,000 years, and inventive costuming. This past year, we did our own Wild West version of The Taming of the Shrew, which I titled “The Yee-Haw! Version.” I added an entirely new “framing play” in place of the Christopher Sly frame and altered the text in a great many places. Our show next year is Romeo and Juliet, set on a distant planet some 5,000 years in the future.
More attention should be paid to what is being accomplished in the arts on the high school level. We don’t settle for “high school productions” (sorry, Walt Disney folks). I’ll put our shows up against most colleges and universities for strength and quality.
Dan Hays, M.S. ’80
Salem
I write to offer belated praise for the “Mars and Back” cover story [“Ascent of a Woman,” Autumn 2008]. I was so inspired by the brilliant Motazedian. It’s a welcome reminder of what inquiring minds can accomplish. Thanks for the nice work.
Lisa Nuss ’85
San Francisco
