How Leo Durocher blazed an early path for sports stars into the TV world

Theres no mention of it on his Hall of Fame plaque, but Leo Durocher once allowed a talking horse to take batting practice against Sandy Koufax at Dodger Stadium. Nor does it mention the time that Durocher, to whom the phrase nice guys finish last is attributed, gave a tryout to a nice guy named

There’s no mention of it on his Hall of Fame plaque, but Leo Durocher once allowed a talking horse to take batting practice against Sandy Koufax at Dodger Stadium.

Nor does it mention the time that Durocher, to whom the phrase “nice guys finish last” is attributed, gave a tryout to a nice guy named Herman Munster.

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Or the time he met that Jethro Bodine kid, a big hillbilly from Tennessee whose family had moved to Beverly Hills after striking it rich in oil. Durocher saw Bodine throw a baseball and wanted to sign him up to pitch for the Dodgers.

All of that actually happened.

On television, anyway.

A show about a talking horse? Of course, of course.

Nouveau rich hillbillies living in a Beverly Hills mansion? Hey, let me tell you a story about a man named Jed.

And, yes, there was even a sitcom in which Frankenstein’s monster is repurposed as a suburban, middle-class family man. Many critics hated it. Others said, “It’s alive! IT’S ALIVE!”

All of that was happening in the early 1960s, a few years after the Brooklyn Dodgers settled into their new home in Los Angeles. And “Leo the Lip,” the famously combative former Brooklyn manager who had kicked around for a while but by then was back working for the team as a coach, looked out over Chavez Ravine toward Hollywood. He wanted a piece of that action.

But then Durocher always was a showman, a ringmaster, an actor. He spent most of his adult life cultivating relationships with entertainers, from his marriage to actress Laraine Day to his decades-long bromance with Frank Sinatra, and during the 1940s and early ’50s, he made regular appearances on “The Jack Benny Show,” “The Fred Allen Show” and other classics from the Golden Age of Radio.

As he closed in on 60, Durocher grabbed hold of the spotlight with both hands. He appeared as himself in a variety of 1960s sitcoms, always as “Leo Durocher of the Los Angeles Dodgers,” even though it was the low-key Walter Alston who actually managed the team. Three of those appearances — on “The Beverly Hillbillies,” “Mr. Ed,” and “The Munsters” — remain the craziest guest hits by a sports figure in television history.

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“I remember watching him in those shows — maybe not clear as day, but, yeah, I watched them,” said Joey Amalfitano, 86, a longtime Durocher confidante who broke into the big leagues playing for him on the Giants in 1954 and ended his career playing for him on the Cubs. “And that was him. I got to see him behind closed doors in his office when he was managing and I saw him on TV in those shows. Same guy. We’re all performers, and some of us perform better than others. Leo performed better than anyone.

“I’ll bet Leo never read a script when he did that TV stuff. I’ll bet they just told him what they wanted and he’d go out and do it. And if he did read it, he read it once and then winged it.”

It’s true Durocher was viewed by many as a scoundrel. He was a pool shark growing up in West Springfield, Mass., and that foreshadowed a lifetime spent figuring out the odds and doing what needed to be done to get an edge. He gambled, he cavorted with unsavory characters, he womanized. On the field, he brawled with umpires, with opposing players, sometimes with members of his own team. And he brawled off the field as well.

Never mind being kicked out of the game by an umpire. In 1947, commissioner Happy Chandler kicked him out of the game for an entire year. Chandler already had a pile of Durocher-related contretemps on his desk, and now there was this: The Catholic Youth Organization was threatening to boycott Brooklyn Dodgers games because of Durocher’s marriage to Day, who had recently been divorced. Tossing everything into one sack, Chandler suspended Durocher for an “accumulation of unpleasant incidents.”

In 1994, about three years after his death at age 87, Durocher was inducted into the Hall of Fame as a manager. Had he stayed with the television, who knows? He might have won an Emmy as well. Given his obsession with winning, Durocher would have figured out a way. Besides, he was a good actor. Damned good. As much as Durocher loved the camera, the camera loved him back. He was a natural.

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Let’s revisit Durocher’s greatest hits.

‘The Beverly Hillbillies’

Episode: “The Clampetts and the Dodgers”

Airdate: April 10, 1963

The plot: Invited by bank president Milburn Drysdale to go on a golf outing with millionaire Jed Clampett and his nephew Jethro Bodine, Durocher is intrigued when he sees Bodine throw a baseball to dislodge a golf ball from a tree. Believing he has discovered the greatest pitching prospect since Satchel Paige, Durocher heads out to the Clampett mansion with Dodgers GM Buzzy Bavasi (played by actor Wally Cassell) to give Jethro a tryout. With Durocher as his catcher, Jethro throws the ball with such velocity that Durocher is thrown backward into the swimming pool —or, as the Clampetts call it, “the see-ment pond.” Durocher and Buzzy are prepared to offer a contract until they discover Jethro can only throw the ball when his hand is covered with possum fat. Durocher wonders if “maybe we can get the commissioner to legalize the possum ball,” but he and Buzzy go home without a new pitching phenom.

Money quote: “You’d make a great umpire,” Durocher snaps after Jethro starts blabbing as he is about to tee off.

Actor Max Baer Jr., who played Jethro for the entire nine-season run of “The Beverly Hillbillies, believes Durocher’s acting skills were an offshoot of his fiery managerial style.

“If you ever watched him manage, and if you ever watched the way he walked in the dugout and walked on the field and harassed the umpire, well, that was all part of an act,” said Baer, now 82 and living in Nevada near Lake Tahoe. “He was a good actor. You’ve got to be a good actor to do that kind of stuff. And that’s the way he was with us. He was easy to work with.”

Baer’s father was boxer Max Baer Sr., who won the world heavyweight championship from Primo Carnera in 1934 and lost it in 1935 to James J. Braddock. Max Jr. was born in 1937, and he grew up in the company of professional athletes and other celebrities. His father was friends with longtime National League umpire Dolly Stark, who sometimes gave the boxer various baseball souvenirs to bring home to his son.

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Years later, Max Jr. formed a fast friendship with Durocher on the set of “The Beverly Hillbillies.”

“We hit it off and I spent quite a bit of time with Leo, both in Palm Springs and in L.A., playing golf,” Baer said. “He was divorced from Laraine Day by then. We played golf together at Canyon Country Club in Palm Springs.

“We used to lie to each other on the golf course. Leo liked to cheat. He didn’t count all his shots. I said to him, ‘Is this the way you manage in baseball?’ He said, ‘Of course! The object is to win. It’s not a courtroom. You don’t raise your hand and swear to tell the truth, the whole truth and nothing but the truth.’”

They never talked about the craft of acting.

“When we did the show together, with me putting Granny’s fatback on my fingers so that I could throw the baseball, which means I was throwing a spitter or whatever, I was there doing a job and he was there doing a job,” Baer said. “And we talked about baseball and golf. And women. That was always part of the conversation when you were talking to Leo.”

‘Mr. Ed’

Episode: “Leo Durocher Meets Mister Ed”

Airdate: Sept. 29, 1963

Plot: Mr. Ed, the talking horse who only converses with his owner, Wilbur, is a passionate Dodgers fan who believes he has found a hitch in Moose Skowron’s swing. He somehow manages to place a call to the Dodgers dugout and, identifying himself as Wilbur, tells Durocher that Skowron is dropping his right shoulder every time he swings. Durocher scoffs at first but passes the tip on to Skowron, who proceeds to get a winning hit. Intrigued, Durocher tracks down Wilbur, thinking he is the source of the batting tip, and invites him to Dodger Stadium. Wilbur naturally shows up with Mr. Ed, who wanders into the batting cage with a bat clenched in his teeth. Agreeing with Dodgers outfielder Willie Davis’ suggestion it would make for a great publicity shot, Durocher allows Sandy Koufax to throw a pitch to Mr. Ed. The horse hits a rocket off the left field fence and gallops around the bases, sliding into the plate for an inside-the-park home run as frightened catcher John Roseboro scampers up the batting cage to get out of the way.

Money quote: Durocher is initially irritated by the in-game call to the dugout, telling Mr. Ed, “Look, mister, I can’t bother with you. I gotta go kill me an umpire.”

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The episode in which Durocher appeared was of such heft that in 1997 it earned a spot on TV Guide’s list of the top 100 television episodes of all time — at No. 73, between episodes of “The X-Files” (“Small Potatoes,” 1997) and “Combat (“Survival,” 1963.)

‘The Munsters’

Episode: “Herman the Rookie”

Airdate: April 8, 1965

Plot: As Durocher is exiting a restaurant with sportswriter Charlie Hodges, he is conked on the head by a baseball. Charlie tells Durocher the nearest ball field is eight blocks away and so Durocher tracks down the mystery slugger, who turns out to be Herman Munster. Durocher visits the Munsters’ home on Mockingbird Lane — “I’ve never seen a place like this in my whole life, not even in Brooklyn,” he says — but he faints upon meeting Herman. “You scared him — in that black suit he must have thought you were an umpire!’ exclaims Herman’s father-in-law, Grandpa. A revived Durocher offers Herman a chance to try out for the Dodgers. Herman steps up to the plate and starts rocketing balls into the sky, one of them hit so hard that it knocks over a scoreboard beyond the fence. Herman also runs the bases and plays the field, plowing through any players who come in contact with him. Alas, Herman doesn’t get offered a baseball contract because, as he ruefully explains to his family, Dodgers owner Walter O’Malley said “it would cost him $75,000 to put the Dodger Stadium back in shape every time I played.” Herman decides to try football, and in the next scene, he is shown punting the ball at a local field. The ball lands atop the head of Los Angeles Rams general manager Elroy “Crazylegs” Hirsch, shown leaving a restaurant with Hodges, ever on the scene. Hirsch says he wants to find out who punted the ball, but Hodges dissuades him of that notion. “Take my advice, Mr. Hirsch, forget it if you don’t want to go out of your skull.” (Hirsch, too, played himself in the episode. Like Durocher, he dabbled in acting during his years in Los Angeles.)

Money quote: The writing team of Joe Connelly and Bob Mosher scripted a couple of lines for Durocher that might have been funny at the time (or maybe not) but are cringeworthy by today’s standards. Such as: “I don’t know whether to sign him for the Dodgers or send him to Vietnam.”

The actor who played fictitious sportswriter Hodges, Gene Darfler, now 90, remembers Durocher as “one of the most unusual persons I ever worked with in anything, not just TV shows. He had a charismatic way with a sarcastic edge.”

Speaking by phone from his home in Illinois, Darfler described Durocher’s acting skills this way: “He did it so naturally. He didn’t act. When they gave him the dialogue, it came out so natural you would have thought he was a graduate of The Actor’s Lab.”

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But Durocher sometimes found it hard to curb his salty language, Darfler said.

“Leo had a habit, I’m sure it came over from his baseball days, that instead of saying, ‘Oh, my God, look how far he hit the ball,’ he’d say, ‘Look at that son of a bitch,’ and things like that,” he said.

“Jerry Paris was the director and on a few occasions, he had to say, ‘Leo, you gotta clean up the dialogue. You can’t say those words here, but just keep it as real as you are.’”

Durocher took daily lunches with cast members during the shoot, and, Darfler said, “He would entertain our little table of people with his stories about Frank Sinatra and some of the ballplayers he worked with and games that he got really worked up about. He was so much fun to be with.

“We shot the tryout scenes at a ballfield in Pasadena. When you’re on a shoot like that there are a lot of people off to the side, and Leo had an eye for the girls. He’d walk over there, he’d sign autographs and wink at them, and then he’d come back over to us and say, ‘Did you see that little lady in the green outfit? Wasn’t she a cutie pie?’ It’s just the way he was.”

And then, just like that, Durocher’s acting career ended. Named manager of the Chicago Cubs for the 1966 season, he was running a big-league club for the first time since being let go by the New York Giants in 1955, and there wasn’t much time to be skipping off to Hollywood for acting stints. He was saving his best stuff for Wrigley Field and other National League ballparks.

In 1969, the Cubs had a nine-game lead as late as Aug. 16 in the newly-formed National League East. But then things fell apart. The “Miracle Mets” wound up winning the division by eight games en route to their first World Series championship, and to this day, there are aging Cubs fans who blame “The Lip” for the slip. The Cubs fired Durocher midway through the ’72 season, after which he was hired to manage the Houston Astros. It was not a happy occasion for Durocher, who said he couldn’t relate to modern ballplayers. He retired after the 1973 season.

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Though Durocher never returned to episodic television, he did show up now and then on talk shows, kibitzing with the likes of Dick Cavett, Merv Griffin and Dinah Shore. He was even the subject of a 1974 “Dean Martin Celebrity Roast,” a highly-scripted vehicle in which various entertainment and sports figures would step up to the dais and tell very bad jokes at the honoree’s expense. Comedian Foster Brooks, posing as an inebriated umpire, said Durocher “was especially interested in genealogy, the study of people’s family trees. Until I first met Leo, I always thought I was a son of a waitress.” And so on.

During a Nov. 14, 1973, appearance on “The Tonight Show with Johnny Carson,” Durocher laughed from the couch as comedian Don Rickles borrowed Carson sidekick Ed McMahon to do an impression of Durocher chest-bumping umpires. Durocher was 68. And yet there he sat to the right of Carson, decked out in striped bell bottoms and a gold V-neck sweater and wearing some kind of medallion around his neck. Though it’s hard to tell, it’s safe to assume it was not a peace medallion.

But, man, did he look great. Durocher was not a handsome man but he always dressed like a movie star, from his 1925 debut as a brash rookie on the Yankees, who had Babe Ruth and Lou Gehrig, to the late-in-life TV hits, and he maintained a lithe, athletic physique well into his old age. Alas, he was decidedly out of style in the baseball world by then. He had stayed on as a manager too long, and he had made too many enemies. Despite 2,008 victories, fifth most when he retired, Durocher’s Hall of Fame induction was posthumous.

Even now, nearly 30 years after his death, Durocher’s legacy continues to evolve.

On the negative side, Joshua Prager’s “The Echoing Green” is an exhaustively-researched book that details how, in 1951, the New York Giants, managed by Durocher, hatched a scheme that involved using a telescope and electrical buzzer to steal the opposing team’s signals. It takes some of the shine off the Giants’ late-season surge, which culminated with Bobby Thomson’s “Shot Heard ‘Round the World” off Dodgers pitcher Ralph Branca to win the National League pennant.

And yet there was a sense of righteousness to Durocher. During a legendary late-night team meeting during spring training in 1947, the then-Brooklyn Dodgers manager called out his players for circulating a letter protesting the team’s decision to break baseball’s color barrier by promoting Jackie Robinson to the big leagues. Durocher won that battle but was then suspended for the year and missed being a part of Robinson’s historic debut. Years later, Durocher’s intervention was given big play in the film “42,” with actor Christopher Meloni cast as Durocher and recreating the meeting in a way that would have had the real Durocher beaming with pride.

Just as there were plenty of people who hated Durocher, there were many who loved him — in baseball and in the entertainment industry. And that brings us back to Durocher’s final appearance on episodic television in which he gave Herman Munster a Dodgers tryout. For just as Durocher’s acting career was winding down, it wasn’t too long before Darfler made his own decision to leave Hollywood.

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As a young stage actor, Darfler had traveled to London to appear in a West End production of “Mister Roberts” with Tyrone Power and Jackie Cooper, and on Broadway, he appeared in “Out West of Eighth,” which bombed. But in 1968, as Darfler was trying to establish himself in Hollywood, he received some crushing news: His two brothers had been killed in a plane crash.

The young actor packed up his wife and kids and returned home to Naperville, Ill., to help his grief-stricken father run the family farm. He never made it back to Hollywood.

“But when I look back on those days,” said Darfler, “one of my favorite memories was working with Leo Durocher. I say that all the time. He was wonderful. I can’t say enough about how delightful it was for me to be with him on that particular program.

“Despite all the conflicts that were connected with his life, to me Leo Durocher was one hell of a fine guy,” he said. “And he was a fine actor.”

Find more stories from The Athletic’s Sports and TV Week here.

(Top photo of Durocher with Herman Munster: Getty Images)

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