Spotlight on Dodgers' History: Uncle Robbie

However, he still knew how to work a pitching staff, and he often won big with discards, over-the-hill has-beens, and unproven young talent.

Dazzy Vance, who had been a bust for both Pittsburgh and the Yankees, suddenly became Robbie’s ace in 1922—after three years languishing in the minors and out of baseball—at the age of 31. He won 187 games in 11 years with Robinson as his manager.

Spitballer Burleigh Grimes experienced a career renaissance pitching for Robinson.

Uncle Robbie adopted a minimalist approach to winning games, one which has been revisited countless times over the ensuing decades: he expected his pitching staff to hold the opposition in check, and his hitters to scratch out just enough runs to win.

In retrospect, given the paucity of talent he had to work with, it is remarkable that he ended his career one game over .500, 1,399-1,398. At the time, he was the third-winningest manager in NL history.

Robinson might be best known for a spring training stunt in 1915, his second season as manager of the Dodgers.

Catcher Gabby Street, on his 13th try, had caught a baseball hurled from the top of the Washington Monument. In tandem with Ruth Law, an aviatrix attempting to make a name for herself, Robbie agreed to catch a baseball thrown from her plane, some 500-plus feet away.

Law purportedly left the baseball at her hotel room, and had to hastily substitute a grapefruit taken from a ground crewman’s lunch. Robinson was none the wiser.

When the “ball” was released, the former catcher circled around until he was in a good position to catch it. When the citrus fruit made impact with his glove (at the ridiculous velocity of about 126 miles per hour!), it disintegrated, splattering juice all over Robbie.

He was knocked to the ground, and kept his eyes closed tight, assuming he was covered in his own blood.

When he heard his team’s uproarious laughter, he opened his eyes and discovered that he had been had.

For many years, Casey Stengel, one of his outfielders, accepted the blame for the switch, but Ruth Law debunked the idea in a 1957 interview.

Robinson spent two seasons as the manager and president of the Atlanta Crackers of the Southern Association, from 1932 to 1934. In August of '34, Robbie, then 71, slipped in his bathroom and slammed his head against the bathtub.

At the hospital, he uttered the immortal words, “Don't worry about it, fellas. I’m an old Oriole. I’m too tough to die.”

Sadly, this was not the case, and good ole Uncle Robbie succumbed to the complications from a brain hemorrhage on Aug. 8, 1934 in Atlanta, with his wife at his bedside. His old friend McGraw, with whom Robbie had reconciled in December of 1930, had died just under six months before.

One of baseball’s favorite characters, Wilbert Robinson was posthumously elected into the Baseball Hall of Fame by the Committee on Baseball Veterans in 1945.

Sources: acmewebpages.com, baseball-statistics.com, baseballlibrary.com, bioproj.sabr.org, and Wikipedia.com.

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