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A Memorable Baseball Brawl: Carl Furillo Gets 50-Year Old Leo Durocher in a Chokehold!

“Durocher was a dirty manager. He was a dirty player… I hated his guts.” –Carl Furillo

“Leo Durocher has an uncanny ability to make a bad situation worse.” -Branch Rickey

A memorable baseball brawl occurred on September 6, 1953. I can speak light-heartedly about the incident because, fortunately, no one was seriously hurt. A confrontation between Brooklyn Dodger Carl Furillo, the Reading Rifle, and his volatile, widely-despised former manager, Leo ‘The Lip” Durocher sparled the melee. 

As the above quote attests, Carl Furillo had issues with Durocher going back to 1946 when Leo became his first manager. To put it mildly, there was no love lost between the two. When Durocher left the Dodgers to become manager of the arch-rival Giants, Furillo had even more reason to hate the man now considered a traitor. And once Durocher took over the Giants’ helm, it seemed that their pitchers all suddenly lost their control when they played the Dodgers. Most of the Bums blamed this development on Durocher and his infamous taunt, “Stick in his ear!” The Dodgers were all too familiar with Durocher’s dirty tactics. Carl Furillo was frequently at the receiving end of this “chin music”…and he didn’t much like it.

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A few years earlier, in 1949, Furillo had been hospitalized after a beaning by Giants’ pitcher Sheldon Jones. Furillo was convinced Durocher had ordered it, and he carried the grudge for years. So if an opportunity presented itself to get back at the hated Durocher, Furillo was ready to take it. The feud came to a boil in a game played that September day at the Polo Grounds when Furillo thought Durocher had again ordered his pitchers to “deliver a message.”

In the featured photo, we see Carl Furillo scoring a run in the 1953 World Series.

In this game, Preacher Roe was on the mound for the World Series-bound Dodgers, seeking his 10th straight win. They were looking for a sweep of the three-game series and their 10th straight win over the Giants. So there was already tension in the air. At the time, Furillo was the National League’s leading hitter with a .344 average. In the second inning, Giant pitcher Ruben Gomez hit Furillo on the wrist. Furillo had to be restrained by umpire Dusty Boggess from charging Gomez on the mound as the benches cleared. After order was restored, the hot-headed Furillo carried his resentment with him as he took first base. Needless to say, he blamed it all on his nemesis, Durocher.

The still-fuming Furillo started taunting Durocher from first base, yelling and pointing at Leo as he sat in the Giants’ dugout. Never one to back down from a challenge, and egged on by coach Herman Franks (“He’s pointing at you Leo! Are you going to just sit there?”), Durocher took the bait and hollered back. Suddenly Carl sprinted toward the dugout, making a beeline right for Durocher. Leo leaped out of his seat and the two met head on. All the players jumped in as the benches and bullpens cleared for a second time. Punches were thrown, but apparently none landed. Monte Irvin of the Giants and Gil Hodges of the Dodgers acted as peacemakers and attempted to separate the two brawlers. Author Lawrence Baldassaro, in his book “Beyond DiMaggio,” described the incident:

“Other accounts have Furillo clamping Durocher in a headlock as they grappled on the ground while others tried to separate them. One observer who did not try to break up the fight, according to Duke Snider, was umpire Babe Pinelli, who reportedly yelled, ‘Kill him, Carl, kill him!’ Fifty-three years later Dodger pitcher Carl Erskine confirmed Snider’s assertion: ‘Furillo had Leo on the ground and was choking him. I was on the perimeter as was Babe Pinelli. He was exclaiming ‘Kill that SOB, kill him.’ He then saw that I had heard him, so he went on, ‘I mean it. That no good low life. I mean it.’ “

Just try to imagine the scene: The powerful Carl Furillo has the diminutive 5’7” Durocher in a choke-hold headlock and wrestles him to the ground, trying unsuccessfully to land a few punches. Then, to add insult to injury, umpire Babe Pinelli, who had been putting up with Durocher’s umpire-baiting antics for over 30 years, instead of trying to break up the fight, is actually egging Furillo on!

Both Furillo and Durocher were ejected from the game. In the melee, Furillo fractured the knuckle on his little finger, putting an end to his season. He ended up winning the batting title by two points over Red Schoendienst. After the game, both participants gave their accounts of the brawl. “That guy had it coming for a long time,” said Furillo, “and he’s going to get it, too. I’d have given a thousand dollars to have hit is ugly mug just once, and I’m going to do it, too. I’m sorry I really never landed a punch.”

Upon hearing these words, Durocher, never at a loss for words, and with his uncanny ability to make a bad situation worse, fired back: “I don’t know what got into him. Nobody was throwing at him and nobody told anyone to throw at him. I’ve got news for Furillo. If he doesn’t hurt me any more than he did this time, I’m not worried. Besides, it’s no disgrace to lose a fight. And for an old guy of 50, I might be able to land a few punches myself before he cuts loose.”

The Dodgers won the game 6-3 en route to their second pennant consecutive pennant, their fourth in the previous six years. This was also the game in which Dodger Roy Campanella hit his 38th home run, breaking the record for home runs by a c catcher set by Gabby Hartnett, and tied the record for RBIs by a catcher with 133 set by Bill Dickey.

I think this incident tells us all we need to know of how Durocher was perceived by his baseball peers. Somehow, you get the feeling that players and umpires throughout the National League were reading with delight about this incident the next day, seeing that the despised Durocher finally had got his comeuppance. I’d bet Furillo thought the broken finger was a small price to pay for the chance to get a chokehold on Durocher. If he was alive today he would probably say it was worth it!

-Gary Livacari

Photo Credits: All from Google search

Information: Excerpts and quotes from Beyond DiMaggio, by Lawrence Baldassaro

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