STL All Sports

Who will ever forget good old Uncle Wilbert Robinson and those daffy Dodgers he managed for eighteen hilarious years from 1914 to 1931?

If you were a Brooklyn rooter and got sore over dropping a game that should have been won, did you have to drown your sorrows and keep your broken heart to yourself?

No, all you had to do was reach for the phone and get good old Uncle Robbie into an argument on the other end. He would talk to you as long as you wanted to and try to make you see the error of your ideas. Anybody could talk to Robbie-cabdrivers, housewives, schoolboys-but nobody could talk him down or make him change his mind.

Nobody, that is, but Mrs. Robinson. She was the only person in the world Uncle Robbie feared or would listen to with respect. "Maw," as he called her, hadn't lived with the rotund little manager all those years without having learned a great deal about baseball. The worst part of his day when the Dodgers lost was when Uncle Robbie got home and the missus pinned his ears back for his faulty strategy. "You blew that one," Maw would say. "You should have done this, you should have done that."

Then, one day, Robbie surprised everybody by starting a green young rookie in the box in an important game against the Chicago Cubs. The poor kid took a fearsome shellacking, but Uncle Robbie just leaned back in the dugout having a fine old time for himself, his big middle shaking and his face beaming with undisguised pleasure. Finally the rookie was relieved and Robbie strolled over to Maw's box.

"There," he said, "I started the kid just like you wanted me to. Now I hope you're satisfied. Maybe you won't be so anxious to second-guess me again." Then, when Maw had nothing to say, he chuckled and came back to the bench. "Let that be a lesson to you, boys," he announced triumphantly. "The woman doesn't live who can tell a man how to play baseball!'