Chuck Dressen Charles Walter Dressen ( September 20 , 1898 – August 10 , 1966 ) , known as both " Chuck " and " Charlie , " was an American third baseman , manager and coach in professional baseball during a career that lasted almost fifty years , and was best known as the manager of the powerful Brooklyn Dodgers of 1951 – 1953 . Indeed , Dressen ' s " schooling " of a young baseball writer is one of the most colorful themes in Roger Kahn ' s classic memoir , " The Boys of Summer " . Born in Decatur , Illinois , Dressen was a veteran baseball man when he took the reins in Brooklyn after the season . After a short football career playing quarterback for the Decatur Staleys ( a forerunner of the Chicago Bears ) in 1920 and in 1922 – 1923 with the Racine Legion , Dressen was a third baseman for the Cincinnati Reds ( 1925 – 1931 ) and a late - season utilityman for the 1933 New York Giants , batting . 272 in 646 games . Dressen began his managerial career in 1932 with the Nashville Vols of the Southern Association . He interrupted that assignment late in 1933 to fill in as an active player for the Giants during the pennant drive . Although he didn ' t play during the 1933 World Series , he helped the Giants win Game 4 . With New York leading the game by a single run in the bottom of the 11th inning , the opposition Washington Senators loaded the bases with one out , and sent up pinch hitter Cliff Bolton . On his own initiative , Dressen called time , ran from the dugout , and advised Giants ' first baseman and playing manager Bill Terry how to pitch and defend Bolton , whom Dressen knew from his Southern Association days . Bolton promptly bounced into a double play and the New Yorkers won the game to take a 3 – 1 lead in the Series , which they ultimately won in five games . The incident stamped Dressen as a potential Major League Baseball manager . Association with Larry MacPhail . After returning to Nashville at the outset of to resume his successful minor league managerial career , Dressen was called to Cincinnati to manage the last - place Reds on July 18 , 1934 . The Reds would rise as high as fifth place under him , in , but when they fell back into the National League basement the following season , Dressen was fired . Despite his poor won - lost record ( 214 – 282 , . 431 ) in Cincinnati , Dressen made a valuable ally in the Reds ’ mercurial general manager , Larry MacPhail . A year after MacPhail took over the Dodgers in , he named fiery shortstop Leo Durocher player - manager and Dressen as his third base coach . Under MacPhail and Durocher , the Dodgers became a hard - playing pennant contender , winning Brooklyn ' s third NL pennant of the modern era in . But when MacPhail resigned in October 1942 to rejoin the armed forces and was succeeded by Branch Rickey , Dressen was fired from Durocher ’ s staff — reportedly because he refused to eschew betting on horses . He was on the sidelines for the first three months of the 1943 season before being rehired by the Dodgers that July . When the Second World War ended , MacPhail returned to baseball as part owner , president and general manager of the New York Yankees . Following the campaign , he raided the Dodger coaching staff , signing Dressen and Red Corriden as aides under his new manager , Bucky Harris . The raids contributed to a public feud between MacPhail on one side and Durocher and Rickey on the other ; ultimately Commissioner of Baseball Albert B . Chandler would suspend Durocher for the entire season for " conduct detrimental to baseball , " suspend Dressen for 30 days for signing a Yankee contract while still an employee of the Dodgers , and fine both clubs and some of their employees . MacPhail left baseball after the Yankees ' 1947 world championship ( gained at Brooklyn ’ s expense ) and Harris was sacked after the season . Dressen was not retained by the new Yankee manager , Casey Stengel , but instead replaced Stengel as the manager of the Oakland Oaks of the Triple - A Pacific Coast League . He skippered the Oaks in 1949 – 1950 and his teams finished second and first , winning 104 and 118 games . Simultaneously , a power struggle for control of the Dodgers ended in Walter O ' Malley forcing Rickey out of the Brooklyn front office . When O ' Malley fired Rickey associate Burt Shotton in the autumn of , he gave the manager ' s job to Dressen . Leader of Brooklyn ' s ' Boys of Summer ' . The Dodgers , unlike the Reds of a decade and a half before , were a perennial contender in the National League , with a lineup that included four future members of the Baseball Hall of Fame — Roy Campanella , Pee Wee Reese , Jackie Robinson and Duke Snider . They had won pennants in and and finished second by only two games in 1946 and 1950 . Brooklyn charged into first place early in the season , while the New York Giants — led since July 16 , 1948 , by Durocher himself — struggled ( despite the callup of a 20 - year - old rookie phenom named Willie Mays ) . When the Dodgers completed a three - game sweep of the Giants at Ebbets Field , August 10 , the Brooklyn lead over the Giants stood at 12½ games . " The Giants is dead , " Dressen sang loudly ( to the tune of " The Beer Barrel Polka " ) through a door adjoining the teams ’ clubhouses . The next day , after another Dodger win and Giant defeat , the Brooklyn lead swelled to 13½ games . As for the ungrammatical remark , Dressen was defended by at least one college professor who pointed out that , since Dressen was not saying that the Giant players were literally deceased , he had more latitude with grammar in a figure of speech . ( All the same , when O ' Malley later fired the manager , New York newspapers commented " DRESSEN ARE DEAD . " ) Then , however , the Giants began to win . With Sal Maglie , Larry Jansen and Jim Hearn anchoring their starting rotation — and ( according to some accounts ) with a " spy " stealing opponents ' signs from their center - field clubhouse at their home field , the Polo Grounds — the Giants won sixteen in a row in August and 37 of their last 44 games to force a flat - footed tie at season ’ s end and a best - of - three playoff . In the ninth inning of the decisive third game at the Polo Grounds , Dodger starting pitcher Don Newcombe had a 4 – 2 lead and two men on base when Dressen decided to go to the bullpen , where Carl Erskine and Ralph Branca were warming up . " Erskine is bouncing his curve , " the manager was told by his bullpen coach , Clyde Sukeforth . Dressen summoned Branca , whose second pitch to Bobby Thomson was hit into the lower left - field stands for a three - run homer , a 5 – 4 Giants ' win , and a National League pennant — Baseball ' s " Shot Heard ‘ Round the World " . Dressen kept his job in ( while Sukeforth was fired ) and for the next two seasons , his Dodgers dominated the NL , winning the pennant by margins of 4½ and 13 games . But each season , they came up short against the Yankees in the World Series , losing in seven games in 1952 and six in 1953 . Fresh from winning the pennant with 105 victories , Dressen decided to publicly demand a three - year contract from O ’ Malley instead of the customary one - year deal the Dodgers then offered their managers . But O ' Malley didn ' t yield . He replaced Dressen with Triple - A Montreal Royals manager Walter Alston — a veteran minor league r who was unknown to most baseball fans . Alston would go on to sign 23 one - year contracts with O ' Malley , while winning seven NL pennants , four World Series , and a berth in the Baseball Hall of Fame . Struggles in Washington and Milwaukee . Dressen returned to Oakland to manage the PCL Oaks in 1954 while he sorted out his Major League future , then was hired to manage the hapless Washington Senators , who had finished sixth in the eight - team American League in 1954 . Dressen inherited a second division team with a poor farm system . Nevertheless , baseball observers predicted that he would rouse the Senators from their doldrums with his managerial acumen . Dressen himself appeared on the Groucho Marx quiz program , " You Bet Your Life " , and predicted that the Senators would finish in the first division ( fourth place or higher ) . His former boss , O ' Malley , said , " Dressen will steal at least six games for Washington in 1955 . " Dressen also told his team , " I guarantee we won ' t finish in sixth place again . " He was right . The 1955 Senators finished eighth and last , the 1956 edition finished seventh , and the ' 57 team was 4 – 16 ( and last again ) on May 7 , 1957 , when Dressen was fired . His Senators won only 116 of 328 games — a winning percentage of . 354 . The team ' s next winning season would have to wait until , when it had become the Minnesota Twins . After leaving Washington , Dressen rejoined the newly relocated Los Angeles Dodgers to serve as a coach under Alston in 1958 – 1959 . When the ' 59 Dodgers won the World Series , Dressen was in demand as a manager once again , and the Milwaukee Braves , who had lost a pennant playoff to Los Angeles at the end of the season , named him their field boss for . Milwaukee was only three victories short ( two in 1956 and one in 1959 ) of four National League pennants in four seasons , and still boasted Hall of Famers Henry Aaron , Eddie Mathews and Warren Spahn , but the players around them had begun to fall off in production and the Brave farm system could not keep up . Dressen was not able to reverse the Braves ' slow decline to the middle of the NL pack . They again finished second in 1960 , but a full seven games behind , and were 71 – 58 and in fourth place late in , when Dressen was replaced by Birdie Tebbetts . In 1962 , Dressen managed the Toronto Maple Leafs of the Triple - A International League to 91 victories . Reviving the Tigers . In , Dressen was out of uniform , scouting for the Dodgers , when his final managing opportunity presented itself . After the Detroit Tigers won only 24 of their first 60 games under Bob Scheffing , the call went out for Dressen on June 19 . He rallied the Tigers to a 55 – 47 record for the remainder of 1963 , a first division finish in , and slowly was mentoring much of the talent ( Denny McLain , Willie Horton , Mickey Lolich and others ) that would win Detroit the 1968 world championship . By now , however , Dressen ' s health began to fail . A heart attack sidelined him during spring training and the first 42 games of ; then he suffered a second coronary only 26 games into the campaign . He was recovering from the heart attack when he was stricken with a kidney infection , and died at age 67 in a Detroit hospital on August 10 , 1966 — fifteen years to the day he had infamously ( and prematurely ) celebrated the death of the New York Giants . He is interred in the Forest Lawn Memorial Park Cemetery in Glendale , California . Known for his sunny self - confidence , Dressen would often tell his highly talented Dodgers , " Just hold them , boys , until I think of something . " His career major league managerial record was 1 , 037 – 993 ( . 511 ) .