Let's Make a Cot Deal

[captainsblog]

Coming home from the gym tonight, there was NBA on the station I usually listen to, so I switched over to an old pal on the Rochester blowtorch AM outlet.  Bob Matthews has been holding forth on WHAM since before I moved to Rochester, and even though I haven't been a regular listener for years, I still check in from time to time, and his perspectives are usually fresher than the various Buffalo and national company lines.

Tonight he was reporting on the death, last week, of a former Rochester Red Wing manager named Cot Deal. He was long retired as both player and manager before I'd followed any baseball, but I vaguely remembered the name from programs and the written chronicle of the team's history written by Bob's fellow newspapermen in the 1990s.  Much of that book is accessible through Google books, but the story about Deal, told by Bob, is not in the excerpt. I do have the book, though, and this more available version of the story from Baseball Almanac tells it about as well. It's a tale from the year of my birth, about sports, international intrigue, and bad calls both on and off the playing field.



For fifteen years Havana was home to teams in the Florida International League (1946-1953) and then in the International League (1954-1960).

   It took a former amateur player, one Fidel Castro, to close the island to professional baseball and to shut off the stream of talented players who brought their unique flair to the game. Only in the last decade has the trickle of native Cuban talent reemerged.

   The incident most widely associated with the end of the Cubans/Sugar Kings occurred forty years ago this past season. With the assistance of one of the main participants in the event, we now return to that season.

   On January 1, 1959, Cuban President Fulgencio Batista flew to exile in the Dominican Republic and revolutionary leader Fidel Castro took over the government. In the days and months following the overthrow, the Cuban populace celebrated their liberation from dictatorship and their merriment made its way to Gran Stadium, the home of Havana's Sugar Kings.

   The Sugar Kings were an independently owned team stocked with players from the Cincinnati Reds organization. The roster featured future major leaguers Luis Arroyo, Mike Cuellar, Tony Gonzalez, Jesse Gonder, Orlando Pena, and Leo Cardenas. They were supported by former major leaguers Sandy Consuegra and Raul Sanchez and a cast of career minor leaguers, most of whom were native Cubans.

   As the 1959 season passed its mid-point, a late-July homestand included a visit by the Rochester Red Wings, a second-division team nearing the end of its three decade association with the St. Louis Cardinals. On Saturday, July 25, the regularly scheduled night game between Havana and Rochester was preceded by the completion of a game suspended by curfew during the Red Wings' previous visit. The final two innings of that game were played and Havana emerged victorious, 1-0.

   The scheduled game began late and continued far into the night. As midnight struck, a military and civilian celebration exploded into lights, flags, music, and gunfire. Initial emotions of uncertainty and fear arose among the players and eased only slightly as the mayhem subsided. The game, once restarted, continued into extra innings as Havana tied it in the ninth inning. Rochester took the lead in the top of the eleventh inning on a Billy Harrell home run, but the Sugar Kings responded quickly with a double from the bat of Jesse Gonder. As Gonder ran toward second base, Rochester manager Ellis "Cot" Deal noticed that Gonder had missed first base. Deal immediately confronted first base umpire Frank Guzzetta who, as part of a
three-man umpiring crew, was running toward second base ahead of Gonder and did not watch the runner behind him.

   The debate between Deal and Guzzetta escalated to Deal's giving the umpire the choke sign. Guzzetta's response was immediate and Deal was out of the game as the crowd again increased its din to the accompaniment of increasing gunfire.

   In his memoirs entitled 50 Years in Baseball, Deal describes the scene as he departed. "The noise was tumultuous as I walked to our dugout and turned over the lineup cards and handling of the club to Frank Verdi, my player-coach". Following Deal's departure, the game continued and Gonder was driven home to tie the score and take the game into the twelfth inning.

   With Verdi now coaching at third base for Rochester, catcher Dick Rand led off the twelfth with a ground out to Havana shortstop Leo Cardenas. Before the next pitch was thrown, shots rang out again in the stadium. Within seconds both Verdi in the coach's box and Cardenas at shortstop dropped to the ground in pain. Verdi, the first struck, was hit in the head. Through great good fortune, he was wearing the plastic batting liner he used while playing in the game earlier and the bullet deflected off the liner, through the lower portion of his ear, and onto his shoulder. Stunned but not seriously injured by the .45 slug, Verdi was asked by screaming umpire Ed Vargo if he was O.K. At the same time, shortstop Cardenas was shaking off the pain from a bullet which grazed his right shoulder. The umpires immediately called the game and players, coaches, and umpires made a mad dash for their respective clubhouses as the shooting continued.

   Following the game, the umpires called league president Frank Shaughnessy for a ruling about playing the game scheduled for Sunday afternoon. The Sugar Kings wanted to replay the incomplete game as part of a Sunday doubleheader. But Deal and Red Wing General manager George Sisler, Jr., had already decided their course of action, consequences notwithstanding. In his book, Deal relates his words to the team, "'Gentlemen, pack your bags. We are not going out there this afternoon'". Despite pressure from Cuban officials to play, Deal and Sisler remained firm and, after spending a tense night at the hotel, flew with the team to Miami on Sunday evening. Deal and Verdi, who by then had only a slight headache, sat together on the plane. In Cot's words, "We sat quietly for a while, both pondering the seriousness of what we had just experienced. 'I just thought of something', Frank said gravely, "you don't wear an insert in your cap - and if you had been standing where I had been standing... Do you realize that getting the thumb might have saved your life!'". Though his response was unrecorded, one senses that Cot Deal was very much aware of that fact.


The Democrat & Chroniclers of the team history ended the story in Silver Seasons with a quote that the newspaper had found from that manager, who went on to live almost 54 more years after that near death experience:

"Umpires aren't such bad people after all," the manager replied.

Good Deal.