Cautionary Tales with Tim Harford - The Nice Guy, the Bully and the Kiss

Episode Date: September 13, 2024

Leo Durocher would stop at nothing to win. The baseball player-turned-manager was a skilled tactician and famously tough. But he also cheated, intimidated umpires and was violent; he was even known to beat up fans. Durocher was famous for coining the phrase "nice guys finish last" - but is that really true? Tim Harford and David Bodanis examine lessons from the life of a ruthless, pugnacious baseball star. This is the first episode of a four-part series about how to succeed without being a jerk. It's based on David's book The Art of Fairness: The Power of Decency in a World Turned Mean. For a full list of sources, see the show notes at timharford.com.See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

Pushkin Hello listeners, exciting news! Today you can enjoy a double dose of malefactors and meltdowns. In honour of my new mini-series on the art of fairness, I have not just one, but two cautionary tales for you. Straight after this episode, you'll be able to listen to another story on this feed, all about an astonishing race to build a skyscraper in just 13 months. And now, on with our first episode. 1928. And Leo de Rocha is a new player on the famed New York Yankees baseball team. He's slight in build and not especially fast.

And now, rounding first base and heading as quickly as he can to second, he can see his opponent, Glove Reddy, is about to slam his foot down on the base. If he does that before De Rocha gets there, then De Rocha is out. De Rocha can try diving head first at the base to get there before his opponent, but he knows he's not going to be fast enough. So he takes a different approach. He has sharp spikes on the bottom of his shoes, ostensibly just for grip as he runs. But they can also serve as a powerful weapon.

He leaps feet forward towards the base. As he hits the ground and slides, he raises his feet high. When he makes contact, the spikes gouge hard into his opponent's leg, tearing open the skin, hitting the bone. De Rocha stands up, brushes himself off. He's made it, but he's gained something more important than second base. He's gained a reputation. Next time, his opponents are going to think twice about even trying to get in his way. Leo De Rocha became one of the best known baseball managers of the 20th century, famous for saying that nice guys finish last.

But is that true? That's what I'll explore today, with help from my friend David Bedarnes. He's written about this idea in his book, The Art of Fairness, the power of decency in a world turned mean. David also has some first-hand experience with DeRosha, for everything came to a test in 1969, when DeRosha was managing in Chicago

and David Bedarnes was there. I'm Tim Harford and you're listening to Cautionary Tales and I'm joined in the studio by David Bedanis himself. Welcome David. Hello sir. Now, you were never formally introduced to De Rocha, but I understand you spent lots of time at games that he managed, right? Oh, 1969 was a beautiful year. I was in my last year of elementary school and school was a bit boring, so I spent a

lot of time with my friends going down to watch the Cubs games. It was a rougher area where the stadium was. It was a little bit scary, but we got used to it. And before long, we weren't scared, we were accepted. And we'd stay late after the games to help clean the stands. That got us free tickets for the next day. That's not a bad gig. So what was it like seeing De Rocha in action? It was exciting. It was the peak of our life to that time. Pretty often we'd stop what we were doing, cleaning up in the stands, and we'd look down and we'd watch him do interviews after the game.

It was a beautiful, beautiful setting. The field was empty below us. There was just open green space right in the middle of Chicago. He'd be alone with the journalists or sometimes a single camera crew. At other times, when we got there early, we'd come right to the edge of the field and we'd watch him organizing the players. He'd comment on batting practice, stuff like that. One of the star pitchers was from Canada.

Well, my dad had grown up in Canada, and a couple of times, I got his attention, and the pitcher would smile at me. I kind of like to imagine that DeRosha saw that and frowned. He always looked ticked off if anyone interrupted what he was doing. But honestly, that could just be a later memory. But DeRosier hadn't begun in Chicago, had he?

No. We always thought of him as a New Yorker. That's where he had played, that's where he had coached when he was younger. Chicago had strong players, but we hadn't made it to the World Series in ages. There was a lot of pain being a Cubs fan. We had a beautiful field. It was the oldest in the National League. It dated from before World War I. There were old red bricks.

There was IV on the outfield wall. The scoreboard was actually turned by hand, and there were no big parking lots outside. You were right next to city apartments, and they crowded in right to the edge of the stadium. People who lived in those buildings were really lucky. They would sometimes rent out their windows or rent out their roof space so cheapskates could get a view. So we had all this beautiful stadium, good players, but we never ever won. Leo de

Rocher was brought in to fix that. So is it fair to say that he was your hero? He really, really was. I was 12, and Chicago was proud of being a solid blue collar city. And so here was this guy. He was tough. He was matter of fact.

He looked exasperated almost all the time. But then he'd sort of ease up. He'd almost be smiling at his own exasperation. We thought that was kind of cool. Sports writers really liked him, at least most of the time. There's a feeling he might be a son of a bitch, a curmudgeon, but he was a lovable one. And everyone knew his quote, that nice guys finish last. It seemed pretty likely his approach would work. In midsummer, our Cubs were way in front. Okay, and forgive me, I'm not a baseball expert, so for people like me who might not know,

just remind me how the baseball season works? That is a totally fair question. If you asked me about rugby or soccer, I would not know. I would even use the wrong word for soccer. Baseball starts in the spring. It goes through an incredibly hot summer, especially if you live in Chicago.

And it finishes usually in September, and then there's playoffs in October. Well, to get ahead, Chicago needed to be first in their division. That would get us to the playoffs. And if we won those, then we could maybe get into the World Series. OK.

Well, it was a good time. We were in front, and there wasn't much competition. The second place team was the New York Mets. They were really, really far behind. Also, the manager of the Mets was the opposite of DeRosier. His name was Gil Hodges, and he was known as the nicest man in baseball. We weren't worried.

But there was something else for me on the line too. I had a girlfriend at the time, or a young lady who went with our group to the Cubs games, and I hoped she'd be a girlfriend. And I was confident she would because she whispered to me that I was going to get a kiss, my very first kiss, if the Cubs won. Wow. Okay, so this is the crucial summer. It's the test of De Rocha's maxim that nice guys finish last. Hodges is a nice guy, De Rocha isn't. And it looked like Hodges would lose. And De Rocha would be proven right about nice guys. But with that kiss on the line, there was still time for everything to change. David, you got me curious about De Roche now.

What was he like when he started out? As a kid, I had no idea. Later, as an adult, I looked back, I researched it. Turned out, he grew up on the East Coast in the 1910s. His parents were from Quebec, so as a kid he only spoke French. When he went to school, he couldn't speak a word of English. But he was good at sports. Boy was he good. He was good in a particular way. He was a small guy but he had good reflexes and he could hustle.

He was really fast and the thing is the big thing he never gave up. Anything that would help him win he would do. He cheated, he tried to intimidate umpires. As we saw he was famous for using his spikes to gouge opponents when he slid into base. And did that kind of thing work? Boy, did it work. Even with his limited talent, he managed to get on one of the most famous teams

of all time, the 1920s New York Yankees. Babe Ruth was the star of the team. And he used to say that DeRosier couldn't hit the floor if he dropped a cigarette. Oh, it's harsh. It's harsh, but accurate. He was a terrible hitter, but he kept hustling and threatening and taking shortcuts. He used to say, I'd knock over my mother if she was rounding a base and I needed the

winning run. Later, he became manager with other teams in New York, and he led the New York Giants to two championships. And how'd he mellowed? In your dreams. He got his players to act just like him. It's kind of attractive when somebody's a bit of a jerk and leading your way and being a jerk wins.

You're allowed to be who you've always wanted to be. He had his pitchers throw fastballs that would go right at the other team's heads. At one point, this was brilliant, he set up a hidden telescope to steal the signals of his opponents right in the middle of the game. And all the time, he kept on trying to intimidate umpires. He'd also always have his players gouge opponents when they could. All that was always going on.

He even liked saying that he mentored about his mother. He would describe how, when he went home, she was terribly hurt at what he said. And, as he put it, for the rest of my life, as long as I visited, she'd walk around with an injured ear. And I guess she had a right to. God rest your soul, Mom. I'm afraid I would have knocked you over. He doesn't sound like a very attractive man. so where does that lovable curmudgeon reputation come from? Well, you have to think of it from the outside.

None of us really knew all the horrible details, certainly not in Chicago, and to be honest, most baseball fans across America. And someone who seems tough, it's pretty appealing if they're on your side. When he managed the Brooklyn Dodgers in the 1940s, the fans loved him. He was salt of the earth, working hard. They liked to think they were salt of the earth. And boy, blue collar jobs in America at the time were really hard work. Well, it was the same thing in my Chicago in the 1960s.

They used to say that when America made half the steel in the world, Chicago made half the steel in America. We were so proud of that. People would go to the games, earthy fingers, sweaty, literally blue shirts. DeRosier was one of us. And DeRosier brought the first black player into the league, didn't he? That's the other thing. If you're strong-willed in one direction, you can be strong-willed in another.

In 1947, he was with Brooklyn, and he brought Jackie Robinson into the league, the very first black player in professional baseball. There was really nasty segregation going on until then. Black players just weren't allowed in the main leagues, but now, especially after World War II, seemed ridiculous. And how did it go over? Well, most of DeRosier's players

were pretty decent about it, but some were from the South. They did not like having a black man anywhere near them. So they signed a petition, and that petition said, Get rid of Jackie Robinson. We will not play on a team with him. DeRosier couldn't stand that. He knew what it was like to be picked on. He grabbed the players who signed the petition, and he yelled at them, and he screamed at them. They could go f themselves, as well as that effing petition. If they didn't unsign it right now, they were fired. That was going to happen. No apology, no excuse. Robinson stayed, and he was a great player. De Rocher

wanted to win. Okay. So toughness lets you get things done. And not only winning, but forcing through these big symbolic steps towards racial justice. So DeRosier had a point. It doesn't always pay to simply be nice. If you want to get things done, you might need to be a little bit hard, even to be a bit obnoxious. You're right, but it isn't the full story. DeRosier loved it in New York, but something was about to happen there. Something that would change everything for him. And we'll hear all about that when Cautionary Tales returns in a moment. We're back. I am in the studio with David Badanis, author of The Art of Fairness, and

we're talking about whether Leo DeRoscia was right that nice guys finish last. Now, David, we've known each other a very long time and you've been interested in these ideas for I think as long as I've known you, 25 years or so. Yeah, to really write about something well or to write deeply, at least for me, I have to really care about it. And I think it comes from way back when I was a kid. I really hated the idea that terrible people could succeed. Bullies succeeding at school, dictators succeeding in politics.

I grew up in a Jewish neighborhood in Chicago not long after World War II. A huge number of people who'd survived the death camps were all around us. They had tattoos on their forearms, my barber, people at the local store, pretty much everybody. And they weren't old.

They were in their 30s. Anyways, history showed that terrible people often win. So I thought maybe I was being naive about wanting the other side to succeed. That's what made me get into this book, The Art of Fairness. I wanted to find out what are the actual limitations of being a jerk, of being horrible. And then the other side, what are the strengths of, if not being merely nice, at least being fair? What are those strengths? And since I knew about DeRosier from first-hand experience, that's what brought me to this story.

I remember when you first told me this idea for a book, and I just idolized you then, David. Of course I still idolize you, but I hadn't written a book, and I just thought to write a book would be the coolest thing ever. One of the early ideas was that you were going to have it reversible. So one side said nice guys finish first and the other side said nice guys finish last and you're going to explore these different ideas. In the end of course it ended up being called the art of fairness. It's such a rich topic for a book. There's so much to explore because there's just no one way to answer the question. Well, that's actually true. And if we're honest about ourselves, the kindest people have jerky

sides underneath. Unless somebody's a total psychopath, they'll often be kind or reasonable. Yeah, the idea of a book that would open from different sides, they used to do that with science fiction books in the 50s and 60s and the cheap magazines. And I got the idea of a book that would open from different sides, they used to do that with science fiction books in the 50s and 60s in the cheap magazines. And I got the idea from William Blake, songs of innocence, songs of experience. You take the same project and come in in different directions. I was always fascinated about that. Yeah. But as we discussed it, at the time I was really into game theory, so there's a mathematical way of thinking about cooperation. And of course there is that side to it.

You can approach it as a mathematician or as a scientist, as an economist, but you can draw on all of these other possible stories as well and bring the arts, bring history into this topic. That actually threw me at the beginning. My own background was in math. And I tried to do it very formally, this book. I tried to go through the logic behind it. And I found that didn't really hold.

There's a subtlety of human interaction. So in a sense, you can only learn from experience. It's really weird. I remember when I was a kid, I was really irritated. I would say to people, well, tell me exactly why and what to do. And it follows. It was like you plug numbers into a math equation and the results automatic.

Why couldn't I plug certain principles into my own life and everything would be good? I have some very friendly people on YouTube who will happily sell you three or five or ten principles that will sort out your life, but it never works like that, does it? It never, never works. To plug a good advice into what we actually do, that's what's hard. Advice is easy to state, but really hard to carry out. You need practical experience. But at the risk of introducing spoilers, I am guessing, since you've written an entire book about the art of fairness, I'm guessing that De Rocha's maxim, nice guys finish last. That's not always right.

Even if sometimes it works well. My greatest pleasure was finding the exceptions. When my oldest boy was a teenager, he asked me before going into the world, he said, Dad, all the stuff we've learned, is it true? And I genuinely didn't know. I'd done very little in the outside world. So I said, I'll take a look. And he was young and naive and believed that I would find out. Anyways, this book is part of the story. And it turns out that when you start acting like a jerk, it can be really hard to stop. You get used to doing whatever you want, to getting your way just by pushing, just by pushing hard against other people.

So speaking of other people, De Rocha had a rival. He had this rival manager, and this rival had a very, very different approach to De Rocha. Ah, that was Gil Hodges. Now, in 1969, he was the manager of the New York Mets. That was our arch-competitor. Ooh, boo, hiss. But he actually knew De Rocha really well. Hodges was a little bit younger than De Rocha.

And back in the 1950s, he'd been a player on one of DeRosier's teams. But yet, he was a totally different character. In what way? DeRosier, I think, was born with something wrong with him. Gil Hodges was a coal miner son, and he'd served in World War II. He was a decorated combat marine. Everything he'd always done was about solidarity, about cooperation, about working together.

As a player, he'd take the time to coach others who needed it. He was aggressive enough when he was hitting and running. He was a really good player. But he never mocked teammates who were having a bad stretch. DeRosier always had to cheat to succeed, not Hodges. He could get by on pure talent. He never jabbed his spikes into anyone's legs. And of course, he interrupted his playing career and lost several years of salary to serve

in World War II. That was something Mr. DeRosier very carefully avoided. When DeRosier was a manager, he used Hodges because Hodges was talented. But he never understood why Hodges insisted on those soft attitudes. Being helpful to others, playing a game by the rules, even being willing to serve your country. Goodness me. And so later on when Hodges himself was a manager, how did he behave then? One of the great things is, as you know, Tim, a lot of people power goes to their head. Hodges stayed the same guy. He stayed the opposite to DeRosier. Now, again, that doesn't mean he was soft.

That's what DeRosier and people like him kept getting wrong. Coal mining families, combat marines, these are not weak people. The thing is, Hodges was fair. It always meant a lot to him. When he was managing the New York Mets in that big year of 1969, one of his star players in the outfield was slacking off.

It was near the end of a long night game. Well, that was unfair to the other players. Hodges knew that, so he walked all the way across the field, in front of the fans, in front of the TV cameras, and then with that player, he walked all the way back. A replacement was going to take his place. Well, it was embarrassing for that player, he walked all the way back. A replacement was going to take his place. Well, it was embarrassing for the player, but Hodges didn't rub it in.

That was the fair thing. He said that from the next day on, the incident would be entirely forgotten, that he had treated the player with as much respect as ever. And he did. That player, Cleon Jones, he knew he had messed up. He played his heart out for the team after that.

So Hodges sounds firm but fair, and he sounds like someone who could quietly earn respect rather than demanding it by screaming. Yes, that's the contrast with De Rocher. Hodges wouldn't pick on someone weaker than him, but De Rocher, he loved doing that. Remember, he was terrified of finishing last in anything. There must have been some internal weakness he needed to dominate. One time, right at the end of World War II, a fan was mocking him.

DeRosier hated that sort of thing. So he got an off-duty policeman to lead the fan to a little room behind the dugout. It was secluded, it was out of sight, and then DeRosier gave a signal. The policeman was going to double the fan over, so he hit him with a blackjack. What's a blackjack? A blackjack is like a truncheon, but much meaner and often with a big heavy metal tip.

Well after the policeman did that, the fan was weak, so DeRosier got to work. He started punching him in the face. The fan tried to get away, but he was a veteran, actually, of World War II. He was wounded. He had a damaged leg. So DeRosier kept a hold with one hand, and with the other hand, he pulled his fist back and he punched him in the face, and he punched him

in the face over and over, breaking his jaw. I have had the joy and misfortune of spending a certain amount of my life around boxing rings. It takes a lot of work to break somebody's jaw. Even the policeman thought that was too much. What are you doing, Leo? He said. That's from his testimony in court later.

He repeated it. What are you doing? But even the policeman was too scared of DeRosha to stop him. The fan was in hospital for weeks. It went to court. Which means it's all over for DeRosha, surely? Yeah, right. This was New York City. Almost all the jurors were Brooklyn Dodgers fans. They determined and thought about the case for something like 11 minutes. DeRosier was

cleared. DeRosier was cleared? I suppose that figures. So he got away with it. And his treatment of his players sounds very different to the way Hodges behaved too. It certainly was. DeRosier had a lot of baseball knowledge to share. And one of the strengths about being a jerk is that you can actually be objective. If a famous player was weak, he'd bench him. If an unknown player was strong, he'd let him play. So that part of it was good. On the other hand, he couldn't stop from bullying everyone,

absolutely everyone, including players on his own team. And since he loved spending money, and he had a tendency to get married, and then divorced, and then married, and then divorced, he did that about three or four times. From all that, he was in debt a lot. So he started cheating when he played cards with his own players, and he'd cheat

when he played craps games with them, throwing the dice. He knew a little about how to do that already, but he liked hanging out with gangsters, and he learned more. So he learned more about how to cheat? He certainly did. He got really good at it. And you know what he found? Cheating against guys who were grown up, who had been playing ball, lived in New York or

big cities for a while, those guys were really hard to hustle. So he looked at sweet boys just coming in from the farms. America was much more rural than it is now. And he would tell these boys, you want to make it in New York City. Here's an easy way. There's a card game. The rules are very simple.

But you got to bet big, kid. You got to bet big. So he would start cheating not on small bets, but for huge stakes. Finally, the baseball commissioner got rumors of this, and he told him to stop. Leo DeRosier was unimpressed when anybody told him to stop. He kept going. In one craps game, he rigged the dice so much that he nearly bankrupted a leading pitcher. But that was against Hicks.

When he tried keeping up with professional gamblers, he wasn't so lucky. He kept on losing, and he kept on losing, and it meant he needed to rig games even more than he ever had before. And whenever the administrators tried to rein him in, well, he let sports writers know what he felt about the big wigs in the offices. Because of that, in the late 1940s, DeRosier got suspended for an entire season. He was allowed back the following year, but that was his big weakness.

He'd really set up an enemy. The powers that be headed in for him. Because of the gambling? Mostly, but also because of the way he kept doing whatever worked. In 1953, for example, there was an opposing team that had a player who was very effective. A player was Carl Ferrillo. He was the best hitter in the National League, a dangerous

opponent for De Rocher's team. Well, De Rocher wanted to get him out of the game. So he had his own pitcher hit Ferrillo with a pitch. And then De Rocher wagged his finger at him, mocking what had happened. Ferrillo was furious. He charged into the dugout. That was exactly what Deroscher hoped. And so, in the safety of the dugout, Deroscher, or maybe some players he'd arranged in advance, they very quickly shattered Ferrillo's wrist. The poor guy was out for the entire season.

The competition was now easier. Wow. So he sounds like someone who would stop at absolutely nothing to win. He was. But that meant winning was the only thing he had to offer. The moment he stopped winning, nobody was going to give him a second chance. There was no loyalty. There was no friendship. So when the New York Giants that he was managing, when they had a poor season in 1955, he was out. Fired. He'd been in New York

since Babe Ruth's Yankees back in the 1920s. So what was he going to do now? Other teams didn't want to hire him, or at least the top teams didn't. The gambling, the violence, they knew about it. It was too much. And he wasn't going to let anyone see him be weak, so he wasn't going to beg. What he said instead was, I've had enough. I'm retiring from baseball. But by 1969, when you are about to turn 13, De Rocha's back on the scene with the Chicago Cubs, right? That's it.

When he was fired in New York, there wasn't a lot he could do. He tried broadcasting and he wasn't bad at it, but it didn't mean much to him, not after being right at the center in the stadium. He was actually in an episode of a TV show with a talking horse. Oh, classy. Curiously, I remember that show, and I remember that horse.

My poor parents had to sit while we enjoyed it. Anyways, for de Rocher, that sort of episode was enough. Late in 1965, he was 61 years old, he signed up to manage the Chicago Cubs. My Chicago Cubs. So what did you make of all this at the time? I was a kid, so I really only had the faintest hint. He was famous, he'd played with Babe Ruth, he'd led New York teams to the World Series.

There was talk that he was rough, maybe too rough, but remember, this was Chicago, we were proud of that. And he didn't do much his first year, 1966. The Cubs weren't that impressive a team yet. They had one star player, Ernie Banks, but they had barely had a winning season in 20 years. Like I said, we Cubs fans knew pain. We were used to it. But the thing is, he was a jerk, he was a curmudgeon, etc. etc. But he really was skilled. He brought up promising youngsters. He knew tactics very well. In 1967, they did better.

1968 was also good. And then came 1969. That was your summer. That it was. I was 12. I was about to turn 13. The city had been through a lot. Just the year before, there were terrible riots. I remember on a big street, just a few yards from my home, watching jeeps with barbed wire on them, National Guard troops with machine guns, and a really fierce look in their face

going down the street to where the riots were going to be. Well, we were kind of a blue-collar city. We liked the idea that we were tough, but we also liked the idea that we hung together. This new manager, he seemed to be showing that was possible. Being tough could unite everybody. And you were hanging out, you were going to watch every game, although when you're supposed to be at school? School shmul. We thought of it more as guidelines. The team got off to such a good start back in 1969, starting in April. It was kind of hard to resist. And then in the summer, when we were still ahead and there was no school, we were almost

living there. And also, there was that promise of the kiss if the Cubs won the division. Now in mid-August, that seemed certain. I was a very, very happy 12-year-old. Hodges' New York Mets were well behind. The season was just six weeks from ending. They would have to undergo the greatest losing streak in the history of American baseball to miss out.

Hmm. Well, there is about to be a showdown between Hodges and De Rocha, and there's a kiss on the line. More on all of that after the break. We're back. I'm in the studio with David Bedanis, and David, casting your mind back to being 12 years old,

that amazing summer, the romance, the excitement, the thrill of being on a winning team, that's how it seemed to you then. What have you learned since then? Well, there were a lot of things I didn't realise. It's kind of nice being 12 years old and very, very innocent. One of the things I didn't know was how careless DeRosier could really be, breaking that veteran's jaws, hanging around with gangsters, and these gangsters were pretty nasty people. One of the men in a circle was Bugsy Siegel, a gangster famous for organizing contract killing and helping the mafia take over early Las Vegas. Another thing I didn't realize was how

much this season meant to DeRosier. There were financial bonuses if you won, and there were even bigger bonuses if you got into the World Series. He'd lost a lot of money in gambling, and he had his big lifestyle with all those divorces, and he needed his cash. So what about his attitude to his players? Is there any sign that he was starting to mellow? Well, that's also what I had no idea about at the time. At batting practice he'd swear a little bit, but this was Chicago who didn't swear. What I missed was how vicious he was to the players. The shortstop, Ron Santo, was Italian-American and he also had diabetes. In that era, he had to hide it. Well, DeRcher kept on riding him and swearing right up to his face, calling him weak, using really vicious insults about Italian Americans, but not in

a sort of jokey way that some people might do for bonding. It was deep, it was biting. Santo was a calm guy, but even he cracked. In the clubhouse one time, he grabbed De Rocher by the throat and he wanted to kill him. His teammates had to pull him off. So DeRosha is famous for bringing the black player Jackie Robinson on the team, but he's using these slurs against Italian Americans. I'm trying to work out, was he a racist? Was he not a racist? It was probably mixed.

He was a DeRosha-ist. Everyone knew about him bringing on Jackie Robinson. That was good. But the thing is, he didn't bring Robinson on because he was standing up for the principles of racial equality. DeRosier never stood up for any principles. He didn't even especially like Robinson. He just wanted to win. Robinson was a great player.

Turned out, a little bit later, Robinson had a problem with his weight. And DeRosier started insulting him. So hard and so non-stop that even Jackie Robinson ended up hating him just as much as everyone else did. Now a true racist puts their race first. DeRosier was simpler. He just put himself first. And above all he wanted to win. So did all this bullying help? That's what gave me such pleasure when I looked into it properly for the book. No, the bullying did not help. He would demand too much.

He would go too far. DeRosier kept his players going without replacement much, much longer than he should have. Chicago's really hot in the summer and it could be near 100% humidity. Feels tropical. But day after day, week after week, he wouldn't allow replacements. That seems so counterproductive. You're right. I think he liked seeing his players get weaker and weaker. It's kind of weird, but it made him feel strong.

And then there were the umpires. Exactly. In front of the TV cameras, he'd ham it up, he'd stand toe to toe, he would yell at them. It seemed like a game. But it was more than a game. In quieter moments when he was alone away from the cameras, he'd really tried to undermine the umpires, saying the most personal things he could find out about their private lives. Now you've got to remember there were barely any video reviews of calls then. So the umpires had a lot of discretion and making an enemy of them wasn't smart. It certainly was not. One sportswriter wrote about it later. Quote, whether or not Leo ever united the Cubs against the umpires, he certainly united

the umpires against the Cubs. Unquote. And then, well, De Rocher also encouraged the most unruly of the fans, people I knew pretty well, to throw metal bolts or sometimes small stones at opposing players. The other teams hated that. And when they complained, De Rocher professed complete innocence. Even so, despite all the counterproductive bullying, by mid-August, the season's going to be over early October, By mid-August, as you said, Chicago was way ahead. I think nine games ahead.

So the only way they could lose would be if Hodges Met had one of the greatest winning streaks in baseball history, and De Rocha's Cubs had one of the greatest losing streaks in baseball history. You had to remind me, Tim, didn't you? It was a mess. It was a catastrophe. It was a catastrophe. It still, I swear to God, it still hurts. The umpires hated DeRosier, and opposing players hated DeRosier, and his own team really, really

hated him. Because he needed to feel strong and humiliate them, and he wouldn't give the starters a rest, they were getting exhausted. It's not that they totally gave up. They still had some pride. They're professional athletes. But by then, the constant bullying, the yelling, the unfairness, it was too much. Everyone else was bringing their strongest game against Chicago. Our players had to be on top. They weren't. When it first began to

happen, the losing, we didn't realize what was going on. Every team loses a bit. And so that was okay. But it kept on. And when we hung out at the field edge during batting practice before the games, there was this feeling that something was different. The players were in a different zone. There was less joking between them. There was a kind of doggedness as they practiced. We shared it too. When my friends and I and the other kids from around the city, when we cleaned the stadium after the games, if anyone who was lifting the seats and I and the other kids from around the city, when we cleaned the stadium after the games, if anyone who was lifting the seats and sweeping down the garbage started to say,

hey, they'd be OK, we'd all look at him. You didn't talk about it. If we were very quiet and very ordinary, maybe we'd all go away. And obviously, it did not all go away. We'd been in first place for 155 consecutive days, and then we lost it all. Everything fell apart. The city was going to be united, and me and my school friends, we were getting more united. But these players we'd look up to, the Cubs who were going to make up for the past, and

finally, finally go all the way, they lost it. Who could we trust? Everything felt different at school, at home, everywhere. The Mets won the division. And the kiss? Pleased. We were friends. We were kids. In a sense, it would have been nothing. We even stayed friends. But at the time, it just made everything worse.

And how far did Gil Hodge's team go? Well, after beating us to take the National League East, they won the playoffs for the entire National League. And then they were into the World Series against Baltimore. I was listening to the series on the radio. Now the player that Hodges publicly reprimanded, Cleon Jones, in the fifth game he gave his all in a spectacular catch that won the series for the New York Mets. Mr. DeRosier and my cubbies were nowhere to be seen.

David, my heart bleeds. It is a tragedy. But on cautionary tales we try to learn from tragedies. So what is your conclusion from this story? It's pretty simple. Being too soft will not work. But being too harsh, that's easily counterproductive too. There is a path in between. Being fair like Hodges, not a bully like DeRosier, this really can be the way to finish first. David, it's been a joy. Thank you so much for joining me. A great pleasure.

David Bedarnes' wonderful book is The Art of Fairness. It is available at all good bookshops, naturally, full of great stories, and every single one has a lesson about how to succeed without being a jerk. We're going back to our usual format next episode, but we will be telling several stories inspired by The Art of Fairness. So join me for stories of villains undone by their villainy, monstrous self-devouring egos and accounts of the extraordinary power of decency. Next time on Cautionary Tales. Cautionary Tales is written by me, Tim Harford, with Andrew Wright. This mini-series is based on David Bedanas' book The Art of

Fairness, the power of decency in a world turned mean, and it was written with David Bedanas himself. For a full list of our sources, see the show notes at timharford.com. The show is produced by Alice Fiennes with Marilyn Rust. The sound design and original music are the work of Pascal Wise. Sarah Nix edited the scripts. Cautionary Tales features the voice talents of Ben Crow, Melanie Guthridge, Stella Harford, Gemma Saunders and Rufus Wright. The show wouldn't have been possible without the work of Jacob Weisberg, Ryan Dilley, Greta Cohen, Eric Sandler, Carrie Brody, Christina Sullivan, Keira Posey and Owen Miller.

Cautionary Tales is a production of Pushkin Industries. It's recorded at Wardour Studios in London by Tom Berry. If you like the show, please remember to share, rate and review. It does really make a difference to us. And if you want to hear the show ad free, sign up to Pushkin Plus on the show page on Apple Podcasts or at pushkin.fm slash plus. you