Carl Furillo and the Dodgers--They Are Together Again at Last

VERO BEACH, Fla. —  He is a security guard for a nylon factory in Stony Creek Mills, Pa., working the swing shift for the last nine years. “It’s a nice job,” Carl Furillo said. “The benefits are beautiful.

“I would have been on midnights this week, but I got off to come down here.”

Carl Furillo was here Sunday in Dodgertown to reminisce about another time, another job--when he was the right fielder for the Brooklyn Dodgers, a team that 30 years ago won the first world championship in Dodger history. A team immortalized as the Boys of Summer.

“Those ’55 boys, when we were on the ballfield there were no enemies,” he said. “I don’t care what happened--we were one.

“If one guy got out of hand, we’d jump right down his throat. We didn’t care if it was Pee Wee, or Jackie Robinson, or Campy, we did it.

“It was nice. I was saying that to Lasorda, and he told me, ‘You don’t do that today.’ I can’t say. I’m not around.”

“Carl Furillo was pure ballplayer. In his prime he stood six feet tall and weighed 190 pounds and there was a fluidity to his frame you seldom see, among such sinews. His black hair was thick, and tightly curled. His face was strong and smooth. He had the look of a young indomitable centurion ... I cannot imagine Carl Furillo in his prime as anything other than a ballplayer. Right field in Brooklyn was his destiny.” --Roger Kahn, Boys of Summer The hair is still thick, but turned to gray, the face still strong, but creased with the lines of living. The centurion has given way to the old warrior who had learned much from battle.

For Furillo, this reunion had been long in coming. The bitterness of his departure from the Dodgers--released in 1960 while injured--had held on like a vise.

“Some of these guys I haven’t seen in 20 years, he said, sitting poolside, watching Jesse Robinson, grandson of Jackie and Rachel, fidgeting nearby.

“You know, that young O’Malley (Peter) really is coming on strong with this. It’s something I never expected.

“I haven’t seen Pee Wee in 20 years, it might be a little longer. Koufax--he used to be my roommate--I haven’t seen in 15, 18 years.

“Mr. Rickey and the younger Rickey, they used to like to room an older ballplayer with a younger player, you know, to settle them down. In other words, we were baby-sitters.

“Sandy, he was the most clean-cut kid you’d ever want to meet. He made me feel guilty sometimes.

“Towards the end, I was like a father. And my wife, Fern, took a liking to him. She used to bake him buttermilk cakes and mail ‘em to us when we were on the road.

” . . . This is fantastic, what they’ve got going down here. I’d enjoy doing this all year round.”

“He played with dedication and he played in pain and he was awesome in his strength and singleness. People came early just to watch Furillo unlimber his arm. The throws whined homeward, hurtled off a bounce and exploded against Roy Campanella’s glove--pom, pom, pom, pom--knee-high fastballs thrown from three hundred feet ... Throughout the grandstands men said to one another, ‘He’s a master.’ ” --Roger Kahn, Boys of Summer “A lot of water has gone over the falls,” Furillo said, “but regrets? I don’t regret nothin’. I have a lot of respect for human beings. I treat them the way I want to be treated. My wife used to say, ‘Dago, stick to your guns.’

“If I was wrong, or if I was trying to take advantage of somebody, I would have backed off. But my feeling was that I was injured, and they didn’t give me medical (disability) or nothing. I would have been satisfied just to get the medical.”

Carl Furillo says he really didn’t want to move his family when Walter O’Malley uprooted the Dodgers from Brooklyn to Los Angeles in 1957. He moved, he said, because the Dodgers said they needed him to promote the team in their new home.

“They told me personally, ‘Don’t worry, we’ll take care of you, even when you’re out of baseball.’ They were supposed to pay my expenses for moving, but instead it came out of my pocket and I only got 50% back. That’s when a little bitterness started.”

In 1959, Furillo, then 37 years old, played only 25 games in the outfield. But he delivered a game-winning hit in the World Series to help Los Angeles to its first world championship.

One week into the following season, Furillo tore a calf muscle. Shortly thereafter, the Dodgers, wanting to bring up a young prospect named Frank Howard, gave Furillo his unconditional release.

“They just let me go,” he said. “They didn’t say, ‘Carl, we’re bringing up a young fellow to help us, do you mind?’ I’m pretty bitter. They done it real nasty, while I was hurt.”

Buzzie Bavasi, then the Dodgers’ vice president, offered Furillo a chance to play for their minor-league club in Spokane, but Furillo refused. “I told them if I can play there, then I can play up here,” he said.

Instead, Furillo sued the Dodgers to collect the remainder of his $30,000 contract, and won. He sought payment he felt was his for the following season, but didn’t get it.

No other team came forth to pick up Furillo, either. He believes he was blackballed because of the lawsuit.

“Now I’m out of a job, injured, and can’t make a living in my profession.”

Furillo always had intended to stay in baseball after his playing career ended, working as an instructor or coach for young players. He had always believed Walter O’Malley and the Dodgers would have a place for him.

When they didn’t, he struggled. A friend in California offered him a job in sporting goods, “but it was crumbs, $10,000 a year. I told him I’d rather go on relief, welfare.”

So he returned to New York, ran a deli for a while, then worked as a laborer building elevator door frames. “I worked 2 1/2 years in the World Trade Center,” he said. “The ironworkers. Local 580.”

He moved back home to Stony Creek Mills, the little town just outside of Reading where he had been reared. His health problems increased. In one year he had two operations on his back, which he blames on his leg injury.

And he cut himself off from baseball, rejecting invitations to play in Old-Timers’ games.

“My wife said, ‘Why don’t you go?’ I said, ‘I don’t need a loaf of bread, I don’t need a meal. Why should I make a jerk of myself on my bad leg and go out there like some freak? What if I end up getting hurt. Who’s going to pay the medical?’ ”

Peter O’Malley, son of the man who had helped to end Furillo’s career, finally cracked the barricade of anger with which Furillo had surrounded himself.

“I picked up the phone one day at home and it was Peter O’Malley,” Furillo said. “He said, ‘Carl.’ I said, ‘Yes?’ He said, ‘The organization and your friends out here all would like you to come out here for an Old-Timers’ game. I said, ‘I would enjoy it; I’d like to see the boys again.’

“My wife was sitting at the kitchen table. I said, ‘Honey, would you like to go?’ She said, ‘If they pay my way.’ Peter heard her and said he would.”

That conversation, which took place some years ago, was the beginning. Eventually, Furillo accepted an invitation to be an instructor in the Dodgers’ adult baseball camp.

“Let bygones be bygones,” he said. “I enjoy the organization. But when people ask me different things, I don’t pull any punches.”

Saturday night, Carl and Fern Furillo were having dinner with Peter O’Malley and several other guests, including Buzzie Bavasi, the man who had given Furillo his release. Mrs. Bavasi asked Furillo to tell the story of one of his contract battles with her husband.

“You’re among friends,” she said.

So Furillo told how he went in to see Bavasi after a good season and Bavasi offered him a $1,500 raise. When Furillo balked, Bavasi said he’d throw in two steers. Furillo, who at the time owned a 60-acre farm, accepted.

One day someone called Furillo to say his steers had been delivered. “They took two young calves, Holsteins, off the truck, and said, ‘There are your steers.’ I said, ‘Who the hell are you trying to kid? Those are milk cows.’ They took ‘em back, and I never did get those steers.”

After everyone had had a good laugh, Bavasi turned to O’Malley. “That’s on the contract,” he said. “You owe him two steers.”

Furillo smiled. “What am I going to do with them now?”

He didn’t say it, but it appeared that at last, the Dodger debts had been forgiven. And both the Dodgers and Furillo were richer for it.