When Keane and the Cardinals surprised everyone by surging to their first World Series championship in 18 years, Busch decided to keep his manager on for another year. However, Keane shocked everyone once again when he announced his resignation at a press conference that was originally intended to celebrate his new contract.

Keane’s 35-year career with the Cardinals included time as a minor league infielder, player-manager, and coach before he joined the big-league coaching staff under manager Solly Hemus. When Hemus was fired in 1961, Keane was named manager. A baseball lifer who studied for the priesthood before joining the Cardinals, Keane was beloved by his players.

“Johnny Keane spent 21 years managing in the minor leagues, which suggests, quite accurately, that he was a patient man,” Bob Gibson wrote in his autobiography. “He was, in fact, the closest thing to a saint that I came across in baseball.”[1]

“Johnny Keane was one of the nicest persons ever in sports,” added Jack Buck in his own autobiography.[2]

Keane led the Cardinals to a 47-33 record after taking over for Hemus in 1961, then followed that performance with an 84-win season in 1962. In 1963, the Cardinals won 93 games and placed second in the National League, giving the club high hopes for the 1964 campaign.

The Cardinals got off to a slow start, however, and on June 17, with a 30-31 record, they sat in eighth place in the 10-team National League. Busch responded by firing Devine; however, he was more than willing to fire the manager Keane as well.

As the Cardinals staggered out of the gate, former Gashouse Gang shortstop Leo Durocher, who had won National League pennants with both the Dodgers and Giants, made a bid for Keane’s job. Now a coach for the Dodgers, Durocher was in St. Louis with the Dodgers in mid-August when Cardinals broadcaster Harry Caray invited him to the broadcast booth for an interview on the pregame show.[3]

When the conversation turned to Durocher’s future as a manager, he told Caray, “If somebody came to me and asked me to manage a team with some talent on it—a team like the Cardinals here—well, I’d jump at it in a minute. Because a club like the Cardinals should be winning.”[4]

That day’s audience happened to include Busch, and the owner instructed Caray to bring Durocher to the beer mogul’s estate the following morning.[5] Durocher described the scene in his book, Nice Guys Finish Last:

When we arrived at Mr. Busch’s estate at Grant’s Farm, Harry said that he’d wait in the car. A servant opened the door and took me the distance of a couple of city blocks to the living room. Then we went through a couple of more rooms and out to a screened-in porch where Gussie was having his breakfast.

It was a very hot Sunday morning, and his kids were riding back and forth outside on their ponies. I had a cup of coffee and a sweet roll with him. The small talk was kept to a minimum.

Gussie wanted to know whether I would be interested in managing his ball club next year if the job should become available. The job, as everybody knew, was going to become available. Busch had fired his general manager, Bing Devine, a couple of weeks earlier and it was common talk that Johnny Keane had been kept on only because it hadn’t been considered good policy to let both the manager and general manager go in the middle of the season.[6]

When Busch finished his breakfast, he and Durocher retired to the beer baron’s office, where Busch announced that the job would be his. First, however, Busch wanted to clear it with Dodgers owner Walter O’Malley. Unfortunately, O’Malley was on safari in Africa and was unavailable.[7] Durocher claims that he warned Busch things could change while he waited for O’Malley’s response.

“The last thing I said before getting up was that it was going to be very hard to keep our agreement out of the newspapers,” Durocher recalled. “‘How do you think Johnny Keane is going to feel when he hears about this? Because you’re not out of it yet, Gus. You’re only seven and a half games out, you could win this thing yet. Anything can happen in this game.’”[8]

Indeed it could.

As rumors swirled about his future with the club, Keane and the Cardinals pulled themselves back into the pennant race. By September 22, the Cardinals were in third place and had trimmed Philadelphia’s lead to five games.

At the same time, rumors regarding Busch’s meeting with Durocher began to swirl. United Press International (UPI) reported that Keane would be replaced within two weeks. In response, Busch denied that the meeting with Durocher had taken place and told the St. Louis Post-Dispatch, “I have great admiration for Durocher and I heard that recent radio interview in which he made a pitch for a managerial job, but I don’t know whether we’ll make a change or not. It was hard enough to let Bing go – I consider Bing one of the finest fellows I’ve ever met – and it was a tough move to make. It would be another tough move to decide to let Keane go.”[9]

When asked whether he thought Keane had done a good job to that point in the season, Busch was noncommittal, saying, “Frankly, I have no comment on that.”[10]

After learning of the meeting between Busch and Durocher, Keane called his friend Bill Bergesch, who had been the general manager at Omaha when Keane was the manager. Bergesch was now the assistant general manager with the Yankees.[11] According to Peter Golenbock, author of The Spirit of St. Louis: A History of the St. Louis Cardinals and Browns, Keane signed a contract for the 1965 season with the Yankees on September 28.[12]

That same day, Keane wrote a letter of resignation that he planned to give Busch whenever the Cardinals’ season ended. Only he and his wife knew that he planned to quit.

“I didn’t want to upset the players,” Keane said.[13]

Ironically, after Keane made the decision to leave the only MLB team he had ever worked for, Busch changed his mind about his 52-year-old manager. On October 2, five days after Keane penned his resignation letter, Busch visited him in the clubhouse and offered him a new contract. Keane demurred, saying that he preferred to wait to discuss his contract until after the season.[14]

With an 11-5 win over the Mets on the final day of the regular season, the Cardinals clinched the pennant, finishing one game ahead of the Reds and Phillies. Their late-season surge meant they would meet another team that came on strong: the Yankees, who had been in third place as late as September 16 before an 11-game win streak pushed them into first place.

In a classic World Series, the Cardinals captured the title in seven games. After taking the loss in Game 2, Gibson won Game 5, then struck out nine Yankees in a complete-game effort in Game 7.

With the championship in hand, Busch called a press conference for the following morning at which he planned to announce a new contract for Keane. Instead, Busch was in for a surprise. When Keane arrived 15 minutes after the press conference was scheduled to begin, he entered Busch’s office and handed him the letter of resignation he had written weeks earlier.

In part, the letter read: “This is to submit my resignation as field manager of the St. Louis Cardinals, effective at the end of the last championship National League game, whether it be at the end of the regular season or at the completion of the World Series. I want you to know that I have enjoyed working for you since you have owned the Cardinals, as well as the many years I spent with the organization prior to that time. I resign my position with the friendliest feelings and wish nothing but success to you and your fine Cardinal team.”[15]

Unaware of the letter’s contents, Busch shoved the letter into his pocket and encouraged Keane to hurry toward waiting press.

“I think you’d better read that before we go in there,” Keane said.

When Busch said he would read it after the press conference, Keane insisted. That was when executive vice president Dick Meyer asked to see the letter. After reading its contents, Meyer stopped Busch.

“We can’t go in there,” he said.

“Why not?” Busch asked.

“He’s not going to manage,” Meyer answered. “He’s resigning.”

Busch was shocked. “I’m sorry, Mr. Busch,” Keane said. “I’ve made other plans.”[16]

When Busch and Keane finally spoke to the press, they announced Keane’s resignation. It marked just the third time in history a manager had not returned after winning the World Series and the first time since Cardinals player-manager Rogers Hornsby was traded to the Giants after the 1926 season.

“It’s hard to leave the players,” Keane said. “During the last 30 days, during the stretch run, we have become a closely knit unit. I have become closer to the players than with any other ball club I’ve been with before. I’ve been one of the boys and liked it.”[17]

When asked by reporters why he quit, Keane said it “was an accumulation of a lot of little things,” including Devine’s firing earlier that season.[18]

“Keane was understood to have resented the interference of Branch Rickey, senior consultant, and the mid-August dismissal of general manager Bing Devine,” St. Louis Post-Dispatch sportswriter Neal Russo wrote. “Keane also was believed to have been upset during the period that the Cardinals reportedly were thinking of Leo Durocher as his successor.”[19]

For his part, Busch admitted his was astonished by Keane’s announcement. “I tried to find the main reason why John is resigning,” he said. “I don’t know what caused him to make this decision. This came as a complete bombshell this morning.”[20]

Keane was asked whether he might go to the Mets, where he could serve as a manager-in-waiting under 74-year-old Casey Stengel and be reunited with Devine, who had joined the Mets’ front office.

“It’s not true that I am going with the Mets,” he said. “That job would be a year from now or more, and I want a job now. I don’t want a coaching job. I want to manage.”[21]

Later that day, Keane’s plans became clearer as the Yankees announced that Yogi Berra would fulfill a different role in the organization and would not be the manager in 1965. Yankees general manager Ralph Houk said Keane was among four finalists for the position.[22] A few days later, the Yankees announced that Keane would manage the club the following season.

Keane’s tenure in New York didn’t last long. Saddled with an aging roster that was on the decline, Keane guided the team to just 77 wins in 1965. After the Yankees won just four of their first 20 games in 1966, he was fired. In January 1967, he was in his Houston home when he suffered a fatal heart attack.

Following the public perception that he and Durocher had chased the World Series-winning Keane from St. Louis, Busch decided not to name Durocher the Cardinals’ next manager. Instead, he sought recommendations from a committee that included the recently retired legend, Stan Musial. Musial campaigned for his longtime friend and teammate Red Schoendienst.

“With Musial leading my support, it came down to as much a public relations decision as a baseball one, I think, and that’s where I had the advantage,” Schoendienst wrote in his autobiography. “There was a lot of negative reaction to Johnny leaving, and the possible hiring of Durocher had stirred up a lot of people. The prevailing thought was the new manager needed to be someone who was a favorite of the fans, and luckily that turned out to be me.”[23]

Schoendienst went on to manage the Cardinals for 12 years, guiding the club to the World Series title in 1967 and another National League pennant in 1968.

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[1] Bob Gibson and Lonnie Wheeler (1994), Stranger to the Game, Penguin Books USA, Page 43.

[2] Jack Buck (2014), Jack Buck: That’s a Winner! Kindle Android version, Location 2066.

[3] Peter Golenbock (2011), The Spirit of St. Louis: A History of the St. Louis Cardinals and Browns, HarperCollins Ebooks, Page 460.

[4] Peter Golenbock (2011), The Spirit of St. Louis: A History of the St. Louis Cardinals and Browns, HarperCollins Ebooks, Page 460.

[5] Peter Golenbock (2011), The Spirit of St. Louis: A History of the St. Louis Cardinals and Browns, HarperCollins Ebooks, Page 460.

[6] Leo Durocher with Ed Linn (1975), Nice Guys Finish Last, University of Chicago Press, Page 344.

[7] Peter Golenbock (2011), The Spirit of St. Louis: A History of the St. Louis Cardinals and Browns, HarperCollins Ebooks, Page 461.

[8] Leo Durocher with Ed Linn (1975), Nice Guys Finish Last, University of Chicago Press, Page 345.

[9] Ed Wilks, “Busch Unsure on Keane,” St. Louis Post-Dispatch, September 22, 1964.

[10] Ed Wilks, “Busch Unsure on Keane,” St. Louis Post-Dispatch, September 22, 1964.

[11] Peter Golenbock (2011), The Spirit of St. Louis: A History of the St. Louis Cardinals and Browns, HarperCollins Ebooks, Page 461.

[12] Peter Golenbock (2011), The Spirit of St. Louis: A History of the St. Louis Cardinals and Browns, HarperCollins Ebooks, Page 468.

[13] Neal Russo, “Keane Quits As Manager Of Cardinals,” St. Louis Post-Dispatch, October 16, 1964.

[14] Neal Russo, “Keane Quits As Manager Of Cardinals,” St. Louis Post-Dispatch, October 16, 1964.

[15] Neal Russo, “Keane Quits As Manager Of Cardinals,” St. Louis Post-Dispatch, October 16, 1964.

[16] Peter Golenbock (2011), The Spirit of St. Louis: A History of the St. Louis Cardinals and Browns, HarperCollins Ebooks, Page 468.

[17] Neal Russo, “Keane Quits As Manager Of Cardinals,” St. Louis Post-Dispatch, October 16, 1964.

[18] Neal Russo, “Keane Quits As Manager Of Cardinals,” St. Louis Post-Dispatch, October 16, 1964.

[19] Neal Russo, “Keane Quits As Manager Of Cardinals,” St. Louis Post-Dispatch, October 16, 1964.

[20] Neal Russo, “Keane Quits As Manager Of Cardinals,” St. Louis Post-Dispatch, October 16, 1964.

[21] Neal Russo, “Keane Quits As Manager Of Cardinals,” St. Louis Post-Dispatch, October 16, 1964.

[22] Neal Russo, “Keane Quits As Manager Of Cardinals,” St. Louis Post-Dispatch, October 16, 1964.

[23] Red Schoendienst with Rob Rains (1998), Red: A Baseball Life, Sports Publishing, Champaign, Ill., Page 134.

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You may sing the praises of Mickey Cochrane’s Tigers and the glory of the Giants from the housetops. Tell the story of Lynwood (Schoolboy) Rowe and the saga of Carl Hubbell, the wizardry of Grover Alexander and the blinding speed of Walter Johnson, but brother, if you were at Ebbetts Field yesterday, you’ve got something to tell your children.[1]

It wasn’t often in 1934 that someone managed to steal the show from Dizzy Dean, but on September 21, 1934, his brother managed the trick on a day that only served to bolster the legend of the incredible Dean brothers.

Both games were make-ups for games that were rained out earlier in the month. Before the double-header started, the Deans were speaking to a reporter in the visitor’s dugout when they were asked who would pitch the first game.

“I’m supposed to,” Dizzy said, “but I don’t feel so good. How about you taking it, Paul?”

“OK with me,” Paul responded. “Where’s the boss?”

Frankie Frisch, the Cardinals’ second baseman/manager, was just emerging onto the field and began to take infield drills. Before his pregame routine was complete, however, the Deans already had lost interest.

“Well, I guess there’s no help for it,” Dizzy said as he walked off to begin warming up.[2]

However well Dizzy was feeling, he went on to throw 7 1/3 no-hit innings in a 13-0 blowout. With one out in the eighth, Buzz Boyle beat out a slow roller to the shortstop. In the next inning, Sam Leslie and Joe Stripp each singled before Al Lopez reached on an error by Pepper Martin at third base. With the bases loaded, Dizzy ended the threat by striking out Nick Tremark for his 27^th win of the year.

“I didn’t know that I had a no-hitter,” Dizzy said. “I was way out in front and I was just coasting along. Boy, if I had known that I was so near to a no-hitter, I’d have given those Dodgers so much smoke and such fancy curves that they wouldn’t have even seen the ball.”[3]

Ripper Collins led the Cardinals’ offense with four hits and six RBIs, including a two-run single in the first inning, an RBI double in the third, a two-run home run in the fourth, and another RBI double in the sixth. Frankie Frisch and Spud Davis drove in two runs apiece, and Jack Rothrock added two hits and three runs scored.

With their win streak now up to five games, 21-year-old rookie Paul Dean and the Cardinals matched up against Ray Benge and the Dodgers. After Benge retired the Cardinals in order in the first, Paul issued a two-out walk to Len Koenecke before retiring Leslie on a fly ball.

“I’ve pitched better ball games in my career than the one today,” Paul said afterwards, “but everything went my way. It seemed that I was always ahead of the hitters, all but Koenecke, whom I walked in the first inning. I had him 3-and-2 and inasmuch as he tagged me for an extra-base hit last month in St. Louis, I wasn’t going to give him anything good.”[4]

Benge kept pace with Paul until the top of the sixth inning, when the younger Dean helped his own cause with a one-out double into center field. Pepper Martin followed with a double to left, and though he was thrown out at third by the center fielder Koenecke, Paul scored on the play to give the Cardinals a 1-0 lead.

One inning later, Joe Medwick doubled to left field and scored on an RBI single to right by Collins. In the seventh, Paul had his closest call of the game as Leslie lifted a fly ball to deep left field that required Medwick to make a running, one-handed catch.[5]

“When did I first think about (a no-hitter)?” Paul said. “Why, after I got the first three outs of the game in the first inning. I said to myself as I went back to the dugout, ‘Well, no hits so far,’ and after the second inning I said the same thing.

“Then after a couple more innings I started to talk to (rookie catcher Bill) DeLancey about it. We’re roommates and I think a lot of him and we told each other after each inning that there wasn’t no hits yet. After six innings I said to Dee that if we could bear down just a little bit longer, we’d have a no-hit game for the room. Dee thought it was a good idea and we both cut the pie at each other when Medwick goes out near the bleacher wall in that seventh inning and comes up with Leslie’s fly, which was well rickety-cacked.”[6]

Paul Dean struck out two of the three batters he faced in the eighth, and in the top of the ninth Collins drove in his eighth run of the day on a ground ball that scored Medwick.

Down 3-0 in the bottom of the ninth and still seeking the Dodgers’ first hit, Casey Stengel called on Jim Bucher to pinch hit for Lopez. The move didn’t work, however, as Paul recorded his sixth and final strikeout of the game.

After Paul got the final strike, coach Miguel Gonzales, who caught Jesse Haines when he threw the first no-hitter in Cardinals history 10 years earlier, yelled at Paul, “Two more and you’ll get Dizzy jealous!”[7]

“I was pouring that ball through there in the late innings,” Paul said. “How did you like them strikes I throwed to Bucher? … He ain’t never saw anything I thrun.”[8]

The next batter also was a pinch hitter, as Johnny McCarthy came in to bat for Benge. McCarthy popped out to Frisch at second base, leaving Boyle between Paul and history.

“I was thinking it would be kinda nice to have the no-hitter, but if Boyle had been man enough to sock one, I’d have taken it without any crying,” Paul said.[9]

The Cardinals rookie never had to find out, as Boyle hit a sharp ground ball to Leo Durocher at shortstop, who blocked the ball with his chest[10] and recovered to throw Boyle out for the final out of the game.

With the game won, fans mobbed the field to congratulate the younger Dean. Delancey raced out to the mound to hand him the historic ball, but it briefly was stolen by a fan. One of the officers on duty, Jimmy Curran, grabbed the fan and the ball and returned the memento.[11]

“My curve was breaking good and as the game went along I felt looser and better,” Paul said. “I got faster as I went along and the funniest thing to me was that I wasn’t a bit tired when it was all over. I didn’t feel like I’d done no work at all. The fellows on the bench and the other players in the game acted like they’d been under a great strain and they kept sighing and heaving that they was glad it was all over, but I didn’t feel none of that. I felt like I could have pitched a couple more games.”[12]

Paul’s no-hitter was the first in the majors since Cleveland’s Wes Ferrell and Washington’s Bob Burke accomplished the feat, and the first Cardinals no-hitter since Jesse Haines did it 10 years earlier. Despite the accomplishment, Paul said his biggest thrill of the game was his offensive performance.

“I guess those two hits I got will knock Dizz off for a while,” he said. “Did I hit those or didn’t I? I never hit so good in my life. That single to right was good, but that double that I larruped out there to left-center was what I got a big kick out of. Yes sir. I guess Dizz won’t talk about his hitting for a while after those two wallops.”[13]

Of course, that didn’t mean that Dizzy Dean didn’t have anything to say. The two wins not only kept the Cardinals within three games of the New York Giants for the National League lead, but it meant that the Deans already had combined for 45 of the Cardinals’ 88 wins, matching a preseason prediction from Dizzy.

“Even Dizzy wasn’t dizzy enough to predict that the 45^th would be a no-hitter,” Durocher said.[14]

In later years, legend would allege that Dizzy told his brother, “Shucks, Paul, you shoulda told me you was gonna pitch a no-hitter, then I woulda pitched one too!” While the quote appears in Milton Shapiro’s The Dizzy Dean Story, published almost 30 years later in 1963, none of the papers covering the game appear to have recorded the anecdote.

What was indisputable, however, was that the Cardinals would end up winning 13 of their final 15 games to catch the Giants and win the National League by two games. Facing the Detroit Tigers in the World Series, Dizzy and Paul would each win a pair of games, including Dizzy’s Game 7 shutout to win the third world championship in St. Louis Cardinals history.

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[1] Bill McCullough, “Dean Brothers Wrote Mound History With Double Win Over Dodgers,” Brooklyn Times-Union, September 22, 1934: Page 1A.

[2] Tommy Holmes, “Dean Brothers Bubbling Over With Fame,” Brooklyn Daily Eagle, September 22, 1934: Page 6.

[3] J. Roy Stockton, “Paul Dean First St. Louis No-Hit Pitcher Since 1924,” St. Louis Post-Dispatch, September 22, 1934: Page 1B.

[4] Bill McCullough, “Dean Brothers Wrote Mound History With Double Win Over Dodgers,” Brooklyn Times-Union, September 22, 1934: Page 1A.

[5] Tommy Holmes, “Dean Brothers Bubbling Over With Fame,” Brooklyn Daily Eagle, September 22, 1934: Page 6.

[6] J. Roy Stockton, “Paul Dean First St. Louis No-Hit Pitcher Since 1924,” St. Louis Post-Dispatch, September 22, 1934: Page 1B.

[7] Bill McCullough, “Dean Brothers Wrote Mound History With Double Win Over Dodgers,” Brooklyn Times-Union, September 22, 1934: Page 2A.

[8] J. Roy Stockton, “Paul Dean First St. Louis No-Hit Pitcher Since 1924,” St. Louis Post-Dispatch, September 22, 1934: Page 1B.

[9] J. Roy Stockton, “Paul Dean First St. Louis No-Hit Pitcher Since 1924,” St. Louis Post-Dispatch, September 22, 1934: Page 1B.

[10] Bill McCullough, “Dean Brothers Wrote Mound History With Double Win Over Dodgers,” Brooklyn Times-Union, September 22, 1934: Page 1A.

[11] Bill McCullough, “Dean Brothers Wrote Mound History With Double Win Over Dodgers,” Brooklyn Times-Union, September 22, 1934: Page 1A.

[12] J. Roy Stockton, “Paul Dean First St. Louis No-Hit Pitcher Since 1924,” St. Louis Post-Dispatch, September 22, 1934: Page 1B.

[13] J. Roy Stockton, “Paul Dean First St. Louis No-Hit Pitcher Since 1924,” St. Louis Post-Dispatch, September 22, 1934: Page 1B.

[14] Tommy Holmes, “Dean Brothers Bubbling Over With Fame,” Brooklyn Daily Eagle, September 22, 1934: Page 6.

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