The automotive world was introduced to economies of scale in 1954 when Nash and Hudson (yes, they made cars exactly 52 years ago) merged to form American Motors. Both the Nash and Hudson models are history. Heck, American Motors has done a hike since then, too.
Two other automakers, Studebaker and Packard, also merged their production in response to economies of scale. They are both gone now too.
While these four automakers headed for oblivion, another entrepreneur was just getting started. Ray Kroc founded McDonald’s in 1954 and went on to create the fast food restaurant industry as we know it today.
The first nonstick frying pan was produced in 1954, which led to Teflon (a trademark for polytetrafluoroethylene), and Reagan (who would become Teflon’s president) wasn’t even president. It was another guy named Ike (Dwight David Eisenhower), who in 1944 was appointed Supreme Allied Commander for the invasion of Europe during World War II.
While Ike was busy making war plans, I was born in Flint, MI, then home to General Motors and its vast manufacturing facilities.
The New York Yankees, who had won five straight World Series from 1949 to 1953, were watching the World Series from the sidelines in 1954, as the National League Champion New York Giants (the other team in town so nice to watch). named twice) swept the AL champion Cleveland Indians in 4 games.
Leo Durocher, the Giants manager, couldn’t say “Good guys finish last” that year.
Interestingly, Cleveland’s Bob Lemon lost games 1 and 4 of the Series and Early Wynn lost game 2. Both Lemon and Wynn are in the Baseball Hall of Fame. Cleveland’s Bobby Avila also won the American League batting title in 1954 with a .341 average (now that’s what’s called a trivia question), and Larry Doby (who broke the color barrier in the American League ) won home run title with 32 dingers
For the Cleveland Indians, it turned out to be what some would call a bad year. Imagine reaching the promised land and falling short of two eventual Hall of Fame pitchers, a hitting champion and an eventual Hall of Fame home run champion.
I remember the 1954 Series like the one at the Polo Grounds when Willie Mays made “The Catch,” a dramatic over-the-shoulder catch of a Vic Wertz line drive to deep center field that might otherwise have given the Indians a game. from Cleveland. one win (remember, the Giants swept the Series that year, winning four straight).
Much more happened in 1954, but here are the tidbits I learned later in life, much later. I celebrated my 62nd birthday on June 27.
In 1954 I was 10 years old and almost my whole world was baseball. We played during the school year but there was never enough time. The summer was a dream come true, with no school and lots of hot sunny days. After getting out of bed, eating the required breakfast, and meeting my friend Tommy, we walked two blocks to St. Michael’s, the private school in our lower-middle-class neighborhood.
We couldn’t afford to go there, but we wore down the brick wall on the side of the school all summer.
The Catholics who built St. Mike intended for it to stand for a long time. At that time, Christianity had been around for 19.5 centuries, and they built it as if they intended it to be there for another 19.5 centuries.
Nobody kicked us off the property. We were very lucky, too small or too insignificant to be noticed. Maybe they thought we were their students.
Back then, Tommy and I played multiple games a day. We were there at 10 and didn’t get out until after 3. Man it was hot most days. Having a game with only two players was simple. The home team’s pitcher took the mound, a suitable distance away, and fired a rubber ball. The batter would stand about 5 feet from the brick wall, and if he didn’t swing at the pitch or swing and miss, the ball bounced off the wall and back to the pitcher.
You learned pretty quickly how to throw strikes, because if you didn’t, you’d be running all over the paved parking lot to get the ball back after every pitch.
When he connected, the distance of the ball in the air determined what kind of hit he had, hit the chain-link fence on the fly and it was “Goodbye baseball, hello home run.” The rubber ball you hit never went as far as you thought. You had 3 swings for each out and 3 outs in one inning. The balls were ignored so as not to cause disputes.
The sun would get hotter as the day progressed. Even at age 10, we thought we had invented sweat because it was so prevalent in the scorching sun. Nobody ever called us to come home, our parents worked when it was not the right thing to do. I think it was called survival on the wrong side of the tracks.
We never think about lunch. We were a couple of 10-year-olds, dreaming of the 9th inning with the tied score, 2 outs and a 3-2 count on the batter. We always think of Mickey on that fateful pitch.
The Yankees’ Mickey Mantle didn’t win the American League home title in 1954, but even at age 10 we knew he was a legend in the making. Mantle won the home run title the following year (1955) and added 3 more titles in 1956, 1958 and 1960.
In 1961, Roger Maris of the Yankees would break the Babe’s record with 61 humdingers. We were so excited that day that we couldn’t pee directly.
After hours of gaming we headed to the local pharmacy. Both Tommy and I were working or we wouldn’t have had any money. I had a TV Guide route with about 200 customers. Young people today would have no idea that TV Guide, long before it relied on grocery stores and direct mail for sales, had routes like newspaper routes. We deliver once a week and collect monthly.
We lived for two things in that pharmacy, baseball cards and Cherry Coke. I purposely dropped the “c” in cherry because back then you couldn’t buy Cherry Coke on the shelf at your local grocery store like you can today.
You would get Coke and the fountain person would spray cherry concentrate and stir it, pour ice and bam, once it hit your throat after 5 hours in the blazing sun it was like visiting another world.
We’d gobble up 4 or 5 of them while buying baseball cards, and with each pack of cards we opened, the gum was stuffed into our mouths, every last bit. We were looking for that elusive Mickey Mantle card, and when we got more than one, we had an incredible bargaining chip for trades.
We were always trying to accumulate enough gum that we could expel it on our cheek, like Nellie Fox, the Chicago White Sox second baseman with the biggest puff of tobacco you’ve ever seen.
Fox was another Hall of Famer, and probably would have been even without tobacco. He was a 12-time American League All-Star who never struck out more than 18 times per season in 15 full seasons, and was the AL MVP in 1959.
We loved Nellie because he was a little guy like us who made it big. Fox had over 200 hits in 1954 and a .319 batting average (his best year in the majors). Man, we thought Nellie was something.
Then we walked home, exhausted, happy, poor kids who never knew any better. It would be several years before we got our first car and hit the A&W Root Beer stand on Friday nights after the high school football game. But with no cars and no car repair bills, 1954 was a great summer.
Copyright © 2006 Ed Bagley
