Grass-roots approach to clearing a good name
CROWE'S NEST
Matt Dahlgren's book details the damage done to grandfather Babe Dahlgren's major league career by unsubstantiated rumors of marijuana use.
Probably the last thing anyone wants to read these days is another story about drugs and baseball.
But this one's different.
This one predates by many years Barry Bonds and Mark McGwire and Roger Clemens and the Mitchell Report, not to mention public awareness of anabolic steroids, androstenedione and human growth hormone.
At the center of this story is not a villain but a victim.
But it's another sad tale.
And baseball, in the end, winds up smelling badly again.
It's the story of Babe Dahlgren, a major league first baseman from 1935 to 1946 probably best remembered as the man who replaced Lou Gehrig in the New York Yankees' lineup on May 2, 1939, ending the Iron Horse's incredible 14-year consecutive-game streak after a then-record 2,130 games.
Less widely known is that Dahlgren's career and life were waylaid by an unsubstantiated rumor that he smoked marijuana.
Dahlgren, who lived in Southern California for more than 40 years before dying in 1996, volunteered to be examined by a doctor in Philadelphia in 1943, thus becoming the first major league player to be tested for drug use.
It seemed to matter little that the tests came up clean.
A strong defensive player who batted .261 and hit 82 home runs while playing for eight teams in 12 major league seasons, Dahlgren spent the last half of his life trying to track down the source of the rumor and clear his name, appealing to a succession of baseball commissioners who showed little interest.
The details are spelled out in "Rumor In Town," a new book written by grandson Matt Dahlgren, a 37-year-old former Southern California College catcher and first-time author who made good on a pledge to bring his grandfather's story to light.
"I was turned down many times by literary agents and publishers," says the Irvine-based Dahlgren, who published the book himself. "But what kept me going was, I promised him I'd do it. I know that might sound corny, but it's the reality. I loved him to no end. I respected him. And I know how badly he wanted this story told. I know how badly this game hurt him. And so I had to do it. . . .
"I just couldn't let him down."
Using a 600-page manuscript left behind by his grandfather as a guide, and after tracking down details through interviews and research, Dahlgren says he believes the rumor was started by the late Joe McCarthy, a highly respected Hall of Fame manager who guided the Yankees to a record seven World Series championships.
