team has to entertain people. Yawkey had his own partners buying everybody drinks.
But the Sox didn't tell Johnny he was being fired for being a drunkard. How could they? “Who the hell got him drunk?” Dick O'Connell asks. “Yawkey and Cronin. Tom Yawkey would send him bottles of Old Forester by the carton.”
What had happened was that Johnny had been sent to the opening of a baseball library, had bumped into a gathering of wealthy executives in the parlor car on the train, and when he was asked why he was going to St. Louis he had reverted to form. “I represent the richest franchise in baseba/1,” Johnny Orlando had announced. “The drinks are on me.” So Johnny was told he was being fired for that.
The writers were told that he was fired for showing up late at the ballpark and for stealing things. “Orlando was a law unto himself,” Dick O'Connell says. “There was only one John.” He'd run short of dough, get a bunch of autographed balls, and sell them, depending on how much he needed. “I'm with the Red Sox,” he'd announce. “I'm stealing baseballs.”
“Who gave a damn?” O'Connell says. “If you wanted to look at it that way, it was publicity.”
Now, there's no doubt that the Red Sox had every justification for firing Johnny Orlando. They also had every justification to fire Bucky Harris, who was still the general manager. Bucky's only saving grace was that on the rare occasions when he did come in to the office he didn't try to do anything. If Orlando wasn't there to do it, it wasn't going to get done.
But what would have been so terrible about waiting another year? Well... Ted had said he'd be making up his mind about returning for another year during spring training, and whatever other reasons Yawkey might have had for firing Johnny Orlando, he wasn't making Ted's return any more attractive for him, was he?
Ted was up in Bangor, Maine, fishing with his pal Bud Leavitt when he was told about the firing. “Ted didn't say anything,” Leavitt recalls. “He just went absolutely quiet and solemn, the way he would when he was really upset.”
Don Fitzpatrick, who replaced Orlando, had been with the Red Sox for fifteen years, mostly in the visiting clubhouse. He had shagged for Ted in those early-morning batting sessions over the years. But he was not Johnny Orlando, and he knew it.
The End
