Background
Melvin Ott was born on March 2, 1909, in Gretna, Louisiana, the son of Charles Ott, a worker at a nearby oil refinery who had once played semiprofessional baseball, and Caroline Miller.
Melvin Ott was born on March 2, 1909, in Gretna, Louisiana, the son of Charles Ott, a worker at a nearby oil refinery who had once played semiprofessional baseball, and Caroline Miller.
Melvin Ott was an all-around athlete at Gretna High School, playing football and basketball, and catching for the baseball team. He left school just before graduation.
Melvin left school just before graduation, hoping to be signed by the New Orleans Pelicans of the Southern Association, but the owner rejected him as being much too small. He was then about five feet, six inches tall. (In his prime Ott stood five feet, nine inches tall and weighed between 160 and 170 pounds - by far the smallest of the great baseball sluggers. ) Ott was soon playing for the Patterson Grays, a semiprofessional team owned by Harry Williams, a local lumberman. He was brilliant behind the plate and a bat, and Williams decided that the young man must be seen by his friend John J. McGraw, the awesome manager of the New York Giants.
With a one-way train ticket and his father's straw suitcase, Ott, just past sixteen years old, set out for New York in the summer of 1925. He immediately impressed a skeptical McGraw with the beauty and power of his batting. Ott's stance at the plate was uniquely unorthodox, and it was already his trademark. Swinging left-handed, he cocked his right leg stiffly about a foot off the ground as if he were goose-stepping; and thus poised, he lowered his bat slightly, then whipped it around in a perfect upward arc. "That kid's got the finest natural batting form I've ever seen, " said McGraw, and almost immediately decided to groom Ott for big-league play.
McGraw refused to send him to the minor leagues, afraid that somebody there would tamper with the youth's hitting stance. The Giants' manager also decided to convert Ott to outfielding, concerned lest his thick, muscular legs become knotted by the constant squatting that is the lot of catchers. In 1926, Ott batted for the first time as a Giant, and struck out. But at the end of the season he was hitting. 383 (in thirty-five games). His prowess as a slugger grew gradually. In 1927 he hit one home run; in 1928, eighteen; and in 1929 - now the regular right fielder - he hit forty-two, the high of his career. The right-field stands at the Polo Grounds (only 257 feet from home plate at the foul line), into which Ott pulled so many of his homers, became known to fans as Ottville.
Along with Bill Terry, the first baseman, and Carl Hubbell, the premier left-handed pitcher of the time, Ott was a Giant mainstay and fixture. When Ott's playing days ended in 1947, he had hit 511 home runs - a lifetime record exceeded at the time only by Babe Ruth and Jimmy Foxx. Moreover, he had batted in more runs (1, 860), hit for more total bases (5, 041), scored more runs (1, 859), drawn more walks (1, 708), and accumulated more extra bases (2, 165) and extra base hits (1, 071) than any player ever in the National League. His lifetime batting average was . 304, his best year being 1930, when he hit . 349. In eight different years he struck thirty or more home runs. Ott played in the World Series of 1933, 1936, and 1937. His homer in the tenth inning of the fifth game decided the World Series of 1933 against the Washington Senators. Ott also participated in eleven All-Star games.
As a fielder Ott made up for a certain lack of speed afoot with a powerful arm (he threw right-handed); the well-practiced technique of gauging in a flash a ball hit deep into his territory, and then, turning his back to it, sprinting to the spot where it would drop into his glove; and uncanny judgment of the carom of balls hit against the angled outfield fence of the Polo Grounds. Endowed with excellent reflexes, he also played splendidly at third base in several seasons.
When Bill Terry, who had succeeded McGraw as manager of the Giants in 1932, resigned in 1941, Ott was chosen to take over the club. The teams he fielded and on which he continued to play were decimated by the military draft, and their performance was generally disappointing. In July 1948 the flamboyant Leo Durocher, who had won fame as a Brooklyn Dodger, was appointed to replace Ott, who took a position in the Giants' front office. Subsequently he managed Oakland in the Pacific Coast League. Ott announced his retirement from baseball in 1955 and entered the construction business in Louisiana. But the lure of the game remained, and soon he returned as a broadcaster, first for the Mutual Broadcasting System and then for the Detroit Tigers.
In mid-November 1958, Ott and his wife were critically injured in an automobile accident in Mississippi. Ott's condition improved for a few days; then his kidneys began to fail. Rushed to New Orleans for surgery, he died on the operating table.
A modest, unassuming gentleman on the field and off, Ott was the target of Durocher's taunt "Nice guys finish last. " But he was a revered national hero. A sportswriter dubbed him "Master Melvin" when he joined the Giants, and he wore the nickname for years.
In 1930 Ott married Mildred Wattigny; they had two daughters.
