Robert L O'Brian

Marse Joe and Me Robert L O'Brian

Marse Joe McCarthy managed the New York Yankees from 1931 to 1946, steering them to eight American League pennants and to seven world championships. He also won a pennant for the Chicago Cubs in 1929, becoming the first manager to win pennants for teams in both leagues, a distinction that would hold for nearly sixty years. There are those who argue that McCarthy was baseball's greatest manager and for fifty years, he made Western New York his home. I became friends with Marse Joe as a boy when I delivered THE BUFFALO EVENING NEWS to the McCarthy home at 52 Gates Circle in Buffalo during those grim early days of the Great Depression.