(Updated March 6, 2023)
Chuck Dressen thumbed his nose at being tossed.
On June 6, 1951, at Ebbets Field in Brooklyn, Dressen, the Dodgers’ manager, was ejected in the fifth inning for complaining about ball and strike calls while Peanuts Lowrey batted for the Cardinals.
After plate umpire Artie Gore motioned for Dressen to take a hike, the manager stormed out of the dugout, kicked dirt around the plate and gesticulated wildly.
The performance ended when Dressen departed down the dugout steps, but it was just the first act in an afternoon of theatrics.
Costume party
According to the New York Daily News, Dressen went “to the cubicle beneath the stands, where it is possible to do a little bootleg managing.”
Unsatisfied with that arrangement, Dressen dreamed up a different scheme. According to The Sporting News, Dressen put on a groundskeeper’s cap and jacket and slipped into a corner of the Dodgers’ dugout, hoping he wouldn’t be noticed. He was about to pick up a rake to enhance the disguise when Cardinals manager Marty Marion spotted him and informed Gore.
“Marty turned me in when I was giving out instructions from the dugout,” Dressen told The Sporting News.
After being ordered by Gore to leave the dugout, Dressen headed for the clubhouse, but he wasn’t done.
Sitting pretty
In the seventh inning, Dressen, wearing street clothes, positioned himself in a box seat next to the Dodgers’ dugout on the first-base side.
Ever vigilant, Marion detected Dressen and again informed Gore. According to Marion, Gore replied, “There is nothing wrong with that, but if you see him doing anything to run the team from there, you let me know and I’ll chase him,” the New York Daily News reported.
Marion saw shortstop Pee Wee Reese, the Dodgers’ captain, go over to Dressen’s seat.
“Dressen was giving the signs and motioned for Reese to get some pitchers warmed up,” Marion told The Sporting News. “He was making a joke of the game.”
When Marion advised Gore what he had seen, Gore told Dressen to leave. Dressen watched the rest of the game from team owner Walter O’Malley’s private perch under the mezzanine behind home plate.
Asked whether he was giving instructions to Reese, Dressen “grinned and said he wasn’t that dumb,” the Brooklyn Daily Eagle reported.
“I just told Pee Wee to find out from Gore what Marion was complaining about,” Dressen said. “I wouldn’t try to relay signs right out there in the open.”
According to the St. Louis Globe-Democrat, Dressen said he sat in the box seat at the request of a photographer. Dressen told the Brooklyn Daily Eagle the photos were for a shoe polish ad.
Some nerve
The Dodgers won, 3-2. Roy Campanella drove in all the Dodgers’ runs and Ralph Branca pitched a complete game. Boxscore
Marion protested the game on the grounds that Dressen broke the rules when he didn’t stay away after being ejected in the fifth inning.
National League president Ford Frick fined Dressen $100 for “failure to leave the bench when ejected and for masquerading in the dugout,” but denied the protest.
Miffed that Marion turned him in to Gore, Dressen told The Sporting News, “If I ever get the chance, you can bet I’ll pour it on him good. I don’t appreciate what he did to me.”
(According to writer Roger Kahn, Dressen was a “nutcake” who proposed crackpot ideas as Dodgers manager. For instance, Dressen said it was bad for pitchers to receive oral sex. “If you get blowed, it makes you sweat in hot weather,” Dressen said to Kahn. “I got guys on my staff can’t beat the Cardinals in St. Louis because they get blowed. It starts them sweating and after a while they can’t stand up to the heat that comes up from the river.”)
Nearly 50 years later, on June 9, 1999, in a night game against the Blue Jays, Mets manager Bobby Valentine returned to the dugout disguised in sunglasses and a fake moustache after being ejected. Valentine said he was fined $5,000 and suspended for two games for the prank. Video
RetroSimba 
“If I ever get the chance, you can bet I’ll pour it on him good. I don’t appreciate what he did to me.”
Yeah, Marty. You were supposed to send him a congratulatory telegram on how crafty he was.
Dodgers. I tell ya.
Yep, Chuck Dressen had a well-deserved reputation for narcissism.
Great story! Chuck Dressen kept the umpires busy in 1951.He led all MLB Managers with 7 ejections for the season.
Thanks, Phillip. Chuck Dressen had been a Dodgers coach when Leo Durocher managed them. Durocher was managing the Giants when Dressen took over the Dodgers. Some New York writers suggested that all those ejections were Dressen’s way of drawing attention to himself and away from Durocher.