THE NIGHT IN HAVANA

Author

Matthew Garringer
December 02, 2023

Good evening. This is Dead Legends. The daily newsletter for people who consume an unhealthy amount of baseball.

Let’s dive in.

Today’s story is about a former Brooklyn Dodger that got himself into a sticky situation one night in Cuba.

Van Lingle Mungo was genuinely as crazy as his name was.

At times, he was absolutely brilliant on the mound, but he had a tough battle with controlling his temper and staying sober.

He played almost his entire career for the Brooklyn Dodgers - 11 of his 14 seasons - and made the all-star team four times.

In the 30’s, he was really one of the only quality pitchers they had.

His manager, Casey Stengal, had a great quote that really gives you a sense of Van’s personality.

”Mungo and I get along fine. I just tell him I won’t stand for no nonsense, and then I duck”

- Casey Stengal

As the years went on, Mungo became increasingly frustrated with the reality of being on a shitty team, and he got in several fights with teammates - verbal and physical.

But in ‘41, he was trying to turn over a new leaf.

The Dodgers were training in Cuba that spring.

Van had gotten sober, and even opted to stay in a room with Whit Wyatt because he was quieter and stayed out of trouble.

Unfortunately, that didn’t stop him from falling back into his old habits.

On Saturday, March 8, Mungo was scheduled to pitch, but the game got rained out.

That night, he went out drinking and got caught by his coaches acting sloppy in public.

They slapped him with a fine and kicked him out of training camp the next day.

For Mungo, that meant one thing: time to go on a bender.

He continued to drink on Sunday and ended up missing the boat that was supposed to take him back home to the states.

After he missed the boat, arrangements were made to have him take a flight out of Havana the following morning.

The Dodgers even had a detective keep an eye on Van while he had dinner and went back to his room to make sure he would be ready for the flight.

But Mungo had other ideas.

After he came back to his room at the hotel, he had two women over - Lady Ruth and Miriam Morgan - and they decided to go out on the town.

According to the legend, this is what happened next:

They came back at 6am and went into Lady Ruth’s room, which was right next door to Miriam’s room, where she had been staying with her husband.

The husband woke up and discovered his wife wasn’t in bed, he went next door, only to find Mungo butt naked with his wife and her friend.

A fight ensued, and Mungo gave the man a black eye.

The husband returned with a butcher knife, and a Dodgers executive by the name of Babe Hamberger (real name) had to hide Mungo in a laundry cart and smuggle him out of the hotel.

He got the pitcher down to the wharf where a seaplane was waiting, and Mungo narrowly escaped with the police hot on his tail.

No one knows if that’s exactly how it went down, but whether or not it’s completely true, the whole story just adds to the legend of Van.

In ‘81, Dave Frishberg made Mungo even more unforgettable when he made this super-random-but-also-fantastic Jazz song in his honor.

The gear from Homage always takes us on a walk down memory lane.

Whether it’s childhood mornings spent watching MTV or the first time you watched Griffey go yard, you’re guaranteed to catch a bit of nostalgia exploring their website.

You won’t find stuff like this anywhere else:

Quick links:

And there’s a lot more where that came from…

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BASEBALL TRIVIA

STRANGE NAMES

If you're just joining us, we play this game every day where we try to find the weirdest names throughout baseball history.

Why? Don't ask us, it's just something we like to do.

If you've been rocking with us for awhile now, you know what time it is.

Today's winner is:

Along with the gentlemen featured above in our daily trivia question, “Kitty” also played in the inaugural World Series.

His original nickname was “Kid,” but a reporter who was hard of hearing misheard it as “Kitty” and the name stuck.

Bransfield played 12 seasons in the big leagues, and while he wasn’t a Hall of Famer by any stretch of the imagination, he was a solid player.

When he left Pittsburgh, they failed to find another good first baseman to replace him and the decades-long drought became known as “The Bransfield Curse.”

THE DEAD LEGENDS ARCHIVE

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