Charlie Dressen

Charlie Dressen was a true baseball character. A scrappy, undersized infielder with the Cincinnati Reds during the 1920s, Dressen became a manager with a reputation as the greatest sign-stealer in baseball. He honestly believed that he could win games by out-managing and out-strategizing the other team, no matter how much talent they had. His regard for his own baseball intelligence can be summed up in his famous phrase, "Hold 'em for seven innings, boys. I'll think of something."

He enjoyed many successes, but also presided over the epic collapse of his 1951 Brooklyn Dodgers, who lost a 131/2 game lead to their most hated rivals, the New York Giants. Bobby Thomson's playoff home run handed Dressen perhaps the most devastating defeat in baseball history. But Charlie bounced back, as he always did. He was an eternal optimist, talkative and opinionated in the Casey Stengel mold. He lived and breathed baseball, made more friends than enemies, and played a key role in the rivalry between the Dodgers and the Giants during the 1950s. This is the first-ever biography of the man who reigned as one of baseball's most colorful personalities for more than 40 years.