Nice Guys Finish Last

0:00The new LinkedIn Hiring Pro can't undo your last hire. The human post-poner. They were the master of one phrase. I'll circle back on that. But three months later, you were the one doing all their work and wondering how big that circle is. Ugh! But LinkedIn Hiring Pro can take the hiring load off your plate by automating the hiring busy work from the initial job post to scheduling interviews. Higher write the first time with LinkedIn Hiring Pro. Post a free job today at LinkedIn.com slash quality. From Book Smart Studios, this is Alexa Convalley, a podcast about language. I'm Bob Garfield with Mike Volo, and today, we, for the first time, discuss physical violence via cement mixer. Hey, Mikey. Hey, Bobby, how you doing? Splendid, thank you, and your own self. I'm great for now. I'm great. This is the second in a series of three bonus episodes

1:00all inspired by our recent show on the word Nice, which you can go back and listen to in the archive. Each of these bonus episodes feature a different idiom, each involving the word Nice, and each one commonly associated with a specific person. We will untangle the facts from the fiction. In this case, regarding the phrase Nice Guy's Finish Last. I'm not a nice guy, so I wouldn't know anything about the truth of that assertion, but the question is who said it? Well, I think it was the famously feisty and intermingently criminal Los Angeles Dodgers manager, Leo Deroscher, Leo Delip, as they call him. Yes, yes. And that's who everybody associates that phrase with because he is believed to have coined it. In early July 1946, the Brooklyn Dodgers

2:00were playing the New York Giants at the old polo grounds in Manhattan. The Dodgers manager at the time was the infamous Leo Deroscher who had a reputation for being fiery and argumentative. I'll put it this way. He's one of only three managers in baseball history to have been ejected 100 times or more from a game over the course of his career. He fought with umpires, he fought with the press, he fought with everybody. So on that day in 1946, shortly before the game started, it was a night game. The Dodgers legendary announcer at the time, Red Barber was in the dugout with some other reporters talking to Deroscher. Barber was baiting Deroscher. He was rage baiting him, we would say nowadays. Barber was trolling Deroscher. And at one point, Barber says,

3:02why don't you be a nice guy for a change? This set Deroscher off on a long screed about nice guys and how it doesn't pay to be one. Now we have a lot of direct quotes of what exactly Deroscher said because one of the print reporters who was there, a guy named Frank Graham, he took notes and he wrote about it the next day in his column. So here's just some of what Deroscher said that evening as reported in the New York Journal American by Graham. He said, a nice guy, a nice guy, I've been around in baseball for a long time and I've known a lot of nice guys, but I never saw a nice guy who was any good when you needed him. He also said, I'll take the guys who aren't nice, the guys who would put you in a cement mixer if they felt like it. He also said, nice guys, I'm not a nice guy and I'm in first place.

4:02Nobody helped me to get there either except the guys on this ball club and they ate nice guys. He also said, the nice guys are all over there. He was pointing to the Giants dug out. The nice guys are all over there in last place. Oh, sick burn. So Deroscher said all that and a lot more about nice guys, but notice that he never quite said nice guys finish last. But his diatribe, it took on a life of its own for the obvious reason that it was amazing. Right? Cement mixers. I'm not a nice guy. The magazine sporting news wrote a piece about it later that month under the headline, nice guys wind up in last place, scoffs lippy. Again, his nickname. Baseball digest reprinted the original column later that year. And nice guys don't win penance became a chant by Dodger fans

5:03in the ballpark that summer. In other words, this became a thing. Today we would say went viral. Yeah. Here's your report. Oh, thanks, Jane. I wish I could hire someone just like you. Try LinkedIn Hiring Pro. It's more than a job board. It's like the recruiter you always wish to have. Hiring Pro uses real-time insights to match your role to LinkedIn's unique network of professionals and delivers a short list of best-fit candidates. You'll spend less time sorting applicants and more time talking to the right people. Let's do it. You're a replaceable, Jane, but another you would be great. Higher right the first time. Post your job for free on LinkedIn today at LinkedIn.com slash quality. College football is back. So Hilton called to me the superstition concierge to make your fan rituals a reality. Need a room to match your lucky number? We got you. Want to make sure our team doesn't wash your lucky jersey? Oh, that smells lucky. Hilton's unmatched hospitality can keep up with any superstition. Even a marching bandwink up call it 555 and 55 seconds.

6:03Hit it! When you need a team that will do whatever it takes on game day, it matters where you stay. Hilton, for this day. Now, the incredible irony to all of this is that Deroscher wrote a piece two years later for Cosmopolitan magazine. Yeah. Then I guess Newt Rockney was writing for Vogue. It's there. You can look in the archives. And it was under the headline, Nice Guy's Finish Last. Now, whether Deroscher wrote the headline himself or more likely, I would guess some editor at Cosmopolitan, nobody knows. But that's thought to be the first time that the phrase appears in that form and it's attributed whether right or wrong, true or not, to Leo Deroscher because the whole incident that took place in that dugout is what spurred that phrase eventually existing.

7:04And I guess it wasn't just the phrase. It was the truth of it, or at least the truthiness of it. It feels so right. The sentiment, yeah. So no surprise, at least in its pithiest iteration in Cosmo, almost destined it to catch on. Yeah. And I should say the reason he wrote that piece was because he had a contract at the time to write a book about the Dodgers called Dem Bums. So it was a kind of preview of and publicity for the book. He never ended up writing the book, but he did write an autobiography in the mid-70s called, of course. Nice Guy's Finish Last. Yeah. So I think it's fair to attribute that one to Leo Deroscher even though he never actually said it originally and may never have even coined it specifically himself. I think it's fair. Yeah, I agree. I mean, verbatim no, but he certainly was the first

8:06to publicly express the sentiment, so it seems. Lexicon Valley was produced by Livia Bloom Ingram. Who has never finished Last at anything in her life? Let's just put it that way. Yeah, I don't think she's nice enough for even second to last. Not even close. All right, Mikey, we done here? Yeah, we are done. Later, Gator. Imagine if the stability piece and the innovation piece were each other's missing piece. First, Citizens Bank and Silicon Valley Bank are combining financial security and innovation expertise to create a full suite of solutions for all your business needs. With the scale to back every stage of growth, from pre-C to IPO and beyond, you have everything you need to make your big ideas click into place. First, Citizens Bank and Silicon Valley Bank. It's the best of bank worlds.

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