Frank Crosetti doesn’t want to hear a single complaint from any Yankee and Met as they prepare for tomorrow’s crosstown doubleheader.
That’s because the 89-year-old former Yankee regularly took part in two-park twinbills when he played for the Pacific Coast League’s San Francisco Seals between 1928 and 1931.
“You’re only young once, so what the hell’s the difference?” the gruff-but-lovable Crosetti told The Post from his home in Stockton, Calif.
Mixing a little hyperbole with a lot of memory of those rough minor league years, Crosetti said his teammates never considered traveling to two parks in one day to be an inconvenience.
“There’s nothing wrong with that [playing twice in different parks],” said Crosetti, who played in nine World Series as a Yankee player and appeared in 14 Fall Classics as a pinstripe coach.
“There better not be any bellyaching. These players today are making $45 million a year, and we made $300 a month. You take it [your pay], play and keep quiet.”
The Seals, the PCL’s most legendary franchise that produced pinstripe heroes like Crosetti, Joe DiMaggio and Tony Lazzeri, were famous for their Sunday doubleheaders against the hated Oakland Oaks.
Between 1905 and 1935, the teams would cap a grueling seven-game series with a Sunday doubleheader that took teams to both sides of the San Francisco Bay. The Yanks and Mets make a similar trek on Saturday, playing at Shea in the afternoon and at Yankee Stadium later that night.
The San Francisco-Oakland twinbills were popular with fans, but those two-park doubleheaders ended in 1935 (ironically, one year before the Bay Bridge opened, connecting San Francisco and Oakland by automobile).
Why? The same reason everything else came to a grinding halt in that era when everything had to be conserved.
“The Depression,” said Dick Beverage, president of the PCL Historical Society. “They [San Francisco-Oakland doubleheaders] drew well. It was just part what you did as a player.”