Leo Durocher - Nice Guys Finish Last

Nice Guys Finish Last

In a July 6, 1946, interview with Red Barber, Durocher had been commenting on the common belief at the time that if a team's players got along well, they would naturally play better than teams with difficult or irascible players; noting some of the players on the Giants who had reputations as personable individuals, notably Mel Ott, he observed that they were all "nice guys", but would nonetheless finish last (while his Dodgers were in first place), summing up his argument with, "Nice guys; finish last." Durocher later noted that the remark was quoted accurately in the published interview, but came to take on a different meaning when some incorrectly thought he meant that such a team would finish last because it included "nice guys", when in fact he had meant that there was no correlation (and in fact, saw it more as an ironic situation) between the personalities on a team and their level of play. (See 1966 Chicago Cubs, below.) Thus the quote "Nice guys finish last" has long been attributed to Durocher, including an entry in Bartlett's Familiar Quotations. Many historians assert, however, that the famous four words never were actually uttered by Durocher; the quotation as it is remembered actually came from headline writers distilling Durocher's quote that "The nice guys are all over there, in seventh place, not in this dugout" into a pithy soundbite.