Pinstripe Empire

by Marty Appel

  Roland Hemond, who would join the Braves’ front office the following summer, suggested that given Hopp’s age (thirty-three), his salary ($20,000), his lack of power, and the fact that he was a good addition for a pennant contender but no one else, the waiver deal was not surprising. “Most teams had their first baseman, and wouldn’t have really needed a Johnny Hopp,” he said.

  Hopp would play in 19 games down the stretch and hit .333 with eight RBI, including a pinch-hit, game-winning grand slam. The rest of his Yankee career was insignificant, but the 1950 waiver deal was an annoyance to those who resented the Yankees’ seemingly endless ability to get whatever they needed.

  Jensen and Martin both played for Oakland in 1949, and were both sold to the Yankees right after the season. Martin had played for Stengel there in ’48; Jensen had not. Jackie was an All-American football and baseball star at Berkeley, a handsome blond athlete who had finished fourth in Heisman Trophy voting while also playing on the first College World Series–winning team in ’47. Before Mickey Mantle was converted to the outfield, Jensen was thought of as a successor to DiMaggio in center. His Yankee career would last only three seasons; he would go to Washington and then Boston, where he’d win the American League’s MVP Award in 1958. But his fear of flying made it impossible for him to fully enjoy his gifts, and his career never played out to its full potential.

  Martin was “Casey’s boy.” Stengel would be the father figure that Billy never had, and since Stengel as a young man had enjoyed the same high times that Billy did, they got along famously. While Stengel would rein Martin in when necessary, he also seemed to enjoy watching his brash behavior. More than anyone, Martin would be the prime example of exceeding one’s abilities simply by donning the Yankee uniform.

  His teammates loved his fire and will to win, although not many could keep up with him on his nightly rounds. Those who did, including Mantle and Ford in the years to come, were seen by management as under his bad influence. Billy was just arriving on the scene in 1950, but he had no problem needling DiMaggio (unheard of among veteran Yankees) and making his presence felt. There was no ignoring Billy Martin in Yankee history, this 165-pound second baseman who would hit just .262 in seven seasons with the Yankees and .251 in four seasons away from them, but .333 in 28 World Series games.

  Ford was just as street-smart as Martin, but more politically correct and more in the image of how a Yankee should conduct himself. He was enormously gifted, and would be the only twentieth-century pitcher under six feet to go to the Hall of Fame. That speaks to his confident mound intelligence, something that ultimately led Elston Howard to call him “the Chairman of the Board.” Perfect.

  Ed Ford was raised in Astoria, Queens, and went to the Manhattan School of Aviation. He was a first baseman in youth baseball, and attended a tryout session at Yankee Stadium under the eyes of scouts Paul Krichell and Johnny Sturm. It was Sturm who suggested he try pitching, being, in his eyes, too small to play first. Some months later, Krichell signed him for a $7,000 bonus.

  Assigned to Binghamton in 1949, his manager was Lefty Gomez, who nicknamed him “Whitey.” He’d also be known as “Slick” because Stengel called him “whiskey slick,” a vague reference to his urban sophistication.

  Ford was slick enough to call the Yankees from a Binghamton phone booth in 1949 to inform them that he was 16–5 with a 1.61 ERA and should be called up. It didn’t happen, but he did get the call the following June after going 6–3 at Kansas City. And he then made one of the great debuts in Yankee history, winning his first nine decisions and assuming his place with Raschi, Reynolds, and Lopat in the starting rotation of the defending world champions.

  His only loss would be in his final decision, a relief appearance against the Athletics on September 27. It was the second-to-last victory of Connie Mack’s managing career.

  The biggest of Whitey’s nine victories came on September 16, an 8–1 triumph over Detroit that put the Yanks in first place to stay. They wound up winning by three games over the Tigers (managed by Rolfe) and four over Boston (managed by McCarthy until he retired for good on June 23). (Washington, managed by Harris, finished fifth.)

  The Yankees’ seventeenth pennant broke a tie with the Cubs for most pennants won, the Cubs having won six of theirs in the nineteenth century.

  DiMaggio, .301/32/122, would enjoy his last big year, but it was Rizzuto, setting a record with fifty-eight consecutive errorless games and hitting .324, who would win the league’s MVP Award. Mize, despite missing a month of the season, drove in 72 runs on 76 hits while belting 25 home runs. Berra, at .322, and Bauer, at .320, made the lineup formidable. A discouraging note among the pitching staff was the fall of Page to a 5.07 ERA, which would mark the end of his Yankee career after seven seasons.

  The 1950 World Series featured the Whiz Kids, the surprising Philadelphia Phillies, but the Yankees were too good and too experienced for them. The Phils started Jim Konstanty, their ace reliever, in game one, but Raschi outpitched him 1–0, with Coleman’s sacrifice fly in the fourth driving in Bobby Brown. In game two, DiMaggio homered in the top of the tenth to give the Yanks a 2–1 win as Reynolds bested Robin Roberts. Game three was a 3–2 Yankee win behind Lopat, with Woodling, Rizzuto, and Coleman singling in the last of the ninth for the winning run. Then Ford got the ball in game four and won the 5–2 clincher, with Stengel calling on Reynolds to get the final out, the fans booing Casey for removing Ford. The Phillies had made every game close, but the Yankees prevailed for their thirteenth world championship and second in a row under Casey.

  Chapter Twenty-Three

  IMAGINE YOU’RE A BASEBALL SCOUT with the lonely existence of driving long distances to see game after game, year after year, players in shoddy conditions in ragtag uniforms, all starting to look the same. Occasionally one stands out, you sign him to a contract, and then he becomes one of the 95 percent who never gets to the majors and is never heard from again.

  You are earning less than $10,000 a year plus a few cents a mile for your gasoline, but you’re in your element, you like the open road, and, hey, you’re a baseball lifer.

  And then one day you drive up to Baxter Springs, Kansas, and see, for the first time, Mickey Mantle. No other scouts are there. This is the moment a scout lives for.

  It really can’t happen anymore. Scouting is sophisticated; prospects are shuttled into eminent schools and programs; the value of young talent is simply too recognizable. There may never be another Mickey Mantle moment.

  A minor league pitcher himself, Tom Greenwade had moved with MacPhail from the Dodgers in ’46. In 1948, he stumbled on a sixteen-year-old Mantle playing for the Whiz Kids in Baxter Springs, twelve miles north of Mantle’s home of Commerce, Oklahoma. Greenwade spoke to Mantle, and when Mickey said he was a junior at Commerce High, he decided to back off, knowing league rules prohibited him from negotiating with high school prospects—but he kept an eye on him.

  “The first time I saw Mantle,” Greenwade would say, “I knew how Paul Krichell felt when he first saw Lou Gehrig.”

  The Mantle story became familiar to baby boomers, the postwar children. Their dads loved DiMaggio, but Mick was their own.

  He had a bad high school football injury that led to osteomyelitis. He was an erratic shortstop. Greenwade signed him in the backseat of his car in Baxter Springs the day he graduated high school for an $1,150 bonus. Mickey’s alternative was to join his father and work in the zinc mines.

  “[Greenwade] got me excused from the commencement exercises so I could play for the Whiz Kids that night,” Mantle recalled.

  The game was in Coffeyville, Kansas. I had a good game—two singles and hit a pair of home runs, connecting from both sides. You’d figure I had it made, yet Greenwade comes over to Dad after the game and says very solemnly, “I’m afraid Mickey may never reach the Yankees. Right now, I’d have to rate him a lousy shortstop. Sloppy. Erratic arm. And he’s small. Get him in front of some really strong pitching …” Then, without blinking an eye, h
e says, “However, I’m willing to take a risk.” He stuck a contract in Dad’s hand. “All right Mutt, I’m ready to give Mickey four hundred dollars for playing at Independence the rest of the summer.” Dad winced. “He can make that much playing Sunday ball and working in the mines during the week.” Greenwade started scribbling something on the back of an envelope. Finally he says, “Tell you what, we’ll throw in an eleven-hundred dollar bonus.”

  He reported to Independence, Missouri, in the KOM League, where Harry Craft was his manager. He was a terrible shortstop, but he was on his way.

  In 1951, the Yankees swapped spring training sites with the Giants, Del Webb being anxious to bring his team to his hometown. That put Mantle in Phoenix and Willie Mays in St. Petersburg for their first big-league camps. Mantle, still a teenager, was a heralded switch-hitter, but he was clearly not a big-league infielder. He was moved to the outfield where Stengel himself, a former outfielder, tutored him. By the end of camp, which included hitting a prodigious homer at an exhibition at USC that may have reached six hundred feet, he made the team and was already being called the successor to DiMaggio. He would play right while Joe spent his final season in center.

  Mantle had it all. He got handsomer as his awkward teen years moved to maturity. The name, the appearance, seemed created by Hollywood. No switch-hitter ever hit with such power from both sides of the plate. No power hitter ever ran with such speed. His shy persona was a winner with fans.

  He was timed running to first in an amazing 3.1 seconds. “We’d all stop to watch him in Arizona that first year,” said Berra. “Everything about him.”

  Carmen Berra added, “We kept hearing about how handsome he was. Then one day that year we were in the lobby of the Concourse Plaza Hotel and he came out of the elevator. It was the first time I saw him up close. Oh my God!”

  He would be the first superstar of the burgeoning television era of the game, and thus could be seen in homes across the country, a privilege Ruth, Gehrig, and DiMaggio had not enjoyed. And his fame would be national because he would play in twelve World Series in his first fourteen seasons, becoming as much a fall network TV star as Milton Berle. By 1952 he was already a third-place finisher in MVP voting.

  His handsome face graced the cover of Life magazine and he’d appear on The Ed Sullivan Show. Sports Illustrated came along in 1954 and sold more copies with him on the cover than anyone else.

  DiMaggio fans were somewhat disdainful. He struck out too much. Joe didn’t do that. And Joe had more “class.”

  DiMaggio, seventeen years Mantle’s senior, was not much of a mentor. He may have resented the attention, or, seeing all the strikeouts, resented the idea that this could be his successor. “I never volunteered any advice to Mickey or any other ballplayer,” said Joe. “Sure, when he came up as a green kid I tried to help him in the outfield, but that’s different from presuming to give unasked advice to a recognized star.”

  When I assisted Bowie Kuhn with his memoir in 1984, he paused in reflection while speaking of the game’s accomplishments during his sixteen years as commissioner, and said, “… and we did it all without ever finding another Mickey Mantle.” Such was the power of the Mantle story.10

  MICKEY’S REPUTATION THROUGHOUT his playing career was one of a clean-living family man, a wholesome hero. Fans learned after his career that this wasn’t quite the case. But by then, an entire generation had embraced him as the true successor to the unbroken line of Yankee greatness. By the time he retired, with the most games played in Yankee history despite a long list of injuries, he was third on the all-time home run list, behind only Ruth and Mays.

  Mantle’s best friends on the Yankees would be Ford and Martin, guiding Mantle into big-city life and all the pluses and minuses associated with it. Ford would be drafted into the army and would not actually be a Mantle teammate until ’53, so Billy had Mick to himself in those first two seasons and the bond between the two was set.

  All didn’t go smoothly in ’51. He was given uniform number 6—pressure enough for a nineteen-year-old, to wear the “next number” after 3, 4, and 5—and when he hit a 452-foot homer in Chicago on May 1, it only raised expectations. But he struggled at bat and had to be returned to the minors to get his confidence back. After hitting .361 in 40 games for Kansas City, he returned to the Yanks, was given number 7 (Cliff Mapes, the previous 7, was sold to the Browns, and Bobby Brown, back from military duty, took his old number 6), and never again wore any other uniform but the Yankees’.

  The struggles, and the return to the minors, allowed another Yankee rookie—versatile infielder Gil McDougald—to earn the Rookie of the Year Award in ’51.

  McDougald, another San Francisco native for the Yankees, was signed by Joe Devine for a $1,000 bonus and replaced Billy Johnson at third. Employing an odd batting stance that would gnaw at Stengel whenever he slumped, he wound up making the All-Star team at second, short, and third during his career.

  ANOTHER NEW ARRIVAL in Yankee Stadium in 1951 was a public-address announcer, a forty-year-old speech teacher and former quarterback from St. John’s University named Bob Sheppard. His debut coincided with Mantle’s.

  PA announcements had long been handled by the rotund Jack Lenz, a frequent object of teasing from players as he left his seat next to the dugout and paraded around with his megaphone: Yankee Stadium didn’t have an electronic PA system until 1936. (George Levy, who had teamed with Lenz at the Polo Grounds, stayed behind to handle just the Giants when Yankee Stadium was opened.) Lenz was said to have handled more than two thousand consecutive games.

  PR director Red Patterson handled the chore prior to Sheppard’s hiring. It wasn’t much for him to slide the PA mike over to his seat in the press box, when all that was required was announcing the starting lineups and substitutions.

  Sheppard’s role was much the same for almost twenty years. But by 1967 the Yankees, recognizing the commanding dignity of his magnificent voice, had him announcing each at-bat. He had been doing between-inning commercials on matters such as upcoming home games or Yankee yearbooks for sale. (Never would the stadium make announcements about lost children, engines running, or lost bus drivers. They would sometimes, but not always, make announcements in the event of an emergency.) Fans had little idea what Sheppard even looked like until I happened to put his photo in the 1971 yearbook, recognizing the obvious—he was by now part of the Yankee Stadium experience.

  His reputation grew. People enjoyed imitating his delivery. He was now instructed to announce every batter, every at-bat. Players considered it part of the big-league experience to have Sheppard say their names. And he was a perfectionist, always checking with visiting players to make sure that he got their names right.

  Bob Sheppard would continue as “the Voice of God,” as Reggie Jackson nicknamed him, until his late nineties. His introduction of Derek Jeter, however, continued via a recording that Jeter requested for the rest of his career. He was honored with a plaque in Monument Park in 2000, and always said that all that a PA announcer needed to be was “clear, concise, and correct.”

  THIRTY MONTHS AFTER being hired amidst snickers, Casey Stengel entered the season with a chance at a third straight world championship. He was suddenly a genius, and his system of platoon baseball was hailed as revolutionary.

  The Yankees and the Indians were in a tight race for much of the ’51 season, a season in which all home and road day games were televised on WPIX, owned by the Daily News, “New York’s Picture Newspaper” (hence, PIX). The Yankees thus began a forty-eight-year run on Channel 11, the longest-running business arrangement the team has had with any company save two—Harry Stevens’s concessions and Allied Maintenance, employers of the ground crew and maintenance workers.

  With Whitey Ford lost to the army for two years after his spectacular 1950 debut, the Yanks essentially relied on Reynolds-Raschi-Lopat, who won a combined 59 games, with no one else winning more than nine. On July 12, Reynolds hurled a 1–0 no-hitter in Cleveland, beating Bob Fel
ler. It was the first by a Yankee since 1938.

  On August 29, the Yankees traded a kid pitcher, Lew Burdette, to the Boston Braves for the veteran Johnny Sain, the hero (with Warren Spahn) of the Braves’ 1948 pennant.11 Again it was a wise late-season veteran pickup, as Sain appeared in seven games, winning two and saving one. (A decade later, Johnny would be the Yankees’ pitching coach for three pennant winners, 1961–63.)

  Burdette, too, would be heard from again.

  The Indians were a game ahead of the Yankees on the morning of Sunday, September 16, as 68,760 poured through the stadium turnstiles to see Reynolds and Feller in a rematch of the earlier no-hitter. Reynolds emerged the winner again, this time 5–1, creating a tie for first.

  The teams met again the next day, first place on the line, Lopat against Bob Lemon.

  In the ninth inning with the bases loaded and the score tied 1–1, Lemon threw a pitch near Rizzuto’s head, but Scooter dropped down a perfect bunt and DiMaggio raced home with the winning run as Lemon fielded the ball too late to throw anywhere. It may be the most famous bunt in baseball history. Lemon fired the ball and his glove against the backstop in frustration.

  Mantle, on deck, was just as delirious, jumping up and down. “I was going crazy because I didn’t have to bat next,” he said. “I think Casey would have me bunting too.”

  Rizzuto didn’t have a helmet on that day, but during that season he became the first Yankee to wear one. Helmets were being constructed by a company started by Branch Rickey, and Phil had agreed to try one out.

  The Yanks won nine of their last twelve and won the pennant by five games. The clincher was a classic in itself. On Friday, September 28, in the first game of a doubleheader, Reynolds faced Boston’s ace, Mel Parnell. The Yanks had an 8–0 lead through eight, so the outcome was clear. What kept the fans on edge was Reynolds working on another no-hitter. No one had pitched two in a season since Johnny Vander Meer of the Reds in ’38 (his were consecutive).