by Marty Appel
Don Newcombe, so often brutalized by the Yanks (and particularly Berra), fell behind 4–0 after three and left the game. It was all Yankees from there. Skowron hit a grand-slam homer in the seventh to make it 9–0 and that’s how it ended, with the Yankees back on top of the baseball world as champions, the Brooklyn Dodgers making their final World Series appearance, and Jackie Robinson striking out to end the game, and his career.
Chapter Twenty-Five
SEVENTEEN GAMES INTO THE ’57 season, Cleveland was the fourth stop of a five-city road trip for the Yanks, and they arrived at cavernous Municipal Stadium on Tuesday, May 7, for a night game with the Indians.
There were 18,386 on hand, which as usual made the huge ballpark feel almost empty. If anything, this was a good crowd for the Indians, since the Yankees were always a good draw, and the Tribe’s ace, Herb Score, would be pitching.
Score, a handsome twenty-three-year-old southpaw born in Queens, burst onto the scene in ’55 and came through with a 16–10 Rookie of the Year season followed by 20–9 in ’56. In both years he led the league in strikeouts, with 245 and 263 respectively. He was the talk of baseball, the latest overnight phenom in the game’s history of love affairs with flamethrowers. The Red Sox had reportedly offered $1 million for him after the ’56 season, an offer the Indians rejected.
He would be making his fifth start of the year, his first against the Yanks, against whom he had been 3–1 in nine career starts with two shutouts.
He took the mound in the first inning, got Bauer on a ground ball, and then faced the shortstop, McDougald. The fans had barely settled into their seats when Gil hit a line drive right back at the mound. It got Score square in his right eye, and he dropped to the ground. A silence fell over the ballpark as the ball was retrieved by third baseman Al Smith, who threw to first for the out.
Score’s nose was shattered and the hemorrhaging in his eye was frightening.
Gus Mauch, the Yankee trainer, rushed to the mound along with the Indians’ medical team as the public-address announcer pleaded, “If there is a doctor in the stands, will he please report to the playing field.” Within a minute, six physicians were headed for the field, clustered around the mound. Score never lost consciousness as he was taken off on a stretcher.
“He was the fastest pitcher I ever saw,” said McDougald to author Dom Forker. “I just flicked my bat at the ball. The ball shot back at him. Herb didn’t have time to get into his follow-through, because the ball hit him on the wrong eye. I saw the blood spurt. I didn’t know whether to run to first or run to the mound. After the game I made a statement to the press, ‘If anything happens to Herb, I don’t want to play anymore.’ The press blew it up. But that’s the way I felt. It couldn’t have happened to a nicer guy. He’s such a beautiful person. C.I. Thomas, his doctor, called me in every town that I traveled to, to let me know Herb’s condition. His mother called me the next day and said, ‘Gil, you had no control over what happened. Don’t ever think of quitting.’ When people are that nice to you, you say, ‘Hell!’ But it took the starch out of me.”
(Ironically, in August 1955 Bob Cerv hit McDougald with a line drive during batting practice. It ultimately cost McDougald his hearing, forcing him to resign from his postcareer job coaching baseball at Fordham. A cochlear implant in 1994 would restore his hearing.)
The game went on as if in a fog. The Indians won 2–1. Score would return the following season but was never again a star pitcher. He was 19–27 over the next six seasons before retiring to a long career as a Cleveland broadcaster.
The game was not televised, and no film or video existed of the play to be forever replayed. But for years, any drive up the middle that made contact with the pitcher would recall for many the night McDougald’s liner hit Herb Score.
ABOUT A WEEK later, Thursday, May 16, after Turley beat the Athletics in New York, a group of Yankees and their wives went out to celebrate Billy Martin’s twenty-ninth birthday. Joining Billy were former Yankees Irv Noren and Bob Cerv, now with Kansas City, plus Mantle, Berra, Ford, Bauer, Kucks, and their wives. They had dinner at Danny’s Hideaway, then went to the Waldorf-Astoria for another round and to see singer Johnny Ray’s show at 10:30. As Cerv and Noren said good-night, the remaining group headed for the Copa, New York’s premier nightclub, to see Sammy Davis Jr. perform the 2:00 A.M. show.
The nightclub was full, but the maître d’ opened a special table at the front and seated the party of eleven. After all, this was New York royalty.
At a nearby table, members of a party of nineteen from a bowling league were celebrating, and probably resented this new table being unfolded in front of them. As Davis began to perform, taunts arose from the bowlers’ table, seemingly racial, and in any case disruptive.
“One thing about Yogi,” said Carmen. “He never stood for heckling; he always wanted respect shown for entertainers.”
Bauer gave the bowlers a stern “shut up” in expletive terms.
The hostility found its way to the men’s room, where one of the hecklers, Edwin Jones, was found unconscious on the floor. What would a Billy Martin party be without someone unconscious on the floor?
New York Post columnist Leonard Lyons led the players out of the club, and the next day, Bauer was charged with felonious assault. He maintained that he never hit anyone and that in fact Kucks and Berra were holding his arms. The charges were eventually dropped, but the Yankees fined each player $1,000, and Kucks, whose salary was much smaller, $500. The Copa brawl put the Yankees on the front pages of the city’s tabloids.
Martin had a feeling the Yankees were running out of patience with him. They had his replacement ready in Bobby Richardson. Richardson and Tony Kubek had come up together from Denver as a second baseman–and–shortstop combo. Martin could see the writing on the wall and felt he was doomed after the Copa incident, even though no one accused him of hitting the fallen bowler.
“I’m gone, pard,” he said to Mantle the next day.
MAY TURNED INTO a momentous June for the Yankees as they faltered, then regained their lead in the standings. On June 4, their chief scout Paul Krichell, who had been recruited from Boston by Ed Barrow in 1920, died at his home in the Bronx at seventy-four.
The same day, the Yankees obtained third baseman Clete Boyer from Kansas City to complete a deal that began in February when pitchers Art Ditmar and Bobby Shantz went to New York, with Tom Morgan and Noren going to the A’s. Shantz, just five foot six, had been an Athletics mainstay since 1949 and the league’s MVP in ’52, when he went 24–7 for a 79–75 team. Boyer’s brother Ken was an All-Star player on the Cardinals.
On June 13 in Chicago, Ditmar was facing the White Sox when he knocked down Larry Doby with a tight pitch. Words were exchanged, both benches emptied, and a lot of punches were thrown. Enos Slaughter, not even in the game, practically had his jersey ripped off his body in the fracas. With peace seemingly restored, Martin yelled something more at Doby and another fight broke out, this time settled by the Chicago police, who had to escort Martin off the grounds. Doby, Slaughter, and Martin were all fined $150, Ditmar $100. Topping said he would pay the Yankees’ fines, but when league president Will Harridge threatened him with a $5,000 fine, he backed off.
“The pitch I threw to him was a foot over his head,” said Ditmar. “Since it got past my catcher, I had to cover home. When I got there, Doby said to me, ‘If you ever do that again, I’ll put a knife in you.’ “
Ditmar claimed umpire Larry Napp heard the exchange and told White Sox manager Al Lopez about it, but Lopez turned and walked away.
Martin played the next day in Kansas City, going 1-for-4 in a Yankee win. The fifteenth was the trade deadline. His name wasn’t in the lineup that day; Richardson was playing second. Billy decided to sit in the bullpen, but in the seventh inning, Stengel walked over and said, “Billy, can I talk to you?”
“I followed the old man into the clubhouse,” he said in his autobiography with Phil Pepe, “and Arnold Johnson, the owner
of the Kansas City club came in a few moments later.”
Casey is talking to me and he’s having trouble getting the words out.
He couldn’t even look me in the eye. But I knew what was coming.
“Billy,” he said, “you’re going to Kansas City … I couldn’t …
Mr. Johnson, let me tell you about this kid, he’s one of the best …”
“You don’t have to say nothing,” I barked at Casey, cutting him
off sharply. “I’ll play for you, Mr. Johnson. I won’t dog it on you.”
(Lee MacPhail claimed he was the one who told Billy, as Stengel didn’t have the heart.)
“I was crying,” said Martin. “Mantle came over to me later and he was crying. Ford started crying. We got on the team bus to go back to the hotel and everybody on the bus was real quiet. They all knew. I saw Bobby Richardson sitting by himself, so I slipped into the seat next to him and said, ‘You’re going to be the second baseman now, son. Carry on the tradition.’ “
Martin wore an Athletics uniform against the Yankees the next day. The biggest crowd of the season in Kansas City turned out. He went 2-for-5 and scored three runs.
Everyone felt terrible. It began eighteen years in the baseball wilderness for Martin, always carrying the Yankees in his heart, always feeling betrayed by Stengel, who he felt could have stopped the trade. He was, after all, “Casey’s boy.” They didn’t speak for years. Ford and Mantle were like his brothers.
Billy would play for six teams before embarking on a managerial career that would eventually take him back to New York long after Weiss, Stengel, Topping, and Webb had departed. Much has been made of the times he was fired as Yankee manager, but his first “firing” was really on June 15, 1957, as a player, and he never got over it. He was never the same player again. More than anyone else, he basked in the Yankee uniform, and it inspired him to achievements far beyond his natural abilities.
WITH SHANTZ’S 2.45 ERA leading the league, earning him Comeback Player of the Year honors, Sturdivant going 16–6, Kubek winning Rookie of the Year, and Mantle winning his second straight MVP Award, the Yankees won their third straight pennant and the eighth for Casey.
A spectacular defensive moment during the season found Bauer, deep in right center, unable to glove a long drive—but in position to slap it bare-handed to Mantle, who briefly bobbled it but held on for the putout. “That’s a play we’ve been working on,” said Bauer.
Mantle’s .365 season, his career high, did not include a repeat of his Triple Crown, as his homers fell from 52 to 34 and his RBI from 130 to 94. This was enough for Weiss to send him a contract for 1958 with a $5,000 pay cut and, during negotiations, a threat to be traded. Eventually Mick got a raise to $75,000, but his distaste for Weiss was forever sealed.
Weiss was a distant figure who didn’t like to know the players personally. “I never even met him,” said Richardson. “His assistant Roy Hamey was assigned to deal with all but a few of us.”
The Yankees took on the Milwaukee Braves in the ’57 World Series, MVP Hank Aaron having led them to their first pennant since moving from Boston in 1953. The Yanks had never faced the Braves before, but when Ford beat Warren Spahn 3–1 in the opener at Yankee Stadium, it looked like business as usual for New York.
Game two featured Lew Burdette against Shantz. Few remembered that Burdette had actually once been Yankee property, traded to the then–Boston Braves for Johnny Sain. Although playing in the Yankee system for five seasons, he had only made two relief appearances for them in 1950 before moving on. On this day Burdette, who was often accused of throwing a spitball, stopped the Yanks 4–2 to even the series.
Game three was a homecoming for Kubek, a graduate of Bay View High in Milwaukee. Tony rose to the occasion with two homers and a single and drove in four as the Yanks won 12–3.
Spahn won game four, going the distance in a ten-inning, 7–5 Milwaukee win when Eddie Mathews hit a walk-off homer off Grim; then Burdette won his second in game five with a 1–0 win over Ford.
Back in New York, Turley came through with a 3–2 victory in game six to even the series and to set the stage for a deciding game seven. A crowd of 61,207 turned out as Burdette, working on two days’ rest, took on Larsen, the World Series MVP of the year before.
It was the Braves’ day. They scored four in the third and wound up winning 5–0 as Burdette won for the third time, a feat accomplished only twice before in World Series play.
THE CLOSE OF 1957 marked a lot of changes for New York baseball. Jerry Coleman, just thirty-three, retired to become assistant director of player development. He would work in the front office for five years, become a Yankee broadcaster for seven, and then move to San Diego, where he would become a legendary Padres announcer. “Being a Yankee was never a job,” he reflected. “It was a religion.”
Another who moved on after ’57 was first baseman Joe Collins, thirty-four, who was sold to the Phillies but chose to quit. “If I can’t be a Yankee, I don’t want to play this game anymore,” he said, even though he lived in Union, New Jersey, and a shift to the Phillies would not be of great geographic upheaval.
First-base coach Bill Dickey would retire in spring training of 1958, going home to Little Rock, Arkansas, to become a securities dealer for Stephens and Company. Denver manager Ralph Houk would replace him as first-base coach.
The biggest change of all was the departure of the Dodgers to Los Angeles and the Giants to San Francisco. This shocking development, removing two classic teams from the nation’s biggest market, left New York alone to the Yankees.
No doubt some felt the Yankees would now scoop up National League fans and enjoy box-office success as never before. But the fans were hardly willing to cheer for their archrivals. And the Yankees, knowing better, made no extraordinary effort to win them over. They could find Yankee Stadium if they wished. No associations were formed with former Dodgers and Giants other than providing a television program for Roy Campanella, the great Dodger catcher who was paralyzed in an auto accident before he could ever move west. Campy, once he had sufficiently recovered, hosted a show between games on doubleheader days.
In 1958, with the New York territory all to themselves, the Yankees’ attendance actually dropped seventy thousand from ’57.
IN ’58, RYNE Duren became the Yankees’ first pure “closer” since Joe Page. Stengel had managed by using Reynolds as a starter-closer, with different pitchers filling the role each season. Now, in the hard-throwing, control-challenged right-hander who came over in the Billy Martin trade, Casey would have his man.
Duren wore what were always described as Coke-bottle eyeglasses. The Yankee Stadium ritual of scaling the low right-field bullpen fence, glancing at the auxiliary scoreboard to check the situation, tossing the warm-up jacket to the waiting batboy, kicking the dirt off his spikes against the rubber, and then firing his first warm-up pitch into the backstop (to frighten the waiting hitter) gave him high style points. The fact that the twenty-nine-year-old rookie would save 20 games, win another six, record a 2.02 ERA, and strike out 87 in 76 innings was a most welcome surprise. He had shown nothing along the way to make anyone think this was coming.
He was, unfortunately, also a bad drunk. At the same time that milkshake-drinking Richardson and Kubek were establishing themselves, Duren was trying to fit in as a guy who liked his liquor. But players who respected guys who could “hold their liquor” saw the distinction. He wasn’t one of them.
His most notorious moment was aboard the Yankees’ pennant-celebratory train in ’58, in which he knocked a cigar out of coach Ralph Houk’s hand. (The Yanks still took trains on occasion; they were one of the last to go all-airline, as neither Weiss nor traveling secretary Bill McCorry was a big fan of airline travel. This was an odd thing about Weiss, who’d nearly been killed in a train wreck in 1923.) Houk, Duren’s manager in Denver who had bailed him out of overnight lockups on more than one occasion there, reacted by punching Duren and opening a cut over his eye. The
moment was witnessed by several Yankee beat writers, who uncharacteristically reported it the next day.
But so long as he was going well—and to everyone’s amazement, he was—such incidents could be swept under the rug. It was when he stopped going well that his baseball career wound down rapidly. After his career, Duren cleaned up, got active in AA, and by the 2000s actually looked more fit and healthy than most of his teammates.
Stengel juggled his pitching staff throughout the season, calling on a trio of forty-one-year-olds—Sal Maglie, Virgil Trucks, and Murray Dickson, plus twenty-nine-year-old Duke Maas—to augment the regular rotation. He still preferred to spot-start Ford, generally keeping him out of Fenway Park, which was tough on left-handers. Whitey would have preferred working on a regular rotation, as he won only 14 games in ’58, half of them shutouts, posting a 2.01 ERA, the best of his career.
The year belonged to Bob Turley, who was 21–7 with six shutouts and a 2.97 ERA, all good enough to deliver the Cy Young Award to him at season’s end. With his no-windup delivery and blazing fastball, the handsome twenty-seven-year-old right-hander became one of the most marketable players on the team. Mantle, with his 42 home runs, was still at the top of picture packs sold to fans, of course.
Nobody appreciated this more than Manny Koenigsberg, who opened Manny’s Baseball Land on River Avenue in the late forties and who seemed to have a monopoly on Yankee souvenirs outside the ballpark until he retired in 1978. (The place later became Stan’s, but by then it had a lot of competition up and down the block.)