Pinstripe Empire

by Marty Appel

  Maris again edged Mantle in MVP voting, this time by just four points, getting seven first-place votes to Mantle’s six despite a .269 batting average to Mantle’s .317. Roger also led the league in RBI with 141.

  But even in losing the home run and the MVP Award, Mantle emerged, at long last, as the rightful heir to DiMaggio and a fan favorite. From 1961 through the remainder of his career, the boos turned to cheers. He would be the most popular player in the game, whether at home or on the road.

  AFTER THE SEASON, a script was hastily written for a low-budget movie called Safe at Home, in which Mantle and Maris played themselves. The film was shot in the beautiful new Fort Lauderdale Stadium, known locally as Little Yankee Stadium, prior to the Yanks setting up their first spring camp there.

  After training in St. Petersburg almost continuously since 1925, the Yanks decided to move east to Florida’s Atlantic coast. Topping said, “Howard, Lopez and [rookie catcher Jesse] Gonder mean as much to our ball club as any other ball players and we would very much like to have the whole team under one roof.” Other black players were coming along, including pitcher Al Downing, who debuted in ’61 as the first African-American pitcher on the team.

  Fishel made it clear that they were talking about the Soreno Hotel, whose assistant manager said, “We have always enjoyed having the New York Yankees with us. We hope to have them with us for many years to come on the same basis.”

  The “same basis” was the key. It meant separate housing for the team’s negro players. But the clock had run out on that. The times they were a-changin’.

  At spring training in 1961, Fishel said, “We hope eventually to break down the segregation which now exists in spring training. But it has been apparent that we would not be able to accomplish that this year, although we feel the Yankees have made more of an effort than any other club.”

  Fort Lauderdale was an up-and-coming city celebrated in teenage beach movies. The city fathers were anxious to lure a major league team there.

  The Yankees comfortably moved into an integrated hotel on the beach called, appropriately, the Yankee Clipper. The Yankee presence in Fort Lauderdale for thirty-four springs put that city on the tourism map for vacationing New Yorkers.

  The Yankees were changing, too. The staid, conservative style was going to be compromised by the addition of four rookies to the 1962 team.

  With Kubek off on army duty for the first few months of the season, Tom Tresh and Phil Linz were to compete for the starting shortstop job.

  Linz, a free spirit who wound up perfectly content to be a “supersub” utility player, was a likable guy who fit in well with New York nightlife, later opening his own nightclub, Mr. Laff’s. Tresh, the more traditional of the two, came from a baseball family. His father Mike had caught for eleven seasons, mostly with the White Sox, and Tom had been a batboy when his father managed in the minors. A switch-hitter, Tom had that Yankee “look” and pop in his bat. His time at shortstop would be temporary—Kubek returned to the team on August 7—but he then shifted comfortably to left field and played it as though he’d always been there. He would wind up being Rookie of the Year.

  Father-and-son combinations in the major leagues became quite common in the coming decades, but in the sixties it was still fairly rare, and Tresh was one of the first sons of a big leaguer to exceed his father’s career achievements.

  Jim Bouton, twenty-three, known as “Bulldog” for his gritty determination, was also a rookie in ’62, having won 27 games in 1960–61 in the lower minors. Houk and Sain liked what they saw in spring training and decided to keep him. Born in Newark, he went to high school in Chicago Heights and college at Western Michigan. Bouton was unlike most players in that he was a true fan as a kid. Most players cared little about going to games, reading about them, or learning stats and history. Bouton grew up with the fan experience. Most of his teammates thought he had a left-hander’s mind trapped in a right-hander’s body, southpaws generally considered more zany in baseball. (Pete Sheehy would flick his left hand to excuse odd behavior.) He was also off to the left politically from his teammates, and an attempt to be elected player representative a few years later went about as well as George McGovern’s presidential bid in ’72.

  Bouton’s big break came in his 14th appearance of the season. On June 24, a Sunday, the Yankees played the longest game in their history, a twenty-two-inning affair in Detroit, won after seven hours on the only home run of reserve outfielder Jack Reed’s career. That day, Bouton entered the game in the fifteenth inning and hurled seven shutout innings to get the win. Both his spot on the team and his “Bulldog” nickname were assured on that memorable evening.

  The fourth rookie was a Brooklyn kid named Joe Pepitone who could hit “four sewers” in stickball and who was shot in his belly at Manual Training High School by a friend who was “kidding around.” With incredible good luck, no vital organs were pierced, and after twelve days in the hospital, Joe was back. He got a $20,000 bonus from the Yankees and would be the first Italian-American Yankee of significance since the 1946 debuts of Raschi and Berra. Joe had terrific talent both at bat and in the field, but his work ethic was sometimes questionable: His own autobiography, years later, was called Joe, You Could Have Made Us Proud. He also hung out with people the Yankee front office thought of as “shady.” On several occasions Joe showed up just minutes before game time, with Houk and the office in full panic mode, having called their police department contacts to search the city. But he always showed up.

  Joe also embodied “style” on the Yankees, getting his uniform to fit as tight as the flannel material would allow. The trend toward form-fitting uniforms had begun with Willie Mays and Tito Fuentes of the Giants, who had a personal tailor perform alterations. It quickly spread around the country, and the once-baggy uniforms now looked much more fashionable on players. Even traditionalists like Mantle and Maris joined in. The whole process would change the “look” of the game over the next few years, foreshadowing the incorporation of tight double-knit uniforms, first adopted in 1972, with the Yankees following a year later.

  Four rookies in one season, at least three of them a little off-center, would certainly be enough to give McCarthy, Dickey, and DiMaggio pause.

  Joe could pause in person, as he was a spring training instructor now. In ’62, he was even accompanied by Marilyn Monroe, which certainly turned heads. (She died five months later.)

  (Yogi Berra remembers going to dinner with Joe and Marilyn. When I asked him to tell me every detail, he said, “You know how they usually give you just five shrimp in a shrimp cocktail? That night they gave us eight!” He didn’t remember anything else about the evening.)

  IN 1962, THE Mets were born. They drew an “amazin’” 922,530 that season to the Yankees’ 1,493,574. The total was certainly skewed by the return visits of the Dodgers and Giants, who accounted for 51 percent of the Mets’ total draw in just fifteen games: The remaining fifty home dates averaged only 9,009. They were 40–120, the worst record of the century, but they clicked with the fans. Casey talked about how the “youth of America should play for the Mets,” about how their new ballpark in Queens would have “escalators, so no more heart attacks going to your seats,” and how little children would say “Metsie Metsie Metsie” as their first words. The press loved it.

  Dick Young in the Daily News began to write about the “new breed” of baseball fans in town, a more ragtag bunch of people who were heading out to the Polo Grounds with enthusiasm unseen in the Bronx. Met fans began to bring banners to the games extolling Marvelous Marv Throneberry and Choo Choo Coleman.

  By 1963, competition between the two resulted in a true cultural clash. The Mayor’s Trophy game, which the Yankees had long played against the Dodgers and Giants, was revived. The proceeds went to benefit sandlot baseball in New York.17 The “historic” first clash would be at Yankee Stadium, but when Met fans arrived with their banners (Casey called them “placards”), Yankee security people attempted to confiscate the
m. Yankee policy was no banners in the stands, obstructing others’ views.

  The press made a huge deal of the Yankees’ confiscations. Eventually, it had the inevitable effect of softening Yankee policy, so that by the end of the decade the Yankees were staging “banner days” just as the Mets did. But the Mets were determined to make an impact, and make it they did.

  The Mayor’s Trophy games eventually got a little stale. They were played from 1963 to 1979, then there was a two-year hiatus, and then they resumed in 1982–83 before shutting down. The real problem was that baseball economy pretty much ended doubleheaders, creating fewer mutually available off-days on which to play the game. The teams continued to contribute to sandlot baseball without playing the game. The trophy itself would get passed back and forth to whichever team won. The Yankees won the final one in 1983, so somewhere among Yankee possessions rests the actual trophy.

  THE YANKS’ FOLLOW-UP to the great ’61 season was less spectacular. Although they took over first place to stay on July 8, they never had a lead of more than six games, and they seemed ripe for the taking all year. But when they had to win, they won.

  Mantle won his third MVP Award in five years, to go with two razor-thin second-place finishes. He claimed that Bobby Richardson (who finished second) was more deserving, hitting .302 and becoming the first Yankee since Rizzuto in 1950 to register 200 hits.

  Mick had a .321/30/89 season and at one point hit seven homers in 12 at-bats, but it was clearly well off his ’61 showing, as was Maris’s .256/33/100, with the fans and press beating him up verbally and in print most of the season.

  Arroyo, troubled by a sore arm, had one win and seven saves, and the bullpen had only nine saves all season. While Ford went 17–8, it was Terry, 23–12, who would lead the league in wins.

  The World Series was the first between the Yankees and a former New York team, as the San Francisco Giants beat the Dodgers in a three-game playoff series, just as in 1951, to win the National League pennant.

  In game one, Ford allowed a run in the second inning, bringing his scoreless-inning record to a close at 33⅔ innings, but he won the game 6–2. The Series was low-scoring, and the hoped-for Mantle-Mays matchup was a disappointment, Mantle hitting .120 and Mays .250, with neither of them homering. Bad weather forced three days of postponements, but it finally came down to a game seven in San Francisco, a game decided with no RBI.

  The Yankees scored a run in the fifth when Kubek hit into a double play, scoring Skowron in what would be Moose’s final game as a Yankee.

  In the ninth, with Terry having pitched a two-hit shutout to this point, Matty Alou beat out a bunt. Terry then fanned both Felipe Alou and Chuck Hiller.

  That brought up Mays, who doubled to right, where Maris made a fine play and got the ball in to hold Matty at third.

  Now the tying run was on third and the winning run on second. Up came Willie McCovey. Terry had been in this spot before: He had yielded Mazeroski’s walk-off just two years earlier.

  This time Terry would be carried off the field, as McCovey hit a hard liner to Richardson’s left. Bobby snared the drive and saved the Series. Another foot and it might have been a two-run single and a Giants championship. Instead, San Francisco would not win a World Series for forty-eight years.

  It was the Yankees’ twentieth world championship—and while they couldn’t have imagined it, their last for fifteen years.

  Chapter Twenty-Seven

  THE TRADE OF SKOWRON TO THE Dodgers after the 1962 season not only broke his heart, but it delivered a mixed message to Yankee fans. On the one hand, this was good baseball management: out with the old, in with the new, to perpetuate the success of the team. Joe Pepitone, a homegrown product with a quick bat and terrific fielding skills, was ready to take over—and was ten years younger! Heartless though it must have felt to the sensitive Moose, this was how successful teams flourished.

  On the other hand, only a few people noticed that the rookie class of ’62—Pepitone, Linz, Bouton, and Tresh—seemed to be the end of the supply chain. Al Downing and Mel Stottlemyre followed in the next few years, but where was the endless pool of players waiting to take over? The guys who kept the regulars on their toes, looking over their shoulders? Keen observers knew the Yankee system was faltering.

  Quietly, Topping and Webb had begun talking to Lehman Brothers about underwriting a dramatic public sale of the team, in the fashion of the Green Bay Packers, who were “community owned.” The talks were ongoing, but it seemed clear that there was an exit strategy brewing.

  In exchange for Skowron, the Yankees got starting pitcher Stan Williams, a 14-game winner for the Dodgers in ’62. But expectations weren’t reached in 1963, Williams would go only 9–8 for the Yanks, and it was bringing up Downing (13–5) in early June that really saved the pitching. Arroyo, with a bad arm, had lost his effectiveness, and Hal Reniff, a hard-throwing righty, emerged as the bullpen savior.

  But then there was Ford, who would go 24–7 for his second and last 20-win season, and Bouton, 21–7 with six shutouts, who kept knocking the cap off his head with each pitch.

  Howard would win the league’s MVP Award with a .287/28/85 season, leading the team in homers and winning a Gold Glove behind the plate, as Berra, now a first-base coach/pinch hitter, wound up his playing days with a .293 showing in 64 games. Howard was the first black player in the American League to win the MVP—the National League had already had eleven, indicative of the better jump it had on signing African-American stars.

  Despite these success stories, who would have thought the Yanks could win when Mantle and Maris appeared in the lineup together only thirty times? Maris, bothered by a bad back, played only 90 games. On May 22, Mantle, now a $100,000 player, took hold of a Bill Fischer pitch and for the second time reached the upper right-field facade, calling it “the hardest ball I ever hit.” But two weeks later, he fractured his left foot on the chain-link outfield fence in Baltimore, which would limit him to just 52 games in the outfield for the season.

  On September 1, the Yanks were back in Baltimore, and Mantle, while activated, was on the training table for most of the game, having had a tough evening with Ford the night before. He was not expecting to play. But in the eighth, with the Yanks trailing 4–1, Houk sent him up to hit against Mike McCormick. Mantle delivered a line-drive homer into the left-field bleachers that helped send the Yanks to a 5–4 win. The “hangover homer” would become part of Mantle legend. “Those people have no idea how hard that really was,” he told his laughing teammates on the bench as the Oriole fans applauded this dramatic return to their ballpark.

  Mantle’s elevation to the $100,000 level put him in a class with Greenberg, DiMaggio, Williams, Musial, and, as of that same year, Mays. It would be his annual salary for the rest of his career.

  The Yanks would somehow win 104 games in 1963 and their third straight pennant under Houk, and would head to the World Series against the Dodgers, who still retained a few Brooklyn players, including their pitching ace, Sandy Koufax. And there would be the strange sight of Skowron playing first.

  Houk’s three pennants in his first three seasons were unprecedented in major league history. But his attempt at a third straight world championship came up short. The Dodger pitching was just too much.

  In one of the most heralded matchups in World Series play, game one at Yankee Stadium would feature Koufax (25–5 in the regular season) against Ford. But the day belonged to Koufax, who struck out a Series record 15, including the first five Yankees he faced. Richardson, who struck out only 22 times in 668 plate appearances during the regular season, fanned three times. Skowron drove in two, and the Dodgers were off and running.

  Old nemesis Podres won game two, Don Drysdale pitched a three-hit shutout in game three, and Koufax came back to win game four, 2-1, again besting Ford, the Yanks’ only run coming on a Mantle homer. In the last of the seventh, Pepitone missed Boyer’s throw from third, claiming he lost it in the background of white shirts, and the error l
ed to the winning run. It was an embarrassing sweep for the Yanks.

  Unbeknownst to all but a few trusted insiders, ’63 would be Houk’s final year as manager. Roy Hamey was planning to retire after the season, and Topping wanted Houk to move up to the front office and succeed him. Ralph wasn’t happy—he was a field guy—but he was a loyal employee, and if that was what they wanted, they’d get it.

  Sixteen days after the World Series, the Yankees crossed the street to the Savoy Hilton and announced Hamey’s retirement and Houk’s ascension to the front office. Hamey would retire with three pennants in three years as GM.

  The next day came Yogi Berra’s elevation to the managing job. Another trek to the Savoy Hilton for a press conference. He too had been in on the plan since spring training. He was to receive a pay cut from his player salary, $45,000 to $35,000, and he took the occasion to announce his retirement as well. (His peak salary as a player had been $55,000.)

  The announcement was greeted with some skepticism. A beloved figure and an immortal Yankee, he was not necessarily considered the “manager type,” whatever that meant. Despite all the clever things he allegedly said, his communication skills were suspect. A typical conversation meant a lot of grunts and nods. Then there was the question of whether his former teammates could view him as the boss. All of that would have to be determined. What was unquestioned was his knowledge of baseball. He didn’t miss a thing.

  Topping and Houk may have seen the hiring of Yogi as a counterpunch to the Mets’ popular success with Stengel. But Yogi was not the man widely quoted by the press who would sometimes stretch the truth to come up with a new Yogi-ism. He was not going to steal the cameras away from Casey.

  Yogi got a one-year contract, which he claimed to be happy with. He wanted to prove to himself he could manage—and then get a big raise if he was successful.

  He named Ford as his pitching coach in addition to continuing his regular turn on the mound. And while retaining Crosetti and Jim Hegan, he added Athletics scout Jimmy Gleeson as first-base coach. Gleeson had been his manager at the New London submarine base when Yogi was stationed there in the forties. Yogi called him two hours after his press conference ended. It was Berra displaying loyalty and friendship, two of his best traits.