Impact Player

by Bobby Richardson

  I never encountered any problems with my teammates because I was a Christian. They all knew my beliefs and accepted them. Sure, there were occasional jokes thrown my way about my clean living, but they were good-natured, and I laughed along with the guys. My teammates were respectful of my faith and, if anything, went out of their way to honor my beliefs.

  Whenever you get twenty-five major leaguers on, for example, a bus, there will be crude jokes told. But the guys around me would make an effort not to say something I would consider inappropriate, or they would warn me, “All right, Rich, this would be a good time for you to go to the front of the bus.” I would simply heed their warning and look for a different place to sit. I never minded because I knew the guys’ intentions and believed that their warning was their way of looking out for me.

  It was always a given that I wouldn’t go out drinking after a game. We would all joke around and cut up in the locker room after a game, and then we would go out in our separate groups. There was a group that went out drinking and a group that didn’t drink—usually including Tony Kubek, Bob Turley, and me. But there were no tensions or conflicts between the two groups. I never felt that the ones in my social group were my friends and the guys in the other group were just my teammates. It was more as if I had two types of friends on the team, and my rapport with both groups was great.

  In the off-season, and even after I retired, I never lacked for teammates who came to visit me in Sumter to go hunting, and that included guys from the “drinking” group. Clete Boyer is a good example. We were very close friends when we were Yankees and remained that way long after our playing days.

  When we began flying instead of taking trains, a few of the guys were nervous about being on an airplane, and they handled their fears by drinking more. I remember Johnny Blanchard would feel the need to explain, “Now Bobby, I’m going to have a couple of drinks, but I want you to know that it’s because I’m flying.”

  There was one chartered flight when I was the only player not on board, because I had received permission to make a quick trip home on an off-day before rejoining the team. The pilots encountered problems getting the landing gear to go down. When word circulated in the cabin, Blanchard said, “Oh my goodness! We’re in trouble—Richardson’s not here!”

  I wish there were an easy formula for how to live an exemplary Christian life among non-Christians. I think the key for me was not to try too hard to be a certain kind of person. I didn’t try to be Bobby the Christian and also Bobby the teammate; those two couldn’t have been separated anyway. All I tried to be was who I was—a sinner grateful to be saved by grace. Anything else I might have tried to be wouldn’t have been sincere.

  Although I spoke about my faith a lot, I wasn’t always pushing my faith on my teammates. That’s not my personality type. With practice, I became comfortable speaking in front of large crowds, but I was more reserved in one-on-one conversations. I just hope my fellow Yankees thought of me the way Joe DiMaggio apparently did.

  Though Joe was retired from playing by the time I became a Yankee, he served as our hitting coach for a short period, and I was able to become good friends with him. Betsy and I went out to dinner with Joe a few times, and Joe came to South Carolina—at his own expense, by the way—to endorse my bid for Congress. I had always looked for opportunities to witness to Joe, and on his trip to South Carolina, I handed him a copy of Chuck Colson’s book Born Again.

  Joe had two brothers who also played in the majors, Vince and Dom. One day I read an article in Decision magazine that said Vince had been born again. He even referenced the Chuck Colson book. I clipped out the article and mailed it to Joe. The next time I saw Joe, he said, “I got your letter.” That’s all he said, because Joe was a man of few words.

  After Joe passed away, a sportswriter called me and said he had interviewed Joe a few weeks before he died. Apparently Joe had talked a lot about me, and the interviewer wanted to send me some of his notes. When they arrived in the mail, I read through them with interest.

  What Joe had told the writer was that I didn’t wear my religion on my sleeve in an obtrusive way. He said that I just shared my faith with him in simplicity as a friend.

  I don’t know if Joe asked Christ to be his Savior or not before he died. And naturally I’ve wondered whether I could have or should have done more in communicating my faith with him. But I haven’t forgotten what Joe told that sportswriter about my sharing with him as a friend. That touched me deeply.

  I don’t know many words more meaningful than friend. That’s what each of my teammates was to me. And I hope I was that to them as well—because that’s the best kind of Christian witness I know.

  Chapter 18

  Teammates and Lifelong Friends

  It may have been the best infield in baseball in its day. I certainly believe it was the most tightly knit.

  I’m referring to the Yankees’ infield consisting of Moose Skowron at first, me at second, Tony Kubek at shortstop, and Clete Boyer at third. The four of us made up the Yankees’ infield for three full seasons, from 1960 through ’62.

  Because that was probably the peak of that Yankees dynasty, we were often asked to make appearances in the New York City area and autograph different types of memorabilia. I don’t know how many photographs we signed of the four of us posing together. But there was one particular pose of us taken on the steps of our dugout that became quite valuable if it bore all our signatures. I once saw one of those autographed pictures advertised in the New York Times for around four hundred dollars.

  That photo was so heavily requested that we decided we should sign a bunch so we could always have a supply on hand when a fan asked for one. I must have given away hundreds of those through the years and never sold one, although I did give one to a plumber who then gave me a discount on his services in return. I liked to place the photos in frames and give them to charities so they could auction them off in fund-raisers.

  As far as I know, Kubek never sold one of those autographed pictures either. But Tony and I knew that Moose and Clete were selling them.

  For a picture to have its highest value, it had to be signed by all four of us. One of us would sign a stack of photos, then send it on to the next, and so on until all four of us had signed them. Because Tony and I wanted to be able to have our own that we could give away, we worked out the signing rotation so that Tony was always the last one to sign. Thus, the photos would end up with him to distribute among the four of us.

  When Moose was running the Yankees fantasy camp, my son Robby liked to take part. Moose would tell him, “Okay, Richardson, everybody else paid five thousand dollars. You don’t have to pay, but tell your dad to give me fifty of those signed pictures!” Instead of paying for Robby to attend, I gave Moose fifty photos and let him sell them.

  Moose Skowron: Funny Guy

  Moose was always the comedian of the bunch. With Mickey, Whitey, Yogi, and Roger, the reporters had an ample supply of superstars to quote, but when the topic was humorous, Moose was the press’s go-to guy. But Moose didn’t just make reporters laugh. He cracked us up too.

  Moose wasn’t as big as his nickname might make you think. He was five feet eleven and weighed a little less than two hundred pounds. His nickname had nothing to do with his size, in fact. When Moose was a kid, his grandfather gave him a bad haircut that reminded family friends of the hairstyle of the Italian dictator Mussolini. They began calling Bill, “Mussolini,” and that got shortened to “Moose” and stuck permanently.

  When he played with us, Moose had a distinctive crew cut, and he would offer to buy my sons and other kids in the clubhouse a hamburger if they would get a haircut like his. Nobody took him up on his offer.

  Moose was a fine all-around athlete who had played football, basketball, and baseball at Purdue University. He went on to a pro baseball career while his baseball coach at Purdue, Hank Stram, became known more for his football coaching abilities, eventually being elected into the Pro Football Hall of
Fame. Moose also made it into a hall of fame: the National Polish-American Sports Hall of Fame. (Years later, after I had conducted several teammates’ funerals, Moose told me I couldn’t do his because I don’t speak Polish.)

  When he struck out, Moose tended to cuss. He’d come back to the dugout and walk the length of the bench uttering profanities. When he would come to me, he’d stop cussing long enough to say, “Excuse me, Bobby.” Then, once he got past me, he’d resume his profanities.

  Language aside, Moose had a lovable personality and was about as generous a person as anyone could hope to know. He was the type of guy that the phrase “He’d give you the shirt off his back” was created to describe.

  When Moose was traded to Los Angeles after the 1962 season, we lost a great guy, a good friend, and a big dose of fun in our infield. Moose hated that trade as much as we did. He had produced great seasons in New York and thought he had more in him.

  In the 1980s, when Mickey Mantle and Whitey Ford started holding Yankees fantasy camps for Yankees fans to play baseball with some of the franchise’s legendary players, they brought Moose in to take part. He provided the laughs at all the camps. The campers, especially the older ones, loved being around Moose. Eventually, he took over running those camps from Mickey and Whitey. And even though Moose had played for the Dodgers, Senators, White Sox, and Angels after he left our team, there was something that just felt right about seeing Moose back in Yankees pinstripes at those fantasy camps.

  Clete Boyer: Shy Guy

  Clete Boyer was the only one of us four who didn’t come up through the Yankees’ system. I remember seeing Clete for the first time in 1955, as he was preparing to sign his first contract. Clete was from Missouri and came to work out with us on one of our trips into Kansas City. He was seventeen years old. I remember saying to myself, Man, what a good arm—and he’s a great fielder.

  The Yankees wound up not signing Clete at that time because of the number of “bonus baby” players to whom major league roster spots had already been committed for the next two years. Instead he signed with the Kansas City Athletics for more than four thousand dollars. The Yankees acquired him from the A’s during the ’57 season as the “player to be named later” from an earlier trade between the teams.

  Clete was eligible to go to the minor leagues by that point, and the Yankees sent him down to develop. He got the call back up late in ’59, when we had Andy Carey, Héctor López, and Gil McDougald playing third. By early June of the 1960 season, the third base job was Clete’s.

  I played every day with Clete for eight seasons, and I consider him to have been one of the best third basemen of his time. That’s even compared to Brooks Robinson, who had fifteen All-Star seasons and sixteen consecutive Gold Glove awards and is often acknowledged as the best defensive third baseman in major league history. Brooks was probably a better all-around player than Clete because of his hitting. But Clete was an excellent player who has never seemed to receive the recognition he deserved. Just a highlight reel of Clete’s defense during the ’61 World Series would be enough to prove my point. And he was no slouch as a hitter, either. As Tony Kubek once pointed out, Clete batted eighth for us, but when he went from New York to Atlanta, the Braves put him in the fifth spot behind Hank Aaron and Joe Torre. After playing for Atlanta, he spent time in Japan as a player and then as a coach, and later he coached for the Oakland A’s and the Yankees before retiring.

  Clete, a quiet man, was especially close to Roger Maris. I sat next to Clete at Roger’s funeral. I was part of the program, and when I returned to my seat, I learned over to Clete and said, “You really ought to say something today.”

  “Oh no,” he said, “not me.”

  At one point in the service, it was asked if any other teammates of Roger’s would like to talk about him.

  I stood from my aisle seat, stepped back, and motioned Clete to go forward. I purposefully put him in a position where he had to get up and walk to the front. And Clete did a fantastic job. It was obvious he was speaking from his heart and as a true friend. Clete thanked me several times after that day for putting him on the spot like that.

  Even though Clete and I were friends, we lived opposite lifestyles. He was known for his hard living and his constant battle with alcohol. I prayed many nights for my good friend. After he retired, Tony and I were so concerned for him that we both came to Atlanta to see what we could do to help.

  Clete’s family was concerned too, of course. One of his daughters faithfully prayed for him year after year. Her love for her father really touched Clete’s heart.

  When Clete died of a brain hemorrhage in 2007, that daughter asked me to take part in the memorial service. I shared a story from a year or so earlier, when Clete came to visit Betsy and me for Christmas.

  Clete had visited me in Sumter several times and loved for me to take him hunting. Betsy and I still laugh about a night during one of those visits, when a loud noise came from the guest room. The slats holding up the bed had fallen, taking Clete to the floor with them. Clete didn’t sleep very well that night.

  But I told those gathered at Clete’s memorial service about a different night during Clete’s most recent visit. While I was out running an errand, Clete and Betsy had a good talk. Betsy showed Clete a special gospel tract and laid it on a table. Noticing that Clete kept looking at that tract, Betsy felt she should leave the room for a few minutes.

  “Betsy,” Clete told her when she returned to the room, “I want you to know that I prayed that prayer at the end. I received Jesus as my Savior.”

  As Clete was leaving our house to return home, we gave him a Christmas present: a Bible. Clete accepted it proudly.

  Tony Kubek: My Milkshake Twin

  Tony Kubek was my best friend on the Yankees. We roomed together while playing for the Bears in Denver and were roommates with the Yankees every season until he retired, except for the year he was called into active military duty.

  Tony was the other half of what the press called the “Milkshake Twins” because we had been followed by detectives and caught engaging in nothing shadier than playing Ping-Pong and enjoying some milkshakes. Tony laughed about that incident when it happened. But later he tried to distance himself a little from that label because first, he didn’t drink milkshakes that often, and second, he didn’t want to be portrayed with such a squeaky-clean image.

  Tony’s “Milkshake Twin” reputation did win him one significant advantage, though—a brief phone relationship with a very beautiful and famous movie star. Back in the early 1950s, after he retired from playing, Joe DiMaggio had been briefly married to Marilyn Monroe, and they remained in contact after their divorce. During the time that Joe served as our spring training and special hitting instructor, he didn’t make the longer road trips with us. Often it would be a last-minute decision as to whether Joe would travel on certain trips. With Marilyn’s busy schedule, Joe couldn’t always get word to her when he wouldn’t be traveling. Because Joe knew the clean-living Milkshake Twins were likely to be in their hotel room during trips, he’d told Marilyn to call us if she couldn’t reach him.

  Tony wasn’t married yet, so I thought it would be more appropriate for him to answer the phone when we knew Marilyn might be calling and let him tell her that Joe had stayed back home. So Tony had several conversations with Marilyn during that period.

  Tony was a Christian like me, but the form of our faith differed. He had been raised a Catholic. His wife, Margaret, whom he married after the 1961 World Series, was the daughter of a Lutheran minister, and Tony left Catholicism to join the Lutheran church. He was an avid reader, and I employed a sneaky method of sharing my own kind of faith with Tony. I would leave Christian books around the hotel room, knowing that Tony’s curiosity wouldn’t be satisfied until he picked up the books to see what they had to say.

  There was a church I would speak at in Kansas City, and when I’d ask Tony if he wanted to go, he would say, “No, I’m not interested.” Yet he would end up at tha
t church service almost every time.

  On a trip to play the Twins, Tony and I planned to visit the church of a pastor friend in Minneapolis, not far from the Twins’ stadium. We asked Mickey Mantle if he wanted to go, and he said he would join us. We were playing a doubleheader that day, so the first game would have an early start.

  When the cab dropped us off at the church, I told Tony and Mickey, “Listen, we’re going to have to leave about ten minutes early to get to the ballpark on time. I’ve arranged to have a cab waiting for us. As soon as the pastor starts winding up his message, we’ll slip out.”

  Everything was fine as the minister started to bring his sermon in for a landing. But when we got up to leave quietly, we were recognized because of Mickey, and half the congregation got up with us. The pastor ended his message early so he and his son could have a picture taken with Mickey. Mickey didn’t like a lot of attention when he was in a hurry. After greeting the people and posing for photos, we missed almost all of batting practice.

  I still have the copy of the photo that the pastor sent me. Tony, the pastor, his son, and I are smiling, while Mickey has a we-need-to-get-going look on his face. For years after that, Tony and I enjoyed razzing Mickey about the Sunday he made us miss batting practice.

  Mickey was known as a prankster. But Tony was one in his own right, and he didn’t mind targeting Mickey, either.

  After Mickey’s final season, I asked him to come to Sumter to put on a batting exhibition for a YMCA fund-raising campaign I was heading up. I brought Tony in to be a part of it too. We had a capacity crowd all the way around the field. When Mickey came out in his Yankees uniform, the crowd cheered wildly.