A TALE OF THREE CITIES: NEW YORK, L.A. AND SAN FRANCISCO IN OCTOBER OF ‘62 (19 page)

In 1951, Mickey Mantle joined the Yankees. Martin was
as erudite as Dean Acheson compared to the 19-year old Mantle, who
now found Ford
and
Martin aiming their good-natured ribbing
at him. He gravitated to them. Ford, nicknamed the “Chairman of the
Board,” quickly assumed the role of social director in the adult
playground that was Manhattan in the 1950s. He always got his rest
the night before his starts, but the rest of the time it was Fun
City. Poor Mickey and Billy found themselves dragging with no
off-days like a starting pitcher gets. Ford just laughed. Everybody
was so young, so immensely talented, and the team so successful,
that all was well with the world.

Throughout the 1950s, Ford’s record was as consistent
as any pitcher has ever been. Year in and year out, he won around
18 games, never 20. His earned run average was invariably below or
near 3.00. He compiled a 2.71 World Series ERA, consistently
winning key games en route to Yankee World Championships. His
lifetime winning percentage was .690.

Ford’s record is worth examining for what it was and
what it was not. Baseball historians tend not to rank him among
other left-handed stalwarts such as Warren Spahn and Sandy Koufax.
His lack of an explosive fast ball knocks a few points off his
record. Yankee Stadium’s left-center field area was known as “Death
Valley” in those days. Ford could give up monstrous longballs to
right-handed hitters, only to watch while the great Mantle flagged
them down.

Casey Stengel used him selectively, arranging for him
to pitch at the Stadium as often as possible, sometimes missing
road starts in favor of home stands. In World Series play, Ford was
used at Yankee Stadium as exclusively as possible. Stengel did not
want Whitey hurling at little Ebbets Field, but rather used him
against the slugging Dodgers at cavernous Yankee Stadium, where
their power was neutralized.

In the 1960 World Series, Stengel’s strategy
backfired, and Casey admitted he was responsible for losing to
Pittsburgh because of it. Stengel held Ford out of the first two
contests at Forbes Field, even though its dimensions were
pitcher-friendly. Ford shut out the Pirates in game three at Yankee
Stadium, 10-0 and in game six at Forbes Field, 12-0. However, since
he had been held out, he only pitched twice (during which time he
broke Babe Ruth’s all-time record for most consecutive scoreless
innings in World Series play). When New York lost a game seven
slugfest, Stengel accepted the blame.

Ford’s “failure” to win 20 games year after year are
sometimes viewed as negatives when comparing him to Spahn, a
multiple 20-game winner, or the dominant Koufax. In truth,
Stengel’s selective use of him, combined with his being held out
late in the season year after year, explains this dynamic. In most
seasons, the Yankees clinched the American League pennant with time
to spare in the regular season. Stengel invariably “rested” Ford
for World Series play instead of leaving him in his regular spot in
the rotation until the end of schedule.

In truth, Stengel was obeying orders from general
manager George Weiss. Weiss did not want Ford winning 20 because he
would use that as a bargaining chip in contract negotiations. The
same thing applied to players who were platooned. A pitcher might
win 18 instead of 20; a position player (other than Mantle or
Berra) might hit 28 home runs instead of 30, or drive in 95 instead
of 100, because of the way they were used. Weiss would then knock
down demands for raises by saying the player had “not won 20,” or
“did not even hit 30 homers.” As a general rule, the club’s
position was that playing for the Yankees, the extra money earned
from World Series shares, and the general ancillary benefits of
being in New York on the world’s most recognized athletic
franchise, were worth more than any raises. The players knew they
had a good thing going and did not rock the boat. Ford certainly
did not.

In 1961, however, new manager Ralph Houk took an
entirely different approach. With Weiss gone, he did not hold
Whitey back. Ford responded with the greatest season of his career,
a sterling 25-4 (.862) record, a 3.21 earned run average, and the
Cy Young award.

****

When the 1962 baseball season began, Willie Howard
Mays had a chip on his shoulder. He had something to prove. The
fact that he had something to prove was the reason he had a chip on
his shoulder.

One of the things sports historians love to argue
about is the question of who is the greatest of all time. The best
baseball player? The best all-around athlete? These arguments are
tempered by myriad criteria, such as modern vs. old-timer, the
effects of integration, and the like. The premise that Willie Mays
is the greatest baseball player who ever lived is a popularly held
one to this day. Over time, the notion that Babe Ruth was has been
dispelled in large part because he never played against blacks,
which is true but is also not Babe’s fault.

Mays is a player who has gotten considerable mileage
out of the obvious comparisons between himself and his Godson,
another San Francisco Giant named Barry Bonds. Mays played in the
new, integrated era. His career spanned expansion, West Coast
baseball and the jet flight that made it possible. Like Joe
DiMaggio, he uniquely belongs to both coasts.

Had Mays retired after the 1961 season, or been
injured and unable to play beyond that year, he still would have
contributed a body of work not only worthy of the Hall of Fame, but
his name would have been bandied about among the list of players
considered the greatest of all time, albeit with the caveat that he
could have done so much more. He had not yet attained the
milestones of his great career; 600 home runs, 3,000 hits, and the
like.

In Mays’s mind, he
was
the best already.
Unlike Mantle, who never lost his awe of Joe DiMaggio and even in
private thought Joe D. superior, Mays was almost scornful of those
players who might be considered his betters. Ruth and Ty Cobb, in
his opinion, were white crackers who could not hold his dirty
jockstrap. Mays was bitter at suggestions that DiMaggio was
superior in any way. His recent move to DiMaggio’s hometown of San
Francisco re-inforced his bitterness, and was a big reason he felt
the need to constantly prove himself.

Mays’s grandfather, Walter Mays, was a pitcher for a
team in Tuscaloosa, Alabama. His father, William Howard “Kitty Kat”
Mays, was an excellent semi-pro player. Willie was not born a
“Junior.” His given name is Willie. He was born in Westfield, a
suburb of Birmingham, Alabama in 1931. His parents were divorced
and Willie lived with his Aunt Sarah in what can be described as a
middle class Southern black household. The youngster was a natural
athlete with aptitude for baseball. He was a fine football and
basketball player at Fairfield Industrial High School, but idolized
DiMaggio. He played center field but because he had a gun for an
arm also pitched like his grandfather, which helps explain why his
instincts and overall field presence was so exemplary. Willie’s
early nickname was Buckduck, which became Buck, the name his
friends called him throughout his playing career. Mays played
semi-pro baseball in addition to the regular prep schedule. He was
a legend in Jefferson County; a scoring demon in basketball, a star
football quarterback, and of course his baseball talents were in
full bloom. Mays was no late developer. His greatness was a
manifest truth. Kitty Kat directed him to baseball and the outfield
to the exclusion of pitching. He knew the boys’ future was on the
diamond and did not want him risking injury on the mound. Willie
was not academically inclined; not for a lack of intelligence, but
because his father made it clear baseball was his ticket.

College football was not out of the question, but
there were several reasons not to go that route. One of his boyhood
friends, Charley Willis, had been badly injured. Willie was not
enthused about four years of school, and of course his only choices
in the South were black colleges like Grambling. The Alabama
Crimson Tide was strictly off-limits.

At the age of 17 in 1948, Willie’s father took him to
Lorenzo Piper Davis, manager of the Birmingham Black Barons of the
Negro National League. He was an immediate sensation defensively,
but took a season learning how to handle professional pitching. In
1949 and 1950, however, Mays hit .316 and .350. The Boston Braves
offered a contract for his services, but could not sign him until
his high school class graduated. Eventually, the White Sox and
other teams scouted him. According to reports, both the all-white
Yankees and Red Sox passed on him because he was black, even though
Jackie Robinson broke the “color barrier” in 1947 and by 1950 black
players were becoming relatively commonplace; at least in the
National League.

It was said that Mays wowed the Red Sox, and that
there failure to sign such an obvious talent was particularly
egregious; perhaps the real “Red Sox curse.” The story of how Mays
became a Giant is a well-told one. On the recommendation of a Negro
League scout named Alex Pompez, two Giants scouts named Bill
Montague and Bill Harris came to Birmingham to see whether Barons
first baseman Lou Perry might be able to fill an open spot in Sioux
City of the class-A Western League.

Perry did not impress. But in a phone call to Giants
scouting director Jack Schwarz and his top aide, ex-Hall of Fame
pitcher Carl Hubbell, the center fielder could literally not be
believed.

“He can hit, run, and throw – like nobody,” exclaimed
Montague. “Don’t ask any questions. Just grab the boy.”

The $10,000 offer was perfect timing; the Braves had
been waiting for Mays’s high school graduation, which came shortly
after Montague’s breathless account. Mays and his father held out
for a $6,000 bonus. Owner Horace Stoneham okayed it. What followed
would be legend, except it actually happened. Mays played at
Trenton in 1950, then moved up to Minneapolis of the triple-A
American Association in 1951. By its very nature, minor league
baseball is subject to myth, not unlike the Negro Leagues where
word of mouth was as prevalent as actual statistics or eyewitness
reporting.

Mays only played 116 minor league games; 81 at
Trenton in the remainder of the 1950 campaign and 35 at Minneapolis
in 1951 before ascending to the Major Leagues, but in that
abbreviated schedule he put on a display that arguably was the most
impressive in minor league history. In some respects, the fact that
he was black was helpful to him. The Negro Leagues had always been
couched in mystery to the white world, with players such as Satchel
Paige representing a sense of myth and wonder. Robinson’s immediate
success and the like talents of early black pioneers Roy
Campanella, Don Newcombe and Larry Doby lent credence in some
quarters to the notion of black physical superiority.

The stories coming out of Trenton and then
Minneapolis had the same hyperbole attached to them as Montague’s
statement that, “I saw a young kid of an outfielder I can’t
believe.” In Trenton Mays hit .353 at the age of 19, but with only
four home runs and seven stolen bases. But what people saw in Mays
and tried to put in words describing him had a quicksilver quality.
Mays played baseball the way a roverback plays football, a
whirling-dervish guard plays basketball. His hat would fly off, he
ran the bases looking behind him with bursts of energetic speed
that took people’s breath way. He made impossible catches and
insane bullet throws. He hit spears, frozen ropes that could be
hung on laundry lines.

In 1951, Mays was batting
.477
in May when the
call came. With all due respect for a Georgia Peach named Ty Cobb;
an incorrigible Baltimore reform school drop-out named Babe Ruth; a
San Francisco phenom named Joe DiMaggio; an Iowa farmboy named Bob
Feller; a San Diego whiz kid named Ted Williams; or that year’s
Commerce Comet, Mickey Mantle; Willie Mays’s arrival at the Polo
Grounds may have been the most anticipated in baseball history.

The rest of course is well known, apocryphal and true
at the same time. Mays was achingly young and out of place in New
York. Manager Leo Durocher took him under his wing. He started
0-for-12 and begged “Mista Leo” to send him back to Minneapolis
because he could not handle big league pitching, but was told he
was the Giants’ starting center field for his defense no matter
what he hit, or did not hit. Mays broke his slump with a homer off
of no less a star pitcher than Warren Spahn, whom he “owned” all
their parallel careers. The numbers for 1951 are relatively
pedestrian: 20 homers, 68 RBIs and a .274 average, but Mays’s
arrival in New York jumpstarted a moribund team that made the
mother of all comebacks to win the National League pennant. When
Bobby Thomson hit the “shot heard ‘round the world,” Mays was
nervously waiting on-deck. The press was agog over the feature
story of the World Series; the rookie center fielders Mantle and
Mays taking the spotlight from the retiring DiMaggio.

But Mantle injured himself and Mays did nothing
(.182) in one of the greatest anti-climaxes of all time, a
bloodless Yankee six-game Series win. Mays served in the Army in
1952 and 1953, but this only served to make his return in 1954
almost as anticipated as a certain Jewish ex-carpenter executed by
the Romans 2,000 years earlier. His raw numbers – 41 homers, 110
RBIs and a .345 average – do not do justice to Willie Mays in 1954,
when in fact he produced one of the greatest single seasons the
game has ever known. He led the Giants to the National League
pennant that Brooklyn had won four of the previous seven years, but
it was his World Series heroics that sealed his place in the
all-time pantheon; namely a game one catch of Vic Wertz’s fly to
the deepest part of the Yosemite-like Polo Grounds. It is known as
The Catch
. The Catch was followed up by The Throw. Announcer
Russ Hodges, who had yelled, “The Giants win the pennant” about 18
teams in 1951, simply declared that Mays’s catch-and-throw “must
have been an optical illusion to a lot of people.”