A TALE OF THREE CITIES: NEW YORK, L.A. AND SAN FRANCISCO IN OCTOBER OF ‘62 (31 page)

In England, groups like The Beatles, The Who
and The Rolling Stones were forming in garages and clubs, but their
"invasion" of America was still a couple of years away.

In 1962, America was a "car culture," as depicted by
George Lucas's
American Graffiti
. Madison Avenue dominated
advertising, seen as the great post-war profession that made sexual
harassment into an art form. Scantily clad girls were the vehicle
for attracting buyers to any and all products. "Sex sells," was the
mantra.

On June 25, 1962 the Supreme Court handed down the
Engel vs. Vitale
decision, thus making it un-Constitutional
to hold prayer in public schools. Bishop James Pike of California
called it "deconsecrating the Union." Former President Herbert
Hoover called it "a disintegration of one of the most sacred of
American heritages." Both the House and Senate tried to overrule
Engel
. The Democrats blocked them.

In November of 1962, Rachel Carson's
Silent
Spring
was published. The book has been credited with spawning
the environmental movement. The first-ever public service warning
that cigarettes were dangerous to health was issued.

Australia's Rod Laver won his first tennis "grand
slam" in 1962. Wilt Chamberlain scored 100 points in a single game
while averaging 50 per contest. The Boston Celtics defeated the Los
Angeles Lakers for the NBA title. The Green Bay Packers were 13-1
and captured the National Football League championship. The Toronto
Maple Leafs won their 10
^th
Stanley Cup. Golfer Arnold
Palmer captured his third green jacket at The Masters.

Emile Griffith killed Boxer Benny Paret in
the ring.

Empire

"I am not superstitious, but I do think it
is bad luck to bet against the Yankees."

- Ring Lardner

The history of the New York Yankees up until
1962 was of course magnificent; over and above any sports franchise
at any level, anywhere. There had been many times in the past when
the Bronx Bombers were deemed unbeatable, at the top of their game,
a surefire favorite to win the pennant and capture the Series.
There may never have been any season, however, in which Yankee
confidence was greater than it was entering the 1962 campaign.

This was the baseball version of America at
the very peak of its glory. They were Rome after Caesar's triumphs;
MacArthur on the deck of the "mighty Mizzou." First, they won the
battle for New York that had long been fought between the Giants,
Dodgers and themselves. In the beginning, the Giants owned the
town. The Yankees were "Johnny-come-latelies," a low rent team of .
. . renters in a new league. It took years before they even settled
on the name Yankees. Somehow this had to happen, because it would
have been hard to imagine such a force of nature going by the name
Highlanders.

The Dodgers never matched the Yankees on the
field, but they engendered a love that the pinstripers could never
seem to get. They were like
Marcus Licinius
Crassus
,
the Roman general played by
Sir Laurence Olivier in
Spartacus
, who steals the slave girl
Varinia from Kirk Douglas. He lavishes her with the good life, but
cannot buy her love. Olivier's response was to crucify Douglas and
the rest of the slave rebellion in a gruesome spectacle along the
Appian Way.

The New York City baseball version was less
horrible but served the Yankees' purposes just the same anyway. The
Dodgers and Giants were run out of town, leaving the Big Apple
uncontested. The New York Yankees owned the city; every single
borough. Whether they liked it or not, the residents of Brooklyn,
Queens, Staten Island, Harlem and the rest of the city had been
colonized by the New York Yankees, Inc.

With the Dodgers and Giants gone, New York
immediately consolidated its power, like a politician who runs
unopposed in the primaries and spends all his money to easily win
the general election. They captured the 1958 World Championship. In
1961, the Yankees did not merely win; they rolled through
opposition like George Patton's tanks in the late winter and early
spring of 1945.

Many people still refer to the 1927 Yankees
as the greatest team of all time, but the 1961 version may well
have been better. New manager Ralph Houk's team got off to a
relatively slow start and faced competition from a strong Detroit
Tigers ball club (101-61) that featured Norm Cash (.361 with 41
homers and 132 RBIs allegedly using a corked bat), Rocky Colavito
(.45 homers, 140 RBIs), the great Al Kaline (.324), pitchers Jim
Bunning (17-11) and the "Yankee killer" Frank Lary (23-9).

But once the "M & M boys," Mickey Mantle
and Roger Maris got going, New York could not be stopped. Maris led
the way, earning his second straight Most Valuable Player award
while breaking Babe Ruth's all-time home run record with 61 along
with 141 runs batted in. Mantle, burdened by a late-season injury
that prevented his breaking Babe's mark, still finished with 54
home runs, 117 runs batted in and a .317 average. First baseman
Bill "Moose" Skowron added 28 homers and 89 RBIs. Second baseman
Bobby Richardson played great defense, and teamed with shortstop
Tony Kubek to form one of the best middle infields in baseball.
Clete Boyer was a fine-fielding third basemen.

Yogi Berra mainly played left field, having
ceded catching duties to Elston Howard. In 1961 Berra hit 22 homers
and batted .271. Mantle (center field) and Maris (right field) were
exceeded defensively only by two National Leaguers, Willie Mays and
Roberto Clemente. It was as complete a line-up as can be imagined.
Houk had kept it set throughout the year, instead of platooning
right-handers and left-handers as Casey Stengel (1949-60) had done.
Utilityman
extraordinaire
Johnny Blanchard contributed 21
home runs and a .305 average.

The pitching staff was airtight, led by Cy
Young award-winner Whitey Ford in his best year ever (25-4, 3.21
ERA). Bill Stafford (14-9, 2.68), Ralph Terry (16-3, 3.15), Rollie
Sheldon (11-5), Jim Coates (11-5), Bob Daley (8-9) and ace relief
pitcher Luis Arroyo (15-5, 29 saves and a 2.19 earned run average)
gave New York mound dominance.

New York had powered their way to a 109-53
record, eight games better than Detroit, then obliterated the
Cincinnati Reds in an anti-climatic five World Series games. Ford
shut out the Reds, 2-0 in the Series opener. In game four at
Crosley Field, Ford had to retire in the sixth inning after
suffering an ankle injury, but was the winning pitcher in a 7-0
victory. That extended his streak of consecutive scoreless innings
in World Series play to 32, eclipsing the old record by Boston's
Base Ruth set in 1918.

Cincinnati's Frank Robinson was held to a
.200 Series average. Maris contributed only one homer and Mantle
was still wobbly from late-season health issues, but there was,
aside from Joey Jay's 6-2 win in game two, no stopping the
Yankees.

As the team gathered in St. Petersburg,
Florida for Spring Training in 1962, they were the kings of
baseball, of all sports, and perhaps most importantly, of New York,
which some people considered to be more important than all of
America or even the world. There was a mosquito in their midst, but
they hardly noticed it. The expansion New York Mets were
congregating for their first season.

Commissioner Ford Frick, who always adhered
to the Yankees' interests as if he was on their payroll, had
opposed the Mets, but inexorable forces within the media and
political circles had made their creation a
fait accompli
.
They would play at the Polo Grounds (Ebbets Field had been torn
down to build apartments immediately after the Dodgers' departure),
which seemed to be a joke. But the Mets had one little, tiny card
in their deck. Casey Stengel was their manager. They featured
several old Dodgers who were expected to draw fan support.

The Yankees, for all their bluster, had not
really increased their attendance in the four years between the
Dodgers and Giants leaving, and the arrival of the Mets. It was the
old "love me . . . how much can I pay you to love me?" theme. But
on the field, and in the general psyche of baseball, they were
all-powerful and gave scant thought to anything the Mets were
doing.

The club assembled in sleepy St. Pete was now
Ralph Houk's team through and through. In 1961, Houk had replaced a
legend. He immediately established his own identity by deviating
from Stengel's old strategems. After some early ups and downs, his
methods proved to be at least as effective, if not superior.

Houk described himself "as corny as Kansas in
August." He was born near Lawrence in 1919 and grew up on a farm. A
high school football hero, he turned down scholarships to Kansas
and Oklahoma in the pursuit professional baseball. Two Yankees
scouts teamed up to get his name on the dotted line for $200. One
"negotiated" while the other regaled scouts of other teams with old
Babe Ruth stories to derail them from signing Houk. By the time
they caught on, the young catcher was a Yankee.

After Houk had a few promising years in the
low minor leagues, the Japanese bombed Pearl Harbor in 1941. Houk
and his brother Harold immediately decided to enlist. The Coast
Guard was their first choice, but Houk failed the test for color
blindness. The Army took him. At first, he was assigned to the camp
baseball team, but he and his brother wanted to see combat. They
applied for Officer Candidate School and were accepted despite not
having attended college or even gone through basic training.

Houk made it through and was assigned to
England in 1943, where he punched a paratrooper captain after he
made crude remarks to a local girl. Like Yogi Berra, Houk landed at
Normandy Beach, albeit a couple of days after June 6, 1944. The
fighting in the Hedgerow countryside just beyond the beach was
intense, with British General Sir Bernard Law Montgomery dismally
failing to punch a hole in the German defenses.

"To the individual soldier nothing mattered
except to take orders, to execute them to the best of his ability -
and to survive," recalled Houk.

Houk avoided talking about his war
experiences for years, but when he became manager the New York
press "pictured me as a sort of Sergeant York." He chose to
enlighten the public in order to dissuade such a notion.

Houk fought his way across France, but by
December of 1944 he was in the Ardennes Forest of Belgium, feeling
like most of his comrades that the war was all but over. Then the
Germans launched a ferocious attack. Two other lieutenants, both
commanders of platoons, were killed. Houk suddenly found himself in
command of the remaining forces in the town of Waldbillig. The
Battle of the Bulge was on.

Houk oversaw the repelling of a ferocious
Nazi attack. His "machine guns and mortars cut down the Nazi
infantry until the snow turned red," he recalled. "Yet on they
came, and fell." Through field glasses, Houk saw six tiger tanks
approaching. If they got a fix, he and his men would be wiped out.
Houk knew a tank-destroyer was available in the rear.

"Life or death depended on getting that
message through" to the tank-destroyer, Houk recalled. He could not
risk sending a courier who might be killed, so Houk went himself.
Using a shroudy mist as cover, Houk evaded the German guns and
found the tank-destroyer, rode it back to the battle, positioned it
advantageously, and oversaw its destruction of the German tanks.
The town of Waldbillig had been saved. The Americans, led by
General George Patton, eventually prevailed in the Battle of the
Bulge and Houk, along with the rest, began the march on the
Rhineland, the heart of Germany. But more harrowing experiences lay
ahead for "the Major," the nickname that would stay with him in
baseball.

Sitting in a jeep with Private Gus Smith, "an
Indian from Neak Bay, Washington," said Houk, who "could see in the
dark," and Private Ken Pidgeon, "a New York jazz drummer," Houk was
struck in the helmet by a German sniper's bullet. He slumped and
the others thought he was dead until he rose as if
from
the
dead.

"The sniper's bullet had perforated the front
of the helmet, passed through the helmet-liner and come out in the
back," explained Houk. "It hadn't even clipped my hair."

From there, Houk helped the American units
fight across the important bridge at Remagen, and from there the
U.S. advanced to ultimate victory. Houk received the Silver Star
for his brave efforts in saving his men from the German tiger
tanks, and further received war-time promotions from first
lieutenant, captain and then major.

"Hey, Maj', how are you?" teammate Gene
Woodling exclaimed to him when he

returned to the Yankees, and that nickname
stuck with him all the years since. A catcher, Houk was
overshadowed by Yogi Berra but was a loyal organization man and
reached the Major Leagues. Houk loved to fish and once took Whitey
Ford and Woodling on a fishing trip during Spring Training. Hearing
what an ace fishmaster he was, Ford - a prankster - decided to play
a joke on him. With Houk positioned in the front of the boat, he
and Woodling caught three fish but kept hooking up the
already-caught ones, pretending to catch a new fish every couple of
minutes. Houk was steamed, having caught nothing while his
teammates were supposedly having a field day.

Finally, at the end of the day, Houk looked
in on the "big catch." He saw three measly fish with multiple
bruises where Ford and Woodling kept re-hooking them, and caught on
to the fact he had been had. He chased his laughing teammates all
the way down the dock.

After a few years mostly catching pitchers
in the bullpen, he retired and took over the Yankees' triple-A farm
club at Denver of the American Association. The Yankees were
successful because of their farm system in those days. Houk oversaw
the development of Bobby Richardson, Tony Kubek, Norm Siebern,
Johnny Blanchard, Ryne Duren and Ralph Terry.