Pinstripe Empire (48 page)

Joe was elected to the Hall of Fame in 1955 (with Home Run Baker) in his third year of eligibility. First-round elections were rare in the days when the Hall was still young and still catching up with a half century of elections never held. Also, while there was no formal five-year waiting period (as enacted in 1954 but waived for Joe), electors seemed not to want to vote for newly retired players, something that helped bring about the five-year rule. DiMaggio, in fact, was only the fifth, and the last, player (besides Ruth, Hubbell, Hornsby, and Ott) elected in fewer than five years after retirement. (Gehrig was a special selection and the waiting period was waived for Roberto Clemente.)

ANOTHER DEPARTURE IN 1951 was that of Commissioner Happy Chandler. Chandler always felt that Del Webb was behind his ouster. He had begun an investigation of whether Webb held a financial interest in Bugsy Siegel’s Flamingo casino in Las Vegas. The plain-talking Chandler wrote, “My abortive investigation of Webb’s reported Las Vegas connections, of course, turned him flatly against me. In the end, he teamed up with [Lou] Perini, [Fred] Saigh, and other skunks to put me on the skids before I could get them.”

“It took me about 48 hours to get enough votes to throw him out,” said Webb. “It was the best thing that ever happened to baseball.”

Chandler’s successor was Ford Frick, the National League president who had covered the Yankees and who was among those who had been a ghostwriter for Babe Ruth.

IN THE YANKS’ fiftieth season, 1952, Bell Telephone assigned a new phone number to Yankee Stadium—CYpress 3-4300—but calls for tickets were
dropping. Despite the success, attendance fell by more than three hundred thousand in 1952, with more homes owning television sets and DiMaggio gone. (That number would still be in place when the Yankees moved into their new home in 2009.)

The Yankees would go after a fourth straight world championship that year, a quest to equal their all-time record. Most of the twelve players who were part of this run of championship clubs felt that the ’52 team was the best of the five.

Martin had been drafted into the army in 1951, but after successfully applying for a hardship discharge (to care for his new wife and ailing stepfather), he had spent most of the season on the Yankee bench, and most of the evenings forming a friendship with Mantle. On April 30, 1952, Coleman was called off for military duty in Korea, and second base was Billy’s. Two early-season brawls—one under the stands with Boston’s Jimmy Piersall and one on the field after he broke Clint Courtney’s glasses with a tag—quickly established Billy’s reputation as a hot-tempered player. Although a product of Berkeley, California, Billy was like an Old West gunslinger, and his image evolved over the years into that of a Texan—and one you better not mess with. Mantle would say, “He was the only guy I ever met who could
hear
somebody give him the finger.”

Billy had played in the Arizona-Texas League in 1947, and perhaps his self-image had been shaped there. He didn’t reappear in Texas until he managed the Rangers in 1973, but by then he was all cowboy and would have been repelled by the liberal thinkers from Berkeley. He didn’t even like tennis players, because to him tennis wasn’t a manly sport. He even opened a Western-wear shop in New York.

Of course, Billy had his vulnerable side, too, something the fans seemed to realize. He was the skinny kid taking on the big fellows and doing his damnedest to succeed. These dueling personas—the sympathy-inducing Billy and the take-on-all-challengers Billy—would define his Yankee career for the next forty years, with time-outs for periodic exiles.

IN THEIR FIFTIETH season, the Yanks won a close pennant race with Cleveland, clinching when they won fourteen of fifteen in the final weeks of the season. The big game in that run came on Sunday, September 14, when 73,608 jammed Municipal Stadium to see Lopat beat 20-game winner Mike Garcia 7–1 with a 3
⅔
-inning save from Reynolds and a homer and a
double from Mantle. The win put the Yanks two and a half games ahead instead of just half a game. The Indians would have no opportunity to narrow the lead head-to-head, and the Yanks kept rolling.

Berra, who set a catcher’s record with 30 home runs, won his second MVP Award and was now in a remarkable streak of ten consecutive seasons in which he finished no worse than fourth in MVP voting.

THE ’52 WORLD Series pitted the Yanks against Brooklyn for the fourth time, and this time the Flock (a nickname used by New York writers who recalled the Dodgers’ days as the Robins) had become what author Roger Kahn would come to call the Boys of Summer.

With the Series knotted at 2–2, Stengel made a decision to start sidearmer Ewell Blackwell in game five. Blackwell, often called one of the toughest pitchers in the National League during his career with Cincinnati, had pitched in only five games for the Yankees since coming over from the Reds on August 28. Carl Erskine outpitched him, but the game went into extra innings, with the Dodgers winning 6–5 in the eleventh. Raschi, with a save from Reynolds, then won game six 3–2, and the tight series went down to a seventh game at Ebbets Field.

This game, preserved on a kinescope, is the oldest surviving full game known to exist on film.

Mantle, still just twenty years old, broke a 2–2 tie in the sixth with a home run and drove in another run in the seventh for a 4–2 Yankee lead.

In the last of the seventh, the Dodgers loaded the bases. As in ’51, Stengel brought in Kuzava. This time, facing Jackie Robinson, Kuzava induced a high pop-up between the mound and first base. Collins, the first baseman, seemed to lose it in the October sun, and it appeared as though it might drop and score the tying runs. Suddenly, Martin raced in from second to catch the ball knee-high, saving the day for the Yankees. It was a quick-thinking, athletic play, a rare feat that showcased Martin’s talents.

Kuzava got the last six outs for the second year in a row as the Yankees took their fourth straight world championship, equaling the feat of the 1936–39 teams. Mize, with homers in three consecutive games and a .400 average, was the hitting star for the Yankees, and Raschi and Reynolds each won two games.

____________

WITH FIFTY YANKEE seasons having passed, Arthur Daley chose an all-time Yankee team for a lengthy
New York Times
magazine feature. He selected Gehrig, Lazzeri, Rizzuto, and Rolfe in the infield; Dickey catching; Ruth, DiMaggio, and Meusel in the outfield; and Gomez and Ruffing as the lefty and righty pitchers. The Yankees also asked all their regular sportswriters to vote, and the results were the same, adding Crosetti as a utility man, Murphy as a relief pitcher, and Pennock in a tie with Gomez as the left-handed starter.

WHITEY FORD WAS back in ’53 from two lost years in the service, making 1953 the only full season in which Raschi-Reynolds-Lopat-Ford were together, although Reynolds was now spending more time in relief. Whitey, 18–6, led the staff in victories; Sain’s 14–7 mark (19 starts, 21 relief appearances) was a pleasant surprise from the thirty-five-year-old; and Kuzava pitched the game of his life when he no-hit Chicago for eight innings before a 68,529-strong Ladies’ Day crowd in August.

While not a regular, another player of note on the ’53 Yankees was Willy Miranda of Cuba, purchased from the Browns in June. Miranda would be the first postwar Latino player on the team. (His brother Fausto was an important sports editor both in Cuba and the U.S.)

Also worthy of note in 1953 was the briefest of brief Yankee careers. Frank Verdi, who would later manage the team’s triple-A clubs, made his debut on May 10, playing shortstop for one inning after Collins hit for Rizzuto. He handled no chances. But when Boston changed pitchers with Verdi due to hit, Casey summoned him back to the dugout and sent up Bill Renna. That would be Verdi’s entire big-league career. Casey’s platoon system could be cruel.

(Verdi fared better than some Yankees, lost to history, who were called up and never got into a game. This happened with regularity when catchers had weekend army reserve duty and an emergency triple-A player was called up—just in case.)
¹²

Mickey Mantle ‘s reputation as one of the great sluggers of all time really took shape on April 17, 1953, when he hit a Chuck Stobbs pitch out of
Griffith Stadium in Washington, leading to the invention of the term “tape-measure home run.”

The clout, accomplished right-handed with a borrowed Loren Babe model bat, left the ballpark after grazing the small scoreboard at the rear of the left-field bleachers. Everyone who saw the blast was in awe—no one thought they had ever seen its like.

Red Patterson knew a good story when he saw one. According to accounts of the time, Red left the press box, left the ballpark, and tracked down young Donald Dunaway on 434 Oakland Place, who was holding the ball. Dunaway showed Patterson where it landed, and gave him the ball in exchange for some cash.

Red would later tell me that he walked it off with his size-eleven shoes to determine the distance, each step being twelve inches. Reports said he’d used a tape measure. Red returned to the press box and reported that the ball traveled 565 feet. It became part of baseball legend.

In researching her 2010 biography of Mantle, Jane Leavy found the frail sixty-nine-year-old Dunaway. Dunaway told Leavy that he watched the home run from the bleachers, and then left the park to retrieve the ball. He returned to the park to give the ball to Mantle, and was escorted by an usher to the visitor’s clubhouse. There he ran into Patterson, who never left Griffith Stadium.

The ball didn’t get anywhere near the backyard of 434 Oakland that Patterson described, and was probably more like 505–515 feet. Still, Mantle’s legend as the tape-measure home run king was made.

THE ’53 YANKS coasted to their twentieth American League pennant by winning 99 games and finishing eight and a half games ahead of Cleveland. The season was effectively over on June 14 when the Yanks ran their winning streak to a club-record eighteen, completing a four-game sweep of the Indians and taking a ten-and-a-half-game lead. Lopat and Ford each won four during the winning streak, a streak that lost a little of its luster when the Yanks proceeded to drop nine straight to narrow the lead to five.

The Yankees won the World Series over Brooklyn in six games, Mantle hitting a grand slam in game five, then wrapping it up the next day behind Ford and Reynolds when Martin singled home Bauer in the last of the ninth for a 4–3 win over reliever Clem Labine. It was Martin’s twelfth hit
of the series and gave him a .500 average (with two homers and eight RBI), as Billy once again answered the call in October with a memorable performance.

This was the Yankees’ fifth consecutive world championship, a feat unprecedented in baseball. More than a half century later and counting, no team has managed to win even four straight.

“You would think we would have had one of those ticker-tape parades after all those years,” said Ford. “But we never had a single one. People just expected us to win, and we did, and then it was on to next year. We had our victory celebrations, we got our rings, but there was never a parade. It would have been fun! I would have liked to have been in at least one!”

IN NOVEMBER, THE Yankees made their way to the United States Supreme Court in the case of George Earl Toolson vs. New York Yankees et al. The case was a test of baseball’s reserve system, and the structure of organized baseball was on trial. The Yankees were named because Toolson had been a Yankee pitcher at Newark in 1949 and believed he had major league abilities (he was 26-26 in triple-A), but because of the Reserve Clause he was being held back in the minors, unable to find a major league job on his own. When Newark dissolved, he was transferred to Binghamton and placed on the ineligible list when he refused to report. That was when he decided to sue.

By a 7–2 vote, the court ruled that any change in the system could not come from them but from Congress, although it was the court that had granted baseball its antitrust exemption in 1922.

IN DECEMBER, THE Yankees and Athletics completed an eleven-player deal, the Yanks giving up Vic Power, the American Association’s batting champ at .349. “Power was the key player,” said Weiss. “The Athletics mentioned his name and then wouldn’t hear of anybody else. Apparently they are going to make a bid for Negro fans and figure Power will help them at the gate.” The key additions to New York were pitcher Harry Byrd, who had been Rookie of the Year in ’52 with 15 victories (but 11–20 in 1953), and Eddie Robinson, a slugging first baseman. The A’s, who were desperate to stave off bankruptcy, happily took $25,000 in cash as part of the deal.

Power, a dark-skinned Puerto Rican with exceptional fielding skills at first base (he popularized one-hand catches), was a victim of scouting reports that included charged words like “showboat,” “flashy,” and “dates white women.” Whether the latter was true or not, just “flashy” would probably have disqualified Power from ever making it to New York, regardless of the racial climate at the time. It just wasn’t Yankee style, and so long as the team kept winning in the accepted manner created during the Barrow-McCarthy years, things weren’t about to change.

In February ’54, Vic Raschi was sold to St. Louis. The Springfield Rifle had gone 120–50 for the Yanks, despite pitching with bone chips in his pitching arm and a painful ligament injury in his right knee. But after going 13–6 in 1953, he refused to agree to a 20 percent pay cut and was sold, learning about it from reporters who came to his house in St. Petersburg. The great run of Raschi-Reynolds-Lopat was over.

Raschi did not pitch well for the Cardinals (he yielded Hank Aaron’s first career homer), and he was done the following year. He retired to Conesus, New York, and operated a liquor store in nearby Geneseo. Vic died in 1988 at sixty-nine.

IN 1954, A BOOK WRITTEN BY Washington Senators fan Douglas Wallop was published called
The Year the Yankees Lost the Pennant.
It was well received and prophetic, for indeed, the Yankees won 103 games in 1954 but finished eight games behind Cleveland, ending their streak. Wallop’s book was set in 1958 and involved a Senators fan selling his soul to the devil in order to reclaim his youth and, as a strapping Joe Hardy, lead his Senators to victory. The drama, of course, came when it was time for the devil to collect his debt.