Pinstripe Empire (56 page)

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 33
⅔
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.

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 led 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.

And so Yogi’s eighteen-year Yankee playing career drew to a close. Three MVP awards, more World Series games and hits than anyone, the home run record for catchers with 358, and a certain Hall of Fame plaque. Was he better than his mentor, Dickey? Dickey outhit Berra .313 to .285, but in many ways they were fairly equal. When it came time to retire Yogi’s number 8, it was decided that Dickey, having worn it earlier, should get equal recognition. So the two 8s retired by the Yankees is unique in baseball. (In May 1965 Yogi would “unretire” and play four games for the Mets, a decision he later regretted.)

THE YANKEES OPENED the ’64 season without Harry M. Stevens as the stadium concessionaire, a relationship that went back to 1903. Stevens was replaced by National Concessions Service, a division of Automatic Canteen Company, the company Art Friedland had brought Topping and Webb into some years before. It had grown into a full-service ballpark concessionaire, and the stadium menu was augmented by new items like shrimp rolls, pizza, fish sandwiches, and milkshakes. Automatic Canteen evolved into Centerplate, which handled Yankee Stadium until it closed in 2008, at which time the Yankees entered into a new company with the Dallas Cowboys called Legends Hospitality. A joint video with Cowboys owner Jerry Jones and George Steinbrenner, released October 20, 2008, would be the last business announcement Steinbrenner would be personally involved with. (In 1994, Aramark acquired the Harry M. Stevens name.)

THINGS DID NOT go smoothly for Yogi at first. Third in the standings in mid-August, the Yankees got a lifeline in Stottlemyre, called up from Richmond, a move reminiscent of Ford’s debut fourteen years earlier.

Mel, a tall, poker-faced right-hander from Washington State whose best
pitch was a sinker, started against Chicago on Wednesday afternoon, August 12, and won 7–3. He was aided by one of the longest home runs of Mantle’s career. It was, in fact, the longest measured homer in Yankee Stadium, 502 feet, soaring over the twenty-two-foot screen in the batter’s eye in dead center, a screen that would occasionally be removed to seat people in that bleacher section in the days before batter safety was taken more seriously.

Mel went 9–3 in 12 starts for the Yanks with a 2.06 ERA. Downing won just 13 but also struck out 217, the most on the team since Chesbro in 1904. Ford, doubling as pitching coach, was 17–6 with eight shutouts, and Bouton led the staff with 18 wins. The bullpen, though, needed shoring up. Pete Mikkelsen joined Reniff and Steve Hamilton, but the trio was no sure thing.

To many, a turning point in the season came in Chicago after a 5–0 loss to the White Sox, the team’s fourth straight. Now they were in third place, four and a half out, and sinking.

On the bus to the airport, where the code of baseball called for contemplative silence following a loss, Phil Linz pulled out a new Hohner harmonica he’d been learning and began to play “Mary Had a Little Lamb.” It was a silly moment, but it infuriated the old guard at the front of the bus—including Berra, whose nerves were frayed anyway.

“Shut that thing up,” he yelled.

“What did he say?” asked Linz.

Mantle, not capturing the seriousness of the moment, responded to Linz: “He said play it louder.” And Linz did.

That felt like defiance to the manager. Perhaps goaded by Crosetti, who called it “the worst thing I’ve seen in 33 years with the team,” Yogi walked to the back of the bus and knocked it out of Linz’s hands.

“I said put it away! You’d think we just
won
four games.”

The writers, who traveled with the team in those days, witnessed the activity from their front seats. “Why are you getting on me?” said Linz. “I give 100 percent on the field. I try to win. I should be able to do what I want off the field.”

Grumbling under his breath, Yogi returned to his seat and the team headed for Boston. Linz was fined $200, but would wind up on the back cover of the Yankee yearbook in ’65, posing for an ad by Hohner. Did the show of managerial power snap this veteran team to attention? Did it turn things around?

That became the conventional wisdom. In fact, the Yankees lost their next two in Boston to run the losing streak to six. But then they began to play better. They won seven of their next nine. They won eleven straight in September. From the harmonica “incident” to the end of the season, they were 30–13.

On September 5 (too late to be eligible for World Series play), the Yankees traded Terry and Daley to the Indians for the veteran Pedro Ramos.

Ramos, master of the “Cuban palmball” (a spitter?), was a flamboyant character who wore a cowboy hat and boots, smoked Cuban cigars, and was forever challenging Mantle to a race, which the Yankees strictly forbade. A starting pitcher for most of his ten-year career, Ramos responded to his bullpen assignment with a win and eight saves in 13 appearances. He was an overnight hit with the fans and his teammates.

(He was also the last Cuban on the Yankees until Luis Tiant in 1979. Steinbrenner would try to take his team to Cuba in 1977 to open relations there and perhaps find a way to sign Cuban players, but Commissioner Bowie Kuhn stopped him, saying only an All-Star team could go. Steinbrenner made a later trip with Ford and took in a game with Fidel Castro, but couldn’t open up the process in the Yankees’ favor.)

THE YANKS WON their twenty-ninth pennant by just one game. It was their fifth in a row (under three managers), and a triumph for the rookie manager and the rookie general manager. But it was a close call.