A TALE OF THREE CITIES: NEW YORK, L.A. AND SAN FRANCISCO IN OCTOBER OF ‘62 (18 page)

Maris never approached .300. One writer asked him if
he would rather hit 60 homers or bat .300. Maris asked the writer,
“What would you rather do?” The writer, obviously a pinhead, said,
“Hit .300.” This was beyond ridiculous. The man was saying he would
rather accomplish this goal, attained by countless players before
and since, instead of attaining the most cherished statistic in
history.

“Well, it takes all kinds,” Maris responded
wryly.

Mantle, on the other hand, was a complete player,
batting well over .300 and enjoying his best season since the
consecutive MVP years of 1956-57. He was more handsome, a matinee
idol who, despite being married, lived a
Playboy
lifestyle
that writers, while not writing about it, admired vicariously.
Maris had a wife and kids back in North Dakota. He went home every
night and called her, having long conversations in which he
expressed his frustration and loneliness. But Maris’s pious ways
helped Mantle, his roommate. When Mick brought groupies home to
their Queens apartment, he felt Maris’s disapproval, even though
Roger was not holier-than-thou about it. The result was that Mick
toed the line, drinking and chasing less. His performance on the
field improved exponentially. But the writers somehow saw virtue as
a vice. They found fault in Roger’s approach.

At mid-season, Frick announced that unless Maris
broke Ruth’s 60-home run mark within the first 154 games, an
asterisk would be affixed to the record. More pressure. As the
Yankees pulled away from the powerhouse Detroit Tigers, the
Maris-Mantle chase became a feeding frenzy. Maris took question
after question. He was polite and respectful, but when the
attention interfered with his game preparation or personal life, he
cut them off. He was excoriated for it.

Maris was accused of being bored, angry, and uppity.
One fan asked him to put “your X” on a baseball. Maris wrote “X”
instead of his signature, either a mistake or a bad joke. It made
news and he was destroyed over it. Fans booed him, but gave
standing ovations to Mantle, who ascended to Ruth-like status in
the Big Apple, which is saying something.

Mantle’s mid-September abscess did him in, leaving
the chase up to Roger. Mantle was disappointed but gave his
teammate the go ahead to “go after that fat (expletive deleted).”
However, with Mantle out of the line-up, Maris no longer had the
great slugger protecting him in the order. He also had to adjust to
taking his position in center field.

The 154-game cut-off loomed, and forces of nature
literally seemed to work against Maris in the form of Hurricane
Esther, blowing wind and rain in from right field at Baltimore. In
the 154
^th
game, Maris hit his 59
^th
home run,
but failed against knuckleballer Hoyt Wilhelm in the ninth inning.
In the post-game pennant-clinching celebration, Maris sat alone.
The pressure had gotten to him. His hair began to fall out. It was
not over yet.

The press said Maris was a “failure,” but he still
had eight games left. In game number 159 on September 26, Maris
blasted his 60
^th
home run off of Baltimore’s Jack
Fisher. Oddly, only 19,000 were at Yankee Stadium to see it, but
number 60 changed the relationship Maris had with the fans, who
cheered his efforts. But when the exhausted star took game number
160 off, the press was incredulous.

Finally, in the 162
^nd
and last game of
the year, Maris connected off of Boston’s Tracy Stallard for his
*61
^st
homer of 1961. A crowd of 23,154 gave him a
standing ovation and Maris made a curtain call, tipping his cap in
relief and appreciation. Announcer Phil Rizzuto’s signature, “Holy
cow Maris did it!” lives on in memory. A 19-year old man named Sal
Durante caught the sphere. Roger never objected to his keeping it
and selling it for profit. The famed circuit clout was all the
scoring in a 1-0 New York triumph, their 109
^th
of an
incredible season.

Maris hit a home run in the anti-climatic World
Series. Mantle, still recovering from his abscess wound, hardly
played. It did not matter. Cincinnati was no match for the Bronx
Bombers.

By 1962, Yogi Berra had been moved to left field,
replaced behind the plate by Elston Howard. However, Berra goes
down in history as one of the greatest catchers of all time. Berra
is also one of the luckiest, most improbable baseball stars
ever.

Berra was born on May 12, 1925 in St. Louis,
Missouri. He grew up in the Italian section of town known as The
Hill. His best friend was Joe Garagiola, who went on to become the
catcher for the hometown St. Louis Cardinals. Berra, like
Garagiola, was a catcher. He was funny looking and seemingly
unathletic, but blocked everything, threw runners out and hit line
drives all over the field. One day a carnival rolled through time.
One of the circus performers was an Eastern character, a mystic
known as a Yogi. Berra’s friends said he looked like the Yogi and
started calling him that.

He pursued baseball but World War II got in the way.
Like many ballplayers, Berra served in the war. Many played on
service teams or avoided combat. A Naval enlisted man, Yogi found
himself on a torpedo boat steaming its way towards Normandy Beach
on June 6, 1944. He recalled later that it was “fun.” Somehow, his
sector was not pounded by German ordnance. He and his fellow boat
crew all survived.

The Yankees had to make adjustments after World War
II. Many of their star players had retired, or had careers
interrupted by the war. It was a period of transition. Berra took
over for Hall of Fame catcher Bill Dickey. Dickey was the
embodiment of a big league catcher: over six feet tall, muscular,
athletic, handsome, with a gun for an arm, fundamentally sound
skills behind the plate, and a powerful bat. In all the years in
which the great Yankees won World Championships with Lou Gehrig and
Joe DiMaggio, Dickey had been the glue who guided their sterling
pitching staff; a dynamic team leader.

Dickey tried to make a comeback in 1946 after
missing all of the 1944 and 1945 seasons, but he was over the hill.
When Berra took over for him, the fans were aghast.
Yogi
Berra?
His defensive skills were not at the big league level
yet. He was clumsy, looked funny, and inspired no confidence. In
St. Louis, his pal Garagiola, while a light hitter, was the
embodiment of big league smooth behind the dish, helping the
Cardinals to the 1946 World Championship.

But a funny thing happened. Every time Yogi came to
the plate, he swatted base hits. In seven games in 1946 he hit
.364. In 1947 the Yankees won the World Series. Berra played part
time but batted a respectable .280 with 11 homers in 83 games. In
1948 he was given the starting catcher’s job and hit .314. In 1949,
Casey Stengel took over. Berra still had his detractors, but Casey
made it clear that Yogi was his starting catcher. The press hooted
that the “clown” Casey had picked a cartoon character for his
catcher. The “Yogi and Boo Boo” jokes abounded. Then another funny
thing happened. Yogi hit 20 homers, batted .277, guided a New York
staff of Vic Raschi (21-10), Eddie Lopat (15-10), Allie Reynolds
(17-6), Tommy Byrnes (15-7) and closer Joe Page (27 saves, 2.59
ERA) to 97 wins and a World Series victory over the vaunted
Brooklyn Dodgers.

Over the next two years, the Yankees made the
transition from the DiMaggio era to the Mantle era. The guiding
force behind this successful effort was Berra. By 1951 he was a
bona fide
Yankee legend, a popular figure in Yankee lore
approaching the Ruths, Gehrigs and DiMaggios. He swatted .27
homers, batted 294, and led the Bronx Bombers to their third World
title while winning the ’51 MVP award.

While Mickey Mantle struggled; enduring press scorn
and fan enmity for not serving in Korea, for striking out too much,
and for not being DiMaggio, Berra – the veteran of Normandy – was a
crowd favorite. The pitching staff swore by him, as did Casey. He
was 5-7 1/2, weighed 185 pounds; a chunky little guy, but he had
cat-quick reflexes and a great throwing arm. Opposing runners did
not test him. When they did they paid for it, getting thrown out
regularly. He could block home plate with the best of them,
although in one famous piece of classic World Series footage,
Jackie Robinson stole home against him. The replay to this day does
not clearly show whether he was safe or out. Berra still claims he
tagged him first.

Berra was a steady hitter who hovered at or near
.300, usually hitting around 30 homers and driving in 100 runs. In
1954 and 1955 he won consecutive Most Valuable Player awards,
giving him three before Mantle had won his first. But Elston Howard
was on the rise. The Yankees, like the rest of the American League,
had been slow to integrate. Their fan base was corporate, Wall
Street, patrician pinstriped country club Republicans. The club was
very careful that when black players wore the pin stripes, they not
be “agitators.” A talented black farmhand, Vic Powers, had been
traded because he was flamboyant and liked white women.

Howard fit the Yankee mold to a tee. To Berra’s
credit, he never stood in his way even when Howard took the job.
The team player Berra was moved to the outfield, the transition
occurring between 1959 and 1961. Yogi was continually productive at
the plate. While not a great outfielder, he had baseball instincts
and was never a liability. His only regret was the “loneliness" of
outfield play. Behind the plate, Berra was a chatter box, asking
opposing players what they had for dinner, where they were going
after the game, did they know their shoes were untied?

“Stee-rike one.”

Yogi asked Ted Williams about fishing in the Florida
Keys. Teddy Ballgame told him, “Shut up, ya little dago.” Others
instructed the umpire to tell Berra to pipe down.

“Don’t take it personally,” Yogi responded.

In 1961, Berra hit 22 home runs, catching 15 games
while playing 87 in the outfield. He was 36 years old when he
reported to Spring Training in 1962.

Edward Charles “Whitey” Ford was born on October 21,
1926 in New York City. He attended Aviation High School in Queens,
a Yankees fan since his first trip to the Stadium in 1938. For
various reasons, New York has not produced a plethora of baseball
stars. Great athletes more often than not come from the South or
the West. In the Yankees’ case, California – particularly the San
Francisco Bay Area – was a breeding ground for the pinstripers.
Ford, Phil Rizzuto and Lou Gehrig were New Yorkers, but relative
exceptions to the rule.

Ford grew up fast, as so many do in the Big Apple. He
was already worldly, a young man with a taste for martinis, hot
night clubs and fast women, when he came up through the minor
leagues and reported to Yankee Stadium in 1950 at the age of 23. He
originally signed with the organization in 1946 and started at
Binghampton of the Eastern League the next year. At first, Ford
struggled to break through the rugged minor league competition that
populated the Yankees’ farm system. He played at Butler of the
Class C Middle Atlantic League. At 5-10 and less than 180 pounds,
Ford was not an impressive physical specimen. In order for a young
pitcher to establish himself as a prospect in the amateur and minor
league ranks, he must throw hard. Ford did not. He needed to
establish his presence without a great fast ball.

In this respect, however, Ford was fortunate to be a
Yankee. The club had a long history of excellent hurlers who did it
with guile, smarts and control. One of those pitchers was Lefty
Gomez, a Hall of Famer from California who was one of the first to
take Ford under his wing. During Ford’s first Spring Training,
there were so many pitchers that Gomez could remember all their
names. Pitchers went by “Blondie” or “Whitey.” Ford had
bleach-blonde white hair, so his nickname was obvious.

Despite Gomez’s nickname, Ford went by Eddie for
years, signing autographs “Eddie Ford.” But Gomez kept calling him
Whitey, promoting him within the organization. Gomez was a
practical joker who played one on the young Ford. Ford and a
teammate went to a carnival in North Carolina and took the ferris
wheel. They had just enough time for one whirl before making it
back to the hotel in time for Gomez’s 10:00 P.M. curfew, except
that Gomez paid the ferris wheel operator to keep it going until
the curfew had passed. Ford and his teammate ran back but were met
by Gomez, who maintained a straight face while he fined them for
breaking curfew.

If Ford had known it was a joke he would have known
he was headed places. Gomez would only play a practical joke on one
of his favorites, not an also-ran. Years later, Ford found out
about the joke and demanded his money back, which Gomez laughingly
gave up. The fact is, however, that Ford was brimming with
confidence. He
knew
he was headed for the big time.

Ford came up in 1950. One pundit immediately called
him “the oldest young man I’ve ever seen.” With his shock of blonde
hair and baby face he still looked like a teenager, but the crooked
smile and twinkle in his eye belied that. He was street smart,
completely sure of himself on and off the field. Ford won nine
games against one defeat with a 2.81 earned run average and 8 2/3
innings of shutout pitching in a World Series win over
Philadelphia, as New York captured the 1950 World Championship.

He had total control and command; a superb curve and
slider; a nasty sinker; and a wide array of “trick” pitchers:
spitters, cutters, and other illegalities, all performed with the
guts of a cat burglar. Billy Martin was a wide-eyed rube from West
Berkeley, California. On a team of veterans, he and Ford were young
players. Ford made fun of Martin’s unsophisticated ways, but Billy
hardly knew he was being razzed. Martin gravitated to the
charismatic Ford.