Pinstripe Empire (46 page)

Another Stadium Club restaurant was added, where the visitors’ clubhouse had been, and a new visitors’ clubhouse was built behind the third-base dugout.

A small change that would have ramifications a year later was improvement to the outfield drainage system, beginning with a water well in the left-field bullpen.

A new press box was added as an overhang to the mezzanine, giving the writers and broadcasters privacy from the fans. After years behind home plate in the “coop” next to the players’ wives’ section, they had then sat in the first rows of the mezzanine until this enhancement.

Occupying the broadcast booth would be a crew from WABD, Channel 4, along with radio engineer Pappy Durkin from WINS, as Mel Allen and Curt Gowdy called the action. P. Ballantine & Sons was back for a fourth season as the team’s beer sponsor and had prominent signage on the new scoreboard it paid for. And man, oh, man, could Mel Allen sell that Ballantine. He would pour it—perfectly—during live commercials, and the sponsor loved it. Home runs were “Ballantine blasts.” “Baseball and Ballantine”: What a combination that would be for twenty years.

Gowdy would leave for Boston after the season, and speculation focused on Henrich as a replacement, but it would be Art Gleason (joined in 1952 by Bill Crowley, later PR director for the Red Sox). The grammatically challenged (“slud” instead of “slid”) Dizzy Dean was recruited to do pre- and postgame television shows.

Diz would be a fixture in American homes, calling the Game of the Week from 1953 to 1965 (first on ABC, then CBS), the majority of the games featuring the Yankees. This was largely unknown to New York–area fans, as the games were blacked out locally. But many across the nation would get lively exposure to the Yanks through the work of Dean, along with his
partners Buddy Blattner and later Pee Wee Reese. It was the beginning of a true national fan base for the team.

Henrich made 1950 his final season, but it was injury-riddled and unsatisfying, and he would retire after eleven years in pinstripes, his home run total just one shy of Keller’s for sixth on the Yankee list. Tommy coached for the Yanks in ’51, and later for the Giants and Tigers. He would live to be ninety-six, the last of Lou Gehrig’s teammates to die, when he passed away in 2009.

The 1950 season would also mark the end of the great association with the Newark Bears. Feeling only one triple-A team was needed, Weiss chose to keep Kansas City in the system. Newark became a Cub farm team and was shifted to Springfield, Massachusetts.

The dawn of the new decade saw major league attendance plunge 16 percent across the board, owing to a softening economy and perhaps enough time after the war for the baseball-is-back excitement to have subsided. And, yes, some spoke of the increased ownership of television sets and continued to warn about the dangers of the games being on free television. (Attendance would fall another 16 percent the following year.) The Yanks did top two million for the fifth straight year, a total they would never again approach in their remaining twenty-four seasons in the original stadium.

For the Yankees, 1950 marked the debuts of Whitey Ford, Jackie Jensen, and Billy Martin, and they would also swing a good trade with the Browns at the June trading deadline to bring pitchers Tom Ferrick and Joe Ostrowski to New York, giving up Stirnweiss in the process. Both pitchers would be big pennant-race pickups.

(Stirnweiss was out of baseball by 1952, and on September 15, 1958, he died tragically at age thirty-nine while a passenger on a New Jersey commuter train that plunged off the Newark Bay Bridge after leaving the Elizabethport station. He was working as a foreign freight agent, and was headed for a lunch appointment in New York.)

No 1950 deal was bigger than a waiver deal described as “inexplicable” by the press. Somehow, Pittsburgh first baseman Johnny Hopp went unclaimed by all National League teams and wound up with the Yankees on September 5. Hopp, a .335 hitter in ’49, was hitting .340 at the time, second in the National League. A twelve-year veteran, he was, like Mize the year before, a perfect pennant-stretch pickup for New York.

How could this have happened? Lips were sealed. No explanation ever
came forth. Like other surprising waiver deals, it would go the grave with Weiss, who never wrote a memoir.

“Baffling,” wrote Arthur Daley. “The Giants could have used him and the Cards could have used him. But a ‘gentlemen’s agreement’ presumably is more important than expediency and thus was Hopp waived out of the league.”

Roland Hemond, who would join the Braves’ front office the following summer, suggested that given Hopp’s age (thirty-three), his salary ($20,000), his lack of power, and the fact that he was a good addition for a pennant contender but no one else, the waiver deal was not surprising. “Most teams had their first baseman, and wouldn’t have really needed a Johnny Hopp,” he said.

Hopp would play in 19 games down the stretch and hit .333 with eight RBI, including a pinch-hit, game-winning grand slam. The rest of his Yankee career was insignificant, but the 1950 waiver deal was an annoyance to those who resented the Yankees’ seemingly endless ability to get whatever they needed.

Jensen and Martin both played for Oakland in 1949, and were both sold to the Yankees right after the season. Martin had played for Stengel there in ’48; Jensen had not. Jackie was an All-American football and baseball star at Berkeley, a handsome blond athlete who had finished fourth in Heisman Trophy voting while also playing on the first College World Series–winning team in ’47. Before Mickey Mantle was converted to the outfield, Jensen was thought of as a successor to DiMaggio in center. His Yankee career would last only three seasons; he would go to Washington and then Boston, where he’d win the American League’s MVP Award in 1958. But his fear of flying made it impossible for him to fully enjoy his gifts, and his career never played out to its full potential.

Martin was “Casey’s boy.” Stengel would be the father figure that Billy never had, and since Stengel as a young man had enjoyed the same high times that Billy did, they got along famously. While Stengel would rein Martin in when necessary, he also seemed to enjoy watching his brash behavior. More than anyone, Martin would be the prime example of exceeding one’s abilities simply by donning the Yankee uniform.

His teammates loved his fire and will to win, although not many could keep up with him on his nightly rounds. Those who did, including Mantle and Ford in the years to come, were seen by management as under his bad
influence. Billy was just arriving on the scene in 1950, but he had no problem needling DiMaggio (unheard of among veteran Yankees) and making his presence felt. There was no ignoring Billy Martin in Yankee history, this 165-pound second baseman who would hit just .262 in seven seasons with the Yankees and .251 in four seasons away from them, but .333 in 28 World Series games.

Ford was just as street-smart as Martin, but more politically correct and more in the image of how a Yankee should conduct himself. He was enormously gifted, and would be the only twentieth-century pitcher under six feet to go to the Hall of Fame. That speaks to his confident mound intelligence, something that ultimately led Elston Howard to call him “the Chairman of the Board.” Perfect.

Ed Ford was raised in Astoria, Queens, and went to the Manhattan School of Aviation. He was a first baseman in youth baseball, and attended a tryout session at Yankee Stadium under the eyes of scouts Paul Krichell and Johnny Sturm. It was Sturm who suggested he try pitching, being, in his eyes, too small to play first. Some months later, Krichell signed him for a $7,000 bonus.

Assigned to Binghamton in 1949, his manager was Lefty Gomez, who nicknamed him “Whitey.” He’d also be known as “Slick” because Stengel called him “whiskey slick,” a vague reference to his urban sophistication.

Ford was slick enough to call the Yankees from a Binghamton phone booth in 1949 to inform them that he was 16–5 with a 1.61 ERA and should be called up. It didn’t happen, but he did get the call the following June after going 6–3 at Kansas City. And he then made one of the great debuts in Yankee history, winning his first nine decisions and assuming his place with Raschi, Reynolds, and Lopat in the starting rotation of the defending world champions.

His only loss would be in his final decision, a relief appearance against the Athletics on September 27. It was the second-to-last victory of Connie Mack’s managing career.

The biggest of Whitey’s nine victories came on September 16, an 8–1 triumph over Detroit that put the Yanks in first place to stay. They wound up winning by three games over the Tigers (managed by Rolfe) and four over Boston (managed by McCarthy until he retired for good on June 23). (Washington, managed by Harris, finished fifth.)

The Yankees’ seventeenth pennant broke a tie with the Cubs for most pennants won, the Cubs having won six of theirs in the nineteenth century.

DiMaggio, .301/32/122, would enjoy his last big year, but it was Rizzuto, setting a record with fifty-eight consecutive errorless games and hitting .324, who would win the league’s MVP Award. Mize, despite missing a month of the season, drove in 72 runs on 76 hits while belting 25 home runs. Berra, at .322, and Bauer, at .320, made the lineup formidable. A discouraging note among the pitching staff was the fall of Page to a 5.07 ERA, which would mark the end of his Yankee career after seven seasons.

The 1950 World Series featured the Whiz Kids, the surprising Philadelphia Phillies, but the Yankees were too good and too experienced for them. The Phils started Jim Konstanty, their ace reliever, in game one, but Raschi outpitched him 1–0, with Coleman’s sacrifice fly in the fourth driving in Bobby Brown. In game two, DiMaggio homered in the top of the tenth to give the Yanks a 2–1 win as Reynolds bested Robin Roberts. Game three was a 3–2 Yankee win behind Lopat, with Woodling, Rizzuto, and Coleman singling in the last of the ninth for the winning run. Then Ford got the ball in game four and won the 5–2 clincher, with Stengel calling on Reynolds to get the final out, the fans booing Casey for removing Ford. The Phillies had made every game close, but the Yankees prevailed for their thirteenth world championship and second in a row under Casey.

IMAGINE YOU’RE A BASEBALL SCOUT with the lonely existence of driving long distances to see game after game, year after year, players in shoddy conditions in ragtag uniforms, all starting to look the same. Occasionally one stands out, you sign him to a contract, and then he becomes one of the 95 percent who never gets to the majors and is never heard from again.

You are earning less than $10,000 a year plus a few cents a mile for your gasoline, but you’re in your element, you like the open road, and, hey, you’re a baseball lifer.

And then one day you drive up to Baxter Springs, Kansas, and see, for the first time, Mickey Mantle. No other scouts are there. This is the moment a scout lives for.

It really can’t happen anymore. Scouting is sophisticated; prospects are shuttled into eminent schools and programs; the value of young talent is simply too recognizable. There may never be another Mickey Mantle moment.

A minor league pitcher himself, Tom Greenwade had moved with MacPhail from the Dodgers in ’46. In 1948, he stumbled on a sixteen-year-old Mantle playing for the Whiz Kids in Baxter Springs, twelve miles north of Mantle’s home of Commerce, Oklahoma. Greenwade spoke to Mantle, and when Mickey said he was a junior at Commerce High, he decided to back off, knowing league rules prohibited him from negotiating with high school prospects—but he kept an eye on him.

“The first time I saw Mantle,” Greenwade would say, “I knew how Paul Krichell felt when he first saw Lou Gehrig.”

The Mantle story became familiar to baby boomers, the postwar children. Their dads loved DiMaggio, but Mick was their own.

He had a bad high school football injury that led to osteomyelitis. He was an erratic shortstop. Greenwade signed him in the backseat of his car in Baxter Springs the day he graduated high school for an $1,150 bonus. Mickey’s alternative was to join his father and work in the zinc mines.

“[Greenwade] got me excused from the commencement exercises so I could play for the Whiz Kids that night,” Mantle recalled.

The game was in Coffeyville, Kansas. I had a good game—two singles and hit a pair of home runs, connecting from both sides. You’d figure I had it made, yet Greenwade comes over to Dad after the game and says very solemnly, “I’m afraid Mickey may never reach the Yankees. Right now, I’d have to rate him a lousy shortstop. Sloppy. Erratic arm. And he’s small. Get him in front of some really strong pitching …” Then, without blinking an eye, he says, “However, I’m willing to take a risk.” He stuck a contract in Dad’s hand. “All right Mutt, I’m ready to give Mickey four hundred dollars for playing at Independence the rest of the summer.” Dad winced. “He can make that much playing Sunday ball and working in the mines during the week.” Greenwade started scribbling something on the back of an envelope. Finally he says, “Tell you what, we’ll throw in an eleven-hundred dollar bonus.”

He reported to Independence, Missouri, in the KOM League, where Harry Craft was his manager. He
was
a terrible shortstop, but he was on his way.

In 1951, the Yankees swapped spring training sites with the Giants, Del Webb being anxious to bring his team to his hometown. That put Mantle in Phoenix and Willie Mays in St. Petersburg for their first big-league camps. Mantle, still a teenager, was a heralded switch-hitter, but he was clearly not a big-league infielder. He was moved to the outfield where Stengel himself, a former outfielder, tutored him. By the end of camp, which included hitting a prodigious homer at an exhibition at USC that may have reached six hundred feet, he made the team and was already being called the successor to DiMaggio. He would play right while Joe spent his final season in center.

Mantle had it all. He got handsomer as his awkward teen years moved to maturity. The name, the appearance, seemed created by Hollywood. No
switch-hitter ever hit with such power from both sides of the plate. No power hitter ever ran with such speed. His shy persona was a winner with fans.