David Halberstam may be best known for his book about the Vietnam war, The Best and the Brightest, but he was also a sports fan, writing at least two books about basketball, two about baseball, and one that looks to be about a football coach. The two I’ve read recently are about baseball. One, coincidentally, about the season of 1949 (my birth year), is about the pennant race between the Boston Red Sox and New York Yankees, as well as the World series against the Brooklyn Dodgers.
The other is, coincidentally again, about the season of 1964, the first season I closely followed the Major League baseball season, as well as other sports. Both have to do with the evolution of baseball into the modern game. Halberstam went into great detail about different personalities on each team, some of them players, some team officials, and some ordinary workers in stadiums.
One of the central characters of the New York Yankees was George Weiss, the general manager, whom the players loathed because he always had a reason not to pay them as much as they thought they deserved. One reason for holding down expenses was because he was given a certain amount out of which to pay players salaries, and was allowed to keep a percentage of however much of it he didn’t spend. One can imagine what the players thought of that when they heard of it.
Weiss had built the Yankee farm system in the 1930s, following the lead of Branch Rickey, whose innovation had been to buy minor league teams instead of buying players from independent minor league teams. When players were signed they were sent to the minor leagues to learn how to play the major league game and were promoted to teams in that played a higher of standard of ball until they reached the major leagues. As Yankee general manager Weiss still inspected the minor league teams, and always had something negative to say about how they kept the stadiums they played in. It’s also interesting that Weiss felt very threatened when Yogi Berra became one of the first major league players to hire an agent. Others followed his lead, and began to have access to income outside the control of the major league teams.
The farm system had been very good to the Yankees, as it had also been to the St. Louis Cardinals, and later the Brooklyn Dodgers, after Rickey went to run that team. Lefty Gomez, Joe DiMaggio, Phil Rizzuto, and Yogi Berra were all products of the farm system, as well as less prominent players like Tommy Henrich and Charlie Keller. Weiss and Rickey both used the farm system to keep their teams competitive, either trading major league players while they were still productive (and before they could demand higher pay) and bringing up players from the minors to replace them, or trading minor league prospects for major league players still able to help the major league team. There are now very few independent minor league teams, and major league teams didn’t much like one that was active in the 1970s, intervening to keep it from winning a minor league championship.
Tom Yawkey had bought the Boston Red Sox in the 1930s when they weren’t a very good team. A previous owner of the Sox had been more interested in producing Broadway shows than running a baseball team, and had sold off many of the players of the very good team he owned, who had won two recent world championships. Babe Ruth was the most famous of those players, and Boston hadn’t won a World Series since he’d gone to the Yankees. Yawkey had slowly rebuilt the Red Sox, acquiring Ted Williams, Dominick DiMaggio (Joe’s brother, also a center fielder), two very good pitchers, and Bobby Doerr, who was almost as clutch a hitter as Williams.
But World War II prevented the Red Sox from winning any pennants. It also prevented Williams, considered by many to be the greatest hitter in baseball history, from getting 3,000 hits, the career goal of elite hitters. Halberstam recounts how Williams complained to a teammate after he struck out, and the teammate asked him what the pitcher had thrown him. When Williams told him it was a curve, the teammate asked, What do you think he’ll throw you next time? Williams was waiting in his next at-bat, and hit a home run off the curve the pitcher had previously struck him out on. He then began obsessively studying pitchers to know what they were likely to throw in any situation.
Williams had a difficult relationship with Boston fans because they got on him, often encouraged by Boston sportswriters. He had a thin skin, partly because of his family situation. His father was a drinker, and his mother (who was Mexican) was a religious fanatic, going door to door to convert people. He got little guidance from them. Because of their neglect, he pursued baseball obsessively. Not the fielding part, but the hitting part, which fascinated him. He joined the San Diego Padres, the minor league team of the city in which he grew up, and it didn’t take long for him to make the majors.
Joe DiMaggio was also a California boy. His father had come over from Italy and had decided San Francisco was a good place to be a fisherman. He was successful at that, and had many children, three of whom became major league players. Vince DiMaggio was the oldest, and also a center fielder, but he was the least gifted of the three. He hit for some power, but not for a very good average. Dominick hit for a good average, but didn’t have much power, though he was possibly the best fielder of the three. But Joe was the complete player, hitting for great average (he had a 75 game hitting streak in the minor leagues several years before setting the major league record with the Yankees), for great power, fielded center field immaculately, and had a powerful throwing arm. He was on many World Series-winning teams, something Williams wanted desperately to do, but was never able.
Yogi Berra was another product of the Yankee farm system, and was quickly recognized as being a very good player, even though he didn’t LOOK like a Yankee. Yankees were supposed to be tall and handsome, and Berra was neither. But he was a very good hitter, and able to play more than one position. He often played left field, as well as catcher–he wasn’t the best catcher in terms of fielding, but was a clutch hitter.
He was also smarter than he appeared. He got a reputation for saying funny things which was only partially deserved. Writers sometimes made up things they attributed to him, and he usually went along with it, but he also DID sometimes say amusing things. But though he didn’t look athletic (but was), wasn’t handsome, and didn’t seem articulate, he was smart about making money outside of baseball, and later was a successful manager. More of that later.
The Yankees continued to be successful in the 1940s, in spite of World War II when many of the best players were fighting overseas. They won pennants 1941-43, and again in 1947 and 1949. The Red Sox got a lot of players back in 1946 and won the pennant that season. They played a very good St. Louis Cardinals team in the World Series, and lost in the seventh game after Dom DiMaggio got injured and had to leave the game. Enos Slaughter then scored from first base on a single, which he probably couldn’t have done had a healthy DiMaggio been in center field. The two good Red Sox pitchers were less effective in following seasons. The Red Sox tied the Cleveland Indians for the pennant in 1948, but lost a playoff game. In 1949 they wanted to win it all.
Their manager was Joe McCarthy who had been very successful managing the Yankees. He had also been successful with the Cubs, earlier. Whether he was beginning to be in over his head was a question, though. Times were changing, McCarthy was a relatively rigid man, and that eventually hurt his team.
Mel Parnell was a very good young pitcher in 1949. He had had a good rookie year the season before, and was part of a pitching staff that had potential, but that was something of an unknown quantity, which is what pitchers often are. All athletes are subject to injury, but in baseball pitchers are more vulnerable than any other position.
Ellis Kinder was an older pitcher who hadn’t had a lot of success, having been stuck in the minor leagues for a number of years. This was at least partly because he didn’t recognize the team’s right to tell him what to do at night. Nights before he pitched he would be out drinking and chasing women, and that didn’t prevent him from pitching well despite having only a mediocre fastball. The Red Sox had traded for him with the St.Louis Browns, one of the teams in the league who had to sell off their best players to survive. When it wasn’t the Red Sox taking advantage of them it was the Yankees. At this time the Washington Senators and Philadelphia Athletics were also in this position. Kinder had pitched well in the past, but not very consistently. 1949 was going to be different for him.
Joe DiMaggio was reaching the end of his career. He started out the season with severe pain in a heel, for which he had to have an operation. But the operation didn’t help the pain. There was very little he could do to keep in shape, so he mostly stayed in his apartment. He was very uncomfortable with socializing at all, even with his teammates. He had people who would go to movies with him, for instance, or to restaurants, so he didn’t have to be alone, Partly this was because of his stardom. He was by far the most talented Yankee, and considered it his responsibility to play hard because, as he said, somebody in the ballpark might never have seen him play before. He was uncertain about Casey Stengel, his new manager, who didn’t have a great reputation in that role. But mainly, he was waiting, that year, to become healthy enough to play. Luckily, his patience was rewarded. One day he was suddenly pain-free, and was able to begin playing again.
Major League Baseball was a whole different world then from what it is today. There were only eight teams in each league, and baseball was an industry always close to the edge of failure. Even the successful teams rarely drew much as many as a million paying customers, in a year though tickets were a lot cheaper then, and that was virtually the only revenue stream teams had–except selling players. Games were almost universally played during the day, so ordinary people could go after work. George Weiss, the Yankee general manager, didn’t like the idea of the games being broadcast over radio. He thought that was giving away his product. He wasn’t any more enthusiastic about TV, either.
Nor had he realized the way in which black players were going to change the game. He didn’t want black players (neither did the Red Sox). He didn’t want to attract black fans because he thought they would upset the middle-class whites who might have to sit near them. These attitudes weren’t unusual. Owners of major league teams could have made it much easier on the black players they signed by having them play north of the Mason-Dixon line, but many were sent to minor league teams in the South, often by themselves so they had almost nobody to help them get through seasons in which they were constantly abused by white fans. Halberstam comments that the Yankees were used to signing tough kids who were warriors as much as athletes, but that they didn’t realize that the kind of young men they were used to signing were now more often black than white in a country that was suddenly much more affluent than before. The Yankees (and the Red Sox) fell behind in finding and signing the tremendous black talent that became available after Jackie Robinson broke the color barrier. In 1949 the Yankees were just entering an era in which they would dominate even more than before, but because they failed to sign great black athletes, they were going to miss the World Series for a long time after their era was over.
The Yankees had great pitching in 1949. Vic Raschi, Allie Reynolds, and Ed Lopat were all quality starters, and Joe Page was the best relief pitcher in the league in an era when relief pitchers weren’t yet a separate category from starting pitchers. Page had a great fastball, but this was disregarded by Joe McCarthy, the Red Sox manager, who said he wanted pitchers with great fastballs to start for him, not pitch relief. Raschi came from the Yankee farm system. Reynolds and Lopat had both been traded for. All of them were tough-minded, and would be joined by Whitey Ford the following season, one of the all-time great Yankee pitchers.
Casey Stengel was the new manager of the Yankees, and many wondered about him as a choice. He had been managing only second-division teams in the National League and in the minors, but when he took the job over he showed that he had his own ideas. He was one of the first managers to platoon players as a regular thing. Most had a set lineup that they didn’t vary much, but Stengel believed that left-handed batters hit better against right-handed pitchers, and vice versa. Players on his team didn’t appreciate being platooned, but he told them that if he was going to lose his job he would do it by doing what he thought would work best. He liked to court the writers, who would make him seem to be a genius, which he was, to some extent. He didn’t necessarily treat his players very considerately, often making fun of them. He had been born in 1890, had had a fairly undistinguished career as a player (though he had starred in a World Series in the early 1920s), and was thrilled to have Yankee talent at his disposal.
One of the differences between the first half of the 20th century and today was that the sportswriters were almost as much a part of the team as the players. The teams paid for their food, drink, and and their rooms (alcohol was the drug of choice in baseball) when the teams traveled. Thus, sportswriters were (and were expected to be) loyal to the teams, and didn’t reveal all they knew about players and managers. That Joe McCarthy of the Red Sox liked to drink, for instance. Sportswriters at that time believed their jobs were the most desirable, and wanted to keep them. That often meant getting to be friends with players (although some Boston sportswriters went the opposite direction with Ted Williams) who were very often from the rural South and were Protestants, while the sportswriters were usually urban, Irish, and Jewish. Players could be made to feel inferior, which would make it difficult to get them to talk and provide stories for the writers. There would be conflict between the earlier era of sportswriters and the later ones who had a different and more sophisticated point of view.
Travel was much different then, too. It was exclusively by train, and the trains were rarely air conditioned, much less the hotels. St. Louis was the furthest west the major leagues extended, and it was brutally hot and humid in the summer. Players, managers, and writers drank and played cards on the trains, and talked baseball probably almost exclusively. That picture would change radically when the Dodgers and Giants moved to the west coast.
The Yankees, as usual, had great pitching in 1949. They were best known for their home run power, but that was never enough by itself to win games. They also had consistently great pitching and consistently great middle infield play. Somebody said it wasn’t the Big Dago (Joe DiMaggio was subject to ethnic slurs, just like every other player) who was the key to the Yankees of the 1940s, but the Little Dago (Phil Rizzuto). But it was also the starting pitchers: Vic Raschi, Allie Reynolds, Ed Lopat, and Joe Page, the best (or one of the best) relief pitchers in the game. The Red Sox had Bobby Doerr at second base, but Junior Stephens at short. Stephens was a powerful hitter, but not a great fielder. Jerry Coleman was a rookie second baseman for the Yankees in 1949 and was terribly worried about being able to hit enough, but eventually was told that his job was to field. If he hit some too, that would be gravy.
Although DiMaggio wasn’t available to start the season, the Yankees began pretty well. The Red Sox took some time to get going, but became hot in the second half of the year. Then the Yankee pitchers began getting tired in August, the hottest time of the year, by which time they had all thrown a lot of innings. The Red Sox began catching up, and first tied, then went ahead of the Yankees right at the end of the season. The pennant came down to two games at the end.
In the first one the Red Sox scored four runs early, but were then unable to score any more. The Yankees came back and won. In the second, the Yankees got one run early, and Vic Raschi made it hold up. In the eighth inning Ellis Kinder, who had had a great season and was pitching very well, was lifted for a pinch hitter who did nothing. Kinder was furious, and so were other Red Sox. Kinder believed he could pitch better against the Yankees than any bullpen pitchers, but McCarthy believed left-hand hitters would hit right-hand pitchers, so brought in Mel Parnell, who had also had a great season, but had recently been overworked. Parnell gave up four runs. The Red Sox scored three runs in the top of the ninth, but it wasn’t enough. The Yankees won the pennant.
In the first game of the World Series, which was also the first World Series game to be televised, Allie Reynolds pitched for the Yankees against Don Newcomb. Newcomb was the first great black pitcher in the majors, not counting Satchel Paige, who had won several key games for the Cleveland Indians the previous year, but was no longer at his peak. Newcomb thought he’d never been faster, and he held the Yankees scoreless until the bottom of the ninth, though he gave up more hits than Reynolds did. But the leadoff hitter was Tommy Henrich, one of the Yankees’ clutch hitters, and a power-hitter. He hit a home run, and the game was over. The Dodgers won only one game in the Series.
Fifteen years later the environment of the game had evolved. The St. Louis Cardinals had a very good team that hadn’t won a pennant in 18 years. The Yankees had only lost the pennant twice in those fifteen years, but they were coming to the end of their dominance. They still had tremendous talent, though.
Bing Devine, the St. Louis general manager, had been building the team for seven years. He had decided Ken Boyer should play third base as a regular, though he could play any position. He also traded for Curt Flood, who became the premiere center fielder of the National League, and a good hitter, though he didn’t have great power. He traded for Bill White, too. White had come up with the Giants, who had moved from New York to San Francisco in 1957, and had Orlando Cepeda and Willy McCovey coming up as first basemen, White’s position. He asked for a trade, and got traded to St. Louis, which he wasn’t immediately enthusiastic about because St. Louis was essentially a southern city, and very racist.
But National League teams had been much more interested in pursuing black talent than had the American League. The first generation of great black players, Jackie Robinson, Willie Mays, Hank Aaron, and Ernie Banks (naming only the best) had all been signed by National League teams. American League teams had had their chances, but weren’t interested. The National League had become a much deeper league which played a more interesting game than did the American League. In 1964 the Cardinals had four black or Latin players who made significant contributions, and their manager was wise enough to encourage friendships between black and white players and not to treat the black players as second-class citizens.
Devine had traded for Dick Groat, the shortstop for the Pittsburgh Pirates in 1960, when they won the pennant and beat the Yankees in the World Series. He was an older player, but very professional. He didn’t have great range, but knew how to position himself for each batter, and was good at hitting behind runners and moving them up. Solly Hemus, his manager in St. Louis when he first arrived, had a problem with him hitting and running without authorization, but Johnny Keane, who succeeded Hemus, was fine with it.
Keane was also fine with putting Bob Gibson in the starting rotation and letting him figure out how he needed to pitch. Hemus hadn’t liked Gibson (there was some debate whether Hemus was racist or just expected black players to pay the same kind of dues he had), and took him out of games more often than Gibson liked. Gibson was a great all-around athlete, who could hit as well as pitch, but had tremendous pitching talent, which he was just beginning to completely put together. He had won 13, 15, and 18 games in the previous 3 years, but was still having control problems.
Devine and Keane believed they were one player away from having a contending team, so they decided to trade for Lou Brock early in the season. Brock had great talent, but hadn’t shown much of it in three previous years with the Cubs. Devine and Keane made the risky move of trading Ernie Broglio, who had won 18 games for them the previous season, for Brock. They had other pitchers, but none was absolutely dependable. When Brock reported to the Cardinals Keane told him to run whenever he thought it was right. Brock was tremendously fast, but the Cubs had wanted him to steal only when they told him to. Being given the green light was liberating for him. He began hitting and fielding better, too.
White was more secure than many black players, and was kind of father-confessor not only for players on his team, but visiting players too. He wanted to make sure black players didn’t blow the chances they had, so gave advice to them. After his playing career was over he eventually became president of the National League.
The Yankees were still powerful and talented, and nobody in their league could quite imagine beating them. Their pitching was still good, and so was their fielding and hitting. But their farm system had gotten thin because they’d been cutting back on it. They had also missed on many talented black players because they weren’t interested. They could have had Ernie Banks, but weren’t interested enough to pursue him. They did sign Elston Howard, a very good player, but Banks was the better hitter. And they weren’t interested in making life any easier for Howard in the minor leagues, either. Howard’s wife felt he died young because he swallowed so much of his anger at his treatment.
Of course Mickey Mantle was the great star of the team. He had as much talent as anyone who had been in the majors, but had frequent injuries that handicapped him. He also didn’t take care of himself as he could have. He drank a lot after games and didn’t stay in shape between seasons, but he was as fast as anyone in the majors and could hit the ball further than anyone. Casey Stengel wanted to teach him everything he knew about the game, but Mantle had had to live up to his father’s expectations, and didn’t want a second father.
The Yankees had fired Stengel after he lost the 1960 World Series, and replaced him with Ralph Houk. Houk had immediate success in 1961. Mantle and Roger Maris began a chase after Babe Ruth’s record of 60 home runs in a season. Maris was the one who hit 61, but he wasn’t very happy about it.
He was a small-town boy, and didn’t like the big city. What he valued most was his privacy, and he lost that in 1961. He didn’t mind telling writers what kind of pitch he’d hit, but wasn’t willing to speculate about whether he could hit 61, and got tired of being asked the same questions over and over. What was worse was that the fans decided it was okay for Mantle (whom they had often booed in previous years) to break Ruth’s record, but not for Maris. Worse still was the season of 1962 when Maris came nowhere near to hitting 61 again. He had often had injury problems before, and 1961 was an unusual year for him because he had few. After that he got frequently injured again–nothing serious, but injuries that kept him from playing at his best. Despite his successful quest to pass Babe Ruth’s record, and the fact that the Yankees drew more fans than in the previous ten years, the team did nothing for Maris. He thought he deserved a large bonus, but didn’t get one. They could also have protected him from the press by scheduling times for them to talk to him, and prohibiting their bothering him at other times, but didn’t bother doing that either. Maris had never much liked New York, and that made him like it even less.
Jim Bouton had had a great season in 1963, winning 21 games and pitching well in the World Series. He would pitch well again in 1964, but had little margin between being successful and not. His fastball was his best pitch, but he had to put everything into throwing it for it to be effective. That would become a problem.
Al Downing was the first black Yankee pitcher, and the second black player to make the Major League team. The scout who signed him was black and gave him good advice about how to organize his career. He had had a good rookie season, winning 13 and losing five.
Pete Mikkelson was a relief pitcher who had hurt his arm and had had to stop throwing overhand. When he did, his fastball began sinking, and Yogi Berra liked sinker-ballers who could make hitters hit the ball on the ground instead of in the air.
Tony Kubek and Bobby Richardson were the middle infielders on the team, Kubek at short and Richardson at second. Kubek didn’t look like a great shortstop, but made the plays, and was very tough. Richardson was a great fielder and good clutch hitter, coming close to being MVP of the league.
Yogi Berra was the new manager after Ralph Houk became the Yankees general manager. It wasn’t a very comfortable fit. Houk had been a players manager, but couldn’t be that as general manager, since he was the one who had to negotiate their contracts. And Berra had recently been a player, which made it difficult for him to enforce rules. Mantle and Ford pushed limits with him, not because they didn’t like him, but because it was more fun for them. When they got away with things, other players thought they could too.
Neither the Yankees nor the Cardinals were great at the beginning of the season, but neither was too bad. Early in the spring Bing Devine, the Cardinals general manager traded Ernie Broglio, who had won 18 games for the team the season before, to the Chicago Cubs for Lou Brock, an outfielder who hadn’t accomplished much in the previous three seasons. It was a risky trade because the pitching staff wasn’t seen to be totally dependable, and pitchers are more susceptible to injury than every-day players. But Devine and Johnny Keane, the manager, believed the team needed more offense. When Brock reported, Keane told him he was going to play every day and that he should steal bases whenever he thought he could. Brock had wanted to steal bases before, but the Cubs had put restrictions on his running. Now he felt liberated, and his hitting and fielding also improved. He hadn’t been taught how to use sunglasses in the outfield, so had lost lots of balls in the sun.
The Cardinals began playing better after the acquisition of Lou Brock, but it still took time for them to start playing really well. Bob Gibson was unable to pitch consistently well for some time. A pitching coach was brought in, and decided he was kind of “pushing” his slider (a slider is like a curve, but breaks less, and more suddenly–Gibson preferred it to his curve) which made it too easy to hit. Gibson worked at throwing it better, and began pitching much better in August.
The Yankees were enduring injuries. Tony Kubek, who Ralph Houk had made the everyday shortstop when he took over from Stengel, had suffered a cracked vertebra in a touch football game in 1962, and in 1964 it was really bothering him. Kubek wasn’t obviously talented, but made all the plays at short, and was very tough. The Yankees lost something when he couldn’t play, and he was unable to play much in 1964.
Mickey Mantle was injured a lot too. He had a hard time batting left-handed (his father had insisted he become a switch-hitter) because of knee problems.
Jim Bouton had had problems throwing his fastball early in the season. It wasn’t because he was having pain, but because the ball simply wasn’t going very fast. Later he was diagnosed with a condition in which the muscles of his arm got so large that they interfered with his circulation. That was why he lost his fastball for good the next season. James Rodney Richard had a similar condition about 15 years later, and suffered a stroke because of it. But Bouton regained his fastball in 1964 and pitched very well in the second half of the season.
Whitey Ford seemed to be having a good season, but in realty his arm wasn’t what it had been, and he was getting by on guile. He and catcher Elston Howard would cut the baseball to make it break in unexpected ways. His won-lost record was good, but the end of his career was in sight.
The Chicago White Sox and Baltimore Orioles were challenging the Yankees in 1964, but didn’t yet know how to win when they had to, though Baltimore was about to become one of the perennial powers in the American League. One of the things that enabled the Yankees to win the pennant was the acquisition of Pedro Ramos from the Cleveland Indians. Ramos had always had a good fastball, and he became the Yankees primary reliever in the last month of the season. Unfortunately for him, he had been acquired too late to be able to play in the World Series.
The other key move was bringing Mel Stottlemyre up from the minor leagues. Stottlemyre was very mature for his age. He had a sinking fastball, and understood that trying to throw it too hard wouldn’t work. The important thing about the pitch was the break rather than the speed. He won nine games in the second half of the season.
Al Downing was the first black pitcher for the Yankees. The scout who discovered him talked to him about how he needed to develop, and he had a very good rookie year, winning 13 games. He won 13 games in 1964 too, but was less consistent than in the previous season. One of the problems was that Johnny Sain had been replaced as pitching coach on the team by Whitey Ford, who was still an important starter. He didn’t have time for the other pitchers, since he was concerned about his own performance, nor was he as insightful about pitching as Sain. Managers often became impatient with pitchers, and Sain would protect them. Pitchers appreciated that, and generally pitched better when he was around. But he wasn’t in 1964.
Meanwhile, in the National League, the Philadelphia Phillies were having an excellent season, leading the league most of the way. They had very good infielders, with two who could play shortstop, and two who could play second, giving the manager more flexibility than managers usually have. They also had an outfielder, Johnny Callison, who was having a career year, and was a prime candidate for most valuable player, as well as Richie Allen, a third baseman who looked like rookie of the year. Besides them, they had acquired Jim Bunning from the Detroit Tigers, who almost immediately became the ace of the staff. That took pressure off of Chris Short, who became a very good second starter that season. The rest of the pitching staff was very deep. It looked like they might win the pennant easily.
The Cardinals became a very hot team in the second half of the season. Bob Gibson, Ray Sadecki, and Curt Simmons were all pitching very well, as was knuckleballer Barney Schultz, who became the Cardinals main relief pitcher. Lou Brock was hitting well and stealing bases with abandon, and the rest of the team were also playing well. Gibson in particular was becoming the intimidating pitcher he would be for the rest of the decade, one of the elite in either league.
But the Cardinals turnaround came too late to save the job of general manager Bing Devine. August Busch, owner of the team, had been frustrated that the team hadn’t gotten better quicker, and had hired Branch Rickey, who was then in his eighties, but still power-hungry and ambitious. He made it his business to undermine Devine with Busch at every turn, and Devine was finally fired before the end of the season. Johnny Keane, the manager, knew he was also in danger of losing his job.
When Pedro Ramos joined the Yankees they went on a long winning streak, partly because he was saving games, partly because Mel Stottlemyre was winning games, and partly because Roger Maris caught fire, began hitting better than in the past two seasons, and because he also started playing center field, since Mantle was unable to play. Besides being an outstanding hitter, he was also a great defensive player.
In the National League the Phillies wanted to clinch the pennant as quickly as possible. Their two best pitchers had been Jim Bunning and Chris Short, and manager Gene Mauch asked each of them to pitch with two days rest. Unfortunately for the Phillies, that didn’t work. Almost thirty years later Bunning was asked whether he had any misgivings about pitching that way. He said he hadn’t, and that top-level athletes love that sort of challenge. But apparently he and Short were more tired than they knew. The Phillies went on a long losing streak just as the Cardinals were playing better than they had all season. They had to fight off the Reds as well as the Phillies, but managed to clinch the pennant on the last day of the season, using Bob Gibson in relief of Curt Simmons. The Yankees also clinched right at the end of the season, at home against the Cleveland Indians, the team from which Ramos had come. Ramos saved the game and then made a rude gesture at the Cleveland manager, who had told him nobody wanted him.
In the first game of the World Series the Cardinals had to battle not only the Yankee myth, of the team that was always in the Series and usually won, but also the myth of Whitey Ford, who had always been a big game pitcher, and especially in the World Series. But Ford didn’t have much that day. Ray Sadecki wasn’t sharp either, but the Cardinals were able to out-slug the Yankees, and won the first game. And Ford wasn’t able to pitch again. He had great pain in his arm because his circulation was bad, and had to have surgery after the season, though the Yankees didn’t announce that.
The second game was Bob Gibson against Mel Stottlemyre, and Stottlemyre won. Gibson wasn’t completely rested, and Stottlemyre pitched well. The Yankees won the third game too. Curt Simmons pitched very well against Jim Bouton, but Barney Schultz, who had been almost automatic as a reliever in the second half of the season, gave up a home run to Mantle near the end of the game.
In the fourth game Sadecki was shaky again, so Roger Craig came in to pitch. He had pitched the previous two seasons for the New York Mets, and had lost a lot of games despite pitching well. For him it was a treat to pitch for a contending team, and when he came in he had good stuff and good control. But Al Downing had both too–until the sixth inning, when the Cardinals began hitting. They loaded the bases and, with Ken Boyer, one of their power-hitters up, Downing threw him a change of pace that he got in the wrong place. Boyer hit a grand slam home run, and the Series was tied at two games apiece.
In the fifth game Bob Gibson was excellent, holding the Yankees scoreless until the ninth inning, when they tied the score at two. But in the next inning catcher Tim McCarver hit a three run home run to win it. That gave the Cardinals a three games to two lead, but the Yankees tied it up again in the next game, leaving the Series to be decided in a seventh game.
Gibson pitched that game on two days rest, and his stuff wasn’t very good, but the Yankees made a number of bad fielding plays, and gave up six runs in one inning, then another. In the bottom of the sixth inning Mickey Mantle hit a three-run homer, though, which made him the all-time leader in World Series home runs. It was 6-3 then, but the Cardinals scored another run to make it 7-3. Gibson was talking to himself on the mound, telling himself not to give in and give anyone a good pitch to hit. He didn’t like to be relieved at any time, but especially not in the seventh game of the World Series. Many tired pitchers take more time between pitches, but he didn’t want to do that, because he didn’t want the other team to think they could get him, even though his fastball and slider weren’t as good as usual. He got to the ninth inning without giving up any more runs, and manager Johnny Keane told him he was going to pitch the ninth inning because he couldn’t give up four home runs. He did give up two, though, but then got the side out. His arm was hurting a great deal, but he wouldn’t have to pitch again until the next season.
There were unusual happenings after the World Series. August Busch, owner of the Cardinals, planned to offer manager Johnny Keane a two-year contract, but just before the press conference Keane handed him an envelope, and insisted on him reading it. In it, Keane wrote that he was resigning as manager of the Cardinals. Unknown at the time was that the Yankees had offered Keane the manager’s job, and he had accepted. Unfortunately for him, it was the wrong job. Keane was a better manager for young players than veterans, and the Yankees had almost no really good players left. He lasted barely more than one season, and died of heart attack in his early fifties. Managing a baseball team is a stressful job. The Cardinals job was more stressful than it should have been, and the Yankees job was an unfortunate mistake. Bing Devine was named manager of the year in 1964, after having been fired. Busch later said he shouldn’t have fired Devine.
And Yogi Berra was taken by surprise too, because he thought he’d done a pretty good managing job, and he got fired. He managed the Mets in 1973, and took them to the World Series. He also managed the Yankees in the 1980s, but was abruptly fired, and decided not to come back to Yankee Stadium. He made a lot of money from commercials, though, with “Yogiisms”.
Bob Gibson went on to become a Hall of Fame pitcher, probably the best and most intimidating pitcher in the National League after Sandy Koufax and Don Drysdale retired. In 1968 he won 22 games, pitched 13 shutouts, and had the lowest Earned Run Average in about 55 years, since Walter Johnson. In the 1968 World Series he struck out 17 in the first game, to set a record that still stands.
As much as anything the two seasons Halberstam portrays are about the transition from baseball as played and as an industry in the first half of the 20th century to the way it would be played in the second half, and today. Many of the Red Sox and Yankee players from their 1949 teams were successful after their baseball careers were over, in baseball or not. Some became uncomfortable with the attitudes of younger players who arrived with an entitled attitude, unlike the players who had grown up during the Depression. One such player decided that the owners had asked for it, though. They had wanted to control their players lives and pay them as little as possible, often feeling threatened when players could find ways of making money outside of the game. In the 1950s the balance of power was just beginning to shift to the players and away from the owners (who still made good profits if they were smart about how they ran their businesses).
Of course the superstars, Joe DiMaggio and Ted Williams, were secure after they retired. Williams managed the Washington Senators for awhile, but after that spent most of his time fishing in one place or another. DIMaggio appeared in commercials, but otherwise didn’t do other work. But when he was inducted into the Hall of Fame he said in his acceptance speech that the Hall of Fame should also honor the great black players who hadn’t excelled in the major leagues only because they hadn’t been allowed. It wasn’t many years after that some of the Negro League players began to be inducted. Halberstam thinks Williams did this, at least in part, because his mother was Mexican (though this may not have been generally known).
By 1964 power had shifted still more, though the teams had mostly not really confronted it yet. The Cardinals were an exception, and Bing Devine and Johnny Keane deserved a lot of credit for that, though August Busch deserved some too. Players were treated equally regardless of color, and often became close friends across color lines. The Cardinals won two more pennants and one more World Series in the 1960s, and were proud of their achievements.
But when the players wanted to get paid for what they had accomplished, Busch took it personally, and begged them not to be greedy. Curt Flood, by the end of the sixties, had become the best center fielder in the league, and wanted to be paid $100,000. Busch didn’t want to give it to him. Steve Carlton, who had become an outstanding pitcher, quarreled with Busch over a difference of $10,000. Busch decided to trade the two of them, plus catcher Tim McCarver, to the Philadelphia Phillies. Carlton went on to become a Hall of Fame pitcher, and later talked about what a positive influence Bob Gibson had been on his career. McCarver was Carlton’s personal catcher through most of the time that Carlton was winning over 300 games, and then became an excellent TV announcer on the Game of the Week for many years.
Flood, though, refused to report to Philadelphia, and sued Major League baseball over the reserve clause, which prevented players from offering their services to other teams, a right most other workers already had. That was the preface to the way athletes are paid now. It was also the preface to the 1994 season when the players went out on strike and were unable to settle with the owners until the following years. Both sides were surprised to discover that fans didn’t sympathize with either. Flood ultimately lost his case, but the reserve clause’s days were numbered. He had some problems in later life, but eventually righted himself.
Mantle hung in another four years with the Yankees, but later said he wished he had retired after 1964. He was never physically able to have another great season after that. And after he retired he became an alcoholic until, in his sixties, he quit alcohol and was publicly open about his regrets about his behavior. He eventually died of liver cancer.
Whitey Ford only had one more pretty good season, and two more when he was unable to pitch very much. Mel Stottlemyre became one of the best pitchers in Yankees history, but never pitched in the playoffs again. Jim Bouton lost his fastball because his blood circulation got compressed. He learned to throw the knuckleball and continued to pitch for sometime. He also wrote the famous Ball Four as a diary of the 1969 season, and became well-known for that. Al Downing never became the pitcher the Yankees had hoped, and was traded. He did win twenty games for the Dodgers one season, but didn’t have a distinguished career.
Tony Kubek retired soon after 1964, and became an announcer on TV games. According to Halberstam, he often upset Yankees owner George Steinbrenner with his calls. Clete Boyer, Tom Tresh, and Bobby Richardson didn’t play much longer either, all becoming college baseball coaches.
Bill White, Cardinals first baseman eventually became president of the National League, and retained his friendship with Harry Walker, who had been his hitting coach, despite Walker’s southern upbringing. Lou Brock also went to the Hall of Fame after breaking Ty Cobb’s single season and career records for stolen bases–until Rickey Henderson broke his.
How Major League baseball is run has changed tremendously since the 1960s, strongly influenced by television and by the baseball players union. Players used to get jobs in the off-season in order to support their families. Now, when even the most marginal players are paid hundreds of thousands a season, that isn’t necessary. But ordinary fans are now shut out of the ballparks because it will usually cost a hundred dollars or more to visit. The game now caters to the elites, and the kind of relationship fans had to the Brooklyn Dodgers players are a thing of the long past.
How the game is played has changed a lot too. Until about the 1970s hitters were concerned to keep their strikeouts minimal. Then they began swinging for the fences every time up, which meant many more strikeouts. Joe DiMaggio is an example of the difference between hitters from the early 20th century and modern hitters: he hit 361 home runs and struck out 369 times in his CAREER. For some hitters that’s just two seasons.
Modern pitching has changed even more. Pitchers used to be judged on complete games (before relief pitching became a specialty on every team). Now pitchers rarely complete games. Six innings is often the most they pitch, unless they’re far ahead. In part, this is to save the pitchers arms, since they’re more vulnerable to that kind of injury than other players. But it seems a shame to routinely have a bullpen pitcher finish a game instead of letting a starter finish if he can.
The game is unlikely to change back anytime soon, and another reason is that there are other sports competing with baseball. In the first half of the 20th century the NFL wasn’t watched by very many people. TV changed that, just as it did for baseball, and NFL players are now paid much more, too. The NBA wasn’t even founded until 1946, and it took more than two decades to really get off the ground, and become the mammoth sport it is now. And there are other sports like hockey, soccer, wrestling, golf, and racing that people follow. It’s possible to be nostalgic for baseball as it was played in the 1920s, 30s, and 40s, but it’s not coming back. Those times, and the personalities who played the games, managed, and coached the teams, and covered them in the papers were fascinating, though, not least because much of what happened didn’t happen on the field.
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