Impact Player

by Bobby Richardson

  For our wedding gift, Betsy’s mother gave us a full set of new tires for my car so we could safely make the drive to Denver. Our first night, we stopped in nearby Columbia. The next day we drove all the way to Tupelo, Mississippi, before stopping to spend a night there.

  That drive was hotter than it was long, and it was plenty long. The car’s heater knob was stuck in the on position. Not only did we not have air conditioning, we had a heater we couldn’t turn off. It might be the heat still influencing my memory, but I remember that first day we headed out toward Denver as the hottest June day in the history of South Carolina.

  That was before there was an interstate highway system, and I also wasn’t too good with maps and navigation, so I didn’t plot out the best route for us. From Mississippi, I took us through northern Arkansas, where I got us lost somewhere in the Ozark Mountains. I called Ralph and said, “I think we’re going to be a couple of days later than I planned.”

  We did make it to Denver—a little later than expected, but after the adventures of our first road trip, it was a relief just to get there.

  I pulled a little joke on Betsy when we got to Denver. I parked the car outside a run-down house and announced, “This is where we’re going to live.” Betsy didn’t know what to say. The look on her face, though, said enough. I quickly informed her I was kidding.

  I had arranged for us to rent a small apartment near Bears Stadium (later renamed Mile High Stadium) from an elderly couple named the Ellises, who were as nice as could be. It was an upstairs apartment with a private entrance.

  “This is where we’re going to stay,” I told Betsy when we pulled into the driveway. The look on her face was much more approving of that house.

  A photographer from the Denver Post newspaper was there. Betsy had started helping me unload the car when the photographer suggested that me carrying Betsy across the threshold would make a good photo. I picked her up, and he took the photo of us arriving at our new home.

  When I got to the field, my teammates teased me about being a couple of days late, saying I’d deliberately taken extra time to report back from our “honeymoon.” Actually, though, the delay made bad timing even worse, because my first game back with the Bears was the final game of a home stand. We hadn’t even unpacked all our suitcases, and I had to leave with the team on a two-week road trip.

  On one of my first calls to Betsy from our trip, I told the operator my call was for Betsy Dobson. “I’m sorry, she doesn’t live here,” Betsy playfully told the operator. “There’s no Betsy Dobson here.”

  When she said that on the other end of the line, I realized my mistake.

  “Oh—Betsy Richardson!” I quickly corrected. “That’s my wife!” Needless to say, as a newlywed, that was the longest road trip of my playing career.

  There was no call-up from the Yankees during the ’56 season. Other than the time off for my wedding, I didn’t miss a game with the Bears, hitting .328 with twelve triples. That season I seemed to hit a lot of line drives into the outfield gaps, and I had the speed to turn those into triples. I made the league All-Star team again. We had a good team, finishing second in the regular season to an Indianapolis Indians team that included a young, power-hitting outfielder named Roger Maris. We defeated the Omaha Cardinals in the first round of the postseason, but then, in the championship, we were swept in four games by Indianapolis.

  That season was the beginning of my friendship with shortstop Tony Kubek. Tony and I were roommates before my wedding, and we would eventually become roommates on the road for most of our major league seasons. My average had me up among the league leaders, and Tony hit three points better than I did, at .331. That was a lot of offensive production from the middle infielders.

  Ralph Terry was also on that team, and he would become a key part of the Yankees’ pitching rotation. Another pitcher for the Bears that season was Tom Lasorda, who would of course become known for managing the Los Angeles Dodgers to two world championships. Before Tom began to “bleed Dodger Blue,” he was my teammate in the Yankees’ system.

  I received a phone call not too long ago.

  “I bet you can’t tell me who this is,” the caller said.

  “Give me some help,” I said.

  “We go back fifty years,” he said.

  “Teammate?”

  “Yeah. Denver. Denver Bears.”

  I started running through names in my mind, trying to match one to the voice. Then came a clue that gave away the answer.

  “I’m the one that started the fight. We were playing Omaha.”

  “Tom Lasorda!” I said.

  There’s only one Tommy Lasorda, that’s for sure.

  Tom was eight years older than me, and his wife, Jo, was one of the team wives who stepped in while we were in Denver to help Betsy adjust not only to married life but also to being married to a ballplayer.

  After the season, Betsy and I made the drive back to Sumter—without getting lost in the Ozarks—and in our first off-season as husband and wife, we lived with Betsy’s mother.

  Back home, I kept up with how the Yankees were doing in their World Series rematch against the Brooklyn Dodgers. The ’56 Series is known as the one in which Don Larsen, in Game 5, threw the only perfect game in World Series history. After Larsen struck out Dale Mitchell for the game’s final out, Yogi ran out from behind the plate and toward the mound, then leaped into Larsen’s arms. I’ve seen that in game highlights many times, but I’m pretty sure I was watching that game live on television with Dad at my parents’ house.

  The Yankees won the World Series that year in seven games. I wanted that to be the last time I would watch the Yankees play in a World Series. I wanted to be playing in the next World Series my dad would watch on his television.

  When I evaluated my season in Denver, I told myself, Okay, next year is my year to go to New York and stay.

  Chapter 6

  Mixed Emotions

  When the 1957 season opened, I didn’t know if Dad would be watching me play in that year’s World Series. But if he did, he would be watching me on a new color TV.

  That was the season I posed for my first bubblegum card. The Topps Company presented me with two offers. I could sign a one-year contract giving permission to use my image on a card and receive a $125 gift certificate, or I could sign a two-year contract and choose from among three or four higher-value payment options. I opted for the second and chose a television to give to my dad. The fact that delivery was free helped sway my decision, because the TV in question was one of those big, heavy console models that took up floor space in the living room. After I signed my Topps contract, a brand-new color television was delivered directly to my parents’ home.

  Dad wouldn’t be able to pick up the Yankees’ regular-season games—they weren’t broadcast in Sumter—but he would be able to watch me when we were featured on Game of the Week broadcasts.

  As I had in 1956, I headed north out of spring training to start the regular season with the Yankees. While in ’56 I had expected I would move out to Denver when the roster was cut down, this year I hoped to stay on with the big club. Though I wouldn’t say I expected to remain in the majors, I thought I had a realistic chance. But the deadline for roster cuts was in mid-May, a month into the season, so until that time I wasn’t going to assume anything about securing a spot on the team.

  The first week of the 1957 season, I was limited to a substitute’s role. Billy Martin, who for good reason was one of Casey’s favorite players, started the season at second base. Third baseman Andy Carey sprained an ankle in one of our first games, so Casey slid Billy over to third and inserted Jerry Coleman at second. Jerry was a veteran player who could play second, third, and short with equal skill. My early appearances in games were as a defensive replacement in the late innings.

  Late in the second week, Casey gave me back-to-back starts at second for weekend games against the Boston Red Sox. I went 0 for 2 in the first game before being lifted for a pinch hitter in t
he seventh inning. The next day I was 2 for 4 and drove in a run. Carey returned from his injury the next game, and I returned to the bench. I didn’t play in another game for a week and a half, and then I made a few more late-game defensive appearances.

  That stretch took us right up to the deadline for roster cuts. I wondered whether my inactivity was an indication that the Yankees could get along without me—and that I would soon be on my way back to Denver.

  I don’t know if Casey wanted to give me one more look before the decision or not, but right before the deadline he started putting me into the starting lineup. I had two hits in my first two games and survived the roster cuts. I then went on to hit in six consecutive games. Casey even moved me from the bottom of the order—I had been hitting mostly seventh or eighth—to the leadoff spot.

  Even after my hitting streak, there still was a stretch at the end of May when I was in and out of the starting lineup. By early June, however, I had become the regular starting second baseman.

  I had also become a dad, because June was when our first son, Robert Clinton Richardson III—Robby—was born. When the season had started, Betsy had stayed in Sumter to have the baby instead of joining me in New York. After a Sunday doubleheader at Yankee Stadium, I received a phone call informing me that Betsy had given birth to a boy.

  Monday was a day off for us, so I immediately flew home and rushed to the hospital. I was so excited to see Betsy and my son that I hurriedly walked through the hospital hallway and into Betsy’s room. I gave her a hug so big that it set off the buzzer to call for a nurse. When Robby was brought into our room, I was able to hold our son for the first time. Words cannot describe the love and joy I felt as I held that gift from God in my arms.

  I had hoped for a son, and now I had one. But just as quickly as I had arrived in Sumter, it was time to go again to join the team for a series in Cleveland. I hated to leave Betsy and Robby, but I knew they would be joining me in New York as soon as they were able.

  The Billy Martin Trade

  Less than two weeks after Robby was born, the Yankees cleared out a little more room for me at second base by trading Billy Martin to the Kansas City Athletics.

  The Yankees and the A’s had an interesting relationship in those days. The “big market” and “small market” distinction prevalent in baseball today was not recognized then, but that would have been a fitting way to describe the contrast between the two teams. Connections between the franchises’ ownerships made them convenient trade partners. Because of the teams’ different needs, the Yankees seemed to get the better end of most trades.

  The Yankees needed players who would keep them in championship contention; the A’s needed marquee players to draw fans. The Yankees would identify up-and-coming young players (whose biggest paydays were still ahead of them) and acquire them from Kansas City, often in exchange for aging players (who didn’t have the skills they once did but still had the fan-attracting name). Some of those trades were met with such complaints from other teams that the A’s became derisively referred to as a Yankees farm team.

  In addition to Billy, Kansas City received starting pitcher Ralph Terry and minor leaguers Woodie Held and Bob Martyn. The A’s sent us relief pitcher Ryne Duren, outfielder Jim Pisoni, and outfielder/first baseman Harry Simpson. It was a seven-player trade, but it obviously centered on Billy. And it’s widely believed that his trade had something to do with an incident that happened a month earlier in New York, on Billy’s birthday.

  Billy, Mickey, Whitey, Hank, Yogi, and a few others players, along with some of the players’ wives, had gone to the famed Copacabana nightclub to celebrate. Some drunks made crude racial comments toward Sammy Davis Jr. as he performed there, and our guys stepped in to try to calm down the drunks. As could be expected considering the environment, things got out of hand, and one of the drunks who had razzed Davis claimed he had been punched by Hank. Hank denied hitting the man, but the incident made ugly headlines in the New York newspapers.

  The altercation remains one of the more infamous off-field incidents in Yankees history, and it’s often said that Billy was traded because general manager George Weiss blamed him for what happened.

  A subplot in that story is that the players ran up quite a tab that night at the Copacabana, to the tune of several thousand dollars. The birthday celebrants didn’t have enough money on them to cover the tab, and Billy said, “I’ll sign the owner’s name to the check!” So Billy signed Yankees owner Dan Topping’s name on the bill. Mr. Topping was none too pleased when it arrived. This presented a problem for Yankees’ management. They couldn’t do anything to Mickey, Whitey, or Yogi because of their status with the team, but they also couldn’t just let the incident slide. They needed a scapegoat, and Billy became that guy.

  The big trade went down on June 15, while we were in Kansas City for a series. After the game, we dressed and boarded our bus to go back to the hotel. When we realized the bus wasn’t leaving, we looked around to see if anyone was missing.

  “Martin’s not here yet,” someone said.

  “Stengel’s talking to him,” someone else said. “He’ll be here in a minute.”

  We waited about an hour until Billy and Casey finally came out and boarded. Casey took his seat at the front of the bus. Billy walked up the aisle and plopped down in the seat next to me.

  “Okay, kid, it’s all yours,” he said. “I’ve been traded to Kansas City.”

  I was stunned. Billy was far more collected than I was.

  Billy had been my main competition at second base, and we had been going back and forth in terms of who got the most playing time there. But on a personal level, Billy never felt like competition. We’d had a good relationship all along.

  As the story about the nightclub bill suggests, Billy was a big joker. He could even make light of our competition for the second base job.

  When Betsy came down to spring training to visit, Billy had asked her, “Is Bobby still here?”

  “What do you mean, ‘Is Bobby still here?’” she asked.

  “Well,” Billy said with a straight face, “I wrote a letter to Bobby’s draft board about six weeks ago. You haven’t heard anything yet?”

  Or, aware of my clean-living lifestyle, Billy would say to Betsy, “Didn’t somebody put something in Rich’s milk last night? He must not have drunk it.”

  Billy’s jokes were always good-natured, though. He was never mean as far as I could see. I just couldn’t believe that we would trade him away.

  Billy Martin was Casey’s type of ballplayer—always hustling and focused on team first. He would be the first player on our team to sacrifice his batting average to hit a grounder that would move a runner up a base. Billy was also a big rah-rah guy, always encouraging his teammates. When we were down, he would be the one to get us going by walking up and down the dugout, hollering and slapping guys on the knees. Then he’d turn toward the field and target the opposition with not-so-encouraging words. Billy never hesitated to make an opponent mad and would look for any way he could to get under an opposing player’s skin. Casey liked that about Billy.

  Billy and Casey’s relationship went back to the minor leagues, where Billy had played for Casey on the Oakland Oaks. After Casey became the New York manager, he was instrumental in the trade that brought Billy to the Yankees. Billy looked at Casey like a father. He loved being a Yankee, too, and Casey knew that.

  It had to be difficult for Casey when Billy was traded. That’s probably why he and Billy talked for an hour. I’m sure that decision was handed down to Casey from George Weiss and Casey had nothing to do with it, but it was his job to deliver the bad news.

  The trade hurt Billy, and I don’t think Billy ever understood why he was traded. He must have believed that Casey either wanted him traded or didn’t go to bat for him with the general manager, because it would be a number of years before Billy would speak with Casey again.

  Not only did I take Billy’s spot at second base, but I also eventually took
his jersey number—the coveted number 1. That decision was made by Big Pete Sheehy, who hung the jersey in my locker before the start of the next season and said, “You wear this.”

  I had worn number 17 during my short stays with the Yankees in 1955 and 1956. When Enos Slaughter came over by trade in ’57, he’d taken the number 17 and I’d been assigned 29. I liked wearing the 1. Saying you are number 1 sounds much better than saying you’re number 29. Plus, even then single-digit numbers with the Yankees were becoming difficult to come by. By that time, numbers 3 (Babe Ruth), 4 (Lou Gehrig), and 5 (Joe DiMaggio) had been retired, Mickey was wearing number 7, and Yogi wore number 8.

  Number 1 was mine for the rest of my career, and Bobby Murcer wore it after me. He was the last Yankees player to wear that number, although Billy wore it later when he managed the Yankees and Gene Michael wore it for one season when he was a coach. Now, though, it will always be Billy’s number with the Yankees. They retired the number in 1986 in Billy’s honor.

  When the number was to be retired, Billy granted me permission to continue to wear it in Old Timers’ Games. “Number 1 is something I am proud to have had in common with you,” Billy wrote me in a letter that he signed, “Your friend in God always.”

  An All-Star

  When the All-Star break rolled around in July, we held a two-and-a-half-game lead in the American League over the Chicago White Sox. As manager of the American League All-Star team, Casey selected me as backup second baseman behind the White Sox’s Nellie Fox.

  The game was at Sportsman’s Park in St. Louis. I didn’t play, but the American League won 6–5 in an exciting game—both teams scored three runs in the ninth inning. I enjoyed being a part of my first All-Star festivities and being able to share a field with the compilation of the game’s best players.