Impact Player

by Bobby Richardson

  Richie had to be the only Yankees fan among the 1,300 people in that theater. When Costas asked, “How many Yankees fans are here today?” Richie let out a loud, “Yeaaaaah!” His was the only voice that responded.

  As the only Yankees player present, I had to absorb a few jabs. All were good-natured, though. And I will say this about the 1,299 Pirates supporters there that night: they were unbelievably gracious. When I was introduced, they gave me warm applause that I very much appreciated. Although I wished we had won the Series, it was interesting to see in person how much that championship still meant to Pittsburgh.

  Unfortunately, the big hero of that game, Bill Mazeroski, was unable to attend because of illness. He and I had become really good friends through our appearances in Old Timers’ Games, and I’d had the honor of writing the foreword for a book about Bill. His son, Darren, had become a fine college baseball coach, and I’d had a couple of opportunities to recommend Darren for job openings.

  One year Bill and I were part of a baseball clinic in Buffalo, New York, and after the clinic we were going to Toronto to play in an Old Timers’ Game. Bill offered to let me ride to Toronto with him and his wife, and we had a delightful conversation the entire way about 1960, baseball, and our lives.

  One thing that stands out from that Old Timers’ Game in Toronto is that neither Bill nor I took batting practice before those games. Some of the old players, as they did in their playing days, liked to step into the cage and try to hit the ball out of the park as many times as they could. Bill and I preferred to hang out in the outfield and chat with the other old-timers. During that game in Toronto, after skipping batting practice, Bill hit a home run.

  Bill is a good man—a very good man. I am happy for the attention that his game-winning home run continues to shine on him and his career. The reverence that remains for him in Pittsburgh is well deserved.

  Betsy and I spend about four months of the year on the South Carolina coast, and there seem to be a lot of Pittsburgh fans who come into the area restaurants. I’ll strike up conversations with them and start talking baseball. They have no idea who they’re talking to, and I’ll say something like, “That was some World Series back in 1960.” Of course, being Pirates fans, they’ll agree. Then I like to ask, “Who was the Most Valuable Player in that World Series?”

  Almost every time, they’ll answer, “Mazeroski.”

  So if you ever want to stump a Pirates fan, I have a good trivia question you can use.

  Chapter 10

  Sixty-One in ’61

  Two events before Opening Day of 1961 resulted in a greater sense of permanence for me, both on and off the field.

  First, during that off-season, construction began on a new home for Betsy and me in Sumter. The first off-season after we married, we had lived with Betsy’s mother. After that we’d rented a place in Sumter during the off-season. Betsy and the kids would join me for spring training, then head north for the season to a place we rented in New Jersey.

  We picked out a lot in an undeveloped area on the west side of town, and a friend who was a builder started working on our home. The total cost was $28,000. I had signed a contract for $22,500 for the 1961 season, and I clearly remember thinking, Man, I won’t ever be able to pay for this.

  Well, we were able to pay for that home, and we still live in it. We’ve enclosed the garage and added on to the back a little, but today Betsy and I occupy the same home we paid $28,000 to build after the 1960 season.

  That turned out to be a busy off-season because of the construction and the attention I received during the World Series. I started fielding more requests for appearances and speaking engagements. Then, right before the New Year, our first daughter, Christie, was born. I was so excited to have a little girl that I told everyone I met about her.

  We didn’t really get to enjoy our new home right away because it was completed just as it was time to head back to St. Petersburg for spring training. That’s where the second event happened, which gave me a new sense of permanence on the field.

  With Casey out as the Yankees’ manager, Ralph Houk—who had been my manager when I played with the Denver Bears—took over our team. Ralph had come up from Denver before the ’58 season to be our first base coach. During the ’60 season, when Casey missed thirteen games because of a bladder infection, Ralph had served as interim manager. Now he was in charge.

  For Casey’s sake, I hated that he had been fired. (At Casey’s farewell press conference, it was first portrayed as a retirement, but that didn’t last long once the reporters starting asking questions and Casey saw an opportunity to reveal what had really happened.) Casey was a good man. However, his platooning, his constant lineup shuffling, and his love of pinch-hitting had become frustrating to me.

  Ralph didn’t believe in platooning and changing the lineup as much as Casey did. The first week of spring training he told Tony and me that we would be his full-time shortstop and second baseman. And he didn’t just tell us. He announced it publicly so that everyone—players, media, and fans—would know that we had his full support.

  “Okay, it’s a new era,” Ralph told me. “I don’t care if you hit .200, .300, .400, or .100. You’re going to be my second baseman. Know that you’re in there every day, and just have a good time. Enjoy yourself.”

  Whew! What a relief that was.

  I wasn’t the kind of player who was going to take it easy or start coasting when I knew I had a permanent place in the lineup. But for the first time since coming up to the Yankees, I felt that I didn’t have to prove myself, that I could just play baseball without having to look over my shoulder all the time.

  Hearing Ralph say those words was like receiving an extra-large injection of confidence. Building up his players was a key part of Ralph’s managerial style. With Ralph as manager, the atmosphere in the clubhouse and on the field immediately became more relaxed. Ralph was a player’s manager. He was positive, always trying to encourage players to do their best.

  Casey’s style had been to keep the players from getting too relaxed. I think sometimes he wanted us to be a little unhappy or on edge. He had a habit of using the media to communicate with his players; it wasn’t unusual to find out what Casey thought of how you were playing by reading the newspaper.

  Ralph, though, would come over to a player and talk to him one-on-one. It would be a gentle conversation, and it would be constructive. He communicated in a way that made you believe that he was pulling for you and that, as your manager, he wanted to put you in situations where you could do your best.

  Yet Ralph was no pushover. His nickname was “the Major” because he had entered the Army during World War II, become an Army Ranger, and worked his way up to the rank of major. Ralph had received the Bronze Star, the Purple Heart, and the Silver Star for his military service. Ralph had the respect of the clubhouse, both as a baseball man and as a person. He definitely had mine.

  Once the season began, Ralph proved to be a man of his word. I started every game at second base except for three—one in July and two in late September after we had clinched the pennant. From about the middle of June on, Ralph also committed to me as the leadoff hitter. Being in the lineup every day and usually at the top of the order instead of near the bottom, I produced some of the best statistics to that point in my career.

  My 662 at bats in 1961 were almost 200 more than my previous high. I scored 80 runs (53 in ’59 had been my best), drove in 49 runs, and even set a new high mark in home runs—three. My .261 batting average was my second best, behind the .301 of two years earlier. I also earned the first of my five consecutive Gold Glove awards for being voted the best defensive second baseman in the American League.

  I clearly benefited from Ralph’s managerial style, and it all began with that spring training conversation when he said the second base job was all mine. It’s interesting how when a manager tells a player that he’s sticking with him no matter what type of statistics he puts up, that player will usually produce
the numbers they were both hoping for in the first place. That’s the impact expressing confidence in someone can make.

  I wasn’t the only player who thrived in Ralph’s first season, and that’s the reason fans today ask for my memories of 1961 more than any other season. That year, of course, was the year of the historic chase after Babe Ruth’s hallowed record of sixty home runs in a season, and the two players chasing the Babe were my teammates Mickey Mantle and Roger Maris.

  For the 1961 season the American League expanded from eight teams to ten with the additions of the Minnesota Twins and the Los Angeles Angels. (The Washington Senators moved to Minneapolis–St. Paul to become the Twins and were replaced by an expansion team also named the Washington Senators.) To keep the schedule balanced with the expanded number of teams, the regular season was stretched from 154 games to 162.

  With the addition of the Los Angeles team, our transportation changed for that season as well. Before 1961 the westernmost franchise had been Kansas City, and we rode the train everywhere. We were the last team in the league not traveling by plane. Why? Because our traveling secretary, who made all travel arrangements, was afraid of flying. “We have too valuable a team for all of them to die at once,” he would say. “In a train wreck, they probably wouldn’t all die.”

  Beginning in ’61, however, with the exception of a short train trip like New York to Boston or Washington, DC, we finally became the flying Yankees.

  Best Ever?

  Our ’61 team is usually included in discussions listing the best baseball teams ever. In my completely biased opinion, I think we deserve that consideration.

  Granted, we played in the first season of the longer, 162-game schedule. But our 109 wins that year were the second most in franchise history behind the 1927 Yankees team that featured the Murderers’ Row lineup with Babe Ruth and Lou Gehrig in the middle. Even today, only one other Yankees team has won more games than our 109—the 1998 team, with 114 victories.

  The Detroit Tigers with Al Kaline, Norm Cash, Rocky Colavito, and Jim Bunning were our closest competition that year. The Tigers ended up tying their franchise record with 101 wins, yet the pennant race was effectively decided the first week of September.

  On September 1 the Tigers came to Yankee Stadium to start a three-game series. By then it was down to a two-team race, and we led the Tigers by one and a half games. We won the first game 1–0 when Moose Skowron drove in Ellie Howard with two outs in the bottom of the ninth. We came back the next day to win 7–2 and finished off the sweep with an 8–5 victory on Sunday. The Tigers left town four and a half games back. Five days later our lead had grown to ten games. Our sweep started an eight-game losing streak for Detroit and a thirteen-game winning streak for us.

  Our taking such a comfortable lead relatively early in the pennant race created room for Mickey and Roger’s pursuit of the home run record Ruth had set at sixty back in 1927.

  When the Detroit series began at the start of September, Roger had hit fifty-one home runs and Mickey was at forty-eight. Both clearly had a chance at breaking Babe’s record. But both felt the pressure, too, not only because they were pursuing baseball’s most sacred record, but also because baseball commissioner Ford Frick had announced in July that if either were to break Ruth’s record, he would have to do so by the 154th game. If a sixty-first home run came after that, Frick said it would be noted in the record books with a distinctive mark due to the expanded season.

  The commissioner didn’t actually use the word asterisk. But eventually popular conception was that if the record were broken after the 154th game, it would be marked with an asterisk—and somehow deemed “inferior” to Ruth’s. The commissioner’s ruling deserved an asterisk itself. Mr. Frick had previously served as Babe Ruth’s ghostwriter and was out to protect Ruth’s legacy.

  We all saw the pressure Mickey and Roger were under. Mickey could adjust to it better than Roger since he’d had more experience with being in the spotlight and having his every move scrutinized. It has been well documented that Roger had patches of hair falling out and rashes breaking out on his body as he approached the record.

  Roger didn’t like the constant media attention. He was shy to begin with, and the press kept asking him the same set of questions over and over and over. It was a big story that was covered on a daily basis, but there wasn’t much different that could be reported. Either Mickey or Roger homered, or they didn’t. What else could they really say? But there were still stories to file about something every day, so the press kept asking.

  That grated on Roger especially, and sometimes, out of frustration, he would answer a reporter’s question in a way that made him sound arrogant. But Roger wasn’t arrogant at all. He was just a shy person who wanted to play baseball in relative peace. Unfortunately, that wasn’t going to happen as the home run chase heated up. That’s too bad, because that was a momentous time in baseball, and I don’t think the key figure involved enjoyed the end of that season.

  Our public relations director later admitted that the situation could have been handled better. If the same situation occurred today, Mickey and Roger would be taken into an interview room each day for an organized question-and-answer session with the media. Instead, the interview process was treated just like any other normal day at the ballpark—except by then, there was no such thing as a normal day. When the home run race really heated up, there would be between fifty and seventy writers in our locker room for every game.

  Of course, a press corps that size could not gather around Mickey or Roger at one time. A group of ten or so would encircle Roger, ask their questions, and move on to Mickey. Then another small group would move in and ask their questions—typically the same questions as the first group’s. The groups kept rotating with Mickey and Roger. There was no protection for the players that way.

  Some members of the press tried to stir up trouble too. There were reports—and some still try to claim this today—that Mickey and Roger didn’t get along. Nothing could be further from the truth. They were both very supportive of each other and spent time together in the clubhouse and away from the Stadium. My observation was that both players benefited from the friendly competition between them, and I think they would have agreed. It wasn’t merely one person chasing the ghost of Babe Ruth. They were two teammates, next to each other in the outfield and in the batting order every day, and they could go head-to-head in a healthy, competitive way.

  One advantage Mickey had was that he had hit fifty-two homers in 1956, so this wasn’t the first time he’d experienced a big home run year. Roger’s best had been thirty-nine home runs in his first season with us, and he had topped that number in 1961 before July ended.

  An advantage for Roger was that he hit directly in front of Mickey, so he had Mickey’s protection in the lineup. Roger did not have a single intentional walk that season. That statistic still amazes me, but who would put Roger on base and then have to face Mickey?

  Truthfully, most of us were pulling for Mickey to beat Babe’s record. We weren’t anti-Roger at all. It’s just that we had known Mickey longer. He had come up through the Yankees’ system and stepped in to replace Joe DiMaggio as the Yankee, whereas Roger had just joined the team the year before. But again, we had nothing against Roger. When Mickey eventually fell out of the home run race, all of us—including Mickey—threw our full support behind Roger.

  On September 10, Mickey homered during a doubleheader against Cleveland to reach number fifty-three. Roger was at fifty-six.

  Nagging injuries, though, began to take their toll on Mickey—he had injured a muscle in his left forearm in the sweep of Detroit but kept playing—and he didn’t hit another home run for almost two weeks. He also came down with flu-like symptoms during that time. Broadcaster Mel Allen recommended a doctor who could give Mickey a shot to take care of the flu. The doctor, however, hit Mickey’s hip bone with the needle. The shot bruised Mickey’s hip, and the bruise developed into an abscess that sent Mickey to the hospital wit
h a high fever.

  Mickey tried to keep playing, but he was in obvious pain. I don’t think people realized how bad that abscess was. It was big enough that I think a person could have put his fist into it. I would see Mickey’s hip in the locker room and wonder how he was suiting up, much less playing. He did end up missing some games in the final two weeks of the season, and the doctor’s shot wound up having ramifications not only on the home run race but also into the postseason.

  Roger had fifty-nine home runs after our 155th game on September 20, so according to the commissioner’s declaration, the record was safe from being beaten without some type of distinctive mark. Roger hit number sixty in game 159 and went into the final day of the regular season tied with Babe Ruth’s mark.

  When Mark McGwire and Sammy Sosa engaged in their pursuit of the single-season home run record in 1998, the crowds for their final games of the season were enormous. But it wasn’t that way in ’61. The action Ford Frick had taken to protect Babe’s record took the glamour out of Roger’s bid for sixty-one once the 154-game mark had passed. When we hosted the Boston Red Sox in the regular season finale with Roger sitting on sixty, the attendance that day was only 23,154, and that was the largest crowd for the three games in which Roger had a chance to break the record.

  Roger reached sixty-one in his second at bat, in the fourth inning, off Tracy Stallard. Roger turned on a knee-high fastball and dropped it into the right field seats of Yankee Stadium as he had so many times that season.

  The response was different than most would probably imagine. If that had happened in today’s baseball, Roger’s teammates would have raced out of the dugout and mobbed him in celebration as soon as he touched home plate. Back then, though, it wasn’t considered appropriate for teams to leave the dugout and greet a home run hitter at home plate. We stayed in the dugout and waited for Roger.