Impact Player

by Bobby Richardson

  I never saw anyone pitch better than Koufax did in Game 1. His fastball was just taking off out of his hand, and he was throwing a straight changeup off his fastball. His changeup looked exactly like his fastball coming in, and we would swing so far out in front of the pitch that we were helpless to make contact. Plus, his curveball would drop off a dime, and he was throwing it precisely where he wanted to. He always seemed to be ahead in the count. As great a pitcher as he was, I don’t think he could have pitched a better game than that one.

  One of my sons told me about the 1975 movie One Flew over the Cuckoo’s Nest about a man who spends time in a mental institution. The character, portrayed by Jack Nicholson, makes up a broadcast of the ’63 Series in which I hit a double off Sandy Koufax, followed by back-to-back home runs by Tresh and Mantle.

  My response to that was, “No wonder he’s in an insane asylum.”

  If I had been asked to name the best pitcher in baseball at that time other than a teammate (Whitey), I would have picked Koufax. Yogi Berra apparently felt the same way. He summed up Koufax’s performance against us well when he said he could see how Koufax had won twenty-five games that season but couldn’t see how he had lost five.

  It was odd during that Series to look out from our dugout and see Moose Skowron standing over at first base in a Dodgers uniform. Moose had a good Series at the plate, and he hit a home run in Game 2. But he told me years later, as we continued our close friendship beyond our playing days, that being traded from the Yankees was the biggest disappointment of his career, and that defeating us in the World Series that year was a hollow victory. As far as I knew, he never wore his ’63 World Series ring.

  But if I ever find out that Moose actually paid Los Angeles second baseman Dick Tracewski to catch his pop-ups for him . . .

  Chapter 13

  Rallying under Yogi

  When our family arrived in Fort Lauderdale, Florida, for spring training in 1964, we had a special new Richardson with us: our second daughter, Jeannie.

  The Yankees had a new manager as well, but he had a familiar face. Ralph Houk had moved into the front office to become the general manager, and Yogi Berra took over the role of running the team.

  I had liked Ralph all the way back in our days together in Denver, and my best years as a Yankee had come with Ralph as the manager. I was happy to have Yogi as our manager too. He had played eighteen seasons with the Yankees, so he knew the Yankee way of doing things as well as anyone. Although Yogi had no managerial experience, I knew he was a smart baseball man and would do well.

  The first obstacle for Yogi would be the transition from player to manager. We all had been his teammates, but now he would be the man making the decisions. He went from being our peer to our boss. The transition got off to a rough start.

  The day before spring training was due to start, Yogi came by the house that Betsy and I were renting. “I want to try something out,” he said. “Tomorrow I’ll be talking to the ball club for the very first time as the manager. I’m gonna set some rules.” Yogi then began listing his rules: no tennis, no swimming, no golf, no card playing, and so on. Then, Yogi said, he would tell the players, “We’ll work hard on the field, but we’ll have some fun, too.”

  He looked at us and asked, “How does that sound?”

  “That sounds good,” I told him, and Betsy agreed.

  The next day he gathered all the players and began reciting what he had said in our living room. Yogi had made it to about his third or fourth “no” rule when Mickey threw down his bat onto the concrete floor, said, “I quit,” and walked out to a chorus of laughter.

  There went Yogi’s big opening speech.

  A Roller-Coaster Season

  We lost our first three games of the 1964 season in eleven, eleven, and twelve innings, respectively. Apparently nothing was going to come easy for us that year. And naturally every difficulty we experienced sparked speculation among the press and fans as to whether the rookie manager was to blame. Yogi, though, remained resolute, assuring us and the media that we would be in our usual position at the end of the season.

  It didn’t help that, although Mantle and Maris were playing, both were hampered by nagging injuries. Al Downing and Jim Bouton had early injury problems too, and that strained the pitching staff.

  We were slipping a bit in the standings in June before we ran off a seven-game winning streak that included a five-game sweep of the then-first-place White Sox. Just like that, we were right back among the league leaders. That entire summer was a roller-coaster ride. We would be up with a good stretch, then dip with a bad stretch, then back up, then back down.

  A high point of that summer for me was receiving the Lou Gehrig Memorial Award. The annual award had been created by Phi Delta Theta, Gehrig’s fraternity at Columbia University, to honor the baseball player who best exemplified Gehrig’s character on and off the field. I had been named winner of the award after the previous season, but the presentation took place during the ’64 season. I can’t tell you how much that award meant to me.

  My respect for Gehrig had only grown since I first saw The Pride of the Yankees, and I was deeply honored to be recognized with that award in his name. The fact that the recognition went beyond the playing field made that day all the more special. And to top it off, I also recorded my one-thousandth career hit that day—a single off Frank Baumann in a doubleheader against the White Sox.

  At the All-Star break we were tied with Chicago three games behind Baltimore. I was hitting .249 and made my only start in an All-Star Game. We ended the first half of the season at home, and because the All-Star Game was slated for the next day at the New York Mets’ Shea Stadium, that game had the bonus of not requiring extra travel.

  I was in the American League’s starting lineup with Mantle and Ellie Howard, and I batted seventh and played the complete game. In the eighth inning—with another teammate, Joe Pepitone, on first as a pinch runner—I singled off Houston Astros pitcher Turk Farrell. I would play in two more All-Star Games before retiring, but that was my only hit in eleven total at bats during the games.

  When the playoff race resumed, so did our roller-coaster ride. We were on a slight rise when we returned to Chicago in mid-August. But the Sox swept us in a four-game series, and we fell to four and a half games behind them.

  As you might guess, we were all pretty down during the bus ride to O’Hare airport after that series. Then Phil Linz decided to pull out his harmonica. I need to back up a little to tell that story.

  Earlier in the season, on a trip to play the Minnesota Twins, Tony Kubek and I had accepted an invitation to visit the headquarters of Billy Graham’s ministry. Tony had picked up a little chorus book there that he liked, and when we returned to our hotel, he had said, “I’d like to sing some of these songs.”

  I suggested he call Spud Murray, our batting practice pitcher, who I knew would rush right over with his harmonica. The three of us were up all night belting out tunes from that songbook. The next morning at the team breakfast in the hotel restaurant, some players were yawning and obviously weary. Tony and I asked what was wrong, and one answered, “Well, there were some drunks up over our room singing and playing a harmonica all night long. We didn’t get any sleep.”

  Tony had enjoyed that night so much—not to mention the story about us “drunks”—that he’d gone to a Marshall Field’s while we were in Chicago and bought four harmonicas. He’d kept one for himself and given one each to me, Tommy Tresh, and Phil Linz. Phil had his harmonica with him when we boarded that bus for the airport after being swept by the White Sox. With the bus quiet, Linz pulled out his harmonica.

  Yogi, in the front where the manager sits, heard an odd but brief noise coming from the rear of the bus. He turned and looked around with a “Surely I didn’t just hear that” expression, then turned back to the front.

  About twenty seconds later, Linz gave another shrieking blow on his harmonica. That time Yogi jumped up, turned to face the back of the bus, a
nd said, “Put that thing in your pocket!” Or something to that effect, because I can’t use Yogi’s exact words.

  “What’d he say?” Linz asked those around him in the back.

  Mickey was sitting across the aisle from Linz and whispered back, “He said he couldn’t hear you. Play it again—louder.”

  Linz did as Mickey suggested.

  Yogi was furious. He stomped down the aisle, grabbed the harmonica from Linz’s hands, and flung it. The harmonica struck Joe Pepitone, who launched into comical theatrics about being injured and threatening to sue. Yogi fined Linz something like two hundred dollars—a heavy fine back then. It worked out great for Linz, though, because he wound up signing an endorsement contract with a harmonica company that paid him many times more than the amount of his fine.

  It didn’t work out nearly as well for Yogi.

  There were reporters traveling with us—seven, I believe—and they got together and decided not to file stories about the harmonica incident because it could look like there was dissension on the team. But one of the reporters decided to break ranks with the rest and submitted an account to his newspaper. Once that paper printed the harmonica story, of course, all of them did, and the story made big headlines. The bad publicity was more fuel for the fire for all the Yogi critics, who already held him responsible for our up-and-down season.

  Still, Yogi kept telling us and the press that everything was going to be fine by season’s end. Yogi was correct.

  On September 3, Baltimore led the league, and the White Sox were next, one game behind. We were three games behind Chicago. On September 17, the three of us were tied for first and set up for an exciting race to the finish. And only a week later, we were four games ahead of both Baltimore and Chicago, with only ten games left to play. Once again we had pulled everything together for a long, late-season winning streak—this one at eleven in a row—even though we’d lost Kubek during that time to a wrist injury.

  We cooled off slightly after that, going 4–4 the rest of the way, but we still were able to clinch the pennant on the next-to-last day of the season.

  Not in the Cards

  Over in the National League, the Philadelphia Phillies held a six-and-a-half-game lead with twelve games remaining but lost ten games in a row and were passed by the St. Louis Cardinals. On October 7 we met the Cardinals at Busch Stadium in St. Louis for Game 1 of the 1964 World Series.

  Whitey Ford had pitched through pain and numbness in his arm during the regular season, but our Chairman was out there toeing the rubber for us to start Game 1. Unfortunately, Whitey had more heart than arm that postseason. We scored four runs in five innings off Cardinals starter Ray Sadecki and scored another run off the bullpen to give us more runs in that game than we had scored in all of the ’63 Series. It wasn’t enough, though. Mike Shannon hit a monstrous homer for St. Louis, and the Cards took the first game 9–5.

  Cardinals ace Bob Gibson had won his team’s pennant clincher in relief, then rested until Game 2, when he made his first career Series start against our rookie, Mel Stottlemyre. Against the odds, we beat Gibson 8–3, with four insurance runs scored in the ninth after Gibson had left. Our offense was off to a good start in the Series, and I had gone 2 for 5 in each of the first two games.

  Pitchers dominated Game 3 of the Series. Behind a six-hitter from Bouton, we won 2–1 to take a 2–1 Series lead.

  Then in Game 4, with a chance to go up 3–1, we scored three runs in the bottom of the first. Sadecki, the Game 1 winner, lasted only five batters. Linz, who was playing for Kubek, doubled to lead off. I doubled in Linz, Maris singled me to third, and Mantle singled to score me. Mantle was thrown out trying to stretch his hit into a double, but that was the only out Sadecki recorded before being pulled in favor of Roger Craig. Ellie Howard, the first batter against Craig, singled in Maris for a 3–0 lead. The score stayed that way as Al Downing retired St. Louis 1–2–3 in four of the first five innings. But in the top of the sixth, the game—and the Series—turned.

  The Cardinals had runners on first and second, with one out, when Dick Groat hit a double play grounder to me. I fielded the ball, but not cleanly. It took me a split second longer to get control of the ball, bringing it out of my glove. That would be just enough to keep us from turning two. Then I flipped the ball to Linz, who was playing shortstop, for a force-out at second. But Linz, less experienced than Kubek, came across the bag as though he still wanted to try to turn a double play instead of staying on the bag. Because of my bobble, the timing was all off on the toss, and Linz couldn’t handle my flip. So in a matter of seconds we’d gone from two likely outs to one and then to none. I was given an error on the play, and deservedly so.

  The bases were now loaded, with only one out. Then Ken Boyer—brother of our third baseman, Clete—followed with a grand slam that gave the Cardinals a 4–3 lead. That would be the final score.

  I drove home that evening aware I had made a very costly error. Before that sixth inning we’d had a chance to take control of the Series. Instead, the Series was 2–2, and St. Louis had Bob Gibson ready to pitch Game 5.

  Gibson blanked us through eight innings in the next game. Trailing 2–0 in the bottom of the ninth, we were in danger of going to St. Louis one loss away from elimination. Mantle led off by reaching on an error. Howard struck out, and Pepitone grounded out. But then Tresh homered off Gibson to tie the score and send the game into extra innings.

  In the tenth Tim McCarver’s three-run homer put St. Louis back in the lead, and Gibson—pitching on three days’ rest—returned to the mound for the bottom of the tenth. I managed a two-out single, but I was our only base runner that inning. We lost the game 5–2, putting us behind 3–2 in the Series.

  Bouton pitched great for us in Game 6, and with Pepitone, Maris, and Mantle hitting home runs, we won 8–3 to set up another winner-take-all Game 7.

  Gibson again started for the Cards, this time on two days’ rest. The game was scoreless going into the bottom of the fourth, when McCarver reached on an error that scored a run. After Mike Shannon singled McCarver to third, St. Louis manager Johnny Keane called for a double steal. Shannon broke for second, and on Ellie’s throw to me there, McCarver took off for home. I cut in front of the bag, fielded Ellie’s throw, and fired back to home. The throw wasn’t in time to get the sliding McCarver.

  The Cards scored one more run in that inning, and we were down 3–0 with Gibson on the mound. An inning later St. Louis handed its ace a 6–0 lead. We had to find a way to put a couple of runs on the board against Gibson and hope he tired late. We could not afford to go into the late innings down by six.

  To start the sixth inning, I reached on an infield single, and Maris singled to right. Mantle then hit a three-run homer to left center to cut our deficit in half, making the score 6–3. That was Mickey’s third home run of the Series and the eighteenth of his World Series career. He had erased Babe Ruth’s record of fifteen.

  Ken Boyer hit his second home run of the Series in the bottom of the seventh, and St. Louis was up 7–3. Gibson went on to sit down Mantle, Howard, and Pepitone in order in the eighth. It was going to take a ninth-inning rally against Gibson for us to have a chance to win.

  We almost got that rally. Clete Boyer and Linz hit solo home runs to make the score 7–5. With two outs, I came to the plate. I knew all I needed to do was get on base and then a tiring Gibson—if he was left in the game—would be looking at Maris at the plate and Mantle on deck. But I made the final out, hitting a pop fly to Dal Maxvill at second base. If I could have just gotten on base, Maris and maybe Mantle would have had a chance. Instead, we ended up losing both the game and the Series.

  I don’t think enough can be said about Bob Gibson’s performance in that Series. On limited rest he made three starts, threw twenty-seven innings, allowed twenty-three hits, and struck out thirty-one batters. He well deserved his MVP award.

  Gibson was a great athlete—he also played basketball for the Harlem Globetrotters—and a real co
mpetitor. I’ve always considered him a right-handed Koufax, with one key difference: Gibson was mean on the mound. He pitched throughout his career with a well-earned reputation for knocking down batters. He loosened me up in the batter’s box on two occasions—and both were in Old Timers’ Games!

  The first time came after José Cardenal had homered off Gibson. I was the next batter. “I wouldn’t go up there if I were you,” Cardenal joked.

  “Surely,” I said, “he wouldn’t hit a sixty-year-old guy who hasn’t picked up a bat in all these years.”

  When the first pitch sailed behind my head, everyone in the game, including Gibson, started laughing. Even though Gibson was playing around, I did not think that would be a good time to remind Bob that I had gotten seven hits off him in the ’64 Series.

  Chapter 14

  Headed for Home

  The disappointment of losing the 1964 World Series was similar to what we felt after losing to Pittsburgh in ’60—and to me it felt very personal. Any seven-game Series has opportunities to go either way, but I felt like my error in Game 4 had been the hinge moment. My batting average for that Series was my highest yet—.406, with at least one hit in all seven games—but what I remember best all these years later is that bobbled grounder that should have been a double play.

  When my season-ending pop-up had been secured and I veered right from the first base line toward our dugout, I could not have imagined that my at bat would be the last for any Yankee in a World Series for twelve years. The 1964 season is now marked as the end of that Yankees dynasty. The slide was unexpected and unbelievably rapid. The changes began almost immediately after the Series.

  On the charter plane returning to New York, Betsy and I sat with Yogi.

  “I’m meeting with the Yankees tomorrow,” Yogi said. “Do you think I should ask for a two-year contract?” (At that time managers worked on one-year contracts.)