Impact Player

by Bobby Richardson

  “Absolutely!” Betsy said. “If it hadn’t been for Robert making that error, we’d have won the World Series.”

  Yogi offered a small chuckle while I squirmed in my seat. Betsy still claims she wasn’t trying to say anything negative about me, just trying to encourage Yogi.

  The day after the team arrived in New York, Betsy and I started home for South Carolina. As we drove, we heard on the radio that Yogi had been fired as manager. We both were stunned, and the impact of my Game 4 error suddenly stung me even more. I might have cost our team the World Series. Could I also have cost my friend Yogi his job?

  I don’t have an answer for that because I still don’t understand why Yogi was fired. Neither do the teammates I’ve discussed this with.

  Yogi was a good manager. That was a difficult season, and there were several points in the regular season where things could have fallen apart, but Yogi got us through them. Even though he had been our teammate just the year before, we always understood that he was our manager now. He was never buddy-buddy with the players, even though we laughed and had a lot of fun together. And we were always clear where we stood with him. Even on that first day in spring training, when Mickey threw down his bat and walked out of the meeting, Yogi knew he didn’t mean it, and everyone there that day knew Yogi had Mickey’s full support.

  We played hard for him. Yogi wouldn’t stand for anything less. If a player needed a little motivation, Yogi never hesitated to provide some for him. Often he did so in an animated, colorful manner, but we didn’t mind. He was just passionate about baseball being respected and played the proper way.

  I wasn’t a pitcher, but I thought Yogi did a fine job of handling our pitching staff too. As a catcher, he had a good instinct about when to leave a pitcher in and when to take one out. I can’t remember a time during that season when I looked back and wondered why Yogi had made a particular move. That’s why his firing is still a mystery to me.

  Shortly after Yogi was let go, Johnny Keane was introduced as our manager—the same Johnny Keane whose Cardinals had just defeated us in the World Series. It was later reported that the Yankees’ decision to fire Yogi had actually been made during the summer, over concerns that he had lost control of the team. (He hadn’t.) But I don’t think the Yankees would have been able to fire Yogi if we had won the World Series, and if I hadn’t bobbled that grounder in Game 4, we probably would have.

  Other factors were clearly at play, of course, including a change in ownership. In early November, CBS had purchased 80 percent of the Yankees franchise from the ownership team of Dan Topping and Del Webb. Although the transaction date occurred after the World Series, the process would have required several months, and I wondered how it affected Yogi’s firing. (CBS would later obtain the remaining 20 percent and maintain ownership until 1973, when a group led by George Steinbrenner bought the club. The Yankees would never make the playoffs under CBS’s ownership.)

  Public relations may have played a role in Yogi’s firing as well. The New York Mets had joined the National League in 1962 and hired Casey Stengel as their first manager. Although Casey’s early teams suffered through the poor seasons expected of a start-up club, Casey’s popularity among the New York media had created an immediate competition for fans. The criticisms of Yogi as a manager—especially exaggerated reports about the harmonica incident in Chicago—were public relations losses for the Yankees.

  Whatever the reasons for Yogi’s firing, the changes that followed it were dramatic and came in a flurry. They came at a time when I was considering a dramatic change myself: retiring from baseball.

  I had accepted the traveling schedule of a major leaguer as part of the lifestyle, but during the ’64 season I’d begun to regret how much time I was spending on the road. We had four kids, and that was a big load for Betsy when I was on road trips. Plus, our two oldest, Robby and Ronnie, had turned seven and six, respectively, during the summer. At their ages they were well into the school routine, and for our family that meant a very complicated school routine.

  In the spring we’d take them out of school in Sumter and send them down to Florida, where they would spend the seven weeks of spring training in a private school that could accommodate them for that short time. Then they would return to Sumter while I headed north for the regular season. When school ended, Betsy and the kids would join me at the home we rented in New Jersey. Then when it was time for school to start back up, they would return to Sumter, and I would rejoin them there as soon as our season ended.

  All that moving required a lot of work—mostly for Betsy—but we wanted to spend as much time together as a family as we could, and not just during the off-seasons. Some players didn’t do that for various reasons. Mickey’s and Roger’s families, for example, did not move to New York for the season. Betsy and I believed our togetherness was worth the effort, but as the kids grew, it was getting harder and harder. Besides, Robby and Ronnie were at the ages where they could begin playing sports in leagues, and it absolutely ate at my insides to be missing their games.

  Late in the season, as I had done once before, I went to Ralph Houk and told him I thought it was time for me to retire. Again Ralph advised me otherwise. He understood my situation, but he stood firm in his belief that the spiritual impact I wanted from my life could best be made as a member of the Yankees.

  During the off-season I told Ralph that I would return to New York for another year. Before we began spring training, a reporter learned that I had intended not to return and then changed my mind. The reporter put two and two together and came up with five. The result was an article that said I had decided to retire if Yogi returned as manager but then decided to come back after he was fired.

  I had a good relationship with the media that covered us and had friends among the press corps. They treated me kindly throughout my career. However, it seemed there was always one sportswriter in the group who jumped to conclusions in his reporting, and that article demonstrated the harm even one article could cause.

  The newspaper printed a large retraction of the story, but not even the retraction could undo all the damage. I cleared things up with Yogi, telling him the story was not true. He knew I had been a big supporter of his, so there was no problem there. But after the article came out, I began receiving hate mail from Yankees fans who supported Yogi. Betsy quit reading my mail for a while because of that. I wish we could have brought that sportswriter in to help answer the fans’ letters!

  The Decline Begins

  The 1965 season turned out to be a tough one for the Yankees. We had missed the playoffs back in ’59, but that year felt like an anomaly. That had been a season in which we battled injuries and things just never seemed to get going, and the feeling was frustration more than anything else. In ’65, the predominant feeling was hopelessness.

  I think the effects of the Yankees’ sale began to become evident during that season. We didn’t know what all had taken place to prepare the franchise for sale, but it was widely speculated that some cost-cutting in the farm system had been part of the process. Whatever the reason, our minor leagues had thinned out talentwise.

  In the past, it seemed like every season we’d hear names of up-and-coming players who were being developed to fill positions with the parent club. That depth allowed us to trade off name players, who were beginning to start the descent in their careers, for young talent that could either step in and play for us right away or be sent down to develop while a primed youngster from Triple-A came up and joined us. But with our farm system producing fewer of those prospects, we became one of the teams trading young talent for veteran players who, it was hoped, could help us win that season.

  In ’65, we were hit with the combination of injuries (again) and veteran players who were beginning to show their age.

  Catcher Elston Howard had elbow surgery and played 110 games. Shortstop Tony Kubek’s back pained him so badly that at times he had difficulty simply bending over, and he played 109 games. Mickey Mantle
moved from center field to left to remove some of the burden on his aching knees, and he played hurt most of the season while appearing in 122 games. Right fielder Roger Maris suffered a hand injury and played 46 games.

  Our numbers told the story that year. Mickey hit .255 with only nineteen home runs. Tom Tresh, who moved to center field, led us in home runs (twenty-six), runs batted in (seventy-four), and batting average (.279). Those weren’t anywhere near typical team-leading statistics for us. My numbers were down too. My batting average slipped twenty points, from .267 to .247. My runs scored dropped from ninety to seventy-six.

  Among the pitchers, Whitey Ford’s arm soreness worsened. There were days when Whitey had trouble even lifting his arm above his head, but he was a gamer and was going to take the ball every time he was scheduled to start. Whitey won sixteen games that season, but he also lost thirteen—the most in his long career. In his second year, Mel Stottlemyre was our best pitcher and won twenty games. But Al Downing finished 12–14, and Jim Bouton dropped from 18–13 the year before to 4–15.

  Despite a three-game winning streak during the first week of the season, we got off to a 3–6 start. We didn’t spend a single day in first place and ended up with a 77–85 record, putting us in sixth place in the ten-team league and twenty-five games behind the first-place Minnesota Twins.

  On road trips that season Tony and I sometimes sat around in our hotel rooms and discussed our futures. For a variety of reasons, neither of us planned on sticking around for 1966.

  More than ever I yearned to be home to take my kids to school, help them with their homework in the afternoons, and watch their games or help coach their teams. Tony shared my yearnings for a normal family life, and his feelings were multiplied by his persistent back problems.

  On top of that, it seemed our team was falling apart. The players who had been most responsible for our success finally seemed to be reaching the downside of their careers in ’65. There wasn’t enough help coming from the top end of our minor league system. And the lower levels had become so depleted that there wasn’t enough there, either, to use in a trade for a veteran or two who could lift us back into pennant contention.

  Some of the younger players who did come up didn’t seem to understand the Yankee way of doing things. There was more interest in individual achievements than team accomplishments. I had noticed signs of that after the ’63 and ’64 World Series, when it came time for us to decide how to split our postseason earnings.

  When I came up, the veteran players had been generous in including younger players who hadn’t played much (such as me). Later, when I had earned a few stripes, I’d been part of the group that wanted to make sure we continued that practice. For instance, we had voted to give batboys a full share. We were making good salaries, and that bonus money meant a great deal to the young players and the batboys.

  But in ’63 and ’64, some of the newer players had been outspoken in saying the players who had played less “deserved” less. Deserved wasn’t a good word to me because I had never understood why baseball players “deserved” better salaries than, say, schoolteachers.

  The “me first” attitude I saw developing was yet another reason I thought it was time to retire. So I played practically all of the ’64 season thinking that my double play partner and I would go out together after that year.

  Knowing that Kubek and I planned to make ’65 our final season, the Yankees asked whether one of us would stay through ’66 to help tutor our infield replacements. Tony agreed to stay. But as the ’65 season wore on, the condition of Tony’s back made it obvious he would not be able to play beyond that season. So the Yankees asked if I would reconsider and stay through 1966.

  Houk wanted to talk about a possible contract with me. I wasn’t the best negotiator, and in that era of baseball, players were not represented by agents. When I was with the Yankees—and I assume this was true with many other teams—a player could not bring along anyone else to help him with his contract. After the ’61 season, Maris’s brother, who was a sharp businessman, had asked to accompany Roger when it came time to discuss his next season’s contract. He’d been kicked out of the office. “We’ll only talk with Roger,” he was told.

  After the ’62 season, when I had led the American League in hits, I had gone in to discuss my contract for ’63. Roy Hamey was the general manager at the time, but only Mickey and perhaps Whitey and Yogi talked directly to the GM about contracts. The rest of us went to the assistant general manager.

  “Well, you had a pretty good year,” the assistant GM told me. “I was thinking in terms of a five-thousand-dollar raise.”

  “Five?” I asked. “I was thinking about fifteen.”

  “Okay, okay,” he said. “We’ll settle at ten.”

  “Okay,” I said, and that was the extent of the “negotiations.”

  When I met with Ralph to talk about my final contract with the Yankees, he said, “We’ll offer you sixty thousand dollars to play one more season.”

  “I’m not worth sixty thousand,” I said. I had made forty thousand the previous season and didn’t feel I warranted a twenty-thousand-dollar raise. (There’s probably a reason that players today aren’t clamoring to have me as their agent.)

  “How about you pay me forty-five thousand and give fifteen thousand to charity?”

  The Yankees wrote out three five-thousand-dollar checks to give to charities of my choice. Also, in appreciation of my returning to help them out for the ’66 season, they added four years to my contract at fifteen thousand per year to be their “special assignment scout.” Or, as Ralph explained, “You don’t have to do anything.”

  The Season That Wouldn’t End

  The 1966 season turned out to be a long one. Only seventeen games in, we were already ten games out of first place. With our record at 4–16 on May 7, Johnny Keane was fired, and Ralph came back down from the front office to manage.

  Keane wasn’t a good hire for our team. He was a wonderful man, and Betsy and I once had an enjoyable visit with him and his family in Texas. However, he had a National League managerial style, and though it had won a world championship with St. Louis, it just wasn’t a good fit for us.

  For instance, he would relieve Whitey Ford in the final innings of close games even though Whitey was pitching well. When Whitey was on, the best thing to do was to leave him in because we would eventually score a run for him.

  In his season-plus with us, Keane never could develop a rapport with the players, and we just went down, down, down until he was fired.

  Even with the managerial change and 140 games remaining, it was clear that we weren’t going to work our way back into contention for the pennant in 1966. So it became a long, long season for us. The games didn’t just seem to take longer; they actually were longer because we were giving up a lot more runs. The road trips become longer too, when you’re losing the way we were.

  Yankees fans were really down on Roger Maris that season. He was still bothered by the hand injury from the year before and slumped to a .233 average, with only thirteen home runs and forty-three RBIs. He knew I would be retiring and told me during the season that he wanted to retire too, even asking what paperwork I had completed.

  “I put my name on the voluntarily retiring list,” I said. “That means I’m saying I won’t be back next year, but I can change my mind. If I do, I’ll have to wait a certain amount of time in April before I can come back and play.”

  Roger indicated he might do that too.

  “You don’t need to do that,” I told him. “The most they’d cut your salary for your next contract is 20 percent. You ought to wait until you get your contract offer. See what it says, and then make a decision.”

  “I’ll do that,” he said.

  As it turned out, he never needed to. After the close of that season the Yankees traded him to St. Louis for Charley Smith, an infielder from Charleston, South Carolina.

  Roger played two years with the Cardinals, whose fans properly
appreciated him.

  Saying Farewell

  We trudged our way through the 1966 season, finishing 70–89 and in last place, twenty-six and a half games back. I ended the season with a .251 average, seventy-one runs scored, seven home runs—seven!—and six stolen bases. I made the All-Star team for the seventh time, but my Gold Glove award streak was ended after five seasons in a row by Bobby Knoop of the recently renamed California Angels.

  Ralph started me regularly at second base, with prospect Horace Clarke playing shortstop most of the second half of the season. With about two weeks to play, Ralph pulled me aside and asked if I would mind sitting out some games so he could move Clarke to second and give another prospect—Bobby Murcer—a look at shortstop. (Murcer was the one who would wear jersey number 1 after I retired.) I agreed to cut back my playing time, and Ralph gave me the opportunity to make a trip home to Sumter to see my family after the kids had settled in to school there.

  Saturday, September 17, was set up as Bobby Richardson Day at Yankee Stadium—part of the final home stand of the season. I was the tenth Yankee to be honored with an on-field ceremony. With us so far out of the pennant race, attendance had dwindled to the point that we weren’t even drawing ten thousand fans for our final home games. So I was honored and humbled to learn that more than twenty-one thousand came out for Bobby Richardson Day.

  Betsy and the kids drove in for the special day. My mother and Betsy’s mother came too, as did several of our friends. The mayor of Sumter also was in attendance, along with a large group from back home. Betsy and I were busy coming up with places for our friends to stay.

  I had asked that George Beverly Shea, a dear friend from the Billy Graham Crusades, sing “How Great Thou Art” as part of the ceremony. Bob Fishel, the Yankees’ public relations director, had expressed reservations about granting that request. But once Bob found out how ticket sales for that game were going as compared to sales for our other games, he said, “Go ahead. He can sing anything he wants to.”