Mickey and Willie

by Allen Barra

  Mickey, caught in the middle, made no public statements on the matter. It was a situation he could have never envisioned. Yogi had been his pal since he had been a raw rookie, one of the first players on the team to make him feel at home. Essentially he had been the friend and mentor Mickey so much wanted Joe DiMaggio to be. Still, it must have occurred to Mickey around that time that if he had shown a greater quality of leadership, there might never have been the perception that Berra had let the team get out of control. Had Mickey Mantle showed the maturity on the Yankees that Willie Mays had on the Giants, Yogi might have kept his job.

  But Mantle’s loyalties were divided. Houk had been Mickey’s friend too, the man who had publicly announced that Mickey was now the leader of the team. It was Houk who had released him from the pressure of “living up to his potential” that Casey always placed on him, and thanks in part to Houk, Mickey had blossomed, winning two MVP Awards and two more World Series rings.

  As the 1965 season started, Mickey Mantle had a great many other things to think about as well. Shortly after the 1964 World Series, the Columbia Broadcasting System purchased 80 percent of the Yankees for the astonishing sum of $11.2 million. No one knows precisely how the deal originated (though William S. Paley, president of CBS, and Yankees owner Dan Topping were old country club pals). Topping and the other previous owner, Del Webb, each retained a 10 percent share in the team. Webb would sell his share in 1965, just before the franchise began its nosedive; Topping divested his soon after in 1966, presumably for less money than Webb got. An unnamed writer in the August 21, 1964, issue of Time magazine wrote, “Topping and Webb had already taken tremendous profits since purchasing the club with Larry MacPhail in 1945 for $2.8 million. Two years later, they bought out MacPhail for two million, got that back and more when they sold Yankee Stadium and the land under it for $6.5 million in 1953. All the rest was gravy.”

  Why did they sell the team to CBS? One reason might have been declining attendance, which in the early 1960s was still the primary source of income for a baseball team. Attendance in 1963, even with the Yankees winning the pennant, was just under 1,309,000, the lowest since World War II. The drop in numbers might have been due in part to the frequent injuries to Mantle and Maris, the star players who most fans wanted to see, but a far bigger reason was the flight of white middle-class fans to the suburbs and the increased time and effort it took to get to the Bronx.

  Whatever the reasons, the sale signaled the beginning of the end of baseball’s flagship franchise. It was hoped in 1965 that Whitey Ford, at age thirty-six, would anchor the rotation for a few more seasons while the talented young trio of starting pitchers—Jim Bouton, who had won 39 games in the previous two seasons, Mel Stottlemyre, and Al Downing—would give the team the kind of starting pitching that “the Big Three”—Allie Reynolds, Vic Raschi, and Ed Lopat—had given Casey Stengel’s early seasons.

  It was not to be. The irreverent Bouton hurt his arm and lost his fastball forever; he won only four games in 1965, and at the end of 1968 he would be sold to the Seattle Pilots in the Pacific Coast League, although he would rejoin the AL the next year when the Pilots became an expansion team. Stottlemyre was terrific in 1965 at 20-9; for the next nine seasons, he waged a heroic battle, maintaining himself as the Yankees’ number-one starter as he tried to lift a bad-to-mediocre team into the first division, winning 21 games in 1968 and 20 in 1969. Al Downing, who was 13-8 in 1964, pitched well for the next three seasons, but with little support. In 1968 he hurt his arm, and after two indifferent years was traded to Oakland.*

  Ford, gritting his teeth and trying to work his way back from arm trouble, managed to win 16 games in 1965. He would win just four more games before calling it quits in 1967, twenty years after the Yankees signed him as an amateur. His career was fabulous: he won 236 games against 106 losses, giving him the best won-lost percentage of any twentieth-century pitcher in the Hall of Fame. His career ERA was 2.75, a little better than that of the best left-hander in the NL over the same period, Warren Spahn (3.09). But that didn’t begin to tell all of Whitey’s story. His career ERA was 0.89 runs per nine innings better than the AL average over the span in which he pitched. The truly intriguing question is whether he would have had greater numbers if Ralph Houk had been his manager instead of Casey Stengel. Casey often held Whitey out of the rotation to pitch against the league’s toughest contenders. He never got a chance to pitch in a regular four-man rotation until Houk became manager in 1961, and he responded over the next four seasons with an 83–25 record for a mind-blowing .769 win-loss percentage. That his relatively slight frame could have taken such a heavy load for several more seasons is open to debate, but it’s likely that those long nights out with Mickey took a lot of innings out of Whitey’s left arm.

  The real decline of the Yankees came because the stars aged and there was no new talent to replace them. The old farm system had dried up from neglect and budget cuts; the last significant product of the Newark Bears for the Yankees was Yogi Berra back in 1946, and the last superstar produced by the scouting system was Mickey Mantle (though the Kansas City minor league team did give them Bill Skowron in 1953). In truth, without the trade pipeline from Philadelphia and then the Kansas City A’s in the 1950s—of which Roger Maris was the crowning achievement—the Yankees dynasty might not have made it out of the decade. Yet another blow to Yankee supremacy was the new draft rule, first implemented in 1965, which limited teams to signing one prospect per round and kept the Yankees from stockpiling talent, as they once had done.

  Maris missed nearly three-quarters of the 1965 season and hit only 8 home runs; in 1967 he was traded to St. Louis, where, as a platoon player, he helped the Cardinals win two pennants. Elston Howard, often playing hurt in 1965, caught just 95 games and batted .233. Joe Pepitone, who was supposed to be the next Yankees superstar, did attain genuine stardom in 1966, hitting 31 home runs and winning a Gold Glove at first base (where he replaced Skowron). After that, nightlife, gambling, and a general inattention to the game eroded his skills. He occasionally missed games, claiming he was being pursued by bookies; he may have been telling the truth. Shortstop Tony Kubek never recovered from a back injury and retired after the 1965 season.

  But perhaps the saddest case of all was that of Tom Tresh, the talented switch-hitting youngster who was cursed with the label of “the next Mickey Mantle” when he was called up in 1962. He was in double digits in home runs every season, and four times had 20 or more, including a high of 27 in 1966. He was also a Gold Glove—caliber outfielder. In 1967 Tresh hurt his knee badly in an exhibition game and underwent surgery. Though he had some sporadic success afterward, he never really achieved what everyone thought was his real potential. Neither did any of the subsequent “next Mickey Mantles.” Tresh was traded to Detroit in 1969 and then retired.

  Mantle played in agony the entire season, batting just 361 times in 122 games, but for all that he did not play poorly, hitting 19 home runs with 6 stolen bases in 8 tries. (Why he tried at all to steal a base is baffling.) He batted just .255, but his on-base percentage was a more than respectable .379—just 19 points fewer than Willie Mays, who led the NL that season. In fact, Mickey’s OBP was higher than that of Tony Oliva, who won the AL batting title at .321. The Yankees finished in sixth place, 77-85.

  On September 18, 1965, the day Mantle played in his 2,000th game, he was honored at Yankee Stadium. (For all his injuries, Mickey played in more games than any other Yankee until Derek Jeter surpassed his total in the next century.) The Yankees lost the game to Denny McLain and the Tigers, 4–3; Mickey went 0-for-3 with a walk.

  Though it was supposed to be a day of celebration, there was a hint of sadness in the fall air. Not only was it the end of a dismal season, but some of the guests symbolized a time that would not come again. Mel Allen, for instance, the longtime Yankees announcer with the Alabama twang, whose “How about that?” and “Going, going, gone!” signature home run calls were dear not just to Yankee fans but to baseb
all fans all over the country, was in attendance. Toots Shor, the famous saloon owner who had relocated his famous nightspot but could never quite recapture its place as the center of New York nightlife, was also there.

  All through the late summer of 1965 there had been rumors that Mantle was thinking of retirement, and now, with the downfall of the Yankees empire a reality, he was caught in a deluge of sentimentality for a lost era, one in which, just a few short years before, many fans had booed him unmercifully. A sellout crowd—the first and last of the 1965 season for the Yankees—sported bedsheet signs that declared, DON’T QUIT, MICK! and similar sentiments. Mickey was given a new car, two quarter horses, a Winchester rifle, and a six-foot, 100-pound Hebrew National salami. As the salami presented an enormous logistical problem—it would have cost far more to transport it back to Dallas than it was worth—Mickey gave it to New York archbishop Francis Cardinal Spellman, who sent it on to several Catholic charities, where it was carved up and enjoyed at several church events. A smiling Merlyn received a mink coat, and the family was given vacation trips to Rome and Puerto Rico.

  Joe DiMaggio flew in from the West Coast for the ceremony. Though it went largely unnoticed by most writers, who had written so much about DiMaggio’s aloofness to nineteen-year-old Mickey in 1951, the two had developed an interesting professional relationship over the years. Whether DiMaggio was ever truly jealous of Mantle will always be a subject for speculation, but by the 1960s the now silver-haired Yankee Clipper was always happy to shake Mickey’s hand and talk a little shop with him around the batting cage, usually during spring training. This was quite possibly the extent to which DiMaggio could relate to most of his former teammates and acquaintances. (Oddly enough, Mickey’s great pal Billy Martin was an exception, one of the few people who could make the Great DiMaggio laugh.) For his part, Mickey had long since lost most of his shyness around Joe and was happy to have him in New York for his special day.

  After reading his introductory appreciation of Mickey, Joe waved and stepped away from the mike. Then, alone among the Yankee players, former players, officials, and guests, he noticed one person standing at the back of the on-field crowd, looking alone and uncomfortable. DiMaggio walked over to Lovell Mantle, took her by the arm, and brought her over to her son and daughter-in-law.

  Mickey would have three more such days, and he remains the only player ever to be so honored. One of these events came in 1997—two years after his death.

  Willie Mays had his days, but not enough of them. There was a day for him at the Polo Grounds in 1954. “A bunch of Trenton fans,” he recalled to Charles Einstein, “came in and gave me some things—a picture and a watch, things like that.† I had a ‘day’ at the Polo Grounds in ’63, too, after the Giants moved to San Francisco and the Mets were playing there.

  “In San Francisco, they don’t go in for things like that so much. They gave me a banquet, for charity, at the Fairmont Hotel in 1964, but on the field the only ‘day’ I can remember was for Stu Miller, back in 1962, and the papers, or at least one or two of the writers, got on them for it—you know, the old story of why donate something to a baseball player who earns more than you do to begin with.… I still feel funny about having my biggest ‘day’ in New York when I was with the visiting team, but that’s how it happened.”‡1

  Probably Mays thought that after the excitement of the 1962 pen nant run there would be a major thaw in the attitude of San Francisco fans toward him. If it happened, he never quite perceived it that way and could never help but contrast the difference between New York and California fans—the latter always, to his mind, withholding some affection from him.

  In 1965 the San Francisco Giants were locked in a tense and bitter pennant race with the Los Angeles Dodgers that looked to be a repeat of the 1962 season. For some odd reason, the two archrivals did not play each other until April 29 in Los Angeles, where Don Drysdale defeated Juan Marichal, 2–1. The rules were different then and slanted toward pitchers, who were allowed to throw inside about as often as they wanted. In this game, Drysdale knocked down five Giants batters—that is, four different hitters, with Felipe Alou going down twice. Marichal was angry and told reporters that if Drysdale tried it again, he would retaliate. Drysdale, in turn, shot back that if Marichal did throw near the heads of Dodger batters, he would personally take out four Giants—“and I don’t mean the .220 hitters.”

  In practical terms, of course, Drysdale meant he would be throwing at Willie Mays. He could have been threatening to throw at Willie McCovey, but this was unlikely since McCovey, a left-handed batter, was far less susceptible to Drysdale’s sweeping, right-handed, near-sidearm fastballs. In fact, McCovey had hit several of his longest home runs off Drysdale. Also, McCovey, at around six-four, was nearly as big as Drysdale and was happy to let reporters know that he would not hesitate to charge the mound.

  As the heat of summer came on and the pennant race heated up with it, the tension between the two teams grew. On August 19, they began a four-game series at Candlestick Park that looked very much as if it would settle the issue of who would win the pennant—and presumably, with the swift and shocking decline of the New York Yankees, the World Series as well.

  The Giants lost the first game in fifteen innings despite a colossal two-run homer from Willie; they won the second on another Mays home run, and in the third game—again despite a clutch home run from Willie that tied the game—the Dodgers won in eleven innings. The fourth and final game on Sunday, August 22, was televised across much of the nation on NBC. It would become one of the most famous games in baseball history, not because it was a pitching duel between the two best starters in baseball, the Dodgers’ Sandy Koufax and the Giants’ Juan Marichal, and not because Mays won the game with a dramatic home run—his fourth in four games. The victory, as it turned out, would be the most bitter of Willie’s career and would cost the Giants the 1965 National League pennant and, realistically, Willie Mays’s last chance in his prime to get back to the World Series.

  I’ve studied the incidents surrounding this game many times, but was never quite satisfied that the story I heard from interviewing the primary players was corroborated by my research. This is how I put it together for a story for the New York Times in 2000.

  What most people remember is the shock of the violence and the blood, which somehow seemed even more horrific on a black-and-white TV. They did not know then, and they probably do not know now, that the racial tensions and tumultuous politics of the midsixties were boiling over on that Sunday afternoon.

  Neither ace was at his best that day, and by the third inning it was 2–1, Los Angeles—a typical score for a nine-inning Marichal-Koufax match. Juan, who was not averse to throwing inside, knocked down Ron Fairly and Maury Wills. Koufax was averse to brushback pitches; with his speed, he was afraid he might kill someone. Still, he was pressured by his catcher, John Roseboro, to retaliate with a high-and-inside fastball when Marichal came to bat. On the next pitch, low and inside, Roseboro dropped the ball and picked it up behind Marichal. He then threw it back to Koufax, barely missing Marichal’s head. Marichal thought it was closer than that; he would forever claim that the ball nicked his ear.

  “Roseboro was sending him a message,” says Charles Einstein in Willie’s Time. Marichal didn’t like the message. He spun around, bat in hand, and began screaming: “Why you do that? Why you do that?” Einstein said some choice Spanish terms were sprinkled in as well.

  Roseboro’s chin music has somehow been excised from everyone’s memory of the incident. What is also forgotten is that it was Roseboro who moved toward Marichal, not the other way around. For most of the 42,000-plus crowd, the first indication that something was wrong came when they saw Marichal smashing Roseboro’s head with his bat. Blood immediately began to flow from a deep scalp wound; to many stunned onlookers, it appeared as if Roseboro’s eye had been knocked out. Players and coaches on both teams rushed toward home plate. Mays, a friend of Roseboro’s, got there first. He immedia
tely grabbed the Dodger catcher, partly to protect him and partly, as he later revealed, to keep him from attacking Marichal. As Mays led Roseboro off the field, he cradled his bleeding head and moaned, “Johnny, Johnny, I’m so sorry.”

  When order was finally restored, a shaken Koufax walked the next two hitters and then gave up a three-run homer to Mays, giving the Giants a 4–2 victory. They may not have realized it that night, but the Giants’ season was over. Marichal, 19–9 before the game, lost three of his last four decisions after coming back from an eight-day suspension, which was seen by many as remarkably light. He was also fined $1,750 by the league, a bigger bite, it’s true, in a time when top stars made $90,000 to $100,000 a year, but almost nothing compared to what fans and much of the press were screaming for. The Giants lost the pennant to the Dodgers by two games.

  The Marichal-Roseboro clash haunted Mays for years. Years later he told Charlie Einstein: “Thinking back on it, I really don’t think Juan should have been playing at all. He was pretty strung out, full of fear and anger, and holding it inside. How can you tell a city and a team that they have to lose a pennant because of problems they don’t know about happening thousands of miles away?” (Mays was referring to the bloody civil war going on in the Dominican Republic, which had Marichal rushing to the phone every day to check on the fortunes of friends and family—particularly another man named Juan Marichal, his cousin, a politician who would become the country’s vice president.) If anything good came out of the incident, it was Mays’s enhanced reputation. After the game, talking to reporters, Dodgers manager Walter Alston said, “Mays was the only player on either club who showed any sense.” If there was any doubt in anyone’s mind that Willie Mays was now the elder statesman of baseball, this game removed it.