Pinstripe Empire Read online

  PINSTRIPE EMPIRE

  _____________________

  The New York Yankees from

  Before the Babe to

  After the Boss

  MARTY APPEL

  Contents

  Title Page

  Dedication

  Foreword by Yogi Berra

  Preface by Bernie Williams

  Special Introduction by Frank Graham Jr: Growing Up Yankee

  Author’s Introduction and Acknowledgments

  Chapter One

  Chapter Two

  Chapter Three

  Chapter Four

  Chapter Five

  Chapter Six

  Chapter Seven

  Chapter Eight

  Chapter Nine

  Chapter Ten

  Chapter Eleven

  Chapter Twelve

  Chapter Thirteen

  Chapter Fourteen

  Chapter Fifteen

  Chapter Sixteen

  Chapter Seventeen

  Chapter Eighteen

  Chapter Nineteen

  Chapter Twenty

  Chapter Twenty-One

  Chapter Twenty-Two

  Chapter Twenty-Three

  Chapter Twenty-Four

  Chapter Twenty-Five

  Chapter Twenty-Six

  Chapter Twenty-Seven

  Chapter Twenty-Eight

  Chapter Twenty-Nine

  Chapter Thirty

  Chapter Thirty-One

  Chapter Thirty-Two

  Chapter Thirty-Three

  Chapter Thirty-Four

  Chapter Thirty-Five

  Chapter Thirty-Six

  Chapter Thirty-Seven

  Chapter Thirty-Eight

  Chapter Thirty-Nine

  Chapter Forty

  Chapter Forty-One

  Chapter Forty-Two

  Chapter Forty-Three

  Chapter Forty-Four

  Chapter Forty-Five

  Chapter Forty-Six

  Chapter Forty-Seven

  Appendix: Yankees Year-by-Year Results

  Footnotes

  Bibliography

  A Note on the Author

  By the Same Author

  Copyright

  To those who ignited my love of baseball: Bob Fishel with his Yankee yearbooks, Mel Allen with his broadcasts, Sy Berger with his Topps baseball cards, Willard Mullin with his World-Telegram & Sun cartoons, Dick Young with his columns, Frank Graham’s Lou Gehrig: A Quiet Hero, the Daily News Sunday magazine, The Little Red Book of Baseball, Ethan Allen’s All-Star Baseball, Sharpie the Gillette parrot and World Series theme music, Pride of the Yankees with Gary Cooper, the Turkin-Thompson Official Encyclopedia of Baseball, the Chip Hilton baseball novels by Clair Bee, Manny’s Baseball Land, “Baseball and Ballantine,” the Hall of Fame, the Dell Baseball Annual, Ed Fitzgerald’s Sport magazines with Ozzie Sweet’s photography, Who’s Who in Baseball, the Sporting News, Baseball Digest, Tom Meany’s The Magnificent Yankees, John Rosenberg’s The Story of Baseball, Harry Simeone’s “It’s a Beautiful Day for a Ballgame,” Mickey Mantle, Bobby Richardson, and the New York City Police Athletic League for my early “career” in Maspeth, Queens.

  Foreword by Yogi Berra

  Sometimes people ask me what it was like to play with Babe Ruth—I have no idea. I met him once, even got my picture taken with him when I was a rookie in 1947, before he died. Shaking hands with him was like touching history.

  I learned once you’re a Yankee, you’re always in touch with that history. You sense it all around you, the pinstripes, the stadium, the tradition. On all the teams I played on, with DiMag, Whitey, Mickey, all of us felt responsible to our team. Being a Yankee meant something and still does.

  To this day I owe an awful lot to Bill Dickey, who made me into the catcher I became. Bill came up in 1928, and then came out of retirement to learn me all his experience, as I used to say. Bill was a great man and a coach on many of our championship teams. Being around him and some of the guys on the legendary ’27 team at our Old-Timers’ Days was special. We’d lend them our gloves or shoes for the game, it was like a big family reunion.

  What I like most about the Yankees is that connection, like we’re all related. I’m proud a guy like Posada came along to continue our connection at catcher—Dickey, me, Ellie Howard, Munson. Not many teams have that kind of tradition. I’m glad Jorgie appreciated the connection, he got it.

  Even nowadays, at spring training or in the new stadium, the current guys like seeing the old guys like me. They know they’re part of a big family. Guys like Jeter, Posada, and Rivera know it best. We have fun together every time I see them.

  I’m not one to dwell in the past; I follow today’s team as close as anyone. But I always get a kick out of Old-Timers’ Day because it’s great to see everyone again. When I was a young player, we had newspapermen like John Drebinger and Frank Graham traveling with us—they also covered the Lou Gehrig teams. We heard a lot of great stories from those guys.

  Talking baseball is what I still love. I was with the Mets when Marty joined the Yankees, but we caught up when I was hired as a coach in ’76—he was the PR guy. Boy, he knew his stuff. I would call him to talk about the latest gossip. He knew how to separate the truth from the rumors. That’s a good thing to know if you’re writing the history of the team.

  I’ve written introductions to many books, but this will probably be the last. This book is the last word on the Yankees. It’s a great history and I’ve been lucky to witness a lot of it. Some of it pretty close up.

  Preface by Bernie Williams

  I was sitting by my locker before the first game of the ’99 ALCS against Boston. It was my habit to be quiet before big games, sort of get into my game frame of mind. Yogi Berra was there to throw out the first pitch, and he thought I looked nervous.

  “What’s wrong?” he asked.

  “Nothing,” I said. “Just a big series. It’ll be a tough one.”

  “Don’t worry about it,” he replied. “These guys have been trying to beat us for eighty years.”

  He was right. He always was.

  That was Yogi, a man of great baseball wisdom, who always made you feel terrific in his presence. And what he was saying was “We’ve got your back,” speaking for ninety-seven seasons of Yankee baseball and all the great players who had come before. No one carried Yankee history more than he did.

  For me, there were other important personal links to the past. I once had a three-minute conversation with Joe DiMaggio, who always intimidated me a little, and he said, “Great job—keep up the good work.” It meant so much. And Mickey Mantle signed a ball for me on Old-Timers’ Day and said, “I’ve heard a lot about you, keep working hard.” Those were just passing moments to them—but so meaningful to me, as a young player trying to find my place.

  I grew up in Puerto Rico rooting for Puerto Rican players more than any one team. I was ten when I watched the Yanks’ Ed Figueroa become the first Puerto Rican to win 20 games. What a big moment that was for us. And I came of age as a fan in 1977 and 1978 when the Yankees were on top. I found myself drawn to them. I ate Reggie bars. I watched Bucky Dent in the Macy’s Thanksgiving Parade and thought that was very cool.

  When I first got to the Yankees in 1991, the team was down, but the organization was first-class, even in the minors. It was my first brush with feeling like a rock star. The facilities, the travel, the things that were required of us—no beards, dress right, wear a tie—it all made us stand out against other organizations.

  I was part of the generation of homegrown players who began to make their marks with the Yankees, a shift in the mentality of the way the team was built. Hensley Meulens, Kevin Maas, Oscar Azocar, Pat Kelly, Andy Stankiewicz, Jim Leyritz: They came just ahead of
me, with Jete, Mo, Andy, and Jorge on the way. It was a transitional time and I was just proud to put on the Yankee uniform. We may have been down, but we had a following wherever we went. Good days were coming; you could feel it.

  Yankee Stadium was magical. Maybe it was just my overwhelming excitement, but while the area around it seemed gray and gloomy, you’d walk into the ballpark and even the sky seemed bluer. It was like I had changed to new glasses. I walked out to the monuments, to the retired numbers, and took it all in. I was going to learn who all these old players were.

  You learn about Yankee history because it’s all around you. I first wondered why the team would spend so much time marketing the past when you had this emerging team coming along. But I came to realize it’s what connected generations of fans and how important that shared experience was. The PR department would get us to record trivia questions for the scoreboard, or we’d watch the historic moments on the board during the game, taking it all in. (You think we don’t watch?)

  That I could be with the Yankees during a championship era in their great history means the world to me. I’m proud to have been a player for this very special franchise, and proud to be part of the telling of its story.

  Special Introduction by Frank Graham Jr.: Growing Up Yankee

  I was born predisposed to become a Yankee fan, as other tots are born into their religion. My father was a sportswriter for the old New York Sun, covering first the Giants and later the Yankees. I spent my earliest years in a Brooklyn apartment, hearing not great symphonies or birdsong but illustrious names from the sports world. The most prominent was that of a person I understood to be called Bay Bruth.

  In 1933 my father took the whole family to St. Petersburg, Florida, where the team had its spring training camp. I saw the great players close up. One day my father and I joined the players on a ferry shuttling them across Tampa Bay for an exhibition game. Tony Lazzeri, Earle Combs, Lefty Gomez, and others who had been simply names to me until then patted this eight-year-old on the head. As we waited on a dock for the return ferry, I wandered over to where the Babe and Lou Gehrig had dropped a fishing line into the water. I stood close to them as they pulled up a blowfish and shared their wonder as the little creature, hitting the air, swelled like a toy balloon.

  For the next decade I exulted or grieved with the Yankees’ fortunes, following their results faithfully in the newspapers. Better still, I read the daily column in the Sun bylined “by Frank Graham,” which often recounted the conversations in the clubhouse and dugout my father had overheard and transcribed with such skill. I tagged along with him sometimes to Yankee Stadium, where the two of us always visited manager Joe McCarthy in his office before the game, and later I would sit in the dugout beside some of my heroes. I posed for a picture with Gehrig, wearing the great man’s cap. Lazzeri offered me a batboy’s uniform so I could go to the outfield and shag flies during batting practice. But I stubbornly declined his offer, envisioning myself skulled by a high fly ball and carted, ignominiously, off the field.

  The 1943 Frank Graham history.

  That era ended with the onset of World War II. In 1943 my father published the first full-fledged history of the Yankees. I had already gone off to war, serving far from home. But the day my copy of his book arrived at mail call and I began to read about the exploits of those fabulous players from the very beginning—the disasters and triumphs of this greatest of baseball franchises, all set down in print by my old man—I was the proudest apprentice seaman in the United States Navy.

  I believe my father would be pleased that Marty Appel has used his original history as his own base for continuing this unique saga well into the twenty-first century. The story is still in good hands, written once again by a man who knows much of what he describes from his own deep personal experience.

  Author’s Introduction and Acknowledgments

  In the 1940s and 1950s, Putnam published a series of sixteen team histories, of which The New York Yankees by Frank Graham was the first and most successful. It was published in 1943 and updated in 1958 after fourteen printings. Graham, who worked at the time for the New York Journal-American, “knew people who knew people” who went back to the origin of the team in 1903. When he used “Griff” for Clark Griffith, you knew he wasn’t just making up a nickname.

  Graham would not be surprised to learn that the Yankees have maintained their winning ways, but he would be surprised by the internationalism of the “brand” and the enormity of the business. And, yes, by the salaries.

  I think he’d also be surprised that in all these years, the Yankee story has yet to be retold in a traditional narrative. It is our hope that this book fills that void.

  The best advice I received early in this project came from my friend Darrell Berger, a Detroit Tigers fan who said, “Remember, a down time for the Yankees was a pretty good time for fans of other teams.” That kept my focus on the assignment—to try and tell a story anyone can relate to, not just for the Bronx faithful.

  I was privileged to work for the team, and later to produce its telecasts over a span of some twenty-five years, and I was smart enough to appreciate being surrounded by observers who went back to the 1920s. I listened. And I’d like to salute the authors, beat writers, broadcasters, and columnists who chronicled the team over the years and left a trail of information to be combed over by people like me for just such a project. They did their profession proud.

  I also had an all-star team gracious enough to read some of this material and lend their thoughts, and I especially wish to cite Doug Lyons, Paul Doherty, Tony Morante, Rick Cerrone, Jordan Sprechman, Tom Villante, Bob Heinisch, and Bill Madden for their time and counsel.

  Others who were gracious enough to help with this project include Maury Allen, Dom Amore, Norm Appel, Peter Bavasi, Mary Bellew, Kathy Bennett, Howard Berk, Yogi Berra, Peter Bjarkman, Arline Blake, Ron Blomberg, Jim Bouton, Ralph Branca, Bruce Brodie, Bill Burgess, Neill Cameron, Bill Chuck, Jerry Cifarelli, Joe Cohen, Dan Cunningham, Pearl Davis, Lou D’Ermilio, Steve Donahue, Frank Fleizach, Whitey Ford, Sean Forman, Steve Fortunato, Bill Francis, Bruce Froemming, Joe Garagiola, Joe Garagiola Jr., Peter Garver, Pat Gillick, Frank Graham Jr., Joe Grant, Ross Greenburg, Bill Guilfoile, Bob Gutkowski, Michael Hagen, Jane Hamilton, Fran Healy, Henry Hecht, Roland Hemond, Dr. Stuart Hershon, Brad Horn, Arlene Howard, Jeff Idelson, Stan Isaacs, Steve Jacobson, Bill Jenkinson, Mark Katz, Lana Kaufman, Pat Kelly, Jason Latimer, Jane Leavy, Mark Letendre, Dan Levitt, Lon Lewis, Terry Lefton, Phil Linz, Lee Lowenfish, Sparky Lyle, Jeffrey Lyons, Nathan Maciborski, Lee MacPhail, Rich Marazzi, Michael Margolis, Tim Mead, Ernestine Miller, Gary Mitchum, Toni Mollett, Gene Monahan, Leigh Montville, Mickey Morabito, Tomas Morales, Craig Muder, Ken Munoz, Kay Murcer, Ian O’Connor, Juliet Papa, Tony Pasqua, Phil Pepe, Fritz Peterson, Dr. Joseph Plantania, Tim Reid, Bobby Richardson, Kurt Rim, Ray Robinson, Mark Roth, K. Jacob Ruppert, Frank Russo, Richard Sandomir, Al Santasierre III, Harvey Schiller, Jerry Schmetterer, Ron Selter, Jay Schwall, Bill Shannon, Danny Sheridan, Tom Shieber, Al Silverman, David Smith, Tal Smith, Jeff Spaulding, Mark Stang, Steve Steinberg, Brent Stevens, Tom Stevens, Sheldon Stone, Bert Sugar, Randall Swearingen, David Szen, Bob Thompson, John Thorn, Dan Topping Jr., Kimberly Topping, Juan Vene, Mike Wach, Larry Wahl, Suzyn Waldman, Willie Weinbaum, Irv Welzer, Bill White, Roy White, Tim Wiles, Bernie Williams, Ralph Wimbish Jr., Bob Wolff, Jason Zillo, and Andrew Zimbalist. Special thanks for extended interviews to Randy Levine, Lonn Trost, Brian Cashman, and Gene Michael.

  At Bloomsbury, I would like to thank George Gibson, Ben Adams, Mike O’Connor, Will Georgantas, Nate Knaebel, Michelle Blankenship, and Patti Ratchford; my agent, Robert Wilson, and Team Appel—Brian, Deb, and especially Lourdes, who accepted the hours on the computer and the stacks of reference material cluttering our home.

  Thanks too to John Rogers and Will Means at Rogers Photo Archives in North Little Rock, Arkansas, for their newspaper, Sporting News, and Sport magazine photo files, and to Phil Castinetti of Sp
ortsworld for providing scorecards back to the days of Hilltop Park. Art depicting Yankee Stadium, 1923, was researched and produced by David Kramer, Matt O’Connor, J. E. Fullerton, Michael Hagan, Scott Weber, Michael Rudolf, Dennis Concepcion, and Chris Campbell.

  Chapter One

  PHIL SCHENCK WALKED GINGERLY across the soupy ground that would soon become Manhattan’s newest baseball diamond. As the newly appointed head groundskeeper of what would be, after all, a major league facility, he had to be intimidated by what lay ahead. Opening day was April 30.

  This new franchise had only been approved on March 12, 1903, and a playing field was a hurried afterthought. So difficult had been the struggle to get an American League team stationed in New York that the playing field, with so much barren space available in New York, seemed somehow less important.

  Unless you were Phil Schenck.

  “There is not a level spot on the whole property,” reported the Sporting News in its March 21, 1903, edition. “From Broadway, looking west, the ground starts in a low swamp filled with water, and runs up into a ridge of rocks … The rocks will be blasted out and the swamp filled in.”

  Joe Vila, thirty-six, approached Schenck and sympathized with his plight. The New York Sun sportswriter had played a significant role in bringing this franchise to reality. Now he wanted to see how “his” field was taking shape.

  It wasn’t very impressive. It would be a haul for fans to get to this field, and they would expect something worthy of the journey, worthy of a paid admission. The new team had to give them a product that felt big-time. And the clock was ticking.

  Vila was born in Boston and had spent two years at Harvard before quitting to become a brakeman and baggage handler on the B&O Railroad. He joined the New York Morning Journal in 1889, and moved to the New York Herald a year later. He had been with the Sun since ’93.