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Post by inger on Jul 8, 2024 14:43:50 GMT -5
It’s not going to be a regular feature for me, but I thought I’d toss one in here to give Clipper a break. Here’s more than you’ll ever want to know about Jim Mason:
No game today, so let's remember a forgotten Yankee: Jim Mason
At the end of the 1965 season, Yankee shortstop Tony Kubek went to the Mayo Clinic so doctors could diagnose the cause of the shoulder, neck, and back pain he had been playing through for years. They determined he had nerve damage at the top of his spinal column -- possibly the result of landing on his head during a touch football game while in the Army -- and warned him that a jarring hit or even a sudden twist of his head could leave him paralyzed.
Kubek, the Yankees' starting shortstop since 1957, retired immediately. His last game was October 3, 1965 -- nine days shy of his 30th birthday. Needless to say, the Yankees had no back-up plan for losing a key player at such a young age.
It would be 12 years until the Yankees finally found a long-term replacement for shortstop. In the meantime, they rotated through a host of players: five in 1966, four in 1967, four in 1968, four in 1969, three in 1970, four in 1971, three in 1972, four in 1973, five in 1974, five in 1975, five in 1976, and then, finally... in 1977, the arrival of Bucky Bleepin' Dent.
But in 1974, the Yankees thought they had found their man -- maybe -- in 23-year-old Jim Mason, acquired from the Texas Rangers.
A kid from Alabama with a thick drawl and a good glove, the Yankees knew Mason had a weak bat... but no one could anticipate just how bad it would be. So bad, in fact, that Mason and Leo Dixon, a light-hitting catcher, were later immortalized as the Mason-Dixon Line -- their combined lifetime .204 batting average being closer to .200 than the .215 career batting average of Mario Mendoza of the famous "Mendoza Line."
But for a player famous for his lack of a bat, Mace has two unusual hitting records to his credit: he is tied for the MLB record for most doubles in a game, with four; and he was the first player in baseball history to have a home run in his only career World Series plate appearance. Both feats happened with the Yankees!
James Percy Mason was born August 14, 1950, in Mobile, Alabama, and graduated from Murphy High School, where he was a three-sport star -- baseball, football, and basketball. His Babe Ruth League team won the state championship in 1965 and 1966, with Mason throwing a two-hit shutout in the 1966 championship game.
The Washington Senators drafted Mason, two months shy of his 18th birthday, in the second round (#28 overall) of the 1968 draft. (The Yankees used their first round pick that year, #4 overall, to take a catcher out of Ohio named Thurman Munson.)
These were not your grandfather's Washington Senators, one of the original franchises from when the American League was founded in 1901. Those Senators had moved to Minnesota in 1960 to become the Twins. These Senators were an expansion franchise team founded in 1961 along with the Los Angeles Angels; in 1972, they would become the Texas Rangers.
But for now, they were still the Washington Senators. After the June draft, they sent Mason to the New York Penn League, where he hit .217/.328/.338.
The following spring training, in February 1969, major league baseball players briefly refused to report as negotiations broke down over a proposed increase in owner contributions to the pension fund.
As a result, a number of baby-faced prospects were in major league spring training camps that year. The Senators had seven minor leaguers, including Mason. The kid made a good first impression on The Kid -- his manager, the legendary Ted Williams, who called him a "can't miss" prospect.
Mason was just as impressed by his manager, just nine years removed from his Hall of Fame playing career. The Sporting News laid on Mason's Alabama drawl pretty thick in their March 29, 1969, issue when they quoted Mason as saying of Williams: "Ah watched him on television when ah I was nine or ten years old. Ah just never reckoned ah'd be playin' fo' him."
The 1969 strike never happened, and Mason was sent back to the minors. But the Senators jumped him all the way from Low-A to Triple-A. He was hitting just .230 after 35 games when he was summoned to military service.
The following year, he was back in Triple-A, and hit just .241. On defense, he impressed coaches with his range and powerful arm, but also made 48 errors in 109 games, most of them on throws.
Meanwhile, another shortstop prospect -- Toby Harrah -- was getting noticed. Harrah was two years older and a step below Mason in Double-A, but he was an All-Star there in 1970 after hitting .276/.373/.357 with 27 stolen bases.
Confident that at least one of them would work out, at the end of the 1970 season the Senators traded starting shortstop Eddie Brinkman to the Detroit Tigers in an eight-player trade highlighted by former 30-game winner Denny McLain and future Yankee Elliott Maddox.
The Sporting News reported Harrah and Mason were "inseparable pals" off the diamond, but the competition for the big league shortstop job was fierce. The Senators invited both young shortstops to play in the fall Florida Instructional League. Harrah accepted; Mason declined. Then, Harrah got off to a hot start in spring training of 1971, and Mason -- looking like he'd put on a few pounds over the winter -- made four errors in one game on March 8. He soon found himself in minor league camp.
"I really didn't get a chance. It was apparent they had their minds made up," Mason told The Sporting News on May 15, 1971.
He said he contemplated quitting baseball and returning to the University of Southern Alabama, which he had had briefly attended before committing to the Senators. But he vowed to prove his doubters wrong.
“I’m determined to show them I can play ball. I’m just going to give it all I’ve got and the future will take care of itself.” -- Jim Mason
Opening the season with the Denver Bears, the Senators' Triple-A team, Mason went 7-for-14 in the first three games of the season, and after 10 games was hitting .405. But he quickly cooled off, finishing the season at .268/.389/.360. Meanwhile, Harrah opened the season as the Senators' starting shortstop, and hit .230/.300/.290 in 428 plate appearances.
The Senators finally called up Mason for the last week of the season. He started three games, all at shortstop, and went 3-for-9 with a walk and three strikeouts. One of those hits was a home run off Stan Bahnsen of the Yankees; the other two came the next day off Mel Stottlemyre.
In 1972, the Senators moved to Arlington and became the Texas Rangers, and once again Harrah was the starting shortstop. Over the first half he hit .273/.326/.353, good enough to make the All-Star Game as a reserve. (Harrah, the only Ranger on the team, injured his shoulder in a game on July 14 and didn't play in the game, played July 25 in Atlanta.)
After the All-Star break, Mason was called up to replace Harrah as the starting shortstop, but after going 3-for-20 in his first eight games found himself back on the bench. Harrah came back, but his shoulder was clearly limiting him -- he hit just .222 after the injury -- and Mason spelled him on and off over the rest of the season. He also played six games at third base to end the season.
Mason's .197/.247/.218 line in 1972 was to say the least disappointing, but he still had youth on his side -- he'd just turned 22 years old -- and he made the Opening Day roster in 1973 as a utility infielder. But six weeks into the season, with the Rangers in the midst of a four-game losing streak to drop them to a league-worst 9-17, the Rangers decided to shake things up by moving Harrah to third base and making Mason the starting shortstop. At first Mason thrived in the role, hitting .299 in June, but in July he hit just .192 and soon was relegated to a bench role again. His batting average continued to plummet, .167 in August and .095 in September, to leave him at .206 on the season.
“I wasn’t playing and lost interest,” he said. “If you don’t play every day, you can’t psych yourself up for when you do play. I wound up playing once a week usually and I guess showed that I was dissatisfied.”
Meanwhile, the Yankees were looking for a shortstop. Gene Michael had been the starter, more or less, since 1969, but in 2,347 plate appearances had hit just .233/.299/.290. Now 35 and coming off a season in which he hit .225/.270/.278, the Yankees knew they needed a longer term solution. First they tried to get Larry Bowa from the Phillies, then Don Kessinger of the Cubs, but in the end they settled on the 23-year-old Mason, purchased for $100,000.
"This is a gamble on this guy, but we're only gambling money. Hell, we've looked at every infielder who's breathing." -- Yankee GM Gabe Paul
It wasn't exactly a ringing endorsement. But Mason was happy for a fresh start. “It’s kinda hard to price yourself, but I think $100,000 is a lot of money to anybody. I don’t think they would have paid that much money if they didn’t want me to play.”
Mason was right, the Yankees did want him to play. He made his Yankee debut on April 6, 1974, as the Yankees' third different Opening Day shortstop in three years. He went 0-for-3 with a walk. The next day he had his first Yankee hit, a two-out, two-run single in the bottom of the eighth inning. He'd only have six more RBIs that month.
Mason hit just .227/.325/.288 in April, followed by an ugly .203/.250/.324 in May, then .250/.304/.297 in June. The Yankees, either out of faith or desperation, continued to play him almost every day. At last he responded with an outstanding July: .333/.369/.539 in 84 plate appearances! It seemed the Yankees had finally found their shortstop.
"What it all adds up to is that Jim Mason has sewed up the Yankee shortstop job for this year, for next year and maybe for a lot of years to come. When the Mason deal was announced in Houston during the winter meetings, Yankee critics said Gabe Paul had bought a $100,000 lemon. Now, they're saying that Paul might have picked himself a plum." -- Sportswriter Phil Pepe
But just as had happened in Texas, Mason's one hot month couldn't be sustained. He fell to .213/.265/.307 in August, bouncing back to .265/.299/.337 in September to finish his first season in pinstripes at a disappointing .250/.302/.352.
Not great... but as it turned out, it would be his career year!
He also tied a major league record that year, hitting four doubles in a game against his former team, the Rangers, on July 8, 1974, in Arlington Stadium. (More than 50 other players have done it; no one has ever had five doubles in a game.) He went 4-for-5 with four doubles and three runs scored in the 12-5 Yankee win. Remarkably, it was the only time all season Mason had more than one double in a game. That year he had 18 doubles, so 22% of his doubles came in that one game!
In 1975, Mason opened as the starting shortstop again. But he began the season with a disastrous 7-for-67 slump, a .105 batting average. He was finally benched on May 7 after going 0-for-19 in seven games, and didn't make another start until May 18. But that day he went 2-for-3 with a double in a 9-1 win over the Oakland A's. That kept him in the lineup for another month, but a 4-for-36 slump had him back on the bench by the middle of June.
Over the rest of the year, the Yankees alternated shortstop between Mason, previously forgotten Yankee Fred "Chicken" Stanley, and Ed Brinkman -- the guy who had been traded by the Senators back in 1970 to create a shortstop competition between Mason and Harrah. (The 33-year-old Brinkman, who after a series of trades had wound up back where he started, with the Senators -- though they were now the Rangers -- had been purchased by the Yankees on June 13.)
The threesome hit a combined .188/.253/.236 in 603 plate appearances. Stanley was the "best" hitter of the three, with a .222/.283/.250 line in 284 plate appearances. Brinkman hit .175/.224/.270 in 68 plate appearances, and Mason just .152/.228/.211 in 251 plate appearances. Had he been a National League pitcher that year, Mason would have ranked 15th in OPS+, right between Gary Nolan (32 OPS+) and Doug Rau (25 OPS+). Tom Seaver and Ray Burris tied with Mason at 26 OPS+ (minimum of 50 plate appearances).
During the 1975-1976 off-season, there were rumors that Mason was going to be traded. But when Opening Day arrived, he was the Yankees' starting shortstop for a third straight year. "I thought I might be thrown in some trade, but I'm here and now I want to play," Mason said.
He and Stanley were now being platooned, with the left-handed Mason starting against right-handed pitching and the right-handed Stanley against lefties. It was a curious platoon as Stanley the previous season had hit worse against lefties (.214/.286/.230) than righties (.230/.279/.270). Mason at least had been better against righties... relatively speaking. He hit .159/.238/.228 against righties, and .118/.167/.118 against lefties.
Once again a prolonged slump -- he was 5-for-52 in June, a .096 batting average -- ruined Mason's season. By August, he was on the bench as a reserve, only getting nine starts in the final 60 games of the year. Stanley, though he hit just .238/.329/.273, had taken over as the starting shortstop of the New York Yankees.
And that year -- for the first time since 1964 -- the Yankees were in the post-season! The Yankees went 97-62, cruising to the A.L. East title by 10 1/2 games over the Orioles, and 15 1/2 over the defending A.L. champion Red Sox. In the American League Championship Series, the Yankees edged the Kansas City Royals in five games; Mason got into Games 2 and 4 as a defensive replacement for Stanley, handling three chances without an error, though those were the two games the Yankees lost. He didn't get to bat.
In the World Series, Mason replaced Stanley in Game 1, playing the final three innings in the loss, as he did in the Game 4 loss. But in between, in Game 3, Mason made major league history!
In the bottom of the fourth, with the Yankees losing 4-0, Chris Chambliss singled and then, after a Carlos May strikeout, Graig Nettles walked. Oscar Gamble then singled to center to knock in Chambliss and bring the tying run to the plate -- 21-year-old All-Star rookie second baseman Willie Randolph. But Willie hit a pop foul that Johnny Bench caught.
With two outs and two on, the Yankees down by three runs, and down two games to none in the World Series, Billy Martin sensed this might be the pivotal moment. He sent veteran Elrod Hendricks to the plate to pinch hit for Stanley. Hendricks had hit just .226 since joining the Yankees in a June 15 trade, but he still had a little bit of pop (.415 SLG). If Hendricks got a hold of one, he'd tie the game.
Unfortunately... he didn't. He flew out to left-center.
Hendricks was a catcher, not a shortstop. With Stanley out of the game, Martin sent Mason to play shortstop.
Mason came up with one out in the bottom of the seventh, his first plate appearance in the World Series... or the post-season, for matter. And he lined one into the right-field bleachers to make the game 4-2!
Mason was the 15th player to hit a home run in his first World Series plate appearance, but the first player to hit a home run in his only World Series plate appearance. That record has since been tied by Geoff Blum in the 2005 World Series and Bobby Kielty in 2007. Michael A. Taylor has a home run in his only World Series plate appearance (2019) so far -- he's still an active player so who knows.
Unlike the other three, however, Mason's World Series home run was his only career post-season plate appearance. He retired with a playoff batting line of 1.000/1.000/.4000!
It also is a bit of Yankee franchise history: the first Yankee home run in a World Series night game. The World Series began playing night games in 1971, but of course the Yankees hadn't been in it until now. Mason's home run also was the only home run by the Yankees in that World Series, and the first World Series home run by a Yankee since Phil Linz took Bob Gibson deep in the ninth inning of Game 7 in 1964.
The Yankees lost the 1976 World Series in four games. Two weeks later, the Yankees left Mason -- still just 26 years old -- unprotected in the expansion draft, and the Blue Jays took him with the 30th pick. He was the third of five Yankees selected, the others being reliever Grant Jackson, outfielder Juan Bernhardt, infielder Garth Iorg, and outfielder Otto Velez.
After losing Mason, the Yankee plan for 1977 was to make Stanley the starting shortstop. But secretly, Martin told George Steinbrenner they needed a better shortstop. On April 5, 1977, the Yankees traded three players -- Oscar Gamble, LaMarr Hoyt, and minor leaguer Bob Polinsky -- plus $200,000 to acquire Bucky Dent. The 24-year-old had been the Rookie of the Year runner-up in 1974 and an All-Star in 1975. The truth was he wasn't much of a hitter -- to that point in his career, .260/.305/.325 -- and indeed he would hit even worse in pinstripes, .239/.295/.324. But one magical moment made Bucky a legend in New York... and a curse word in Boston!
Mason began the 1977 season platooning with Hector Torres at shortstop, but once again lost the job after hitting a microscopic .105/.177/.123 to open the season, and on May 9 the Blue Jays traded him and pitcher Steve Hargan to the Rangers for third baseman Roy Howell.
Back to where he started, Mason hit .218/.290/.327 the rest of the season in Texas as a utility infielder, and the following season .190/.227/.229 in the same role. After the 1978 season, the Rangers traded him to the Montreal Expos for minor leaguer Mike Hart. Mason hit .183 in 71 at-bats as a reserve, and the Expos released him prior to the 1980 season. He couldn't catch on with another team, and he retired at age 29... coincidentally, the same age Kubek was when he had retired 15 years earlier to start this whole saga!
In three seasons with the Yankees, Mason hit .208/.261/.288 (59 OPS+)... which was an improvement from his career line of .203/.259/.275 (54 OPS+).
Mason Bits
Leo Dixon, the Dixon of the proposed "Mason-Dixon Line", was the better of the two hitters -- he hit .206/.291/.272 in 497 career plate appearances, compared to Mason's .203/.259/.275. However, Dixon played in the 1920s, when offenses were better, so his .562 career OPS is a 43 OPS+, compared to Mason's .534, 54 OPS+. So relative to their eras, Mason was the better hitter, or at least, the less bad one. Together, they hit .204. Dixon was a catcher for the Browns between 1925 and 1927, and then briefly with the Reds in 1929.
Mason said his favorite player growing up was Mickey Mantle. “Mickey was a favorite of mine when I was a kid, and I’ve always wanted to meet him. I sorta did meet him once but that was when I was 2 years old. The Yankees played an exhibition game in Mobile and I got his autograph.”
Marty Appel, the Yankees' long-time PR man, said the first time Mason stepped into the batting cage at spring training in 1974, he swung and missed at the first 12 pitches.
Mace was among several Senators' players who arrived a few pounds overweight at camp in spring training 1971. Manager Ted Williams put the entire team on a diet, according to The Sporting News. "The chef's orders for spring training banned bread, meat and cheese, and featured clear soup, carrots, celery, hard-boiled eggs, lettuce and tomatoes and green peppers."
Ted Williams said Mason reminded him of Cecil Travis, a left-handed hitting shortstop who hit .314/.370/.416 (108 OPS+) in 12 seasons with the original Washington Senators. A three-time All-Star, Travis hit .359/.410/.520 (150 OPS+) in 663 plate appearances in 1941 at age 27, then missed the next three seasons and almost all of 1945 due to World War II service. When he returned as a full-time player in 1946 at age 32, he hit just .252/.323/.318, and retired after the following season.
The strike owners feared in 1969 finally materialized in 1972, with the players walking out on April 1 and not returning until April 13. It was the first league-wide strike in baseball history, and it ended after owners agreed to increase pension fund contributions by $500,000 and to add salary arbitration to the Collective Bargaining Agreement.
Mason was in the dugout for the Senators' final home game at RFK Stadium on September 30, 1971. The game, against the Yankees, was heading to a 7-5 Senators win, but instead became a forfeit. As previously forgotten Yankee Horace Clarke was walking up to the plate with two outs in the top of the 9th, a fan ran onto the field and grabbed first base as a souvenir. Hundreds of fans followed, grabbing whatever they could -- the other bases, the numbers from the scoreboard, equipment from the dugouts. The players, umpires, and even police ran off the field, and the Yankees won by forfeit.
Toby Harrah, the guy who beat out Mason for the starting shortstop job in 1971, was a utility infielder for the Yankees in 1984, hitting .217/.331/.296 at age 35.
Mason was benched by Billy Martin on two different teams! Martin took over as manager of the Texas Rangers at the end of the 1973 season. After Martin was hired on September 9, Mason -- who had played to that point in 88 games either as a starter or as a replacement -- had just five appearances over the final 23 games under Martin. In 1975, Martin took over as manager on August 1; Mason, who to this point had played in 80 of the Yankees' 101 games, played in just 14 of the Yankees' remaining 56 games.
Playing for the Denver Bears on September 1, 1970, Mason had two unusual highlights: he started a triple play, and he had an inside-the-park home run!
Mason is the only graduate of Murphy High School to play in the major leagues, but the school has produced a lot of NFL players -- Buddy Aydelette, Bobby Jackson, Angelo James, Michael Jefferson, Joey Jones, Alex Lincoln, Keith McCants, Mardye McDole, Captain Munnerlyn, Solomon Patton, Billy Shipp, Cleo Simmons, Taylor Stallworth, John Steber, Mickey Sutton, John Tate, and Jerrel Wilson.
Mason and his father, Myril Mason, were inducted into the Mobile Youth Baseball Hall of Fame in 1975.
Mason briefly attended the University of South Alabama before signing with the Washington Senators. Had he gone there, he would have joined a short list of Jaguars to play for the Yankees -
- the others being 2004 pitcher Jon Lieber, 2000 reserve outfielder Lance Johnson, and 1984 backup catcher Mike O'Berry.
Mason wore #22 all three seasons with the Yankees. The double deuces are now worn by Juan Soto, but prior to that, they belonged to Harrison Bader (2022-2023). Others who wore #22 for three or more seasons in the Bronx: Jacoby Ellsbury (2014-2017); Jimmy Key (1993-1996); Omar Moreno (1983-1985); Jerry Mumphrey (1981-1983); Jack Aker (1969-1972); Fred Talbot (1966-1969); Bill Stafford (1960-1965); Allie Reynolds (1947-1954); and previously forgotten Yankee Marius Russo (1939-1943).
According to the back of Mason's 1973 baseball card, in the off-seasons he worked for a trucking company!
Mason's Yankee career was not legendary, but he did set some unusual records... and in a way, he paved the way for Bucky Dent. And for that, we should remember him!
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Post by fwclipper51 on Jul 8, 2024 17:30:39 GMT -5
Nice work! Maybe I'll take a vacation! Your next assignment will be another 1970's Yankees shortstop Frank "No Home Run" Baker.
Clipper
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Post by inger on Jul 9, 2024 12:25:38 GMT -5
Nice work! Maybe I'll take a vacation! Your next assignment will be another 1970's Yankees shortstop Frank "No Home Run" Baker. Clipper 😂😂😂… Naw. This is your gig, Clipper…I just happened upon a couple pieces on Mason and thought they were cool and informative. You do a much better and thorough job on these than I could do on a regular basis. You da’ man! But thank you! … |
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Post by pippsheadache on Jul 9, 2024 16:24:18 GMT -5
Toby Harrah, the guy who beat out Mason for the starting shortstop job in 1971, was a utility infielder for the Yankees in 1984, hitting .217/.331/.296 at age 35. Mason's Yankee career was not legendary, but he did set some unusual records... and in a way, he paved the way for Bucky Dent. And for that, we should remember him! Boy it was depressing when Jim Mason was the shortstop. Toby Harrah -- the ultimate baseball palindrome -- was the last Washington Senator to play in the major leagues when he retired from Texas after the 1986 season. He was a good ballplayer. Last week I was watching that 1978 Bucky Dent game. On the pitch before his HR, he fouled a ball off of his shin. The game was held up for several minutes while they sprayed ethyl chloride on it to numb the pain. He was limping pretty badly before that. In the same situation today he would almost certainly been taken out of the game. Fortunately for Yankee history, that didn't happen back in the day. |
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Post by inger on Jul 9, 2024 17:23:14 GMT -5
Toby Harrah, the guy who beat out Mason for the starting shortstop job in 1971, was a utility infielder for the Yankees in 1984, hitting .217/.331/.296 at age 35. Mason's Yankee career was not legendary, but he did set some unusual records... and in a way, he paved the way for Bucky Dent. And for that, we should remember him! Boy it was depressing when Jim Mason was the shortstop. Toby Harrah -- the ultimate baseball palindrome -- was the last Washington Senator to play in the major leagues when he retired from Texas after the 1986 season. He was a good ballplayer. Last week I was watching that 1978 Bucky Dent game. On the pitch before his HR, he fouled a ball off of his shin. The game was held up for several minutes while they sprayed ethyl chloride on it to numb the pain. He was limping pretty badly before that. In the same situation today he would almost certainly been taken out of the game. Fortunately for Yankee history, that didn't happen back in the day. [ Fact: Dent fouls ball off shin, hits a homer in pain. Kirk Gibson limps to plate in pain, homers in WS. Assumption: Injured players or players in pain always hit home runs. Instead of disabling Stanton, he should be playing in pain. That’s science. I like it… |
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Post by fwclipper51 on Jul 14, 2024 12:18:35 GMT -5
Toby Harrah, the guy who beat out Mason for the starting shortstop job in 1971, was a utility infielder for the Yankees in 1984, hitting .217/.331/.296 at age 35. Mason's Yankee career was not legendary, but he did set some unusual records... and in a way, he paved the way for Bucky Dent. And for that, we should remember him! Boy it was depressing when Jim Mason was the shortstop. Toby Harrah -- the ultimate baseball palindrome -- was the last Washington Senator to play in the major leagues when he retired from Texas after the 1986 season. He was a good ballplayer. Last week I was watching that 1978 Bucky Dent game. On the pitch before his HR, he fouled a ball off of his shin. The game was held up for several minutes while they sprayed ethyl chloride on it to numb the pain. He was limping pretty badly before that. In the same situation today he would almost certainly been taken out of the game. Fortunately for Yankee history, that didn't happen back in the day. The Yankees had acquired shortstop Jim Mason from the Texas Rangers on December 6,1973 for cash ($100,000). They had failed to get Phillies Larry Bowa and the Cubs Don Kissinger in trades. Yankees GM Gabe Paul would make the deal with the Rangers. In 1971, Gene Michael was the Yankees regular shortstop with Horace Clarke at 2B. The highlight of Mason's Yankees playing career was the doubles game and hitting the only Yankees HR in the 1976 World Series. |
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Post by fwclipper51 on Jul 15, 2024 15:58:46 GMT -5
Boy it was depressing when Jim Mason was the shortstop. Toby Harrah -- the ultimate baseball palindrome -- was the last Washington Senator to play in the major leagues when he retired from Texas after the 1986 season. He was a good ballplayer. Last week I was watching that 1978 Bucky Dent game. On the pitch before his HR, he fouled a ball off of his shin. The game was held up for several minutes while they sprayed ethyl chloride on it to numb the pain. He was limping pretty badly before that. In the same situation today he would almost certainly been taken out of the game. Fortunately for Yankee history, that didn't happen back in the day. [ Fact: Dent fouls ball off shin, hits a homer in pain. Kirk Gibson limps to plate in pain, homers in WS. Assumption: Injured players or players in pain always hit home runs. Instead of disabling Stanton, he should be playing in pain. That’s science. I like it… |
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Post by fwclipper51 on Jul 15, 2024 16:03:32 GMT -5
Toby Harrah, the guy who beat out Mason for the starting shortstop job in 1971, was a utility infielder for the Yankees in 1984, hitting .217/.331/.296 at age 35. Mason's Yankee career was not legendary, but he did set some unusual records... and in a way, he paved the way for Bucky Dent. And for that, we should remember him! Boy it was depressing when Jim Mason was the shortstop. Toby Harrah -- the ultimate baseball palindrome -- was the last Washington Senator to play in the major leagues when he retired from Texas after the 1986 season. He was a good ballplayer. Last week I was watching that 1978 Bucky Dent game. On the pitch before his HR, he fouled a ball off of his shin. The game was held up for several minutes while they sprayed ethyl chloride on it to numb the pain. He was limping pretty badly before that. In the same situation today he would almost certainly been taken out of the game. Fortunately for Yankee history, that didn't happen back in the day. Actually Jim Mason was gone in the 1976 AL Expansion team player draft. Fred Stanley had been the Yankees shortstop most of the 1976 season. In the 1976 fall free agency market, Billy asked for Oakland All Star shortstop Bert Campairas, but George went out signed sluggers Reggie Jackson and Jim Wynn instead. In 1977 Yankees MLB spring training camp, Billy Martin was counting on Yankees INF prospect Mickey Klutts to be the new shortstop until he broke a finger on his throwing hand, that force the Dent trade with the White Sox. |
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Post by inger on Jul 24, 2024 8:39:07 GMT -5
Kaybli, maybe you should look into this security cam idea for the forum…we could really use one… 😂
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Post by fwclipper51 on Aug 4, 2024 19:28:03 GMT -5
Bill “Moose” Skowron
This article was written by Joseph Wancho, Edited by Clipper
 1954 Topps Baseball Card
The telegram was brash and a bit disrespectful. Simply stated, it read “DEAR MOOSE: TOLD YOU SO. JOE PEP.”
The New York Yankees needed pitching help—specifically a boost to their rotation—following the 1962 MLB season. They had set their sights on Stan Williams, a right-handed twirler for the Los Angeles Dodgers who had won 14, 15, and 14 games the previous 3 seasons. “You have to give up something to get something,” runs the old adage, and the Yankees would shipped their veteran 1st baseman, Bill Skowron, to Los Angeles for Williams on November 26, 1962.
Skowron had been a formidable force in the Yankee lineup, batting behind Mickey Mantle and Roger Maris. But the Yankees were high on their young 1st baseman, Joe Pepitone, who—although just a bench player in his rookie year of 1962—took every opportunity to tell Skowron how he was going to take the 9–year veteran’s place. Hence the telegram.
“There are indications that Joe will hit,” said Yankees Manager Ralph Houk. “He already has demonstrated his superior skills in the field. I have noted Williams, his style, his potential, and his spirit. I don’t believe we will rue the deal. And I don’t have to remind you that I am a Skowron booster. I certainly hated to see him go. But it just had to be done.”
Houk’s words seemed prophetic as Pepitone slugged 27 HRs, drove in 89 runs, and batted .271 in 1963. His numbers were close to the level of those of his predecessor in 1962. Skowron, meanwhile, slumped in Los Angeles, hitting a career-low .202. As fate would have it, each team won their respective leagues and met in the World Series. Skowron was a veteran of these fall classic matchups, having appeared in 7 previous series with New York. It was during these October autumn days that Skowron seemed to really shine. During his post-season career, Moose totaled 7 HRs and 26 RBI and batted .283. “I just want to do a little something to help this team,” said Skowron. “Everyone has been great to me. I’ve been awful.”
In spite of his subpar regular season, Dodger Manager Walter Alston inserted Skowron at 1st base. Ron Fairly, who manned 1st base for much of the regular season, played some right field and pinch-hit. The switch worked as Skowron would hit .385 with a HR. “Well, it’s October and you always get hot now,” former teammate Bobby Richardson told him during a game. His Dodger teammates celebrated Skowron’s series with a chorus of the familiar Walt Disney refrain: “Mickey Moose, Mickey Moose, M-i-c-k-e-y M-o-o-s-e, Moose, Moose.”
The 1963 World Series series was, in a way, a national coming-out party for Dodgers lefty Sandy Koufax, who led L.A.’s 4-game sweep with a 2-0 record and a 1.50 ERA. He had struck out 23 Yankee hitters.
Skowron was mighty pleased with the results. “Hell, I wanted to come back and beat the club that traded me,” said Skowron. “I didn’t expect to play in this thing until I read the newspaper lineup. I know I’ve been a donkey. But this tastes awful sweet.”
William Joseph Skowron was born December 18, 1930 in Chicago, Illinois. He was 1 of 3 children (including brother Edward and sister Jean) born to William and Helen Skowron. The Skowron clan lived in the northwest part of the city. “You’d have to say that we lived in a poor section,” recalls Skowron. “We didn’t have much of anything when I was a kid. My father worked for the Sanitation Department and my mother had to work too.” Helen Skowron was employed at Zenith Radio.
William Sr. played on a semi-pro baseball team, the Cragin Merchants. Young Bill played on the Cragin Juniors. His father’s teammates thought that Bill’s crew cut (given by his grandfather) made him look like Benito Mussolini, the Prime Minister of Italy. He was soon given the nickname Mussolini, later shortened to “Moose.”
He would earned a scholarship to Weber High School, an all-boys Catholic school named for Archbishop Joseph Weber. For a short time, Bill entertained the idea of becoming a priest. “As a kid I served Mass a lot and I liked to help out at the church,” says Skowron. “I got to know the priests real well and I liked them a lot. My mother and grandmother wanted me to be a priest and I thought it might be a good idea.”
Bill Skowron was an excellent all-around athlete, excelling in football and basketball (Weber did not offer baseball as an extracurricular activity). Even as a child, Skowron had a burly build, and he gained 80 pounds in high school. He soon realized his talent as a player and the thought of entering the priesthood faded.
After graduation, he accepted a scholarship to Purdue University. Although he had played baseball in recreation leagues around Chicago, only in college did he begin to play regularly. His freshman baseball and football coach was the legendary Hall of Fame football coach Hank Stram. Skowron made varsity in football, basketball, and baseball his sophomore year. He was a blocking back and punter for the Boilermakers’ gridiron team.
In 1950, Joe McDermott, a Midwest MLB Scout for the New York Yankees, had spotted Skowron playing semi-pro ball in southern Minnesota. McDermott had invited Skowron to a workout at Comiskey Park the next time the Yankees were in town. Skowron showed off his strength at Comiskey Park. “I took 5 cuts and put a couple into the 2nd deck. I guess maybe that’s why they signed me.” New York Manager Casey Stengel was impressed with the young man and told Moose that if he signed with the Yankees, Stengel would have him in the big leagues in 3 years. Four days before he was to report to Purdue for football practice, Skowron’s father accepted the Yankees’ offer of a $22,000 bonus. (Moose, as a minor, needed his parents’ assent.)
Purdue football coach Stu Holcomb—later an baseball executive for the Chicago White Sox—accused the Yankees of “thievery” as Skowron headed to winter league baseball in Puerto Rico, rather than return to West Lafayette. Although he had a bright future in major league baseball, Skowron later said he always regretted not getting his degree. Skowron had been a 3rd baseman as an amateur, but after 21 games at Binghamton Triplets of the single-A Eastern League in 1951, Moose was demoted to Class B Norfolk Tars of the Piedmont League to learn to play the outfield. He certainly aced the hitting part of the job—batting a league-best .334 with 18 HRs and 76 RBIs to capture MVP honors—but his Manager, Mayo Smith, was worried that Bill’s reactions in left field were too slow and that he had a weak throwing arm.
Despite these concerns, Skowron was promoted for 1952 to the Yankees’ top farm team, the AAA Kansas City Blues (American Association). Skowron showed that his 1st pro season was no fluke, as he would hit .341 for Kansas City and led the American Association with 31 HRs and 134 RBIs. That fall, The Sporting News would named him Minor League Player of the Year.
When Bill Skowron reported to Yankee spring training camp the next season, Stengel decided the youngster’s ideal position was 1st base. He would send Moose back to Kansas City to work on his fielding with onetime big-league 1st baseman Johnny Neun, who especially focused on teaching Skowron proper footwork. “Ground balls didn’t give me much trouble, because of my experience at 3rd,” said Skowron. “But I had trouble shifting my feet and also with foul flies. Johnny spent hours showing me how to move around and after a while, I began to feel at home at 1st base. Then they drilled me on pops. By the end of the season, I felt better playing 1st than 3rd.”
Skowron also took dancing lessons at Arthur Murray Studio to improve his footwork. Casey’s 3-year promise to Skowron was on the verge of becoming a reality. Skowron at last made the big leagues in 1954, starting 56 games at 1st base. Stengel often used a platoon system to maximize his players’ talents and 1st base was no exception. Left-handed hitters Joe Collins and Eddie Robinson were used against right-handed pitchers, with Collins getting most of the starts. Still, the right-handed hitting Skowron showed plenty of moxie, by hitting .340 and driving in 41 runs. The 1954 AL season was certainly an anomaly for Skowron and his teammates as the Yankees failed to win the AL pennant. They were back on top the following 4 AL seasons, though. Each World Series in that span went the distance as New York split with both Brooklyn Dodgers and the Milwaukee Braves.
After falling to Milwaukee in the 1957 fall classic, the Yankees trailed the Braves the following year, 3 games to 1 but they would fought off elimination to win. Skowron played a key role in both the 6th and 7th games, played at County Stadium. In Game 6, the score was tied at 2 at the end of 9 innings. In the top of the 10th, Gil McDougald homered to give the Yankees the lead. With 2 outs, consecutive singles by Elston Howard, Yogi Berra, and Skowron pushed the Yankees lead to 4–2. As it turned out, Skowron’s single to scored Howard was key; the Braves scored 1 run in their half of the 10th inning before succumbing.
In Game 7, with the scored knotted 2–2, the Yankees scored 4 runs in the top of the 8th to put the game out of reach. The big blast was Skowron’s 3-run HR off of Lew Burdette. “It was a lousy pitch that I gave Bill Skowron,” said Burdette. “It was a slider—the same thing he had looked bad on before—but this one I got in too high.”
The 5’11’’ Bill Skowron had already become legendary for his physique. “His muscles had muscles,” a familiar saying, was often applied to Moose. It seemed, though, that those muscles were susceptible to tearing. He missed a lot of playing time due to injuries, never playing in more than 134 games through his 1st 5 campaigns. “He seems to like the clang of the ambulance,” quipped Stengel.
Moose did have a flair for the dramatic. On April 22, 1959, his solo HR in the top of the 14th inning delivered a 1–0 victory over the Washington Senators at Griffith Stadium. At the time, it was believed to be the longest 1–0 game in major league history. Whitey Ford had pitched all 14 frames for the win, while striking out 15 Nats. That July 25th in Detroit, Skowron entered the game in the 9th inning as a pinch-hitter. He remained in the game at 1st base, but while reaching for a throw from 3rd baseman Hector Lopez, Skowron collided with baserunner Coot Veal of the Tigers. The result was a fractured wrist and an end to his 1959 season. That fall, the White Sox and their go-go style of baseball would put an end to the Yankees’ 4-year AL pennant streak.
“When I reported to the Mayo Clinic for a recent check-up,” said Skowron, “the doctors explained to me that I was susceptible to injury because my muscles lacked elasticity. They won’t stretch as they do with the average athlete and that is why I’ve been suffering repeatedly from muscle tears in my legs and back. They recommended swimming as a means towards loosening my muscles and making them more pliable.” The strategy seemed to work, as Skowron averaged 25 HRs, 85 RBIs with a .282 average from 1960–1962. He would played in 140 or more games each season during this period.
Skowron would hit .375 in the 1960 World Series against Pittsburgh Pirates with 2 HRs and 6 RBIs. One of those HRs was in the 5th inning of the deciding Game 7 at Forbes Field, a classic game won by the Pirates on Bill Mazeroski’s HR. The Sporting News would named Skowron 1st baseman on its Major League All-Star Team in 1960.
Behind Roger Maris’ and Mickey Mantle’s pursuits of Babe Ruth’s HR record in 1961, the Yankees would cruised to the AL pennant. The three M’s (Mantle, Maris, and Moose) set a record for HRs runs by a threesome in a season (143). The Yankees had bested Cincinnati in the World Series in 5 games, with Skowron adding a HR and 5 RBIs. They made it 2 straight world championships in 1962, after a hard-fought 7 game series with San Francisco Giants.
After yet another World Series win with the Dodgers in 1963, Moose thought he had a fair shot at staying out west. But the front office felt otherwise, selling him to the Washington Senators for a reported $25,000. Skowron was happy to be back in the junior circuit. “You can count on me to play good ball for you,” Moose promised the front office. “Throw out what happened to me last season. The National League pitching was too new to me.”
Skowron may have been on to something. He was batting .271 with 13 HRs (3 in 1 doubleheader against Boston on May 10th) and 41 RBIs, when Washington traded him, along with pitcher Carl Bouldin, to the White Sox for outfielder Joe Cunningham and pitcher Frank Kreutzer on July 13, 1964. Chicago was in the midst of a pennant race and Manager Al Lopez compared the acquisition of Skowron to that of Ted Kluszewski in 1959. “Skowron should give us a big lift,” said the Sox skipper. “I remember in 1959 when we got Ted Kluszewski from the Pirates. It picked the whole club up and we won a pennant.”
Bill Skowron was coming home and he enjoyed hitting at Comiskey Park. Although Moose did not supply the power that Lopez may have been counting on, he still drove in 38 runs and hit .283 in 70 starts at 1st base. On September 15, Chicago trailed Baltimore by 1 game and was a half-game up on New York. The White Sox closed the season winning 12 of their final 15 games, including their final 9 in a row. But the Yankees were even better, winning 15 of 19 in the same period (the Yankees had 4doubleheaders) to nip the Sox by a 1 game.
Skowron was leading the team in HRs (11) and RBIs (39) when he was named to represent the White Sox in the 1965 All-Star Game. Moose was no stranger to the midsummer classic, having been on the A.L. squad each year from 1957 through 1961. But at age 34, this trip was extra rewarding. “To be named to the All-Star team at this time in my career is what makes it so overwhelming to me,” said Skowron. “You know, I wanted to make it so badly this year that I would have been delighted if I had been picked just as a pinch-hitter.”
Chicago General Manager Ed Short was impressed with his veteran 1st baseman. “You know, many of these players, especially the veterans, would just as soon not make the All-Star Team,” said Short. “They’d rather have the 3 days off. But here is a guy who has been around a long time and you might expect him to be a bit jaded. But he feels distinctly honored. He has real pride in his profession and pride in his performance. It’s too bad there are not more fellows like him.”
In 1966. Skowron would split time at 1st base with young Tommy McCraw, a left-handed batter. It appeared as if Skowron’s career had come full circle, as he was back to being a platoon player. His production was decreasing, and in 1967 he was dealt to the Los Angeles Angels for utility player Cotton Nash. Following the season, Skowron retired from the major leagues. Over a 14-year career, Moose had compiled a career batting average of .282, belted 211 HRs and 243 doubles and knocked in 888 runs. He would hit over .300, 5 times in his MLB playing career and had played for 8 pennant-winning teams, 5 of which won the World Series.
Skowron and his 1st wife, Virginia, had 2 sons Greg and Steve. Skowron also had a daughter, Lynette, with his 2nd wife, Lorraine. After retiring from baseball, Skowron worked in many professions, mostly promotional and sales positions. He was a fan favorite at fantasy camps and attended many card shows. From 1999 through 2012, he worked as a community affairs representative for the Chicago White Sox.
Bill “Moose” Skowron would passed away on April 27, 2012, in Arlington Heights, Illinois. The cause of his death was congestive heart failure, although he had been fighting lung cancer for a few years.
“When I think of Moose, I remember him and Bob Cerv before games,” says former Yankee teammate Johnny Blanchard. “The 2 of them would face each other. They would lock their hands behind each other’s necks. Then it would begin, the banging of heads. They’d do it for fun, but they wouldn’t stop until there were tears running down from their own eyes. I know Moose and Cerv would have fun doing it, but there’s nothing more horrible than hearing 2 skulls bang together.”
Yankee hurler Bob Turley also remembers a fun, gregarious person. “He is this big kid who always enjoys things. He loves to go to banquets and pick up a couple hundred dollars as a speaker. He talks 90 miles a minute and people instantly like him. He also works for the state of Illinois, teaching bicycle safety in the schools. How can you not love a guy who relishes showing little kids how to ride a bike?
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Post by kaybli on Aug 4, 2024 19:50:15 GMT -5
We're up to 112 player bios in the remembrance thread! Great job clipper!
Required reading for all posters. There will be a quiz Monday.  |
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Post by inger on Aug 4, 2024 23:48:45 GMT -5
We're up to 112 player bios in the remembrance thread! Great job clipper!
Required reading for all posters. There will be a quiz Monday. I hope that’s a Monday in December 2039… |
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Post by fwclipper51 on Aug 7, 2024 17:46:41 GMT -5
Former Yankees Minor League Player and Manager Eddie Sawyer
Written by C. Paul Rogers III - Ralph Berger, Edited by Clipper
In 1883, the Worcester Ruby Legs became the Philadelphia Quakers and shortly the Phillies. From then until 1980, there were no World Series titles for the Phillies. They won just two National League pennants, in 1915 and in 1950, when a quiet, scholarly but rugged man named Eddie Sawyer led the club called the Whiz Kids.
1950 World Series Photo
Edwin Milby Sawyer was born on September 10, 1910, in Westerly, Rhode Island, to Robert and Isabelle Sawyer. Westerly, as its name indicates, is in the western part of Rhode Island, founded by John Babcock in 1669. The nearby Pawcatuck River flows by fine beaches to which thousands of tourists flock every summer. Eddie’s father was a stonecutter. He had 2 siblings, Mildred and Robert.
When he was 10 years old, Eddie sometimes served as a batboy for a visiting semipro team that came to town to play exhibition games against a local team. The visitors bore names like Brown, Green, and Smith but were uncommonly impressive ballplayers. Sawyer later learned that they were Boston Red Sox players who were playing under assumed names to pick up some extra money since Boston did not have Sunday baseball at the time. Among them was Herb Pennock, who later would be instrumental in Sawyer’s own baseball career.
Sawyer was a 4-sport star in high school. After graduating, he had no resources to attend college and went to work as an assistant caddie master at a local golf course while playing semipro baseball. In 1931, his 2nd summer out of high school, one of his teammates, Ken Patrick, scouted around and learned that Ithaca College in New York would, in the midst of the Great Depression, extend tuition credit to incoming students and allow them to work their way through college. So, with just $20 in his pocket, Sawyer entered Ithaca College worked his way through by tending furnaces, sweeping out gyms and being a short-order cook at fraternity houses. He earned a bachelor’s degree and membership in the Oracle Society, Ithaca’s version of Phi Beta Kappa, allegedly, because of his photographic memory, without ever taking a note. In addition to pitching and playing outfield on the baseball team, he was a star halfback on the football team. He subsequently enrolled at Cornell University, where he earned a master’s degree in biology.
During Sawyer’s 1st month at Ithaca, he began dating a pretty, petite classmate named Pauline Bassett, known to all as Polly, who also earned membership in the Oracle Society. They became engaged by the time they graduated in 1935 and were married that July. They would raise 2 daughters and be married for 62 years.
In 1934, Paul Krichell, the famed New York Yankees MLB Scout had signed Sawyer, who was playing in a summer college league in Malone, New York. Sawyer’s 1st stop in professional baseball was at Norfolk in the Class-B Piedmont League. He helped lead the Tars to the pennant by hitting .361, with 143 hits in 102 games. The outfielder followed with 2 .300-plus seasons for Binghamton in the Class-A New York-Pennsylvania League, batting .325 in 1935 and .313 in 1936 for the Triplets.
Sawyer reached the Yankees’ Pacific Coast League AA affiliate, the Oakland Oaks, in 1937 — but that was as far as he would advance in his playing career. He was slow afoot, and a shoulder separation, sustained diving for a ball, hampered his chances of making it to the majors. That winter Sawyer decided to give up baseball. He began teaching at Ithaca College and was intent on earning a Ph.D.
When 1938 rolled around, the Yankees were short of minor-league outfielders. Despite his ailing shoulder, which hampered his swing, Sawyer gave himself 1 more shot as a player. Before he left that season, he told his wife, Polly, that if he did not hit over .300, he would quit baseball. He batted .299 at Binghamton despite his bad shoulder. But his baseball career was far from over. Although he was only 28 years old, the Yankees asked him to become a player-manager in their minor-league system
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Sawyer’s 1st managerial assignment was at Amsterdam, New York, in the Class-C Canadian-American League, in 1939. He played full-time and led the league in 4 offensive categories, including hitting a robust .369 with 103 RBIs, while leading the Rugmakers to a 1st-place finish, although they lost in the playoff finals. Sawyer returned to manage Amsterdam in 1940 and hit .329 again as a full-time outfielder. This time the Rugmakers finished the regular season in 3rd place but became league champions, when they won the playoffs. Sawyer remained a player-manager in 1941 for Norfolk in Class B, where he hit .277 in 128 games. He went back to Binghamton to manage in1942 and 1943 before retiring as an active player.
In the off-seasons, he returned to Ithaca as an Assistant Coach in football, baseball, and basketball and as Assistant Athletic Director. He taught physiology and biology. There he again displayed the photographic memory that aided him greatly as a manager. At Ithaca, he was able to call every student by his or her 1st name and knew every one of their hometowns. However, after the 1943 season, with Ithaca College down to about 300 students, mostly women, because of World War II, Sawyer would stayed in Binghamton and taught and coached football at Binghamton North High School.
In 1944, Sawyer left the Yankees organization, where he didn’t think he would be able to move up their managerial chain and ended up with the Phillies organization. Bob Carpenter of the DuPont family had taken over as President and Owner of the Phillies in 1943, when the club had finished in the 2nd division for 11 consecutive years. The farm system was in disarray, with few talented players. Carpenter realized that rebuilding was going to take time and money. He had hired Herb Pennock as General Manager. Carpenter and Pennock agreed that the best way to go was a 5-year plan to 1st strengthen the farm system. One of their initial major moves was to hire a minor-league manager, the 33-year-old part-time college professor Eddie Sawyer.
Sawyer and Pennock had become friendly in the early 1940s, when Sawyer was playing and managing in the Yankees farm system and Pennock was Farm Director for the Boston Red Sox. Every minor league in which Sawyer managed also had a Red Sox farm team. Sawyer was about to join the Boston organization, when he picked up the papers 1 morning and found that Pennock was no longer there, he was now the General Manager of the Phillies. This left him up in the air a bit. A few days later, though, Pennock told Sawyer, “Don’t worry, I’ve got a job for you no matter.”
At 1st, Sawyer had no idea where he was going. All he knew was that he was now in a NL organization. The Phillies did not have a AAA affiliate at the time, because they did not have enough players. The 1st club Carpenter’s Phils bought was Utica, New York, in the Class-A Eastern League. The team did not even have a fitting nickname; in 1943, they were still known as the Braves, a vestige of past affiliation with the Boston NL franchise. Sawyer as manager eventually named them the Blue Sox.
Of the Phillies’ “5 Year Plan,” Sawyer said, “We did things pretty fast. Our scouts signed a lot of good young players. Of course, we rushed them to the major leagues pretty quickly, but we made sure we they had a good foundation. The Carpenters knew what it took to build a good organization and they relied heavily on Herb Pennock. He knew how to build a farm system and develop it. Within a few years, we had a bunch of teams in the minor leagues.”
Sawyer would managed at Utica for 4 seasons through 1947. “The Whiz Kids actually started in Utica, New York, but were not known as the Whiz Kids then,” Sawyer once said. “We had players such as Richie Ashburn, Putsy Caballero, and Granny Hamner. In 1945, I had 9 1st-year men in a real tough league and we won the pennant [though they lost in the 1st round of the playoffs]. We had an excellent team in 1945. We made very few mistakes because we tried to take care of that in morning and afternoon workouts. The games were played at night.”
In 1946 the Blue Sox, sans Ashburn (who was in the military), Hamner, and Caballero, would slipped to 7th place. However, in 1947, buoyed by the return of those 3 plus the addition of another future Whiz Kid, catcher Stan Lopata, Utica would swept to the pennant by 10 games with a gaudy 90-48 record as all 4 future Whiz Kids made the Eastern League All-Star team. The Blue Sox went on to sweep the playoffs, defeating the Wilkes-Barre Barons in 6 games and the Albany Senators in 7
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As a Manager Sawyer was a laid-back, avuncular type who showed great patience with his players. For example, the 18-year-old Granny Hamner had had a rough debut with the Phillies in 1945, making 11 errors in 13 games and being booed roundly in Philadelphia. The team sent him to Utica, where Sawyer told him “You’re my shortstop this season even if you boot a dozen a game. And I am going to sock the first fan that rides you.”
He also showed his shrewd eye for talent with Richie Ashburn. When Ashburn reported to Utica in 1945, he was a catcher. Sawyer took a look at Richie’s speed and soon converted him to the outfield. Ashburn was so fast that on bunts as a catcher he would beat the runner down the 1st-base line as he backed up the 1st baseman-even with his catching gear on. Sawyer felt that as a catcher, Ashburn’s arm was not strong enough and that his speed would diminish from the constant crouching.
The Phillies did not have a AAA franchise until 1948, when they entered into a working agreement with the Toronto Maple Leafs in he International League. After his successful run with Utica, the Phillies named Sawyer manager of the AAA Maple Leafs. He continued to develop future Whiz Kids like Lopata, Bubba Church, and Willie “Puddinhead” Jones, along with older players, like Pitcher Jim Konstanty, who would contribute greatly to the 1950 NL pennant team.
But before he could take the reins of the AAA Maple Leafs, Sawyer’s friendship with Herb Pennock came to a tragic end in January 1948, when Pennock died of a cerebral hemorrhage at the Waldorf-Astoria Hotel in New York. Sawyer had been conversing with the GM not more than 15 minutes earlier.
That July with the Phillies in 7th place (although with a 37-42 record), Bob Carpenter would fired Manager Ben Chapman and replaced him with Sawyer. At 37, Sawyer became the 2nd youngest manager in the MLB at the time, behind only Lou Boudreau of the Cleveland Indians.
In an unusual move after taking over, Sawyer retained all 3 of Chapman’s MLB coaches, Dusty Cooke, Benny Bengough, and Cy Perkins. He said, “All 3 were ex-Yankee ballplayers and I knew them all well. We got along well and rather than go out and get other people, I just kept them all. They knew the major leagues better than I did. [Interim Manager] Dusty Cooke was one of Ben Chapman’s best friends, but we got along great. I think they all knew the team had to make a change.”
Eddie was a perfect fit for a team with young players who showed the talent to make a solid ballclub with Granny Hamner, Willie Jones, Del Ennis, Robin Roberts, Richie Ashburn, Curt Simmons, Bubba Church, Bob Miller, and others. In 1950 his patience would pay off.
The Phillies’ turnaround under Sawyer was not immediate; they finished the 1948 season with 23 wins against 40 losses after he took over and wound up in 6th place, 25½ games out of the lead. During the offseason they traded Harry “The Hat” Walker to the Chicago Cubs for veteran outfielder Bill “Swish” Nicholson. With Richie Ashburn coming into his own, there was no room for 2 singles hitters in the outfield. Nicholson added power and a veteran presence.
Bowman Baseball card
The team started to come to life under Sawyer in 1949, though a near-tragedy marred the season. In Chicago’s Edgewater Beach Hotel on June 14TH, a deranged woman named Ruth Steinhagen shot 1st baseman Eddie Waitkus. Waitkus survived, but would not play again until the next year.
Roberts summed up how the team kept its composure. He said, “In baseball we have to play every day. We didn’t have much of a chance to dwell on events, even traumatic ones, because there was always another ballgame to play.” Sawyer, with his low-key approach, kept the young team moving forward. They took both games of a doubleheader against the Cubs on the day after Waitkus was shot. The next day, still in Chicago, the Phillies trailed 3-0 after 7 innings but rallied for 4 runs in the 8th to win, 4-3. Sawyer allowed reliever Jim Konstanty to bat for himself with the go-ahead run on 3 rd. Konstanty responded with a single to drive in the winning run.
Gaining confidence under Sawyer’s steady leadership, the Phillies closed with a late surge and finished the season in 3rd place with an 81-73 record. It was the highest finish by a Phillies team since 1917, a span of 32 years.
Staff ace Robin Roberts said of Sawyer, “Although I did not realize it at the time, the hiring of Eddie Sawyer was a real turning point for the Phillies and for me personally. Under Eddie, the Phillies would race to the 1950 pennant and I would develop into a 20-game winner.”
Roberts continued, “Eddie had a hands-off leadership style that I did not grow to appreciate until much later in my baseball career. We knew who was boss but he did not flaunt his authority or force himself on us. We had very few meetings, and Eddie had very few conversations with individual players. When he did talk to a player it was in private and had a purpose. Usually to correct a mistake.”
“… Sawyer wanted to keep the game simple and did not have pregame meetings to go over the hitters and how to pitch to them. He encouraged pitchers to pitch from their strengths. The catchers called the ballgames. The players played the game on their own.” Sawyer did keep the game simple and did not try to complicate it with a lot of strategy. Under him the team rarely hit and ran or pitched out. Even their signs were simple. Putsy Caballero remembered that “H, hat was for hit, S, shirt, was a steal. Belt buckle, B, was a bunt. Anyone could remember those signs. Of course, we had a take-off sign, so Eddie could put a sign on, take it off, and put it back on, several times if he wanted to.” According to Roberts, “Sawyer‘s leadership had a lot to do with our camaraderie — he did not panic or show frustration when the team did not do well.” Sawyer had the sense to leave well enough alone, as seen when he told Pitching Coach George Earnshaw and other coaches not to change the herky-jerky, across-the-body motion of bonus baby southpaw Curt Simmons, who had struggled his 1st 2 years. He told Simmons, “You go right back to pitching the way you pitched in Egypt, Pennsylvania.” Simmons did go back to his natural style and won 17 games for the Whiz Kids in 1950, before he was called to active military duty from the reserve.
Sawyer also handled different personalities well. Jim Konstanty, a family man who didn’t smoke or drink, wasn’t “one of the boys.” He could be difficult and was not well-liked by some. Sawyer said, “He was doing all right and I avoided him.” Yet Konstanty was quoted in 1950 as saying, “If we didn’t have Sawyer as Manager, we’d be in the 2nd division. He gets 20% more out of a team than any man I ever saw.”
Richie Ashburn echoed this, saying, “He didn’t bother the people that played hard. He never said a word to those guys because he didn’t think he had to.” While Sawyer had a laissez-faire approach to managing a team, he could get rough and even physical when it was needed. Ashburn said, “He was a brilliant, scholarly man but he could also be very tough.”
Sawyer could clamp down on the players when necessary. He related that he once fought a player who was breaking training rules in the privacy of the clubhouse after everyone but the clubhouse attendant had left. He said, “I whipped this fellow and whipped him good. All he could understand then was fear. I made him fearful.” According to Sawyer, the individual “turned out to be a pretty good ballplayer.” At one juncture the young team was stuffing themselves on the road and charging it to the team, and some had gone to the beach and gotten sunburned. Eddie laid down the law and had the players come to him for their meal money and saw to it that there were no more sunburns. Still, he allowed them to play the game mostly on their own intuition and abilities.The Phillies of 1949 were a surprise team. The fans were becoming optimistic. Sawyer told the players at season’s end, “We are going to win it all in 1950. Come back next year ready to win.”
When the 1950 NL season opened, the Phillies broke out their new red-striped uniforms. Sawyer said, “I actually designed the pinstriped uniforms. I thought the old uniforms were terrible looking … and Bob Carpenter agreed to change them. I worked for Wilson Sporting Goods and so I told them that I wanted pinstripe uniforms like the Yankees, only in red. I thought that the Yankee blue pinstripes were good-looking uniforms. “But Wilson did not want to make them … for anybody but the Yankees. So even though I was with Wilson, I told them I have a lot of good friends at MacGregor. They’ll make them for us any way we want. So, Wilson decided to make them for us.”
The club moved in and out of 1st place several times in 1950, but on July 25th they took 2 from the Cubs and moved into the lead for good. With 3 weeks left in the season, the Phillies had built a 6½-game lead. Then bad things started to happen. Gene Kelly, the voice of the Phillies, used to say, “Whoa Nelly” — but now it was “Woe.” Number-2 starter Curt Simmons was lost to the Army. Then Bubba Church, Bob Miller, Andy Seminick, and Dick Sisler were injured. The seemingly comfortable lead melted to 1 game over the Brooklyn Dodgers with the Phillies playing the Dodgers at Ebbets Field on the last day of the regular season. If the Phils lost, they would face a best-of-3 playoff with a depleted pitching staff.
Eddie Sawyer had picked Robin Roberts, who had only 2 days’ rest, to start for Philadelphia. The Dodgers went with their ace, Don Newcombe. Roberts seemed to pitch his best against Newcombe and Sawyer felt confident about using him. In fact, Roberts had started on only 2 days’ rest 7 times already that season. The game was a classic. Roberts bore down in the 9th inning and with the help of Ashburn, who threw out Cal Abrams at the plate — survived a Brooklyn threat. He then retired the Dodgers in order in the 10th, after Dick Sisler’s 3-run HR gave the Phillies a 4-1 lead.
After the game several of the Dodgers (including losing pitcher Newcombe and Jackie Robinson) came to the Phils’ clubhouse to congratulate them. “The Dodgers and we respected each other,” Sawyer said. “We played them a lot and they were all tough games. They appreciated us and we appreciated them. They were good hard competitors. Some 30,000 fans jammed 13th Street Railroad station in Philadelphia to welcome home the 1st pennant by a Phillies team in 35 years.
Eddie Sawyer’s Whiz Kids and Casey Stengel’s New York Yankees squared off in the 1950 World Series. The Phillies’ opening-game starter was an open question. Roberts would have had to go on very short rest yet again; Simmons, while on furlough from the Army, was only a spectator and batting-practice pitcher. The newspapers speculated that 3-game winner Ken Heintzelman could get the call, since soft-tossing lefties had done well against the Yankees that year. Yet to the surprise of many, Sawyer had picked the Phillies’ ace reliever, Jim Konstanty. “I was looking for somebody different,” Eddie said. “Back in 1929, Connie Mack started Howard Ehmkein the World Series versus the Cubs. (Ehmke) couldn’t throw hard and struck out 13. So, this was what I was thinking of. Konstanty would be something different for the Yankees to look at. We had to stop the Yankees’ left-handed bats, Yogi Berra, Bobby Brown and Johnny Mize. Those guys were pretty good hitters. Konstanty had pitched 7 innings a lot of times in Toronto, pitching the short games in a doubleheader. So, I figured he could start it and go as far as he can and then I would bring in somebody else.” Jim did pitch great ball, but Yankees starter Vic Raschi was slightly better and the Yankees won the 1st game, 1-0. The rest of the 1950 World Series followed the 1st game almost to a T. In Game 2, Robin Roberts lost in the 10th inning, when Joe DiMaggio hit a long fly ball into the upper deck at Shibe Park, giving the Yankees a 2-1 victory and a 2-0 edge. The Phillies’ bats were silent, continuing a team hitting slump from the end of the season and Sawyer could do little about it. They lost Game 3, by the score of 3-2, and Game 4, losing 5-2. No World Series had fewer runs scored than the 1950 edition. The Yankees swept the Series despite an opposing 2.27 ERA. After the final out, the sporting Phillies Manager “vaulted from the dugout and was one of the 1st to reach the yelling, celebrating Yanks to congratulate them.”
Eddie Sawyer had edged Casey Stengel in the voting for baseball’s Manager of the Year. The news came as a surprise to Eddie; he said, “It was farthest from my thoughts.” Joe Reichler of the Associated Press wrote, “Players regard Sawyer as more than a mere manager. He’s father confessor, friendly advisor, coach, and psychologist to every Phil.” Psychology was a key ingredient to Sawyer’s managerial style. After the Whiz Kids won their pennant, he said, “Build up a fellow’s confidence and you build up his ability. Knock him all the time, his confidence disappears and the battle is lost.” Sawyer and the Phillies were optimistic about the 1951 NL season. However, with starter Curt Simmons still on active duty, the team slumped to 5th place with a 73-81 record. Sawyer got a small measure of revenge against the Yankees as Manager of the National League All-Star team, which defeated Casey Stengel’s AL squad, by the score of 8-3.
In 1952, Sawyer clamped down in spring training. As a sportswriter put it, “No wives, no automobiles, no golf, no gambling, no swimming and a strict curfew is the order of the day in camp.” The “austerity program” didn’t pay off, though, the Phillies had a 28-35 record, when on June 27th, Eddie Sawyer had resigned as Manager and was replaced by Steve O’Neill. Sawyer said the move had been “on the fire for some time. It almost happened last winter. Had the club been winning this year it would not have happened at this time, but probably would have happened next year anyway. … [The club] isn’t winning because it isn’t hitting.”
Sawyer was retained on the Phillies payroll in an advisory capacity, evaluating the farm systems and personnel of other teams. Although there were rumors after the 1952 season that he might manage the Pittsburgh Pirates, Eddie said at the end of the year that he was “through with baseball for good.” He then became a salesman for a golf-ball manufacturer in the Philadelphia area, eventually advancing to vice president for sales.
Sawyer was out of baseball until 1958. Amid reports that he was looking to come back, he rejoined the Phillies, replacing Mayo Smith as Manager in July. Phillies General Manager Roy Hamey said, “He had a good record while he was here.”
Eddie said, “I told them I expect them to put out 100%. And if they don’t, I made it very clear to them that they wouldn’t be here long.” Revealing why he came back, he added, “Baseball gets in your blood. There’s more to working than just making money. What good is all the money in the world if you don’t enjoy yourself?”The enjoyment didn’t last, unfortunately. The team finished in the cellar in 1958 with a 69-85 record and in 1959, they would fall to 64-90 to again finish in last place. Then, after the Phillies lost the opening game of the 1960 season in Cincinnati, Sawyer had resigned, issuing the famous quote, “I am 49 years old and want to live to be 50.”
He knew of what he spoke as, under new manager Gene Mauch, the team finished in the cellar for the 3rd straight season with a 59-95 record before bottoming out with a dreadful 47-107 won-loss record in 1961.
Eddie Sawyer rejoined the Phillies as a MLB scout in December 1962, serving through the 1966 season. In June 1968, it was announced that he would join the brand-new Kansas City Royals as a full-time scout in 1969. He was instrumental in the expansion player draft, helping to form a team that became the most successful of the 4 new franchises that year.
Sawyer continued to work as a special-assignment scout for the Royals before retiring from baseball on January 1, 1974.
For many years, he lived in Phoenixville, Pennsylvania on Valley Forge Mountain with his wife, Polly. Over the years he was elected to various sports Halls of Fame: Pennsylvania; Maryland; Virginia; Rhode Island; Binghamton, New York; and Ithaca College. On October 14, 1980, Sawyer threw out the ceremonial 1st pitch at Veterans Stadium as the Phillies faced the Kansas City Royals in the World Series. It was the Phillies’ 1st pennant since the Whiz Kids, and at last they brought home the championship.
For much of the 1990s Sawyer cared for Polly, who was in poor health. During that time, he routinely turned down speaking engagements and appearances, saying, “She took care of me all those years, it’s the least I can do to take care of her now .”Eddie Sawyer died on September 22, 1997, at the age of 87 in Phoenixville from a combination of respiratory problems and kidney failure. He donated his body to the Pennsylvania Medical Society for research. Sawyer was survived by Polly, 2 daughters, 5 grandchildren and 3 great-grandchildren.
The loss of Sawyer came not 2 weeks after the death of Richie Ashburn. Although it wasn’t front-page news in Philly, the Inquirer and the Daily News carried substantial obituaries for the Whiz Kids’ skipper. As the Daily News put it, “He could tell the greatest, rich-in-detail stories one moment, then speak volumes soon afterward merely by fixing someone with a purposeful stare.”
Eddie Sawyer’s lifetime managing record in the major leagues of 390-423 ended below .500 at .480, but he remains one of the most revered managers in Phillies history. For 1 season, he led a young team that brought great joy and glory to a city that had been bereft of either for a long time.
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Post by donniebaseball23 on Aug 8, 2024 0:03:46 GMT -5
Wasn't sure where else to post this, but I suppose this is as good a spit as any - this popped up on my youtube recommendations. Maybe my favorite moment in baseball ever. As you may know, Don Mattingly is my favorite player ever; he's the reason I'm a Yankees fan and was more or less my idol growing up. I remember watching this live at my buddy's house in 1995. I went nuts when i heard him connect. One of those swings you KNOW it's gone the millisecond they connect. Got legit choked up as he rounded the bases.
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Post by fwclipper51 on Aug 11, 2024 16:35:59 GMT -5
The Quite YankeeYankees 2B Bobby Richardson
Written by Len Pasculli, Edited by Clipper
 Topps Baseball Card
Bobby Richardson played 2nd base for the New York Yankees from 1955 to 1966, a key contributor during one of the Yankees’ most successful stretches in their legendary history. Richardson was by all accounts a slick, rangy glove man and a steady stick man. He had won the Gold Glove Award 5 times; he had hit over .300 in 2 different seasons. He was selected to the American League All-Star team 8 times. When the October spotlight was turned on, Richardson would excel. His lifetime regular season statistics include a .266 batting average, a .299 on-base percentage and a .335 slugging percentage. In World Series play, however, he had batted .305 with a .331 OBP and .405 SLG.
Richardson played in 7 World Series, 36 games in all including an MLB record 30 consecutive World Series games. He holds several remarkable World Series hitting records as well: he is 1 of only 4 players to have 11 or more hits in 2 different World Series, he has the most RBIs in a World Series and the most RBIs in a single World Series game. His total of 40 World Series hits places him at #13 on the list of Most World Series Hits in a Career, as of this writing. Richardson is the only 2nd baseman and the only player from the losing team to win the coveted Sport Magazine World Series MVP award. Bobby Richardson was inarguably one of the best 2nd sackers in his day and a convincing case could be made that he is the greatest all-time Yankee 2nd baseman after Hall of Famer Tony Lazzeri.
Robert Clinton Richardson Jr., was born on August 19, 1935, the 2nd child born to Robert Clinton, Sr. and Willie (nee Owens) Richardson of Sumter, South Carolina. Older sister Inez was born 1 year earlier and little sister Willie Ann was born 1 year later. His father was part owner and manager of Richardson Marble and Granite Works and his mother was a homemaker. (“My father was the type who would sit quietly in the bleachers and watch me play.”)
Bobby’s early influences in baseball were an older neighborhood boy named Harry Stokes and his Edmunds High School and Sumter American Legion baseball coach “Hutch” Hutchinson. Bobby played in the YMCA program for a team sponsored by the Salvation Army, when he was 10 years old. Also, on a team sponsored by the Kiwanis Club for the next several years. During those formative years, he would badger Harry to play catch with him and despite a 7-year difference in age, Harry would oblige. Bobby had played shortstop on the Sumter American Legion team that, under Coach Hutchinson, won the state championship team in 1952.
The Yankees’ Norfolk Tars, Virginia, farm club Manager Mayo Smith and Yankee MLB scout Bill Harris had their eye on Richardson–but so did 11 other MLB clubs (there were only 16 MLB teams at the time!), as did Georgia Tech and the University of North Carolina, who had offered Richardson scholarships to play ball for them. But on June 12,1953, the day, he had graduated high school, Bobby would sign with the Yankees. Bobby traveled to Norfolk by bus with a jar full of coins taken up as a collection from his friends and neighbors in Sumter. “85 dollars in coins!” recalls Richardson. He would play 27 games at Class B Norfolk Tars (Piedmont League), but he was re-assigned to the Class D Olean, New York, club later that season, where he performed much better. He attempted to further his education several times during the off-season in those 1st years after high school, but never successfully. (“My 2 doctorates are honorary,” admits Richardson.)
Bobby was not big when he broke into professional baseball, not yet the 5’9″ and 166 pounds that would appear on the back of his later baseball cards. But he was an outstanding middle infielder. In 1954, he would jump to Class A Binghamton Triplets (Eastern League), where he batted .310 and was voted Most Valuable Player of the Eastern League. Next, he would move up to Yankees Triple A club, the Denver Bears, where he batted .296 in 1955 and .328 in 1956. Bobby was the American Association’s All-Star 2nd baseman in both years. Baseball Digest publishes reports on promising MLB rookies each March. For Bobby, the report read: “Best infielder for his age in years.”
In 1955 at age 19, Richardson was called up to the Yankees because Gil McDougald was knocked out of the. starting lineup, when he got hit by a line drive during batting practice. Bobby made his MLB player debut on August 5, 1955. In the 4th inning, he walked and stole 2nd, followed by a walk to Mickey Mantle. They both scored on Yogi Berra‘s 200th MLB career HR. That was all the Bronx Bombers needed as they defeated the Tigers, 3-0. Richardson got his 1st MLB hit, when he singled off rookie hurler Jim Bunning in the 7th inning. In the field, however, Bobby admits he was a “nervous wreck” that game as he waited for his 1st major league defensive chance that never came. Richardson would later select this game among all the games he ever played as the Game of His Life. However, with McDougald healed, Richardson was sent back down to Triple A Richmond (International League) on August 19, his 20th birthday.
Bobby had the tools but it was tough breaking into a lineup that touted All-Stars McDougald, Billy Martin, Jerry Coleman, and Phil Rizzuto. At the start of the 1956 season, he traveled north with the club, but he saw playing time in only 5 games before being sent back down to AAA Denver Bears (American Association).
Yankee player photo
However, in 1957, Richardson finally got more playing time with Billy Martin being traded to the Kansas City A's on June 15th and Coleman playing in his final MLB season. “Bobby Richardson had arrived,” declared The New York Times. Richardson, who was batting over .300 in June, he was selected to the 1957 All-Star team. Even so, the crusty Casey Stengel, who during his 12-year stretch as Yankee Manager (1949-1960) took the club to the World Series 10 times, loved to platoon his players, including Richardson. (“Casey never called me by my name. He always called me ‘Kid’,” recalls Bobby.) Richardson did not like the ever-changing lineup, just as he did not like it when Casey pinch hit for him before he batted even once in a game, or when the skipper batted him 9th in the order behind a good hitting pitcher like Don Larsen or Mickey McDermott or Tommy Byrne. But that was Casey’s style. On at least 1 occasion, Casey would pinch hit for Bill Skowron and Clete Boyer before their 1st plate appearance, too (for Boyer, it happened in his very 1st World Series game!) and he batted Martin and Rizzuto 9th in the order. None of them liked it.
Although his early Yankee years were not easy, Richardson persisted, aided by his dad’s support and his faith. Everyone–his teammates, his fans, the media–knew Bobby, a Southern Baptist, to be a righteous and right-living man. Stengel said famously of Richardson, “Look at him. He doesn’t drink, he doesn’t smoke, he doesn’t chew, he doesn’t stay out late and he still can’t hit .250.” Bobby and his roommate and best friend on the team, Tony Kubek, were dubbed “The Milkshake Twins” for their decorous lifestyle.
The 1959 AL season was Richardson’s breakout year. Bobby gives much of the credit for his hitting improvement to Yankees Batting Coach Bill Dickey. The Hall of Famer told Bobby to use a heavier bat and swing harder, and suddenly, sharply hit ground balls and line drives were piling up for hits. He had the highest batting average on the club, and he was 3rd on the team in hits and triples.
his 2 hits on the last day of the 1959 AL season against the Baltimore Orioles make for a great baseball story. The Bombers did not have even 1 .300 hitter that season, but before that final game, Casey learned that Bobby, who had hit safely in the last 18 consecutive games, needed just 1 hit to reach that mark. He told Bobby, “Get a hit and I’ll take you out.” It turned out that Bobby had friends on the O’s, too. Third baseman Brooks Robinson passed by to say, “I’ll be playing deep today,” inviting Bobby to bunt for the hit. Birds’ Catcher Joe Ginsberg let Bobby know that starting pitcher Billy O’Dell, an off-season hunting buddy of Richardson’s, would lay his pitches in. Even 1st base umpire Ed Hurley knew what was going on: “If you hit it on the ground, just make it close,” he told Bobby. But on his 1st trip to the plate Bobby hit a line drive to right field that Albie Pearson snared. “Pearson was one of my closest friends in the game–we’d spoken together at church! He must have been the only person in the ballpark, who didn’t know I was supposed to get my hit!” But Bobby would collect 2 singles off his pal O’Dell to finish precisely at .3006 before Casey pinch-hit for him in the 8th inning.
Richardson’s celebrity afforded him the opportunity for public speaking (especially with the Christian ministries that he pursued both during the off-season and after his playing career ended) and for the occasional TV advertisement (though never for alcohol or cigarettes). In his autobiography he tells a wonderful self-deprecating story about how he flubbed through 9 takes doing a razor blade commercial because, in his nervousness, he repeatedly called them “blazor rades.”
1960 World Series Grand Slam HR
In 1960, the durable Richardson had played in 150 of the team’s 154 games (the schedule expanded to 162 games in the following year), although his average dropped 49 points. However, as with several other seasons, Richardson is remembered not for his regular season play in 1960 but for his incredible World Series performance. The 1960 World Series was a re-match of the New York Yankees and the Pittsburgh Pirates, who last faced each other in 1927. Richardson had a quiet Game 1, but a very busy Game 2. He had 11 chances in the field with 1 walk and 3 hits, including a Series record 2 in 1 inning. He scored 3 runs and knocked in 2 others as New York rallied 16-3 to even the Series at 1 game apiece.
In Game 3 in between catching the ceremonial 1st pitch from the just-retired Ted Williams and strike 3 to Gino Cimoli to end the game, Yankee catcher Elston Howard had 2 hits, but it was Ellie’s infield hit in the 1st inning that Bobby Richardson will always remember. Clem Labine relieved “Vinegar Bend” Mizell to face Howard with the bases loaded and 1 run in already. The big catcher beat out a slow roller toward 3rd to score Mickey Mantle. That brought Richardson up with the bases still loaded. Bobby strode to the batter’s box, expecting the whole time for Stengel to call him back as he often did in a situation like this. He soon learned why Casey had not sent up a pinch-hitter. Long time Yankees 3rd base Coach Frank Crosetti flashed Richardson the sign for a squeeze bunt! “Not a good baseball move in this situation,” thought Richardson. Nevertheless, he tried to bunt but he fouled off 2 pitches. Then, on a 3-2 pitch, Richardson belted a high inside fastball into the left field bleachers. The smallest Yankee had hit only 3 HRs in 1,578 regular season plate appearances in his 6 MLB seasons up to that point, but on this afternoon, he became the 7th player in World Series competition to hit a grand-slam HR, the 1st one in Yankee Stadium World Series history.
Bobby was not done. When he came to bat in the 4th inning, again Bill Skowron, Gil McDougald, and Elston Howard clogged the bases. This time Bobby ripped a single into left field off of Red Witt to drive in 2 more runs in front of 70,001 cheering hometown fans. (“I wanted to hit a HR that time, too.”) His 6 RBIs in a game broke the record of 5 RBIs tied by Mantle just 2 days earlier.
Richardson collected 2 more hits and an RBI in Game 4, but he was shut down in Game 5. In Game 6, Richardson would slugged 2 triples both to deep leftfield in Forbes Field and knocked in 3 more runs. In Game 7, Casey batted Richardson in the leadoff spot and Bobby responded by getting 2 hits and scoring 2 runs, including a crucial lead-off single and a run scored in the top of the 9th, as the Yankees clawed back after losing the lead in the 8th. But as every baseball fan knows, the Pirates won the game and the World Series when Bill Mazeroski led off the bottom of the 9th with the 1st walk-off HR in World Series history, an event that The Sporting News ranked 2nd only to “The Shot Heard ‘Round the World” in its list of Baseball’s 25 Greatest Moments published in 1999.
Richardson amassed 11 hits in 30 at-bats (.367) in that Series, with 2 doubles, 2 triples, and 1 HR, good for a .667 slugging percentage. He had batted .462 with runners in scoring position. He scored 8 runs; his 12 RBIs are a World Series record (as of 2020), and he was the 1st player in World Series history to record 6 RBIs in a game (since accomplished 3 more times through 2020). Also, he made 28 assists and 21 putouts, including 7 double plays. Yet, according to Mantle, Bobby was “dad-gummed surprised” when he was named the Most Valuable Player of the 1960 World Series. “‘Dad-gum’ was about as rough as [Bobby’s] language ever got,” says his long-time buddy. SportMagazine had awarded Richardson a new 1960 Corvette. But with 2 kids and a 3rd on the way, when he went back to South Carolina after the Series ended, the unpretentious little slugger traded in the Corvette for a Chevy station wagon.
Bobby remembers his only other MLB grand-slam HR. On August 16, 1962, the Yankees were down by 3 runs in the 9th inning against the Twins in Minnesota. The bases were loaded with hurler Dick Stigman on the mound. As Bobby came up to bat, Mickey said to Bobby, “See if you can hit 1 out. I’m not feeling too good today.” (Dutifully, though implausibly, Richardson obliged with a shot down the left field line to put the Yankees ahead, 8-7. Relief pitcher Marshall Bridges could not hold the lead, however, and the Twins scored once in the 9th and again in the 10th to win the game.
Less than one week after the 1960 World Series ended, in what would turn out to be a turning point in Bobby’s career, MLB Coach Ralph Houk was promoted to replace Manager Casey Stengel. Houk knew Bobby from when he had managed the Denver Bears AAA farm club in 1955 and 1956. And in 1958 it was Houk, the Yankees’ MLB Coach at the time, who helped convince Bobby not to quit baseball, when he was slumping. Unlike Stengel, Houk would used a steady lineup. Richardson would play in all 162 games in 1961 (a grueling feat, considering that the Yankees played 23 doubleheaders that year) and usually batted 1st or 2nd in the order.
Richardson was awarded his 1st Gold Glove Award in 1961 as he improved his fielding percentage to .978 and led the league with 413 putouts and 136 double plays, anchoring a solid defensive infield of 3b Clete Boyer, ss Tony Kubek, 2b Richardson, and 1b Bill Skowron (“Moose paid me 500 bucks a year to catch all the pop-ups behind him.”)
The Yankees would outscore the Cincinnati Reds 27 to 13 in the 1961 World Series and won the Series in 5 games. Richardson had a fine Series against the Reds, collecting 9 hits (5 of them off lefty Jim O’Toole) and batting .391, with 8 singles, a double, and 2 runs scored–but no RBIs this year unlike the year before! As of this writing, Richardson’s 9 hits (tied with 10 others) and 23 at-bats (tied with 2 others) are still MLB records for a 5-game World Series.
Richardson’s most productive season was 1962. He led the American League and recorded personal career best performances with 754 total plate appearances, 692 official at-bats, and 209 hits. As of this writing, his 692 ABs and 754 TPAs still ranks Bobby among the top 5 of all time in the American League in those 2 single-season categories. With a mere 24 strikeouts, Bobby struck out only 1 time for every 28.8 official at-bats that year. And with opposing pitchers not wanting to walk Bobby in front of Mantle and Roger Maris, Bobby racked up several other personal-best batting performances that year: .302 batting average, 38 doubles (led the team; 4th in the American League), 8 HRs, 59 RBIs, 99 runs scored (led the team), 37 walks, a slugging average of .406 and an on-base percentage of .337. He also led the Yankees and the league with 20 sacrifice bunts. He won his 2nd Gold Glove Award and finished 2nd to Mickey Mantle in the voting for the American League’s Most Valuable Player Award.
The 1962 World Series against the San Francisco Giants was notable for both franchises. The San Francisco Giants and their fans remember this World Series as the most heart-wrenching of the 3 Series they lost after moving to the West Coast. The New York Yankees and their fans remember it as the last World Series victory until 1977. Game 7 at Candlestick Park was a genuine nail-biter, a pitching duel between the Giants’ Jack Sanford and Yankee ace Ralph Terry, both of whom were able to pitch even though they pitched Game 5 because of the 3 days of rain that postponed Game 6.
The Yankees scored the only run in the game when Bill Skowron crossed the plate as the Giants were completing a 6-4-3 double play on a Tony Kubek ground ball in the 5th inning. The 9th inning has been written about extensively, but here’s how Richardson remembers it:
Giants Pinch-hitter Matty Alou led off the bottom of the 9th with a drag bunt base hit that I could not get to in time. Felipe Alou attempted to bunt him over but was unsuccessful. He struck out, as did the next batter Chuck Hiller. Then Willie Mays slapped a double down the right field line. Roger Maris made a wonderful play to cut the ball off before it reached the corner. He threw the ball to me at the cutoff position and I got rid of the ball quick and it was on line. When Maris got me the ball, Giants 3rd base Coach Whitey Lockman held up Matty Alou at 3rd. But as it turned out my throw took a high bounce and Ellie Howard had to reach up for it. Who knows? Had Alou been trying to score, he might have been able to slide under the tag.
With the tying and winning runs on 3rd and 2nd base, Ralph Houk visited the mound to check with Terry, the same Ralph Terry who gave up Bill Mazeroski’s HR in Pittsburgh 2 years earlier. Terry and Houk decided to pitch to Willie McCovey–even though he tripled in his previous at-bat and homered off of Terry in Game 2–rather than pitch to the on-deck batter Orlando Cepeda whom Terry already struck out twice in the game. McCovey hit a long foul ball down the right field line on the 1st pitch. On the 2nd pitch, he hit a line shot right at Richardson that Bobby caught shoulder high and the Yankees won the Series. “People often suggest that I was out of position on that play,” recalls Bobby. “But McCovey hit 2 hard ground balls to me earlier in the Series, so I played where I thought he would hit the ball.”
That play was listed by The Sporting News as #13 of Baseball’s 25 Greatest Moments. It also underlay the famous quote by Willie McCovey epitomizing the fragility of success in the game of baseball:
I broke in with a 4-for-4 my rookie year against a Hall of Fame pitcher, Robin Roberts. I hit more grand slams [18] than anybody in National League history. I hit more HRs [521] than any lefthanded hitter in the National League. But that out is what many people remember about me….I would rather be remembered as the guy who hit the ball 6 inches over Bobby Richardson’s head.
In 1963, Bobby’s batting average dropped back to .265. He tied his own career high and tied Elston Howard for the team lead with 6 triples. He stole a career-high 15 bases to lead the Yankees and finish 7th in the American League. He won his 3rd Gold Glove Award with a personal best .984 fielding percentage. Bobby did not hit well in the World Series between the Yankees and the Los Angeles Dodgers that year, but he did appear in all 4 World Series games increasing his string to 23 consecutive World Series games.
Bobby had missed 11 games during the 1963 regular season, mostly to visit with his father or help handle family affairs, after his father suffered a stroke in May and died on June 17th.
The Yankees enjoyed another successful season in 1964, with their 5th consecutive World Series appearance (14 out of their last 16 seasons), and another pretty good year for Richardson. He ranked 3rd in the league with 181 hits along with his league-leading 679 ABs, for a .267 batting average and he won the Gold Glove Award again. He collected his “elusive” 1,000th hit on June 12, 1964, in the 1st game of a doubleheader with the Chicago White Sox: “He had hit the ball solidly five times Thursday night in Boston and twice last night before the ball dropped in,” reported The New York Times.
On that evening, Richardson was presented with the Lou Gehrig Memorial Award which had been bestowed on him following the 1963 season. This award, established by Lou Gehrig’s college fraternity at Columbia University in 1955, is presented annually to the MLB player ,who both on and off the field best exemplifies the character of Lou Gehrig–an extremely meaningful award for the young man who wanted to play for the Yankees ever since he 1st saw “The Pride of the Yankees.”
The 1964 World Series was against the St. Louis Cardinals would be Richardson’s last–and the Yankees’ last until 1976. It was a dramatic, hard-fought Series with the Yankees scoring 32 runs and the Cards scoring 33. The Cardinals won the Series in Game 7. World Series MVP Bob Gibson pitched 2 complete-game victories (1 went 10 innings) plus 8 innings in his only loss, with 31 strikeouts in those 27 innings. Remarkably, Richardson had 7 hits including a double in 14 at-bats against Gibson. In all, he had a team-high 13 hits and .406 batting average. As of this writing, his 13 hits is still a major league record for a 7-game World Series (tied with two others). However, Bobby laments the 1964 Series for the 2 errors he made that he claims “may well have been the difference between winning and losing for the Yankees.” He thought he was redeemed when Tom Tresh hit a 2-out, 2-run HR in the bottom of the 9th inning in Game 5 to tie the game. “Bobby Richardson, whose error had allowed 1 of the Cardinal runs, was so excited he jumped up from the bench, striking his head on the concrete dugout roof and almost knocking himself out cold.” But the Yankees lost in extra innings and went into Game 6 down 3 games to 2 instead of the other way around before they ultimately lost the Series.
The Yankees had started the 1965 season in historic fashion. On April 9, 1965, they traveled to Texas to play an exhibition game against the Houston Astros as part of the grand opening of the Harris County Domed Stadium, better known as the Houston Astrodome. Batting in the top of the 1st, Richardson was the 2nd MLB player to ever bat in a ballpark with a roof. Mantle was the 1st, possibly to give him the designation of being the 1st MLB player to bat indoors.Richardson had a number of 4-hit games, but his biggest offensive outbursts were 2
5-hit games at the tail end of his MLB playing career. On May 10,1965, in the 1st game of a doubleheader against the Indians in Cleveland, Bobby had 5 singles in a game the Yankees won by the score of 12-2. On June 29,1966, Bobby went 5 for 5 in the Yankees’ 6-5 win over the Red Sox at Fenway Park. His solo HR into the left field screen was followed by HR from Mickey Mantle (his 2nd of the game) and Joe Pepitone for a back-to-back-to-back outburst.
Although Bobby was still the best at his position in 1965–with his 7th All-Star Game selection and 5th consecutive Gold Glove Award–he planned to retire after the 1965 season. However, Tony Kubek’s chronic back and neck injuries finally caught up with him, and his doctors advised him to retire. The Yankees did not want to lose both members of their double play combination in the same year, so they offered Richardson a 5-year contract, if he would play 1 more year and then assist the club in some minimal functions for the other 4, which he did.
On August 31,1966, at age 31, Bobby Richardson announced his retirement from professional baseball: “This will be my last year as far as playing baseball for the New York Yankees. I will close out the year with 10 years and 56 days of real enjoyment spent in Yankee Stadium and the clubhouses and diamonds of the league. But I feel the time has come when I really should spend a little more time with my family.” The years of shuttling his family from Sumter to Ft. Lauderdale to Ridgewood, New Jersey, would soon be over.
Neither the Yankees nor Richardson finished the 1966 AL season strong. The Yankees had lost 15 of their final 24 games to drop them into last place of the American League standings for the 1st time since 1912, when the club was known as the New York Highlanders. Bobby had just 8 hits in his last 55 at-bats, but one of them was memorable. On Sunday, September 11,1966, in Fenway Park, Richardson smacked a solo HR in the top of the 10th inning off of reliever John Wyatt to break a 2-2 tie and help the Yankees defeat the Red Sox by the score of 4-2. It was Bobby’s last MLB HR.
On the final day of the season, Sunday, October 2nd, Richardson played his last game in the big leagues. He accounted for both Yankee runs in a 2-0 win over the Chicago White Sox at Comiskey Park. Batting 3rd in the lineup, Bobby singled in the 1st inning for his 1,432nd and final MLB hit, but he was erased on a double play. In the 3rd inning, Al Downing scored on Richardson’s RBI groundout. In the 6th inning, Bobby reached 2nd on an error by rookie RF Buddy Bradford, advanced to 3rd on a Tommy John wild pitch and scored on Steve Whitaker‘s single. Richardson’s last MLB at bat was a groundout, 2nd to 1st, off of pitcher Jack Lamabe.
Richardson finished his MLB playiing career with 1,412 regular season games and a .266 lifetime batting average. He led the league 3 times in at-bats (1962-1964). Although Richardson did not draw many walks, he was a splendid batter at the top of the Yankee order. He was tough to strike out (only 243 in 5,780 career plate appearances), tough to double up (only 100 times in his career) and a great bunter–he had 98 sacrifice bunts in his career, good enough to finish in the AL’s top 10 in that category 7 times, and twice (1962 and 1964), he led the league.
In the field, Bobby was known as 1 of the 2nd-sackers of his era “who could turn a good double play” and the DP combo of Kubek and Richardson was among the best in the big leagues in the Sixties, just as Rizzuto and Coleman were in the Fifties. Bobby claims that he learned a lot from Jerry Coleman about making the pivot.) Richardson would turn a total of 963 double plays from 2nd base, but during his last 7 years, he averaged an incredible 111.5 DPs per season. In 4 of those years (1961-1963, 1965), he would led the American League in that category. The 136 double plays Richardson turned in 1961 was 2nd only to Coleman’s 137 for the most double plays by a Yankee 2nd baseman in a season.
Richardson was even involved in a couple of triple plays. (18) The 1st happened on May 16,1957, when the Kansas City Athletics had Jim Pisoni (who would be traded to the Yankees a month later on 1st and Hector Lopez (also a future Yankee) on 2nd. Veteran pitcher Alex Kellner attempted to bunt the runners over, but he popped up the pitch from Bob Turley. Turley rushed in and caught the pop up, whirled and threw to shortstop Gil McDougald at 2nd base, who then whipped the ball to Richardson covering 1st for the triple play. On September 4, 1965, rare triple play lightning struck again for Richardson. With Boston’s Tony Conigliaro on 2nd and Rico Petrocelli on 1st, catcher Bob Tillman hit a ground ball to 3rd. Clete Boyer started a routine double play, Boyer to Richardson to Pepitone. But when Conigliaro stopped running between 2nd and 3rd, apparently thinking there were 3 outs, Pepitone alertly threw to Boyer, at 3B, who tagged Conigliaro for the 3rd out.
Bobby Richardson’s legacy is the rich and balanced life he lived both in and out of baseball. He is married to the former Betsy Dobson, whom he married on June 8, 1956 (“It was unusual for anyone to let a player go and get married during the season but Ralph [Houk] said it was okay so I went.”) Bobby recalls that Betsy scored better than he did at miniature golf on their 1st date in 1954. They are active in their ministries together (“Betsy is the best counselor I’ve ever known,” proclaims Bobby). They have 5 children: Robbie (born June 2, 1957), Ron (July 13, 1958), Christie (December 30, 1960), Jeannie (January 21, 1964) and Rich (August 27, 1968). Robert Clinton III, who played baseball at the University of South Carolina, when his dad coached there, is a pastor in North Muskegon (“I’m not very good with computers,” admits Bobby. “Whenever I have a question about computers, I ask Robbie”). Ron, an Academic All-American in football and baseball at Wheaton College, is now the pastor in the Richardson’s’ congregation in Sumter. Christie, a teacher, is married to a youth pastor,and Jeannie, the best athlete in the family, according to her dad, is married to John Kaye, who coached with Bobby at Liberty College. Rich, the only child of Betsy and Bobby not yet born, when the Yankees honored his dad at Yankee Stadium on September 17, 1966, with “Bobby Richardson Day,” graduated from Clemson and is in real estate in Atlanta. All the children, and even some of his 15 grandchildren, hunt with Bobby, a hunting enthusiast his whole life.
Throughout his playing career Bobby was extremely active in community and Christian organizations and events. He was the Sumter YMCA general secretary, and was involved in the Fellowship of Christian Athletes, the American Tract Society (a religious publishing body), South Carolina’s tuberculosis campaign and innumerable other charities and organizations. He even hosted a radio sports show. After he had retired, Bobby remained active with those organizations, plus others, such as The Baseball Assistance Team (20), the Baseball Chapel (where he served as President for 10 years), the President’s Council for Physical Fitness and Toastmasters International ,where he is the only sports figure to win the prestigious Golden Gavel Award (1974).
Soon after Richardson retired from baseball, he was asked to be the Head Baseball Coach at the University of South Carolina. Because he was still under the 5-year contract with the Yankees, he was forced to decline at first. When the Yankees agreed to release him, however, Bobby took the coaching job in 1970. He was the Head Baseball Coach at USC from 1970 to 1976, the Head Coach and Athletic Director at Coastal Carolina College from 1984 to 1986 and the Head coach, Athletic Director and Assistant to the Chancellor at Liberty University from 1987 to 1990. With his reputation and MBL connections, Richardson successfully recruited very good ballplayers, including 7 future major leaguers, as he turned the USC program around. He would coach the South Carolina Gamecocks to a 51-6 record and their 1st trip to the NCAA Division I College World Series in 1975, but they lost to Texas in the final game. Richardson won over 70 % of the games that he had coached at USC. Later, as coach of the Coastal Carolina Chanticleers, he would win the Big South Conference in 1986.
In 1976, at President Gerald Ford’s urging, Richardson resigned from coaching to make a run for Congress. He lost by less than 3,000 votes. He returned to “civilian life” for several years, 1st to serve as the Governor’s Coordinator for Highway Safety, then on the board of a private foundation for missionaries and next as a Public-Relations representative for Columbia Bible College until 1984, when he returned to coaching. He “retired” in 1990, though no one would know it by looking at his speaking engagement calendar today.
In his playing career and his life, Bobby Richardson cast a longer shadow than his 5’9″ frame might suggest. He was a good hitter and a marvelous set-up man for one of the most famous slugging duos in baseball history. He was an excellent fielder for a team loaded with groundball-inducing pitchers. Above all, he was a member of the New York Yankee family during one of their most golden eras, and he was proud of it. Famously, Mickey Mantle’s widow, Merlyn, asked “the Preacher” to deliver the eulogy at Mickey’s funeral service in 1995. The Mantles were at Roger Maris’ funeral ten years earlier when Bobby recited a poem that a fan sent him, and Mickey made Richardson promise that he would read it at Mickey’s funeral, too.
Bobby Richardson is in the breed of Yankees that baseball fans mention when creating a list of “true” Yankees and good guys. Although he did not play major league baseball long enough to accumulate the requisite batting credentials to merit consideration for a plaque in Cooperstown, Bobby has been honored as a Hall of Famer by 3 other organizations. He was inducted into the State of South Carolina Hall of Fame in 1996 and into the University of South Carolina Athletic Hall of Fame in 2004. He and Betsy were inducted into the Palmetto Family Council Hall of Honor in 2003.
Richardson is the Yankees’ Mr. October without the HRs (well, except for 1), he was the keystone without the fanfare, and he is truly one of life’s Hall of Famers.
Last updated: October 31, 2020 (ghw)
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