A Deadly Pause

Thinking back on it, the Yankees in 1961 sure didn't seem like a team whose foundation was cracking. The team was perfectly positioned to take immediate advantage of expansion. Adding the Angels and Senators to a league that already had a patsy (KC) played right into the Yankees' slugger-filled line-up. The Yanks cranked 240 HRs; amazingly, the Angels were (a distant) second, with 189.

Winning 109 games and four of five in the World Series, the Yankees' management may have decided to take a breather. They abandoned the Stengel / Topping / Weiss strategy of trading with the losers to pick up the pitchers and role players they would need to compensate for a lack of homegrown talent. But that left them with a woefully thin bench to backstop one of the oldest teams in the Majors. Some 14 roster players were 30 or over, and Mantle was physically well past 30. Key players like Ford, Howard, Berra, Skowron, Lopez, Ditmar, Turley and Duren were among the 30-plus crowd. Moreover, the front office clearly considered Mantle, Maris, Ford, Berra, Howard, Kubek, Richardson and Boyer Untouchables.

There wasn't much left to dangle in front of KC, LA and Washington, and expansion had thinned out the "talent" on their rosters anyway.

1962: The Yankees win again, but just manage to edge out Minnesota (by 5). In one of the most amazing expansion stories ever, the two-year-old Angels led by Bill Rigney finished just 10 back. Then the Yanks barely beat the Giants in 7. (Remember Richarson spearing McCovey ninth innning line shot? Oh Willie, we wanted you to get that hit!) And again, the front office stands pat.

Well, not completely. Skowron is traded for Stan Williams, the big Dodger righty. You can't fault the trade. They had to do something. (The Moose would get his revenge in the '63 Series with clutch hits that helped beat the Yanks.) Pepitone, the next Lou Gehrig (I'm not making this up), takes over at first base. Howard, 33, is now the regular catcher. Plays like a 25-year-old. But still ...

1963: Everyone in the infield has a career year: Howard (the MVP), Kubek, Richardson, Pepitone, Boyer. Ford and Bouton have huge years, as do Terry and Downing. But Maris and Mantle are hobbled by injury, Berra gets in only 35 games behind the mask. The bench includes 37-year-old Dale Long and Harry Bright (!). Maris is unhappy, the press says. The press is right.

If the American League is fooled, the Dodgers ain't buying it. They sweep--sweep!--the Yankees. Houk scurries to the front office, leaving the field boss job in 1964 to a completely unprepared Yogi Berra. And yet, they stand pat. No trades of any note.

1964: Still no one (except Stottlemyre) coming up from the farm to help out. Super sub Phil (Harmonica Man) Linz gets into 112 games, playing 2nd, short, third and OF as injuries (esp. Kubek) and age take their toll. Terry, former budding star Bill Stafford and Williams tank, not enough to undermine fine years by Ford, Downing, Bouton and Stottlemyre, but still worrisome. Maris and Mantle rebound (Maris is unhappy, the press reports), but Boyer and Tresh slump, their slippage covered up by another pennant. Comes the Series, and a team that slipped in, a team whose g.m. was fired in August and whose manager was put on notice--this team, the Cardinals, beats the mighty Yankees in 7 games.

1965: The wheels come off. Berra is canned, Keane comes over from the victorious Cardinals to take the reins--and finds an old, injured, burnt out squad in complete disarray. Pepitone is probably doing drugs by then (a first: the Yankees preferred drug was always booze!). He slumps. Kubek--stick a fork in him. At age 28, he's through. Maris barely plays due to "injuries." (He's really unhappy now, we don't need the press to remind us.) Mantle hobbles on and off the field (and bench) and only plays 108 games in the field. Elston Howard, at age 36, catches 95 games but is suddenly acting his age. Bouton's arm goes out on him and he goes 4-15. Guys named Mike Jerewicz, Jim Brenneman, Gil Blanco and Rich Beck are included on the pitching staff. And yet the front office does nothing to help. They let it happen. Did Keane screw Houk's wife in the off season or something? How can this franchise just sit back and watch this mess?

Casey could have told you. He knew nothing was coming up from the farm teams. He knew it took a special relationship between front office and field boss to get the players you needed and then have the guts, the nerve, the balls, to platoon wonderful players like Ellie Howard and Da Moose and Hector Lopez because that was how you won. Casey knew you had to trade a Billy Martin or a Norm Siebern or a Jerry Lumpe or Don Larsen or Tom Morgan to get something of value. And he must have known that, by the time he got the game a) the Yankees had too many Untouchables and b) there were no young players to dangle as trade bait left in the pipeline.

And so the Yankees, to the delight of millions of Yankee haters like myself, would wander in the desert. When they finally traded some of the Untouchables, they'd lost their value. Maris went for Charlie Smith (?); boy, did the Cards get the better end of that deal. Boyer went for Bill Robinson, which would have been a good trade if the Yankees had hung on to Robinson for more than two years. They got Ron Klimkowski for Elston Howard. Ouch! And nothing for Kubek, McDougald and Richardson, who all retired early.

The Yankees would be led out of the desert by an unlikely pair: ex-Clevelander George Steinbrenner and Billy Martin. (And free agency, of course, which automatically gave the Yankees a huge talent advantage over every other team on the planet.) But they would not return to punish and dominate and humiliate until the 1990s, when Steinbrenner finally got it right. And by then, other clubs, including the Indians, were able to regroup and become competitive once again.