To take up the pen is to take up the sword when the challenge is to write about the New York Yankees. Let me say this: My admiration for individual Yankees is as deep and abiding as is my hatred for the organization. The only Yankee I think I have ever truly disliked is A-Rod, and that has nothing to do with the fact that he's a Yankee. Well, maybe Rickey Henderson. Now there's an asshole. But you get the point. When one team thwarts your dreams year in and year out, when one team seems to have too many advantages, when one team is just so good, well, you wind up hating that team.
Where to begin? I have limited my work here to the period of Rocky Colavito's career: 1956-1968. Within those confines, I will begin, then, at the end. With the tragic death of Johnny Keane in early 1967. For Keane's death, to me, symbolizes the true beginning of the worst 30 years in Yankee history--a period that fans from Cleveland, Detroit, Chicago, Boston and Baltimore would savor. The bullied always relish the downfall of the bully.
Keane's tale lives yet in my mind as Shakespearean in its richness. An aspiring ballplayer who was injured early in his career, Keane turned to managing in the minors for the St. Louis Cardinals. He was good, and when the Cards stumbled in the 1950s, Gussie Busch spotted him as someone who might turn the team around. Taking over in 1961, he boosted the Cards into second place by 1963 and, through a series of flukes, brought home a world championship team one year later. His team benefitted from one of the great late-season collapses of all time, the tanking of Gene Mauch Phillies. The Cards went on to beat the fading Bronx Bombers in the World Series.
And then Keane resigned. And took another job. As manager. Of. the. Yankees.
Oh yeah. Stop the presses! What a story! See, babe, what happened was this: In August, August Busch thought his Cards were not gonna win the title. Nope. So he let it be known that perhaps Mr. Keane ought to be looking around for a new job in 1965. He canned Bing Devine, only one of the finest G.M.s ever, and a bunch of other front office suits. Well, Keane was pissed. But he kept his mouth shut and kept managing. The Cards kept winning, won the Series, and then in one of the finest FUCK YOUS ever in the history of the world, he quit and went over to the dark side.
Woulda been a great story if he'd have taken the fading Yankees and restored them to their former glory. But it was too late. In fact, Keane helped put the dagger in the vampire's heart by knocking them out of the Series. The team Keane inherited, the team he had helped to demoralize, was--well, demoralized. It was old. Players like Bobby Richardson, Tony Kubek, Clete Boyer and Tom Tresh, though still in their late 20s, were old before their time, worn out by the pressures of playing under the New York microscope. The pitching staff had no depth beyond Whitey and Mel. The once-fabled Yankee bench had nuthin'. Mantle limped painfully. Berra was a lousy first-time manager. The club finished sixth. The next year, the club got off to a horrible start, and Keane was gone after 20 games. Less than nine months later, he was dead of a heart attack, a modern MacBeth laid low by wounded pride, the desire for revenge and the wanton lust to be proclaimed king of diamonds. (Not sure what role Mrs. Keane played in his suffering.)
Keane's death robbed us of what might have been. No comeback story for the long-time minor leaguer who finally made it to The Show. Was he a great manager? Or just lucky? I tend to see 1964 pennant as more luck and good timing than talent for the Cards. The number of players who had career years was unsually high. The collapse of the Phils, and the tendency of the other strong teams to knock each other off, allowed the Cards to sneak in. The Yankees were on the verge of implosion. Still, one wonders whether Keane could have returned to prove the Yankees wrong. Instead, we had to follow the many resurrections of Billy Martin.
But Keane's short-lived notoriety serves as a perfect metaphor for the Yankee's downfall. What Keane probably did not know was that the Ol' Perfessor, and the Yankees' front office brain trust, had been keeping the team at the top of the heap for nearly a decade with no help from the farm system. For the story of the brilliance of Casey Stengel, Dan Topping, and George Weiss, you must wait, my friends, for another day.
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