Yankees struck a sour note 60 years ago

Resurgence actually was beginning of the end

Good morning, all. Welcome to this special edition of my newsletter.

I felt compelled to write this edition because I always viewed the date of Aug. 21, 1964, as a significant one in baseball history, especially when it came to the American League.

The Yankees had dominated the sport since 1921, but there were chips in the armor. The hiring of fan favorite Yogi Berra as manager was not working out. By mid-August the Yankees were no longer a given to win the pennant. Adding to the intrigue, the announcement was made that owners Dan Topping and Del Webb were selling the club to CBS. That in itself led to howls as high as the U.S. Congress, as everyone from baseball owners to politicians feared that corporate ownership of a major league baseball team would ruin the sport.

That brought us to Thursday, Aug. 20, when the Chicago White Sox moved into first place over Baltimore in the 10-team A.L. (There were no divisions.) by completing a four-game sweep of the Yankees with a 5-0 victory. The Yankees had dropped to third place 4 1/2 games out of first and beat writers such as Joe Trimble of the then iconic New York Daily News were writing the ball club’s obituary. “The network’s (CBS) newest subsidiary, the Yankees, today made it quite certain there would be no pennant, when they were blanked, 5-0, by the White Sox, who swept the four-game series,” Trimble wrote.

At 69-50, with 43 games still to go and only three games down in the loss column, it would seem the Yankees were still very much in the race, but Trimble was putting a lid on the season. It was the type of panic that would make today’s sports talk radio proud.

Adding to the Yankees mess was the controversy that surrounded the club on the team bus ride to O’Hare Airport after the Aug. 20 game. Utility infielder Phil Linz had pulled out his newly acquired harmonica and started playing it on the bus. Berra ordered that the music be stopped, and when Linz asked, “What did he say?” Mickey Mantle piped up, “He said play it louder.” As Linz resumed his harmonica playing, Berra walked down the aisle of the bus and swatted the instrument out of Linz’s hand. The harmonica struck Joe Pepitone on the knee and the first baseman feigned injury.

The incident, which seemed to indicate Berra had lost control of the club, occurred in full view of the writers, who traveled with the team, and it made headline news in the next day’s (Aug. 21) papers. There may not have been social media back then, but the story was the talk of the country. Johnny Carson made it part of his monologue on NBC’s Tonight Show. (Watch it here. Carson jokes at the 2:30 mark of the 6:00 piece.)

Berra ended up fining Linz $200. Meanwhile, the Yankees problems continued. They went to Boston and lost the first two games of a three-game series against the Red Sox, as the media was having a field day with the story. Dick Young, iconic Daily News sports writer and columnist, had fun polling the crosstown rival Mets. Yogi’s former manager with the Yankees, Casey Stengel, came to his defense. “He just showed he was manager,” the Ol’Professor told Young. Mets player Rod Kanehl added: “It’s different with us. We gotta have our fun off the field because we don’t have any on it.”

The Yankees salvaged the finale of the series in Boston, snapping a six-game losing streak. They were five games out first with 39 games to play, however, and Trimble was throwing dirt on their grave. The story continued to dominate the back page of the Daily News.

Following the win over the Red Sox, the Yankees returned to New York to play the annual Mayor’s Trophy game against the Mets at Shea Stadium. It might have been an exhibition game, but in the days before interleague play the contest was a big deal, as more than 55,000 fans turned out, many of them bringing harmonicas. Berra actually pinched hit in the Yankees win.

Then a funny thing happened, while the Yankees were proclaimed dead, following the harmonica affair. They started making sweet music again. Mantle began playing like the Mantle of old, Roger Maris - even with a sore back - produced clutch hits, the Yankees called up pitcher Mel Stottlemyre from AAA Richmond, acquired closer Pedro Ramos from the Indians and starting with the victory in Boston, won 30 of their last 41 games to win the A.L. Pennant.

The Yankees apparently were not dead. The dynasty was alive. No one could have foreseen its collapse, following a scintillating World Series with the Cardinals, won by St. Louis in seven games. But one day after the Series, Berra, expecting to be rehired as manager in a meeting with general manager Ralph Houk, was fired. (The decision to fire Berra was made as the club spun out of control in those dark days of August.) He was offered a job to be Houk’s assistant, a position he initially accepted only to be hired away by the Mets as a player-coach less than a month later.

Adding to the mystique, Johnny Keane, who had managed the Cards to the world championship, told their owner August A. Busch what he could do with his new contract offer, after he had learned the Cardinals had planned to fire him, before the club made a spectacular season-ending comeback. Instead he was hired as Berra’s replacement with the Yankees, though both Keane and Houk denied a deal had been struck before the World Series.

And all was not lost for Phil Linz, who not only returned to the club in 1965 but had a contract from the M. Hohner Harmonica Co. He even appeared in an advertisement on the back page of the Yankees Yearbook.

Just about every prognosticator marked the Yankees down for a record sixth straight pennant, entering the 1965 season. The roster was intact from 1964 with a few tweaks, and with the disciplinarian Keane at the helm to restore order, the “experts” had the Yankees as a can’t miss proposition. But just as the “experts” were wrong in declaring the Yankees dead in 1964, they were wrong again. The Yankees were dead. The dynasty had collapsed and with it an era in baseball.

Four years later the two major leagues would each split into two divisions. By the 1990s each league would contain three divisions plus more playoff teams, diluting the post season even more and assuring no team would ever again dominate the sport like the New York Yankees.

Coincidentally, Berra would return to manage the Yankees 20 years later in 1984; and so would the “Voice of the Yankees” Mel Allen, as one of the team’s broadcasters, who also was unceremoniously dumped in 1964. But all that would occur under a different owner in a much different time.

I hope you enjoyed this special edition of the newsletter and gain a better understanding why 1964 will always be a significant season for me.

DAN LOVALLO