Authors: David Halberstam
And yet even with all that, he had the Yankees off balance. Gibson was still a very fast, very smart pitcher, and even more, a great competitor. The Yankees might be a great fastball-hitting team, but that did not mean that hitting Bob Gibson was going to be easy. When the Cardinals played against Koufax or Maloney or Bob Veale, Gibson used to tease his teammates: “Okay, all you fastball hitters, there he is, now just go out there and have a field day.” It was like telling a kid who liked ice cream to eat a gallon of it at one sitting, McCarver thought. Gibson was going to do that on this day; he was going to make the Yankees earn every hit.
In baseball, thought McCarver, players admired the ability of a pitcher who could reach back and find something extra. More than anyone he had ever played with, Bob Gibson could do that. He might be exhausted, but he seemed to understand even on the worst days that he would be finished in two and half hours. That allowed him to force his body to do things it did not want to do. It was a triumph of the spirit over body; since he refused to be defeated, he was not defeated. He would walk off the mound after one of those games, his arm aching, and he would sit in the locker room icing his arm, saying that he was going to quit, that it was not worth it, that the pain was too great. The constant use of his slider had literally bent his arm out of shape. When Gibson and McCarver went to the tailor together, the tailor would tell Gibson to drop both his arms straight down so that he could measure their length; the left arm dropped normally, but the right arm remained bent just slightly. “Let your arm hang straight, Bob,” the tailor would say, and Gibson would say, “It
is
hanging straight.” That was as good as he could do. The slider had done it to him. He always knew the price he was paying for the success he sought.
Normally, the day after he pitched his arm was all right, and then on the second day, it ached terribly, and on the third day the ache began to go away. It was not the rest of his body that was tired, only his arm. In those days he, like other pitchers, took Darvon to kill the pain. Gibson thought he had rather good stuff early in the game, and he struck out three batters in the first two innings, including Mickey Mantle.
The Yankees went with Mel Stottlemyre, who had gone, in a few brief weeks, from ingenue to rookie sensation to ace of the staff. Yogi Berra and the coaches came to him and asked if he could pitch on two days’ rest. The other possibilities were Ralph Terry, whom they had not used much late in the season and who had not had a good year, and Al Downing, about whom they clearly were uncertain. So Stottlemyre said yes, and he felt reasonably good when he went to the mound. He thought he was pitching fairly well, although his slider had less bite on it and his ball had less movement than usual. But the Cardinals were hitting the ball on the ground.
But in the fourth inning the Yankees self-destructed. They had fielded poorly throughout the Series, and though when it was over they were charged with nine errors to the Cardinals’ four, in reality their fielding had been far worse than that. There had been numerous bad throws and bonehead plays, which were not counted as errors but which cost them dearly, just as their poor baserunning had cost them on offense. Ken Boyer started the home fourth with a single to center. Dick Groat walked on four pitches. Then Tim McCarver hit a bouncer to Pepitone that looked like a double-play ball. Pepitone made a good pickup and threw to Linz at second for the force on Groat. Stottlemyre covered first for the return throw, but the throw from Linz, which should have beaten McCarver easily, was wide of first and rolled to the stands. Backing up the play, Bobby Richardson picked up the ball and threw home, but Boyer scored for the first run of the game. Mike Shannon’s single sent McCarver to third. So far in the Series, the Cardinals had been relatively cautious in their baserunning, but they decided in this game that they would challenge Howard and the Yankees, and they tried the double steal. Shannon broke for second, and behind the plate Ellie Howard double-pumped; then Howard bit and threw to second, but his throw was high and to the right, and Shannon slid in safely. When Howard threw, McCarver raced for home, and he scored when Richardson’s throw was in the dirt and went through Howard. Dal Maxvill singled to right, and Mantle got to the ball quickly. A good throw from Mantle might have caught Shannon, but Mantle threw wide and Howard dove for Shannon and missed. The Cardinals had three runs on only one Yankee error, but four bad Yankee throws. The once-great Yankees, wrote Dick Young, “had looked more like the Mets than the Mets. Linz made a bad play. Howard made a bad play. Richardson made a bad play. Mantle made a bad throw and up went three ragged runs for St. Louis and the Yankees were never in the ball game again.”
Worse, Stottlemyre jammed his shoulder diving for the ball from Linz, and it quickly stiffened on him. The Yankees sent up a pinch hitter for him in the fifth, and then sent Al Downing to the mound in the bottom of the fifth. Brock greeted Downing with a four-hundred-foot drive to the pavilion roof in right-center. Then Bill White singled to center and Boyer doubled to right, sending White to third. That was it for Downing, and Roland Sheldon came in to pitch. Groat grounded to Richardson, who had to throw to first and had no chance to get White, who scored. Boyer went to third. That made it 5-0. Then McCarver hit a soft fly to right and Boyer beat Mantle’s throw, which skidded through Howard again. That made it 6-0.
In the top of the sixth the Yankees began to struggle back. Richardson beat out a slow roller to Ken Boyer at third. Maris hit a ground single to right, with Richardson stopping at second. All during the Series Gibson had pitched Mantle outside, going against the book. McCarver had thought the scouting reports were right, but Gibson was Gibson—he did not like coming inside on power hitters; he believed the outside of the plate belonged to him, and he was not a man easily argued out of anything. So far his strategy had worked. Mantle had been 1-10 against him in the Series. But now Gibson was really beginning to tire and he came outside, and Mantle hit the ball into the left center field bleachers to make the score 6-3. It was Mantle’s third home run of the Series and his record eighteenth in World Series competition.
But even then the Yankees could not hold the Cardinals. Ken Boyer hit a solo home run off Steve Hamilton in the home seventh. By the seventh inning Gibson knew he was tiring, but Johnny Keane left him in, in part because he had a four-run lead, in part out of respect for Gibson as a competitor, and in part because of his anxiety about his own bullpen. Gibson hated to come out for a relief pitcher in any circumstance, and he most certainly did not want to come out of this game. But by the seventh inning he was finding it harder and harder to put the ball where he wanted. He had to put more effort into getting extra break on the ball, and as he did that, he lost location. There was a danger at a moment like this, he well knew, of slipping, of pushing rather than firing the ball, of losing both location and speed, and then of beginning to fall behind the hitters. The other danger, he thought, was that it was easy to become lazy without knowing it, to give in to your body and stop reaching back. So he spent those last three innings talking to himself on the mound, trying to keep himself alert:
Let’s go asshole, don’t quit now. ... This is where you’ve always wanted to be, the seventh game of the World Series with you pitching for everything against the New York Yankees ... this is not the time to get lazy and get soft.
Out on the mound his throat was dry because every time he threw, he grunted from the effort.
In the seventh the Yankees hit the ball relatively hard on him. With two out Richardson singled to center, and Maris hit a line shot to right field, but directly at Mike Shannon for the third out. The eighth was easier. Mantle flied to center. Ellie Howard struck out, which was a relief for it showed Gibson still had some pop on the ball. Then Pepitone popped up to Maxvill. The Cardinals did not score in the bottom of the eighth. Now it was time for the top half of the ninth. Rarely had Bob Gibson wanted anything so badly as to finish this game. When it was time to go out on the mound for the ninth, Johnny Keane,
who knew he was tired and knew he was wearing down,
came over to Gibson and told him he was going to stay with him, and reminded him that he had a four-run lead. “Bob, I’m going with you in the ninth. Just throw it over the plate,” he said. “Don’t be cute. Don’t go for the corners. Just get it over. They’re not going to hit four home runs off you.” What Gibson had always wanted was the confidence of his manager, and on this day he had it more than any pitcher could ever ask for. He did not want to betray that trust in the ninth.
He struck out Tom Tresh, the first batter. Then Clete Boyer came up and hit a home run into the left-field bleachers.
That’s one home run,
Gibson thought to himself. Johnny Blanchard batted for Pete Mikkelsen and struck out. Two outs now, both strikeouts. Then Phil Linz came up, and he hit the ball into the left-field bleachers, making it 7-5.
That’s two home runs,
Gibson thought.
Maybe Keane is wrong.
Up came Bobby Richardson, who already had thirteen hits in the Series. Out in the bullpen, Ray Sadecki was warming up. Aware that he had not pitched well in the Series, and that Johnny Keane was down on him, he wondered whether Keane would go to him if Richardson got on. Until then Keane said he never thought of lifting Gibson. But if Richardson had gotten on, he would have gone to Sadecki. Keane went out to the mound to talk with his pitcher for a moment. McCarver did not go all the way out because he knew Gibson hated it when the catcher came out, and besides, there was nothing to say. The count was 1-1. Richardson liked the ball high and out over the plate, and Gibson made a very good pitch to him, a fastball that moved in on him at the last instant. Richardson popped it up, and Dal Maxvill gathered it in a second.
Afterward Gibson realized for the first time how hard he had fought against his fatigue and how much his arm hurt. It would hurt on and off for an entire month, but it was a month in which he did not have to pitch. He had struck out nine men, which gave him a total of thirty-one for the Series, a Series record, which he would soon break. He was voted the Most Valuable Player in the World Series, just ahead of McCarver. After the game, when reporters crowded around Johnny Keane, they asked the manager why he had left Gibson in during the ninth when he was so obviously tiring. Keane answered with one of the nicest things a manager ever said about a baseball player: “I had a commitment to his heart.”
Y
OGI BERRA THOUGHT HE
had done a good job managing the Yankees. He had brought them from behind to win the pennant, and though he had lost his ace pitcher in the first game of the World Series, he believed he had done a good job of patching an aging team together. He had not panicked when the team was doing poorly. Baseball men compared what he had done in New York to what Gene Mauch had done in Philadelphia and concluded that Berra’s lighter touch and willingness to let the players find their own way was the superior job—particularly for a team that had suffered so many injuries. He had no idea that Houk believed he had lost control of the team in mid-season and had decided much earlier to replace him. In fact, Houk had been aware that Johnny Keane was about to be fired by Gussie Busch and Houk had covertly offered Keane Berra’s job. Flying back from St. Louis with Bobby Richardson and his wife, Betsy, Berra asked them, as he had asked others, whether when he met with management in the next few days he should ask for a two-year contract. “Why not,” said Betsy Richardson, teasing him and teasing her husband. “If it hadn’t been for Bobby, you’d have won the Series.” He was therefore stunned when he was told he was out. Later on the day that Berra got the bad news, Jerry Coleman ran into him outside the Yankee offices. “Hey, Yog,” said Coleman, “did you get the two-year contract?” “They fired me,” said Berra, his face ashen. Meanwhile, in St. Louis the Cardinals called a press conference in which Gussie Busch intended to announce that he had rehired Johnny Keane. Everyone was ready to start the conference, but Keane was a little late to it. When he finally arrived, he handed Busch a letter. Busch took no notice of it, and was eager to get on with the press conference when an aide read the letter. He pushed it over to Busch and insisted the owner read it before he started the press conference. In it Johnny Keane announced his resignation. When reporters asked about Keane’s future plans, he said he was going to do some fishing. The truth was he was going to fly to New York to take the Yankee job.
It would be the wrong team for him. He was a manager who was better with younger players than older ones, and this was a team of aging stars whose best years were behind them. They were accustomed to going their own way and setting their own hours, and they soon came to regard Keane as a martinet—a man with too many rules and too little flexibility. They longed for the return of Berra.
The Yankee decline was about to accelerate. Ralph Terry was gone, traded to Cleveland as part of the Ramos deal. Al Downing occasionally pitched well for the Yankees but never achieved the greatness some had predicted; he was traded at the end of the 1969 season. Bouton’s arm went bad; he had thrown too hard for too long, and in 1965 he was 4-15, often pitching in great pain, and nearly two full runs were added on to his earned run average. He was effectively finished as a big-league power pitcher at twenty-six. Of the younger Yankee pitchers only Mel Stottlemyre lived up to his potential. Arriving in New York in time to help save the pennant and pitch the Yankees into the World Series, he had assumed that there would be annual pennant races and World Series games; though he became one of the best pitchers in Yankee history, with a career earned run average of 2.97, he never pitched in another championship game.
Under Keane the Yankees had a losing record, 77-85, and fell to sixth place, and when they started the 1966 season they won only four of their first twenty games. Johnny Keane was fired and replaced by Ralph Houk. The Yankee players were thrilled by the return of Houk and were sure that Houk would bring back the old Yankee magic. But the magic was gone and Houk’s team finished in tenth place. CBS, it turned out, had bought a logo and not a great deal more. Less than a year after being fired in New York, Keane died at the age of fifty-five of a heart attack in Houston, Texas. His former players thought the decision to go to New York had been a tragic one and that managing that particular team had taken a terrible toll on him.