1961 World Series: Maris, Mantle and the New Manager

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During the 1958 season, Yankee owners Dan Topping and Del Webb concluded that Casey Stengel was finished as manager of the Yankees. At the end of the year when Stengel’s contract was up, Topping and Webb were going to thank Stengel for a glorious run, then send the 68-year-old out to the glue factory and install young Ralph Houk as the new skipper.

Stengel screwed up the plan. The Yankees weren’t supposed to win the World Series that year, but they did. And because Stengel had guided them to the championship for the seventh time in his 10 years with the club, Topping and Webb knew there would be a fan and media mutiny if they let the wildly popular Stengel go on the heels of what happened in Milwaukee. So they signed him to a new two-year contract and told Houk, who from 1955 to 1957 had proven to be a fine manager with the Yankees top farm team in Denver, to be patient.

After a disastrous 1959 season when the Yankees slumped to a 79-75 record and a third-place finish, the worst of Stengel’s tenure, the old man guided the club back to the top of the American League in 1960, winning his 10th pennant. As we later found out, nothing Stengel could have done in 1960 - not even winning the World Series - would have prolonged his Yankee career, but it would have been interesting to see what would have happened had the Yankees defeated the Pittsburgh Pirates.

Bill Mazeroski saved Topping and Webb some grief, capping what may have been the most unusual Series ever by hitting the first, and still only, Game 7 World Series walk-off home run to give the Pirates the championship. The Yankees outscored the Pirates 55-27, out-hit them 91-60, out-homered them 10-4 and set a new Series record for team batting average at .338 which was 82 points better than Pittsburgh’s mark. And they lost.

And a few days later, Stengel was coaxed into “retirement” by the owners who had no intention of giving him a new contract.

During a sham of press conference, Joe Reichler, the baseball writer for The Associated Press, blurted out the question, “Casey, tell us the truth, were you fired?” And Stengel replied, “You’re goddamn right I was fired.”

And with that, Topping and Webb were unmasked. The only reason Stengel was being let go was because of his age. Today, there probably would have been a lawsuit.

“I commenced winning pennants when I got here, but I didn’t commence getting any younger,” Stengel said. “They told me my services were no longer desired because they wanted to put in a youth program as an advance way of keeping the club going. When a club gets to discharging a man on account of age, they can if they want to. The trick is growing up without growing old. Most guys are dead at my age anyway. You could look it up. I’ll never make the mistake of being 70 years old again.”

Houk was named as the replacement, and the Major was extremely fortunate in 1961 that he had the great home run chase between Roger Maris and Mickey Mantle as camouflage. With so much focus on the M&M boys chasing Babe Ruth’s mystical record of 60 home runs, Houk was able to remain contently in the background going about his daily business in the most routine manner. Never has anyone replaced a legend as seamlessly and quietly as Houk did that year.

By season’s end, Maris had broken the Babe’s record with 61 homers, and the Yankees had put together one of their greatest seasons ever. In the first year of the newly-expanded 162-game schedule, Houk’s team won 109 games, at the time second-most in franchise history behind only the 1927 Yankees who won 110 out of 154 games, now third after the 1998 Yankees set the new team standard with 114 victories.

Standing across from the Yankees were the surprising Cincinnati Reds, a team that had finished 20 games below .500 in 1960 and had not won a National League pennant since 1940 when they also on the World Series.

On paper, the Series looked like a mismatch, but that was what everyone thought the year before when it was the Pirates representing the NL. Reds manager Fred Hutchinson tried to downplay predictions of gloom on the eve of the opener by saying “Why should odds scare us? Last April they were 60-to-1 we wouldn’t win the pennant. I read that we’re not supposed to win, but I haven’t told my players yet.”

In the end, the Yankees won it in five games, but there was nothing easy about the first three games.

In the opener at Yankee Stadium, Whitey Ford was simply dominant, just as he had been all season when he won 25 games and the AL Cy Young award. He dazzled the Reds with a two-hit shutout as the Yankees won 2-0. Ford received the backing of Elston Howard and Moose Skowron who hit solo homers in the fourth and sixth innings, respectively.

“Whitey was just great, he was the chairman of the board out there,” said Howard, who caught the gem while Yogi Berra played left field.

The only negative to the day was the fact that Mantle was sidelined by a hip abscess, and that was also the case in Game 2. The Yankees could have used him as Cincinnati rebounded for a 6-2 triumph behind Joey Jay who threw a four-hit complete game. “Where is the expert who picked the Yankees to win in four games?” Hutchinson crowed afterward.

The Yankees were unusually sloppy as they committed three errors and Howard allowed a passed ball that sent Cincinnati’s eventual winning run across the plate in the fifth inning.

In the first two games Maris had gone 0-for-7 with three strikeouts and he’d hit just one ball out of the infield. When questioned about his lack of production, he became annoyed and answered, “What’s 0-for-7 for me? I’ve gone much longer without a hit several times during the season. I wouldn’t say the Reds have shown any special pattern in pitching to me. I’ll keep swinging and see what happens.”

Maris did indeed keep swinging, and one of those swings turned the Series irreversibly in New York’s favor.

Bill Stafford started Game 3 for New York, and he did so with Mantle behind him in center field, wearing a thick gauze bandage wrapped around his waist in the hopes of preventing the blood from draining and it worked, but Mantle never really tested the leg. He went 0-for-4 with two fly outs and two strikeouts and only had to make one catch in the field so his running was minimal.

While Mantle was only able to provide an emotional lift to his team in the tense third game, it was Maris who delivered the victory. Johnny Blanchard had tied the score at 2-2 with a two-out solo homer off Bob Purkey, and then in the top of the ninth inning Maris led off against Purkey with a long home run to right field that brought a 3-2 triumph.

The Yankees were back in control, and soon, they would be back in their familiar position as world champions of baseball. The fourth game saw Mantle limp off the field in the fourth inning with blood oozing through his uniform, and Ford exit in the sixth with a foot injury, but the two stars were hardly missed as the Yankees bludgeoned Cincinnati 7-0, opening a commanding three games to one lead.

Mantle’s wound had torn open as he lashed a drive off the scoreboard in left-center and he could only make it to first base, unable to put any weight on his right leg. Houk sent Hector Lopez out to run for him, and Mantle departed, his season over. “As it turned out, my body couldn’t afford the price my mind was willing to pay,” Mantle wrote years later.

After the game Mantle’s teammates were bowled over by his courage. “The bandages were so thick I couldn’t believe how the blood could come through,” said Ford. Blanchard described the hole in Mantle’s hip, “as deep as a golf ball with blood oozing out of it.” Bobby Richardson was spiked at second base turning a double play later in the game and, inspired by Mantle, he went the distance despite a bloody gash that soaked through his sock. “I’d be ashamed to come out of the game after Mickey’s been playing with what he’s got,” Richardson said.

Ford worked his way through five uneventful innings and had a 4-0 lead when he foul tipped a ball off his foot in the top of the sixth. He tried to pitch, but after Elio Chacon singled to start the bottom of the sixth, Ford signaled to Houk that the pain was too great and he couldn’t continue.

He left with another record in his hip pocket, his streak of scoreless World Series innings having been stretched to 32, breaking Babe Ruth’s mark of 29 straight between 1916 and 1918 when he pitched for the Red Sox. “It sure wasn’t a very good year for the Babe,” Ford quipped afterward.

“Don’t forget, we still have to take another game,” the always cautious Houk said afterward. “Somehow that last one is always the toughest.”

It wasn’t. The next day New York routed Jay for five runs in the first inning and seven other Cincinnati pitchers had little luck slowing down the Bronx Bombers during a 13-5 wipeout that ended the Series.

“That was some explosion out there today,” said Houk after watching his troops pound out 15 hits, seven for extra bases. “This is the best all-around team I’ve ever seen. This team has much more power down through the lineup and the finest defensive infield I’ve ever seen. With Raschi, Reynolds and Lopat those other Yankee teams had more experienced pitching, but our young staff did mighty well.”

For Houk, it was sweet vindication. In becoming only the third rookie manager in baseball history to win a World Series, he laid to rest any doubts about his abilities as a skipper and made people forget all about Stengel.

And for Maris, it was the end of an extraordinary yet trying season. The Yankees threw a victory party at the Savoy Hotel the next night, but Maris made up his mind in the clubhouse after the game that he wasn’t going. “It’s been a long season,” he said. “I’m anxious to go home. No party is good enough to keep me from my family.”