Tag Archives: New York Yankees

Game 1 Of The 1957 World Series Yankees vs. Braves

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Action At Second Base, Fifty Five Years Ago Today

Don’t let anyone tell you that the players of yesteryear weren’t as good as today’s players.

They were.

And they played as hard then as they do now. Considering an average player’s salary was around $15,000, the World Series provided extra lucrative income for ballplayers, many of  whom worked at regular jobs in the off season. The winning player’s share of the 1957 World Series was $8,924, the losing player’s share was $5,606.

This news photograph captures the Milwaukee Braves Wes Covington sliding hard into second base to break-up a double play. The news photo is captioned as follows:

Got One, Trying For Two

NEW YORK: New York Yankees second baseman Jerry Coleman leaps to get off the ball (lower center) to first after putting out sliding Milwaukee Braves’ Wes Covington on a force play at second in the fifth inning of the first World Series game of 1957 here at Yankee Stadium October 2nd. Bill McKinley umpires.  McDougald took Crandall’s bouncer and threw to Coleman. The Yanks missed a double play when Elston Howard dropped Coleman’s throw for an error. The Yanks took this opener, 3-1.

United Press Photo      10/2/57

The Braves would end up coming back to win the Series in seven games. Braves right-handed ace Lew Burdette won three games.

1955 World Series The Brooklyn Dodgers Win Game 3 Behind Johnny Podres

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Johnny Podres, The Birthday Boy, Wins A Critical Game 3

This news photograph’s caption reads as follows:

NEW YORK; SEPT. 30 — VICTORY ON HIS BIRTHDAY

Johnny Podres kicks, fires and follows through — with eyes on ground — during third World Series game against New York Yankees at Ebbets Field in Brooklyn today. Johnny celebrated his 23rd birthday with an 8-3 victory over the American League champs. Slender lefty thus put Dodgers back into contention for Series. (AP wirephoto)

The New York Yankees looked like they were on their way to beating their crosstown rivals the Brooklyn Dodgers once again in another World Series. The Yankees had taken the first two games of the 1955 World Series by scores of 6-5 and 4-2. Continue reading →

Billy Martin, Mickey Mantle Prepare For The 1952 World Series

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Martin, Mantle Prepare Series Strategy

60 years ago, the World Series started on the first day of October. This year the World Series will begin October 24!

Here is another one of these great baseball news photographs. This one is from UPI dated September 30 1952. The caption reads: Continue reading →

Honoring Lou Gehrig, His Monument Unveiled – 1941

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The Day The Yankees Paid Their Final Tribute To The “Iron Horse”

This monument ceremony seen below was supposed to take place July 4 1941, on the two year anniversary of Lou Gehrig Day in 1939.

Many baseball fans know that the New York Yankees began the tradition of Old-Timers Day with a ceremony on July 4, 1939 to honor Lou Gehrig, the “Iron Horse.” On that day, the Yankees brought together Lou’s old teammates to show their deep admiration for a man who exemplified everything the Yankees were about. At the last minute Gehrig was asked to say something to the packed house at Yankee Stadium.

The words he said, now known as, “The Luckiest Man on the Face of the Earth” speech, live on in immortality because it was completely spontaneous and from the heart.

What you may not know, is that you really have never heard or seen that speech.

You have only seen or heard small portions of Gehrig’s speech, because believe it or not, there is not one extant movie or audio recording of Gehrig’s complete speech. Only snippets.

As incredible as it sounds with all those newsreel cameras present to record the activities at Yankee Stadium, no complete version of the speech has surfaced in all these years. Continue reading →

Babe Ruth, Dewayne Wise And Mistakes Umpires Make

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Umpires Make Mistakes: See Baseball History 101

Photo Mike Stobe / Getty Images

Everyone is in an unnecessary uproar over the  Dewayne Wise phantom catch of a baseball that disappeared into the crowd at Yankee Stadium on June 26, 2012 during a 6-4 Yankee victory over the Cleveland Indians.

The umpire, Mike DiMuro is human. He made a mistake and admitted it after the game. That was the right thing to do.

Do you want the game to stop every time there is a controversial play? Aren’t the games slow enough?

Mistakes similar to this have been happening since baseball began and have been forgotten unless they affect the pennant race or a World Series game.

One forgotten incident that occurred on August 1, 1920 was whether Joe Jackson of the Chicago White Sox actually caught a baseball Babe Ruth hit into an overflow crowd at Comiskey Park.  The aftermath of that play is shown below.

Babe Ruth & Miller Huggins argue with umpire Tom Connolly, Bob Meusel (with bat) listens © blackbetsy.com

Going into the game against the White Sox, Ruth was on a tear, having hit 37 home runs already, shattering his own record of 29 home runs set the previous year. Continue reading →

Joe DiMaggio’s Comeback 1949

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The Yankee Clipper Gets Ready To Return To Play – June 21, 1949

Many who saw Joe DiMaggio play say he was the greatest all-around ballplayer who ever lived. Everything he did seemed effortless. Of course this is a huge exaggeration. Everything DiMaggio did so well required practice, patience and hard work.

When DiMaggio missed the first three months of the 1949 baseball season with a painful heel injury, many fans, players and sportswriters thought he might never play again.

So it was hush-hush when DiMaggio went to an empty Yankee Stadium to test out his heel in a full workout on June 21, 1949.

Things went well and DiMaggio returned to the Yankee line-up on June 28, 1949 at Fenway Park against the Red Sox to start a three game series. He hit a homerun in the first game which the Yankees won by a score of 5-4. The Yankees swept the series and when DiMaggio left Boston, he had hit four homeruns and driven in nine runs.

The impact of his return cannot be understated. In the 76 games DiMaggio played for the remainder of the year, he batted .346, hit 14 homeruns and drove in 67 runs. His on base percentage was the highest of his career, .459. In 329 plate appearances he struck out only 18 times.

The Yankees ended up edging the Red Sox by one game in the final season standings, propelling the Yankees into the World Series against the Brooklyn Dodgers.

DiMaggio would go on to have the worst World Series performance in his storied career, batting just .111. But the Yankees still defeated the Dodgers four games to one, starting their stretch of winning five World Championships in a row.

Babe Ruth’s 1920 Uniform Sells For $4.4 Million At Auction

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Babe Ruth, King Of The Sports Memorabilia World

Nearly sixty-four years after his death, Babe Ruth set another record on Sunday May 20, 2012 . His circa 1920 Yankees road jersey sold at SCP auctions for a staggering $4.4 million.

Photo © SCP auctions

This eclipses the previous highest amount paid for a piece of sports memorabilia, a Honus Wagner baseball card, which sold in 2008 for $2.8 million.

To put the amount of the sale price in some perspective, Babe Ruth earned approximately $910,000 during his entire major league baseball playing career from 1914 -1935. This of course does not account for inflation. In modern dollars with inflation Ruth would have earned $15.3 million.

Also Ruth made vast amounts of money during the off-season, barnstorming and doing various product endorsements and personal appearances.

How would Ruth have felt about his uniform selling for more than he made his entire career? I’d like to think Ruth would have had a good laugh at that fact.

Babe Ruth, second from left, with his Yankee teammates, early 1920’s

Here is a photograph of Babe Ruth early in his New York Yankee career during spring training, possibly wearing the multi-million dollar uniform.

On a side note

The Kansas City Royals defeated the New York Yankees last night, May 21 at Yankee Stadium by a score of 6-0.  What made me notice this otherwise unremarkable game was what the New York Times said today in the sports section:

But the clutch-hitting woes of the Yankees — not just their wheezing All-Star first baseman — remained for another game, a 6-0 loss to the Kansas City Royals in front of 39,229 fans.

Anyone attending or watching the game on television knows the announced attendance of 39,229 was a joke. Looking at the mostly empty stadium, there were probably no more than 8,000 people attending the dreary game, which was played under a constant, steady rain.

The idea that baseball attendance is counted not by clicks of the turnstile, but by tickets sold is ridiculous. It’s another slight problem in a laundry list of things that MLB should address before baseball becomes completely irrelevant.

Bill Moose Skowron Dies at 81 – An Appreciation of a Kind Man

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Casey Stengel and Bill “Moose” Skowron

Bill “Moose” Skowron died today, April 27, 2012 of congestive heart failure in Arligton Heights, IL.

In this news photograph above, the caption says, “Bill Moose Skowron reports for his first day, at Comiskey Park in Chicago, September 19.”

The only problem with this is that Moose’s first game was April 13, 1954 and it was not at Comiskey Park.  And the Yankees did not play in Chicago on September 19, 1954.

So what is the answer to this problem? Continue reading →

Yankees Spring Training 1963

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Mickey Mantle Bunting

The opening of the 2012 baseball season is only weeks away. It is a time to practice skills that may be needed during the regular season.

In this photograph from 1963, Mickey Mantle is attempting to bunt against the Cincinnati Reds in a spring training game. Mantle would bunt frequently during the early years of his career, many times to try and beat it out. But as his knees went through wear and tear, he would rarely attempt to bunt for hits in the 1960’s. So a spring training game was a good time to get in some bunting practice.

Here he appears to miss the drag bunt as Elston Howard watches from the on-deck circle.  The Yankees lost this game 4-2.