The Year the Yankees Lost the Pennant

This article was originally published in SABR’s The National Pastime, Spring 1985 (Vol. 4, No. 1).

 

Everyone, both those who cheered the Bronx Bombers and those who muttered, “Damn Yankees,” expected the pinstriped powerhouse to win the pennant again. It was a great time to be a Yankee fan. It was 1959. New York had won the American League pennant every year of the decade but 1954, and that was a lightning bolt season in which New York won 103 games—the most ever by Stengel’s men—only to finish eight games behind Cleveland. And the Yanks would capture the first five pennants of the 1960s.

But what about 1959? That season the imperial Yankees crawled home in disheveled disgrace with a record of 79-75, a distant fifteen games out of first place. What went wrong? Everything. But 1959 wasn’t just the year the Yankees lost the pennant; the first-place Chicago White Sox, with 94 wins, won two more games than the champion Yankees of 1958. Given their wealth of woes, the wonder is that the Yankees finished as high as third place. was, despite a brief run at the pennant in June and a first-division finish, a disastrous season—at least by the unforgiving standards of the Yankees and their fans.

Still fresh was the image of Casey Stengel stepping off an airplane in New York following the 1958 World Series, his rugged countenance sporting the burnt-cork dollar signs Whitey Ford applied during a victory-celebrating flight. Casey’s charges had courageously overcome a three-games-to-one deficit, won three straight games, and wrested the World Championship back from the Milwaukee Braves, the team of Aaron and Mathews, Spahn and Burdette. Now Stengel was basking in the glory of a dramatic World Series victory. He was at the pinnacle of his immense fame.

The Yankees of 1958 quickly had blown open the American League race, sprinting to a 25-6 record and all but locking up the flag by Memorial Day. New York’s lead reached 17 games in early August, and then, perhaps because the games no longer mattered, or more likely because a string of injuries began to take its toll, the Yankees sleepwalked home with a 25-28 record. But the last two months of the season, the harbinger of the season to come, were paid scant heed as the Yanks still won the flag by a healthy ten games and went on to dethrone the Braves—and probably saved Stengel’s job.

Yankee co-owners Dan Topping and Del Webb reportedly were not happy about having Stengel back as their manager in 1959, despite his record of nine pennants in ten years. The Ol’ Perfesser would be sixty-nine in July of ’59, and was showing signs of losing his grip. But the owners’ hands were tied by the 1958 Series comeback; they couldn’t fire Casey in his greatest hour. When Stengel signed a two-year contract in February 1959, Topping fully intended that this would be Casey’s final pact with the Yankees. There was an uneasiness in the once-strong relationship between Topping, Stengel, and General Manager George Weiss, whom Topping was also preparing to release. The normal lines of communication were strained as the Yankees broke spring training camp in 1959. Although troubled by Topping’s aloofness, a robustly confident Stengel boasted, “I’ll tell you what I think of our prospects. I think we’ve got the world by the ears, and we’re not letting go.”

But Stengel was bedazzled by the World Series, and was himself becoming aloof—if not downright irascible—to his players. Several key Yankees of past years crumbled in ’59. Don Larsen and Tom Sturdivant had arm miseries. Larsen didn’t win a game after mid-June, and it was a winless Sturdivant who was traded to Kansas City late in the spring. Gil McDougald, a World Series hero the previous October, was hit on the hands by a pitched ball and missed two weeks. He also was hindered by a bad back. McDougald hit .251 in 127 games in 1959, one point higher than his batting average of 1958—but his home runs dropped from 14 to 4, and his RBIs from 65 to 34. He was shuffled between second base, shortstop, and third, as a hole-plugging Stengel took advantage of Gil’s versatility. But Casey may have weakened one of his most important bats in the process. McDougald had been an All-Star at all three positions-but not in the same season.

Like McDougald, first baseman Bill “Moose” Skowron, one of the league’s premier sluggers, began the year with a serious back ailment. Wearing a back brace and gritting his teeth, Skowron was truly murdering the ball when he was able to play — but he would play in fewer than half the team’s games.

Stengel’s patience had worn thin with third baseman Andy Carey. Stengel wanted Carey to chop down on the ball and hit for a higher batting average — to “butcher boy.” Andy, who hit .302 in 1954, ignored Stengel’s advice and swung for the fences. But he just wasn’t a power hitter, and now he wasn’t hitting for average, either. Defensively, he was good on bunts, but his range was limited. Still, his biggest handicap in 1959 was bad luck. He had an early-season hand infection and after playing in only 41 games, developed an illness that sidelined him for the season.

The 1959 Yankees were bothered most of all by the physical problems of Mickey Mantle. For some time leg problems had taxed the Mick’s play, but now a shoulder injury, the result of a collision with Red Schoendienst in the 1957 World Series, was even more hampering. Pain shot through his damaged right shoulder whenever the switch-hitting Mantle swung lefthanded and missed. Mantle had a much smoother and more level swing as a right-handed hitter in 1958 and 1959.

Early in the 1959 campaign, Mantle re-injured his shoulder in making a throw from center field. His woes gathered in early May when he was hit by a pitch in batting practice and suffered a chipped bone in his right index finger. Then Mickey became one of several Yankees to come down with the Asian flu. And it wasn’t even summer yet.

On May 20 the Yankees, owning a 12-19 record, tumbled into the American League cellar for the first time in nineteen years. Mantle, insisting on playing in pain, hit a two-run homer in a losing cause and was booed unmercifully by unfeeling Yankee Stadium fans as he circled the bases. But Mickey on this day was beginning a 20-for-42 streak (with 12 walks) and by May 31 the Yankees were out of last place. The Bronx Bombers were, in fact, commencing a great run at the league leaders, a surge that corresponded with Mantle’s hot bat.

George Weiss, meantime, made a deal that helped the Yankees both in the short term and over the long haul. On May 26 Weiss sent the sore-armed Sturdivant, pitcher Johnny Kucks, and infielder Jerry Lumpe to Kansas City for Ralph Terry and Hector Lopez. Terry, a righthander who was originally in the Yankee farm chain and who was considered an excellent pitching prospect, was still maturing as a pitcher in 1959 and would go 3-7 with New York. However, he did flash a few spectacular outings that hinted at his 16-3 season in 1961 and his 23-win year in 1962. Lopez, on the other hand, paid immediate dividends. Stengel put him at third base, and although Hector wasn’t much with the glove, he was a first-class hitter. In his first 32 Yankee games, the native of Panama had 26 RBIs, and for his full season with the A’s and Yanks, Lopez had 93 RBIs; no other Yankee of 1959 could match that figure. Led by Lopez, Mantle, and Skowron, Yankee bats came alive in June.

Relief pitcher Ryne Duren led a resurgence in New York’s pitching. From late April through mid-July, Duren pitched 36 consecutive scoreless innings over 18 appearances. The intimidating, flamethrowing Duren, the Goose Gossage of his era, posted a full-season ERA of 1.88, but at the point the Yankees were eliminated from pennant contention, his ERA was well under 1.00.

Yet Duren won only 3 games and saved only 14. The problem was that his great efforts were often wasted; the Yankees weren’t scoring runs in the late innings, and didn’t have many leads in need of protection. For years the Yankees excelled at keeping a game close and pulling it out in the late going, but the ’59 Yanks were no 5 o’clock wonders, as their record stood around .5OO for both extra-inning and one-run games.

Emancipated from the basement, the Yankees stormed through their June schedule, winning 17 of 23 games at one point and racing to within 1 1/2 games of first-place Cleveland. But their momentum was halted in late June when the White Sox licked them in three of four games at Comiskey Park. Chicago was 13-9 against New York in 1959, the first year since 1925 that the Yankees lost their season series with the Chisox.

A few days later, Mantle hurt his right ankle; he would go on to hit only two home runs in July. He should have rested, but with the Yankees struggling to remain in the race, he limped through the summer. As Mantle slumped, to an unprecedented chorus of boos, the Yanks fell back, going 12-16 in July. Mantle was an unselfish player who realized his importance to the club and, pressing to turn the team’s fortunes around, lost his rhythm. His impatience at the plate widened the strike zone and he swung at bad pitches rather than accept a walk. Mantle wound up striking out 127 times, the most in his career, while drawing only 94 walks, his only dip below 100 between 1954 and 1962. He ended the season with 31 homers, 75 RBIs, a .285 batting average, and a .514 slugging percentage, numbers that were considered, overall, his worst since 1951, his rookie year. Yet there were some positive numbers, too. That he had a career-high 21 stolen bases (in only 24 attempts) may say more about the team’s punch than about his baserunning.

Through midsummer, Weiss and Stengel believed the Yankees would rally again. For good or bad, neither would panic; Weiss would make no wholesale roster changes and Stengel would not play his kids. If Casey was going to bite the dust, it would be with his veterans. But Boston dealt a damaging blow in mid-July. As the Fenway faithful roared their approval, New York dropped five consecutive games and fell seven and a half games off the pace.

More injuries followed. Gil McDougald and Tony Kubek collided in chasing a popup and both suffered lingering aches. Yankee fans were finding themselves in the unaccustomed position of using the loser’s lament—bad luck—for the tribulations of1959. Then, on July 25, Moose Skowron reached for an errant throw, stepping into the first base line, and was struck by Detroit’s Coot Veal. The result: Skowron’s arm was broken in two places and his season was over. So, most definitely, was the Yanks’ season. “If you had him,” said Stengel, “you could even think about winning it.” But not without him.

Skowron finished 1959 at .298 and with 15 homers in 74 games. At the time of his broken arm, he was second in the league in RBIs with 59. Marv Throneberry, the famous beer commercial star, was Skowron’s part-time replacement; Marvelous Marv’s batting average was a lite .240.

The Yankees played out the string in August and September, and then everyone went home. Everyone, that is, except Stengel, who covered the World Series for Life magazine.

Bob Turley’s poor year was the single most puzzling aspect of 1959. “Bullet Bob” had won the Cy Young Award with a 21-7 record in 1958 and had rescued the Yankees in the World Series with two wins and a save in the final three games. But in 1959 he had no pop in his once blazing fastball, and he dropped to 8-11 with a fat ERA of 4.32.

Turley in his prime was one of the game’s most awesome power pitchers, relying almost exclusively on heat. Then he learned to throw a slow curveball and fell in love with the pitch. When hitters began to sit on the curve, Bob went back to his fastball, only to discover that the old zip wasn’t there. Writing of Turley and 1959, Stengel in his autobiography (Casey at the Bat, 1962) observed that there “was nothing wrong with his arm or his willingness to work. He just couldn’t win.” Casey complained that Turley wasn’t throwing hard and “it looked like he was experimenting on all the hitters with slow stuff and junk.”

Turley’s 1959 decline was a critical jolt to a starting crew that was without a stopper, although Duke Maas (14-8) and Art Ditmar (13-9) were adequate and Bobby Shantz and Jim Coates pitched well out of the pen in support of Duren. Whitey Ford followed his 14-7 record in 1958 with a fine 16-10 mark, but his ERA was up by more than one run per game and he allowed more hits and walks while pitching in fewer innings than he did the year before. (Ford was far from finished, of course. In 1961 under rookie manager Ralph Houk, Ford began working every fourth day in a regular rotation for a change, posted a 25-4 record and won the Cy Young Award.)

The Yankee lineups of the 1950s were characterized by the tremendous back-to-back punch of Mickey Mantle and Yogi Berra. As the Yankees rolled to four successive pennants from 1955 through 1958 (usually with Mantle batting third and Berra fourth), the twosome averaged a combined 67 home runs per season. They hit only 50 roundtrippers in 1959. The aging Berra no longer was putting the big power numbers on the board: He had 19 homers and 69 RBIs. Yogi may have been the league’s most valuable player for the 1950s. Not only was he a first-rate defensive catcher, but he hit between 22 and 30 homers and had between 82 and 125 RBIs in every season of the decade until 1959. However, he turned thirty-four in 1959 and some of his power was sapped after years of playing the game’s most demanding position.

With Berra aging and Skowron hurting, Elston Howard was the man most likely to protect Mantle in the batting order, but at age thirty he still didn’t have a regular position in the field. Playing first base, catcher, and outfield in 1959, Ellie had 18 homers and 73 RBIs but might have done better still with the predictability of having a permanent, everyday job. Casey liked all-purpose players like McDougald and Howard because they increased his managerial options. “You can substitute but you can rarely replace,” Stengel once said. “With Howard, I have a replacement, not a substitute.” Stengel handed him the bulk of the catching in 1960, but Howard had his greatest seasons under Houk in the early 1960s.

The Yankees had a problem in right field, where for years Hank Bauer had roamed. Bauer had been a solid, all-round player, who symbolized Stengel’s Yankee teams. He did nothing spectacularly but everything well, and he knew how to win. The tough ex-Marine didn’t make mistakes and seemed to save his best performances for crucial moments. But his great effort in the 1958 World Series turned out to be his last hurrah. He turned thirty-seven in 1959, a season in which he batted only .238 with 9 homers. The next year would find him in the Yankees’ last stop before sundown, otherwise known as Kansas City.

The 1959 Yankees had records of around .500 against right-handed pitching and at home, indicating the club wasn’t taking advantage of the short right-field porch at Yankee Stadium. The Bombers should never be vulnerable to righties, and yet in 1959 Frank Lary and Cal McLish (as well as southpaw Don Mossi) each defeated New York five times. Clearly the Yanks needed a new right fielder, preferably one who batted lefthanded. (Kansas City was to oblige with Roger Maris.)

The Yankees who didn’t win the pennant had problems off the field as well as on. When spring training opened in 1959, Mantle and Ford were among the unsigned. Mickey Signed for $72,000, a small raise, and other Yankees fell into line. Stengel maintained that the tough negotiating stance of the front office put his players in a bad frame of mind. Casey may have forgotten that his old buddy Weiss was always a tough man to shake a nickel out of, in an age when players had little recourse but to sign on the dotted line. How tough was Weiss? Well, following Mantle’s 1959 season, he wanted to cut Mickey’s salary by $17,000—yes, they actually cut salaries in those days—and Mantle finally signed for $65,000, a painful cut of $7,000.

Stengel was also bitter over losing his instructional school in 1959 (by act of Dan Topping). Stengel once had been a good teacher and enjoyed working with the organization’s young prospects. But by 1959, having grown impatient with the inevitable mistakes of youth, Casey was browbeating and intimidating many of the youngsters. The more the Ol’ Perfesser fussed and criticized, the tighter and more erratic the kids played. The cases of Norm Siebern and Jerry Lumpe make the point. Stengel rode both and both struggled; finally they were traded to Kansas City in separate 1959 deals. Lumpe was shifted from third base to second and Siebern was moved from the outfield to first base. Each was better suited to his new position. In 1962 Lumpe hit .301 with 193 hits and Siebern hit .308 with 25 homers and 117 RBIs. They weren’t such bad players after all.

Tony Kubek and Bobby Richardson took Stengel’s hazing, survived, and developed into stars with New York. Stengel liked Kubek’s versatility—Tony played all four infield positions as well as the outfield under Stengel—but Tony, who developed into an excellent shortstop, may have lost a chance to be even better because he wasn’t kept at the position from the start. Stengel wasn’t a Richardson fan. He kept Bobby in a backup role until 1959, when the sweet fielder finally became the regular second sacker. Richardson hit .301, best of the 1959 Yankees. He and Kubek, who hit a solid .279, formed a dynamic double-play combo, too.

Stengel may have hindered Mantle, whom he didn’t always treat warmly. Mantle’s batting average peaked at .365 in 1957, and then fell to .304 in 1958 and .285 in 1959, a source of great frustration to Stengel, who always believed Mickey should have been even better than he was. Mantle was helped by two circumstances in the early 1960s. The first was the 1960 arrival of Maris, who became the new whipping boy of the fans and press, as Mantle finally became the people’s choice. The second was Houk taking the managerial reins in 1961. Houk boosted Mantle’s confidence and the Mick responded with perhaps his greatest season.

Yankee shake-ups seemed forthcoming after the 1959 disaster. But in the end, Weiss, Stengel and most of the players returned in 1960. Pitching coach Jim Turner was made the scapegoat and after the season was replaced by Eddie Lopat, the former great Yankee southpaw. As for Casey, he had one thing going for him; he had a year left on his contract, and Topping, unlike the management in New York today, wasn’t in the habit of eating big contracts (Stengel’s was for $90,000). Nonetheless, Ralph Houk was clearly the heir apparent, and Stengel knew it. He didn’t like one bit having Houk looking over his shoulder, but the players found Houk an antidote to their irascible manager. Although still the darling of the fans and the media, Casey had lost the respect of several players and didn’t ingratiate himself with his troops when he allowed management to use him in a midwinter press conference. This get-together with the media laid blame for the 1959 failure on the night owls. Casey, who had always been a nocturnal animal, cracked: “I got these players who got the bad watches, that they can’t tell midnight from noon.”

Weiss typically blamed 1959 on some of his players’ outside business interests. But if George was correct, then he was the one at fault; with the salaries he was paying, the players were forced to supplement their incomes. Another theory held that the Yankees’ slowness in signing black and Latin players had finally caught up with them. It would catch up with them, but not until 1965.

Wrote Stengel in Casey at the Bat: “This bad 1959 season was an emergency to our owners. They thought the manager was slipping. They thought the coaches were slipping. They thought the players were slipping …. But maybe those people in the front office didn’t have such a good year themselves.” Casey had it right—everyone slipped in the year the Yankees lost the pennant. The sagging Bronx Bombers were not defeated by a Joe Hardy—instead they went out and got one, a Roger Maris who would hit 100 home runs in the next two years and restore to the Yankees their accustomed splendor.