July 2, 1961: Yankee bats pummel Senators on way to home run records

Sunday, July 2, 1961, was a muggy day at Yankee Stadium, with game-time temperatures in the low 90s. The expansion Washington Senators were finishing a three-game set against the New York Yankees, who were going for a series sweep and seeking to move closer to the first-place Detroit Tigers.

This game illustrated the challenges any club – much less a first-year expansion team – had against a dominating Yankee lineup that went on to hit 240 home runs in 1961, more than any other major-league team to that time. On their way to a 13-4 win, the Yankees walloped five home runs. Four of these homers were prodigious blasts, supplemented by a double that was hit more than 400 feet, a home run in most other ballparks. When he took over the radio broadcast in the fifth inning, Red Barber described the Yankees’ offensive strategy as “hitting them where they’ve got no defense.”1 “A crowd of 19,794 sadists enjoyed the spectacle of the lambs being tossed to the lions of the American League” was the synopsis given by Bob Addie of the Washington Post.2

The Yanks were in second place, two games behind the Tigers, while the Senators were seventh in the newly expanded 10-team league. In Friday night’s series opener, Mickey Mantle’s sixth inning inside-the-park home run put New York ahead to stay, and Whitey Ford limited the Senators to five hits in a 5-1 win, his 14th of the season and eighth in June. Mantle blasted two more homers on Saturday afternoon, but it took Roger Maris’s two-run shot in the bottom of the ninth to rally the Yankees to a 7-6 win.

Before Sunday’s game began, a comparison of the starting lineups showed a clear disparity in the teams’ talent levels. Only two of the Senators’ starters were ever selected for an All-Star Game during their careers: first baseman Dale Long (as a Pittsburgh Pirate in 1956) and right fielder Gene Woodling (as a Baltimore Oriole in 1959).3 By contrast, eight members of the Yankees’ lineup made at least one All-Star team, and seven were selected at least four times apiece.4

Using the more objective measure of WAR, Mantle’s 10.4 total just for the 1961 season was greater than the career total of seven of the Washington starters, and greater than the aggregate 1961 total of the entire Washington starting lineup!5 Despite this disparity, the Senators had beaten the Yankees in their previous three meetings entering the series, including a two-game sweep at Yankee Stadium in May.

The Senators took a 1-0 lead in the top of the second against lefty Bud Daley, who was making his fourth start since joining New York in a June 14 trade with the Kansas City Athletics.6 Gene Green led off with a double and scored on a one-out single by Long, a Yankee in 1960 and later in 1962 and 1963.

The bottom half of the inning, however, gave an indication of bigger things to come. Facing left-hander Pete Burnside, catcher Elston Howard struck a two-run homer that landed in the front section of the upper deck in left field, giving the Yankees a 2-1 lead. While Howard was the Yankees’ primary catcher, both Yogi Berra and Johnny Blanchard also caught for the team. All three players hit over 20 homers that season, with a combined total of 30 coming from the catcher’s position.7

The Senators struck back to tie the game in the third. Woodling, a contributing member of the Yankees’ five consecutive World Series champions from 1949 through 1953, singled home Danny O’Connell.

Maris, vying with teammate Mantle for the league’s home-run lead and challenging Babe Ruth’s single-season homer record, gave the Yankees a 5-2 lead in the third with his 29th homer of the season, close to the right-field foul pole. Maris waited at home plate to see if his blast would be fair or foul, which led to a critical line of questioning by the press after the game.8

Burnside, credited with one of the wins when the Senators visited Yankee Stadium in May, walked three batters that inning, for a total of five in just 2⅓ innings. Mickey Vernon, in his first season as a big-league manager, replaced him with Johnny Klippstein, who closed out the third, then kept the Yankees scoreless over the next three innings.

Yankee radio announcers Phil Rizzuto and Barber9 noted multiple times the hot weather and its potential stress on the pitchers and catchers.10 Klippstein was surprisingly allowed to hit for himself in the seventh inning with his team behind by three runs, striking a single. Perhaps his time on the bases, in addition to his 66 pitches at that point, reduced his stamina and led to the Yankee onslaught in the next two innings. Barber suggested that keeping Klippstein in the game was probably due to a desire by Vernon to “keep the staff in balance.”

With one out in the seventh, Maris crushed an authoritative homer off the right-field upper-deck facing. His 30th home run of the season made it 6-2. He was followed by Mantle, who had walked in his first three plate appearances. Mantle swung at a pitch for the first time in the game, nearly hitting an opposite-field home run that was just foul. He was walked on the next pitch as loud boos resonated from the crowd.

Mantle went on to lead the league in walks for the fourth time in his career. He had been feasting on Senators pitching throughout the series. His inside-the-park home run on Friday struck the center-field wall 461 feet away. One of his home runs on Saturday cleared the 457-foot mark in the left-center-field bleachers.11 He had a 14-game hitting streak coming into Sunday’s game, and his fourth walk was his eighth consecutive time on base against Washington.

Howard followed with a single. One out later,  Bob Cerv bashed a double that reached the 457-foot mark on a bounce, driving in Mantle and Howard. Billy Gardner’s single scored Cerv, and it was a 9-2 game.

Entering the bottom of the eighth, Klippstein was still on the mound, despite having already thrown 93 pitches. With the Yankees owning a seven-run lead at this point, the Senators finally gave Mantle an opportunity to swing with Tony Kubek on first and two outs. It resulted in the most impressive home run of the day, his 28th of the season. There were two loud sounds; the explosion of the bat meeting the ball followed seconds later by the crack of the ball hitting the back of a vacant wooden seat halfway up the leftmost section (toward center field) of the upper deck in right field. The ball was still rising when it hit that seat.12 As Barber had said earlier in the game when he started his stint in the booth, “the ball is landing in far places frequently” when the Yankees hit.

Two batters later, Moose Skowron drove a ball into the left-center-field bleachers, close to the visitors bullpen, for another two-run homer. Driving a ball into those bleachers was a rare feat at the old Yankee Stadium.13 To have it happen on consecutive days was indicative of the raw power of that Yankees lineup, aided perhaps by the weakness of expansion pitching. Joe Trimble of the New York Daily News commented: “There have been thousands of home runs hit in the Bronx, but it’s doubtful if as much raw power ever was demonstrated in one ball game.”14 It was the Yankees’ 113th home run in 75 games, on their way to surpassing the previous record of 221, set by the 1947 New York Giants and 1956 Cincinnati Reds.15

Daley tired in the ninth inning after throwing 117 pitches, and was replaced by relief specialist Luis Arroyo. As Daley struggled in the ninth, Red Barber opined, “Starting pitchers like to finish; they have egos!” Barber described Daley as a man with “indomitable” spirit for having overcome a birth injury that resulted in his right arm being shorter than his left (pitching) arm. The Senators scored in the ninth on Chuck Cottier’s RBI double off Daley and Billy Klaus’ run-scoring single off Arroyo. Despite a 13-4 score with the teams totaling 22 hits and 12 walks (9 for the Yankees), the game time was only 2:42, a fairly typical length of a ballgame in the early 1960s.

The Yankees powered their way to 109 victories and an eight-game margin over the Tigers by season’s end. They went on to beat the Cincinnati Reds for the 19th World Series championship in franchise history. The Senators won only one-third of their remaining games and finished tied for last in the AL.

Author’s Note

This was my first major-league game, and still among the most memorable of the hundreds of games I have attended. Billy Crystal’s description of attending his first game at Yankee Stadium in the movie City Slickers is a nearly word-for-word description of my own experience on July 2, 1961. I was very fortunate to find a recording of the radio broadcast, which greatly helped to corroborate my memories.

Listening to the broadcast, a listener is particularly struck by the brief time between innings. The interval was filled by either a single advertisement lasting a minute or an update on out-of-town scores or upcoming Stadium events with no advertisement. There were only two sponsors. Ballantine Beer (“selling 5 million glasses a day”) sponsored the first half of the game, while Atlantic Imperial (gasoline for a “clean carburetor”) sponsored the second half.

Acknowledgments

This article was fact-checked by Gary Belleville and copy-edited by Len Levin. The author wishes to thank John Fredland, Kurt Blumenau, and Gary Belleville for their insightful commentary on the first draft of the article.

Photo credit: Roger Maris, Trading Card Database.

Sources

In addition to the sources cited in the Notes, the author consulted Baseball-Reference.com and Retrosheet.org for pertinent information, including the box score and play-by-play:

https://www.baseball-reference.com/boxes/NYA/NYA196107020.shtml

https://www.retrosheet.org/boxesetc/1961/B07020NYA1961.htm

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=A-S9utAxNVw

Notes

1 All quotes attributed to Red Barber or Phil Rizzuto come directly from a recording of the Yankees’ radio broadcast of the game. New York Yankees’ Radio Broadcast, “1961 07 02 Yankees Senators Old Time Baseball,” YouTube video (Classic Baseball on the Radio), 2:48:49, accessed May 18, 2024, https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=A-S9utAxNVw.

2 Bob Addie, “Yankees Bombard Senators 13-4,” Washington Post, July 3, 1961: A13.

3 Pitcher Dick Donovan, who started the series opener against the Yankees on June 30, was the Senators’ sole All-Star in 1961. His 2.40 ERA led the major leagues that season.

4 Reserve third baseman Billy Gardner was the only member of the Yankees’ lineup in this game not to make an All-Star team, and left fielder Bob Cerv was selected only once.

5 Thanks to reviewer Kurt Blumenau for suggesting a more objective WAR comparison. The WAR figures all come from Baseball-Reference.com.

6 On June 14 the Yankees traded Art Ditmar and Deron Johnson to Kansas City to obtain Daley. Daley would win 8 and lose 9 with the Yanks in 1961. He won the deciding game of that year’s World Series against Cincinnati.

7 Howard hit 17 homers from the catcher position, Blanchard hit 11, and Berra struck 2.

8 Dick Clemente, “Maris Got Trapped Into Talking,” Newsday (Long Island, New York), July 3, 1961: 57.

9 Rizzuto and Barber broadcast the game without the assistance of a second commentator in the booth, as was common practice at that time.

10 Rizzuto also blamed the heat as a contributing factor to some of his verbal miscues.

11 This information comes from the radio broadcast, as well as David S. Nuttall, Mickey Mantle’s Greatest Hits: Dramatic Highlights of a Legendary Career (New York: S.P.I Books, 1998), 155-156.

12 This information comes from the radio broadcast, as well as the author’s personal recollections of the game.

13 Skowron, Mantle, and Joe DiMaggio were the only hitters to reach these bleachers multiple times in their careers. Nuttall, 156.

14 Joe Trimble, “Yankees Clout 5 King-Size Homers, Crush Nats, 13-4,” New York Daily News, July 3, 1961: 29.

15 The 1961 Yankees held the club home-run record for 35 years, until the Baltimore Orioles hit 257, the Seattle Mariners hit 245, and the Oakland A’s hit 243 in 1996. As of 2024, the 2019 Minnesota Twins and 2023 Atlanta Braves were tied for the record with 307.