September 22, 1966: Smallest attendance ever at Yankee Stadium: 413 fans

The 1966 New York Yankees were two seasons removed from a seven-game World Series loss to a powerful St. Louis Cardinals team in 1964. The 1965 season saw the Yankees collapse into sixth place in the American League, their worst finish since 1925. As the 1966 season began, the team’s future looked slightly brighter. In its preseason review, Sports Illustrated wrote, “The Yankees have more question marks than a true-false quiz. There should be enough positive answers to get them back to the first division, but not enough for first place.”1  

The 1966 team boasted three recent MVPs: Mickey Mantle, Roger Maris, and Elston Howard, plus a former Cy Young Award winner, Whitey Ford. The lineup also included Joe Pepitone, Bobby Richardson, Clete Boyer, Tom Tresh, Jim Bouton, and Mel Stottlemyre, all important contributors to the 1964 pennant winner. Rounding out the roster were promising newcomers including pitchers Fritz Peterson and Dooley Womack, and hard-hitting position players Roy White and Bobby Murcer.

So how did this epic decline from “first to worst’” occur? Age and injuries had something to do with it.

Although the Yankees were made up of only three players older than 35 – Howard and Whitey Ford at 37 and Hector Lopez at 36 – their age was reflected in their ability to stay healthy. Mantle was a banged-up medical miracle at 34, but still effective, though he was limited to 108 games that season, none after September 18. Also on the roster, injured and without effective replacements, were Jim Bouton, Roger Maris, Ford, and new shortstop Ruben Amaro. Amaro’s replacement at short, the rookie Bobby Murcer, who would go on to a successful career in center field, slumped in a few appearances and was sent to the minors until September.

The Yankees players also did not get along with the old-school style of their manager in 1965 and the start of 1966, Johnny Keane. He was fired on May 6. Ralph Houk, the manager of the pennant-winning 1961-63 clubs who became GM before 1964, moved from the front office back to the dugout. However, that didn’t help the Yankees’ fortunes.

Over two years starting in 1964, CBS purchased the Yankees from Dan Topping and Del Webb. On September 20, 1966, Michael Burke took over as the Yankees’ president and CEO.

Both the Yankees and the fourth-place White Sox had been mathematically eliminated when they faced each other on September 22, 1966. The game was preceded by four days of 30-year record-breaking rain in New York City. As a result, no games were played from September 19 through September 21. This game itself was in doubt as there was a fine mist just prior to the start with a prediction of heavier rain. Even Yankees play-by-play announcer Red Barber, believed the game would be called as he drove to the park, but it wasn’t.

As the game commenced, the Yankees languished in last place, 28 games behind the league-leading Baltimore Orioles. As a result of the Yankees’ poor performance, attendance continued to decline as the season progressed. Three of the five prior games and their next two final games of the season had attendance under 10,000. The average attendance was 13,715 per game for 1966. With no pennant implications, wet weather, plus the lack of publicity after several cancellations provided a recipe for poor attendance for a daytime midweek game, and just 413 fans showed up.

Despite having no pennant implications, the game itself did have the potential for some exciting moments. The starting pitchers were Joe Horlen for the White Sox and Stan Bahnsen for the Yankees. Bahnsen, a 1965 draft pick and September call-up, had a complete-game victory in his first major-league start, on September 15. Horlen was known as “Hard Luck” for both low ERAs and low run support – in 1966, he finished second in ERA (2.43), but went 10-13.

The few fans who were there also welcomed a visiting former Yankee hero, Chicago first baseman Moose Skowron.

The game was a scoreless pitchers’ duel for the first four innings. Bahnsen retired the first 13 batters through the top of the fifth until Duane Josephson, the second batter in the fifth inning, singled and scored on a two-out double to left by Jerry Adair. In the sixth inning, Don Buford doubled and was driven home by a single to center by Tommy Agee. In the ninth, Agee hit an inside-the-park home run, followed by Tom McCraw’s home run to right to build the White Sox lead to four runs. McCraw replaced Skowron at first base, batting fourth, in the bottom of the sixth inning. Horlen continued to blank the Yankees through seven innings, allowing just seven hits, when he was relieved by Hoyt Wilhelm. 

Wilhelm rode his knuckleball to dazzle hitters for a 21-year Hall of Fame career. He set the Yankees down in the eighth inning. The bottom of the ninth provided some excitement as Josephson, the White Sox catcher, had a difficult time with Wilhelm’s dancing knuckleball. The Yankees provided their only real rally in that inning, which started when Billy Bryan singled. Boyer popped out but Hector Lopez got a pinch-hit single. After Horace Clarke fouled out for the second out, Bobby Murcer singled to drive in Bryan. That was all of the offense the Yankees could muster when Joe Pepitone struck out on three pitches to end the game.2

The game provided other off-the-field drama.  Red Barber, the longtime Yankees announcer, refused Yankees management’s instructions to not broadcast the virtually empty stands, which stood to embarrass the team. But Barber mentioned it on the air, believing that the lack of fans in the stands “is the story, not the game.”3 This was the last straw between Barber, whose relationship with the Yankees broadcast team over the years had grown frosty, and the new Yankees management led by Mike Burke. Burke fired Barber at a breakfast meeting four days later, on September 26. Barber, 58 when he was fired, never announced full time for another team. It was a loss to the industry as Barber was instrumental in the development of many great announcers, most prominently Vin Scully.4

The September 22 attendance figure of 413 was a record low for Yankee Stadium. What is astonishing is that consistently, from 1925 to 1965, the Yankees had been first or second in American League attendance. At the close of the 1966 season, the Yankees’ cumulative attendance was 1,124,648, dropping the team to fifth place out of 10 teams. From that season the attendance continued to slip, falling to under 1 million by 1972 largely due to the consistently disappointing performance by the team.

The CBS entertainment conglomerate continued to own the Yankees until January of 1973, when it sold the team to a consortium led by George Steinbrenner for $8.7 million. It remains one of the few times that a major-league team was sold at a loss. The Yankees returned to the World Series in 1976 and saw their highest attendance (2,012,434) since 1950. From 2005 until the Stadium closed until 2008, attendance averaged over 4 million. As of April 2022, Sportico valued the Yankees at an estimated $7 billion with an average game attendance of 38,648, back to being number one in the American League.5

Sources

In addition to the sources cited in the Notes, the author accessed Baseball Reference.com, Retrosheet.org, SABR.org, and the following:

Kelley, CJ. “In Their Ruin: The 1966 New York Yankees,” in How They Play, May 16, 2022. https://howtheyplay.com/team-sports/In-Their-Ruin-The-1966-Yankees.

Featherston, Al. “The Demise of the Yankees 1964-1966,” in www.diamondsinthedusk.com.

Photo credit: Trading Card Database.

Notes

1 “Things are Looking Up for the Americans,” Sports Illustrated, April 18, 1966: 89. https://vault.si.com/vault/1966/04/18/43179#&gid=ci0258bed33010278a&pid=43179—095—image.

2 Mark Strauss, “White Sox Defeat New York, 4-1: Smallest Crowd of the Season,” New York Times, September 23, 1966: S27.

3 David Halberstam, “Red Barber and the Empty Yankee Stadium – September 22, 1996,” AwfulAnnouncing.com, September 22, 2016. https://awfulannouncing.com/2016/red-barber-and-the-empty-yankee-stadium-september-22-1966.html. Accessed June 18, 2022.

4 Judith R. Hiltner and James R. Walker, Red Barber: The Life and Legacy of a Broadcasting Legend (Lincoln: University of Nebraska Press, 2022), 330-335.

5 Team Valuations, https://www.sportico.com/valuations/teams/2022/yankees-red-sox-dodgers-mlb-valuations-1234671197/. Accessed April 14, 2022