New York Yankees: A Look Back at the 1961 Lineup
The 1961 New York Yankees lineup is generally marked as one of the best to ever take the field. Following is a in-depth look at that lineup and the team that earned the nickname of the Bronx Bombers.
The team finished with a record of 109–53, eight games ahead of the Detroit Tigers, and won their 26th American League pennant. Managed by Ralph Houk, the New York Yankees plowed their way through a season in which the pennant race was an afterthought.
What mattered was the “M&M Boys”, who launched into a epic assault on the single-season record of 60 home runs set by Babe Ruth way back in 1927.
On a daily basis, New York newspapers, and eventually the entire nation, monitored the competition between an already encapsulated superstar Mickey Mantle and a relatively unknown Roger Maris as the home runs continued to mount throughout the summer
The sideshow continued and as we all know, Roger Maris entered the lore of baseball on a 2-0 pitch from Tracy Stallard that he delivered into the short right field porch at the old Yankee Stadium. Here’s the call by the inimitable Phil Rizzuto…
The Yankees’ 240 home runs that year would eclipse every team and doubled the total of several teams as they entered the World Series, which they won in five games over the Cincinnati Reds. Here is the typical starting lineup for the New York Yankees during that magical season…
1) Bobby Richardson, 2B
Bobby Richardson, at 5’9″ and 170 lbs would be considered undersized by today’s standards. But he was a huge presence in the Yankees lineup in 1961 as a table-setter for the power coming up behind him.
He hit a modest .252 that year, but his 173 hits were good for fifth place in the American League. An All-Star eight times, Richardson also won the first of five consecutive Gold Glove awards in ’61.
In sum, he was the perfect complement to a team that reveled in its ability to score runs and play defense.
Besides baseball, there was another element to Richardson’s life that touched a good many people and players. A deeply religious individual, he became friends with Mickey Mantle early in his career when, as a rookie, Mantle made way for him to step in the batting cage and hit. That friendship continued as Richardson revealed in a interview with CBN:
Some years later in Dallas, Texas, he was in the hospital, already had a liver transplant. And my phone rang in the hotel, it was early in the morning. It was Mickey and he said, “I’m really hurtin.” We had prayer together on the phone. Mickey and I talked together and as I was leaving to come back to South Carolina, I received a call that he’d taken a turn for the worst. Immediately we were on a plane flying out to Dallas. And one more time, I wanted to be bold because I wanted him to spend eternity with me in heaven – walked into Baylor Medical Center, he had a smile on his face. He said, “Come over here, I can’t wait to tell you this.” He said, “I want you to know I’m a Christian, I’ve accepted Christ as my Savior.” I cried a little bit and then I said, “Mickey let me go over it a little bit with you to make sure you understand.”
2) Tony Kubek, SS
Tall and rangy at 6’3″ 190 lbs, Tony Kubek played shortstop and hit second in the Yankees batting order. Playing in all but one of the Yankees’ 154 games, he would make 617 plate appearances.
He hit .276 in ’61, collecting 170 hits. More importantly, though, like his counterpart Richardson he provided the up-the-middle strength defensively to round out a powerful offense. He finished third in the league in both putouts and assists.
The year before in the seventh game of the World Series, Kubek’s career had almost come to an end when a smash off the bat of Bill Virdon hit a pebble and bounced up hitting him in the throat. Kubek was carried off the field and on his way to the hospital when Bill Mazeroski ended the series with a dramatic home run.
Following his retirement as a player in 1965, Kubek began a second career as a broadcaster. And in 2008, he won the highly coveted Ford Frick award, taking a seat in the Hall of Fame.
Ironically, though, Kubek turned sour on the game claiming that baseball had been taken over by money and greed. Here’s how he explained it to the New York Daily News just prior to his induction:
“I have no ill feelings toward anyone or the game,” Kubek said by phone from his home in Appleton, Wis. Tuesday. “I just felt it had become too driven by money. There are still a lot of dedicated players out there, but I just felt there were too many players more interested in their salaries who didn’t respect the game. It became overbearing what people in the game were allowed to get away with. I really haven’t watched a game on TV since I retired. If I couldn’t be a part of all of it, I didn’t want to be a part of any of it.”
3) Roger Maris, RF
Just like the photo above, Roger Maris would often be seen in this pose watching another home run find its way into the short porch at the old Yankee Stadium. It was a magical year for Maris who had spent most of his career wallowing in baseball purgatory in Kansas City, a team that was laughingly referred to as a Yankees farm team as players were freely traded between the two teams, with the Yankees usually getting the better part of the deal. This was the case with Maris.
Although he hit for an average of only .269, he scored 132 runs and drove in 141. Maris was a unlikely hero for the Yankees during the 1961 season. As his assault on Babe Ruth‘s 60 became more and more real, much of the press openly expressed their displeasure by favoring Mickey Mantle over Maris in the race to 60.
For Maris himself, the season began to take a physical toll on him and blotches of his crew cut hair began to fall out. Adding to the pressure, Ford Frick, the Commissioner of Baseball and old-time friend of Ruth, announced that Maris would need to break the record in 154 games. Otherwise, an asterisk would be added in the record books.
Maris of course did break Ruth’s record, and eventually in 1991 a panel voted to have the “asterisk” removed. (Although some argue that it never really existed in the first place.) Eventually, Maris would put the 1961 season and the Yankees behind him, retiring from baseball in 1968. With his brother, he opened a thriving beer distributorship and maintained a life removed from baseball until nine years later when George Steinbrenner, the new owner of the Yankees, began a campaign to bring him back to Yankee Stadium.
True to form, Maris resisted, settling on his own terms in this way as recounted in this excellent read from the Society of American Baseball Research:
Steinbrenner made a concerted effort to reestablish relations with the former Yankee great. A spring 1977 exhibition game provided the venue for a meeting, and while Maris turned down Steinbrenner’s request to come back for the 1977 Old-Timers Game, in April of 1978, with no advance fanfare, he flew up to New York to join Mantle in raising the 1977 American League pennant. A crowd of over 44,000 surprised fans reacted with admiration and appreciation as Maris came onto the field, heavier than in his playing days, but still sporting his trademark crew cut. With chants of “Roger, Roger,” ringing in his ears, it was clear that at least some of the ghosts of 1961 had been buried.
4) Mickey Mantle, CF
Though injured for most of the 1961 World Series, Mickey Mantle would assume his regular spot in the batting order as the cleanup hitter for the Bombers.
Mantle had developed a serious abscess on his thigh that could be seen bleeding through his uniform. He was held back by Ralph Houk for the first two games of the series before he came back to start the third, but by the fourth inning he had to be removed from the game, ending any further attempts to play.
Perhaps, Mantle’s 1961 season was the best of his storied career. Hitting for average (.317) and power (54 HR, 126 RBI), he set a personal high with a .687 slugging percentage.
In many respects, Mantle’s career was almost over before it began when his right knee was twisted as his leg was caught in a drain during the 1951 World Series. The blazing speed that many had marveled at would never be seen again.
Nevertheless, the career of Mickey Mantle became the stuff of legend, especially in the city of New York where he was revered for that powerful swing from both sides of the plate and his boyish ways that he never lost as the kid from Oklahoma.
5) Elston Howard, C
Elston Howard played for 13 seasons in a Yankees uniform, filling a vital role as catcher when Yogi Berra was moved to left field to finish out his stellar career. In 1961, Howard would hit for average (.348) and contribute some power as well with 21 HR and 77 RBI.
Howard’s career in baseball began in Kansas City with the vaunted Monarchs of the Negro Leagues. According to the Society of American Baseball Research, Howard learned under player-manager Buck O’Neil and catcher Earl “Mickey” Taborn. With Taborn behind the plate, Howard usually played left field. Taborn left to join the Newark Bears in 1949, and the next year Howard roomed with future Cubs legend and Hall of Famer Ernie Banks.
Meanwhile, in New York City, Larry Doby‘s breaking of the American League color barrier in Cleveland was putting pressure on the other clubs to follow suit. Again, according to SABR,
“Casey Stengel batted Howard in the cleanup spot much of the spring, prompting Arthur Daley to write in the New York Times, “He seems certain to be the first Negro to make the Yankees. … They’ve waited for one to come along who [is] ‘the Yankee type.’ Elston is a nice, quiet lad whose reserved, gentlemanly demeanor has won him complete acceptance from every Yankee.” Daley was right. Ralph Houk went to the minors, Howard was given his uniform number (32), and on March 21 general manager George Weiss announced that Elston Howard would be coming to New York.”
And if you read between the lines, therein lies the rub. A “nice quiet lad… a gentleman.” Howard would forever be stuck with that label, and he would have to jump through hoops to maintain that image throughout his career with the Yankees.
“The challenges continued for Howard when he and his wife bought a vacant lot in Teaneck on which to build a larger house. Mayor Matty Feldman begged them not to build in a white neighborhood. The Howards ignored him, and although they suffered graffiti and sabotage during building, they moved in toward the end of the 1963 season.”
But nothing could stop him between the lines. He would be a vital part of four world championships and be voted the AL MVP in 1963.
He achieved full recognition for his career in 1984 when the Yankees retired his number 32. He would also become the first black coach to join the Yankees and remained with them as a steadying force during the years of the “Bronx Zoo”.
When his health began to fail and he could no longer fulfill his coaching duties, George Steinbrenner hired him into the Yankees front office where he remained until his death in 1980.
6) Bill “Moose” Skowron, 1B
From the photo above, it shouldn’t be hard to see why his Yankees teammates insisted on calling Bill Skowron “Moose”.
But it’s better to hear him tell the story though as he does here:
“When I was about 8 years old living in Chicago, my grandfather gave all the haircuts to his grandchildren,” Skowron told John Tullius for the oral history ‘I’d Rather Be a Yankee.’ “He shaved off all my hair. I was completely bald. When I got outside, all the older fellows around the neighborhood started calling me Mussolini. At that time, he was the dictator of Italy. So after that, in grammar school, high school and college, everybody called me Moose.”
Playing on seven pennant-winning teams, Skowron batted .300 five times in his career with the Yankees. Skowron was named an All-Star every season from 1957 to 1961 with the Yankees and again in 1965 with the Chicago White Sox. He was at his best in the World Series, hitting eight home runs and driving in 29 runs in 39 games.
In 1961, he hit 28 home runs while driving in 89. More importantly, he was a steady rock at first base playing in 150 games.
Some of the the best pitchers in the game were wary and intimidated when he came up to hit:
“Moose Skowron wasn’t someone you wanted to face too often,” the Detroit Tigers right-hander Frank Lary, known as the Yankee Killer for his many dominant pitching performances against them, was quoted as saying by Richard Lally in “Bombers: An Oral History of the New York Yankees.” “He wasn’t just a big slugger trying to hit the long ball all the time. Smart hitter, went with the pitch, thought along with the pitcher, and could hit the ball the other way as hard as anyone. And Moose was underrated at first. He had real soft hands and could dig tough chances out of the dirt.”
A crowd favorite at every Yankees Old Timers Day, the chants of M-O-O-S-E would welcome him back until he died in 2012 at the age of 81.
7) Yogi Berra, LF
Yogi Berra was in the twilight of a brilliant career in 1961. Called upon to play an unfamiliar position as the Yankees’ starting left fielder after so many seasons as an MVP catcher, Berra made the switch admirably.
Berra met the threshold of 20 or more home runs in the regular season that was the Yankees’ internal barometer for the team labeled the “Bronx Bombers”. He smashed 22 homers while driving in 61 runs.
He would contribute another home run in the World Series, but more importantly would draw five walks to make for a .500 OBP.
Yogi Berra was not an integral part of this Yankees team, but even at his advancing age of 36 he was a mainstay, not only in the lineup, but in the clubhouse as well. He was a renowned character and you can spend hours reading about his “Yogi-isms” as they became known as, (“When you come to a fork in the road, take it”) but when all is said and done, Yogi Berra was one helluva baseball player.
He was a three-time Most Valuable Player in the American League and played on teams that won 10 – ten! – world championships.
Berra would remain connected to baseball following his retirement, enduring brief stints as manager of both the Yankees and New York Mets. But he found his true calling in the establishment of the Yogi Berra Museum and Learning Center located near what was his home in New Jersey.
Election to the Baseball Hall of Fame came in 1972 and the Yankees would retire his number 8 as well.
8) Clete Boyer, 3B
Clete Boyer, like so many of the Yankees in his era (including Roger Maris) came over in a trade with Kansas City. His contributions to the team in 1961 appear to be negligible on the surface. He hit a paltry .224, but he was the standard-bearer at third base and drew 68 walks to complement the power-hitting lineup ahead of him.
His fielding prowess did not go unnoticed by his teammates, as Whitey Ford attests to in this quote from SABR: “Clete always made great plays. But no third baseman ever played better than Clete did in the 1961 Series.”
Former Yankees infielder Frank Crosetti also praised Boyer’s talent with the glove, saying, “He never got the publicity because he didn’t hit for a lot of power or a high average. The only difference between Brooks [Robinson] and Clete was that Brooks was a better hitter, not fielder.”
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And according to another quote from SABR, Brooks Robinson didn’t dismiss the idea: “In terms of catching the ball and throwing, Clete Boyer was the best defensive third baseman I played against.”
Good teams always need the complementary players to become great teams like the Yankees in 1961. Clete Boyer filled that role splendidly.