Harvey Frommer / Players Yankees
Meet
Harvey in Person!
Fall 2008
Book Tour
Reviews
of
"Remembering
Yankee Stadium", published Fall 2008. Sneak previews and extra content:
Remembering
Yankee Stadium: Opening Day 1923
Yankee
Stadium Firsts
Barnstorming
Around America with the 1927 New York Yankees
Remembering
Yankee Stadium: All-Star Games
Roll
out the Barrel: The 1927 Yankees
An
Oral and Narrative History of The House That Ruth Built
Yankee
Stadium Prisms and Sidebars (A Very Partial List)
Yankee
Stadium By The Numbers
Remembering
Yankee Stadium:
Twenties
/
Thirties
/
Forties
/
Fifties
/
Sixties
/
Seventies
/
Eighties
/
Nineties
/ 21st
Century
Harvey Frommer on Sports
*Remembering Yankee Stadium: NINETIES
(For your reading pleasure
adapted from REMEMBERING YANKEE STADIUM: AN ORAL AND
NARRATIVE HISTORY OF THE
HOUSE THAT RUTH BUILT, on sale everywhere, buy it now)
Back when he assumed principal
ownership of the New York Yankees
on
January
3,
1973, Steinbrenner had
said, "We plan absentee ownership as far as running the Yankees is
concerned. I won't
be active in the day-to-day operations of the club at all. I've got enough
headaches with my shipping company.
As things turned out, however, he was anything but hands off. That is, until July 30, 1990, when he was forced to surrender control of the Yankees. He was banned from baseball for life by Baseball Commissioner Fay Vincent for alleged payments he made to a gambler in New York City seeking to gain damaging info on outfielder Dave Winfield.
When the news of the banning reached the fans that day in Yankee Stadium, they chanted: No more George. They had had enough of the Boss for a while.
Denied access to his spacious
office at Yankee Stadium where a favorite pillow proclaimed: Give me
a bastard with talent, Steinbrenner in exile was the Big Guy
in the Sky, the man who wasnt there but who really was watching
things play out through the 1990 season.
His presence or absence seemed to make little difference to the 1990 team whose season was largely a disaster. There were some high points like the time during an August 2nd game when rookie first baseman Kevin Maas hammered his 10th home run in just 77 at bats, the fastest any player reached that mark. The Stadium's short right-field porch seemed tailor-made for the southpaw swinger, and Maas finished 1990 with 21 home runs in only 254 at-bats. But he was the exception for that squad rather than the rule - -the team finished dead last in batting average, a pathetic .241.
The 1990 Yankees had but one starting pitcher who won more than seven
games, nine-game winner Tim Leary. But he also lost 19 before Stump Merrill
showed some pity and took him out of the rotation. When the season mercifully
came to a close, the Yanks wound up
21 games behind Boston in the AL East,
the first time
during Steinbrenners time that his team finished in last place. One
had to go back to 1913 to find a Yankee team with a lower winning percentage.
Only the Yankees of 1908 and 1912 lost more
games. Ironically, the Stadium
box office registers just kept on
ringing. The Bombers drew a healthy 2,006,436 to the big park in
the Bronx.
A survivor, Stump
Merrill lasted through 1991 as field boss of the
Yankees. Among the dubious and
memorable moments of the season was the 479 foot homer Seattle's Jay Buhner
hammered over the left-field
bullpen, the shelling of Oakland outfielder
Jose
Canseco by Yankee
fans who pelted him with assorted objects like an inflatable doll a
cabbage head, and a transistor radio among other objects, and the honoring
of Joe DiMaggio on the 50th anniversary of his 56 game hitting
streak.
RICH MARAZZI: During the pre
game introductions players were brought out to the first and third base lines,
and I, as one of the four umpires working the Old Timers game, was
called out to the home plate area. I remained there through the
introductions. When the national
anthem ended, I walked over to DiMaggio.
Joe, thanks for the memories, I
said.
Whenever DiMaggio saw me with a press tag around my neck, he was
tentative. But whenever he saw me in my umpires uniform, he would put
his hand out to me, like we were old
buddies. And that's what he
did this day.
I met my childhood heroes - Ned Garver, Mickey Mantle, Mike Garcia
-- the former top pitcher. I always wanted to meet Mike. I found him in a
locker stall, giving himself dialysis treatment. He was half the size he
was when he pitched. I had a nice interview with him.
I umpired second base most of the time but did get to umpire the
plate three times. I made sure my son would warm me up during the week so
my arm would not turn on me when I had to throw the ball back to the pitcher.
The 1991
Yankees finished with a 71-91 record, 20 games behind the Toronto Blue Jays,
in fifth place. The team results were less pathetic than the 90 season,
but still underwhelming.
Attendance at the Stadium dropped to 1,863,733, placing the Yankees
11th out of 14 American League teams. Average attendance per game
was just 23,009.
9 |
|
By 1992, Stump Merrill was gone, replaced by
36-year-old Buck Showalter. He had
progressed from Eye in the
Sky to third base coach to hitting coach to manager.
The losing ways continued for the fourth season in a row. Ten games below
.500, the Yanks finished 20 games behind first place Toronto in the AL East,
but there was some incremental progress - for the
first time since 1987, they finished (tied) in fourth
place.
.
. .
=
Harvey Frommer is his 33rd consecutive
year of writing sports books. The author of 40 of them including the classics:
"New York City Baseball,1947-1957" and "Shoeless Joe and Ragtime
Baseball," his REMEMBERING YANKEE STADIUM, an oral/narrative history
(Abrams, Stewart, Tabori and Chang) was published September 1, 2008
as well as a reprint version of his "Shoeless Joe and Ragtime Baseball.".
Frommer sports books are available direct from the author - discounted and
autographed.
FROMMER SPORTSNET (syndicated) reaches a readership in excess of one million
and appears on Internet search engines for extended periods of time.
Harvey Frommer "Dartmouth's own Mr. Baseball" Dartmouth Alumni Magazine/ HARVEYFROMMERSPORTS.COM
REMEMBERING YANKEE STADIUM (Definitive Book) "New & Notable" Amazon.com http://www.hnabooks.com/images/sites/9/redirects/yankees/
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