Collapse? Pt. I

 

Just to riff off an earlier post from our Peerless Leader, El Duque: Is this the year we finally see the out-and-out Yankees collapse some of us have been predicting (all right, crying wolf on) for years now?

For purposes of comparison it might be useful to take a look at the Yanks' most famous collapse, a.k.a., The Big One, back in 1965. Much has been written about that one, and various shibboleths and urban myths abound. 

But the central truth is this: The collapse of the 1960s Yankees came out of nowhere, and happened to a team that seemed much better equipped to go on dominating the American League for years, than HAL & The Brain's various editions of the Pinstripers ever have.

First off, going into 1965, the Yankees were the dynasty di tutti dynastia, far and away the greatest sports dynasty ever to dominate North America, and probably in any major sport, anywhere in the world.

From 1919-1964, your New York Yankees had exactly one (1) losing season out of 46, the year of the Babe's Great Bellyache—in 1925. 

From 1920 to 1964, they won 29 pennants and 20 World Series, with a winning percentage of .619. That put them 12 games ahead of the Indians—yes, the Indians—and 15 ahead of the Tigers, and at least an average of 20 games ahead of every other team in the American League in that time.

During that 45-year stretch, the Yanks also outhit every other AL team by at least 3 points, outscored them by at least 3,300 runs, and outhomered them by at least 1,900 roundtrippers. 

Similar margins existed in most other statistical categories—and at the box office, where the Yankees were first in the American League in 37 of 45 seasons.  

They finished out of the first division only once, from 1917-1964. And from 1920-1964, they finished lower than third place only twice—the year of the Big Bellyache, and the war year of 1945. 

And they only seemed to be getting more dominant. From 1947-1964, the Yanks won 15 pennants and 10 World Series in 18 seasons.

Now that's a !#&@ dynasty!!!

And suddenly...it was all over. The team dropped to sixth in 1965, 25 games out of first. 

This did not prove to be an aberration. They were tenth and last in 1966 (the first time they had finished in the cellar since 1912), and ninth in 1967, before they managed to scrap their way back to some generally respectable, winning, even contending seasons from 1968-1975—but nothing like the old dynasty.

So what happened?  What caused the collapse?

Well, a lot of people said the Yankees just got old.  

Not true. The average age of all players on the 1965 team was 28.3; of pitchers, 27.2—slightly younger than the team had been in the record-mashing year of 1961 (28.4, 27.8, respectively), and younger than the 1953 team, winner of a record, fifth-straight World Series (28.4, 31.0).  

Some have attributed it to the Yanks' atrocious refusal to enthusiastically pursue Black or Hispanic players. This was certainly contemptible—but it didn't much hurt them in the very white Junior Circuit. 

As it was, the Yanks had the first, Black AL MVP, in Elston Howard in 1963.

In 1964, with Howard and Al Downing, they even had the first, all-Black, World Series American League battery. And Downing in general was considered for several years the best Black pitcher in the game not named Bob Gibson.

After the dismissal of George Weiss following the 1960 season, the fact was that the Yanks got a lot more colorblind. Finally.

So, what was it that led to the collapse, then?

The most popular theory has it that longtime Yankees owners Del Webb and Dan Topping actually decided to sell the team back in 1960, and that from then until they finally handed it over to CBS near the end of 1964, they decided not to put anymore money into it, letting it decay and rot. 

It was an excuse that CBS and its designated president of the Yanks, Mike Burke, seized with both hands, claiming that when they took over, "the cupboard was bare," both on the big team and in the minor leagues.

Again: not true.

Topping and Webb, for all their flaws, handed over a genuine favorite—and continuing powerhouse—to CBS. 

And not only was the team in the Bronx all set, they had not cut the development budget—as evidenced by the formidable number of good-to-excellent players the Yankees kept producing, all through the 1960s and into the '70s.

These included:

1960—Bill Stafford, Deron Johnson.

1961—Rollie Sheldon, Hal Reniff.

1962—Jim Bouton, Joe Pepitone, Tom Tresh (Rookie of the Year).

1963—Al Downing.

1964—Mel Stottlemyre, Pete Mikkelson.

1965—Roy White, Curt Blefary (Rookie of the Year with Baltimore).

1966—Fritz Peterson, Dooley Womack.

1968—Stan Bahnsen (Rookie of the Year).

1969—Bobby Murcer.

1970—Steve Kline, Thurman Munson (Rookie of the Year).

So...if it wasn't the age, or the racism, and it wasn't letting the team rot, what WAS the reason for The Big Collapse???...