Something thwapped my noggin’ at a young age and told me that rooting for the New York Yankees was not the type of mistake a young feller should make.
I didn’t know the half of it.
In those summers, a hopscotch court was chalked on a sidewalk somewhere in the neighborhood, no one wore a helmet to ride a bike, and packs of Topps baseball cards included recaps of each game from the previous year’s World Series.
The card that zinged the New York Yankees in 1964 showed mammoth, 26-year-old Los Angeles Dodger Frank Howard launching a baseball into the second level of young Dodger Stadium off a curveball from Yankee left-hander Whitey Ford, who was still dazzling at age 34.
The photo of Howard, all 6-foot-7 of him, depositing a baseball where no man had hit one before, wasn’t what popped on that baseball card. It was the red letters that emphasized the Dodgers’ four-game sweep: SEALING YANKS’ DOOM.
That Ohtani narrative sure took a turn
I’m fine with the Dodgers meeting the Yankees again in the 2024 World Series. Major League Baseball is delighted no matter who wins.
The New York and L.A. markets are large, and having Shohei Ohtani in the Series ensures the largest international audience for a World Series.
As the 2024 season dawned, the Dodgers’ Ohtani — the world’s most famous baseball player — was connected to a gambling scandal. He was cleared when his interpreter confessed to fraud, and now every person in Japan will be watching this World Series.
Boy, that Ohtani gambling thing sure lit up social media this spring.
It would have been intriguing had social media been around when a guy named Del Webb owned the Yankees, what with his Las Vegas mob connections and lopsided trades with business pal Arnold Johnson.
Hey, now that’s collusion
Webb was a real estate developer whose name today is featured on retirement communities. He owned the Yankees from 1945 to 1964. The Yankees went to the World Series 15 times in that span.
The streak included five trips from 1954 to 1960. That was after, at Webb’s encouragement, business associate Arnold Johnson bought the A’s and moved them from Philadelphia to Kansas City.
Webb oversaw construction of the Flamingo Hotel after World War II. Mobster Ben (Don’t Call Me Bugsy) Siegel hired Webb for the job.
If people think the prospect of the A’s moving again, this time from Oakland to Vegas, is a new path for baseball, well, baseball owners had ties to gamblers throughout the game’s history.
Not only did Bugsy hire Webb, the Yankees dragged their feet on integration. So Webb used his cozy arrangement with Arnold Johnson to fuel pennant runs.
If you never followed baseball, you don’t know the names, but New York got Enos Slaughter and John Sain from K.C. in 1955, and Bob Cerv in ’56.
The Yankees’ boost from K.C. continued, with Bobby Shantz, Art Ditmar and Clete Boyer going to New York in ’57, followed by Ryne Duren, Ralph Terry, Hector Lopez and, famously in 1959, Fargo Shanley graduate Roger Maris.
Jackie Robinson broke the modern color line in baseball in ’47, but the Yankees didn’t have a Black player until Elston Howard wore the uniform in 1955.
Dragging their heels on integration finally caught up to the Yankees when they lost the World Series in ’63 and ’64. The Dodgers and St. Louis Cardinals had starting lineups stocked with Black players. The Yankees had Howard.
New York didn’t return to the World Series again for more than a decade.
With the exception of Cleveland, the American League dallied on integration and lost 75 percent of the All-Star Games from 1950-70 because of it.
But the Yankees had managed to keep winning into the ’60s without Black players because Johnson’s Kansas City club kept sending talent to the Yankees in lopsided deals.
Thank you, Magic Johnson
Major League Baseball has been unable to figure out the benefits of televising games since 1939, so it’s nothing new that most of this year’s postseason games were available to only those with subscription TV services.
Further, the consensus among baseball’s dwindling audience is that this year’s Dodger-Yankee World Series is a pairing of high payrolls.
It’s true the six highest payrolls among baseball’s 30 teams were in this year’s playoffs. But so were five of the 10 lowest.
The Yankees and Dodgers are in the top five in payroll. The owners of those clubs spend every year. NBA Hall of Fame Magic Johnson is part-owner of the Dodgers.
Johnson keenly knows that no matter how much money you have, you’re going to die. So if you want to own a sports franchise you should be in the game to win.
MLB doesn’t have a salary cap like the National Football League. A salary cap is just a way for NFL owners to restrict the lavish spending of a few and to restrict player movement.
There’s none of that in baseball.
Most billionaires own pro sports franchises to get richer and enjoy the ridiculous tax deductions afforded by sports ownership. So I’m glad to see owners who are in it to win it in the World Series.
I won’t be pulling for the Yankees in this World Series. But it would be a helluva lot easier now than pulling for the Yankees when Del Webb owned them.
