Damn Yankees by Edward Drobinski - HTML preview

Damn Yankees

Page 23

continued, though, and on October 1, the final day of the season, he homered against Red Sox pitcher Tracy Stallard into the right field stands of Yankee Stadium, breaking the record with 61. Commissioner Ford Frick decreed that two separate records be kept, as the Yankees played a 154 game schedule in 1927. Beginning in 1961, AL teams played 162 games to accommodate the league's expansion to 10 teams. MLB did away with the dual records 30 years later, giving Maris sole possession of the single season home run record. The Yankees won the pennant with 109 regular season wins, at the time the club's second highest single season total, and defeated the Cincinnati Reds in five games to win the franchise's 19th World Series. The team hit 240 home runs to break the MLB single season record. Maris won another AL MVP Award, while Whitey Ford captured the Cy Young

Award, having posted a 25–4 record. The team gained a reputation as one of the strongest the Yankees had ever fielded, along with the 1927 and 1939 Yankees. New York returned to the World Series in 1962, facing the San Francisco Giants. After exchanging victories in the first six games of the Series, the Yankees won the decisive seventh game 1–0 to clinch the title.

The Yankees again reached the World Series in their 1963 campaign, but were swept in four games by the Los Angeles Dodgers. Houk left the manager's position to become the team's