This book is one of the most personal and dramatic baseball stories ever written-a blow-by-blow account of managing the most dynamic team in baseball history. All during the record-breaking 1961 Yankee season Charles Dexter dogged Ralph Houk's footsteps with a tape recorder, taking down in the manager's own words his on-the-spot reactions to the day's game and the current crises. As a result, for the first time a major league manager lifts the curtain on what actually goes on in the clubhouse and on the bench, takes the reader into team meetings, reveals the secret of his tactics, his disciplinary problems, and the techniques of baseball as the Yankees play it. Houk exposes his own psychological reactions in the heat of battle and that of his players, from the moment he succeeded Casey Stengel to the final put-out of the 1961 World Series.
BALLPLAYERS ARE HUMAN, TOO begins with Houk's stunned reaction as the Yankees lost the 1960 World Series to the Pittsburgh Pirates, followed by his personal narrative of his sudden elevation to the throne Casey Stengel had occupied for twelve years.
He quickly reviews his Kansas background, his childhood, his introduction to baseball, his early minor league days, his rise from a private to a Major on the battlefields of Europe, his return to baseball, his struggles to win a Yankee job, his years with the five-time Yankee champions, and as a tempestuous yet thoughtful minor league manager and as a Yankee coach. Then, as Yankee manager, he tells how he planned and organized the 1961 campaign, including his handling of rookies, trades, spring training, press relations, and relations with umpires-and, from the season's opening, the daily game-by-game problems of keeping a high-spirited, highly paid ball club on its toes.
It's all here, Roger Maris' 61 home runs and Mickey Mantle's 54, the skillful employment of the three first-string catchers, the canny trades that brought winning pitchers to a faltering staff, What really happened to Ryne Duren, Whitey Ford's record of 25 victories, Papa Luis Arroyo's miraculous relief pitching, and the tremendous loyalty which made the Yankees' team effort one to be long remembered. All this is told in Ralph Houk's own very special unexpurgated lingo; here's a baseball fans baseball book-rich in drama, humor, and baseball lore.
Houk, Ralph: - Ralph George Houk (1919-2010), nicknamed "the Major", was an American catcher, coach, manager, and front office executive in Major League Baseball. He is best known as the successor of Casey Stengel as manager of the New York Yankees from 1961 to 1963, when his teams won three consecutive American League pennants and the 1961 and 1962 World Series championships. Houk was a catcher working his way through the Yankees' farm system when the U.S. entered World War II. He enlisted in the armed forces, and rose to the rank of Major (the source of his Yankees nickname). Returning to baseball after the war, Houk eventually reached the major leagues, serving as the Yankees' second- and third-string catcher behind Yogi Berra. Houk was known as a "player's manager"-albeit one with a quick temper. Future Los Angeles Dodgers manager Tommy Lasorda briefly played for Houk at Denver and called Houk the best handler of men he ever played for, and modeled his managerial style on him. The Kansas Sports Hall of Fame, of which Houk is a member, describes Houk as "rough, blunt and decisive" and his tantrums in arguments with umpires earned him 45 ejections as a manager in the majors.
