The Lean Years of the Yankees: 1965-1975 (review)

Most baseball books are written to recall and celebrate the glory years of a particular team, player, or even league. Robert Cohen takes the opposite approach with The Lean Years of the Yankees. This is a curious choice. Is the book aimed at an audience of devout Yankee fans, or the many Yankee haters in Baseball Nation, particularly those who root for the Red Sox or Mets? Perhaps the book will appeal to both or neither, for it recounts probably the most fallow period in the history of baseball's most productive franchise.

Rabid Yankee fans may find it enjoyable to revisit the careers of such "stars" as Fritz Peterson, Horace Clarke, Ron Blumberg, and Bobby Murcer, or pat themselves on the back for remembering the likes of Frank Tepedino and Celerino Sanchez. Yankee haters will long for the days when the team was picking up washed up veterans such as Johnny Callison, Felipe Alou, Jim Ray Hart, and Sam McDowell, all fine players in their time but long past it when they donned the pinstripes. In some cases, Cohen's profiles of average talents on struggling teams are refreshing in a society obsessed with "winners." For instance, he offers good evidence that Fritz Peterson, most remembered for swapping wives with teammate Mike Kekich, actually deserves more recognition for his pitching ability, pointing out that he won 69 games in one four-year period, with 20 in 1970, and rarely walked more than 40 a year.

After an opening historical chapter that cites the years of the Highlanders and pre-Ruth Yanks as evidence that the team has not always dominated, Cohen speculates about the reasons for the breakdown after the loss in the 1964 World Series. Interestingly, he traces some of the problem back to the team's reluctance to sign many black players in the 1950s and early 60s, Horace Clark and Al Downing notwithstanding. The book then moves to a year-by-year account of the highlights and lowlights of the eleven years under consideration. Following a prose account of the team's pre-season hopes and in-season performance, each of these chapters concludes with a chronology of highlights, the American League standings for that year, and complete Yankee statistics.

While there is perhaps more information here than even a Yankee fan wants, the organization of the book effectively charts the peaks and valleys of a mediocre team's efforts in the front office and on the field over an extended period. Of course, fans of past doormats, such as the Cubs, Phillies, or Indians, or of today's small market teams will have no sympathy here since what for the Yanks is an eleven-year anomaly, for many teams, past and present, is business as usual. And even in their darkest age, the Yankees enjoyed two second-place finishes (1970 and 1974) and were usually middle-of-the pack in other years. Of course, there was that delicious season in 1966 when they finished tenth in the then ten-team American League. (Ironically, the Red Sox finished ninth, though winning the pennant the next year). Though only Yankee fans feel any sympathy, it is interesting to see how the aging of such stars such as Mantle and Ford led to a quick descent when players like Tom Tresh and Mike Kekich could not fill their shoes, and then later to see the promise in the mid-1970s when players such as Thurman Munson and Graig Nettles were reaching their prime, and newcomers such as Ron Guidry were foreshadowing (or foreboding, depending on one's perspective) the five post-season appearances, four in the World Series with a win in '77, from '76 through '81.

In terms of the research and organization of this book, Cohen has done a nice job, but the question remains: who is the audience? Obviously, Cohen is attempting to capitalize on the Evil Empire's nauseating success of the past decade with a contrast that says...