When the Yankees Were on the Fritz: Revisiting the "Horace Clark Era"

By Fritz Peterson

This book is written from a players perspective and attempts to explain why the New York Yankees didn't, and couldn't have won any pennants from 1966 through 1974, a time known as "The Horace Clarke Era" by baseball historians. The book takes the reader from the first day Fritz Peterson appeared in a Yankee uniform in the spring in 1966 to the day he, and three teammates were traded to the Indians in April, 1974. The book shows both the personal and professional sides of life being a New York Yankee in the 1960's and 1970's before free agency when the players were more like a family rather than a business when players all had to work during off seasons, now a lost art. Many players will be highlighted because of the impressions or various incidents that happened making them especially memorable to Fritz. Players range from Mickey Mantle, down to Luke Lamboley, Fritz's first friend to be released (fired) from the Yankee organization.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Fritz Peterson
• Release date: Aug 22, 2014
• ISBN: 9781311694621

Fritz Peterson

Fritz Peterson was born in 1942 in Chicago, Illinois and was a White Sox fan until he signed with the NY Yankees in 1963. He won the first game he started on April 15, 1966 against the would be World Champion Baltimore Orioles, 3-2. It was the only game the Orioles lost that month. He won 20 games in 1970 and pitched in the All Star game that season. After an 11 year career he holds the lowest career E.R.A. in the long 85 year history of Old Yankee Stadium. Fritz had an over all e.r.a. of 2.52, Whitey Ford was second with a 2.58 e.r.a.Fritz became an author in 2009 and again in 2012 and is finishing up 2 other books in 2014. He finds humor in almost everything he does. He and his wife have been married for over 40 years and have raised 7 children (so far) with a 7 year old grand daughter living with them as of 2014.

Book preview

When the Yankees

Were on the Fritz

Revisiting the Horace Clarke Years

Fritz Peterson

Copyright © 2014 Fritz Peterson

Smashwords Edition

All rights reserved.

This book is about how one of the best right-handed/left-handed pitching combinations in baseball from 1966-1974, Mel Stottlemyre and Fritz Peterson and how they made it through the entire Horace Clarke Era without winning a pennant. It also includes some interesting comments about many of the players who made the whole journey very interesting.

Note to readers: In the main text of this book you may find some instances where a similar incident is noted more than once. The reason is some stories have general ramifications while others have specific references pertaining to only one player, one time. I'd rather include more information rather than not enough in certain situations. Enjoy!

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Book cover: Tony Ficca; [e-mail]

TABLE OF CONTENTS

Acknowledgements

Chapter 1 – 1st Inning

Chapter 2 – 2nd Inning

Chapter 3 – 3rd Inning

Chapter 4 – 4th Inning

Chapter 5 – 5th Inning

Chapter 6 – 6th Inning

Chapter 7 – 7th Inning

Chapter 8 – 8th Inning

Chapter 9 – 9th Inning Part 1

Chapter 10 – 9th Inning Part 2

Chapter 11 – An Undercurrent Beneath Yankee Stadium

Epilogue

ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

I have so many people to thank for this book I hate to single any one person out. I can start with my wonderful wife who spared me for 2 years every day without fail to grind out the wonderful things I remembered about my 8+ years with the NY Yankees. I found myself re-examining some of the things I had originally felt about certain players that I had thought were responsible for our lack of winning pennants. I then remembered that I was part of that group as well. For that, I shoulder some of the blame for my part in the Horace Clarke Era.

The original idea for this book came from a great Yankee fan, New Yorker, Bill Heyman, who thought a book called, Teammates for Life should be written. Bill had surmised from some of the emails I had copied him that I had sent to some of my teammates over the past 2 or 3 years that we really were teammates for life. Bill enjoyed reading some of the previously unwritten things I had emailed to some of my ex teammates along with their responses back to me. Marty Appel, a fantastic author and friend in New York suggested the title of the book be, When the Yankees Were on the Fritz. Marty was the Public Relations Director for the Yankees during most of my career and did a terrific job there.

Thanks to Sarah Woodbury, a prolific writer and educator for getting me started back writing again. Also, her friend and formatting expert Jolea Harrison for overriding all of my amateurish efforts to format my own book.

My illustrator, Tony Ficca, did the book cover, as he always does, about which I have heard nothing but extreme satisfaction from everyone who has ever seen it. Tony has been with this book from day one, offering illustrations and thoughts about all of those years which he fondly remembers. We have been best friends for years now. Without Feces (Tony's nickname) this book would not be here. I almost got to officiate he and his wonderful wife, Carolyn's wedding in 2013. Because of a time conflict, Judge Meola, from Hawthorne NJ was accorded the honor instead.

I hope I wasn't too harsh on some of my ex-teammates but they know my weird sense of humor so I think I will get a pass from them. In one instance, my good friend Jim Bouton reprimanded me for something I said about an overweight player who had recently passed away. I genuinely apologized to Jim about it with copies to the two friends that I had sent copies of that email to. Just about everything that could be said about me has been, of which I'm not mad at anyone for saying. I supposed that I should be more sensitive, but I'm not.

As usual, I appreciate my attorneys who keep me a free man while I write these books. They know I'm left-handed! They are: Jim Roth in Dubuque, IA, John Tormey III in New York City, and Joseph Skemp, Jr., in LaCrosse, WI. My accountant, David Puff has been extraordinary along with my mentor in New Jersey, Jon Hanson! Finally, a special thanks to my good friend and best photographer in the world, Michael Grossbardt for letting me use a prize winning photograph of his for the cover of this book!

Thanks especially to two special baseball wives who have enjoyed copies I have sent them along the way; Jean Stottlemyre and Kay Murcer. You'll like this one girls, you lived part of it!

Lastly, thanks to our 7 children who have kept us, especially my wife, young. Personally I am ready for the nursing home, I need a rest. Bring on those Depends!

1st Inning

1966 (Record: 70-89)

End of a Dynasty

"It is official. The incredible New York Yankee Dynasty has crumbled and, like Humpty Dumpty, it appears doubtful it can ever be put together again.

From first place and the World Series in 1964 to last place in 1966 – the fall was quick and distressing. The Yankees lost 16 of their first 20 games this season and fired Manager Johnny Keane. Ralph Houk went from the front office back to the dugout but, confronted by injuries to key players like Mickey Mantle, Roger Maris, and Whitey Ford, he could not halt the skid. The Yankees fell to 70-89, finishing a half game behind ninth-place Boston.

The realization that the Yankees are mortal comes as a shock to fans who watched them win 29 American League pennants and capture a record 20 World Series titles in a 44-year period from 1921 to '64. The Yankees, simply were better than everybody else then and if they faltered, they simply would reload with prudent signings or one-sided trades.

But no more. The 1965 Bronx Bombers fell to sixth place and the '66 Yanks dropped the rest of the way into the basement. The 'MISTIQUE' is dead."

(Ron Smith, The Sporting News: Chronicle of Baseball, 1993)

1966 – Yankees welcome Fritz Peterson to their starting rotation.

The piece above, by Ron Smith, called, End of a Dynasty was included in a book put together by the Sporting News, Chronicling baseball from 1900 to 1992. It depicts the state of the Yankees that I walked into as I entered the Major Leagues with the New York Yankees in the spring of 1966.

Mel Stottlemyre had gotten to the Yankees in time to taste what it felt like to be in a World Series in 1964. In reality, Mel was the main reason the Yankees were in the World Series that year after winning 9 games for them from August 12th until the end of the season. The Yankees ended up one game ahead of the Chicago White Sox and two games ahead of Baltimore to win the pennant that season.

The start of the 1965 season should have been the beginning of a Baseball Hall of Fame career for Mel but instead, he would never see another World Series game as a player again. Mel was about to enter, The Horace Clarke Era, (1966-1974) during which time the Yankees would not win a pennant again for 11 straight years!

By the time I became Mel's teammate in 1966 he had already become a 20 game winner the year before but would, in fact, become a 20 game loser during my rookie season. If we would have had a crystal ball, we would have seen that for the rest of our playing careers, our journeys would not be easy ones. It was like falling from the big show to the no show in one year that would last for the rest of our careers as pitchers for the New York Yankees. My rookie season, 1966, would be the first time in history that the New York Yankees would finish in last place. Call it bad timing if you'd like, but had Mel been either ten years before, or after the time he actually played, he would have been a Hall of Famer five years after his playing days were over.

When I saw a picture of Mel and me at New York Yankee Fantasy camp in 2007, I broke down and cried, something I never did before, not even at my parents’ funerals or even at Thurman Munson's in 1979. After I saw the picture I wasn't able to speak for several minutes and couldn't even go up to the front of the banquet hall where Mel & I had been asked to announce the names of our teammates for that fantasy camp in Tampa, FL. When I saw that picture, all I could think about is all the time Mel and I spent together in New York going through very tough years, then all the struggles we have gone through in our personal lives since then. One of those things included every parent’s nightmare when Mel & Jean lost a child to leukemia in 1981. Then, in about 1999, Mel and I both got cancer, which we are still battling to this day. The feelings were just too much for me to handle and caused me to lose it. Even though we'd been apart for almost 40 years by then, it seemed like we had never been apart for a day, an hour, or even a second.

It brought back other memories like the day Jake Gibbs, our backup catcher, told Mel and me in the dugout that he was going to retire after the 1972 season. We looked at each other and both of our arms started aching immediately after hearing that. That was just a down payment!

This book is about those years on the Yankees, being a part of the Horace Clarke Era and how it felt to be there during that segment of time in Yankee history.

The Horace Clarke Era – 1966-1974

Horace Meredith Clarke (born June 2, 1940, in Frederiksted, St. Croix, United States Virgin Islands) was a Major League Baseball player for the New York Yankees and the San Diego Padres from 1965 to 1974.

He was signed by the Yankees as an amateur free agent in 1958. He made his Major League Baseball debut on May 13, 1965. In 1967, he became the Yankees' regular second baseman upon the retirement of longtime veteran Bobby Richardson. In 10 seasons, he hit .256, with 27 home runs and 304 RBI. In the space of one month in 1970, he broke up three possible no-hitters in the ninth inning (Jim Rooker[1] on June 4, Sonny Siebert[2] on June 19 and, Joe Niekro[3] on July 2). That season, Clarke made 732 plate appearances (batting 686 times officially). As a fielder, though, the knock on Clarke was that he would not turn the double play with runners barreling in. Few ever took him out with a slide, but Clarke would hold the ball after leaping.

Clarke was sold to the San Diego Padres on May 31, 1974, for $25,000. He retired at the end of the 1974 season. After his retirement, he worked as a baseball instructor for the Virgin Islands Department of Recreation and as an assistant scout for the Kansas City Royals.

Horace Clarke speaks out:

Asked how he felt about having his name permanently linked to such an inglorious period of New York Yankee history, Clarke said, You see, every time I hear 'the Horace Clarke Era' I don't know how to take it, but I think it is mostly because we were losing and I was a member of all those teams. I could understand fans, writers, and commentators were spoiled at being so successful for so long. I know how the fans feel about the drought that we went through, it was a let down during that losing Era. But when I hear it I think, 'Here we go again. The Horace Clarke Era, the Horace Clarke Years.' I’m going to tell you something, while I was there some guys (writers) always targeted me, I was targeted more than anybody I think because I played just about every day. When I was traded to San Diego a writer wrote, 'You know, that guy wasn’t so bad after all.' Because he had gone to the record books and saw what I had done over those years.

With all due respect, the San Diego Padres released Horace just 4 months after they bought him from the Yankees. He hit only .189 for them in just 90 at bats. The San Diego Padres didn't get their money's worth out of Horace because Horace was through! So was the Horace Clarke Era!

A little history about Fritz Peterson

Like most kids, when I was in Little League, I dreamed about being a big league baseball player some day but never really thought it would be possible. Even though I was a Chicago White Sox fan (because my dad was) I always thought the Yankees were in a class of their own. Whitey Ford would usually beat Chicago's best pitcher, Billy Pierce (my favorite) and in the process, the Yankees would always pound out home runs like they were going out of style. After all, the Yankees played in the shadow of the man they named their stadium after, Babe Ruth; The House That Ruth Built. It was ironic that I ended up being the starting pitcher in the last game ever played in The House That Ruth Built in 1973. I also ended up having the lowest career earned run average of any pitcher that ever pitched at Old Yankee Stadium in its 85 year history. I had a 2.52 ERA while Whitey Ford ended up coming in 2nd with a 2.58 ERA. Imagine, the guy that used to beat my boyhood idol, Billy Pierce, The Chairman of the Board – Whitey Ford coming in 2nd place behind me, an ex-Chicago native and ex-White Sox fan. No way! Way!

Mel Stottlemyre came in 4th with a 2.67 overall ERA at Yankee Stadium. Mel had a distinct disadvantage of spending his entire career in a left-handed hitter’s paradise. The reason the right field fence had been pulled in from its inception in 1923 stemmed from the Yankees accommodating the man they had built the stadium for – Babe Ruth. Mariano Rivera came in third, but was a reliever who hitters never faced more than once in any game. Mariano's ERA at the stadium was 2.61. To put all that ERA stuff in proportion, it might surprise you to know that Roger Clemens had a 3.53 ERA at the stadium and Andy Pettitte had a 3.70 lifetime ERA there. Whitey Ford is already in the Hall of Fame, and Mariano Rivera is a shoe-in for it five years after he retired. Mel should have been too! Clemens would have been as well, but...? What a difference being on a winning ball team makes! During the years Mel and I played on the Yankees together we never came close to winning a single pennant other than possibly in 1972. There were 4 teams in the race that year with only 3 weeks left to go in the season. The Yankees were one of those four. We fell short when we lost the last 5 games of the season.

Signing with the Yankees.

I ended up signing with the New York Yankees in 1963 (before the baseball draft) and spent 2 ½ years in the minor leagues watching the real Yankees play on T.V. almost every Saturday afternoon on the Game of The Week. The Yankees were almost always the game of the week in those days, because overall, they were the best team in baseball in the 1950s and early 1960s.

After watching the Yankees play so much on TV before I got there, I felt like I knew them personally. I didn’t, of course, but I did know their names when I saw them. The Yankees always seemed to be better than my White Sox teams because, in fact, they were, except for the 1959 season. The Yankees always had an aura about them.

In the Fall of 1965 I got a letter from the New York Yankees big team informing me that I had been added to the team’s 40 man roster. It was the first letter I ever got from the real Yankee office. The two previous years I had gotten my letters from the Yankee Minor League office based in Hollywood, Florida telling us when and where to report around March 1st. This time the letter was from the real Yankees in Bronx, NY meaning that I'd be going to spring training with the big team in February. It was a little scary but exciting at the same time. Other than having met some of the players briefly on the team bus from the hotel in Chicago in 1963 when I was trying out with the Yankees during a road trip they had to Chicago in June of 1963, I had never met a real major league player before face to face. I realized then that I was actually going to the real ballpark in Ft. Lauderdale, FL, a park that the minor league players weren't allowed to visit even though Hollywood, FL was only 5 miles away from Ft. Lauderdale. It was a real mental step forward in life for me. Imagine seeing Mantle, Maris, Ford, Bouton, Stottlemyre, Howard and the rest of them that I had been watching for the last 3 summers on TV in only a matter of weeks!

Spring Training 1966

By the time I got to go to my first spring with the Yankees in 1966 and then making the team, I figured that I'd be in line for many world series checks coming in from post season play every season. My scouts even used that fact to sell me on the idea of signing with the Yankees rather than with the Kansas City A's, the only other team interested in signing me. The Yankees are always in the series they said in 1963 and it turned out that they were in the midst of winning the American League pennant 5 years in a row. It was a great feeling. There was one slight problem. My scouts forgot to tell me that the Yankee owners, Del Webb and Dan Topping, the ones who signed my bonus check in 1963, were slowly fazing out of baseball at the time and weren't replacing their current stars with top minor league prospects like they used to. Although the Yankees’ streak of success from 1921 until 1964 was unprecedented, their current roster of players was running out of gas. Even though the names were the same in 1966, with the exception of Tony Kubek, the ability levels weren't and we finished in last place for the first time since the team had first been renamed the New York Yankees in 1913!

Jim Bouton was really nice to me that spring. He and I just sort of hit it off, especially when he found out that my best friend's sister, Elaine, had been a flame of Jim's in high school from Homewood, Illinois. During the second week of spring training, the position players arrived. That's when I got to see Mantle for the first time as a player and future teammate. Just looking at him was intimidating. He looked exactly like I'd pictured him.

That was the setting for my first year in the big leagues. Big expectations, bigger disappointments. We were about to enter into the Horace Clarke Era. More accurately, for all intents and purposes, mentally, physically, and emotionally, the Era actually began in 1965 when Johnny Keane became the Yankee manager. Clarke was on the team in 1965 (playing only 51 games) but didn't become the regular Yankee second baseman until 1967, Bobby Richardson's first year out of baseball. That year was the season that baseball historians and Yankee fans attribute formally with the Horace Clarke Era. I consider the Era to be from 1966, when Horace took over 2nd base for Bobby Richardson that September, until Horace was sold to the San Diego Padres in May of 1974, a month after I had been traded to the Cleveland Indians.

During my first spring training I was doing really well with the big club but my real test came when I was the starting pitcher for a spring training game in Sarasota, FL, against the Chicago White Sox, my favorite team growing up in Chicago as a kid. It was broadcast on the radio back to Chicago and my dad was able to hear the game. Bob Elson was a favorite of mine and my dad's growing up in Chicago. He was the play by play guy on WGN Radio in Chicago.

Before the game, Whitey Ford came up to me and said, Hey kid, I hate to tell you this, but this is IT. What he meant was if I did well in that game I would make the team. If not – oh well! I think Whitey knew that I had already made the team but I hadn't been aware of it yet. I love it now, thinking about what he said to me, but then it was a little nerve racking. It didn't matter at the end of the day because I went 6 innings and only gave up one run. Thanks Whitey. Maybe that's why I have white hair myself now?

At the end of spring training in 1966, we played an exhibition game in Atlanta. When it was over we flew up to New York City. I had never been in New York before, which made it really exciting flying into the Big Apple for the first time. NY City seemed like it was big enough to pack ten Chicago's into it! Chicago had been the only city I had flown into before that night for a tryout in Kansas City with the A's back in June, 1963. Flying into Chicago was neat at the time but nothing like flying into New York City. NY City even has 3 functional airports! Chicago only has one and a half. Midway Airport is just for the cheap, sketchy airlines to fly in to. O'Hare Field is the only real airport in Chicago.

When our flight landed in New York, we took a charter bus from LaGuardia Airport to Yankee Stadium. I remember sitting on the bus as our guys boarded it for the ride to Yankee Stadium hearing our bus driver yell out the window, blow it out your ass to some cab drivers. They had been blasting their horns at our bus for blocking the taxi lane. Joe Pepitone, the team comedian at the time, shouted to all of us saying, Hey guys, we're back (meaning back in NY City). Everyone laughed; I got the picture. I would learn what he meant in the years to come and would come to love those years even more after I left New York nine years later than I did when I actually played there.

Start of the 1966 Season – Let's Play ball!

I started the season staying 3 blocks away at an older hotel in the Bronx called the Concourse Plaza Hotel. Horace Clarke stayed there most of his career because he liked being that close to the ballpark. I didn't really care that it was old because we were going on a road trip to Baltimore in less than a week and then I'd find a better place to stay. The day before the opener, the Yankees let all the fans into the Stadium for free to be able to watch our workout and sort of meet some of the new players that had made the team that Spring. That was a blast! Of course, all the fans wanted autographs and would try to talk us out of a baseball if we caught any in the outfield during batting practice. The autographs were fine, but Frank Crosetti, our third base coach, was in charge of the baseballs and would go berserk if anyone gave a ball away. The fans were very cunning and knew all the lines to use to try to get a baseball out of us. One even told me he had been Mickey Mantle's coach in high school! I told Mantle about the guy and Mickey told me that he wasn't his coach (in a nice way so as to not embarrass me) but said the next time someone tried that one again to give him the ball to sign. I did and Mickey signed it, Best F**king Wishes, Mickey Mantle so I could get a good laugh out of it. That ball is probably worth $10,000 today! Mickey was cool!

The team got off to a bad start in 1966, losing our first 3 games in New York. That turned out to be a precursor for the rest of the season, and the era we had just entered and were experiencing without knowing it. We then went on our first road trip to play Baltimore's home opener at Memorial Stadium after our opening 3 games in New York. I was the starting pitcher for the Yankees that day. It was scary! I had never pitched in front of a crowd that big before, 44,000+ people all hoping their team would beat the tar out of me. They didn't get their wish. We beat them 3-2, and I pitched the entire game. I thought my teammates would carry me off the field on their shoulders like they did in the movies once in a while. Although I had no free ride off the

Reviews for When the Yankees Were on the Fritz

[David Shipe · Rating: 4 out of 5 stars]

Interesting story about the bad Yankees some of their teams were really BAD good historical book on Yankee baseball

[rocketjk · Rating: 3 out of 5 stars]

Book 43: [When the Yankees Were On the Fritz: Revisiting the Horace Clarke Years] by Fritz PetersonFritz Peterson was a very good starting pitcher for the New York Yankees during the between-dynasty period of 1965 - 1974. Peterson and Mel Stottlemyre formed a very potent pitching tandem for several years, but unfortunately, other than Stottemyre's experiences in the World Series in his rookie year of 1964, neither ever pitched in a post-season game. This book is Peterson's memoir of those seasons, and his attempt to explain why those Yankees teams were so mediocre during that span despite their normally above average-to-excellent pitching staffs. Horace Clarke was the second baseman for all those seasons, and Peterson uses him to typify the mediocre quality of the position players that dotted the team's lineup. Peterson calls Clarke a good person and a hard worker. He was a mediocre hitter at best, and Peterson claims that Clarke was unwilling to complete doubleplays when there was a runner bearing down on him. He wouldn't "take one for the team," as Peterson puts it. That period of Yankee history actually corresponds with my most passionate devotion to the team as a young fame, so I was very much looking forward to reading Peterson's memoir. Sadly, the book suffers from several flaws. One is that Peterson was an inveterate prankster and practical joker, and he delights in this book in relating an endless stream of such highjinks. I'm not really a fan of that sort of humor, so these anecdotes eventually made me impatient. Also, Peterson insists on giving thumbnail sketches of just about every player who was his teammate, for no matter how brief a time. In part these serve to make Peterson's point that the Yankees were contenting themselves over those years with bringing in over-the-hill veterans, or trading for "can't miss" young players who fizzled, as illustrations of why the Yankees could never win. But mostly, it seems, each such sketch provides an opportunity to describe the nicknames he gave each player and the pranks he pulled on them. Finally, this is a self-published memoir, and the editing is simply atrocious. The reader stumbles over everything from egregious grammar and syntax errors, to anecdotes clearly missing entire sentences, to repetition, to the point of whole paragraphs sometimes being recreated in their entirety in multiple chapters. As a matter of fact, I believe the book is created on a "print-on-demand" basis, and I began to suspect that someone had printed out the wrong version of the file for my order. For example, there are frequent references to photographs that do not actually appear.When Peterson actually gets down to talking real baseball, reminiscing about particular games and pennant races, the book is, indeed, as interesting as I was hoping it would be. Sadly, that doesn't happen often enough. Peterson has been diagnosed with Alzheimer's Disease, so maybe the pre-diagnosis onset of that horrible affliction affected the creation of this book. Illness or not, though, I wish Peterson had chosen to solicit the help of an editor. Anyway, Fritz is, was and always will be one of my very favorite ballplayers.