Pride of October by Bill Madden

Author:Bill Madden [MADDEN, BILL]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: SPO003000
ISBN: 9780446554602
Publisher: Grand Central Publishing
Published: 2008-12-14T00:00:00+00:00

From the very beginning—in 1957 when he arrived for good as the second base heir apparent to Billy Martin—it had become evident to the old-guard Yankees of Casey Stengel that Bobby Richardson was different from the rest of them. He wasn’t the typical jock athlete indifferent to the gifts God bestowed on him; he didn’t drink, he didn’t smoke and he didn’t cuss. He was 21 and married happily to his Sumter, South Carolina, hometown sweetheart, the former Betsy Dobson, who was only 17. Not only that, he kept a New Testament Bible in his locker, and during idle moments might even be observed reading it while the conversation across the room among the other Yankees featured tales of late-night escapades and boozy triumphs. And his best friend on the team, Tony Kubek, the all-purpose man who now seemed to be gradually settling in at shortstop, was much like him insofar as their mutual sharing of Christian values. They’d come up together through the system, each achieving All-Star status at Triple A Denver in 1956, when Richardson hit .328 and Kubek .331. Kubek, a gangly, shy farm boy from the dairy land of Wisconsin, was single but eschewed the bar and party scene that in most cases captivated a young, unattached, famous Yankee.

Someone—no one could ever remember who it was—dubbed them the “Milk Shake Boys” but if it was meant to be a mocking of their clean-living image, they weren’t offended, and it stuck.

In the ribald Yankee clubhouse, theirs was one corner where temperance had its place. Pete Sheehy, the venerable custodian of the Yankee clubhouse since the days of Babe Ruth, saw to that. Right away, he knew Richardson and Kubek were a different breed and, so, he strategically set them up, side by side, out of earshot of the profanity, next to the old-school coach, Frank Crosetti, who concerned himself only with the game day preparation and the accounting of the baseballs.

“Pete was amazing like that,” Richardson said. “He put Tony and I right there on the left side of the clubhouse as you walked in and we couldn’t hear anything that was going on at the other end of the room. The other guys all knew how we were about things; that we loved the Lord, and they respected that. I used to bring my kids into the clubhouse a lot and they’d invariably go right over to Mickey’s locker. One time, though, Hank Bauer motioned to my son Robbie, who was only two at the time, to come over to his locker and take a sip of beer. ‘C’mon’ he said, ‘this’ll help you grow up to be a man.’ I said something to Hank about not to do that, but he persisted and kept offering Robbie a sip of the beer. He was just fooling around, but then he realized I was serious. We later apologized to each other, but I guess that was the first real time the other players came to know what I was about.

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