The occasionally unreliable prism of history fools us sometimes. For Yankees fans, “1965” conjures distinct, and thoroughly unappetizing, feelings, the same way “1970” is anathema for Beatles fans, the way “1980” is for Democrats, the way “1994” is for baseball fans as a whole.
Nineteen sixty-five: Not just a year, but a symbol, not just a reference point but a jumping-off point. History tries to compartmentalize things for us and so looking back, it seems inevitable that the Yankees’ 44-year run of dominance on top of the sport would end: the institution of a player-dispersal draft, the American League’s slow embrace of integration, the onset of aloof corporate management thanks to the arrival of CBS.
All of that may have been true. But so is this: the 1965 Yankees had seven of the same every-day players as the ’64 Yankees (save for Roger Maris, limited to 30 games with injury), had four-fifths of their starting rotation intact, had, in essence, the same team back that had won 99 games the year before, taken the Cardinals to Game 7 of the World Series.
And fell apart anyway, winning 22 fewer games, tumbling to sixth place, 25 full games behind the pennant-winning Twins.
You hear a lot of talk about 1965 this spring, some of it from concerned Yankees fans who fear a 20-year gravy train that¹s yielded five championships, seven pennants and 17 playoff appearances may be careening toward a brick wall, much of it from hopeful Yankees haters figuring that one of these years the arithmetic is going to catch up.
For Yankees fans of a certain vintage, fortunate enough to own a healthy dosage of perspective, this actually has the opportunity to be something of an enjoyable year: for once, the Yankees aren¹t the hunted. For once, you can keep a straight face and talk about your team as underdogs, as the hunters, as a team capable of surprising the world.
In its way, that¹s a refreshing change of pace.
But it also obscures what may be the most troubling link to the Yankees’ forebears. Because it wasn¹t as if anyone saw the collapse of ’65 coming.
Almost every major publication picked the Yankees to win a sixth straight pennant. It wouldn¹t be until the next year, 1966, that Ralph Houk would famously say, in the midst of an extended funk, “You know Mantle is going to hit, you know Maris is going to hit. You know Tresh is going to hit …” But the sentiment was the same. And they collapsed anyway. Yankees fans who choose to see their spring as half-sunny right now point to the familiar, to Derek Jeter and Mariano Rivera and Andy Pettitte, to Robinson Cano and the injured duo of Mark Teixeira and Curtis Granderson, to a strong rotation and a stronger bullpen, and they see comfort in the familiar.
As did Yankees fans in the spring of ’65.
Does that mean the ’13 Yankees are doomed already? It does not. Every AL East team has holes, has flaws, and the Yankees have more winning muscle memory than any of them. Still, history has a funny way of navigating its way into our present, even when we see it coming.
Mets fans know that too well; their problem is that they aren¹t sure if it’s 1968/1984 (when fresh winds of hope and young pitchers foretold wonderful years to come), or 1962/1993 (which is impossible not to think about when you ponder the outfield Terry Collins will send out against the National League every day) or, let’s be honest, 2011/2012, when on any given day you could find six things to like and eight things to hate about the team, its present and its near future.
Much has been made about which of our local nines have the sunnier future, calmer waters ahead, and if both seasons go sour that’ll be the greater baseball debate this summer. For now? There are no sunken ships just yet.
But the baseball season passes in an eyeblink. Soon enough you may hear a cry of S.O.S. Or two.
The bummer of ’65
The Yankees had won 29 of the previous 45 AL pennants (and 20 championships) heading into 1965, but it all fell apart for them in a rush that year. Here are five reasons why:
KARMA¹S A SWITCH
Yogi Berra was a surprise choice to skipper the ’64 club, but he won 99 games and Yanks pushed Cardinals to Game 7. Two days later, he was canned and replaced by Johnny Keane — who’d been managing the Cards — the first of two shabby dismissals Yogi endured from the Yankees 21 years apart.
ROGER & OUT
In April, Roger Maris, still only 30, hurt his hamstring in a game in Kansas City and when he returned he promptly broke his hand. His season consisted of 46 games, 155 at-bats and eight home runs, and he wouldn’t regain his stroke until he was traded to the Cardinals in 1967.
BALL FOUR … AND MORE
The Yankees pitching staff, which carried them in ’64, bottomed out.
Though young Mel Stottlemyre won 20, Whitey Ford’s ERA rose by more than a run in his last effective full year and Jim Bouton went from 18-13 to 4-15 (his ERA rising almost two runs a game).
BEGINNING OF THE END
At the end of 1964, Mickey Mantle was a .309 lifetime hitter. The decline that would chop some 11 points off that mark by the time he retired in
1968 began with a brutal year of .255, 19 HR, 46 RBIs, and a drop-off of nearly 200 points from his ’64 OPS.
BLACK EYE FOR BLACK ROCK
Fairly or not, the Yankees’ decline coincided with CBS buying 80 percent of the team from Dan Topping and Del Webb just after the ’64 World Series.
A cold, corporate shield instantly fell around the team, and that wouldn¹t dissipate until CBS sold the team — at a $3 million loss — to George Steinbrenner in 1973.
michael.vaccaro@nypost.com