The New York Times
Published: February 12, 2007
As the sports world knows, the Yankees’ home uniform has pinstripes with the interlocking letters NY, but the die-hard eye can see the two invisible inner circles sewn into it. One contains the four players who were on each of the four World Series championship teams over the five seasons from 1996 to 2000, the other includes the dozen players who won a record five consecutive World Series from 1949 to 1953.
But with the apparent absence of the longtime center fielder Bernie Williams from this year’s team and the death of the grizzled outfielder Hank Bauer, each of those Yankees inner circles is not quite the same.
Williams, Derek Jeter, Mariano Rivera and Andy Pettitte were the only four to contribute to all four Series titles during Joe Torre’s first five seasons as the manager. But with Williams spurning the Yankees’ offer to come to spring training on a minor league contract and wait for a roster spot to open, only Jeter, Rivera and Pettitte, who has returned to the Yankees this season, remain active.
The living members of the 1949-1953 inner circle are Yogi Berra, Phil Rizzuto, Jerry Coleman, Bobby Brown and Charlie Silvera. Over the weekend, they mourned Bauer, who died Friday at 84 and is now in the big Yankees dugout in the sky with Allie Reynolds, Vic Raschi, Eddie Lopat, Joe Collins, Gene Woodling and Johnny Mize.
Williams and Bauer — from different eras but each a Yankee to remember in a different way.
Williams never raised his voice. Bauer seldom lowered his. Williams liked to play classical guitar during his quiet hours. Bauer seldom had quiet hours.
Williams, out of Puerto Rico, was a shy American League batting champion, the best center fielder in Yankees history after Joe DiMaggio and Mickey Mantle.
Bauer, out of East St. Louis, Ill., earned two Bronze Stars and two Purple Hearts as a marine during World War II before playing with DiMaggio and Mantle.
Williams played every day. Bauer, who hit safely in a record 17 consecutive Series games, hated platooning alongside DiMaggio and then Mantle.
Williams will always be beloved by Yankees fans, who chanted “One more year” late in the 2005 season. And the front office gave him one more year.
Bauer has always been beloved by Yankees fans, even though he was the Orioles’ manager when they swept the 1966 World Series from the Dodgers.
Williams made a lot of money, notably his seven-year, $87.5 million contract after the 1998 season when the Yankees had to top an offer from the Red Sox.
Bauer didn’t make much money in his era, two decades before free agency, but he probably had more fun with it than Williams has with his millions.
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When the incident at the Copacabana night club hit the front pages in 1957, Bauer was accused of slugging a customer. Bauer, Berra, Whitey Ford, Gil McDougald and Johnny Kucks were there with their wives along with Mantle and Billy Martin, whose birthday they were celebrating. Sammy Davis Jr. was performing. Ford, in his 1987 book, “Slick,” wrote:
“There was another group not too far from us sitting at a big long table. It turned out it was a bowling team, and they had been there several hours. That was obvious because they were pretty well juiced and they were making a lot of noise. They started calling Sammy Davis ‘Sambo’ and making other racial remarks. Bauer yelled over to them to cool it in a nice way, not hostile.
“But the next thing we know, one of the guys said, ‘Who’s going to make me?’ Then he got up, and it looked like he and Bauer were going to get into it. They walked to a room in the back, and the rest of us got up and followed just in case. The guy who said that to Hank got to the back room before any of us, even Hank.
“All of a sudden, we heard a crash, and by the time we got there, the guy was stretched out on the floor. My eyes never left Hank, so I know he didn’t do it. And Billy was right next to me all the time, so I know he didn’t do it. And I know I didn’t do it. To this day, I don’t know who slugged the guy. I think it was one of the Copa bouncers, because it was a real professional job.”
George Weiss, the Yankees’ general manager, hit each of the Yankees at the Copa that night with a $1,000 fine, and Martin was traded to the Kansas City Athletics a month later. After the 1959 season, Bauer also went to the Athletics in a trade for Roger Maris, who hit 61 home runs during the 1961 season.
But like Bernie Williams in that other inner circle that only a Yankees die-hard eye can see, Hank Bauer will always be thought of as a Yankee.
And he always thought of himself that way. “The Yankee logo,” he once said of the interlocking NY, “is like a college degree from Harvard.”
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