"Trenton, New Jersey's contribution to the Yankees is southpaw Al Downing. The 22-year-old was called up by manager Ralph Houk in June to fill a void in the club's starting ranks. After two brief earlier Yankee trials, Al hoped to make it with the parent club this time.
His first start on June 10 at Washington resulted in his first major league victory, a brilliant nine-strikeout shutout win. He followed this with his first win in Yankee Stadium, a complete game 9-2 victory over archrival Detroit. Again, Downing posted nine strikeouts and, as this was written, he was still maintaining a better than one strikeout per inning pace."
-The New York Yankees Official 1963 Yearbook
Alfonso Erwin Downing (P) #24
Born June 28, 1941, in Trenton, N.J., where he resides. Height: 5-11, weight: 173. Bats right, throws left.
-The New York Yankees Official 1963 Yearbook
KID WITH THE K-ARM
Downing Looks Like Up-And-Coming Yankee
"They're one-in-a-thousand, kids with K in their arms. They're one in a generation when it's their left arm that throws a strikeout pitch.* Al Downing has a south paw that fires a pitch that explodes. During the first six weeks after he reported to the New York Yankees from their Richmond farm in June, he rifled 91 strikeouts in 77.1 innings, with totals of 10, 14, 10, 10 and 9 in five successive games, including three shutouts and a one-hitter. By mid-August he had won eight while losing only three and had an earned run average of 2.62.
Of course, Downing could be a flash in the pan, for it takes more than a few games and even more than a few seasons to get up there with Lefty Grove and Sandy Koufax as a cannonball star. But, in the estimation of seasoned baseball men, the Trenton kid, age 22, can't miss.
'He's the best I've seen since I left the National League,' said Birdie Tebbetts, after Al struck out 14 of his Indians. 'He looks like the American League's answer to Sandy Koufax,' says Ralph Houk, Yankee manager. 'He pitches a little like Whitey Ford, a little like Warren Spahn,' says Johnny Sain, the Yankee pitching coach. Your Baseball Digest reporter firmly believes Downing will be Whitey Ford's successor as the Yankee southpaw ace for the next ten years or so, provided his arm holds out.
Most fireball flingers are big men who put poundage-power into their fast hard one. Al is a little fellow, baseballically speaking: five-eleven, 173 pounds, one inch taller but five pounds lighter than his idol, Ford. Like Ford, the extra ingredient in his pitching is savvy, or, as Johnny Sain puts it, 'The kid's a thinker, not a thrower.' How Al got that way is the guts of his story, the story of a young man who seriously studied the game of baseball from the time he was 14 years old.
Al was born and grew up in Trenton, New Jersey, an industrial city with a cosmopolitan population. There were eight children in the Downing family; they lived comfortably on the $9,000 annual income of Al's father, a construction superintendent. Al's mother died when he was six and an aunt took care of the younger Downings.
Al first played team ball when he was eight. 'A bunch of us kids on our street would get together and challenge kids from other streets or nearby project houses. We played on sandlots or in the school playground, or wherever we could stake out a diamond. We'd bring along an older boy to act as umpire but otherwise we were unsupervised. We had no uniforms; we bought our own balls, bats and gloves and we learned the game the way the oldtimers used to. It was great fun, discovering new things you could do.
'The neighborhood had a mix of Italians, Jews and Negroes. The fact that Al was a Negro was no handicap in Trenton. 'I never gave it a thought,' he says. 'We kids played together, went to the movies and seashore together, never mentioned any differences in race, religion or color.'
At 11 Al joined a Little League club. 'It was still fun, because playing baseball has always been fun to me. But we only played once a week, instead of almost every day. We had to wear uniforms and play under a manager- it was almost like being in the big leagues. And when that season ended and I was a year older I was past the age limit for Little League ball, and too small to play on a Babe Ruth League team.'
To a 12-year-old less passionately interested in baseball than Al, this gap between boy-ball and adolescent-ball might have turned his energies toward another sport. 'Not me. I went looking for games in the municipal and recreational leagues and found 'em. I played first, the outfield and pitched, mostly pitched. I'd always wanted to be a pitcher. I wanted to be the one who ran the game: if I'd ever played football, I'd have wanted to be the quarterback.'
Al was still a little fellow at 14, but his love for the game was so great that he joined the Babe Ruth League team in his vicinity, fighting for a regular starting assignment on a six-man pitching staff. 'I was No. 6,' he relates. 'I wasn't used much the first year but had a 2-2 record. It wasn't until the next year that I had the first inkling I might make good as a ballplayer, even though I was the smallest kid on the squad. We entered the regional tournament that year. I went in as a relief pitcher in the third inning of a championship game and won it. That gave me confidence. If you haven't got confidence in your ability to win, you won't get anywhere in baseball or anywhere else.'
In 1956, when Al was 15, he entered Trenton Union High School and pitched with a hard ball with organized baseball rules for the first time. And for the first time he fell under the eye of a competent coach. 'Carl Palumbo was a strict disciplinarian who impressed us fellows with the necessity of disciplining ourselves. He insisted that I do a lot of running to harden my legs and improve my wind, and I've done it ever since. I think that's why I can throw hard from start to finish in a nine-inning game. Mr. Palumbo kept us working on fielding, too, breaking the squad into infield and outfield units who would work together smoothly.'
Al needed no one to tell him to keep working on his pitching. He was a veteran of hundreds of games by the time he was 16. He had acquired a curve and taught himself how to throw a change-up from the same motion as his fastball, a remarkable feat for a lad of his age.
'I used to practice control, too, throwing at a target until I could hit it any time. Mr. Palumbo didn't tinker with my pitching. He argued that self-control was as important as control of the ball. A boy can be taught how to throw but unless he has confidence in his knowledge of what he is throwing, he won't be much good. My record in the Babe Ruth League hadn't been so hot at first, but after I got confidence it zoomed. I pitched five of our ten games that last season, four shutouts and a seven-inning no-hitter for five victories. The other teams scored only two runs off me all season. I also pitched the opening and closing games of the Babe Ruth World Series, winning both, including a shutout in the last game. That's when I decided that I might be a big leaguer one day.'
The other Al Downing, the young man who went to high school classes five days a week, was equally earnest in his search for higher knowledge. 'I took an academic course, I got plenty of A's and B's, but very few C's. I had fantasies of maybe being a doctor or lawyer, but when I started thinking about it, heck, I'd go back to baseball, that's where I wanted to be.
'My favorite subject was European history because it dealt with all those dynasties and rambled around from country to country, like I want to do someday. My heroes were the Lafitte brothers, Jean and Pierre, the pirates, because they were daring and whole men. It wasn't the same old stuff about Lafayette riding onto a battlefield on a white horse, you know, and saving everybody. Not all the heroes were good guys, as our teachers tried to get us to believe.
'But my real hero was Whitey Ford and No. 2 was Warren Spahn. I started to follow Whitey's career in 1950 when he came up to the Yankees. I was only nine then but he was a lefty like me and small like me, and the way he went right in and won big games inspired me. I never dreamed then that I'd be on the Yankees with him.'
When the baseball season ended in high school, Al still an itch for a ball in his hands and went out for basketball. He learned the court game quickly, won a spot as a guard in his junior year, became a co-captain and won All-State honors as a senior, and was rewarded with a basketball scholarship to Muhlenberg College.
But basketball could not lure him away from his first love, baseball. After he was graduated from high school in 1959 he organized a semipro team which battled its way into a national tournament in Wichita, Kansas. On that trip he pitched against a pickup team composed of minor leaguers, some in AAA ball- and faced Satchell Paige. 'I did fairly good against them, pitching five innings and losing, 5-3, and striking out 12, and only giving up four hits, which were sandwiched around four or five walks. After the game Satch said, 'Kid, you threw the ball hard. If you learn to get the ball over the plate more consistently, you'll be a pretty good pitcher. Here's my philosophy of pitching- throw the ball hard but keep it down around the knees. Then when I get men on base I just throw the old snakey and make 'em and make 'em hit it on the ground.' '
During that tournament, Frank O'Rourke, Yankee scout in southern New Jersey, saw Al fire his fastball and started the train of events that was to bring the Trenton youth to the Stadium two years later. The Yankees played it cool, O'Rourke expressing no more than a polite interest but with typical efficiency they placed a 'round-the-clock watch on Fireball Al. Their private eye was Bill Yancey, former star of the Negro professional leagues and famous as an all-time basketball star with the peerless New York Rens.
Yancey, who lives in Moorestown, N.J., was already acquainted with the Trenton southpaw, who he had first espied in his capacity as a scout for the Philadelphia Phillies. Now there were conferences in the Yankee front office, and Bill Skiff, chief scout and inheritor of the policy which had brought scores of great players to the Stadium, approached Yancey, signing as a full-time ferreter of Negro talent.
When it comes to scouting future Yankees, the House of Champions is choosy. A Yankee must be well-bred, mannerly, capable of wearing custom-made clothes and the right tie; he must be abstemious, serious and a heck of a ballplayer. Yancey visited the Downing home, became acquainted with Al's father, his brothers and sisters. He filed as many personnel reports as details of Al's mound techniques.
Al met the requirements in every respect, privately and on the diamond. His college marks were above average. As a freshman he was unable to play varsity ball at Muhlenberg; he went to work under his father's supervision after the spring term ended and enrolled at Temple University's nighttime courses in the fall of 1960. 'I pulled nails out of wood, picked up bricks, you know, that sort of thing,' Al laughs. 'But I was getting sick for baseball that summer and when Bill Yancey called me up and asked me to sign a contract with the Yankees I was the happiest kid alive.'
Al signed his contract in December 1960. He was assigned to Binghamton in the Eastern League. He had speed, control, a curve, a change-up and that super-fast ball. He was a 150-pounder, a miniature as pitchers go. But he had enthusiasm, confidence and a clear, level head. By July, he was leading the league in victories, with nine, against only one loss.
The Yanks, under Ralph Houk's freshman leadership, were suddenly strapped for front-line pitching, what with Art Ditmar fading fast and Bob Turley suffering from the arm troubles that were to result in an elbow operation at the season's end. With but three months' pro experience behind him, Al received a summons from the Big Team.
He was just 21. The press and broadcasting commentators made a big fuss about him. Camermen chased him around the ball park. And Ralph Houk said, 'Ordinarily I'd put you in the bullpen for a few weeks but I'm so short of pitching that I'll have to start you soon.'
Elston Howard helped Al find a room in a hotel near the Stadium. Whitey Ford, his boyhood idol, told him about enemy batters. Hector Lopez gave him tips on how big leaguers act. On a hot July afternoon he faced the Washington Senators in the nightcap of a double-header. He struck out the first three batters to face him, using his lively fastball, his sweeping curve and blooping change-up.
But in the second inning, Gene Green singled. Al kept one eye on Green, the other on the plate. It couldn't be done. Before the carnage ended, Washington had scored seven runs. It was a case of too much, too soon.
Neither Al nor the Yankees were discouraged. A less stable pitcher, a less wise organization, might have made mistakes that would have ruined him as a rare prospect. Al sat on the bench for the remainder of the season, learning something each day. No one advised him to change his style or delivery. The key bit of advice he received came from Johnny Sain: 'With men on bases, Al, throw extra hard. Dig into the rubber with your back foot, rear up and let go.'
Last year Al reared back and let go with men on bases at Richmond. He also practiced pick-off moves until he could give a reasonable facsimile of Whitey Ford in action with men on bases. He fanned 180 men, tops for the AAA International League. 'I had plenty of opportunities to find out how to pitch with men on bases,' grins Al. 'I started 31 games, which was also high for the league.'
With a full professional season behind him, Al put the finishing touches to his form at Richmond in the spring of '63. 'Al pitches like an old-time overhander now,' says Johnny Sain. 'His left leg goes high as his arm comes down, breaking the batter's line of vision long enough to make it impossible to pick up the ball until it is on its way. This accounts for a large degree for his strikeout record, for his speed is great enough to get the ball over before the batter can complete his swing.
Al fanned 64 batters in 57 innings at Richmond before being called up to the Yankees. He gave up 17 earned runs for a 2.68 average. In June the Yankees were again in need of mound aid. Stan Williams, traded from the Dodgers, had started shakily and was on the shelf. Bill Stafford came up with an inexclipable spell of wildness. For a second time Big Al boarded a plane to New York and the Big Team.
'I'm faster than two years ago,' he says, 'because I've picked up extra weight. My curve isn't as good as it should be but I've got better control of my change-of-pace. I try to study batters; I don't change styles to left-handers or right-handers, just throw the same stuff.'
It's slick stuff, that K-pitch of Al Downing's. Quiet and discreet as he is in the traditional Yankee style, he has won many fans during his brief career at Yankee Stadium. He owns no automobile; his fans chase him after games, catching up to him as he walks to his hotel one half-mile from the ballpark. Many are his age or younger and he delights in signing his name for them.
It isn't so long ago, after watching Whitey Ford perform, he went hunting for Whitey's signature. 'I still get a kick from being on the same team as Whitey,' he says."
*K stands for strikeout in most scorekeepers' shorthand.
-Charles Dexter, Baseball Digest, October-November 1963
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