MICHAEL BURKE (Chairman of the Board and President)
"Youth is the order of the day and the Yankees are in pace with the times. As always, young men move up to become the new heroes. This season your ball club will be the youngest and fastest in Yankee history - and determined to make its own history."
-Michael Burke, The New York Yankees Official 1969 Yearbook
"To sports writers, the New Era of the Yankees had been something that had existed only in the minds of Michael Burke, Lee MacPhail and Ralph Houk. But in the final weeks of the 1968 season, veteran scribes dusted their shades and looked again.
Mike Burke had said on more than one occasion, 'The future is what the Yankees are all about.'
There were those who claimed that meant a return to glory was a long way down the road. But the fired-up Yankees had brashly challenged Boston and Cleveland in the pennant stretch and were finishing in the first division. They hadn't been rated a first division ball club; this club clearly didn't fit a mold.
If the new Yankees are anything but a stereotyped baseball operation, it is because Burke himself doesn't ease into a mold. The president of a major league club is hidden behind a desk somewhere, isn't he? Mike usually sits in a box next to the dugout, but you might find him anywhere in the park. Kids crowd around to get his autograph. There has never been a 'front office' like it.
And then there are Mike's unconventional ideas about what a ball club should be. In his first year as president, he had said that the Yankees would become a vital part of the community and assume their responsibility to help build a better New York. Reporters smiled; it was good public relations talk, but ballplayers are just ballplayers, aren't they?
Mike and men like Downing and Robinson visited schools in poverty areas, urging youngsters to stay in school and get an education.
Last spring, more Yankees visited schools with the 'Don't Drop Out' message, and when principals saw how kids were taking it to heart, the team couldn't handle the requests that poured in. Mayor Lindsey's Urban Coalition needed a win; the whole team went into Harlem. This was a call for volunteers but EVERY Yankee showed up. It said what Mike had been saying - the Yankees are more than just a ball club.
In cooperation with Con Ed, the Yankees provided 400,000 complimentary tickets to needy youngsters. (If it helped only one boy, it was worth it,' says Burke.) It's one thing to talk about a club's willingness to help the community; quite another to get with it. Mike's initiative and personal participation have demonstrated how it can be done.
Burke has had the perfect background for his job. He grew up in the competitive world of sports, starring in baseball, basketball and football. He was a halfback at the University of Pennsylvania when Penn was one of the top teams in the nation. Commissioned in the Navy at the outbreak of World War II, he was assigned to General Wild Bill Donovan's OSS wartime espionage service.
In 1953 he became General Manager of Ringling Brothers, Barnum and Bailey Circus. From the Big Top he moved to CBS and was elected Chairman of the Board and President of the Yankees in September 1966. He has been identified as one of baseball's outstanding new leaders and a catalyst for restructuring baseball, maintaining that, 'we should honor the past, but we must live in the present and be entirely contemporary.'
Mike Burke lives his job, which is to say that he draws on his remarkable background to give dynamic leadership to the new Yankees. His dedication to his job is a measure of his dedication to the team, to baseball and the community."
-The New York Yankees Official 1969 Yearbook
LEE MACPHAIL (Executive Vice-President and General Manager)
"Lee MacPhail was the architect of the Baltimore team that won the Championship in 1966 - though he was in the Commissioner's office by that time. It was he who bought Frank Robinson to the Orioles - though the trade was completed after he left. So it's easy to see why - though he was Administrator of Baseball - he couldn't resist the challenge of rebuilding the Yankees, the club he had served for 13 years and of which his father, at one time, had been chief executive. MacPhail returned to Yankee Stadium in 1967 and with Michael Burke and Ralph Houk drew up a five-year plan for building the new Yankees from the farm up.
Twenty-eight years in baseball are a big asset when you shoulder the job of delivering the field strength needed to move a club to the top. It gives an executive like Lee vision and perspective. ("Things are never really as good as they look when you are winning - and never really as bad as they seem when you're down.") Building a championship club takes time, and the reasons why some changes are made are not always apparent. (The trade of popular Andy Kosco for young pitcher Mike Kekich, to cite a recent example.) A builder must move boldly and keep his own counsel. He must fill gaps only he and the manager know will develop in the future. Lee is engaged in a building job that has not yet been completed. When it is, the fans and the other clubs in the league will know it.
'This is the third year of our building program,' says MacPhail, 'and we are on schedule. The process is more apparent in our farm system where every boy playing in our organization today has a chance to make it to the majors. We now have better players in the lower minors than most clubs.'
Lee has strengthened the Yankee farm system by making capable Johnny Johnson farm director, revamping the scouting set-up to make it more productive, and developing young players. Last year the Yankees were the second youngest team in the major leagues.
In 1969, the Yankees are in the toughest division in all of professional sport. All five of the first division teams in the American League in 1968 are in the American League East. This presents a tremendous challenge to a team that is still building. But one of the best-balanced management teams in baseball today - Michael Burke, Lee MacPhail and Ralph Houk - have brought the Yankees to the point where Lee concedes, 'it won't take too much to make the Yankees a winning team."
-The New York Yankees Official 1969 Yearbook
No comments:
Post a Comment