This weekend, the New York Yankees return to St. Louis for a “real” game for the first time since October of 1964.
The Yanks played an exhibition here in 1966 in the then-new Busch Stadium on a blazing hot afternoon. When asked what he thought of the stadium, the legendary Casey Stengel reportedly replied, “It holds the heat well.”
Well, it still does that quite well. The true dedication of Cardinal Nation is on display not during the Fall Classic. It takes true dedication for almost 50,000 people to sit through an entire game when the heat index has climbed to more than 100 degrees.
It could be that hot this weekend when the Yankees and Cardinals square off for a three-game series beginning Friday night.
But let’s turn a few pages back in American history to October of 1964.
I’m not kidding, let’s really turn some pages. I’ve read David Halberstam’s October 1964 twice, because it is a riveting study of not only baseball, but also race relations in America.
When the book was published in 1994, the Boston Globe carried this sentence in its review: “David Halberstam’s new book should be a hit with anyone interested in understanding the important interplay between sports and society.”
You see, the New York Yankees, like many teams in the American League and many people in America, were resistant to integration.
Says Halberstam in the book’s forward, “The Yankees, like most American League teams, reflected the status quo and, in contrast to the National League teams, had been slow to sign the new great black players (indeed, for a time, their best scouts were ordered not to sign them). Though the Yankees boasted such great names as (Mickey) Mantle, (Roger) Maris, and Whitey Ford, theirs was an aging team: Mantle, hobbled by injuries, was facing his last hurrah in post-season play.
“By contrast, the St. Louis Cardinals were a young tough team on the ascent, featuring talented black players n Bob Gibson, Curt Flood, Lou Brock, and Bill White n who were changing the very nature of the game with their unprecedented speed and power.”
The 1964 World Series was not only a battle for the championship; it was a battle of cultures. It was old-school thinking vs. a new ideology being played out over seven games.
In a 1994 interview, Halberstam said, “I don’t think (the Cardinals’ black players) thought they were part of the sit-ins or that sort of thing. But they did see themselves out to prove something. I think they were very aware they were getting a chance and that they were playing for all those who had never gotten that chance. They were aware they were part of something larger than they were.”
It’s funny that baseball feels like “the good guys” won in 1964. There was no talk of an “evil empire,” like today, but the racist tradition of the Yankees had to be vanquished, and the racially balanced Cardinals got the job done.
A year and 40 years later, the Cardinals and Yankees will again face each other n and could see each other again in the World Series.
While society has changed for the better in regard to racism, it is still rampant in 2005.
While baseball has embraced diversity, there are fewer black players per team than there were 20 years ago in the Major Leagues.
The drama that plays out this weekend at Busch Stadium will seem historic, but it will come nowhere close to what transpired in St. Louis in 1964.
Baseball and America changed when the Cardinals defeated the Yankees in seven games in 1964. Both for the better.