Harvey Araton of the New York Times looks at the current edition of the Bronx Bombers and sees parallels to the 1965, dynasty-ending edition. Weirdest parallel? The comparison of 1965 as the Yankees' first season in ages without Mel Allen to 2008 as the Yankees' first season in ages without Bob Sheppard. That's not the the most notable thing in the story, though. Check out what happened when Araton called Tony Kubek for a comment:A telephone call to a 1965 Yankee, shortstop Tony Kubek, found him in Michigan at his Upper Peninsula lake retreat, where he said he hadn’t watched baseball live or on television since leaving the Yankees’ broadcast booth in 1994, hadn’t seen much of Derek Jeter (seriously) and was not familiar with the injured Yankees (Hideki Matsui, Chien-Ming Wang) I casually mentioned as a reason for the Yankees’ current standing.Unable to draw comparisons, Kubek did say that the 1965 Yankees’ core pretty much crumbled, age and injuries debilitating Mickey Mantle and Roger Maris, among others.
I used to vacation in the U.P. when I was a kid and whenever I was up there I felt a million miles away from civilization. I'm kind of glad to see that it still has that effect on people.
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I just read "October 1964" that talks about the '64 season and series and how the balance of power switched to the aggressive NL (Cardnial) style of play. David Halberstam takes a long look at the reasons why the Yanks declined including: resistance to integration and recruiting black baseball players; and their sale to CBS.
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