Posted on 06/16/2019 8:29:12 AM PDT by Hojczyk
I just looked it up, and it was indeed two seasons (1974 and 1975). I recall Graig commenting on how it felt like being on the road for two years because almost none of the real Yankee fans showed up but many Mets fans did and booed plenty. IIRC, Bill Virdon was the manager at about that time (between when Ralph Houk quit because he got fed up with Steinbrenner’s meddling and when George brought in Billy for the first time in 1976).
There is some thought that a lot of MLB memorabilia is going to come on the market because the recent changes in MLB are going to lead to the surpassing of long-standing offensive records and such memorabilia from previous eras are going to be worth less.
Babe Ruth memorabilia may be an exception.
Doesn’t exactly square with my recollection, the guys I went with were, and are, to this day, passionate Yankee fans. A couple of things, in the Old Stadium, the decks were layered right on top of each other, so the entire crowd seemed to be breathing right down the player’s necks, while they were on the field. Shea, and even the New Stadium, is laid out differently, the decks are terraced out, so the crowd is a greater distance from the field.
Another thing, that was the culmination of a decade of awful Yankee teams, beginning in 1965, sometimes referred to as the “Horace Clarke era”. Not so much a knock against Horace, as he was a mediocre player, after a string of Hall of Fame Yankees, who seemed to represent the team’s descent from the championship era. A lot of those boos , or Bronx cheers, although in Queens, came from frustrated Bomber faithful. When the Yankees returned to the refurbished Stadium, with Billy at the helm, in 1976, they got back on the winning track, and won the pennant, that year. Thanks !
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