Bob,
Your fan experience parallels mine. I knew that Ralph Houk was known as "The Major," but did not know why until I read your piece. Quite a story!
Thanks,
Joe
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Obituary: Tribute to “The Major”
Date: Monday, July 26, 2010, 11:53 AM EDT, 11:53 AM EDT from Rob in Annapolis
When I was a kid and into baseball as the be all and end all of life, I absolutely hated the Yankees. I was not alone in that emotion in my borough of Queens, New York City, neighborhood of Elmhurst. Everyone on my block, in the 50s, loved “dem bums,” the Brooklyn Dodgers, and abhorred the Yankees. It was the classic battle of the working class heroes of Brooklyn and Queens, epitomized by the Dodgers, against the snooty Manhattan sophisticates, symbolized by the Bronx Bombers. The title of the musical Damn Yankees was a war cry for all Dodger fans when the Yankees would rough up the hapless Dodgers in the World Series in 1947, 1949, 1952, and 1953. “Wait ‘til next year” became a bitter retort to gloating Yankee fans.
In 1955, “next year” became the year and the bums beat the Yankees in seven games. It was their first World Series championship since Brooklyn joined the National League in 1889. In 1956, it was “wait ‘til next year” time again as the Yankees won it in seven games with one of them being Don Larsen’s perfect game, the only one in World Series history so far. In 1957, the Dodgers finished in third place, not having the services of Jackie Robinson who retired rather than be traded to the New York Giants.
After the Dodgers left Brooklyn, before the start of the 1958 season, for the warm, clean environs of Chavez Ravine on the West Coast, and before the creation of the Amazins known as the Mets in 1962, there were a few World Series contests that included the dreaded Yanks. In both 1957 and 1958, the Bronx Bombers defeated the Milwaukee Braves for their seventeenth and eighteenth titles. In 1959, it was the turncoat Los Angeles Dodges who won it all against the Chicago White Sox. Then in 1960, the Pittsburgh Pirates won a hard-fought contest against the Yanks with Bill Mazeroski’s walk off home run in the seventh game. I never rooted for the Pittsburgh Pirates when the Dodgers were in Brooklyn, but I did in 1960, and did a victory dance to boot when Mazeroski crossed home plate.
There was a Yankee coach on that 1960 team whom everyone affectionately called “The Major.” His name was Ralph Houk, and it was his last year as a coach for them because he became their skipper the next year and remained so until 1973. The first two years, his Yankees won consecutive World Series championships, and then lost to the Los Angeles Dodgers in 1963 (I was a Met fan at that point but rooted for L.A. anyway). Houk ultimately went on to manage the Detroit Tigers (1974 – 1978) and the Boston Red Sox (1981 – 1984), finishing up his baseball career as a front office executive (1986 – 1989) for the Minnesota Twins.
Ralph Houk passed away the other day at the age of 90. In reading his obituary in the New York Times, I discovered why they called him “The Major.” You see that was the rank he ultimately attained as he fought in World War II, most notably in the Battle of the Bulge. Dave Anderson in his Sports of the Times column yesterday quoted the U.S. Army’s official record for Houk’s Silver Star, earned in combat as a second lieutenant and commander of 60 men in the town of Waldbillig, Luxembourg, against a force of some 200 Germans with Tiger tanks:
Deliberately exposing himself to the withering fire, although the fire was so intense that his clothes were torn by enemy machine-gun bullets, he calmly moved from one position to another, directing his men. As enemy tanks continued to advance, realizing that his guns were ineffective against them, he secured a tank destroyer from an adjacent unit, and personally directing its fire, he forced the enemy to withdraw from the area. Through his gallant leadership, he was directly responsible for repelling the enemy attack.
Houk was also awarded a Bronze Star with Oak Leaf Cluster and a Purple Heart. Of the Purple Heart, awarded when shrapnel from a German 88 artillery shell burrowed into his left leg, he said this when notified: “What the hell is this for? I only got a little scratched up.” Regarding his promotions in the service, he said: “In my outfit, all you had to do to get promoted was stay alive.”
As much as I hated the Yankees in those glorious summer days of the fifties and early sixties, there was a real life major on the club who was a genuine hero and could never be hated. As Dave Anderson states in his article about all the obituaries of Houk: “His World War II exploits as an Army officer in Europe were always mentioned, although there were few details because he seldom, if ever, talked about them.” So, hats off to The Major for his sterling baseball career but most of all for his bravery on the snowy fields of Luxembourg in the winter of 1944 that made our enjoyment and memory of those baseball games possible.
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