Yankee Pride: The Story of the New York Yankees in the 1960s

by Carroll Conklin

Yankee Pride tells the story of the New York Yankees during the decade of the 1960s. It chronicles how the team won consecutive American League pennants during the first five years of the 1960s, winning two World Series titles and losing two others in dramatic -- and, for Yankee fans, heartbreaking -- seven-game series. The story then turns to the Yankees' fall from glory starting in 1965, and then into the American League cellar in 1966, the first time that the Yankee organization had finished in last place since its pre-Ruthian days of 1912. The story follows how the Yankees returned to respectability in the last three years of the decade, winning on pitching and defense rather than the power-hitting that had been so synonymous with Yankee baseball in the team's glory days.Yankee Pride takes you year-by-year, month-by-month, even game-by-game, as the entire decade unfolds before your eyes as you watch the Yankee greats of the 1960 Mickey Mantle hitting for power and average, compiling amazing offensive numbers despite the injuries that increasingly limited his playing time. Roger Maris as he leads the American League in runs batted in while winning back-to-back MVP awards … and smashes Babe Ruth’s single-season home run record, the record once believed could never be broken. Watch Whitey Ford go 8-0 in June of 1961 on his way to a 25-4 Cy Young season. Follow two young pitchers (Al Downing in 1963 and Mel Stottlemyre in 1964) whose amazing debut seasons propelled the Yankees to pennants in tough races.Meet the 1960s Yankee players who made the franchise the most successful in baseball Slugging first baseman Bill “Moose” Skowron, World Series dynamo Bobby Richardson, 1963 MVP Elston Howard, pitcher Luis Arroyo who redefined forever the role of closer, and so many more. Meet the Yankee stars of the late 1960s, whose fine play fell short of glory but who propelled the franchise back to outfielders like Tom Tresh and Bobby Murcer, hitters like Joe Pepitone, pitchers like Fritz Peterson, Stan Bahnsen, Hal Reniff and Lindy McDaniel.No other baseball history gives you so many ways to relive the excitement and drama of the New York Yankees in the 1960s.

533 pages, Kindle Edition

First published June 6, 2012