Wanted: "Yankee Killers"
By ThrowsLikeAGirl
Michael O'Keefe of the daily News published this story back in July, before it all went bad for the Sox and Cub fans - and before we knew those wild Marlins would be heroes to us all.
Anything can happen - no matter how much money you can throw at a situation. A quarter-trillion-dollar player's bone and muscle and grey matter, although they may be assembled into one very talented player, can break and tear and crack like the rest of us slobs. So there's always hope. "Next year" is here.
It's time for a new set of Yankee Killers to step up to the plate, or the mound. Who's it going to be? Read O'Keefe's story and offer your comments.
The Yankee killers
All-Time Yankee Team
By MICHAEL O'KEEFFE
Ken Griffey Jr.
Frank Lary was an average pitcher on a mediocre Detroit team in the 1950s, but for some mysterious reason, the Alabama-born righty turned into Superman when he was on the mound against the Yankees.
Lary compiled a 128-116 record during his 12-year career but he was 28-13 against the Yankees. In 1958, when the Tigers were 77-77 and finished 15 games behind the first-place Bombers, Lary went 7-1 against the Yanks - and 9-14 against the rest of the American League.
"There's no secret to it," Lary said in 1977. "The Tigers just played their best baseball when they were playing the Yankees."
Hall of Fame researcher Bill Francis says Lary may have found great success against the Yankees because the American League only had eight teams in the 1950s. Clubs played each other 16 times every season, which helped pitchers become familiar with their opponents' lineups.
"Still, the Yankees had a killer roster, with a number of future Hall of Famers," Francis says. "That makes Lary's accomplishment all the more impressive."
Lary's nickname was "The Yankee Killer," but he's not the only player who racked up big numbers against the most storied team in sports history:
Lew Burdette
In 1957, Burdette led the Braves to just their second championship in 43 years by pitching and winning three complete games - including two shutouts - against a fearsome Yankee team. "The only thing I can say," says Burdette, who now lives in Orlando with his daughter and her family, "is that I threw 'em where they weren't swinging."
The former Yankee farmhand pitched Game 7 on two days' rest because Milwaukee ace Warren Spahn was benched with the flu. "It wasn't the first time I had pitched on two days' rest," Burdette says. "I don't know how pitchers do it these days with four or five days of rest. I lost my sharpness after three days."
Among the fans who packed Yankee Stadium for Game 7: Joe Torre, who was there to cheer his big brother Frank, the Braves' first baseman.
George Brett
The Kansas City Royals were an expansion team created in 1969, but it didn't take long for them to become one of the Yankees' biggest rivals, thanks to Brett, the Hall of Fame third baseman who hit .358 in four postseason series against the Yanks.
The Yankees beat the Royals in the ALCS in 1976, 1977 and 1978, but in 1980, Brett's three-run homer off Goose Gossage in Game 3 put the Royals in the World Series for the first time.
Brett, of course, will always have a special place in Yankee history after the game in July 1983 when he threw a major league tantrum after umpire Tim McClelland discounted a home run, saying the pine tar line on Brett's bat exceeded the 18-inch limit. A few days later, AL president Lee MacPhail said the homer should have counted and ordered the game resumed. This time, the Royals won.
Walter Johnson
The Big Train notched 60 of his 417 wins against the Yankees - the most by any opposing pitcher. What makes Johnson's record remarkable is that he won those games with the Senators. "What makes his record so special," says Francis, "is that he played on so many bad teams."
In 1908, Johnson pitched three shutouts in four days against the Yankees, then known as the Highlanders. In 1923, he gave New York its first defeat at their new park, Yankee Stadium, a 4-3 loss before 70,000 fans.
"When Yankee Stadium was built, it was showtime, the place to play - and it still is," says author Hank Thomas, Johnson's biographer and grandson. "I'm sure Walter put a little extra on the ball, especially against Babe Ruth."
In 1924, with his career winding down, Johnson led the Senators, picked by The Sporting News to finish seventh, to the pennant in a photo finish with the Yankees.
Ken Griffey Jr.
When Griffey was a kid and his dad was a Yankee, Billy Martin kicked Junior out of the clubhouse because the child was noisy and boisterous.
Junior has made the Bombers pay: He's a lifetime .312 hitter against the Yankees, with 33 homers and 92 RBI in 447 at-bats.
Kevin Brown
Brownie has thoroughly owned the Yankees over the course of his career, posting a 2.50 ERA and 12-3 record in 16 starts. Fortunately for the Yankees, Brown was not so dominating in postseason play. Brown started two games in the 1998 World Series, going 0-1 and giving up seven earned runs over 14.1 innings.
Scott Fletcher
Fletcher played for six teams and hit .262 during a 15-year career as an infielder and DH. But Fletcher hit .335 against the Yankees before retiring in 1995. "It's hard to explain why I was able to hit better against certain teams," Fletcher, best known for stints with the Rangers and White Sox, told the Akron Beacon Journal in 1996. "But I'm proud of the fact that I did hit well against a team like the Yankees, with all their tradition and everything."
Bill Lee
The Spaceman went 12-5 against the Yankees for their archrivals, the Red Sox. One reason for his success, Lee admits, was the Yankees weren't very good in the early '70s, when he began his career. As a lefty, he acknowledges he benefited from the old Yankee Stadium's deep right field. But mostly, he says, it's because pitchers are smarter than hitters.
"Hitters are Neanderthals," Lee says. "Pitchers are smarter than hitters - except for Roger Clemens."
Lee is the author of the recently published "The Little Red (Sox) Book," an alternate-universe history of the Sox. In Lee's book, Babe Ruth - another Yankee-killer who went 17-5 as a pitcher against the Bombers - never leaves Boston. That means the Red Sox win dozens of World Series titles, while the Yankees limp along as their title-less rivals. Lee's book, obviously, can be found on the fiction shelves.
"There's nothing in the world like the fatalism of the Red Sox fans," Lee writes. "All this makes Boston fans a little crazy, and I feel sorry for them."
Originally published on July 14, 2003 - The Daily News
