waiting for the batter to dare to step up.
I thought,
This is great, this needs a theme song
.
So I asked a friend in the music business to suggest a song, and he said, “‘Pomp and Circumstance.’ It’s about the end, the culmination.”
Also known as the “Graduation March,” it worked. Toby Wright was our stadium organist and the drill was for me to look into the bullpen with binoculars to make sure Lyle was getting into the car, then phone Toby in the organist’s booth over first base and say, “It’s Lyle.” And he’d hit that first chord as the gate from the bullpen opened. The fans picked up on this quickly and at the sound of the first note, they would begin cheering. By the time Lyle emerged from the car, the place was going crazy.
Today, every closer seems to have a theme song, and Lyle has told me on more than one occasion that my choreography of his entrance really made me the creator of “The Closer.” It isn’t true. DickRadatz had a great act in Boston in the 1960s. But I love it when he throws me that compliment, even if he did say, “Let’s not do it” the following year.
“Too much pressure,” he said, and this from the man who thrived on it. Oh well.
The 1972 season, when Lyle saved thirty-five games, many in highly dramatic fashion, was really great fun, although it began with the first players’ strike in history. Although future strikes would be longer, this was very painful to all of us in the game. It was unimaginable that the industry could shut down. But it did. For those of us who lived through all the work stoppages baseball has thrown at us, 1972 was the worst because it was so unthinkable.
Although the Yankees were never in first place—not even for a day—the race was so tight that we had to prepare for a possible World Series, printing tickets, designing a program, setting up a postseason media operation. The team had not had to go through this exercise since 1964.
On September 1 the Yanks were tied for second, just one and a half games behind Baltimore. A Stottlemyre shutout that day over Chicago, and then a 2-1 win by Steve Kline the next day, put the deficit at just a half game. These were truly exciting days, and no one was enjoying them more than Munson, tasting his first pennant race and loving every aspect of the competition. Three-for-four on September 1, he was hitting .292 and enjoying his first season in which he didn’t have to climb up from the depths in the batting department. He started the year with an eight-game hitting streak, was at .338 on May 12, and would wind up with a solid .280. He hit .292 from July 15 to the end of the season. His buddy Murcer had a monster year, belting 33 homers, driving in 96 runs, and leading the league in runs scored and total bases.
Sadly, the hopes and promises of the season went unfulfilled. Detroit wound up winning the Eastern Division over Boston, with Baltimorethird and the Yankees once again fourth, six and a half games out, thanks to losses in their final five games, all at home. The Tigers didn’t clinch until the next-to-last day of the season. They won by only a half game, the worst possible result of an uneven schedule, necessitated by the strike and unplayed games never made up.
The lost games cost the Yankees their four-game opening weekend against the Orioles, which included opening day and a Sunday Cap Day, easily 100,000 in total attendance. For the season, the Yankees would draw only 966,328—about 34,000 short of a million. It would be the first time since 1946 that the team failed to crack the million mark, a very unsettling stat.
The truth was, attendance was never great at Yankee Stadium—not for being the glorious Yankees in the nation’s number one population center, playing in a beloved, historic ballpark. The team was capable of drawing two million, as it had done for five straight years after World War II. But then attendance sank toward the 1.5 million mark as people stopped going
I thought,
This is great, this needs a theme song
.
So I asked a friend in the music business to suggest a song, and he said, “‘Pomp and Circumstance.’ It’s about the end, the culmination.”
Also known as the “Graduation March,” it worked. Toby Wright was our stadium organist and the drill was for me to look into the bullpen with binoculars to make sure Lyle was getting into the car, then phone Toby in the organist’s booth over first base and say, “It’s Lyle.” And he’d hit that first chord as the gate from the bullpen opened. The fans picked up on this quickly and at the sound of the first note, they would begin cheering. By the time Lyle emerged from the car, the place was going crazy.
Today, every closer seems to have a theme song, and Lyle has told me on more than one occasion that my choreography of his entrance really made me the creator of “The Closer.” It isn’t true. DickRadatz had a great act in Boston in the 1960s. But I love it when he throws me that compliment, even if he did say, “Let’s not do it” the following year.
“Too much pressure,” he said, and this from the man who thrived on it. Oh well.
The 1972 season, when Lyle saved thirty-five games, many in highly dramatic fashion, was really great fun, although it began with the first players’ strike in history. Although future strikes would be longer, this was very painful to all of us in the game. It was unimaginable that the industry could shut down. But it did. For those of us who lived through all the work stoppages baseball has thrown at us, 1972 was the worst because it was so unthinkable.
Although the Yankees were never in first place—not even for a day—the race was so tight that we had to prepare for a possible World Series, printing tickets, designing a program, setting up a postseason media operation. The team had not had to go through this exercise since 1964.
On September 1 the Yanks were tied for second, just one and a half games behind Baltimore. A Stottlemyre shutout that day over Chicago, and then a 2-1 win by Steve Kline the next day, put the deficit at just a half game. These were truly exciting days, and no one was enjoying them more than Munson, tasting his first pennant race and loving every aspect of the competition. Three-for-four on September 1, he was hitting .292 and enjoying his first season in which he didn’t have to climb up from the depths in the batting department. He started the year with an eight-game hitting streak, was at .338 on May 12, and would wind up with a solid .280. He hit .292 from July 15 to the end of the season. His buddy Murcer had a monster year, belting 33 homers, driving in 96 runs, and leading the league in runs scored and total bases.
Sadly, the hopes and promises of the season went unfulfilled. Detroit wound up winning the Eastern Division over Boston, with Baltimorethird and the Yankees once again fourth, six and a half games out, thanks to losses in their final five games, all at home. The Tigers didn’t clinch until the next-to-last day of the season. They won by only a half game, the worst possible result of an uneven schedule, necessitated by the strike and unplayed games never made up.
The lost games cost the Yankees their four-game opening weekend against the Orioles, which included opening day and a Sunday Cap Day, easily 100,000 in total attendance. For the season, the Yankees would draw only 966,328—about 34,000 short of a million. It would be the first time since 1946 that the team failed to crack the million mark, a very unsettling stat.
The truth was, attendance was never great at Yankee Stadium—not for being the glorious Yankees in the nation’s number one population center, playing in a beloved, historic ballpark. The team was capable of drawing two million, as it had done for five straight years after World War II. But then attendance sank toward the 1.5 million mark as people stopped going
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