Former New York Yankees, Boston Red Sox manager Ralph Houk dies - ESPN

RIP, Ralph Houk, former big league manager

When I think of him, here's what comes to mind:

• He was the guy who succeeded Casey Stengel as Yankee manager.
  
• He had been a WW2 hero, a major in the army.
  
• He was the toast of the Big Apple in 1961. He guided Whitey Ford and Roger Maris to their best seasons that year, when the Yankees went all the way. It was the year Mantle and Maris combined to hit 115 HR and four of their teammates hit 20 or more dingers, while Whitey Ford and Ralph Terry combined for an unreal 41-7 record between them. Elston Howard batted .348 and Luis Arroyo was the league's best reliever with 29 saves and an uncanny 15 wins. The Yankees were so good that their third-string catcher, John Blanchard, was also the third best catcher in the league. He batted .305 with 21 homers as a half-time player. In fact, he had a higher OPS than Maris!
  

  With 109 wins and a World Series victory, the 1961 club was one of the greatest teams in the history of a franchise filled with great teams. And Houk wasn't finished winning. He averaged 103 wins per year in 1961-63 and those three years surely added up to one of the greatest managerial debuts in history. Houk won another World Series in 1962, and a third pennant in 1963, albeit with a 4-0 loss in the Series to Koufax and the Dodgers. Those were his first three years as an MLB manager and he was still in his early 40s.
  

  So how did the Yankees reward him? They promptly fired his ass and made Yogi the manager.
  

  Yogi won the pennant in 1964, but a loss in the Series to Johnny Keane's Cardinals prompted the club's ownership to fire Yogi and hire Keane. After one unsuccessful year with Keane at the helm, Houk was rehired, but he could not recapture the lightning in that bottle. He would never again win a pennant for the Yankees or any of the other teams he ran in his next 17 years as a big league manager.