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Pitcher Bob Turley served up a gopher ball to the Tigers' Harvey Kuenn. "It was right at the Yankee Stadium score-board," says Turley, now a pitching coach with the Boston Red Sox. "Hank couldn't quite catch up to the ball. But somehow, God only knows how, he got close enough to tip it with his bare hand —and flip it right into Mickey Mantle's glove. Hank crashed into the Scoreboard, bounced off and trotted back to right-field." Then there was the last game of the 1951 World Series, against the New York Giants. Bauer had put the Yankees ahead with a bases-loaded triple. But the Giants rallied in the ninth inning. Two men were on, two were out, and the score was 4-3 when the Giants sent up Sal Yvars as a pinch hitter. Yvars blooped a sinking liner into rightfield. The sensible thing would have been to play it on one hop, let the tying run score, and hold the other base runner. A misplay could mean the ball game. Rushing in, Bauer lunged, stumbled, fell to his knees, slid a good 10 ft. and stuck out his glove. Then, like a gladiator displaying the sawed-off head of his enemy, he triumphantly held the glove high in the air to show everyone the ball, nestled snugly in the pocket.
How to Drink. On or off the field, his value to the Yankees was priceless. "Bauer taught me how to dress, how to talk—and how to drink," says Mickey Mantle, remembering how he arrived from Commerce, Okla., wearing a straw hat and carrying a $4 cardboard suitcase. "I'll never forget the first game I pitched for the Yankees," says Whitey Ford. "I came flying into the locker room at 1 p.m. I had overslept. Nobody said anything, but Bauer gave me that look of his. I dressed and ran. As it turned out, I won the game. Afterward, Bauer came over. 'Whitey,' he said, 'if you'd lost that game, you'd been dead.' "
There were bad moments too. There was, for instance, the celebrated "Copacabana incident" in 1957. A Bronx delicatessen owner sued Bauer for $250,000, claiming that Hank had punched him and broken his jaw. That was silly; a Bauer punch would have broken him into little pieces. But Hank was still hauled off to a police station, photographed, fingerprinted and booked—"just like a criminal." Partly on the strength of Yogi Berra's now-classic testimony—"Nobody never hit nobody nohow"—a Manhattan grand jury cleared Bauer of the charge. Another sore point: the cavalier way the Yankees traded Bauer off to Kansas City in 1959 —notifying the press, but not him.
Yet that sadly depressing trade proved to be the biggest break of Bauer's career. After a so-so 1960 season (.275 average, three homers), the aging outfielder was summoned to a meeting with Kansas City Owner Charles O. Finley and General Manager Frank Lane. "How would you like to manage one of our minor-league farm clubs?" asked Lane. Replied Bauer: "I'd like a shot at managing, but I don't think I'm interested in going back to the minors." Announced Finley: "Well, then, you're the new manager of the Kansas City ball club."