But it was not to be. The two starters, both working on just two days rest, matched zeroes for three innings. But the Cardinals broke through with three runs off Stottlemyre in the fourth, three more against Downing and Sheldon in the fifth, and hung on from there. Gibson was running on fumes by the end - he gave up a three run homer to Mantle, and ninth-inning solo blasts by Boyer and Linz, before finally retiring Bobby Richardson to end it. The Cardinals were champs. The Yankees had lost. Again. So the Yankees fired their manager. Again. Just four years earlier, they had fired Casey Stengel when his Yankees lost the seventh game of the World Series. There was, and there still remains, about the Yankees a sense of entitlement that is far too vast for human comprehension.

The new manager, replacing franchise icon Yogi Berra, was Johnny Keane. The same Johnny Keane who had just managed the Cardinals to the 1964 title. The 1965 Yankees brought back the same team that had gone to Game Seven the year before, except this time they would have young Stottlemyre in the rotation for the entire season, They would also have Pedro Ramos as their bullpen ace - his brilliant work down the stretch (1-0, 1.25, 8 saves) had been a crucial part of the Yankees rallying from four games back in early September to finish atop the AL pennant race. Ramos had not joined the team in time to be eligible for the World Series, and his presence may well have made a difference in the pivotal fifth game.

You will often be told, as I have been told all my life, that these Yankees were an old team, and that this made their fall inevitable. Do not believe them. The Yankees did not have a particularly old team. They certainly weren't anywhere near as old as the 2015 Blue Jays. The 1965 Yankees had three position players and one starting pitcher on the wrong side of 30; the 2015 Jays had five such position players and three starting pitchers. Catcher Elston Howard, 36 years old, was the oldest of the regulars. He was still a great player. He'd just finished third in the MVP voting after hitting .313/.371/.455 and winning his second Gold Glove; he'd been the league's MVP the year previous.  The incomparable Mickey Mantle was now 33 years old, but he was coming off yet another outstanding season (.303/.423/.591) - he had been the runner-up in the 1964 MVP vote. Roger Maris, 30 years old, was the only other position player on the wrong side of 30, and while he was no longer a threat to any of Babe Ruth's records, he was still a very fine player. The infielders were all at or approaching their peaks, from 23 year old Joe Pepitone to 29 year old Bobby Richardson. They had won in 1964 despite an off year from 25 year old outfielder Tom Tresh, whom they expected to bounce back.

The starting rotation featured the marvellous old veteran Whitey Ford, still one of the very best pitchers in all of baseball and coming off a brilliant age 35 season (17-6, 2.13.) Behind Ford were three very talented youngsters: the skinny sinker-baller Mel Stottlemyre and the two hard throwers, RH Jim Bouton and LH Al Downing. Bouton had just gone 18-13, 3.02 with two World Series wins in 1964; he had won 21 games in 1963; Downing had gone 13-8, 3.47 and led the AL with 217 Ks. A full season of Pedro Ramos would further strengthen a relief corps held down by solid veterans Pete Mikkelson, Hal Reniff, and Steve Hamilton. Hey, if they got lucky they might even get some contribution from the oft-injured Bill Stafford and Rollie Sheldon. Ramos and Hamilton were both 30 years old; they, along with Ford, were the only Yankees pitchers on the wrong side of 30.

There was no real reason to expect what happened to happen. Johnny Keane's major innovation was to have Mickey Mantle and Tom Tresh swap outfield positions, with Tresh taking over in centre and Mantle moving to left field. The idea, surely, was to put the young legs in centre field, and ease the burden on Mantle's always aching pins. This may not have been the wisest idea, as the left field area in the original Yankee Stadium was enormous. But it probably had little to do with what ensued.

Things actually began to go wrong before the games even began. Elston Howard injured his elbow in spring training. It didn't get better - it got worse. He played on Opening Day anyway (he went 2-5 with a homer while catching 11 innings) and pretty much vanished from the lineup. He wouldn't appear behind the plate again until mid-June. Even when he did, his elbow was still hurting and his bat would never come back, ever. Johnny Blanchard filled in behind the plate at first, but the Yankees had never much liked Blanchard's defensive work and at the beginning of May they traded him and Sheldon to Kansas City for Doc Edwards, a competent enough catcher but very much a non-hitter.

Roger Maris, off to a slow start, went down with a hand injury at the end of April. He was out for a little more than three weeks and continued to struggle upon returning to the lineup. It turned out he had a broken hand, which had been misdiagnosed. He would start just 42 games in right field; his replacement, Hector Lopez was 35 years old and had been the Yankees fourth outfielder since 1959. He was still a solid player and did a decent job filling in. He just wasn't Roger Maris.

And while we're at it - Howard and Maris were both superb defensive players, considerably better than the men who replaced them.


First baseman Joe Pepitone wasn't old - he was just 24 years old and in 1964 he'd hit 28 HRs and driven in 100 runs. He'd hit 27 HRs the year before that, in his first full season. There was no reason to expect him to collapse to .247/.305/.394 with just 18 HRs. But he did.

Infielders Bobby Richardson, Tony Kubek, and Clete Boyer weren't expected to hit. They never had before. They were in the lineup because of the brilliant defensive play they provided. They didn't step up and fill the gaps in the offense on this occasion, not that anyone actually expected them to do anything of the sort. 

The only positive development in the lineup was 26 year old Tom Tresh, who did indeed have a fine bounce back season, hitting .279/.348/.477 with 26 HRs and winning a Gold Glove for his work in centre field. The 1964 Yankees had been second in the league in runs scored, with 4.45 per games, despite playing half their games in one of the greatest pitcher's parks the game has ever seen. The 1065 team fell to seventh in the league in scoring, managing just 3.77 per game.

On the mound, young Mel Stottlemyre emerged as a bonafide ace, going 20-9, 2.63 and working 291 IP. Al Downing basically repeated his 1964 performance (12-14, 3.40); the team's much poorer offense took a large bite out of his W-L record. Whitey Ford had another fine season (16-13, 3.24), although it was nowhere near as sensational as his work in 1964. The one absolute disaster was the other starter, Jim Bouton. Bouton, just 26 years old and coming off two outstanding seasons, went utterly to pieces. He had a sore bicep, it never got better, and he and the team decided he should just pitch through it. This did not go well. Bouton went 4-15, 4.82 and would never throw a decent fastball again. Bill Stafford joined the rotation in early May to help the team cope with some double-headers. As he immediately performed better than both Downing and Bouton, Stafford remained in what became a five man rotation until his chronic shoulder miseries shelved him at the end of June.  The bullpen was decent enough, especially Ramos and the tall southpaw Steve Hamilton. It wasn't enough. The fall-off on the mound was modest compared to what had happened to the hitters, but the fall was there as well.