Nearly all of Tony Kubek’s recollections about Ralph Houk, who died on Wednesday, reflect on the leadership qualities of the former Yankees manager and World War II battlefield hero.
“Ralph learned leadership the hardest way possible — seeing his friends and comrades die around him in the Battle of the Bulge,” Kubek, a Yankees shortstop from 1957 to 1965, said on Thursday.
He recalled that in the late 1980s Houk showed him the helmet he wore at Omaha Beach with holes where a bullet narrowly missed his skull.
“Ralph had a few more difficult times in a leadership position, leading the remnant of a platoon in Europe, than managing a team in a pennant race,” he said of the man who led the Yankees to World Series titles in 1961 and 1962 and the American League pennant in 1963.
Houk became the general manager of the Yankees the next season, when the Yankees lost the World Series to St Louis, then became the field manager again in 1966, a job he kept until stepping down after the 1973 season, George Steinbrenner’s first as owner. But from 1965 on, Houk never returned to the postseason.
Kubek first met Houk in the mid-1950s when he played for the Yankees’ Class AAA team in Denver and Houk managed.
He recalled an instance when Denver’s two catchers got hurt and Houk stepped in.
“Ralph activated himself and caught a doubleheader,” Kubek said. “That’s how he was. He could have asked some kid to catch.”
Kubek said that when Houk took over as Yankees manager in 1961, he usually had a set lineup, platooning less often than his predecessor, Casey Stengel.
“He wasn’t a superstrategist,” he said. “He didn’t want to overmanage.”
“Ralph had a feel for people,” Kubek said. “He spent more time before games with the guys who weren’t playing. He’d be in the outfield with them during batting practice.”
But he said Houk could also be volatile. “Nobody — maybe Lou Piniella — became more irate than Ralph,” he said.
He said Houk once squashed a cigar “playfully” into pitcher Ryne Duren’s face; decked the singer Gordon MacRae for dancing, maybe too closely, with his wife, (which both men denied); and disarmed a man during a barroom brawl.
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