Yankees History: Five memorable Fourth of July moments

It seems only fitting that former Yankees owner, George Steinbrenner, would be born on the Fourth of July, a day when a small band of American Colonists decided to take matters into their own hands while others stood by, to declare their independence from the might of the British Empire.

Steinbrenner, in his individualistic way, declared his team’s independence from the might and power of baseball’s other owners by forging a path of free spending and all-out war to bring Championships to Yankees fans and the city of New York.

On July 4, 1996, Steinbrenner’s team was in the middle of a record-breaking season, heading towards their first Championship in nearly two decades, and one of five that would occur in the ensuing six years.

The game played that day at Yankee Stadium against the Milwaukee Brewers was remarkable only in the sense that it was unremarkable, and just another ho-hum 4-1 win for the Yankees.

A glance at the game’s box score shows Andy Pettitte going seven strong innings, upping his record to 13-4 on the season, with the tandem of Mariano Rivera, who was then the set-up man for John Wetteland, coming in to seal the victory, giving Wetteland his 28th save of the year.

Paul O’Neill and Derek Jeter hit home runs, and Tino Martinez collected his 61st RBI of the season, and Bernie Williams threw John Jaha out at third base.

But the bigger story of the game was the birthday present George Steinbrenner decided to give himself, over protests from his General Manager at the time, Bob Watson, that the player wasn’t “a fit” for the Yankees, by signing Darryl Strawberry to a contract.

Strawberry, who by this time in his career, had been in and out of rehab for alcohol and drug abuse, could only be found playing with the Independent St. Paul Saints in Minnesota.

Strawberry, though, was tailor-made for Steinbrenner, the man with the big and forgiving heart, and he came through for the Yankees in a big way over the next 63 games of the season, slugging eleven home runs and driving in 36.

Then, to cap off his resurrected career, he propelled the Yankees to the World Series in the ALCS against Baltimore, batting .417 with three more home runs and 5 RBI.

And when all the dust settled, it turned out that it would be Watson who didn’t fit with the Yankees, when, in1998, he was replaced by Brian Cashman.

Strawberry would be granted free agency by the Yankees twice, only to be re-signed by the team for the 1998 and 1999 seasons. Strawberry and Steinbrenner would collect another World Series title together in 1999, Strawberry’s last season in the major leagues.

It would not be surprising if most Yankees fans, including myself, didn’t recall that Phil Niekro once pitched for the team. But on July 4, 1984, Niekro took the mound wearing the Pinstripes to face the Texas Rangers in a night game at Arlington Stadium.

Signed as a free agent by the Yankees with a salary of $550,000, Niekro entered the game with a record of 10-4. He pitched eight strong innings that night, earning the win in a game that took only two hours and twenty minutes to play.

Steve Kemp homered in the game, and Don Mattingly collected two hits, raising his batting average to .339 on his way to his best season in baseball.

Niekro would collect only five strikeouts in the game, but one of them would be the 3000th of his career, making him at the time, only the ninth pitcher to reach that plateau.

For the Yankees, though, that particular Fourth of July was hardly anything to celebrate, finishing the night with a record of 35-43. The team went on to finish with a strong second half to wind up in third place, a full seventeen games behind the Detroit Tigers, who went on to win it all.

Niekro was signed as a free agent the following year by the Yankees, only to be released just before the start of the 1986 season.

Niekro would labor in the big leagues and pitch until he was forty-eight years old. Over 21 seasons, he collected 318 wins, enough to earn him election to the Hall of Fame in 2005.

For a fleeting moment, though, he was a New York Yankee, and on the Fourth of July, he made baseball history wearing the Pinstripes and earning his 3,000th strikeout.

Going to a major league baseball game can be akin to playing the lottery, “Because, you never know.”

And, when you walk through the turnstiles, it’s often only natural to be thinking that you could be a witness to something rare and extraordinary. The right fielder could hit four home runs, or maybe the shortstop hits for the cycle. Or maybe, just perhaps, a pitcher could toss a no-hitter.

For the 41,000 fans attending the game at Yankee Stadium on a sweltering 94 degree Fourth of July in 1983, that’s precisely what they got as Dave Righetti thrilled the crowd with a no-hitter against a fellow lefty, John Tudor, and the Boston Red Sox.

Later, Righetti would recall for Bill Nowlin, writing for the Society for American Baseball Research (SABR), that it was “just the way I want it” when Wade Boggs stepped in with two outs in the ninth as one of the toughest strikeouts in the game.

Stepping in to face Righetti, Boggs would later recall and tell Nowlin:

“He had a fastball that was rising. And he was doing a good job of pitching in and away. He throws two kinds of sliders … one that breaks and one that doesn’t. On the second you see that dot, and hope it isn’t the one that breaks. I guessed wrong.”

That he did and for a moment the Stadium was silent in awe of what they had just witnessed during a 132 pitch effort on a sweltering July afternoon in the Bronx. Righetti recounts for SABR the moments that followed when he saw his catcher Butch Wynegar holding the ball in his hand:

“For one split second, I was blank,” confessed Righetti. “I didn’t know whether I should jump around or not. I just kind of looked at Butch and I saw him coming, and I said, ‘Oh, geez!’ I just leaned on him and held onto him. I didn’t want to fall on the ground.”

For Righetti, the first Yankees no-hitter in 27 years (Don Larsen, 1956) was the culmination of a career with the Yankees that would see him make the conversion from a starter to a reliever, where he continued to excel, ending his 16-year career with 252 saves.

Today, Righetti is still wearing a major league uniform as the long-time pitching coach for the San Francisco Giants.

On July 4, 1939, Yankees first baseman, Lou Gehrig, stood on the field at Yankee Stadium for the final time and read these words to the assembled crowd of stunned fans and teammates:

“Fans, for the past two weeks you have been reading about the bad break I got. Yet today I consider myself the luckiest man on the face of this earth. I have been in ballparks for seventeen years and have never received anything but kindness and encouragement from you fans. “Look at these grand men. Which of you wouldn’t consider it the highlight of his career just to associate with them for even one day? Sure, I’m lucky. Who wouldn’t consider it an honor to have known Jacob Ruppert? Also, the builder of baseball’s greatest empire, Ed Barrow? To have spent six years with that wonderful little fellow, Miller Huggins? Then to have spent the next nine years with that outstanding leader, that smart student of psychology, the best manager in baseball today, Joe McCarthy? Sure, I’m lucky. “So I close in saying that I might have been given a bad break, but I’ve got an awful lot to live for.”

From what we know about Gehrig, those words are more than he might speak in a week, but the emotion that swelled in the crowd that day left echoes in the old Yankee Stadium for years to come.

For Gehrig, the irony of the disease that afflicted him, literally bringing him to his knees at the end, when juxtaposed against his Iron Horse career, is something that leaves all fans of baseball with an emptied feeling from the first time Gehrig stepped on a ballfield at Columbia University.

For the sellout crowd that packed Stadium on the Fourth of July in 1939, as well as for all fans of baseball, the cause for celebration was hidden in the very words that Gehrig spoke that day.

Because on the day that our country was born, we all should feel like we “have an awful lot to live for.”

It’s all about the kids now. The ones on the field and the people in the stands. The hope and renewal brought to the Yankees organization mirror precisely the meaning of the Fourth of July in America.

The Baby Bombers, some here and some on their way, and still others like Dustin Fowler and James Kaprielian who are on the mend, bring pause to celebrate in 2017.

The tape measure home runs off the bat of Aaron Judge that keeps Statcast working overtime and on weekends, together with the emergence of a young staff with the likes of Jordan Montgomery and Luis Severino leading the way, give further pause in knowing that the Yankees are back.

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Let it be said that the depth of the Yankees organization is greater than the size of the Colonist’s rag-tag army, but let it also be said that with youth comes honor and courage that enable both armies to succeed in the face of seeming insurmountable hurdles.

The rash of injuries incurred by the Yankees over the last week or so, together with some that have been stretched to the max as in the cases of Greg Bird and Kaprielian, in another time would have been a good reason for the Yankees to fold up their tents, calling the rest of season in.

But these Yankees are a team of the future, just as America was the country of the future on July 4, 1776, when they held those truths to be self-evident……

And the truth for the Yankees today is that Aaron Judge and Gary Sanchez form the nucleus of a team that is poised to make the playoffs, even though most prognosticators had destined them for, at best, a .500 season.

How are Yankees’ top 10 prospects performing so far?

The New York Yankees' farm system is teeming with talent and, like the big-league club, trudging through its share of injuries.

And that, my friends, is cause to include this Fourth of July as one of the most memorable of all-time in Yankees history.