Aug. 21, 1964 - Yogi Berra fined his harmonica rascal — Phil Linz — $200 today and declared the matter settled.
Yesterday in Chicago, while the Yankees were en route to the airport after a fourth straight loss to the White Sox, the peace had been disturbed by Linz’s tootling on a harmonica.
Manager Berra, in a testy frame of mind, had told Linz to stop. Linz didn’t. Berra walked to the back of the bus to make him stop, Linz flipped the instrument, Yogi batted it aside, and harsh words followed.
“Why pick on me? I put out 100%,” said Linz.
“I’ll take care of you,” said Berra.
Today he did.
Meanwhile, the incident received headline treatment, with reports that general manager Ralph Houk was rushing to intervene, that Berra’s job was in jeopardy, that the Yankees were “cracking up,” and that there were far-reaching implications for the American League pennant race.
“I called Houk in New York last night to tell him what would be in the papers,” said Yogi, “so he wouldn’t be caught by surprise. He told me to do anything I felt right, and that he’d back me. That’s all there was to it.”
“This is something that’s strictly between Yogi and Linz,” Houk said. “I have no intention of talking to Linz about it or discussing it any further with Yogi. Whatever he decides is the end of it. I must say, I don’t think playing a harmonica is a good idea after a tough defeat.”
Linz was totally contrite.
“I realized I’d get fined,” he said. “I know I did something wrong, and I’m sorry. I provoked Yogi, and I know that now. If I had to do it over, I wouldn’t. He had to do what he did to retain authority. I just hope it will be forgotten now.”
He added: “Imagine that — $202.25. That’s an expensive harmonica.”
It won’t be forgotten because it has provided too much rich material for the jokesters, punsters, commentators, and wiseacres who surround baseball.
“I heard one boy on the radio,” said Houk with a laugh, “urging fans to come out tonight to Fenway Park with harmonicas and kazoos and all kinds of other instruments. That would be funny, wouldn’t it?”
The most numerous jokes involved Linz getting some sort of harmonica-playing job with CBS — the new majority owner of the Yankees.
The fine is the first imposed by Berra in his managerial career. It is not large, as Yankee fines go. When Mickey Mantle, Whitey Ford, Berra, Billy Martin, Hank Bauer, and Johnny Kucks were involved in a nightclub scrape in the Copacabana in 1957, the first five were fined $1,000 each and Kucks, in a lower income bracket, $500.
“I was supposed to go that night,” recalled Elston Howard, “because it was Billy Martin’s birthday party, but we couldn’t get a babysitter. I saved myself $1,000.”
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