Oct. 8, 1964 - “He threw me a fastball,” said Phil Linz. “I guess he just wasn’t afraid of me. Well, I’m not afraid of me either.”
Linz, the Yankee utility infielder who has been known as Super Sub and, starting in August, the Harmonicat, belted a ninth-inning homer today off Barney Schultz for his third hit of the game. In the postgame crush in the winners’ dressing room, the free-spirited 25-year-old from Baltimore sipped a beer and wallowed in more attention than he had gotten in a long time.
“Does cold weather make me stronger? Sure, it does,” he said. “Nothing can make me weaker than I am.”
“What’s it feel like to hit a homer? It feels good, like you can do it every time,” he said, taking a cut with the beer bottle. “Then you get up again, and it doesn’t happen.”
Linz took over shortstop several weeks ago when Tony Kubek injured his hand. At that time, Linz commented that he’d never be a hero, only a goat. People would say that the Yankees lost the pennant because they had to play Linz at short.
Linz was also still playing under the cloud of the harmonica incident, in which Yogi Berra fined him for playing the instrument in the club bus after a defeat at Chicago.
“I’m still playing,” he said today. “I can play ‘Mary Had a Little Lamb,’ and I can play ‘Way Down Upon the Swanee…’ I haven’t gotten to river yet. Maybe next year I’ll be in the river.”
Linz said today he did not ascribe to the theory that the harmonica incident “woke up” a complacent team and fire it on to win the pennant.
“It’s a good September ballclub, that’s all — a great club,” he said. Linz has received 10 harmonicas in the mail since the incident, some recording offers, and $65 from fans to defray the cost of his fine. The $65 included $25 from a well-known orchestra leader who asked for anonymity and signed the letter, “A Music Lover.”
As for the homer today, Linz said coach Jim Gleeson shouted, “Go, Go, Go,” as he rounded the bases, and he wondered if the ball hadn’t gone as far as he thought it had. “Just my luck, I thought, a big gust of wind comes along and blows it back in.”
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