Phil Linz, 1939-2020

Gabriel has blown his horn, and now Phil Linz has traded his harmonica for a golden harp.

Philip Francis Linz was born on June 4, 1939 in Baltimore. He starred at Calvert Hall, a Catholic high school there, and was signed right after graduation by the Yankees. He made the team out of Spring Training in 1962, as part of a talented, but smart-mouthed, group of kids who had come up through the farm system together, including 1st baseman Joe Pepitone and pitcher Jim Bouton.

He was a shortstop, and thus seemed to be stuck behind Tony Kubek and Tom Tresh. When Kubek missed much of the 1962 season due to his U.S. Army Reserve commitment, it was Tresh who played most of the games at shortstop.

When Linz made his debut on May 23, it was at 3rd base, after Clete Boyer had to leave the game after being hit by a pitch. In only his 2nd at-bat, Linz hit a home run off Dan Pfister. The Yankees beat the Kansas City Athletics, 13-7 at the original Yankee Stadium, as Pepitone (twice) and Johnny Blanchard also hit home runs.

Linz wore Number 34 that day -- as had Boyer before switching to the more familiar 6 in 1961 -- and would ear it for the Pinstripes through the 1964 season. He batted .287 in 1962, and helped the Yankees win the American League Pennant, but was not placed on the World Series roster. He did get a World Series ring, though.

In 1963, manager Ralph Houk began placing him in the outfield. When Houk became general manager and retiring player Yogi Berra became field manager for 1964, Yogi continued to use Linz wherever he could, allowing him to make 417 plate appearances, which would prove to be a career high. The press nicknamed Linz "Supersub."

The 1964 season would be a difficult one for the Yankees. On August 20, the Chicago White Sox beat them 5-0 to finish a 4-game sweep over them at Comiskey Park. This left the Yankees in 3rd place in the single-division AL, 4 1/2 games behind the White Sox, with the Baltimore Orioles half a game back.

The Yankees boarded a bus for O'Hare International Airport, where they would catch a flight to Boston to play the Red Sox. To pass the time, Linz pulled out a harmonica, which he had begun to learn how to play. Like so many beginner musicians, one of the first songs he had learned was "Mary Had a Little Lamb."

Yogi was seated at the front of the bus, and the sound deepened his annoyance. Linz kept playing, and, finally, Yogi had had enough, yelling, "Whoever's playing that thing, shove it up your ass!"

Linz couldn't make out what Yogi said, so he leaned across the aisle and asked, "What did he say?" Unfortunately, the player across the aisle was Mickey Mantle, at the time baseball's greatest player, but also a guy with a wicked sense of humor. Mickey decided to have a little fun with both of them, and said, "He said, 'Play it louder.'" Unfortunately, Linz took Mickey seriously, and played the harmonica louder.

So, with the bus still in motion, Yogi got up, and walked over to Linz, and said, "I thought I told you to shove that thing up your ass!"

Linz did not take Yogi seriously. He said, "If you want it shoved up my ass, why don't you shove it there?" And he tossed the harmonica to Yogi.

Yogi, angry that his authority had been challenged, slapped the instrument down with his hand.

What happened next depends on who's telling the story. Some sources say that nothing happened. And that this showed the players, most of whom had played with Yogi and considered him a great guy, that, now, they had to start respecting him as a manager.

But the version of the story most often told is that, when Yogi slapped the harmonica, it bounced off Pepitone's leg. Joe fell into the aisle, and acted as thought he was seriously injured, faking a moan-and-grown session.

When this version is told, what happened next is that everyone laughed, and then Mickey picked up the harmonica, and told Whitey Ford, sitting next to him, "Well, Whitey, looks like I'm gonna be managin' this team next year. You can be my pitching coach." And he grabbed the harmonica and began to play: "One note means a fastball. Two means a curve." And everybody laughed harder.

This suggests that they still didn't respect Yogi as a manager. But the story also goes that the team had been really uptight, and that this incident loosened them up.

Houk went up to Boston and met with Berra and Linz, separately. His decision: A $200 fine, but no suspension. The Yankees ended up losing the 1st 2 games in Boston. But after that, they went 30-11, including winning streaks of 11, 5 and 4, and won the Pennant, by 1 game over the White Sox and 2 over the Orioles.

The National League Pennant race of 1964 has been talked about to death, due to the Philadelphia Phillies blowing a 6 1/2-game lead with 12 to play with a 10 game losing streak, with the Cincinnati Reds going 9-1 and the St. Louis Cardinals 8-2 over the same stretch, resulting in the Cards beating the Phils and Reds by 1 game each. But the AL race was nearly as dramatic. David Halberstam chronicled both races in his book October 1964.

Linz appeared in all 7 games of the 1964 World Series, after Kubek got hurt. He hit home runs off Barney Schultz in Game 2 and Bob Gibson in Game 7. But the Cardinals beat the Yankees. Halberstam wrote that a big reason why was that 2nd baseman Bobby Richardson didn't have the same kind of rapport with Linz that he had with Kubek. This is ridiculous: The Yankees lost that Series because Whitey Ford got hurt in Game 1, and wasn't able to pitch in Game 4, or in Game 7 against Gibson.

"The Harmonica Incident" led Yankee management to immediately decide that Berra would be fired after the season, even if they won the World Series. They wanted to bring in a new manager who would crack down on bad behavior. They got their chance when Cardinal manager Johnny Keane also quit right after the Series, and they hired him.

The move backfired tremendously. Keane was already ill, and handled the players very badly. They might not have respected Yogi enough, but at least they liked him, and knew he had contributed to Yankee success. Keane had never been in the Yankee organization before, and infuriated everybody, including Mantle and Ford. Once Keane lost them, he'd lost the whole team. He was fired in early 1966, and died a year later.

The Yankee Dynasty was over. They finished 6th in 1965, with Linz, now wearing Number 12, playing more as a back injury hampered Kubek, and led him to retire at the end of the season. Roger Maris broke his hand, Bouton wrecked his elbow, and Richardson was also hurt.

After the season, the Yankees traded Linz to the Phillies, and hardly played for them for a year and a half. In 1967, he was traded back to New York, to the Mets. Yogi was a coach there. But all was forgiven, as he and Phil posed for a good-natured photo.

Phil started the 1968 season 0-for-25. Then, on May 25, he went 3-for-4 and helped the Mets beat the Atlanta Braves 9-1. It was a last hurrah: He played his last game on September 29, the Mets released him, and none of the 4 expansion teams coming in for 1969 selected him. He was not yet 30, but he was done, with a reputation as a good fielder, but just a .235 lifetime batting average.

After baseball, he operated a series of restaurants, and a New York disco named The Marshmallow, with 1969 Met hero Art Shamsky as a partner. He then worked in the insurance industry. He was married to the former Lynn Parker, and they had a son Phillip Ben, who had a son Julius.

He attended a few Old-Timers Days, and, in uniform, sat for an interview for the YES Network's Yankeeography series, including playing a harmonica. But not the original: Somehow, Whitey ended up with it, and refused to give it back, saying it will be worth a lot of money someday. Whitey died this past October, and had never sold it.

Phil Linz suffered a stroke in 2015, and had lived in a nursing home in Leesburg, Virginia ever since. He died today, December 9, 2020, at the age of 81.