ELSTON HOWARD, YANKEE MAINSTAY

The New York Yankees of the 1950s and early 1960s made it tough on everyone else. They won nine World Series in a span of fourteen years with rosters stuffed with stars who were on their way to baseball’s Hall of Fame.

But when it came to putting players of color in the club’s famous pinstripes, the Yankees were a lot closer to last place than to first.

Most of the sixteen teams that then made up the major leagues had already broken the color barrier by the time the Yankees—either because they were being cautious or biased, or both—finally put Elston Howard on the opening-day roster for the 1955 season.

Howard was from St. Louis, a high school star in three sports who turned down offers of college scholarships to sign with the Kansas City Monarchs of the Negro leagues in 1948. Three years earlier, Jackie Robinson had played a season for the Monarchs before beginning his journey to the Brooklyn Dodgers and American history. Howard’s journey was less dramatic, but no less determined.

After three seasons with the Monarchs and two in the United States Army, Howard signed with the Yankees. He was an outfielder, but by the time the Yankees called him up to the majors, he had become a catcher, too.

And from that first season in 1955, when he hit .290 in 271 at-bats, he became a reliable member of the Yankees’ lineup—someone who could play right field or left, catcher or even first base. And could hit.

In 1957, he was named to the American League All-Star Team, the first of nine consecutive selections. In 1958, he was a World Series hero as the Yankees rallied from a three-games-to-one deficit to beat the Milwaukee Braves and regain the world championship. In 1960, he took over the majority of the catching duties from Yogi Berra, who by then was thirty-five.

And in 1961, the year that two of Howard’s teammates, Roger Maris and Mickey Mantle, staged their epic pursuit of Babe Ruth’s single-season mark of sixty home runs, Howard put up dazzling numbers, too: 111 games behind the plate, a .348 batting average and twenty-one home runs.

That fall, the Yankees took on the Cincinnati Reds in the Series. Howard homered in the first game and caught the fifth, when the Yankees clinched the title in Cincinnati. The account of the victory in the next day’s editions of The New York Times included a picture of Howard, his catching mask still on, embracing pitcher Bud Daley after the last out.

The main photo, though, was of the two managers—the Yankees’ Ralph Houk, looking joyous, and the Reds’ Fred Hutchinson, looking somber—as Hutchinson awkwardly congratulated Houk in the locker room.

When the Yankees arrived home the following day at Penn Station, champions of baseball for the third time in four years, The Times was there to greet them, but no story appeared about the welcome home. Nor did The Times choose to use a picture that its photographer, Arthur Brower, took of Howard and his wife, Arlene, as they left the train.

In it, Howard, with a suitcase in his left hand, had a jaunty Reds hat on his head in a sly display of humor. Arlene held a Yankees World Series pennant.

A year later, the Howards would celebrate again as the Yankees beat the San Francisco Giants in seven games to win still another Series. And in 1963, Howard was named the American League’s most valuable player.

Howard had one more strong season left, in 1964, and then his offensive numbers began to fade, as they often do for catchers who are climbing past their mid-thirties. His last season was 1968, as a part-time player with the Boston Red Sox.

He became a coach for the Yankees and then an administrative assistant for the team, but death claimed him early, as it did with Robinson. He was only fifty-one when he died of a heart ailment in December 1980.

Two months later, George Vecsey wrote a “Sports of the Times” column about the man who had integrated the Yankees. He interviewed Arlene Howard, who talked at length about what it was like to be married to someone who had to deal with the pressure of being the first black player on the team.

“There were times when Elston would come home angry—people never knew that—and I felt the brunt,” she told Vecsey. “I had to be wife, mother and psychiatrist sometimes, but I wanted to be.”

She recalled their experiences at spring training in St. Petersburg when for years the Howards had to find their own accommodations away from the team hotel.

“We had friends, and we always managed to rent houses, but I was angry nonetheless,” she said. “Elston was angry, too, but his nature was such that he put his anger into competing.”

And there were sweeter memories, too. “Travel was by train, you always had Monday off, you played day games, you could plan your evenings,” she said. “Every Sunday night, we’d go into the city knowing we had Monday off. It was a marvelous family era.”

Accompanying the column was a picture of Elston and Arlene Howard. It was a nice photo, but not as eye-catching as the one that never ran twenty years before.

—JAY SCHREIBER