Not just one of the greatest Yankees of all time — No. 24 by our Top 100 a few years back — Elston is one of the most important in the history of the franchise. A six-time champion, Howard won an MVP in pinstripes and lengthened the lineup of that legendary 1961 club. Most important of all, he was the first Black Yankee, representing the team that plays in the most diverse borough in the most diverse city in the world.
He would have been 97 today.
Elston Gene Howard
Born: February 23, 1929 (St Louis, MO)
Died: December 14, 1980 (New York, NY)
Yankees Tenure: 1955-67
If he didn’t live at the same time as Buck O’Neil, Henry Aaron, or Willie Mays, Howard would have a strong case to be Mr. Baseball, cutting his teeth with the famous Kansas City Monarchs starting as a teenager in 1948 — now fairly acknowledged as his first career season of major-league play. He turned down three different college football scholarships to play for the Monarchs, the most famous brand in Negro Leagues ball. The Monarchs were the New York Yankees of their environment, with players among the most famous men, Black or otherwise, in the south.
It’s easy to see how such an apprenticeship would serve Howard well in the Bronx, signing with the org in 1950 but not seeing major-league playing time until 1955 — eight years after Jackie Robinson’s MLB debut and in the ascendancy of that late-50s dynasty. His route to the majors was delayed by Selected Service during the Korean War, where he was initially ticketed for a combat role but transferred to a morale unit, playing baseball for two years in Japan as an export of soft power.
He had split time in left field and behind the plate in the Negro Leagues, Japan and Yankee minors, it was going to be difficult to catch with Yogi Berra entrenched at the position. Invited to big-league camp in 1954, Howard was taken under the wing of coach Bill Dickey, who had a pretty good run in the majors as a catcher himself. After the Vic Power affair a year before, many in the New York media questioned whether this focus on catching was a delay tactic, that the Yankees didn’t want to actually integrate the team.
After one more season with the minor-league Toronto Maple Leafs, one where he won the International League MVP, Howard hit cleanup through almost the entirety of spring training. The writing was on the wall by this point: the Yankees were going to roster their first Black player. His debut came on April 14th, notching a single to bring in Mickey Mantle to score. While the promise and the talent was always there, 1955 was going to be the third MVP season for Berra — whether the Yankees were actively racist or not, it was always going to be tough to get playing time when Yogi is also on the team.
Howard’s first start in MLB came, of course, in Kansas City, and he went 3-for-5 in that first game behind the plate. As he began to solidify himself as a platoon player, the racism of the time was never far. Headed to spring training ahead of the 1956 season, Elston wanted to stop and stay with Martin Luther King Jr. in Atlanta, a friend of his family. The day before Howard was to arrive, King’s home was firebombed. Some years later, while trying to build in an all-white neighborhood in Trenton, Howard would start every morning of the summer scrubbing the build site clean of racist graffiti.
Elston Howard would win four World Series with the Yankees, and while he didn’t take home World Series MVP in the 1958 showdown with Milwaukee, a brilliant diving double play in left field got his team back into the series, and in Game 7, he’d drive in the eventual Series-winning run. He would consistently produce in the postseason, with four playoff runs posting an OPS over .850. The best way to write yourself into Yankee history is to show up under the brightest lights, and Howard could do all that and more.
He was also an innovator in more ways than one. Ahead of his MVP season in 1963, the right-handed hitting Howard switched to a heavier bat, forcing himself to be a little more late on every pitch. This drove up his fly balls to the opposite field, targeting that 314-foot sign in right field. A career-high 28 home runs followed, a prime example of the geeks ruining the sport by focusing too much on analytics. Towards the end of his time in the big leagues, Howard finalized the doughnut bat weight as well, rolling it out for the young, upstart, pennant-winning Red Sox team as he gradually closed out his career.
Howard could’ve easily been a pioneer in the dugout as well. Immediately after retiring, he rejoined the Yankees and became the American League’s first Black coach in 1969. For the next decade, managers like Ralph Houk, Bill Virdon, and of course Billy Martin came and went, but Howard remained on the big-league staff as a deeply valued mentor — and occasional peacekeeper in the dugout. Few doubted that Howard could have been MLB’s first Black manager, or at the very least the first in Yankees history after Frank Robinson beat him to the punch. Devastatingly, a severe case of myocarditis took Howard from this world at only 51 years old in 1980, and he could only watch over his Yanks from above. His widow, Arlene, would remain a beloved, revered figure at Old-Timers’ Day events for the rest of her life.
There’s that old saying that Ginger Rogers had to do everything Fred Astaire did, but backwards and in high heels. Integration worked that way too, Black players didn’t just have to be excellent on the field, but they were never allowed to make the same mistakes or be the playboys that their White counterparts were. Elston Howard cut through all of that, a stellar example of what can happen when a human being perseveres through a system designed to break him down. Happy birthday, Elston.
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