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Ralph George Houk (; August 9, 1919 – July 21, 2010), nicknamed " the Major", was an American catcher, coach, manager, and front office executive in Major League Baseball. He is best known as the successor of Casey Stengel as manager of the New York Yankees from 1961 to 1963, when his teams won three consecutive American League pennants and the 1961 and 1962 World Series championships. In he became the second rookie manager to win 100 games in a season and third rookie manager to win a World Series. He was the first manager to win World Series titles in his first two seasons and the first manager since Hughie Jennings to win three pennants in his first three seasons.
Returning to baseball after the war, Houk eventually reached the major leagues, serving as the Yankees' second- and third-string catcher behind Yogi Berra. A right-handed hitter listed as tall and , Houk games played only 91 games over eight seasons (1947–1954), finishing with a batting average of .272. Although the Yankees participated in six World Series during that period, Houk had only two at bats (one in , the other in ), batting .500.
In 1955 he was named manager of the Yanks' Triple-A affiliate, the Denver Bears of the American Association. Following three highly successful seasons at Denver, culminating with the 1957 league playoff and Junior World Series championships, Houk returned to the Bronx as Stengel's first-base coach from 1958 to 1960. From late May through early June , Houk served as acting manager of the Yanks for 13 games while Stengel, 70, was sidelined by illness. (The team won 7 and lost 6.) Then, after the Yanks lost the 1960 World Series to the Pittsburgh Pirates—and with Houk one of the hottest managerial candidates in baseball—the Yankees "discharged" Stengel (to use Stengel's own words) and promoted Houk.
The early 1960s Yankees responded to Houk's leadership; the 1961 team led by Roger Maris (61 ), Mickey Mantle (54 homers) and Whitey Ford (25 victories) won 109 games and beat the Cincinnati Reds in five games in the World Series. His club won 96 games, and were victorious over the San Francisco Giants in seven games in the Fall Classic. In , the Yanks won 104 games and rolled to the pennant, but were swept in four games by the Dodgers in the Series.
Not all players found him to be a stellar players' manager, though. He was featured a handful of times in Jim Bouton's book Ball Four, as Bouton was reminiscing about his time with the Yankees in 1969. Houk was described in one instance as "sometimes...99 percent pure bullshit."
To succeed Berra, he then hired Johnny Keane, who had just resigned as manager of the champion Cardinals. Houk had admired Keane as a competitor in the American Association from almost a decade before and, according to author David Halberstam, the Yankees had made overtures to Keane during the 1964 regular season about becoming their manager for 1965. But the great postwar Yankee dynasty was aged and crumbling, the farm system had seriously deteriorated, and the Kansas City Athletics were no longer a reliable source for major league talent. Keane, a longtime minor league manager, was better suited by temperament for managing young players than established and aging superstars, and his hiring was a failure. The team fell to sixth in —their first losing record since 1925, and only their second since 1918. When they won only four of the first 20 games of , Houk fired Keane on May 7 and named himself manager, assuming that job for the second time.
Despite two years left on a three‐year contract, Houk announced his resignation immediately after a season-ending 8–5 loss to the Detroit Tigers on September 30, 1973, in the final game at Yankee Stadium prior to its closure for a two-year renovation. Goldaper, Sam. "Houk Out As Yanks' Manager," The New York Times, Monday, October 1, 1973. Retrieved March 25, 2022. While first-year team owner George Steinbrenner's commanding style has led some to think the new owner influenced Houk's departure, he told Bill Madden of the New York Daily News it was the constant booing of Yankee fans that pushed him. Houk even said that Steinbrenner insisted he'd get some new players to restore the team's greatness. "And he did, bringing in Catfish Hunter and Reggie Jackson, " Houk told Madden in Pride of October. "That'll make you good in a hurry!" Apart from a brief stint with the Tigers' Class B affiliate in Augusta, Georgia, he had spent the first 35 years of his adult life on the Yankees' payroll.
Aware of the challenge he was going to face, he stated, "I'm more concerned with winning than rebuilding, but we have to rebuild, there's no doubt about it." Chass, Murray. "Tigers Get Houk As Pilot," The New York Times, Friday, October 12, 1973. Retrieved March 25, 2022. A veteran team -- Detroit's 1973 roster averaged 31.8 years of age Baseball Reference -- the Tigers were five years removed from winning the World Series and had just had won the AL East in 1972 under Martin. But the team was in need of a rebuild and began moving on from their longtime stars -- including future Hall of Famer Al Kaline, who retired after Houk's first season.
The low point came in , when Houk's team lost 102 games -- at the time the second-most losses in a season in franchise history -- but the Tigers improved their record by 14 games behind the heroics of rookie pitcher Mark Fidrych, who won 19 games while becoming a national sensation. By , Houk had restored Detroit to respectability and the Tigers won 86 games, but because Houk overpitched Fidrych in far too many games for a rookie, The Bird would only last two more seasons. 1978 was their first winning season since 1973, and the first of 11 consecutive winning seasons -- with future stars of the Sparky Anderson-led 1980s Tigers such as Lou Whitaker, Alan Trammell and Jack Morris.
After the 1978 season, with the roster's average age a youthful 26.3, Baseball Reference Houk retired from baseball.
Although not as daunting as his Detroit assignment, Houk faced another rebuilding job: the powerful Boston team of the 1970s was about to lose marquee players such as Carlton Fisk and Fred Lynn and needed to retool its roster. But Houk rose to the challenge, and in four seasons produced three over-.500 teams. On his watch, Boston broke in young players Wade Boggs, Roger Clemens, Bruce Hurst and Marty Barrett. When Houk retired from managing permanently in October , just after his 65th birthday, he bequeathed the core of another pennant winning ballclub (in this case, the 1986 Red Sox) to his successor, John McNamara.
His final record, over 20 years with the Yankees (1961–1963, 1966–1973), Tigers (1974–1978) and Red Sox (1981–1984) was 1,619 wins and 1,531 losses (.514), plus eight wins and eight losses in the World Series. In twenty seasons as manager, he had eleven winning seasons, with six finishes of third or better and five seasons with a finish of sixth or worse. After his first three championship seasons, he never appeared in the postseason.
Colorful opinions about Houk can be found in Jim Bouton's classic 1970 memoir, Ball Four. Houk was Bouton's first big league manager and sparred with him over contracts when Houk was the Yankees' GM.
Houk was portrayed by Bruce McGill in the 2001 film 61*.
He died on July 21, 2010, in Winter Haven, Florida, just nineteen days before he would have turned 91. At age 90 he was, at the time, the oldest living manager of a World Series-winning, pennant-winning or post-season team. He was survived by a daughter, Donna; a son, Robert; four grandchildren and 10 great-grandchildren.
On July 22, 2010, the Yankees announced players and coaches would wear a black armband in Houk's memory on the left sleeve of their home and away uniforms for the remainder of the 2010 season.
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