It was, indeed, “déjà vu all over again,” in the 1963 battle for supremacy between the White Sox and the Yankees! The Yanks won the regular season series 10-8, won 104 games to again claim the American League pennant, and went on to play the Los Angeles Dodgers in the World Series. The White Sox, on the other hand, finished second, ten-and-a-half games back at 94-68. They did “Go” 18-9 in the month of September, making a last-ditch rally, after a 14-13 July and 17-13 August, but it was obviously not enough. The Minnesota Twins finished second, just ahead of the Baltimore Orioles.
Dave DeBusschere appeared in 24-games before he decided that basketball was more his thing and not baseball. He finished his two-year career in a White Sox uniform with a 3-4 record. There were more changes in the Sox roster in May when Dom Zanni was traded to the Cincinnati Reds for Jim Brosnan, and Sammy Esposito was released by the team. Nellie Fox and Juan Pizzaro were reserves in the All-Star game.
Sherm Lollar played in only 35-games in 1963 with no home runs and a meager .233 average to end his playing career, having never fully recovered from the thumb injury. September 7, 1963, was his final game. I have a ticket stub in my collection but did not attend. He came in to catch in the top of the 10th for J.C. Martin, and didn’t get to hit until the 11th inning in a 2-2 game. His last swing was a pop-out to the catcher, Jerry Zimmerman. The Twins went on to win it 4-2 in the top of the 12th on a Rich Rollins single.
For the first time ever, the Yankees were swept in a World Series. The Dodgers ended Berra’s catching career on a similar sour note as Lollar’s. Yogi, too, was 0-1 in his final game, with it being his sole at bat in the Series. Also, like Lollar, it was his 18th season as a player, but all with the Yankees, while Lollar played for four different teams: the Indians, Yankees, Browns, and White Sox.
Berra spent 1964 as the Yankees manager, when Ralph Houk, moved up to general manager. It was the same old story for the White Sox, who lagged one game behind in the final standings. Doubts about his managerial skills plagued Yogi throughout a difficult season with many veterans missing games due to injury. There was the “Harmonica Incident,” where after a White Sox sweep appeared to take the Yankees out of pennant contention, he clashed with one of his players on the team bus. The team rallied behind Berra afterwards to win the pennant. However, the Cardinals won the Series, and the incident may have been the reason why Berra was replaced by the winning Red Birds manager, Johnny Keane, at the end of the season.
Lollar became the bullpen coach of the Baltimore Orioles in 1964 and remained in that position until 1967, winning a second World Series ring in 1966, eleven fewer than Yogi. Berra joined the New York Mets in 1965 as coach (and briefly as a player again), and stayed for the next decade, serving the last four years as their manager. As a side note, in 1962 before Berra joined the crosstown Mets, they had posted a 40–120 record, the “second-most” losses by a post-1900 MLB team only because the 2024 Chicago White Sox just surpassed that dubious mark. Yogi’s hire added some credibility to the Mets’ organization that had frankly become a joke. The punch line came in 1966, when team executives famously bypassed future Hall of Famer Reggie Jackson in the amateur draft, instead selecting Steve Chilcott, who never played in the majors.
Sherm Lollar next became the bullpen coach of the 1968-1969 Oakland Athletics, guiding Catfish Hunter’s perfect game. Meanwhile, his Oriole pitchers from the previous year went on to play Berra’s “Amazing Mets” in the 1969 World Series. Suddenly, the Mets were no longer a laughingstock, and Coach Berra won another World Series ring, the only one not associated with the Yankees.
Yogi returned to the Yankees in 1976, under manager Billy Martin. Berra stayed for eight seasons as coach and then managed the Bronx Bombers for what turned out to be barely just over a year. Coach Berra’s Yankee’s, now in the American League East division, had returned to the Bronx after a two-year absence for stadium renovations. They were once again uncharacteristically swept by Cincinnati 4-0 in the World Series, just as the Dodgers had done to them in 1963. It marked their first postseason appearance since 1964.
1977 was George Steinbrenner’s first year of ownership and the newly renovated Yankee Stadium hosted the All-Star game. His first major move was to sign Reggie Jackson to a five-year contract. The team finished in first place in the American League East with a record of 100–62 (.617), 2½ games ahead of the Baltimore Orioles to successfully defend their division title. In the best-of-five League Championship Series (ALCS), they beat the Kansas City Royals in five games. In the World Series, the Yankees defeated the Los Angeles Dodgers in six games to celebrate the 75th season of the team and the 21st title. Coach Yogi Berra claimed more World Series hardware for his fingers and toes.
More of the same, in 1978, as Coach Berra’s Yankees compiled a record of 100–63, finishing one game ahead of the Boston Red Sox to win their third American League East title, but it took a one-game playoff. They went on win the World Series in a rematch with the Los Angeles Dodgers, despite all the controversy. Reggie Jackson had been suspended in a mid-season showdown with Billy Martin, which resulted in Martin resigning a week later. Dick Howser became manager for one game before Bob Lemon took over the team in July. Yogi ultimately received his 13th World Series championship ring.
This story has taken a twist from the now deceased Sherm Lollar to being more about Yogi’s tumultuous Yankees. Not happy with the slow start to the 1979 season, Steinbrenner fired Manager Lemon and brought Martin back. This move did not sit well with Jackson or team president, Al Rosen, who also resigned. The year was also tragically marked by the death of starting catcher, Thurman Munson, on August 2. As a result, the Yankees’ three-year domination of the AL East came to an abrupt halt. The team finished with a record of 89–71, finishing fourth, 13.5 games behind the Baltimore Orioles.
In continuing to compare Berra and Lollar’s parallel careers, Sherm managed the Oakland Athletic minor league Iowa Oaks from 1970-72. While in Des Moines, Iowa, once again according to John McMurray’s article: “Lollar barely escaped serious injury. While he sat in his car at a red light after a game in 1970, a nearby building suddenly collapsed. ‘I was just sitting there listening to the radio when – wham! It was like the sky falling,’ Lollar related. ‘What made it worse was that I had no idea what was happening. I couldn’t see a thing because of the dust and debris.” Fortunately, Lollar was unhurt.
His next stop was to manage the Tucson Toros, another A’s affiliate, from 1973 to 1974, winning a division title during the 1973 season. I bought a 50-cent copy of a Toros’ program from 1973 at E-bay prices that included an article titled “Lollar Wins First Pennant at Tuscon:”
“Under Lollar’s guidance, the Toros took five of seven games from the Salt Lake Angels to wrap up the Eastern Division title. The victory brough Tucson its first championship team in two decades. Sherm said last spring that he felt the Oakland A’s could provide the Toros with the type of talent that would make Tucson a pennant contender…and he was right!”
“During informal moments Lollar like to relate two bits of trivia about his major league career. First, he was a teammate of the only midget to play in the majors while a member of the St. Louis Browns (Eddie Gaedel, brought in by owner Bill Veeck as a publicity stunt). Secondly, he was involved in the first pinch-hit home run recorded in a World Series...in 1947. Yogi Berra clouted the first four-bagger as a pinch hitter…for none other than Sherm Lollar.”
McMurray went on to write: “Lollar retired from the Toros after the 1974 season because of a dispute with Charley Finley, the owner of the Oakland A’s. He had done advance scouting for the A’s for the post-season, starting in 1971. In 1974, John Claiborne, Finley’s director of minor-league operations, told Lollar that Finley wanted to pay $500 less for the advance scouting than he had paid in previous seasons. Lollar refused. ‘He’s going to be mad, Sherm,’ said Claiborne, ‘and you might not be managing next year.’ Lollar stuck to his guns. ‘It was the principle of the thing,’ he told a reporter later. ‘I never did have any direct contact with Finley about it. But … I decided I had been playing ball 30 years and you’ve got to quit sometime, so I figured it was a good time.'”
“Sherm and his wife, Constance, reside in Springfield, Mo., during the off-season. They have two sons attending college in the South. Sherm spends a considerable amount of his time in the winter supervising activities at his 32-lane bowling establishment in Springfield.”
Sherm had met Connie in 1946, just after his debut with the Cleveland Indians. They married in 1949.
The Toros team was in Hawaii in the spring of 1973, so Lollar was unable to attend a White Sox All-Star reunion. He died after a long battle with cancer four years later on September 24, 1977, at the far too young age of 53. He is buried in Rivermonte Memorial Gardens in Springfield. Sherm Lollar’ final honor was being named to the Chicago White Sox All-Century Team. Yogi Berra continued to coach and manage, as the Bronx Bombers rolled on!
The 1980 Yankees were swept in the ALCS by the Kansas City Royals. Once again, Dick Howser was in charge, but this time for the whole season rather than just a day, with Billy Martin out of the picture, as the Steinbrenner see-saw rocked back and forth. The team finished with a record of 103–59, finishing in first place in the American League East, 3-games ahead of the Baltimore Orioles.
The 1981 team finished in first place for the first half of the season with a 34–22 record but finished fifth in the second half with a 25–26 record, for an overall record of 59–48. The season was suspended for 50 days due to the infamous 1981 players strike and the league chose as its playoff teams, the division winners from the first and second halves of the season, respectively. In the Series, it was the Dodgers in six over the Yankees.
1982 was the first losing season for the Yankees since 1973 at 79-83. Bob Lemon was back to share the managerial duties with Gene Michael. Once again, no Billy Martin, who continued to manage the Oakland Athletics since 1980. He returned to Steinbrenner and the Yankees in 1983 to deliver a winning season, but short of any titles, before Yogi took over in 1984 for another disappointing third place finish.
Temperamental Yankees owner George Steinbrenner had Berra fired sixteen games into the 1985 season, electing not to do it himself, following a sweep by the Chicago White Sox. Yogi was then replaced by Billy Martin in the revolving door that started with those two in 1983 when Berra replaced Martin as manager. It had been swinging for years during the Steinbrenner regime. Berra, in bitter retaliation, vowed never to return to Yankee Stadium. Steinbrenner publicly apologized ten-years later. Meanwhile, Berra joined the Houston Astros as bench coach in 1985, where he made it to the NLCS in 1986. He remained in that position for three more years, retiring after the 1989 season.
Yogi Berra had lasted in baseball 15-years longer than Sherm Lollar and lived 38-years more, reaching the golden age of 90. When all was said and done with his decades of involvement in New York baseball, Berra had appeared as a player, coach or manager in 13 of 15 World Series that New York baseball teams won from 1947 through 1981. Overall, he played or coached in 21 World Series.
While other great catchers like Sherm Lollar, Elston Howard, and Thurmon Munson never did get nods from the Hall of Fame, Yogi Berra was elected in 1972 on his second ballot. That same year, his No. 8 was retired in 1972 by the Yankees, jointly honoring both Berra and Bill Dickey, his predecessor as the Yankees’ star catcher. Sherm also played for Bill Dickey on that 1947 team that earned both he and Berra their first World Series rings.
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