Sunday is the 50th anniversary of what is considered to be one of the most lopsided trades in baseball history. Of course, it involved the Chicago Cubs.

On June 15, 1964, the Cubs traded outfielder Lou Brock and pitchers Jack Spring and Paul Toth to the St. Louis Cardinals for pitchers Ernie Broglio and Bobby Shantz and outfielder Doug Clemens.

The trade a month into the 1964 season was the first chapter in an unlikely season that ended with the Cardinals’ winning the 1964 World Series over the New York Yankees, after which the Yankees fired first-year manager Yogi Berra (yes, that Yogi Berra) and replaced him with … Cardinals manager Johnny Keane.

The Cardinals’ and Yankees’ seasons are chronicled in David Halberstam’s book, October 1964, which is a great read for fans of baseball. From the Cardinals’ perspective, it was probably a season that Hollywood would have rejected as a story idea because of its improbable nature.

The 1964 season turned out to be the last American League pennant-winning season for the Yankees after a stretch in which the damn Yankees were as inevitable as the sun setting in the west. From 1947 until 1964, it’s simpler to list the years the Yankees did not win the AL pennant — 1948, 1954 and 1959. The 1964 season was their fifth consecutive AL pennant-winning season, though disturbances could be felt in the Force, so to speak, since the Yankees did not win the 1960 and 1963 World Series.

The Cardinals won the 1946 World Series, and had not been back since then. Most years, the Cardinals didn’t get close, though they finished six games behind the Los Angeles Dodgers in 1963. On June 15, the day of the trade, the Cardinals lost to Houston 9–3 to drop to 28–31.

Then Brock showed up, and the Cardinals won four games in a row to jump over .500. From the day of the trade to the end of the season, the Cardinals went 65–38 to finish at 93–69, one game better than the Philadelphia Phillies.

For Spring, it was the second time he’d been traded in a month; the Cubs acquired Spring from the Los Angeles Angels May 15. Shantz wasn’t done moving either; Philadelphia purchased Shantz from the Cubs Aug. 15.

Around the time of Shantz’s move from Chicago to Philly, those Phillies appeared to be running away with the National League pennant. (Two months earlier, pitcher Jim Bunning threw a perfect game on Father’s Day.)

So, based on the advice of his advisor Branch Rickey (yes, that Branch Rickey), Cardinals owner Gussie Busch fired general manager Bing Devine, and planned to fire manager Johnny Keane at the end of the season. (The initial speculated replacement was Leo Durocher, who was sort of Billy Martin before Billy Martin, though as far as I know Durocher was never reported as punching a marshmallow salesman.)

Three days after Busch fired Devine, the Chicago White Sox beat the Yankees 5–0 to complete a sweep at Comiskey Park. As the Yankees’ bus was heading toward O’Hare International Airport in Chicago, according to Yankees pitcher and Ball Four author Jim Bouton (or read the Associated Press version), infielder Phil Linz pulled out a harmonica and started playing “Mary Had a Little Lamb.” Berra, at the front of the bus, told Linz to stop playing. Linz didn’t hear Berra and kept playing. Berra then said, “If you don’t knock that off, I’m going to come back there and kick your ass.” Linz didn’t hear that either and asked teammate Mickey Mantle what Berra had said. Helpfully, Mantle said, “He said play it louder.”

So Linz did, and Berra stormed to the back of the bus and slapped the harmonica out of Linz’s hands. The harmonica bounced off the knee of first baseman Joe Pepitone, who, according to Bouton, yelled, “Ow! You hurt my wittle knee!”, because the harmonica actually cut Pepitone. Yankees coach Frank Crosetti called the incident the worst he’d seen in his 33 years with the team. (Which didn’t impress Bouton.)

As stupid as that incident was — expecting maturity from baseball players is about as reasonable as expecting temperance from drunks — it apparently convinced Yankees management to fire Berra at the end of the season. And indeed, Berra was fired after his first season, despite the Yankees getting to the seventh game of the World Series. Halberstam’s book reports that the Yankees talked to Keane during the season about replacing Berra in 1965.

None of this would have been very interesting had the Phillies continued to play well and clinched the NL pennant in September. But a funny thing happened to the Phillies on the way to the ’64 pennant — the Phillies collapsed. Their 6½ game lead on Labor Day, with 25 games to go, was maintained despite a sudden torrent of injuries and pitcher ineffectiveness.

Then, the Phillies managed to lose every game of a seven-game homestand, and went to St. Louis and lost three more, dropping them into third place. Cincinnati got the league lead briefly, then the Cardinals got it, then the Cardinals nearly lost it, but beat the (hideously bad) New York Mets to avoid a three-team tie at the end of the season, and more importantly win the NL pennant. The loss of a 6½-game lead over the season’s last 12 games is known in Philadelphia as the Phold.

The Yankees, meanwhile, managed to hold off the White Sox by one game and Baltimore by two to get to the World Series, which, it must be noted, began with …

… Cardinals backup catcher Bob Uecker (yes, that Bob Uecker) shagging fly balls with a metal tuba before the first game. (Uecker had already distinguished himself and foreshadowed his future career by imitating Cardinals announcer Harry Caray in the locker room after the pennant-clinching win. As Uecker put it years later, he had been “announcing” in the bullpen for years; all he had to do to broadcast was take out the obscenities.)

The aforementioned Bouton won two games, but the Cardinals won the World Series in seven games.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YSZ6hazhqMw

And then the fun started. The morning after game 7, Busch met with Keane about continuing as manager. Instead, reported the Associated Press:

Keane personally presented to Cardinals owner August A.  Busch Jr. Friday morning his letter of resignation typed by his wife and dated Sept. 28. Busch, whose Anheuser-Busch brewery owns the Cardinals, was visibly shaken.

“This really has shocked me,” said Busch, who earlier had been reported offering Keane’s job to Leo Durocher, then a coach with the Los Angeles Dodgers. “I didn’t know a thing about it until I saw Johnny this morning. All I can say is that I’m damned sorry to lose Johnny.” …

“I told Mr. Busch not to make any offer,” said Keane. “I handed him my resignation and said my decision was firm — that I didn’t want to embarrass him — but that no offer would be acceptable.”

Meanwhile,  elsewhere on the AP wire …

NEW YORK  (AP) — Colorful Yogi Berra’s tenure as manager of the New York Yankees has ended after one year.

The announcement of Berra’s dismissal was made to a stunned press conference by General Manager Ralph Houk, whom Yogi succeeded as Yankee skipper last Oct. 24.

Hoak, straining to be tactful, said Berra had accepted a two-year contract in the Yankee organization as a special field consultant working under Houk.

“The decision was made before the World Series,” said Houk …

Under questioning, Houk said, “This was the first Yogi knew about this.” …

Houk was asked if players had complained about Berra’s managing, as reports have indicated, and he answered: “I don’t want to put the blame on anybody.”

However, there had been reports of players’ dissatisfaction with Berra’s managing, and Houk reportedly was disenchanted with Berra’s handling of pitchers during his tenure.

Keane, whose resignation was the last act of 35 years with the Cardinals, was offered the Pirates’ job (to replace Danny Murtaugh, who had retired due to health problems; Murtaugh would return three times, the last to lead the Pirates to the 1971 World Series title), but became the Yankees’ manager. The Cardinals promoted coach and former second baseman Red Schoendienst to manager.

The moves worked better for the Cardinals than the Yankees. Schoendienst got to back-to-back World Series, winning in 1967. Keane inherited an aging lineup whose past stars weren’t successfully replaced. Houk fired Keane early in the 1966 season, replacing him with … Houk, who didn’t do any better. Keane died after the 1966 season.

Berra fared just fine; becoming a coach for the Mets, which won the 1969 World Series, then became the Mets manager after Gil Hodges died, and got to the 1973 World Series. (The Mets were 1969’s answer to the 1964 Cardinals, while the Cubs — remember them? — did their imitation of the 1964 Phillies under manager Durocher, taking the entire month of September to crash like the Hindenburg.

Berra then became a Yankees coach and then manager, getting fired by George Steinbrenner (which never happens) early in the 1985 season. Berra refused to set foot in Yankee Stadium as long as Steinbrenner owned the Yankees, and stayed out until 1998, when Steinbrenner went to Berra’s house to personally apologize.

Two more connections of interest: One of Keane’s coaches, Joe Schultz, became the first manager of the expansion Seattle Pilots, where one of his pitchers was Jim Bouton, whose aforementioned book chronicled Schultz’s favorite phrase, “Pound that Budweiser,”  and apparent favorite obscenities, “shitfuck” and “fuckshit.” After the Pilots went bankrupt following their only season, they ended up in Milwaukee to become the Brewers, whose announcer for four decades has been .. Bob Uecker.