Johnny Blanchard

Legends Johnny Blanchard, Arthur Richman are one in Yankee memories

The Yankees were dealt a double loss Wednesday with the news that longtime senior exec Arthur Richman and the popular '60s backup catcher Johnny Blanchard both passed away within hours of each other. And while they scarcely knew each other, because they were from two different Yankee eras, they did have one notable thing in common:

Each of them achieved a measure of baseball fame far beyond anyone's imagination.

Blanchard, who succumbed to a heart attack at age 76 at North Memorial Medical Center in Robbinsville, Minn., played in only 516 major league games for the Yankees, Kansas City Athletics and Milwaukee Braves from 1955-65, but he is probably the most famous third-string catcher in baseball history. That's because, in 1961, as a pivotal player on the Roger Maris/Mickey Mantle Yankees that hit a then-major league record 240 homers, he had one of the greatest seasons ever by a backup catcher - .305 average, 21 homers and 54 RBI in only 243 at-bats, including four straight homers over a three-game period. Although beginning to decline, Yogi Berra was still regarded as the Yankees' No. 1 catcher with Elston Howard, No. 2. The three of them combined for 64 homers that year.

In the 1961 World Series against the Cincinnati Reds, Blanchard's pinch-hit homer in the eighth inning tied Game 3 at 2-2, and in the clinching Game 5, he went 3-for-4 with a homer and a double while playing right field.

Blanchard hit .239 with 67 homers in his brief career, but .345 with two homers and five RBI in 15 games in five World Series for the Yankees - when it counted most. When the Yankees traded him to the Athletics in May of 1965, he was devastated. "I'd been a backup catcher for seven years and it was a total surprise that I never got over," he told me a few years ago. "After that, I really started to drink. It was the end of the world for me."

As years went by, he got himself together. He'd always been in Mantle's inner circle of close friends and partly because of that, Blanchard achieved "A-list" status for the Yankees' annual Old-Timers' Day ceremonies. Not bad for a lifetime .239-hitting third-string catcher.

Arthur Richman, who died in his sleep at age 83 in his Manhattan apartment with his wife, Martha, and friends, at his side, spent more than 40 years in baseball as a front office executive, during which he forged friendships with hundreds of players, managers and officials in the game as well as celebrities and political titans outside it. Richman grew up in the game when he and his older brother Milton used to hang out by the visiting players' gate at Yankee Stadium and were "adopted" by the St. Louis Browns who brought them on the trains with them to Philadelphia and Boston.

Later, the Richman brothers became sports writers, Arthur with the old New York Mirror, and Milton with United Press International, where he rose to become sports editor and earn election to the writers' wing of the Hall of Fame in 1981. For Arthur, baseball became a full-time occupation after the Mirror folded in 1963. He first worked for the Mets as promotions director and traveling secretary, then moved over to the Yankees when George Steinbrenner hired him as a senior adviser in 1995.

That winter, when Steinbrenner fired Buck Showalter as Yankee manager, Richman recommended he hire Joe Torre. Although Steinbrenner later credited Richman for the recommendation, it was, in fact, Gene Michael, as the head of baseball operations, who made the Torre hire.

In that respect, nobody quite knew what Richman actually did for the Yankees, but as former media relations director Rick Cerrone said: "If you didn't know him, you couldn't have invented him." Cerrone recalled his utter amazement at the phone calls Richman would routinely get during the course of the day. Hall of Famers such as Joe DiMaggio, Stan Musial, George Brett, Johnny Bench, Willie Mays, and celebrities such as Rush Limbaugh, cardinals and bishops would call. Or even a President - George H.W. Bush - whom Richman would affectionately call "Bushie."

Richman was fond of telling people about the list of pallbearers "for when I go bye-bye Babylon" that he kept in his vest pocket. It was a list that was apparently subject to periodic revisions, although Brett, who named his first son "Dylan Richman" after Arthur and Milton, was always the one constant.

"It broke my heart to see him struggle with his memory and names and not be the life of the party," Brett said last night. "He was always complaining about everything, but always had a smile on his face while he was complaining. He was a special man."

Services will be held today at 11:45 a.m. at the Riverside Memorial Chapel on 76th St. and Amsterdam Ave. and, at his request, Richman will be laid to rest in his 1944 Brownies cap, the year of their one World Series appearance. However, I can just hear Arthur scolding me.

"I gotta share the obit with Johnny Blanchard? What the hell did he do?"