The Pecan Park Eagle

Excerpt from “Your 1948 Houston Buffs, Dixie Champions: Brief Biographies By Morris Frank and Adie Marks (1948).

Johnny Keane
Manager
1947 Houston Buffs

Johnny Keane managed the first team I ever followed, the 1947 Houston Buffs, to both the Texas League pennant and the Dixie Series championship. Seventeen years later, he led the comeback-romping 1964 St. Louis Cardinals to an incredible last-chapter snatching of the National League pennant from the Cincinnati Reds and the phaltering phingers of the pholding Philadelphia Phillies. The Cardinals then edged the New York Yankees in the seven-game 1964 World Series. It was a big surprise championship, but the biggest surprise followed almost immediately.

The Yankees fired Yogi Berra as their manager for losing the ’64 Series and hired Johnny Keane as his replacement. In spite of Johnny’s desire to get back at Cardinals’ owner August Bush for his own plans to fire him until the team’s miracle rally, his placement with the Yankees was quick to prove itself a very bad fit.

Keane’s authoritarian ways didn’t go over well with the arrogant Yankee big apple celebrity athletes. The 1965 Yankees slipped all the way down to 6th. Then, New York AL ’66 headed toward a last place finish in the tenth spot, Keane was fired and replaced by Ralph Houk. Johnny Keane’s baseball career was over and done.

Johnny Keane returned to his Houston home after the Yankee firing, but his health had taken a heavy silent toll from the stress. At age 55, he died of heart failure on January 6, 1967.

Johnny Keane’s baseball history with the Houston Buffs was ancient and deep. He loved the city, playing shortstop here for four seasons from 1934 to 1937. He later managed the Buffs from 1946 to 1948, even getting into a few games as a player.

Keane was a minor league manager for seventeen seasons (1938-41, 1946-58) and a major league manager for six seasons with St. Louis, NL (1961-64) and New York, AL (1965-66).

Tags: Buff Biographies, Johnny Keane

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