Former Yankee Standout Keller is Enjoying Great Success in Another Sport

In 1939, a young country boy with bat and glove wandered into the Yankee clubhouse and stared in awe at Joe DiMaggio and Lou Gehrig, unaware that in the next four decades he would become a baseball star himself and a major force in another sport as well.

“It was a big step,” said Charlie (King Kong) Keller, now one of the nation’s top breeders of standardbred race horses. “The Yankees of those days had such a big name. I felt pride walking into the ballpark.”

Despite his initial shyness, Keller patroled the Yankee Stadium outfield for 11 years, turning in a career batting average of .286 with 189 home runs and 760 RBIs.

Today, Keller, 69, patrols a 100-acre spread at the foot of Maryland’s Catoctin mountains and you must coax the gentle man who does not like the nickname King Kong to talk about his baseball past.

“When I left baseball, I left baseball. I’ve always had another interests,” he said. “I never was happy in the big town,” he added, strolling about his oak tree-shaded home.

If Keller was uncomfortable away from his rural Middletown, Md., home, he did not show it when he started his professional career in 1937 with the Newark Bears, batting .353 with 13 homers and earning a shot with the heralded Yankees two years later.

In his rookie year, the Bronx Bombers--helped by Keller’s .334 hitting with 11 homers and 83 runs batted in--made the World Series and the still-green country boy belted three homers to help the Yankees to the championship.

“I like to tell people that Ted Williams and I broke in the same year and I out-hit him in my first year,” Keller boasted.

The next three seasons were just as sucessful for Keller. He batted near .300, smashed 111 home runs and played in three World Series and was named to the All-Star team three times.

Like many stars of that era, Keller spent 1944 and 1945 in the service, but he came back to make the All-Star team in 1946 and 1947. Soon after, Keller began to lose his batting stroke, injured his back and retired in 1952, though he coached for the Yankees in 1957.

Keller returned home to Western Maryland. “Some (ballplayers) never left it and held on to it too long. It was a passing phase in my life.”

Keller’s post-baseball career started in about 1955 with the purchase of a rundown old horse farm in Frederick, about three miles over the ridge from his birthplace.

“I happened to be in the right place at the right time. The (horse breeding) business was growing,” he said.

His first horse, Gay Yankee, won $70,000, enough to pave the long driveway to his home and purchase several broodmares and stallions. That modest stock has swelled to about 150 horses, commanding an average of $25,000 each on the auction block. Some of his trotters have sold for around $100,000.

Keller said he sells his animals to horsemen across the country, and plans to bring some of his stock to Lexington, Ky. in September for a yearling sale.

Pointing to one of his big success stories, Keller heaps praise on his horse Fresh Yankee, the first mare trotter to win over $1 million. Fresh Yankee, who raced from 1965 to 1972, is considered one of the great horses in harness racing history.

Keller’s pasture is also home to Yankee Bambi, the mother of TV Yankee, who holds the world record for two-year-olds on the mile track.

“In 1982 and 1983, Yankeeland became one of the most significant breeding farms in North America,” said David Carr, a spokesman for the U.S. Trotting Assn. “Just as he played on a great team, he has assembled a great team of broodmares.”

In 1981, Yankeeland horses were ranked 96th in earnings in the country with $255,352 in winnings, according to trotting association figures. In 1982, Keller’s products won $900,000 and a No. 16. ranking nationally. In the last five years, Yankeeland offspring earned about $5 million and won about 400 races.

Yankeeland Farms in 1985 was ranked 15th in the country with $1.4 million in earnings, Carr said.