PRIDE OF YANKEES : While Big Team Flounders, Albany Quietly Rips Up Double-A League

Normally, the only thoughts the Albany Yankees might have at this time of year would be how to generate some steam for the start of the Eastern League playoffs next week.

But since this double-A franchise in central New York is a farm club of the New York Yankees, baseball’s longest-running soap opera, nothing is that simple.

The Albany Yankees are completing one of the most successful seasons in minor league history, and despite a recent slump they will probably finish more than 40 games over .500, and at least 20 games ahead of the second-place club.

The manager is William Nathaniel Showalter III, but everybody calls him Buck. Although Showalter looks as young as some of his players, he is 33. In the Yankee system, which under owner George Steinbrenner has not stamped continuity as its hallmark, Showalter is an anomaly. Since leaving Mississippi State, where he was an All-American outfielder, he has spent 13 years with the farm clubs, seven as a player and six managing.

And unlike his counterparts at Yankee Stadium, where managers are either held in contempt by the players or by Steinbrenner, or by both, there seems to be no animosity toward Showalter here. Even more popular among the players is Russ (Monk) Meyer, the 65-year-old Albany pitching coach.

But that internal harmony was disturbed, at least for one player, when Bucky Dent became the new manager at the home office in the Bronx.

Tim Layana, 25, is a 6-foot-2, 195-pound former Loyola Marymount University pitcher from Culver City. He is the ace of the Albany bullpen. Going into the final weeks of the season, Layana had a 7-2 record, a 1.66 earned-run average and 15 saves.

Last week, before a game at cozy Heritage Park and the day before Steinbrenner chose Dent to replace Dallas Green as the Yankees’ manager, Layana talked about his problems with Dent at Columbus, Ohio, where the Yankees have their triple-A club. Layana had a 1-7 record in 11 games last year at Columbus and then finished the season at Albany.

This spring, Layana was scheduled to start the season at Columbus, but after what he says was “an altercation” with Dent, the right-hander with a 90-m.p.h. fastball and an unusual knuckle-curve pitch requested a return to Albany.

“I was with Bucky for three years, and we got along fine,” Layana said.

“But then I had one bad year last year, and he turned around and gave up on me. I still had good stuff, but all of a sudden it was like I hadn’t done anything for him before.

“All of my problems were mental, because I knew he wasn’t behind me. He said some things that weren’t appropriate, and then I said some things. I felt I was right, and I stuck up for myself.”

If the pitcher makes the jump to New York, however, he figures to put his differences with Dent to good use.

“The fact that he quit on me will be an inspiration,” Layana said. “It will give me an extra reason for wanting to succeed.”

Layana has already been with the Yankees, having been called up to New York for 10 days early this month. The closest he came to pitching for Green was one warmup stint in the bullpen.

The Yankees, struggling in the American League East, made two pitching changes before Layana was farmed out, signing their one-time relief star, Goose Gossage, and removing John Candelaria from the disabled list.

“I think I’ve become the pitcher that I thought I was capable of being so it was disappointing not to pitch after getting called up,” Layana said.

“I expected Candelaria to go back on the roster, but I didn’t expect the Gossage thing to happen. But I’m going to start taking it one day at a time and not worry about the future. I’ve found that when I start worrying, it affects my performance.”

When Green dropped Layana, he might have been sent to Columbus, but apparently the Yankee front office felt the pitcher would be better off away from Dent.

“They tried to change me when I was at Columbus,” Layana said. “They didn’t like my knuckle-curve, but it’s a pitch I believe in.”

Few pitchers have used the knuckle-curve. Gene Bearden was one, and Burt Hooton was another, but the Albany Yankees have two--Layana and Steve Adkins, who was undefeated in 11 decisions, with an ERA under 2.00 and an average of more than a strikeout an inning, before he lost here last Saturday.

Albany has a .273 team batting average, the best in the league, and it also leads in home runs, runs scored and stolen bases, but it was pitching that enabled the club to clinch the regular-season pennant with 20 games to play.

Other members of the staff are Rodney Imes, a 6-5 right-hander who is 30-13 the last two years in the minors; Royal Clayton, who is 14-4 this season with only 42 walks in 155 innings; and Scott Kamieniecki, who despite a 10-9 record might be the team’s best pitching prospect.

“Scott’s got tremendous velocity,” Meyer said. “He can throw regularly between 90 and 92 m.p.h. And he’s also got a good slider and forkball to go with the fastball. Layana is a different kind of pitcher. He’s the closer. He’s tough mentally, and he’s like a bulldog.”

Albany’s offense is led by catcher Jim Leyritz and outfielder Jason Maas, the top two hitters in the league with averages of .323 and .309, respectively. Rob Sepanek, the first baseman, has 19 homers and more than 65 runs batted in. Outfielder Bernie Williams has combined with Andy Stankiewicz, the second baseman, and Maas to steal more than 80 bases.

Stankiewicz is a stocky, sure-handed second baseman from Pepperdine whose errorless streak of 93 games ended recently.

“I should have had the ball,” Stankiewicz said. “It was a hit-and-run play and I broke to cover the bag. When I broke back, I didn’t quite get back in time to handle it.”

The Albany Yankees were 70-20 through their first 90 games. In 1922, an Enid, Okla. team in the Western Assn. went 105-27, generally considered to be the best record posted in the minors.

The Eastern League record for victories is 101, set in 1953 by Rocky Colavito and his Reading, Pa. Indians. The best won-lost percentage for the league is .723, set by the Hartford, Conn. team that went 99-38 in 1944.

Another minor league power was the Newark, N.J., Bears of the International League in 1937.

Newark was a powerful farm club for the Yankees during the 1930s, and in ’37 the “Wonder Bears” won 109, lost 43 and took the pennant by 25 1/2 games.

Newark players who went on to the majors included Charley Keller, George McQuinn, Joe Gordon, Buddy Rosar, Spud Chandler and Red Rolfe. The Yankees were so powerful during the era that Keller, after hitting .353 in 1937, was unable to make the parent club the next year.

Since going 70-20, Albany has slumped and had an 85-43 record before Tuesday’s doubleheader.

Player promotions--a typical penalty that a good minor league team suffers--took their toll. Besides all the surviving talent, the team started with Deion Sanders, who went to the Yankees before returning to the minors, but this time to Columbus.

Several Albany players have college educations. Adkins, the 6-6 left-hander, has a degree in mechanical engineering. Clayton studied psychology at UC Riverside, Layana was an economics major at Loyola and Stankiewicz concentrated on sociology at Pepperdine.

Clayton’s brother, Royce, is a shortstop in the San Francisco Giants’ system, a first-round draft choice after playing at San Jose State.

After the season ends here, Royal Clayton will return to California, to work as a group counselor for troubled youth in Riverside’s Juvenile Hall.

“They’re kids between the ages of 8 and 17,” Clayton said. “Many of them are kids who were neglected by their parents.”

He was asked what an 8-year-old could be in trouble for.

“I had one who was charged with arson,” Clayton said.