Farewells to the Great Yankees Are Not All Recalled So Fondly Charles Bennett/Associated Press Yogi Berra, center, feuded with George Steinbrenner for 14 years after he was fired as manager in 1985. Mariano Rivera is a rare Yankees icon. As he approaches retirement, his career and character will be celebrated Sunday at the Stadium with fans cheering and bands playing. But in the often cruel culture of baseball, in the past, many of the most famous Yankees departed unhappily, if not sadly. Beginning with the most famous Yankee of all, Babe Ruth. At his best, the Babe was the Yankees. He put the words home run into baseball's vocabulary, notably a record 60 homers in 1927. When asked if his salary ($80,000) should be more than President Herbert Hoover's ($75,000), he said: "Why not? I had a better year than he did. In his 15 seasons, his Yankees teams won seven American League pennants and four World Series. As the Babe's career wound down, he wanted to be the Yankees" manager, but the owner, Jacob Ruppert, insisted on retaining Joe McCarthy. When the Boston Braves" owner, Judge Emil Fuchs, offered to make the Babe a vice president and assistant manager with a $25,000 salary and a share of the profits to mostly pinch-hit in the 1935 season, the Yankees could not agree fast enough. The only thanks the Babe got from the Yankees was thanks for the memories. And not long after hitting three home runs for the Braves in a game at Pittsburgh, he decided to retire, saying Fuchs had double-crossed him. The Yankees honored him in 1947, when he returned to the Stadium for Babe Ruth Day. In 1948, on the 25th anniversary of the House That Ruth Built, he was there when his No. 3 uniform was retired. Two months later, he died. "The termites got me," he told a teammate. Cancer. The Yankees mourned. His body lay for viewing at the entrance to Yankee Stadium for two days before his funeral Mass at St. Patrick's Cathedral. But when the Babe departed to the Braves, the Yankees" front office was glad to see him go. For Lou Gehrig, the end was tragic theater. Gehrig, the first baseman known as the Iron Horse, played 2,130 consecutive games. With a career .340 average, he hit 493 home runs, including 23 grand slams. He drove in 100 runs or more in 13 seasons. But on May 2, 1939, in Detroit, he benched himself. He was batting .143 with four singles in 28 at-bats. He never played again. Seven weeks later, he learned he had amyotrophic lateral sclerosis, soon known as Lou Gehrig's disease. On July 4, 1939, about 62,000 fans attending Lou Gehrig Appreciation Day at the Stadium heard him say, "Today, I consider myself the luckiest man on the face of the earth." He concluded, "So I close in saying that I might have been given a bad break, but I've got an awful lot to live for." Early in 1940, the Yankees announced that his No. 4 uniform was retired; Gehrig was the only Yankee to wear that number. He died June 2, 1941, at his home in the Riverdale section of the Bronx. He was 37. Joe DiMaggio had a hollow last hurrah. His two-run homer in Game 4 of the 1951 World Series at the Polo Grounds helped propel the Yankees to a six-game victory over the Giants after his so-so season: .263 average, 12 homers, 71 runs batted in. Offered another $100,000 contract, he retired, saying: "I can't play anymore. It's not the money, it's me. I don't want to play baseball like this. Those words confirmed a Brooklyn Dodgers scouting report in Life magazine. Against right-handed pitching, the report said: "His reflexes are very slow and he can't pull a good fastball at all. Throw him nothing but good fastballs and fast curveballs. Will pull a left-handed pitcher a little more, pitch him the same. Don't slow up on him. He will go for a bad pitch once in a while with two strikes. Speed: he can't run and he won't bunt. Fielding: he can't stop quickly and throw hard. You can take the extra base on him if he's in motion away from the line of throw. He didn't need to read that scouting report to know he was no longer the Joe DiMaggio who hit safely in 56 consecutive games in 1941. But until his death in 1999, he often returned to the Stadium, where he was introduced as "the greatest living player."