Pinstripe Empire (68 page)

Moss Klein [of the
Newark Star Ledger
] was in step with me in terms of hard-hitting coverage. Sometimes we’d just wink at each other as though to say, “I got something.” And by day’s end, we may have both had it—or we were on two separate stories of importance.

Relations with the press became an important dynamic. Steinbrenner learned how to use it, how to steal column inches away from the Mets, how to reward certain writers and punish others.

Coverage of the Yankees would never be the same.

THE PURSUIT OF Reggie Jackson would be different from that of Hunter, because now George Steinbrenner led the Yankees’ pursuit—not Gabe Paul, not Clyde Kluttz, but the owner himself. And Reggie gave every indication that he wanted to be courted. If it took a Rolls-Royce to sweeten the deal, that would be okay with George.

Everyone saw New York as the perfect city for Jackson, who helped Oakland win five straight division championships and who had an ego that fit “the city that never sleeps.” The pursuit took three weeks. The Montreal Expos, owned by Seagram’s Edgar Bronfman, actually made the best offer: almost $5 million for five years. San Diego, owned by Ray Kroc of McDonald’s, offered $3.4 million.

Reggie had lunch at the 21 Club with Steinbrenner and felt the power
and lure of New York all around him. Afterward, they walked the streets of New York: fans calling out to them, urging Reggie to sign with the Yankees. Steinbrenner didn’t get him that day—he made a low offer—but he got him a few days later, for $2.96 million over five years plus a Rolls-Royce. The Yankees had their cleanup hitter.

At his press conference at the Americana Hotel, Reggie said he would wear number 42 in honor of Jackie Robinson, then decided on 20 before spring training, and then switched to 44 because the number looked so good on the backs of Hank Aaron and Willie McCovey.

Jackson was one of the great power hitters in baseball history, but he could be streaky. He would never hit 30 home runs in two consecutive seasons over his twenty-one-season career. He was by no means a sure bet, and the Yankees were betting a lot on him. So looming was his presence, though, that he wound up with a Yankee cap on his Hall of Fame plaque, a retired number, and a Monument Park plaque despite only four good seasons in New York.

To the captain and MVP, Munson, he was a great addition. Not only did Munson encourage Steinbrenner to “go get the big guy,” but he believed that he had an understanding with Steinbrenner that he would be the highest-paid player on the team no matter which free agents were signed (with the exception of Hunter), and that his contract would be adjusted accordingly. That didn’t happen, and it became a matter of conflict between the owner and his captain.

As if to add to it, Reggie did an interview with a
Sport
magazine writer during his first spring training, in which he questioned Munson’s leadership and extolled his own, stating, “I’m the straw that stirs the drink; Munson can only stir it bad.”

“Maybe he was misquoted,” suggested teammate Fran Healy.

“For six [expletive] pages?” answered Munson.

Jackson was far too media-savvy to have fallen into a trap, although he always claimed that the journalist, Robert Ward, led him astray. Jackson felt the story had been sensationalized, but it seemed clear to all that he did in fact utter those words.

The magazine didn’t come out until the season was under way, but with the publication of that article, the stage was set for a year of enormous disharmony.

With nearly twenty-three teammates siding with Munson (and Healy trying to side with both), Jackson was an outcast in the Yankee clubhouse
during his first season. The drama that was beginning to unfold would be chronicled almost three decades later in the book
Ladies and Gentlemen, the Bronx Is Burning
by Jonathan Mahler, and in an ESPN miniseries,
The Bronx Is Burning.

Jackson’s problem extended to Martin as well. Billy didn’t feel he needed Jackson. Didn’t want him, didn’t like him. But Steinbrenner went out and got him, and Billy was stuck. Martin and Jackson could read each other well—they knew the situation. Billy’s least marketable skill was hiding his feelings. Reggie’s was hiding his ego. One could almost feel this was a collision course.

On June 18, Jackson appeared to have loafed on a short fly ball to right in a nationally televised game at Fenway Park. Martin took him out of the game on the spot, sending Paul Blair out in the midst of the inning. This resulted in a nasty confrontation in the Yankee dugout as Jackson called Martin an “old man,” and Martin prepared for a fight. The coaches—Howard, Dick Howser, and Berra—had to intervene to keep the two from a barroom brawl right on network TV. It was a scene replayed over and over across the country. Berra held Martin in a bear hug. Nobody could hold Reggie, although some tried. He left the dugout and, wisely, the ballpark.

For a month, newspapers speculated that Jackson was going to be the cause of Martin being fired—that George would back his big investment and that Martin had embarrassed the franchise on national TV by going after him in the dugout. Reggie had days when he wanted out. Billy refused to bat him fourth in the lineup, which was why he was signed in the first place. Munson went to Steinbrenner and asked him to “get off Billy’s back or fire him, but don’t leave him twisting in the wind.”

There was a lot of secondary “good” to all of this. The team was winning, the turnstiles were clicking, and the Yanks were dominating the sports pages.

Jackson wasn’t the only addition to the ’77 Yanks. As each team was allowed to sign two free agents, the Yanks first considered Bobby Grich but then signed Don Gullett, the Reds’ best starter. They traded a discontented Dock Ellis to the Athletics for Mike Torrez. Just before opening day, they traded LaMarr Hoyt (an eventual Cy Young winner) for Bucky Dent, a “heartthrob” shortstop who would replace Fred Stanley in the regular lineup and provide good defense, if not much pop. Stanley, an unsung hero of the ’76 championship, got a touching standing ovation when he was announced as “now playing shortstop” in the ninth inning on opening day.

“Looking at the likes of Bucky Dent didn’t hurt,” said Suzyn Waldman, explaining the increasing female attendance at games.

Munson enjoyed his third straight .300 average/100 RBI season, something no one had done in the American League since Al Rosen in 1952–54, nor in the majors since Bill White in 1962–64. And Munson did it with only 47 homers over the three years, a tribute to his clutch-hitting abilities.

The Yanks also signed Houston star Jim Wynn, who electrified the crowd on opening day with a titanic shot into the center-field “black” portion of the bleachers. It would prove to be one of the longest home runs hit in the remodeled Yankee Stadium, but it would be Wynn’s only Yankee homer, and the last of his career. (Detroit’s Juan Encarnacion off Ramiro Mendoza on July 24, 2001, and one by Barry Bonds off Ted Lilly into the upper deck in right during an interleague game on June 8, 2002, both measured about five hundred feet).

Ron Guidry broke into the starting rotation with a 16–7 record, including five shutouts. Few had seen this sort of ability in the lanky left-hander known as Gator. Just a year before, barely noticed on the team, he had been sent back to Syracuse for more seasoning, and told his wife, “Let’s pack, we’re going home.” They were driving to Louisiana when Bonnie Guidry turned to her husband and said, “Is this what you really want?”

“I guess I needed a push, and Bonnie gave it to me,” he said. He turned around and went to Syracuse, then finished the season with New York. It was a good thing Bonnie spoke up.

The pitching star of the ’77 team was not one of the starters but Sparky Lyle, who had a 13–5 record in 72 appearances with 26 saves and a 2.17 ERA. So dominant was his wicked slider that he would win the Cy Young Award, the first Yankee to do it since Ford and the first relief pitcher to win it in AL history.

The ’77 Yanks won 100 games and the division title, but Billy Martin looked much more like a man who had taken each of the 62 defeats as a sock in the face. Hidden behind dark glasses, losing weight, drinking excessively, he had been through hell and back.

A SEASON THAT was filled with so much drama came to a head in the final game of the League Championship Series. Again it was the Yankees and the Royals. This time, Martin benched the slumping Jackson in the decisive fifth game. But Martin sent him up to pinch-hit in the eighth, and he
delivered a base hit, scoring Randolph. The Yankees went on to score three in the ninth, Roy White scoring the winning run, and they won their thirty-first pennant with a 5–3 win. Lyle won twice, allowing one run in 9
⅔
innings, while Rivers hit .391.

Nine days later, during a memorable Yankees-Dodgers game during-six World Series night in New York, Reginald Martinez Jackson hit three home runs on three pitches against Burt Hooton, Elias Sosa, and Charlie Hough. The one off Hough sailed into the black, seatless portion of the center-field bleachers, nearly five hundred feet away. It marked four consecutive homers on four swings, going back to game five. And it was five home runs in the Series, the first time that had ever been accomplished. With that one huge night that even got Munson smiling in the dugout, Reggie earned the nickname that would appear on his Hall of Fame plaque: “Mr. October.”
²⁴
The Yankees won their twenty-first world championship and their first in fifteen years. As champagne was poured and the game was recounted, thoughts went back to what this team had been through. It would be the only world championship of Martin’s managing career, and it was a painful one.

MAYOR ABE BEAME, taking a cue from the ’69 Mets, decided on a ticker-tape parade for the Yankees after the World Series, a joyous celebration through lower Manhattan that would be a first for the Yankees after so many championship years. There had been subdued welcome-home parades preceding the 1961 and 1962 seasons, but they lacked the spontaneous enthusiasm that something a day later could provide. Whitey Ford didn’t even remember those earlier parades. So the ’77 Yankees had their moment, perhaps on behalf of the twenty previous world championship Yankee clubs who never had the thrill of going through the “Canyon of Heroes.” Joe DiMaggio joined them for the parade.

But perhaps the sweetest coda to the season was the raising of the pennant on opening day of ’78. After twelve years of self-imposed exile, Roger Maris accepted George Steinbrenner’s invitation to join Mantle and raise the ’77 championship flag. The flag raising, a tradition that was discontinued
when the Yanks won in 2009,
²⁵
was always emotional, but never more than on the day Maris was welcomed back, a fully recognized Yankee hero. He received a prolonged and thunderous ovation on this unannounced moment. In the early and mid-seventies, I had phoned him each year to invite him to Old-Timers’ Day. He’d say, “Why should I come back to be booed?” I told him I really didn’t think that was going to be the case; a lot of feelings had changed. But now Steinbrenner had personally asked him back, and he accepted.

He became an Old-Timers’ Day regular, and in 1984 had his uniform retired and a plaque dedicated. He died a year later, a cancer victim at fiftyone, two years younger than Babe Ruth was when he died. His funeral, in two-degree weather in Fargo, North Dakota, drew Mantle, Ford, Boyer, and Skowron among the pallbearers, and was followed by a memorial service at St. Patrick’s Cathedral, with former president Richard Nixon in attendance.

RICH “GOOSE” GOSSAGE was the most attractive free agent available after the 1977 season, and despite having the best relief pitcher in the game in Lyle, the Yankees went after him. Although he would come at a high cost, this effectively showed that the Yankees planned on regularly pursuing the top free agents, particularly if they could go younger in their pursuit of continuing success. Again it was Steinbrenner in pursuit, Gabe Paul having sold his interest in the team and returned to run the Indians. Al Rosen, who became a limited partner in 1974, succeeded Paul as team president, returning to baseball for the first time in a daily capacity since he retired as a player in 1956.

Gossage, just twenty-six, was already a six-year veteran and was coming off his only National League season, a 26-save, 11-win showing for the Pirates with a 1.61 ERA. He had 151 strikeouts in 133 innings. Big, strong, hard-throwing, all arms and legs with a high-effort delivery, he was a sure thing as long as he didn’t get hurt. This was the beauty of playing the free-agent market as opposed to developing minor league talent. Even the top draft choices and the best triple-A players always came with the element of “What if he can’t make it in the big leagues?”

Lyle was thirty-three and not very happy about this at all. “He went from Cy Young to Sayonara,” quipped Nettles. And Lyle’s reaction proved correct: Gossage became the principal reliever and had 27 saves in his first Yankee season, while Lyle had only nine.

Gossage signed for $2.8 million over six years, and it came to be considered one of the best free-agent signings in baseball history. Lyle’s summer of discontent would be told in a bestselling book called
The Bronx Zoo
, whose name came to characterize the whole late-seventies era of Yankee baseball, when the team achieved success despite mountains of controversy. The title was conceived by Larry Freundlich, an editor at Crown; the idea was hatched by Billy Martin’s agent, Doug Newton, and Peter Golenbock was the coauthor. The book spent twenty-nine weeks on the
New York Times
bestseller list, the bestselling baseball book in history until George Will’s
Men at Work
in 1990.

Gossage did not get off to a good start. In spring training, Martin went to the mound to tell him to “drill” Texas infielder Billy Sample, whom Martin disliked. He used a racial epithet to describe Sample, and Gossage, with no history against Sample, refused to carry out the mission. Martin immediately saw a weakness in his new reliever that set him on his bad side. When the regular season began, Gossage wasn’t lights-out as advertised. In April he blew two leads and lost three times. He didn’t get his first save until May 3.