Pinstripe Empire (69 page)

A moment to remember came at the home opener of ’78, when all fans received free Reggie bars, a product arranged by Jackson’s agent Matt Merola after Reggie said, “If I ever play in New York, they’d name a candy bar after me.” (Baby Ruth candy bars were “not named” after the Babe, so that the manufacturer could avoid paying royalties, similar to the case of Yogi Bear and Yogi Berra. Merola made sure that this time the player controlled the product’s profits.)

When Reggie homered on his first at-bat, the fans showered the field with their free candy bars, making for a long game delay while the groundskeepers went into cleanup mode.

The team wasn’t playing like defending champions at all. Although the Yanks were now drawing huge and enthusiastic crowds, their performance was quickly slipping. By July 19 they had fallen to fourth place, fourteen games out of first, and the Red Sox looked as if they were going to run away with the division.

Only two starters were holding their own. Ed Figueroa was on his way to becoming the first native Puerto Rican to win 20, and Ron Guidry was having
a career year. Gator was almost untouchable, with a hop to his fastball that completely defied his 160-pound physique. Never was the magic of his season more apparent than in a 4–0 win over the Angels in Yankee Stadium on June 17 when he struck out 18, breaking Bob Shawkey’s fifty-nine-year-old club record of 15 and setting a league record for left-handers. On that day, as the strikeout total rose, and as broadcaster Phil Rizzuto first called him “Louisiana Lightning,” the fans began to stand after two strikes, lending their enthusiasm for a third. The practice, born that afternoon, continues to this day.

Guidry won his first 13 decisions, breaking Atley Donald’s club record of 12; ironic in that Donald was the scout who signed him.

Troubles between Martin and Jackson continued. On July 17, Martin ordered Reggie to sacrifice, something Jackson hadn’t done in six years. After one pitch, Martin removed the bunt sign, but Reggie decided to continue bunting. He popped out.

After the game Martin read a statement: “Reggie Jackson is suspended without pay effective this moment.”

Billy was in a deep depression; Jackson was getting to him. In June, AL president Lee MacPhail had actually suggested to Steinbrenner and Bill Veeck that the Yankees and White Sox trade managers—Martin for Bob Lemon. It was Veeck who turned it down, but he fired Lemon anyway on June 29.

Jackson’s suspension was lifted on July 23 as the Yankees won their fifth straight. The media circus at his locker—and the presence of a dozen roses someone had sent—fueled Martin’s disgust with the whole situation. He didn’t put him in the lineup. After the game, drinking in the press room, he read what Jackson had told reporters: “I never considered what I did an act of defiance. I didn’t think people would get so upset at what I did. I was surprised the way they had taken it.” Martin handed it back to the reporter in disgust.

At O’Hare Airport, Martin took Murray Chass and Henry Hecht aside and acted out an imaginary conversation with Jackson: “We’re winning without you. We don’t need you coming in and making all those comments.” Then he said, “If he doesn’t shut his mouth, he won’t play, and I don’t care what George says. He can replace me right now if he doesn’t like it.”

Billy insisted all he was saying was on the record. He continued: “I let him drive his Rolls-Royce to Miami, Vero Beach, Fort Myers. I let him fly
home to Oakland. He’s a born liar. The two of them [Jackson and Steinbrenner] deserve each other. One’s a born liar; the other’s convicted.”

When the team’s commercial flight landed in Kansas City, Chass and Hecht called Steinbrenner and read Martin’s comments. He had crossed the line by referring to Steinbrenner’s Watergate-related conviction. Hecht said that his speech were slurred. But all the reporters insisted on asking Martin if his words were “on the record,” and when told that he was quoted, he “grinned broadly,” according to Chass.

(At this time the Yankees flew partly commercial, partly charter. The commercial flights often meant long delays at the ballpark or at the airport. Delays did not work well for Martin or, occasionally, for players with too much idle time. Eventually, teams flew almost exclusively charter, and usually without writers aboard.)

Al Rosen was now preparing to fly to Kansas City to confront Martin directly. In the meantime, he reached out to his old Cleveland teammate Bob Lemon to see if he would be ready to take over. Lem and Rosen had known each other for almost forty years.

Mickey Morabito, who succeeded me as the team’s PR director (I resigned in early ’77 with Joe Garagiola Jr., the team’s in-house attorney), was sent to bring Martin to Rosen’s room. Morabito discovered that Martin was preparing to go to the media-filled lobby to announce his retirement, but he managed to head him off and summoned Rosen to Martin’s suite.

“Tell George I didn’t say those things,” Billy said to Rosen. Wearing dark glasses, he proceeded to the level above the lobby and, breaking into tears, read his resignation statement. “I don’t want to hurt this team’s chances for the pennant with this undue publicity. The team has a shot at the pennant and I hope they win it. I owe it to my health and my mental well-being to resign. At this time I’m also sorry about those things that were written about George Steinbrenner. He does not deserve them, nor did I say them. I’ve had my differences with George but we’ve been able to resolve them. I would like to thank the Yankee management, the press, the news media, my coaches, my players and most of all … the fans.” With that he broke down, and Phil Rizzuto led him away.

Billy was gone. The organization he loved, the organization that hurt him so much when they traded him in ’57, the only team he wanted to manage, his dream job—gone. The defending world champion manager had self-destructed.

Third-base coach Dick Howser managed for one game, and then Lemon took over what appeared to be a doomed season.

For days, Steinbrenner fretted over what had happened. On the one hand, he had little choice but to dismiss Martin for insubordination. On the other hand, the fans loved Martin and rallied around him most when he was down. He was a very sympathetic figure.

Finally, he decided on a dramatic plan, one that he didn’t even share with Rosen. He decided to sneak Martin back to the stadium on Saturday—Old-Timers’ Day—and introduce him as Lemon’s successor, effective in 1980, when Lemon would become general manager. Lem, in his fifth day as manager, wasn’t in on this either, and he and Rosen were shocked as they stood side by side in Indian uniforms during the ceremonies.

So three years after his Old-Timers’ Day hiring, Billy was squirreled into the stadium and hidden until the moment when Bob Sheppard stunned everyone in the house by reading the announcement about the changes. Billy would be back, Lemon would be “kicked upstairs,” and Rosen would be left wondering how he’d fallen out of the loop. The active players, sitting in the dugout, looked anything but thrilled. Billy took his bows and left.

For days afterward, the media wanted to interview Martin. Morabito finally went to Steinbrenner to plead for a luncheon—anything—to meet their needs in a controlled environment.

Steinbrenner reluctantly agreed. “But if anything goes wrong, it’s on your head,” he told Morabito.

Something went wrong. Martin needed little prodding to start attacking Jackson all over again. The reporters couldn’t wait to call Steinbrenner, read Martin’s quotes, and get his reaction.

Steinbrenner confronted Morabito. “If this Reggie stuff gets in the paper tomorrow, you’re fired,” he told him. Mickey, knowing it would make the papers, stopped at the mail room, picked up some cartons, and headed back to his office to begin packing.

That night, the New York newspapers went on strike. There would be no coverage of Billy’s remarks except in the suburban papers, and Steinbrenner didn’t care about them. A miracle had saved Morabito’s job.

Not only that: Without the pressure of the daily newspapers chronicling every controversy, the Yankees began to win. It may have been coincidental, but it was hard to ignore. By September 7, as the Yankees arrived in Boston for a four-game series, the Red Sox lead had slipped to four games. Lemon
had brought calm to a talented team, and was also manipulating the bench very well. Rivers, Randolph, and Dent were injured and out of the lineup; Munson was playing hurt.

A procedure by team physician Dr. Maurice Cowan somehow brought Catfish Hunter back to health, and he won six straight. The Red Sox, while not in free fall, felt the Yankees breathing down their backs.

In what came to be called the Boston Massacre, the Yankees won all four games of the series, 15–3, 13–2, 7–0, and 7–4. The shutout by Guidry in the Saturday game made him 21–2.

“This is,” said NBC broadcaster Tony Kubek, “the first time I’ve seen a first-place team chasing a second-place team.”

On September 13 the Yankees moved into first, but the Red Sox wouldn’t die. With one game left in the season for each team and the Yankees up by a game, Boston won and the Yankees lost. There would need to be a one-game playoff to decide the division, the first time in their history the Yankees needed to play a tiebreaker.

Earlier in the month, Rosen lost a coin toss at the American League office, meaning if a tiebreaker was necessary, it would be played in Fenway Park. Steinbrenner couldn’t believe Rosen could lose a coin toss. As Rosen recounted later to Bill Madden for his Steinbrenner biography, Steinbrenner shouted, “What did you call?” Told it was heads, he screamed, “Heads! You [expletive] idiot! Everyone knows it comes up tails seventy percent of the time!”

As the Yanks were losing the season finale, Steinbrenner summoned traveling secretary Bill Kane to his darkened office and asked him about the flight to Boston. “Where’s the plane?” he asked. “Newark,” responded Kane, “same as all season.”

“Newark! No good. Move it to LaGuardia,” said the Boss.

Angry words led to Kane’s quitting—or being fired—at that very moment. After calling on Gerry Murphy, a former traveling secretary now in the ticket office, to take over, cooler heads eventually prevailed. The team went to Boston from Newark, under Kane’s watch.

Monday, October 2, a day game in sunny Fenway Park, found Guidry, 24–3, on three days’ rest, taking on ex-teammate Mike Torrez, who had gone to the Red Sox as a free agent after winning the final game of the ’77 World Series. It would be a watershed moment in the Yankee–Red Sox rivalry. A full house in historic Fenway Park; the greatest rivalry in sports; a last-minute game with a pennant on the line. And it delivered.

Boston held a 2–0 lead through six. In the top of the seventh, with Chambliss and White on, Dent, hitting ninth in the lineup, fouled a pitch off his foot, cracking his bat. In pain, he borrowed a Roy White model bat from on-deck hitter Mickey Rivers. On the next pitch, as Bill White described it from the broadcast booth: “Deep to left! Yastrzemski … will not get it! It’s a home run! A three-run homer by Bucky Dent! And the Yankees now lead by a score of three to two!”

Dent had hit 22 home runs in his career to that point, four that season. It’s interesting to recall Rosen’s coin toss at this moment: Had the game been in Yankee Stadium, the ball might not have gone out. It might have been an Al Gionfriddo moment. Now Fenway fell silent as the most unlikely man in the Yankee lineup rounded the bases.

The Red Sox would still rally, Jackson would homer, and Gossage would save the game, aided by a “blind catch” in the impossible sunlight by Piniella in right. Yastrzemski popped out to Nettles to end it, a 5–4 Yankee win.

The win made Guidry 25–3, the best winning percentage (.893) by a 20-game winner in history. His 1.74 ERA was the lowest by a lefty since Koufax’s 1.73 in 1966, and the second lowest by an American League left-hander in history, Dutch Leonard having had a 0.96 ERA in 1914. For the season, in which the league batted only .193 against him, Guidry fanned 248, breaking Jack Chesbro’s 1904 team record, and threw nine shutouts, a team mark and the most for an American League left-hander since Ruth had nine for the Red Sox in 1916. He was the unanimous winner of the Cy Young Award, won the
Sporting News
Man of the Year and the Associated Press Male Athlete of the Year—but not the MVP, won by Jim Rice with twenty first-place votes to Guidry’s eight.

The Yankee franchise, blessed as it was over the decades with elite hitters, never did possess a Young, a Mathewson, a Johnson, an Alexander, a Grove, a Feller, a Spahn, or a Koufax. But for one season, Guidry outdid them all.

He never approached this performance again, but he would remain a beloved figure in Yankee history and would ultimately have his number-49 uniform retired and a plaque in Monument Park. Without the intervention of his wife just two years earlier, it never would have happened.

The Yankees beat Kansas City for the third year in a row in the LCS, doing it in four games with Guidry winning the decider. Munson found previously undiscovered power in game three and belted a homer off Doug Bird that landed by the Babe Ruth monument, about 475 feet away. It was the Yanks’ thirty-second pennant.

For the second year in a row, the Yankees faced the Dodgers in the World Series. Randolph, injured, was replaced by Brian Doyle at second base, who batted .438. Dent hit .417 and was the Series MVP as the Yankees claimed their twenty-second world championship in six games, with Hunter winning in the finale at Dodger Stadium and two more Series home runs from Jackson. Nettles’s brilliant fielding at third was a highlight, as was a base-running maneuver by Jackson, deflecting a throw with his right hip while running to second. Gossage was on the mound for the final out in the play-off game at Fenway, the pennant clincher against the Royals, and the world championship against the Dodgers.

It was an especially sweet triumph for Lemon, fired in midseason by the White Sox and now able to enjoy a wonderful coda to his Hall of Fame pitching career as a world champion manager.

It wasn’t a happy time for Sparky Lyle, however. Lyle did not appear in the World Series at all, and his time as a Yankee came to a close on November 10, when he went to Texas in a deal that brought Dave Righetti to the Yankees.