Pinstripe Empire (73 page)

THE YANKEES TRADED their big first baseman Steve Balboni to open the position for Mattingly in ’84, but who would write Mattingly’s name on the lineup card remained a question. On December 16, George pulled the trigger. Billy was out, again. And Yogi Berra, who last managed the Yankees in 1964, was the new manager.

Yogi knew, of course, what he was getting into. He’d been a coach for eight years and had seen it all. But as he said, “It was offered, it was home, and I thought I could win,” which were all good reasons to take the job. To sweeten it, the Yankees even traded to get infielder Dale Berra, Yogi’s youngest son, from the Pirates. It would be the first case of a player being managed by his father since Connie Mack managed Earle Mack from 1910 to 1914.

While Dale Berra was not a top-flight player, Yogi was blessed with the blossoming of Mattingly, who was. Yankee fans quickly fell in love with “Donnie Baseball”—the low draft pick who had defied the odds and stayed in the organization, unlike so many of his minor league teammates.

At five foot eleven and 185 pounds, one didn’t expect big power numbers from Mattingly, and yet his swing was perfectly tailored to Yankee Stadium. Of course, if it was that easy, a lot of 185-pound left-hand hitters would have solved it along the way.

Mattingly’s work routine included monotonous hitting off a tee into a net before the game. He carried himself with a soft-spoken dignity that belied his youth—he only turned twenty-three that April. He managed to play his game relatively free of controversy throughout the tumultuous eighties and nineties, save for an occasional dispute over the length of his hair. He was a player’s player, and many who would reach the majors in the 2000s, like Mark Teixeira, would confess to having had a Don Mattingly poster on their wall growing up. (A popular one was him dressed like a mobster, with the legend “Hit Man.”)

Lou Piniella retired as a player on June 17 and became the team’s hitting coach. “I learned to be a power hitter from Lou,” Mattingly told the
Daily News
’s Bill Madden. “My body was starting to mature from weight lifting and Lou taught me about weight shifting and how to incorporate it into my swing. I started pulling the ball. At the same time, Yogi just let me play. He’d told me that spring I was gonna be his swing man, going back and forth from the outfield to first base, but he started me at first and wound up leaving me there.”

He went on to win six Gold Gloves at first base, exhibiting a range and a sureness that led to a great old New York baseball debate: Who was better, the Mets’ Keith Hernandez or the Yanks’ Don Mattingly?

What developed over the next six All-Star seasons would evoke the names of the greatest Yankees in history and put Mattingly right beside them.

IN ’84, THE Yankees said good-bye to their captain, Graig Nettles, the greatest third baseman in the team’s history to that point. He would be the last Yankee to have played in the original Yankee Stadium, and his 250 homers were sixth on the club’s all-time list. He was also the league’s all-time home run hitter among third basemen with 319.

But he would be forty that summer and the Yankees had planned to platoon him with Toby Harrah if they kept him. He wasn’t happy about that, and the Yankees weren’t happy with a book he wrote,
Balls
, published during the off-season, which criticized Steinbrenner’s meddling. He went to his hometown, San Diego, on March 30 in a trade that brought starting
pitcher Dennis Rasmussen to the Yanks. There, Nettles joined Gossage, who had gone to the Padres as a free agent after six seasons with the Yanks, and together they would help San Diego to its first World Series appearance. Goose had little good to say about Steinbrenner as he departed, but mellowed over the years and came to view him with affection. He’d return for one more tour of duty in 1989.

Righetti, in a much-debated decision, replaced Gossage in the bullpen and proved to be a worthy successor, saving 31 games. “Rags” found himself a teammate of Mike “Pags” Pagliarulo, who came up from Columbus on July 7 to play third base after Harrah failed to hit.

In 1984 the Yanks also added free agent Phil Niekro, who signed a two-year contract after spending his entire career with the Braves. He used his knuckleball to win 32 games for the Yanks over two seasons, with the final win being the 300th of his career. He became the first player to win his 300th while wearing a Yankee uniform.
²⁸
By then the Yanks had added his brother Joe, also a knuckleballer, to the staff.

At the same time, they lost pitcher Tim Belcher as compensation in the free-agent draft. Belcher was selected by Oakland, even though the Yankees drafted him after the list of protected players was due. Belcher would win 146 games in the majors, and hurled eight shutouts in 1989.

The Yanks got off horribly and were twenty games out of first at the All-Star break. Steinbrenner took out his frustrations by firing the bullpen coach, Jerry McNertney, for “failing to impose discipline” in the bullpen, and by hauling Yogi and his coaching staff into his office to berate them for the team’s performance. Exasperated, Yogi could take the lecture no more and flung a pack of cigarettes across Steinbrenner’s desk and into his chest. He essentially dared the Boss to fire him, and shouted, “This is your [expletive] team, you put this [expletive] team together, you make all the [expletive] moves around here, you get all the [expletive] players no one else wants!”

Yogi wasn’t fired. In the second half of the season, they had the best record in the majors, 51–29, but it was too little, too late, as they finished third, seventeen games out, with just 1.8 million in home attendance, their first time under two million (except for the ’81 strike season) since they moved into the renovated Yankee Stadium.

During this period, a whole new segment of fans began to follow baseball
through fantasy leagues, where individual player performance mattered and team performance didn’t. Because enrollment in the leagues involved a generally modest fee, it was a form of gambling that greatly increased interest in baseball. Gambling’s relationship with baseball quietly went back to the nineteenth century, the low point being the Black Sox scandal. For years, NO BETTING signs loomed large in ballparks, and when state-run lotteries became legal, the sports leagues fought to keep their games off-limits.

No team was more wagered on than the Yankees, according to Danny Sheridan,
USA Today
’s sports gambling expert. “The Yankees are THE brand name in all sports,” he said. “With that notoriety, comes a loyal following of bettors—probably up to a million nationally for a big series. Bookmakers know baseball bettors will wager on them at any price, especially at home, and they raise their odds on them accordingly.”

DON MATTINGLY EDGED Winfield for the batting title on the final day of the season, a thrilling race between teammates won by Mattingly’s .343 to Winfield’s .340, when Don went 4-for-5 on the final day. After Mattingly’s fourth hit, Winfield grounded out, forcing Don at second. A pinch runner went in for Dave allowing the two of them to come off the field together. They came off to a terrific ovation, arm in arm.

But there were overtones to the batting race in ’84. Disappointed though he was about losing (he had never won a batting title), Winfield was hurt by the boos he heard when he came to bat, compared to the cheers for Mattingly. “Stuff like that hurts, believe me,” he wrote. “It stays with you.” While it was easy to see the fans rooting for the smaller guy, the guy who came out of nowhere to challenge the $21 million man, to pretend there weren’t racial overtones would be to ignore that race still mattered and that most fans at the game were white.

Mattingly was the first Yankee batting champion since Mantle’s Triple-Crown season of 1956—twenty-eight years—and the first left-handed Yankee since Gehrig in 1937 to hit .340 or better. His 207 hits were the first of three straight 200-hit seasons, which hadn’t been done since Gehrig, from 1930–32.

RICKEY HENDERSON WAS A Christmas Day baby who threw left, batted right, and was acclaimed as the greatest leadoff hitter in the history of baseball. He hit more leadoff home runs, stole more bases, scored more runs, and walked more times than anyone who ever played the game.

When the Yankees traded for him on December 5, 1984, giving up five promising players and cash, he had already topped 100 stolen bases three times by age twenty-five. He was arguably the best player in baseball, and certainly the most exciting. He took his place atop a Yankee lineup that also included Mattingly, Winfield, Griffey, Baylor, and Randolph. This was a good team.

But all of these blessings wouldn’t get Yogi into May. Despite promising to trust him, Steinbrenner fired the Yankee icon when the team started 6–10, even though Mattingly, Winfield, and Henderson were all hurting.

GM Clyde King sought out Yogi in the cramped visiting manager’s office at Comiskey Park. He closed the door and delivered the news. Yogi had been fired twice before, but at 6–10 in April? With his three best hitters hurt?

The players reacted with a fury. Baylor threw over a garbage can. Curses were hurled at the absent owner.

As for Yogi, he was a baseball lifer, and he knew how the game worked. What really got him was the way in which it was done. This, to him, called for a dismissal by the owner, not by King.

Yogi went on the first bus to the airport with the team, sitting up front as
managers do. It took two buses to travel this party. This was the same route taken when Phil Linz played his harmonica twenty-one years before. Because Yogi would not be getting on the plane with the team and going on to Texas, the bus driver was instructed by Bill Kane to stop first at the passenger terminal before proceeding to the tarmac, where the players would get right off and onto the waiting charter.

At the passenger terminal, Yogi rose, collected his bags, and began to depart. Suddenly, hands began clapping—an ovation in the bus for the departing skipper, a beloved figure in baseball history. And, yes, the ovation, heard in the second bus, prompted the ovation to continue there. Dale Berra was crying in the back of the first bus. That was his dad.

The two buses circled around to go the tarmac. Players could see the lonely, unmistakable figure of Yogi Berra, alone on the sidewalk, entering the terminal to go home.

This one really hurt Berra, and this proud man decided that as much as he bled Yankee blue, he would never again return to Yankee Stadium so long as George Steinbrenner owned the team. He was first a man of principle, and this defied his principles.

He occasionally cheated and snuck back to the stadium to see Pete Sheehy, maybe to collect something for a charity auction, or just feel the presence of Yankee Stadium. But he never went back when Steinbrenner was there.

His New Jersey neighbor John McMullen, once a limited partner in the Yankees (“There is nothing as limited as being a limited partner of George Steinbrenner,” he said), now owned the Houston Astros. He reached out and offered Yogi a coaching job with the Astros, and Yogi took it. The Astros won their first division title in his first season. He stayed until 1989, when he finally retired from full-time baseball work.

In 1998, the Yogi Berra Museum and Learning Center opened at Montclair State University, and it provided Yogi with a destination to talk baseball, meet fans, and feel honored and appreciated. It was just a short drive from the fork in the road that led to Yogi’s home. As with many things in Yogi’s life, the museum’s success exceeded expectations.

And it was there, in 1999, fourteen years after his firing, that George Steinbrenner came to see him and to apologize. Broadcaster Suzyn Waldman brokered the deal. Yogi’s family was encouraging him to accept the apology so that his grandchildren could see him get cheered at Yankee Stadium.

Steinbrenner arrived a little later than announced (“You’re late,” was the first thing Yogi said), but clearly everyone was ready to bury the hatchet.
The two, along with Carmen Berra, retreated into Dave Kaplan’s museum director’s office. Steinbrenner began by saying, “I made a big mistake,” and Yogi interrupted him to say, “Oh, I’ve made mistakes too.” By acknowledging that an apology was due and accepted, but by responding as he did, Yogi’s wisdom had won the day. He put the Boss at ease in a most unusual situation for a man of his power. From then on, Yogi would be a fixture at special events, in spring training, and whenever he felt like taking in a game.

“I never saw Mr. Steinbrenner happier than on the drive back to the stadium after that meeting,” said his media-relations director Rick Cerrone.

YOGI’S SUCCESSOR WAS Billy Martin, back for his fourth turn as manager. “George and I have the greatest relationship I’ve ever had with him,” he said. The media, and most fans, let out a collective sigh, although to some he remained one of the top in-game managers in baseball.

One thing that Billy had this time was Henderson, who had thrived under him in Oakland. And Rickey delivered, scoring 146 runs, belting 24 homers, and stealing 80 bases, breaking Fritz Maisel’s seventy-one-year-old club record. He was only thrown out 10 times. His run-scoring prowess was amazing. If he was on third, he would take a lead, almost willing home plate into his pocket. Henderson on third always felt like a sure run, and he’d often get there on a walk and a couple of steals. His runs-scored total was the most in the league since Ted Williams in 1950, and the most by a Yankee since DiMaggio in ’37. He became the first player in AL history with 20 homers and 50 steals.

Martin also had Bobby Meacham and Dale Berra, who made the blooper reels for ’85 when both were tagged out at home by Carlton Fisk on a single play. It made them look bad, but it turned out that Lou Gehrig and Dixie Walker, Yankee teammates in 1933, had done the same thing. It would have made the play less painful and more comical had it been known at the time.

A SAD NOTE in the summer of ’85 was the death of Pete Sheehy at seventy-five. Pete suffered a heart attack, and his passing broke a link that went to the very origins of the team, as Pete had come aboard in 1927 to assist Pop Logan in the clubhouse, and Logan had gone back to the first season, 1903. Pete was Yankee history, and his funeral, at a small church in New Jersey,
drew DiMaggio, Martin, Berra, Michael, Bobby Brown, McDougald, Roy White, Guidry, Mattingly, Righetti, Baylor, and a large contingent of front-office people and former employees. Steinbrenner sat quietly in the back row.