Pinstripe Empire (74 page)

“I’ve known the man for thirty-five years and today was the first time I’ve met his wife,” said Martin, one of the eulogists.

Knowing of Big Pete’s secrecy with matters involving players, I waited a few seasons to gain his trust before I attempted to draw him out in conversation. One day in the early seventies, I finally said, “Pete, tell me about the Babe.”

He was silent for a few moments, and then said, “He never flushed the toilet.”

The Yankees wore black armbands on their sleeves for the remainder of the season after Pete died.

With his passing, his longtime assistant Nick Priore took charge of the Yankee clubhouse, with Rob Cucuzza succeeding him in 1998. Cucuzza’s father, Lou Sr., had worked the visiting clubhouse since 1977, with Lou Jr. running it after starting as a batboy in 1979.

IN 1985, DON MATTINGLY won the league’s MVP Award, the first Yankee to do so since Munson. He drove in 145 runs, the most by a Yankee since DiMaggio’s 155 in 1948. He reached his peak in home runs with 35.

The Yanks played great ball throughout the summer, going 38–18 in July and August and scrambling into a good pennant race, with an eleven-game winning streak carrying them into September. Ron Guidry was rebounding from 10–11 to a 22-win season, while Righetti was on his way to 29 saves. By September 12, they had moved to within one and a half games of division-leading Toronto. But suddenly they lost eight straight, including three to the Jays, and by September 22 were six and a half out with only fourteen games left. And as the losing streak unfolded, Martin seemed to melt down with it.

The streak followed a dressing-down by Steinbrenner. “This is a test of Yankee heart and Yankee pride!” he said in the clubhouse, shortly after a confrontation with player-rep Winfield over distribution of material urging the players to support a drug-testing plan proposed by Commissioner Peter Ueberroth.

During the streak, the Yanks blew a 5–3 lead to the Indians when reliever Brian Fisher allowed six runs in the ninth. Martin blamed the game on third-string catcher Juan Espino’s pitch calling.

In another loss, Martin ordered lefty-hitting Pagliarulo to bat right-handed. Pags struck out looking. Even he wondered what was going on.

Then there was the time Martin scratched Ed Whitson from his start, referring to him as “Whatchamacallit” to the press and claiming he had a sore arm. Whitson knew nothing about this.

Whitson had signed as a free agent with the Yanks after a 14–8 record with San Diego in ’84. A seven-year veteran, the six-foot-three right-hander met all the Yankees’ scouting requirements to move into the rotation. But he started out 1–6 with a 6.23 ERA after 11 starts, and the patience of Yankee fans was never their strong suit. Although he would go 9–2 from that point with two shutouts, he’d lost Martin’s confidence. He would come to be the first name recited when people began to talk about the “New York factor,” the supposed difficulty of transitioning to New York after pitching in other cities. It became a new gauge of mental toughness for pitchers—something that had previously been unidentified during the years of Giants-Dodgers-Yankees. Suddenly, even if the players were Hall of Fame–bound like Randy Johnson, or just successful elsewhere like Kenny Rogers, Terry Mulholland, Jack McDowell, or Javy Vazquez, the question “Can he pitch in New York?” became part of the dialogue.

By the following year, it was decided that Whitson would only pitch in road games. It had gotten that bad.

In loss number eight, in Baltimore, Martin forgot that rubbing his nose was actually a sign for a pitchout. He did it twice. Rich Bordi, pitching instead of Whitson, threw two pitchouts and wound up walking Lee Lacy before Cal Ripken delivered a game-winning single.

That night in the lounge of the Cross Keys Inn, where the Yankees were staying, Martin got into a verbal fight with two honeymooning young couples, apparently telling one that “your wife has a potbelly.” Martin denied this, claiming he had said she had a “fat ass.” Some shoving ensued, but when Billy suggested taking the fight outside, his opponent failed to show.

Sometime after midnight on Saturday night, back in the Cross Keys lounge, Whitson was engaged in an argument with another patron. Martin and Dale Berra went to his aid, at which point Whitson turned on Martin and they tumbled to the floor and had to be separated by other players. Martin questioned Whitson’s claim that he had “sucker-punched” him, and suggested that Whitson couldn’t “hold his liquor.”

Whitson continued to scream at Martin, and Martin went back toward
him. Players were holding Whitson back, but he managed to kick Martin in the groin. Said Billy, “Okay, now I’m gonna kill you, now you did it.”

Round three continued outside, with Whitson, now unrestrained, rushing at Martin. The two crashed to the pavement, punching away. “You’ve tried to bury me here; you’re trying to ruin me,” shouted Whitson.

Whitson was sent home the following morning; Martin went off to the hospital with a broken right arm. Whitson, thirty, was a well-conditioned professional athlete. He should have had the sense to walk away. Billy, fifty-seven, was as thin as ever at 165 pounds, and too old for this stuff. Yet Billy could look in the mirror and see the same guy who had fought Clint Courtney almost forty years before. There was no gray hair, no potbelly. A challenge was a challenge. And his drinking never abated.

Whitson would pitch just once more that season, in a Yankee win at Toronto, which put them two out with two games to play. But they lost 5–1 the next day, officially knocking them out of the playoffs. Phil Niekro won his 300th on the season’s meaningless final day. The Yanks wound up with 97 wins, and finished two out.

On October 27, the morning of the seventh game of the World Series between Kansas City and St. Louis, Billy was fired a fourth time. This one was announced by conference call from the Bronx to reporters in Kansas City. His replacement would be hitting instructor Lou Piniella, who had never managed before. Steinbrenner did not take part in the call; Clyde King made the announcement.

PINIELLA HAD LONG been a favorite of Steinbrenner’s. A Tampa neighbor with a winning personality and a drive to win, he would ultimately go on to win more than 1,800 games as a manager, the fourteenth-best total in history.

Once, as a player, Lou, among others, had missed a photo shoot that Steinbrenner had arranged. Threatening retaliation, Steinbrenner went down the list of offenders one by one, citing, “no more free tickets,” “no more favors,” as the names appeared. Finally, getting to Piniella, he said, “Oh don’t worry. I’m gonna
really
[expletive] him! I’m gonna make him the manager!”

The time had come. Being a favorite son had its disadvantages. He got a three-year contract.

But despite his expressions of confidence in Piniella, Steinbrenner kept
Martin as a close advisor in ’86. The team came out of spring training with its pitching staff in ruins—new “ace” Britt Burns had a damaged hip and would never pitch for the team; Phil Niekro was released. Guidry had a horrible 9–12 season and the team never did settle on a shortstop or a catcher. Steinbrenner continued to complain about Winfield, both his performance and his foundation. Rasmussen, who Martin said was “soft,” would be the team’s only double-digit winner, going 18–6, while Righetti saved 46 games, a major league record.

Newcomer Mike Easler hit .302, and Henderson bettered his ’85 performance by stealing 87 bases and hitting 28 homers, although his batting average dropped more than fifty points to .263. Pagliarulo added 28 home runs of his own.

But it was again Mattingly who was the team’s best player, leading the majors with 238 hits, breaking Earle Combs’s team record of 231 set in 1927. His 388 total bases were the most by a Yankee since DiMaggio in ’37. His 53 doubles broke Gehrig’s team record of 52, also set in ’27. He lost the batting title to Wade Boggs .357 to .352, when Boggs sat out the last weekend with a sore hamstring and Mattingly went 8-for-29 in pursuit.

The MVP Award went to Roger Clemens of the Red Sox, who got nineteen first-place votes to Mattingly’s five, a rare example of a pitcher winning the award over a position player. (Jim Rice had won the award over Guidry in 1978.)

The Yankees were just three and a half behind Boston on August 13, but proceeded to lose thirteen of their next twenty-one to blow their chance at a title, and in the end finished second with a 90–72 mark, a decent showing for a rookie manager. Unfortunately, the disappointment at losing out to the Red Sox was magnified by the Mets winning the pennant and then a memorable World Series against Boston. What had looked like a possible subway series in August (T-shirts were sold!) had faded.

THE YANKEES WENT to spring training in ’87 with Piniella as manager and Harvey Greene as PR director—the first time since 1974–75 that the same twosome (in that case, Virdon and me) had returned. But it was hardly a sign of new stability on the team. The season featured a ten-game winning streak in April, and first place from May 12 to August 6 (save for a couple of days), but crashed with the comings and goings of forty-eight different
players, and with Henderson spending fifty-five days on the disabled list amid accusations that the injuries weren’t real.

The Henderson drama was central; the team could hardly lose their table-setting superstar for a third of the season and pretend they could cover it.

There was no question that Henderson missed Billy Martin, and Piniella was not always sure that his left fielder was giving it his all. When Rickey went on the disabled list for a second time over what he called “bad hammys” (hamstring muscles), Piniella suggested to several sources that he was “jaking it.”

Steinbrenner finally intervened in the Henderson matter, issuing a long, rambling statement on the state of the team that exonerated Henderson, while undermining Piniella by revealing that he wanted Rickey traded.

The statement also criticized Piniella for not being available for a prearranged phone call. “I don’t know of too many guys—even sportswriters—who, if their boss told them to be available for a call at a certain time, wouldn’t be there!” the statement said. Many felt the statement essentially brought a close to the season, if not to Lou’s tenure.

There was another record-breaking season from Mattingly (six grand slams, the only six of his career, and eight consecutive games with at least one homer). Obtaining Steve Trout from the Cubs (“I just won you the pennant,” said Steinbrenner to Piniella at the time) resulted in not a single win, as Trout took his place beside Whitson as failures. Only Rick Rhoden (16–10) and the returning Tommy John (13–6) cracked double figures in victories. Pagliarulo led the team with 32 homers, and the Yanks finished a disappointing fourth.

The disappointments in 1987 were many. The “special relationship” between Steinbrenner and Piniella was tarnished. And Mattingly, despite the home run records and a .327 average, began to show signs of a back problem that would ultimately reduce him from one of the best players in baseball to just a good player.

“It’s something that was there from the time I was a kid, and it’s always gonna be there,” Mattingly told Bill Madden. “When it first flared up in ’87, it was a spasm. The funny thing was, right after that I went on that home run streak.”

Mattingly missed eighteen games early in the year because of the back. He hit 30 homers in ’87, but never hit more than 23 again. He would have two decent years in ’88 and ’89, but less than stellar by the standard he had
set for himself. Starting in 1990, he put up fairly ordinary stats—just 58 homers in his final six seasons, and no more 100-RBI campaigns. His fielding remained superlative, and he would always be Donnie Baseball, but he would never again be the Mattingly of 1984–87.

Piniella was fired after the season and moved up to general manager to replace poor Woody Woodward (who’d failed at his main assignment: to trade Winfield).

Piniella’s successor, sure to please Henderson, was Martin again. Billy V was anointed on October 19, an off day during the World Series, and also “Black Monday,” the day the stock market plunged 508 points. After this, the Commissioner’s Office ruled that there could be no major team announcements to interfere with the World Series.

The Yankees drew 2.4 million fans in ’87 despite all the angst, the third-highest total in team history. The Mets, however, coming off their ’86 championship, became the first New York team in history to top three million.
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This was an unacceptable development for the Yanks, but the Mets would continue to outdraw them until 1994.

Even if the Mets were leading at the gate, in TV and radio ratings, and in revenues, a gasp went up throughout the industry when the Yankees signed a twelve-year cable-television deal in 1988 that drove a huge wedge between them and all the other teams. There was a buyout clause in the Yankees’ SportsChannel deal that would enable them to open the television rights to the marketplace, and they exercised it. (They made a $50 million radio-rights deal in 1987 with WABC, the year the majority of telecasts moved to cable.)

The Yankees were in the fortunate position of being courted by three wealthy entities: Cablevision’s SportsChannel (owned by HBO founder Charles Dolan), Madison Square Garden Network (owned by Paramount Entertainment, run by Bob Gutkowski), and their longtime over-the-air broadcaster, Tribune Company’s WPIX (which, under its president Lev Pope, had once nearly bought the team, only to have Tribune nix the deal—Tribune later bought the Cubs).

MSG Network, desperate to have summer programming, won, bidding $493.5 million. This had a seismic effect on the Yankees’ future: an influx of revenue that dwarfed everyone else’s and assured their ability to sign top stars. It happened at a time when the Mets “owned the town” but were
locked into a long-term deal with SportsChannel. It had been considered lucrative when they signed it, but by the time the Mets’ deal expired, MSG Network had the Yankees, and three entities to bid up the cost weren’t there.

The Yankees weren’t the first New York team to embrace cable: MSG Network first provided home games of the Knicks and Rangers in the seventies, a novelty for the New York area that helped create the cable market. Yankee home games, of course, had long been televised. But the arrival of SportsChannel put every Yankee game on TV. In the eighties, the increasing number of games migrating from “free TV”—WPIX was down to forty games from as many as 140 in the late fifties—and the slow rate at which New York’s outer boroughs (including the Bronx) were being wired for cable made this a polarizing issue. For the first time, a new medium (cable) was creating a situation in which fewer people could watch or listen to Yankee games.