Pinstripe Empire (76 page)

His finances were in bad shape. His drinking was heavy and occurring before the nation took greater interest in alcoholism as a disease.

He died just two weeks after his feisty mother died in California, a
devastating blow to the emotional Martin. At the time, he had been told that his parents had never married; this was later shown to be incorrect, but he didn’t learn of the correction while he was alive.

He was also arguing with Jill, and instead of spending the holiday with her, he set off drinking with his pal Bill Reedy. Reedy’s truck slid out of control as Billy shouted, “Hang on! Look out!” but he couldn’t survive the accident. He was sixty-one.

Whether Reedy or Martin was actually driving became a matter of debate, settled in court by a jury that found Reedy guilty of drunk driving. There were Martin hair fragments in the passenger window, but his injuries suggested the steering wheel had gone into him. Like many things about Billy, there was mystery surrounding it.

Not only did Martin have a majestic funeral at St. Patrick’s Cathedral in the presence of Richard Nixon, Steinbrenner, Mantle, Ford, Rizzuto, and others, but he was buried within a few feet of Babe Ruth at Gate of Heaven in Hawthorne, New York.

There was never a more prideful Yankee. Or a more complicated one.

IN 1990 THE Yankees dropped to last place with 95 losses. They had been last in 1966, 1912, and 1908, and that was it.

On July 30, Commissioner Fay Vincent imposed a second suspension on Steinbrenner. Having conducted an investigation into payments made to Howie Spira to dig up dirt on Winfield, Vincent concluded that a suspension was called for. Spira went to jail for twenty-two months on an extortion conviction. To everyone’s surprise, Steinbrenner rejected the suspension and chose instead to remove himself from baseball, offering to be placed on baseball’s permanent ineligible list. It was the preferred course of action for him if he wished to remain active with the United States Olympic Committee, an assignment he genuinely enjoyed. Bob Nederlander, a limited partner, was named general partner. Steinbrenner would be permitted to participate in matters “extraordinary and material” to the team.

Word reached the fans at Yankee Stadium during a game in progress. Fans did not yet have cell phones, texts, and e-mails at the ready in those days, but news quickly spread and a chant of “No more George” began to be heard. It was a bizarre moment, and of course it reflected the fans’ frustration at how low the team had sunk. He was, in the minds of the fans, the fall guy for the sorry product they were watching that season. Yes, Steinbrenner
had overseen some success, but the frustration had been growing a long time. The fact that the team passed two million in attendance was thought of as a small miracle.
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Daniel McCarthy, an original limited partner in the team, succeeded Bob Nederlander as the Yankees’ “acting general partner” a year later, but Vincent rejected him when he and another partner, Harold Bowman, sued Vincent over the value of their Yankee stock being compromised by Steinbrenner’s expulsion. The suit was dismissed, but McCarthy’s time at the top was brief, and he was succeeded by Steinbrenner’s son-in-law, Joe Molloy.

BUCKY DENT WAS a marked man from the time he arrived, and his tenure would be brief. He was fired on June 6, with the team 18–31. Sadly, the firing came when the Yankees were in Boston, the scene of his greatest moment. His replacement was Columbus manager Stump Merrill, then in his eleventh year as a minor league manager for the Yanks. The first game he managed was the first time he had been inside a major league stadium in his twenty-five years in the game, beginning as a catcher.

He inherited a falling club. Mattingly’s big years were over—he had a .256 season with just five homers, and missed 60 games with a bad back. Only reliever Lee Guetterman managed to win 10 games. Tim Leary lost 19. Dave Righetti saved 36 of the team’s 67 wins and Barfield hit 25 homers, while Sax and Roberto Kelly teamed up for 85 stolen bases. A surprise DH find was Kevin Maas, who hit 21 homers in 254 at-bats.

So awful was the season that when Andy Hawkins no-hit the White Sox on July 1, he managed to lose the game 4–0. In the last of the eighth of a scoreless tie, two out, third baseman Mike Blowers made an error, and Hawkins walked the next two. Robin Ventura flied to left, but rookie Jim Leyritz misplayed it for an error, allowing all three runners to score. Then Ivan Calderon flied to right, where Barfield lost it in the sun for another error and another run.

“What’s going on here?” said a shocked Phil Rizzuto in the TV booth. It could have applied to the full season. As a home team with the lead, the
White Sox didn’t have to bat in the ninth, which meant Hawkins’s no-hitter was only eight innings, and not included in the record books. Talk about a bad year.

Merrill was 49–64 and there were few hopeful signs, except perhaps for the promotion to third-base coach of thirty-two-year-old Buck Showalter, who was thought to have a good baseball mind. Buck had previously been the team’s eye in the sky, positioning players from the press level.

GENE MICHAEL RETURNED to the general manager’s office in August 1990, but George Bradley, of the Tampa brigade, was brought to New York with similar duties. The two butted heads over a number of off-season roster moves, emphasizing how dysfunctional the operation had become. Dave Righetti left via free agency to finish his career with the Giants, with Al Rosen, now San Francisco’s general manager, offering him four years to the Yankees’ two.

In his place, Michael signed Steve Farr, who saved 78 games over the next three seasons. Michael also signed Scott Sanderson, who would be the team’s leading winner (16–10), and took a chance on the oft-suspended Steve Howe, who’d battled drug and alcohol problems since a Rookie of the Year showing with the Dodgers. It was the move of a team desperate for pitching—at one point during the ’91 season, the rotation included Wade Taylor, Jeff Johnson, and Scott Kamieniecki, all considered triple-A pitchers at that point.

Meanwhile, Bradley signed the fading Steve Sax to a four-year deal, something Michael opposed, causing further tension in the front office. Sax rebounded to go from .260 to .304. New faces also included catcher Matt Nokes (24 homers) and third baseman Pat Kelly.

In June, at the annual amateur draft, the Yankees gambled on a nineteen-year-old left-hander named Brien Taylor, who was advised by agent Scott Boras and represented by his mother, Bettie, a tough negotiator. The team’s last-place finish in 1990 had earned them the top pick in the nation, and it was Taylor.

Bettie upped the pressure by saying, “Once Brien goes to college, the Yankees will have no chance at him. They have the opportunity now. If they want him, now is the time to get him.”

As negotiations continued and she wasn’t getting her price, she said,
“I’m beginning to wonder, is it because we’re back here, we’re poor and we’re black?”

(Among those passed over by the Yanks was Manny Ramirez from neighboring Washington Heights, drafted by the Indians with the thirteenth overall pick.)

Taylor got a record $1.55 million signing bonus and spent two seasons in the minors, winning 19 games and showing good developmental progress for his age. The Yankees were delighted with his 13–7 season for Albany-Colonie in ’93. But in December 1993 he got into a barroom fistfight defending his brother, and dislocated his left shoulder in the process. He was never the same, and never pitched an inning in the majors, becoming a UPS package handler instead of a Yankee Stadium star.

THE YANKS RETURNED to fifth place in ’91 and stayed with Stump Merrill for the full season, the first time in four years they’d played a year under one manager. Merrill was fired at year’s end, as was George Bradley. Stump continued to serve the organization in a variety of capacities for many years, including managing, but never again on the big-league level.

There was a breakthrough moment that arrived quietly. On July 7, in a home loss against Baltimore, the Yankees started Bernabe Williams in center field. Gene Michael thought Williams represented the kind of hitter the Yankees needed in the lineup—someone selective at the plate who could get on base a lot.

“Bernie,” just twenty-two, batted eighth and had a single and a sacrifice fly in four plate appearances, driving in two. While Roberto Kelly was the team’s regular center fielder (20 homers, .267), Williams played in 85 games, hit his first three homers, and stole 10 bases. The soft-spoken, switch-hitting product of Escuela Libre de Musica High School in Puerto Rico, who could play classical guitar, would be the first of the mid-nineties stars to arrive to begin the process of digging the team out of the hole it was in.

WILLIAM “BUCK” SHOWALTER became the Yankees’ manager on October 29, 1991. At thirty-five, he was the youngest in baseball and the youngest Yankee manager since Roger Peckinpaugh in 1914. He’d been a teammate of Mattingly’s at double-A Nashville, where he led the league in hits, part of a seven-year playing career as a first baseman and outfielder. He began managing the Oneonta Yankees in 1985, and in five seasons in the organization, had four first-place finishes.

Showalter had a keen mind for detail and loved to get involved in all phases of the game. He was prepared, disciplined, and efficient, traits greatly admired by Steinbrenner, even in absentia. He received a one-year contract, but just three months into his first season, with the team barely at .500, he was given two more. He wound up finishing the 1992 season tied for fourth, ten games under .500, twenty games out of first. It was a five-game improvement over 1991. Gene Michael saw talent in Showalter, saw that the team was a work in progress, digging out from years of shipping off prospects for players who weren’t a good fit, and he chose to retain Buck to continue the team’s development.

Danny Tartabull was the big preseason acquisition, signing a $25.5 million, five-year contract, and as a right fielder and DH, he delivered 25 homers and 85 RBI, nine of them in one game. Catcher Mike Stanley was acquired from Texas to back up Matt Nokes, while Pat Kelly took over at second from the departed Sax, with Charlie Hayes becoming the regular third baseman.

The Yanks’ number-one starter was to have been Pascual Perez, but he
failed a drug test and was suspended for the full season. Instead his brother Melido became the de facto “ace,” winning 13 to Sanderson’s 12. Steve Howe, who started the season strong, also failed a drug test and suffered his seventh suspension, leaving Farr as the short man.

The Howe suspension caused another major split between the Yankees and the Commissioner’s Office, when Showalter, Michael, and COO Jack Lawn testified on Howe’s behalf at an arbitration hearing. Vincent threatened all three with their own suspensions for taking Howe’s side, stating, “You have effectively resigned from baseball by agreeing to appear at the hearing.” He later apologized for the appearance of intimidating future witnesses.

Vincent was shown the door three months later, after a series of actions that found other teams exasperated with his leadership. But on July 24, before he left office, he announced that Steinbrenner’s suspension would be lifted and that he could return in 1993. (In November, Howe’s suspension was overturned by an arbitrator.)

Vincent’s departure found Milwaukee owner Bud Selig stepping in as acting commissioner, which would lead to a long run as permanent commissioner.

ON MARCH 1, 1993, Steinbrenner returned, riding a white horse and dressed in Napoleonic clothing for a
Sports Illustrated
cover. The photo op was considered “good sport,” but fans feared that the return might also mean a return to the disorder of the eighties. Disorder, however, was more prevalent in Tampa, where American Ship was struggling to survive. The company filed for bankruptcy that November.

The baseball fears proved unfounded. Michael had steadied the operation. Showalter proved to be a good leader, and the team was about to break its streak of four straight sub-.500 seasons and begin one of the most successful eras in the team’s history.

Prior to the season, the Yankees signed free agent Wade Boggs. While Boggs’s biggest years and six batting championships were behind him in Boston, he arrived with a .335 lifetime average and was still a quality player. Both Boggs and the Yankees got a thrill from the scandalized reaction of Red Sox fans, and he lifted his average 43 points from 1992’s .259 low point, back over .300, started the All-Star Game, and led the league in fielding.

Jimmy Key, thirty-two, was a free agent from Toronto who went 18–6
and took over leadership of the starting rotation. Key, winner of two games in the ’92 World Series, was a second choice after the Yankees were spurned by Greg Maddux, who chose to go to Atlanta for less money. David Wells said of Key, “He’s one pocket protector away from full-blown nerd status, but don’t let any of that fool you. He’s a tough competitor.”

Jim Abbott, one of the great success stories in major league history, pitched a no-hitter on September 4. In a classy gesture, he summoned his catcher, Nokes, out of the dugout after the game to share equally in the cheers from the crowd.

Abbott had been born without a right hand, yet had overcome the handicap, pitching lefty and maneuvering his glove back onto his throwing hand afterward so he could field his position. He did it so effortlessly that one almost forgot the odds he’d overcome to attain big-league status. A star at the University of Michigan, he broke in with the Angels, and by the time he was traded to the Yankees, people had accepted his fortitude and expected big things. On that count, his Yankee career was middling, 20–22 over two seasons before he left as a free agent. Sadly, he was pretty much done at twenty-eight, going 2–18 back with the Angels.

A fourth new face on the club would be Paul O’Neill. A native of Columbus, Ohio, whose sister Molly wrote a food column for the
New York Times
, O’Neill had played for his “hometown” Cincinnati Reds since 1985. But by 1992 his numbers had slipped to .246/14/66, unproductive for a right fielder.

At the same time, the Yankees were feeling that Bernie Williams, or perhaps the unrelated Gerald Williams, might be as good as Roberto Kelly in center. Kelly, right-handed, would never attain big power numbers in Yankee Stadium, but O’Neill, left-handed, might. Michael made the Kelly-O’Neill deal on November 3, 1992, and it would prove to be one of the best trades in Yankee history. O’Neill returned to top form—even surpassing his best Cincinnati seasons—and would be a key part of the coming success of the team. His popularity with the fans, who enjoyed his Piniella-like intensity, was instant. In his first Yankee season, O’Neill hit .311 with 20 homers, and he would lock down the right-field position for the next nine seasons.