Becoming Mr. October (9780385533126)

by Jackson, Reggie; Baker, Kevin

  However, looking back on it now, I don’t know if that’s true. I was so upset at the time I don’t think I was considering what the consequences were. And if I had, I still don’t know if I would’ve backed down. I wouldn’t have wanted to.

  Something had to be done. Something had to be done to stop the team from coming apart any further. Something had to be done to keep the situation between Billy and me from getting any worse. I wasn’t going to sit by and watch him ruin guys, including me. I wasn’t going to sit on the bench and spend the next three and a half years as a part-time DH.

  Maybe it was only my unconscious mind that was telling me to force the situation. I don’t know. But if I had gone along and bunted just like Billy wanted, it wouldn’t have done him or anybody else any good. If I had just meekly gone along with the changes George wanted, it wouldn’t have helped anybody. We wouldn’t have won anything that year, and Billy would’ve been fired pretty soon anyway. George (the Boss) would’ve torn the team apart.

  Instead, as it happened, Billy took himself apart. He sounded very pleased with himself while I was out in Hawaii. The team won five in a row, and Boston finally ran into a rough patch. The Sox started suffering a few injuries of their own, started running into some hot clubs, and we cut their lead over us down to ten games—even if we were still in third place.

  Billy was apparently saying to all the writers that this showed how right he was about things and how I was the problem with the team. He was really hoping I would just stay out in California, maybe get traded somewhere. And now I was back.

  You know, one of the writers, I think it was Henry Hecht, had a theory from the year before that Billy was trying to “gaslight” me. It was a reference from this old Ingrid Bergman movie, in which her husband tries to convince her she’s going crazy. Henry thought Billy was trying to do that to me, moving me all around the lineup, trying to undermine my confidence. Taking the bat out of my hand. Getting me to demand a trade and move myself out of there. If he only knew how much I was trying to be traded …

  In the end, I was the one driving him crazy. Just by being there.

  You’d think Billy would’ve been on top of the world just then. He’d just won five straight games without me. Just won a game playing Billy-ball, squeezing in a run the way he liked. You’d think he would’ve been happy.

  Yet I don’t think Billy was ever happy. Not then, anyway.

  Then came the next unbelievable twist in the story. We were trying to get out of Chicago. We get out to O’Hare Airport, and our flight was delayed, and Billy starts fueling. Oh, Billy Martin and airport bars! He started pouring down the fuel with Art Fowler. Then Murray Chass of the New York Times came by and told him what I’d said after the game—about how it was an uncomfortable situation.

  It wasn’t much of anything to say, I thought, but Billy went off on it. He told Murray, “I’m saying, ‘Shut up, Reggie Jackson. We don’t need none of your s—t.’ ” He told him, “ ‘We’re winning without you. We don’t need you coming in and making all these comments.’ ”

  Billy told him, “If Jackson 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.” He told Chass to go ahead and phone the story in, then he went back for more fuel.

  Meanwhile, word was starting to get out about the sort of stuff he was saying. Henry Hecht went back with Chass to the bar, and Billy just kept running off at the mouth. When Henry told him what I’d said about what I would do if I had to do it all over again—how I guessed I would’ve gone ahead and swung away against Kansas City as ordered—Billy told him that was like “a guy getting out of jail and saying, ‘I’m innocent,’ after he killed somebody. He and every one of the other players knew he defied me.”

  Billy told them that I had taken off my glasses when I got back to the bench because I was getting ready for a fight. That was only half-wrong—I was getting ready just in case he thought I was going to be another in a long line of Billy Martin sucker-punch victims.

  “He expected to get popped but good,” he told Chass, and Billy said it took him “the most restraint it’s ever taken in my life” not to hit me there. He said something about how he was going to kick my ass.

  Uh-huh. He must’ve spent a lot of time in the off-season down at Disneyland, because that’s where they got Goofy. He’d got real goofy if he ever thought he was going to kick my ass. I didn’t want that confrontation. I knew I couldn’t win in the public forum.

  Billy just wouldn’t shut up. Even as he was walking to the team plane with Hecht and Chass, he went on about how upset he was that I hadn’t apologized. Then, when they told him they’d asked me and I said he hadn’t spoken to me yet, he told them I was lying. Then he threw in George.

  “The two of them deserve each other,” he said about George and me. “One’s a born liar, the other’s convicted”—referring to how George was found guilty of making illegal campaign contributions to Richard Nixon.

  Now he was comparing me to a murderer and saying I’m a liar.

  Henry knew at once how big a story he had. He came back over to me where I was walking through the airport with Fran. Henry came up to me, and he said, “I think Billy’s gonna get fired. Wait’ll George hears about this!” He said, “He talked about George, and he talked about you, Reggie, and he was so upset that you didn’t come and apologize to him and the team.”

  I didn’t even think about it. I just wanted to be out of the way. I just couldn’t believe I was getting tagged for Martin blowing up and calling me a liar. I hadn’t said anything to him. I didn’t even understand his comment. I didn’t know who he meant. When I first heard that quote, I was honestly trying to figure out which one of us was supposed to be which. I was like, “What did I do?”

  There’s another thing a lot of people don’t know about that quote. It wasn’t even original. It was something a couple of guys on the team came up with. They’d been saying it about Steinbrenner and Billy Martin himself—not me!—since back in spring training. Billy picked up the line and used it about George and me.

  Henry was excited because he had a story, and he was reporting it. He thought Billy was going to get fired. He didn’t like Billy, either. Of course by that time, a lot of people were fed up with Billy. Even the players who liked Billy were uncomfortable with the way things were going.

  The writers went ahead and called George from the airport and asked him for a reaction. He was stunned by it. Who wouldn’t be? The team had finally started to win—we won that afternoon—and here was Billy telling him off. For nothing. George hadn’t said a word to him since we’d been winning.

  The next day, after we got into Kansas City, Billy had that awful press conference at the Crown Center hotel. Standing on the balcony, sunglasses on inside the building. His hands shaking. He looked like a man ten years older than he was yesterday!

  He told the writers he had a statement to make and he wouldn’t say anything else, “now or forever, because I am a Yankee and Yankees do not talk or throw rocks.” It was pretty late for him to decide that. He went on to say he was quitting to help the team win the pennant and for his own health and “mental well-being.”

  He apologized to George Steinbrenner for saying what he said about him—then said he didn’t say it.

  Surprisingly, he didn’t mention any apology to me. He then went on to thank the front office, the media, the writers, the coaches, and the fans. Everybody but the players who made him a champion.

  By the end he was sobbing. Not everybody was impressed. Roger Kahn wrote in the Times, “Babe Ruth and Lou Gehrig went out of the arena more quietly to face their death.” Pete Gammons wrote, “Martin had to be led away from the news conference in tears, which was good for a few laughs.”

  I wasn’t laughing. I can’t honestly say I was sorry to see him go, but I wasn’t laughing. Phil Rizzuto had to come up and lead him away, I think. I don’t know if the Yankees even had anyone official there.
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  I don’t know how I’d describe the whole scene. But it was fitting. Because once again, Billy was alone.

  It was such a weird time. I didn’t know all that was going on at the time. Fran knew more than I did, people talked to him, they didn’t talk so much to me. I was suspended; I was back on the team. I was the problem; Billy was the problem. We’re on our way to Kansas City, we’re going pretty good … and Martin? He was getting fired? What happened? What did I do?

  Certainly I understood it takes two to tango and I was one of them. I regret the way this turned out. I remember at the time Fran Healy was telling me how to handle the press, what to say. He warned me, “They’ll blame you; they’ll make you out to be the villain.”

  I basically remained quiet. Did whatever Fran told me. He would pick out a few things to say, and I would say them. Basic things about Billy, like, “This is his decision. I’m just going to go along with management. I don’t have anything against Billy.” It’s tough to say things you don’t mean.

  I was very fortunate to have people around me who helped get me through the hard times, people like Fran, Gary Walker, my family, and others. I remember one of George’s friends, Tony Rolfe, lots of times talking through all the nonsense that went on.

  All these individuals were constantly giving me good advice, keeping my head straight, and pointing me toward what mattered most in life. I’m grateful to this day—I’ll always be grateful—that they were there to help me.

  I don’t know that Billy was ever that fortunate. Throughout the time we were both on the Yankees, there were always people around him who kept telling him that he was right, and that George was wrong, and that I was the problem with the team.

  Those people might have meant well. The fans meant well, siding with him through everything. They loved Billy as the underdog, and I understood that. However, ultimately, I don’t think they did him any favors.

  That helped to keep him from ever acknowledging that he might not be thinking clearly—that he might be wrong. And they did not make Billy face what had become a real problem in his life, which was his drinking.

  Occasionally, someone said something. I remember hearing a story about a day in 1977 when Billy was tying one on after a loss, and Gabe Paul looked at him and said, “You’re drinking like we won.” But those sorts of interventions were all too few and far between.

  The reporters covering our team also didn’t do Billy any favors by not writing about his drinking. Too often in our society, we celebrate public figures when they’re on top and kick them when they’re down, forgetting that the person involved is not just a picture in a newspaper or an image on a TV screen but a living, breathing, bleeding human being. A human being who could use our help before it’s too late.

  Being honest is a virtue. It hurts, as we all know. But sometimes it is a necessity.

  Billy Martin was a human tragedy, in the real sense of the words. He defied long odds his whole life and maximized his abilities in the game. He helped the Yankees win five rings as a player and another one as manager. He fought hard his whole life—but too often, it seemed like he was fighting himself.

  I was disappointed that we were never able to get along. I always felt we had some things in common, particularly a strong desire to compete, to win any way we could.

  I never understood why he was so antagonistic to me from almost the moment I joined the team. Even though I understood the reasons intellectually—Billy was upset that he hadn’t been consulted about signing me, he felt that I was the one who questioned his authority, he thought I would disturb the team chemistry, and all that jazz.

  Emotionally, though, I didn’t understand why he could never move past all that, in pursuit of our mutual desire to win. I couldn’t understand why he was so determined to undermine me at every opportunity. It was as if he was trying to prove something that he himself didn’t quite understand.

  Billy once told some writers about me, “He’s not a hater, he doesn’t know how to hate. Raschi and Reynolds knew how to hate, I know how to hate.”

  I never had the privilege to play with Vic Raschi or Allie Reynolds, his old teammates. I’m sure they were great pitchers and fierce competitors. But I bet they knew how not to hate, too.

  Billy was right, I was not a hater. When I heard about him saying that, I had and still have no comprehension of the thought process behind it!

  I didn’t hate Billy. I didn’t hate anybody. If I didn’t like someone, I just kept a distance. Still do. I just get away from them, or whatever it is that’s agitating me. If you can’t control it, prepare. If it’s raining outside, take an umbrella. If you don’t have one, wear a raincoat. If you don’t have either, wait until it stops raining. Do whatever it takes.

  “Reggie doesn’t know how to hate”—he was trying to call it a weakness. But I would call that a strength.

  Billy Martin went out on a winning streak. In his dream job, managing the Yankees. Managing the team the way he wanted, with me on the bench. And somehow it wasn’t enough. He had let his demons take over.

  That tells me that there was plenty more going on with Billy that we didn’t see. It tells me that his problems went beyond whatever fracas he was having with George or me on any given day. He had everything he claimed to want—and then he was gone. That tells me that knowing how to hate makes no sense.

  Billy was gone—and then he was back.

  Just five days later, at our Old-Timers’ Day, back at the Stadium, they made a surprise announcement that Billy would come back to manage the team in 1980.

  It was probably the worst day in my baseball life. Nobody warned me about it beforehand. I didn’t see Billy in the clubhouse; they were keeping him under wraps. Then there he was, running out on the field after all those Yankee greats, grinning from ear to ear. We had a big crowd, more than forty-six thousand, and they went crazy.

  I asked George later why he didn’t give me a heads-up. He said, “Well, I really didn’t have to, Reggie.”

  Would’ve been nice, though. That’s the short story on that.

  The longer story was I think he really did it just to appease the fans, keep them quiet. And a couple days later, Billy was already spouting off, telling reporters, “I’ve always said I could manage Adolf Hitler, Benito Mussolini, and Hirohito. That doesn’t mean I’d like them, but I’d manage them.” A few days after that, he told the press that he didn’t have any malice in his heart toward me: “I’ve done everything I could to help the young man and now he has to help himself.”

  Yeah, that was Billy Martin, my mentor. Now I was a murderer sprung from jail, a born liar, and Hitler, Mussolini, and Hirohito, all rolled into one. It was a few days after that, I think, that he told the press that Fred Stanley, our backup shortstop, made more contributions to the team than I ever did.

  You know, it wouldn’t necessarily have been so bad to plan to bring Billy back in 1980—if somebody was going to use the next year and a half to get him some real help. But that wasn’t going to happen. Instead, he was the same old Billy. He was just going to do what he wanted, say what he wanted, and come back anyway.

  At the time, the Boss said, “All that happened in the past is meaningless.” Which was just the problem. If you don’t learn from the past, if you don’t learn from experience, what do you learn from? How do you know the way forward?

  Bringing Billy back, ignoring his past, meant the Yankees were just going to go around in circles. Which is what would happen.

  But on Old-Timers’ Day, we played the Twins. I had two hits and threw out Roy Smalley trying to take an extra base after a single. We won, 7–3. That was what we did. We were professionals.

  22

  “A VERY SIMPLE GAME FOR CHILDREN”

  PRIVATELY, I TOLD myself that—one way or another—I would be gone by the time Billy Martin came back in 1980. I would make them trade me, somehow.

  Then I just put it out of my mind. I think a lot of us were stunned that Billy was supposed to come back,
but we just put it away. It was like what Lou Piniella said: “Nineteen eighty is a year and a half away. We can’t worry about that.”

  It’s too hard to play baseball and try to be successful—try to go out there every day and get hits—and have distractions. Those who’ve never played, you can’t understand the difficulty of the daily grind and the demand for excellence. It is a struggle. It was hard to do for me. I chose to stay inside myself, it made it easier to be gruff because I felt it helped me play better.

  I still had the feeling of being overwhelmed by the city. I don’t blame New York. But sometimes when I was alone in my apartment, my mind would just get stale. I lived right across from the Metropolitan Museum then, at Seventy-ninth and Fifth, and I would look out over the museum and the park, and I would just drift. I enjoyed seeing the sun set to the west, over the Dakota building. I enjoyed the park, the trees and green, from where I was on the twentieth floor. It was nice and peaceful to look below and chill out, relax.

  At the ballpark, it was bad at first, though not as bad as it had been the year before. Predictably, the fans blamed me for Billy’s self-destruction. They hung up signs saying things like, “Billy’s the One Who’s Sane, Reggie’s the One to Blame,” and “Reggie, Are You Happy Now?” (Yes.) There were ones a lot worse than those, which security had to take down, they were so profane. When I’d come up, some of them would chant, “Bunt! Bunt!” for a while. (And much worse things.)

  With all that pressure, there was a deep loneliness inside. That was the first time I ever really felt that. There was a need for help, and I recognized that. That forced me to go to the place where I had to go, to go to things that I needed as a human being. And those things were mainly God, Jesus, and the friends who supported me.

  I had a girlfriend in California I could talk to and the other friends I’d made through the Boss in New York. Fran Healy was a great sounding board for me, as always; he’d help me with peace of mind. It was great as always seeing my brother Joe and my dad. They were still telling me, “Keep beating on the ball.”