by Lou Piniella
DEDICATION
This book is dedicated to my wonderful wife, Anita. For the past
fifty years, she has been my rock, my loving companion, and the
mother of our three amazing children, Lou Jr., Kristi, and Derek.
I also want to thank my parents, Margaret and Louis, for the
love and encouragement they gave me all their lives.
CONTENTS
Cover
Title Page
Dedication
CHAPTER 1. Glory in the Sun
CHAPTER 2. The Tampa Red-Ass
CHAPTER 3. Have Bat, Will Travel
CHAPTER 4. Pinstripes
CHAPTER 5. Death of a Captain and a Dynasty Detoured
CHAPTER 6. Managing for the Man
CHAPTER 7. Bye-Bye, Boss
CHAPTER 8. Red October
CHAPTER 9. Nasty Doings and Doggie Poop
CHAPTER 10. Saving in Seattle
CHAPTER 11. Don’t Like Good-Byes
CHAPTER 12. Rising Sun, Setting Sun
CHAPTER 13. Out at Home
CHAPTER 14. Billy Goats to Bartman to Chance
CHAPTER 15. Alex Heartbreak, Bradley Madness, and a Windy City Farewell
CHAPTER 16. Lou-Pinions
EPILOGUE
PHOTOS SECTION
Acknowledgments
Appendix: The Lou Lists
About the Author
Credits
Copyright
About the Publisher
CHAPTER 1
Glory in the Sun
The sun was just beginning its slow rise above the Fenway Park grandstand behind home plate, and you could already feel the tension in the air as we climbed off the team bus and began making our way to the visiting clubhouse for what would be the biggest and most fun baseball game of my life. What an absolutely glorious October day for a sudden-death Yankees–Red Sox baseball game that was to decide the 1978 American League East title, with brilliant sunshine and temperatures in the low seventies that couldn’t be more perfect for everyone, fans and players alike—with the lone exception being the unfortunate guy called on to play right field.
Which, in the Yankees’ case, was going to be me.
I didn’t know this until I got to the clubhouse and saw the lineup posted that had me hitting third in right field and Reggie Jackson batting cleanup as the designated hitter. For the most part, Bob Lemon, who’d taken over as the Yankees’ manager from Billy Martin in late July, had been switching Reggie and me back and forth from right field to DH. Reggie had played right the previous two games at Yankee Stadium, but he’d had his problems in right in Fenway through the years, and while Lem never said anything to me, I just figured he wanted Reggie fully in his comfort zone and his mind on hitting. Right field at Fenway Park is trickier than most parks—if you ask me, it’s the toughest right field in the American League because of the contour of the wall that wraps around from the “Pesky Pole,” at 302 feet in the right field corner, to as deep as 380 feet in the right-center bullpen area, all of it only about five feet high, which means the fans are right on top of you. And on cloudless, sunny days, as Monday, October 2, 1978, was shaping up to be, right field at Fenway can be downright treacherous on fly balls, especially line drives, once the sun makes its rise above that grandstand.
The air in the clubhouse was businesslike as we dressed for this final battle with our archrivals, absent the customary in-house verbal hijinks that during the season provided both tension-reducing levity for us and entertainment for the writers. We’d been through so much to get to this point, overcome so much adversity, that now it was time for fulfillment. We didn’t look at it as “do or die.” We looked at it as “do.” We just didn’t know how it would be done. No one could have ever foreseen it getting done with Bucky Dent’s bat and my glove.
The only world championship ring I wear is from 1977, but that’s because it was the first one for me. Without a doubt, however, the most fun season of my life was 1978. We had perhaps the most balanced lineup of professional hitters in baseball, perfectly suited for Yankee Stadium—lefty power in Reggie; Graig Nettles and Chris Chambliss for that short right field fence; and high-average right-handed gap hitters in Thurman Munson, Willie Randolph, and myself, who each took advantage of the stadium’s vast left-center field. Roy White, a versatile switch hitter, could hit second, sixth, or seventh, and at the top of the lineup we had the speed of Mickey Rivers. And starting out in ’78, we had a rotation of Catfish Hunter, a future Hall of Famer; Don Gullett, my roommate, who’d been the ace of the 1976 “Big Red Machine” Cincinnati Reds; Ed Figueroa, who’d won fifty-one games over the previous three seasons and would go on to win twenty in ’78; and Ron Guidry, who, in 1978, had one of the greatest seasons of any pitcher in history—leading the majors with a 25–3 record and 1.74 ERA. Over the winter, George Steinbrenner, taking a page from Noah about having two of everything, signed Goose Gossage, one of the premier closers in the National League, to team up with our own Sparky Lyle, who’d only been the American League Cy Young Award winner in ’77. So this was a well-constructed, championship-caliber baseball team, with few weaknesses, a team of pressure-tested players who knew how to win.
It’s understandable, though, if Yankees fans weren’t so sure of that during the first half of ’78, and began harboring serious doubts about the team’s ability to repeat as world champions. We started off losing four of our first five games, and Goose especially had a rough period of adjustment, coming in as he did as the designated “co-closer” with Sparky, who was one of the most popular players on the team. (It didn’t help either that Goose and Billy got off on the wrong foot in spring training when Goose refused Billy’s order to throw deliberately at the Texas Rangers’ Billy Sample, and the two never mended fences.)
In his first game as a Yankee, Goose came up the loser on Opening Day in Texas when he gave up a ninth-inning homer to Richie Zisk. He blew the save and gave up three more runs in three innings against the Brewers in his next game, five days later. Then, a week after that he was completely demoralized when he threw away a sacrifice bunt by the Blue Jays’ Dave McKay to let in the winning run in the ninth inning in Toronto. After that game, we watched in silence as poor Goose sat at his locker crying.
Years later, we were having a couple of beers after an Old-Timers’ Day game at Yankee Stadium, and Goose, seemingly still hurting, could not forget how absolutely devastating those first couple of weeks had been for him.
“They gave me Sparky’s job on a silver platter and what do I do but start off with the worst stretch of my entire career,” he said. “They always talk about the ’78 Yankees and the great comeback. Well, it wouldn’t have been a great comeback if it hadn’t been for me! But the beauty of that team was that, in the face of disaster, they’d be laughing like kids on a Little League field. After that awful game in Toronto in which I threw that damn bunt twenty feet into the stands or wherever, I’m collapsed in my locker, my head buried in my uniform top, and I look up and who’s standing in front of me but Catfish, who said, ‘Hurry up and get dressed now. We’re taking you out to dinner.’ From that point on, I realized what a special group you guys were. They knew how to cut the tension. Whenever I’d come into a game after that, Thurman would come out to the mound and say, ‘Okay, Goose. How do you plan to screw this one up?’”
Cut the tension we did. After that rocky first week, we started getting our footing, and through the first two months we were hanging right there with Don Zimmer’s Red Sox, a couple of games out of first place. But then the injuries began to set in. It started with Catfish, finally experiencing the toll of pitching 626 innings—you read that right!—his first two seasons with us (’75–’76), going down with a rotator cuff issue with his shoulder on May 9. We didn’t get him back un
til mid-July, by which time we were trailing the Red Sox by double digits. Actually the way we got Catfish back was a kind of a miracle in itself. His shoulder had been hurting since midseason ’76, and it was assumed he was probably going to have to get cut on. But while he was in the hospital having his arm examined in late June, one of our team doctors, Maurice Cowen, tried a unique procedure on him in which, after putting him under an anesthetic, he began stretching and manipulating Catfish’s shoulder. It was something Cowen had tried earlier on Gullett with some success. When Catfish came out of the anesthetic, he found he could once again cock his arm and throw with no pain. This continued for the rest of the season. On days he was pitching, we’d be sitting in the clubhouse and you could hear the popping in Catfish’s shoulder from the trainer’s room where Cowen was doing his manipulation thing.
There was also a period in late June/early July when we were without both Randolph and Dent, our second base–shortstop combo. And while he didn’t miss many games, Thurman was banged up with assorted injuries the first four months, specifically his knee and his shoulder—at least that’s what we surmised, because Thurman would never tell anyone where he was hurting or if he even was hurting. I only know it affected both his throwing and his power. Through the first 81 games in ’77, he was hitting .315 with 11 homers. At the same juncture in ’78, he was batting .288 with just 4 homers. He was also having increasing problems with his throwing, to the point where, right after the All-Star Break, Steinbrenner suggested to Billy that he move him to right field for a while to give his arm some extra rest. He didn’t go back to catching regularly until August 3.
Meanwhile, with Zimmer managing with the pedal to the metal, the Red Sox kept winning and winning into July, gradually pulling away. By July 5, our deficit had reached ten games, and then we went into the throes of seven losses in eight games. The most crushing loss during that stretch was the Sunday getaway game in Milwaukee right before the All-Star Break, in which the Brewers—with Mr. Steinbrenner looking on from the private box of the Brewers’ owner, Bud Selig—completed the series sweep, 8–4, and Gullett left the game in the first inning clutching his shoulder. Donnie had experienced periodic shoulder soreness for a couple of years, and for a while Dr. Cowen’s manipulations had kept him going, but as I watched him from right field, slowly trudging to the dugout after retiring only two batters, an uneasy feeling came over me that this time it was real bad. I was right. His rotator cuff was completely torn. Just like that his career was over.
After the game, Mr. Steinbrenner was frantic. We were playing lousy, we’d just gotten Catfish back only now to lose Gullett, and the pressure of a season slipping away was building all around us. I really think at that point Mr. Steinbrenner had given up on the season, and if he were alive today he’d admit that. Over the break, he announced a series of changes he wanted to implement. In addition to the Thurman move to right field, it was determined that Mike Heath would be doing the bulk of the catching and that Gary Thomasson, our fourth outfielder, was going to start playing center, leading to media speculation that Mr. Steinbrenner was getting ready to break up the team and trade almost anyone, starting with Rivers.
Things would only get worse before they got better, as our tough streak culminated in an infamous blowup on July 15 between Reggie and Billy that resulted in Billy’s resigning as manager in Kansas City. We’d opened the second half by splitting two games with the White Sox at the stadium, then, with Rivers restored to center field, had lost three more in a row to the Royals. It was in the tenth inning of the final game of the Royals series, July 17, with no outs and Thurman on first, that Reggie incurred Billy’s wrath by twice attempting to sacrifice—after Billy had wiped off his initial bunt sign—and wound up popping out. Billy and Reggie had been at odds all season, mostly over Billy’s stubborn refusal to hit Reggie in the cleanup spot. After the game, which the Royals won, 9–7, Billy was in a fury in his office. It was later reported in the papers that a clock radio was in pieces on the floor and Billy, after blowing off the writers, was on the phone with George and his team president, Al Rosen, demanding that Reggie be suspended for insubordination.
Mr. Steinbrenner really had no choice. What Reggie had done was inexcusable, and so they docked him five days (four games) and about $9,000. Believe it or not, the players were mostly oblivious to all this commotion going on in Billy’s office—by this time we’d become almost immune to the continual Billy-Reggie histrionics, and it was probably just coincidental that we went on the road to Minnesota and Chicago and proceeded to win five in a row without Reggie.
But if Billy won a victory there over Reggie, it turned out to be a Pyrrhic one. As soon as Reggie returned to the team that last game in Chicago and addressed all the writers, saying that he didn’t think what he had done was an act of defiance and adding that Martin hadn’t spoken to him since spring training, another fuse was lit. When one of the writers showed Billy those quotes he erupted all over again, and later after a few drinks at O’Hare Airport, where we were waiting for our plane, he made the fatal remark to Murray Chass of the New York Times about Reggie being a “born liar” and George “a convicted one,” in reference to Mr. Steinbrenner’s conviction for making illegal campaign donations to President Nixon in the Watergate scandal.
The next thing we knew, when we got to the ballpark in Kansas City the following afternoon, Billy had resigned and Lemon was coming in as our new manager. Goose, you have to understand, hated Billy, but he nevertheless kind of summed up the mood of the team at that point when he said there was very little reaction among the players. “If anything,” he said, “there was a sense of relief. We were all sick and tired of all the Billy-Reggie bullshit. I’m probably the wrong guy to be saying this but if you ask me I don’t think we would’ve won in ’78 if Billy had stayed as manager.”
Billy could be difficult for a lot of players. But between the lines, in the dugout, he was a great manager in my opinion. I learned more from him than any other manager I played for. His problem was he wanted to be the headliner. He liked teams he could manage, teams that played fundamentally sound baseball with not a lot of egos, which we were. Unfortunately, Reggie had to be the headliner. They were two volatile personalities who didn’t like each other. Mr. Steinbrenner always maintained that in New York you do need stars, and I agree with that. In Reggie he got the biggest star in the game when he signed him as a free agent after the 1976 season, and Reggie helped us, no question. His heroics in the 1977 World Series stand for themselves. But the constant clashes with Billy made it hard on all of us. The manager has to get along with his star players—I made a point of that when I was managing. But Billy didn’t care, and that was why he kept getting fired.
The other thing was this constant friction between Billy and Al Rosen, the president and general manager of the Yankees in 1978, which went back to when they were bitter rivals as players in the 1950s, Billy with the Yankees and Rosen with the Indians. Billy looked at Rosen as an outsider and didn’t like taking orders from him, and he complained about not being consulted on player moves. And as Rosen himself says, “I couldn’t warm up to Billy Martin if I was embalmed with him.”
So when Billy self-destructed at the airport in Chicago, this was Rosen’s opportunity to bring in his own man and old Cleveland teammate Lemon, and it proved to be just what everyone needed at that time. Lem was immediately a calming influence. His first-day clubhouse address to us was brief and simple: “You guys are defending world champions, so just go out and play like you did last year. I’m just gonna put what I feel is the best lineup for that day on the field, try to make the right pitching changes, and stay out of your way as best as I can.”
Lem could not have been more correct. As Reggie himself would later say, “Bob Lemon was exactly what we needed after Billy. A tough old guy with an even disposition.”
Around the same time Lem took over, the Red Sox finally started to slump—they went 13–15 in July—and we began slowly rebounding from our lo
west ebb of fourteen games back in fourth place, on July 19. A week later, we’d gotten it down to eight, and I remember a bunch of us sitting around the clubhouse having a few beers after a game and agreeing we could still win this thing. All we needed was to keep playing the way we were capable of and whittling it down with an eye on that four-game series in Boston in September. There was also one other factor that, in retrospect, Lem especially credited for calming things down and keeping us in a “taking care of business” mode: on August 10, all the New York newspapers went on strike, and they didn’t come back until November 15. The daily “Bronx Zoo” Yankees soap opera was officially shut down.
Still, our deficit was at six and a half games when we got to September, but that was when the Red Sox, whose veteran players Carlton Fisk, Rick Burleson, Carl Yastrzemski, George Scott, Fred Lynn, and Jerry Remy had all been battling assorted injuries of their own, started to wear down and hit the skids. From August 25 to September 6, we went 12–2 at the same time the Red Sox went 8–5, and as we rolled into Boston for that four-game September series, which we’d had our eye on since July, we were only four games back, with a chance to leave town in first place.
It was right around this time we were all feeling pretty good about the way the season had turned around, and I was kidding around with Catfish that I was thinking about getting an Afro—just like Oscar Gamble, our happy-go-lucky “free spirit” outfielder in ’76 whom we’d traded to the White Sox the following April in the deal for Bucky. Oscar had the supreme Afro, so much so that Topps had made a special baseball card of him.
“You do that,” Catfish said, “and I’ll pay for it. I wanna see this!”
So our confidence level had never been higher, and I’m sure the Red Sox could feel it. For the next four days, Fenway Park must have felt like the Alamo for the Red Sox and their fans. We won the first two games 15–3 and 13–2, and then Guidry pitched a two-hit, 7–0 shutout in the third game. One of the things I always admired about Zimmer was the “riverboat gambler” mentality he had as a manager. He knew his x’s and o’s but wasn’t afraid to manage against ’em at times. I think, in that respect, he made Joe Torre a better manager with the Yankees. Joe was basically a conservative by-the-book manager, but when he hired Zim as his bench coach, all of a sudden the Yankees were doing a lot of different things, more squeezing, stealing, and hit-and-running.
