by Lou Piniella
After the workout, he put us through this running drill in which we had to run home to first, then home to second, then home to third, and finally all the way around the bases. All the while, Virdon stood at home plate, and as we crossed the plate, he’d give us either a thumbs-up sign to go to the clubhouse or a thumbs-down, meaning you had to take another lap. The first couple of weeks I ran with the outfielders, all of whom were much faster than I was and opened up distance on me. I finally said, “I’ve got to get smart here,” and began running with the catchers. In particular, I began running alongside Duke Sims, a big (6′2″, 200 pounds) lumbering guy who was about at the end of his career. This one day I stayed right with Duke until we got to home plate, then ducked behind him—for a place and a photo finish—as Virdon gave him the thumbs-up. Duke and I then both dashed into the clubhouse, but as I was lathering up in the shower, I saw Virdon coming my way.
“Smart guy,” he said. “When you finish that shower, you can put your uniform back on and come back to the field and start running again until I give you a thumbs-up.”
About the only guy who was able to penetrate Virdon’s stern veneer was Sparky Lyle, our irrepressible resident court jester whose clubhouse levity kept everybody loose and was a welcome balance to the frequent turmoil. A prime example of that was an incident in 1974 when our utility infielder “Chicken” Stanley, another truly funny guy, decided to make a bar in his home out of a coffin and for some reason had the coffin delivered to the clubhouse. This was something Sparky couldn’t resist, and when everyone was out on the field, he sneaked back to the clubhouse, covered the rims of his eyes with lampblack, and pulled a surgical mask over his head so he looked like a mummy, then climbed into the coffin and shut the lid. A while later, when everyone came off the field, Virdon held a clubhouse meeting. As he was speaking, the lid of the coffin suddenly cracked open and slowly rose Sparky, who said in this deep ghoulish voice, “Who here knows how to pitch to Brooks Robinson?” Everybody cracked up, and even Virdon forced a smile before ordering Sparky back into the coffin.
But tough as he was and hard as he was to get to know, I learned a lot from Virdon, knowledge that became invaluable to me years later when I became a manager myself: the importance of fundamentals and conditioning. I incorporated a lot of his drills with my own clubs—although I was a little gentler in the quantity of the work as opposed to the quality.
I wasn’t quite sure where I was going to fit in the Yankees’ outfield in 1974, especially after the team acquired Elliott Maddox from the Texas Rangers late in the spring to join the fixtures Bobby Murcer and Roy White. Maddox was reputed to be one of the better defensive center fielders in baseball, and Virdon sent shock waves through the camp when he announced he was installing Maddox in center and moving Murcer, who’d been a mainstay there since 1969, to right—which is where I thought I’d be playing. Ultimately the move made us a better team, but Bobby was devastated by it and never forgave Virdon. Through the ’60s lean years Bobby had been the Yankees’ lone star, an Oklahoma kid who, because he moved from shortstop to center field like his idol and fellow Oklahoman Mickey Mantle, was automatically stamped with the unwanted label as the next Mick. Bobby always said he considered that an honor, but I wonder if it wasn’t really a burden.
I was able to become quick friends with my new teammates Bobby, Thurman, and Roy White, all of whom enjoyed going to the racetrack. Bobby and I became particularly close, perhaps because we were kindred spirits in Virdon’s grueling outfield drills. Little did I know 1974 would be Bobby’s last year with the Yankees—at least for a while. I remember one of my great pleasures was coming to Yankee Stadium with the Royals and watching Bobby take batting practice, with that smooth, compact left-handed swing of his, smacking ball after ball over that short right field wall and into the right field bleachers. Yankee Stadium was made for him—he’d averaged over 25 homers a year the previous five seasons. But now we were moving over to Shea Stadium with its vast outfield fences, constant winds off Flushing Bay, and all the noise from those jets landing and taking off from LaGuardia. None of us liked it, but for Bobby it was absolute hell. His batting average fell from .304 to .274 and his homers from 22 to 10—all of them hit on the road. He hated Shea Stadium, hated Virdon, and hated what the fates had done to his career. I felt terrible for him.
One thing that stood out to me was the fact that Thurman was the leader in that clubhouse. He was a few years away from being named only the second Yankee captain—after Lou Gehrig—but just by his manner he had already assumed the part. Being a catcher, that was fairly natural. Nothing happens in a game until the catcher puts his fingers down.
My last year in Kansas City, the team had gotten much younger, but this Yankee group was all around my same age and they made it easy for me to fit in, especially Thurman. We had something in common right away—I won the Rookie of the Year in 1969 and he won it in 1970—and we talked about that a lot. Soon our wives became good friends and usually sat together in the family section at Shea Stadium for our games. I liked Thurman’s brashness, his toughness, his inner confidence, and his knowledge of the game. It seemed there was a mutual respect right away. One of the things I really loved was how, after the games, we’d hang around the clubhouse and talk baseball over beers—stuff like which pitchers were the hardest to hit, how to handle certain pitchers. Thurman also liked going to the track, and during the season on the road we’d go to play the ponies or dogs on the off-days. It was a close-knit group, but it didn’t take long for Thurman, Bobby, and me to become particularly close.
I had a pretty good spring and thought I’d shown Virdon I was a more than decent outfielder, but when we opened the season at Yankee Stadium I found myself on the bench for those first three games against Cleveland. We then went on the road to Detroit where, happily, Virdon had me starting in left field and hitting fifth. My first at-bat as a Yankee I hit a two-out, two-run single to left against Mickey Lolich, the tough, durable Tigers lefty. I went 2-for-3 on the day, and at dinner that night, Virdon came up to my table and said, “Good game, young man,” and he had a smile on his face. Now that really made me feel good.
Under Virdon, I had one of my best seasons in 1974, hitting .305 with 9 homers and 70 RBI, and the team, even after losing our top pitcher and staff leader, Mel Stottlemyre, for half the season with a torn rotator cuff in his shoulder, improved to 89–73, just two games behind Earl Weaver’s Orioles. We were in the race right up until the next-to-last day, when fate stepped in and handed me a pair of season-ending goat horns.
After beating the tar out of the Indians, 10–0, in the last game in September—a game in which I went 3-for-4 with 2 RBI—we flew to Milwaukee for the final two games of the season, still just a game behind the Orioles. But the flight was delayed by thunderstorms, allowing extra time for the players to get lubricated. During the flight our two backup catchers, Rick Dempsey and Bill Sudakis, started needling each other. The needling accelerated on the bus ride to the Pfister Hotel in Milwaukee and immediately escalated into a full-fledged fight when we got to the hotel lobby. As our traveling secretary Bill “Killer” Kane later recounted, it was “like an old-fashioned furniture fight that you used to see in the westerns—players leaping over couches, lamps tipping over”—and in the middle of the melee, Murcer, attempting to separate Dempsey and Sudakis, got his hand stepped on and suffered a broken finger. Fights like that, especially among teammates, were not commonplace, even among the “Bronx Zoo” ’70s Yankees, although I have to say this particular one was a doozy.
With a right-hander, Kevin Kobel, pitching for the Brewers in the next-to-last game, I figured that Murcer would be starting in right field and not me, but Bobby’s season was over and I was now his replacement. We went into the bottom of the eighth inning winning 2–0 behind some really artful pitching by Doc Medich. That’s when disaster struck. With one out, Bob Hansen, a pinch hitter, tripled for the Brewers, and then Don Money hit a slicing fly ball to right center between mysel
f and Elliott Maddox. Conceivably, Bobby might have been able to catch it, but I got a bad read on the ball, then switched directions trying to catch up to it. At the same time, Maddox rushed over and made a desperate effort to catch it, but the ball landed between us and skipped all the way to the wall for another triple. An ensuing sac fly scored Money to tie the game and the Brewers won it in the tenth off Medich on a double, a sacrifice, and an RBI single by George Scott. The Orioles, who finished the year with nine straight wins, had won earlier in the day, so that was it for our season.
It was a terrible disappointment, but it was tempered by the appearance of Mr. Steinbrenner in our clubhouse in an apparent violation of his suspension. He was wearing a “Yes We Can” button on his lapel, and as the writers all gathered around him, he lavished praise on us: “They did themselves proud. They should be heroes in New York. They made a dull city exciting all summer and fall.”
That was my first in-person encounter with the man who would have the most profound influence of anyone, even my parents, on my life.
Over the winter, still in exile, Mr. Steinbrenner made his mark as a force to be reckoned with in baseball when, with Gabe Paul doing all the legwork, the Yankees won the sweepstakes for Catfish Hunter, who had been declared baseball’s first modern-day free agent due to a breach of his contract by the Oakland A’s owner, Charlie Finley. After a madcap bidding war for Catfish’s services against a dozen other teams, the Yankees were able to sign him with a five-year contract for an unheard-of (at that time) $3.35 million. Much as we were thrilled to be getting Catfish, one of the premier pitchers in baseball, there were decidedly mixed feelings about Paul’s other big splash that winter—the trade of Murcer to the Giants for Bobby Bonds. Although Bonds was an acknowledged superstar—only the third player in history to hit 30 homers and steal 30 bases in the same season—Murcer was part of our team fabric, popular with all of us. In that respect, the trade was shocking. Bobby later said that it was the worst day of his life.
Nevertheless, in Fort Lauderdale the following February, there was an air of excitement and much optimism; Catfish and Bonds were drawing crowds of visiting media at their lockers every day, and for the first time in over a decade a lot of the writers were talking us up as a potential World Series team. Apparently Mr. Steinbrenner, who was still on suspension, was convinced of that as well. Before the first exhibition game, he summoned Virdon over to his seat in the stands right next to the Yankees’ dugout and handed him what looked like a little tape recorder. When Virdon got back to the clubhouse, he gathered us around the table in the middle of the room, set the tape recorder down, and said brusquely, “I’ve been asked to play this.” With that, he pressed the button and walked away.
On the tape was Mr. Steinbrenner, sounding like General MacArthur, delivering this rousing pep talk about there being no substitute for winning and everyone needing to give 100 percent effort, with no excuses, and how he did his part and now it was time for us to do ours. Then, at the end of the speech, he took a page out of Mission Impossible, saying, “This tape will self-destruct in thirty seconds,” which brought a laugh from everyone—except Virdon.
As for me, once again I’d had a frustrating contract negotiation. Gabe Paul lived in Tampa, and a couple of weeks before camp, he had asked me over to this beautiful apartment he had on Tampa Bay. We talked and talked, with Gabe never getting around to a number, and then as I was about to leave, he said, “I’ll send your contract over in the morning. Don’t worry. It’s not the hole in the doughnut that counts, it’s the whole doughnut.”
I drove home shaking my head, and when I told Anita what Gabe had said and asked her what she thought he meant, she said, “It means you’re probably getting a minimal raise.”
She was right.
Gabe was both cunning and cruel, as he showed at the end of the spring when he released Mel Stottlemyre—whom he’d told to take all the time he needed to rehab his shoulder—one day before the deadline that obligated the Yankees to pay only one-sixth of his contract. The players were furious when we heard this. Mel was loved and respected by all of us. He was a team leader, the ace of the pitching staff since 1964, and for him to be treated by the club that way was just horrible. It cast a pall over the clubhouse, which up until then had been brimming with optimism.
One of our final trips that spring was to Puerto Rico to play the Roberto Clemente charity game, and it gave me the opportunity to get in some bodysurfing, except there was a tropical depression out in the ocean and I wound up getting thrown around pretty good by the big waves. Not long after, I started feeling dizzy and experiencing a loss of balance all the time. I started getting vertigo, especially on plane trips. There’d be times I’d be walking down the street, bumping into buildings like a drunk. During the games, I started seeing two baseballs. I didn’t know what was wrong, only that I couldn’t hit. The team doctors couldn’t find what the problem was and I was really getting scared. Finally, a specialist in New York determined I had an inner ear infection that required surgery. After that, I was told to drink a lot of juices along with amphetamines to restore my energy. But I never felt right the rest of the season, and I missed most of the road games because I was unable to fly. I ended up playing only 74 games, hitting .196.
But I was not the only Yankees casualty in 1975. Because of some crucial injuries to Bonds and Maddox, by August 1, we were in third place, at 53–51, ten games behind. Throughout the season, we’d heard rumblings about Mr. Steinbrenner’s dismay behind the scenes, and they finally came to fruition when Virdon was fired and replaced by Billy Martin.
We liked Virdon and felt bad for him. However, we were excited about getting Billy Martin, who’d been a mainstay Yankees second baseman on all those 1950s World Series teams and had a proven record of turning around losing teams in his three previous managing jobs with Minnesota, Detroit, and Texas. Billy was the antithesis of Virdon. He was very animated, talkative, and you could have fun with him, but you also had to be careful not to piss him off. At the end of the year, he called me aside and said, “Don’t worry about your condition. Go home, take it easy this winter, and then when you come back next spring, be ready to play, because we’re gonna win next year.”
He was right. Over the winter, Gabe Paul, with the help of his thirty-two-year-old assistant, an already highly regarded talent evaluator named Pat Gillick—who would later play an important part in my baseball career—executed a pair of trades that laid the foundation for a mini–Yankees dynasty that produced four pennants, two world championships, and five division titles from 1976 to 1981. Their first move was to trade Bonds, our leading home run man in 1975, to the California Angels for right-handed starter Ed Figueroa and center fielder–leadoff man Mickey Rivers. Next they traded Doc Medich, whose 16 wins in ’75 were second on the team behind Catfish, to the Pirates for two starting pitchers—a talented but somewhat unstable right-hander, Dock Ellis, and the lefty Ken Brett—plus a rookie second baseman, Willie Randolph. (Gillick had personally scouted Randolph, playing for the Pirates’ Triple-A team in Charleston, West Virginia, in ’75, and Willie went on to become a six-time All-Star and a fixture at second base for the Yankees through 1988.)
As we began spring training, Virdon and his outfield drills were gone, but there was one new wrinkle in Fort Lauderdale that a lot of the players found somewhat disconcerting. On March 1, Mr. Steinbrenner was reinstated from his suspension by commissioner Bowie Kuhn, and a day or two later a notice, signed by him and Billy, appeared on the clubhouse wall announcing a new club hair policy in which, from here on out, we were forbidden to wear beards or long mustaches and our hair could not exceed over the collar. Poor Oscar Gamble had to shear his then-famous Afro, and guys like myself, Thurman, and Sparky had to trim our locks above the collar. With Steinbrenner’s Yankees anyway, the hippie ’70s were officially over. And as I learned quickly the following year, the Yankees’ “no facial hair” policy was here to stay. When I arrived in camp, I hadn’t had a haircut in
about two months; my hair was way over the collar, almost shoulder length, and Pete Sheehy, the Yankees’ longtime clubhouse man, informed me he could not issue me a uniform until I went over to the office trailer and saw Mr. Steinbrenner.
When I went in to Mr. Steinbrenner’s office, he immediately pointed at my hair and said, “Get it cut, Lou. I will not have my players on the field looking like that. You know the rules.”
“I don’t understand, Mr. Steinbrenner, what long hair has to do with your ability to play baseball,” I protested. “I’m a Christian and Our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ had hair down to the middle of his back and it didn’t affect the way he went about his work.”
Steinbrenner jumped from his chair. “Oh really,” he said. “Well you just come with me.”
With that, he led me out beyond the left field wall where there was this big pond. “You see that pond, Lou?” he said. “It’s about seven to eight feet deep. If you can walk across it, you can wear your hair as long as you want and I won’t say a thing about it! How’s that?”
Every day in that spring of ’76, Mr. Steinbrenner would stand stoically behind the batting cage wearing his aviator sunglasses, giving hint to the dominating presence he was going to be. It wasn’t until the June 15 trading deadline—and a huge ten-player deal with the Orioles in which two of our best young pitchers, Scotty McGregor and Tippy Martinez, and the backup catcher Rick Dempsey were sent to the Orioles for the veteran starters Doyle Alexander and Ken Holtzman—that we began to suspect Mr. Steinbrenner, behind the scenes, was really injecting himself into the daily operations of the team. Billy made it clear to everyone he was opposed to the trade, and he and Holtzman didn’t get along right from the beginning.
