Lou

by Lou Piniella

  Despite the daily scrutiny from our hands-on owner, we played relaxed that whole year, with a new sense of confidence, even though most of us, other than Catfish, had never won before. Most of that confidence came from Billy, who was sharp, knew how to maneuver his players, and was the master of the unexpected. In only the second game of the season, Billy shocked us with his genius when he was able to get what appeared to be a ninth-inning, game-winning grand slam home run by the Brewers’ Don Money nullified in Milwaukee. As soon as the ball was hit, Billy came charging out of the dugout as Dave Pagan, our pitcher, began fleeing from the mound in terror. But Billy wasn’t coming after Pagan, he was screaming to the umpires that time had been called by Chris Chambliss at first base, right before the pitch to Money. To our amazement, the umpires concurred, risking a riot by the Milwaukee fans, and we wound up winning the game, 9–7. I had never seen a home run reversed like that.

  My vertigo situation cleared up gradually through spring training and it was a great relief to feel normal again. I wasn’t sure whether Billy liked me or not—he didn’t play me regularly that season—but I hit .281 in 100 games in what I felt was a nice rebound from the rock bottom of the year before. My season might have been even better had I not allowed my temper to get the better of me once again. After a particularly bad game on July 10, in which I went 0-for-4 to drop my average down to .268 (from a high of .303 three weeks earlier), I was so pissed off I heaved my bat in disgust into my locker. But as I did, my hand hit the divider between lockers and I badly jammed my wrist. Afterward, I couldn’t even open my car door. There was a knot on my wrist, which I still have, and it bothered me the rest of the season. Another lesson learned about losing your temper.

  One of the things I especially loved watching back in the ’70s was Billy managing against Weaver. The two of them hated each other and managed every game against each other like it was the seventh game of the World Series. (I have to confess, years later when I became a manager, I felt—and managed—the same way when it came to Weaver.) One game in 1976 that stands out for me was July 27—a makeup game against the Orioles in Baltimore. Dock Ellis and Jim Palmer were facing off against each other, and I guess Palmer had been brushing a lot of our guys back, prompting Dock to start mouthing off a bunch of stuff at the Orioles’ bench after giving up a homer to Al Bumbry in the seventh inning. That was when Reggie Jackson, who had been traded from Oakland to Baltimore at the start of the season, got up on the top step of the dugout and shouted back to Dock, “You wanna hit somebody? Go ahead mother——. Hit me!”

  I don’t know if Reggie had bothered to look that far ahead, but he was the Orioles’ leadoff hitter the next inning, and Dock was only too eager to oblige him by hitting him squarely in the back with a fastball. Billy loved guys like that. Of course, you do that today and you’re out of the game, for as we know, with all the new rules, there is no retribution in baseball.

  While we didn’t get into a brawl with the Orioles in that game, earlier in the season we had gotten into one of the wildest brawls in baseball history with our archrivals, the Red Sox. When the schedule came out every year, the first thing we looked at was when we were playing the Red Sox, and we circled those games. When people talk about the Yankees–Red Sox rivalry, I can say here unequivocally it was real. We didn’t like them and they didn’t like us. Both teams were very talented—we both had stars—and we competed every year for the American League East title. It didn’t hurt either that Mr. Steinbrenner put special emphasis on beating the Red Sox, and in the days leading up to a Red Sox series he’d come through the clubhouse reminding everyone to stay focused on the games ahead with Boston. The only team he hated more than the Red Sox was the Mets. There’s no question that we played with a little more intensity against the Red Sox.

  That was never more evident than on the night of May 20, 1976, and that aforementioned huge brawl. I’d slid home, hard, right into Carlton Fisk, which started the whole thing. I had tried to score from second base on Otto Velez’s single to right—despite the fact that the Red Sox’s right fielder Dwight Evans had one of the strongest throwing arms in the game. I was actually a little surprised that our third base coach, Dick Howser, waved me in, and I was fifteen feet from home when Fisk already had the ball. I had no choice but to try and run him over. Fisk was a big, strong guy, but I hit him pretty good and, to his credit, he held on to the ball. As we tumbled to the ground he stuck the ball right in my eye, and after getting tangled up with him, I came up swinging. Then all hell broke loose.

  “Spaceman” Bill Lee, the Red Sox’s pitcher, came charging in off the mound only to be intercepted by Nettles, who slammed him to the ground. Lee tore a shoulder ligament that sidelined him for a couple of months, but he wasn’t done fighting, and when he later confronted Nettles again, Graig got off another punch that blackened his eye. Lee was looking for trouble and turned out to be the only guy who got hurt. In the years since, Carlton and I have had many chances to revisit the fight, and like two old, retired gladiators, we’re able to laugh about it now.

  I’d like to add that the brawl, which went on for about ten minutes, would have never happened today with the new rules preventing the catcher from blocking the plate. I understand you don’t want players getting hurt, but at the same time you’re out there trying to compete, and the idea is to try and score while the other team, in particular the catcher, is trying to prevent you from scoring. How’s he going to do that if he can’t block the plate?

  Fights and squabbles aside, the ’76 Yankees meant business from the start. Rivers hit .312 with 43 stolen bases, becoming the top-of-the-order catalyst the Yankees hadn’t had in ages. Figueroa and Ellis combined for 36 wins, while Thurman (.302/105 RBI) won American League MVP honors. Graig Nettles led the league in homers with 32, Roy White led the league with 104 runs, and Sparky and Dick Tidrow combined for 33 saves out of the bullpen. And of course, the team was now back home in the refurbished Yankee Stadium. All this combined to take us from last to second in runs scored, as we led the American League East for nearly the entire season, winning the division by ten games over the Orioles.

  In the ’76 American League Championship Series, we faced off against my old Kansas City Royals teammates of George Brett, Hal McRae, and Co. and it was a beauty of a series that wasn’t decided until the last pitch of the deciding fifth game. With the game tied 6–6 (thanks to a stunning three-run homer by Brett in the eighth), Chris Chambliss led off the bottom of the ninth and hit the first pitch, a high fastball, from the Royals’ reliever Mark Littell on a high drive to right-center field. We all jumped from our seats in the dugout, unsure if it was going to be long enough to get out, and then I saw Al Cowens, the Royals’ center fielder, jump at the wall and come down empty handed, and Yankee Stadium erupted in joyous bedlam, with thousands of fans pouring down onto the field as Chris tried to make his way around the bases. It had been twelve long years since Yankees fans had experienced a World Series, and I had never seen such joy.

  Chris later said the whole thing was a chain reaction. “I just kind of reacted like I always did. I wasn’t trying to hit a home run. Sometimes when you react to a high fastball it works out that way. Then, when I was running around the bases, fans were coming at me from everywhere, grabbing me, pounding me on the back. I was just trying to get around the bases and into the dugout—I ran at least one guy over—but I never made it to home plate. Later, after I got to the clubhouse, Nettles said I should return to the field and touch home plate, just to make it official. But when we got back out there, home plate and all the other bases were gone, stripped from their moorings and confiscated by the delirious Yankee fans.”

  Unfortunately, that was to be our final hurrah for 1976. When we got to the World Series we found, in the defending world champion “Big Red Machine” Cincinnati Reds, a whole different animal. We partied all night after beating the Royals and arrived in Cincinnati for the workout the next day tired and hungover. But Billy thought he could surprise and a
mbush the Reds, and you had to admire his brashness, confidence, and belief in his players. Unfortunately, we were swept in four games. The Reds just had more talent.

  Adding insult to the loss was the disparaging remark that the Reds’ manager, Sparky Anderson, made about Thurman in the interview room after game 4. Johnny Bench had been the hero for the Reds, batting .533 with 2 homers and 6 RBI, but Thurman had hit .529 for us. When asked to discuss the two great catchers, Sparky replied, “Gentlemen, don’t ever embarrass a man by comparing him with Johnny Bench.” As he spoke, Thurman was standing right there, off to the side, seething.

  Sparky later apologized to Thurman, but I know that really hurt him. Thurman was intensely proud of his career and his accomplishments and didn’t think he should take a backseat to any catcher in baseball, which is why, around All-Star time every year, he was particularly conscious about any media hype surrounding the Red Sox’s Fisk. The Thurman-Fisk rivalry was at the center of the Yankees–Red Sox rivalry, and in my opinion, in the eight years they faced off against each other, from 1972 to 1979, Thurman was every bit the Hall of Famer Fisk was; his career just wasn’t long enough.

  Nobody was more disappointed about our World Series sweep at the hands of the Reds than Mr. Steinbrenner, who wasted no time in reloading for 1977 by taking full advantage of baseball’s new free agency system. This was the other monumental gain won for the players by Marvin Miller—the right to become free agents after six years of service—and unlike most of the other owners, who viewed it as a death knell for baseball, Mr. Steinbrenner was a visionary insofar as using it to fast-track a world championship to Yankee Stadium. The biggest prize of the first free-agent class—which was filled with All-Star-caliber talent such as Don Baylor, Bobby Grich, Bert Campaneris, Sal Bando, Joe Rudi, Rollie Fingers, and Don Gullett—was Reggie Jackson, and over Billy Martin’s staunch objections, Mr. Steinbrenner put a full-court press on Reggie and signed him to a five-year contract for $2.96 million. In addition, Mr. Steinbrenner made certain the Reds would not be standing in his way again to a world championship by swooping Gullett away from them with a six-year, $2 million deal. (It sure didn’t take long for free agency to have a profound effect on players’ salaries!)

  We were obviously delighted and excited with these signings, knowing we had an owner who was going to spare no cost in an effort to win. Billy, on the other hand, was particularly upset over the Reggie signing. For one thing, Billy wanted autonomy when it came to putting the team together. Billy was also used to being the star on all his teams. But while Billy had great baseball sense, Mr. Steinbrenner had great business sense and recognized the value of star quality. It was going to be up to Billy, who argued fruitlessly that the Yankees had a perfectly good cleanup hitter in Chambliss, to make it work with Reggie.

  From the get-go that wasn’t happening.

  In spring training, Reggie didn’t go out of his way to endear himself to a close-knit team that had just been to the World Series, making statements to the press about how important he was. And then there was the “I’m the straw that stirs the drink” article in Sport magazine in which he was quoted disparaging Thurman, our captain and leader. When in 1976 spring training Mr. Steinbrenner made Thurman the first Yankee captain since Lou Gehrig, we were all in full accordance. It was no coincidence either that Thurman went on to have his best season and won MVP honors. Thurman epitomized what a captain should be, with his intensity, his way of handling the pitching staff, and his clubhouse leadership. Everyone on the team respected him and looked up to him, and Mr. Steinbrenner recognized that. We also liked the way he was so gruff with the media. Made it easier on all of us. Making him captain was one of Mr. Steinbrenner’s best moves.

  The rift between Reggie and the team lasted quite a while and was further fueled by Billy’s continuing refusal to bat Reggie in his accustomed cleanup spot. It also didn’t help Billy’s stability with Mr. Steinbrenner that, despite these splashy, expensive new additions—plus the acquisition of Bucky Dent from the White Sox to shore up shortstop right before the start of the season—we got off to a slow (2–7) start and were in third place in the AL East as late as mid-August.

  All the while Billy and Reggie were feuding, players were griping about the constant turmoil, and Mr. Steinbrenner was losing his patience. The problem was that both Reggie and Billy liked the headlines and at times they tried to outdo each other. Compounding it was Ken Holtzman, who’d been Reggie’s teammate on the 1972–74 A’s championship teams and who really hated Billy. Holtzman was miserable in New York and never hid his desire to be traded. Even Thurman talked about wanting to be traded to Cleveland so he could be closer to his family in Canton. And Thurman was upset not with Billy but rather with Mr. Steinbrenner after he found out the Boss was paying Reggie more than him.

  Things first came to a head in a Saturday TV Game of the Week on June 18 in Boston, when Reggie misjudged a fly ball in right field and was slow to retrieve it. I was on the bench and momentarily stunned at Billy’s rage as he screamed over to Paul Blair to go out to right field and replace Reggie. Then we braced ourselves for the confrontation. Sparky Lyle, who particularly didn’t like Reggie, was on the mound for us, and as Paulie ran by him on the way out to right field, we heard him shout, “Wooo-boy! I can’t wait to see this!” As soon as Reggie got back to the dugout, he and Billy started screaming and charging at each other and had it not been for our coaches Yogi Berra and Elston Howard grabbing Billy and getting in between, it might have really been ugly. As it was, the whole scene was captured by the national TV cameras. In the clubhouse, Reggie was still agitated and said he was going to have it out with Billy. That’s when I said to him, “Get changed and go back to the hotel, Reggie. You don’t need any more problems and neither do we.”

  Mr. Steinbrenner was watching the game on TV from Florida, and after we were swept by the Red Sox, he flew to Detroit, our next stop, amid reports he was going to fire Billy. That was only averted when Reggie, realizing the fans would blame him as the villain if Billy were fired, convinced Mr. Steinbrenner the season would be lost with any more upheaval.

  Unfortunately, the inner turmoil with Reggie and Billy continued and things came to a head again during an awful road trip in July in which we lost seven of ten to the Orioles, Brewers, and Royals. We were in Milwaukee, and Thurman and I were having a drink at the Pfister Hotel bar, discussing the whole situation with Billy and Reggie. Thurman said Mr. Steinbrenner was coming to town the next day and suggested we have a meeting with him. Initially, I was reluctant, citing the fact that he was the captain and it was appropriate that only he should be meeting with the owner on a team matter. But I guess he felt I was one of Mr. Steinbrenner’s favorites and wanted reinforcement. Despite his strained relationship with Reggie, Thurman felt that, for the good of the team, Reggie should hit cleanup, where he was most comfortable.

  The next night we went up to the Boss’s suite. He was in his robe and he’d set up a blackboard with all these different lineups on it. He was also armed with a bunch of statistics about Reggie’s batting average in the third, fourth, and fifth spots in the lineup. I don’t think he had an opinion either way, but he made sure he was prepared.

  “So what do you guys think we should do?” he asked.

  “This is a little uncomfortable for us, going behind Billy’s back like this,” Thurman said, “but we only want what’s best for the team and we’re tired of the constant problems. If Reggie wants to hit fourth, let him hit fourth. He signed here with the idea he was going to hit fourth like he always had. Make him happy.”

  “What do you think?” Mr. Steinbrenner asked me.

  “I agree with Thurman, sir. None of the rest of us care where we hit. It’s a simple thing to do. I don’t understand why Billy has been so stubborn about this.”

  We told him we understood the manager had every right to make out the lineup as he saw fit, but Reggie’s ego was such that he couldn’t perform to his utmost unless he batted cleanup. Suddenly, t
here was a knock on the door and outside was Billy, who had heard the conversation and demanded to be let in.

  “I’ll take care of this,” Mr. Steinbrenner said, and sent us into the bathroom before letting Billy in.

  “What the hell is going on here?” Billy screamed. “Who else is in here?”

  He was clearly agitated and Mr. Steinbrenner called to us to come out of the bathroom.

  “What are you guys doing here?” Billy demanded.

  Before we could answer, Mr. Steinbrenner attempted to calm Billy down, explaining to him that we only wanted to relieve the turmoil on the club by trying to resolve this issue with Reggie and the cleanup spot. Mr. Steinbrenner suggested to Billy that maybe he ought to consider this.

  “All we’re trying to accomplish,” Thurman said, “is to eliminate all this turmoil and distraction and get back to winning.”

  Billy said he’d think about it.

  But it was a very uncomfortable situation. Billy was his own man and took great pride in being the bona fide leader and that whatever he said, went. Thurman and I felt very sheepish and embarrassed. We both liked Billy and here we were going behind his back to the Boss—over Reggie! Even though Billy kept his cool, it was a very uncomfortable half hour in the Boss’s suite. I managed for twenty-three years, and I know if one of my players went behind my back to the owner, I wouldn’t be very happy. The next day Thurman and I had lunch and wondered if Reggie would be batting fourth that night. He wasn’t.

  Instead, the stalemate between Billy and Reggie continued on for another three and a half weeks, and after we were soundly beaten, 9–2, by the Mariners in Seattle on August 6—our fourth loss in five games, which dropped us five games back, in third place—I couldn’t take it any longer. We were the defending American League champions and we were seemingly fraught with griping and dissension. After that game I went on a tirade in front of all the writers, basically calling out my teammates to either put up or shut up.