by Lou Piniella
But as Woody quickly found out, Mr. Steinbrenner was not into the future. He wanted to win now, and so, a week before the winter baseball meetings, Woody was ordered to trade Drabek to the Pirates for Rick Rhoden. With 15 wins for a last-place Pirates’ team, Rhoden had been one of the best pitchers in the National League in ’86, and he went on to lead my staff with 16 wins in ’87. But at thirty-three, he was nine years older than Drabek and was out of baseball after the ’89 season. Drabek, on the other hand, won 92 games, including a Cy Young Award in 1990, over the next six years. Woody and I begged Mr. Steinbrenner not to trade Drabek, but he saw Rhoden as a sort of trophy, as the best established pitcher on the market that winter, and that was that.
Despite the problematic starting rotation, we reached the ’87 All-Star Break in first place, 55–34, three games ahead of the Blue Jays, and we remained atop the AL East until August 8. That was when injuries and age caught up to us and Mr. Steinbrenner caught up to me. The Sunday before the All-Star Break I was in my office at Yankee Stadium when the red phone on my desk rang. (The red phones were private, direct-line phones from Mr. Steinbrenner installed in everyone’s office at the stadium. When they rang they kind of glowed like Rudolph’s nose.) I picked up the phone, and on the other end, Mr. Steinbrenner declared, “I just won you the pennant, Lou. I just got you Steve Trout!”
There was no question we needed another starting pitcher—Guidry had been bothered by a sore elbow all season, and a month earlier we’d traded Joe Niekro to the Twins for Mark Salas, a catcher with left-handed pop but who was decidedly challenged defensively. Trout was a thirty-year-old left-hander who’d been one of the Cubs’ best pitchers, but as I was soon to discover, he was another Ed Whitson when it came to pitching with the pressures of New York.
We opened the second half of the season in Texas, and I decided we would start Trout the third game of that series against the Rangers. Before the game, I told my pitching coach, Mark Connor, to give me a call when Trout was fully loosened up from his bullpen session. But after five minutes, I noticed that Trout had sat down. I called Mark and asked what happened. “I dunno,” he said. “He never got loose and just sat down.”
This did not bode well, and in his Yankees debut, Trout surrendered nine hits and five runs in five-plus innings. His only saving grace was that our bullpen was even worse. We wound up being slaughtered 20–3, and I finally had to call on Rick Cerone to make his debut as a major-league pitcher to close it out in the ninth. As Cerone recalled for this book, Trout was simply a basket case.
“That first start in Texas, Trout had nothing,” Cerone said. “But neither did anyone else Lou brought in—until me. Pat Clements, his fourth pitcher, was trying to get through the ninth with no success. At one point, I went out to the mound to talk to him and I turned and saw Lou coming out of the dugout. He had already visited Clements earlier in the inning and I started waving him off. ‘Lou, go back! This is your second trip!’ I yelled, but Lou just threw his hands up in exasperation and said, ‘Ah, forget about it, Rick. Go to the dugout and take your catching gear off. You’re pitching!’ I retired the side on almost all knuckleballs. After that first start, Trout just couldn’t throw strikes, especially to left-handed batters. It was scary, to the point where I could only call for breaking balls with him.”
Trout made eight other starts and five mop-up relief appearances for us in ’87, one almost as bad as the next, and after his last start, from which I had to pull him in the third inning after he’d walked four batters, he apologized to me. “I’m sorry, Lou,” he said. “I just can’t pitch for shit here.” Not only did Trout not win me the pennant, he didn’t win me a game, finishing 0–4, with a 6.60 ERA and 37 walks in 46⅓ innings. (An addendum here: one of the pitchers we gave up to the Cubs for Trout was Bob Tewksbury, who went on to a nice career in the big leagues, winning 110 games.)
Another pitcher Mr. Steinbrenner acquired for me in 1987 who couldn’t help was Al Holland. Actually this was the second time in a year we’d signed Holland, another Tom Reich client. We’d signed him as a free agent in 1986 and released him in August after he was mostly ineffective and looked like he was done. I didn’t pay much attention when Mr. Steinbrenner, as another favor to Reich, signed him again in April ’87 to pitch for our Triple-A team in Columbus. But then, out of the blue, on August 3, I got a call from Mr. Steinbrenner informing me that Holland was being recalled but that I was not to pitch him! I could only assume that this had something to do with Holland needing more major-league service time. The problem was, I had to send out Pat Clements, a lefty reliever who’d been one of my most reliable hands in the bullpen, and it just so happened, the day Holland arrived, Tommy John got knocked out of the game against Cleveland in the third inning. Without Clements, I needed a reliever to give me some innings, and so I called on Holland, who was subsequently rocked for six runs in 1⅔ innings. This was right around the time everything began coming apart—we lost 7 of our first 10 games in August to fall out of first place for the first time since June 24—and when Mr. Steinbrenner called me to scream about me using Holland—“I told you not to use him. You’re embarrassing me!” is what he said—I hung up. After that, I stopped taking his phone calls. I just got tired of being beat up and having nothing satisfy him.
Speaking of Tommy John, I’d like to clarify something here about the long-standing myth that Mr. Steinbrenner was constantly making calls to the dugout during games to air his complaints with managers. I don’t know about anyone else, but with me that happened only one time: August 24, 1987. We were playing the “Singing Cowboy” Gene Autry’s Angels in Anaheim and it was a tight pitching duel between Tommy John and Don Sutton, two wily veterans who allegedly were not averse to occasionally adding a little helpful foreign substance to the ball. In this particular game, the Yankees’ WPIX cameras caught Sutton rubbing something on the ball. After the broadcasters noted the Yankees must not have noticed it, Mr. Steinbrenner, watching the game from his horse farm in Ocala, called Anaheim Stadium and had the switchboard operator put him through to our dugout, whereupon he began excoriating me.
“What’s wrong with you?” he screamed. “The whole world just saw Sutton doctoring up the baseball and you’re just sitting there on your ass and not doing anything about it! Who’s paying your salary? Me or the Cowboy?”
“Mr. Steinbrenner,” I said calmly, “what’s the score of the game?”
“What’s the score? We’re winning 2–1. What’s that got to do with anything?”
“I’ll tell you, sir,” I said. “It means that our guy is cheating better than their guy.”
He hung up in a huff and I never heard another word about it from him—or got another dugout call from him—probably because we wound up winning the game, 3–2, in the ninth inning. I never told Mr. Steinbrenner, but after the game, Mr. Autry, as he frequently did when we visited town, came down to the clubhouse with a bottle of vodka and we sat around talking baseball for a couple of hours before he had his driver take me back to the team hotel. Wonderful man.
It was hard enough trying to hold everything together that season with the starting pitching in such disarray, but I’d also been dealing with Rickey Henderson’s ongoing hamstring issue, which had put him on the disabled list most of June and now again in August.
Later that day, “Killer” Kane came to me with a message from Mr. Steinbrenner to be in my hotel room at 2:00 p.m. the next day for a phone call from him. I knew this drill too. Mr. Steinbrenner was famous for telling people to be in their hotel rooms for phone calls from him that never came. One time in ’86 he’d done this with me, and I sat in my hotel room, watching TV with three bottles of Heineken, waiting for his call. The next thing I knew it was 4:00 a.m. and I was lying in bed with two empty bottles of beer on the floor and the other one spilled all over me.
Nevertheless, I fully intended to be in my room for his 2:00 p.m. call the next day, except that over lunch with a couple of his Yankees limited partners who lived in Clev
eland, I was talked into going shopping. At the same time, I had been lobbying Woody to bring up Joel Skinner, an excellent defensive catcher, to replace Salas, who was leading the league in passed balls. Instead of going back to the hotel, I went right to the ballpark from shopping and called Woody. That’s when my general manager informed me he was no longer permitted to talk to me! I couldn’t believe it. Rome was burning and the emperor was cutting off his field general.
“I’m sorry, Lou,” Woody said. “You’re just gonna have to work this out with George. I have to do what he tells me.”
The next day in Detroit I called all the writers together and informed them that for weeks I had been trying to get Joel Skinner called up from Columbus but when I called again, my general manager said he was not allowed to talk to me.
Well, that was the match that lit the inferno. After seeing my comments in the papers, Mr. Steinbrenner issued a blistering press release, excoriating me for not being in my room in Cleveland to take his phone call—“I don’t know of too many guys—even sportswriters—who if their boss told them to be available for a call at a certain time, wouldn’t be there! That type of behavior wouldn’t be tolerated at any newspaper and it won’t be tolerated by the Yankees either!”
He then followed that up by sending me a letter of insubordination for refusing to take his calls and not being in my room for his call in Cleveland, which he also filed with the commissioner’s office. I had no problem with Mr. Steinbrenner’s being upset about the missed phone call. I was wrong not to have been there. You should obey your boss, but I was fed up. What I did have a problem with was the rest of the rambling press release, in which he completely undermined me with my players by claiming that in private conversations with him I called Salas “a bum” and accused Rickey of “jaking it.”
How do you mend fences with your players after stuff like that comes out? I fired back in the papers, maintaining I never called Salas a bum and had never used that word to describe any player. Same thing with Rickey. I told him the word “jaking” was not even in my vocabulary, but I could understand his bitterness. The whole hamstring thing with him started in a June 4 game in Milwaukee. He’d been complaining about the hammy bothering him, and after he drew a leadoff walk in the eighth inning, I sent him on a 3-2 pitch and he pulled up lame stealing second. He missed three weeks after that and when he came back played cautiously (only three stolen bases) through July before pulling it again, sidelining him the whole month of August. In spring training the following year, Rickey said it probably would have been different if Billy had been managing in ’87, which hurt me. Still, I understood because Billy was the one who had brought him to the major leagues with Oakland and, like me with Alex Rodriguez, was almost a second father to him. It took a few years for Rickey and me to mend everything. In 2000, when he was released by the Mets and it looked like his career might be over, I brought him over to the Mariners and he stole 31 bases for me in 92 games. Just an amazing player, and it was an honor to have managed him and been a small part of his career as the greatest leadoff man in baseball history.
It was of little consolation to me that the media all blasted Mr. Steinbrenner for cutting my legs off the way he did. Managing the Yankees—my dream job, for which I was forever grateful to Mr. Steinbrenner—had at that point become a living hell. It took some long talks with my close friends Hawk Harrelson and Bobby Murcer, who were both working as announcers for the Yankees, to convince me to stick it out and just do the best job I could. From August 1 to the end of the season we went 26–33, to finish in fourth place with 89 wins. I knew I was going to be fired, but after all that had transpired in 1987, I almost welcomed it.
CHAPTER 7
Bye-Bye, Boss
As much of a toll the 1987 season took on me, I was not alone. For Woody Woodward, one year of being Mr. Steinbrenner’s general manager had been truly hazardous to his health. The first time Anita and I ever went over to Woody’s house, we were having dinner in the dining room with Woody and his wife, Pamela, when suddenly I heard this quacking.
“Do you have a pet duck here, Woody?” I asked.
Woody sighed, his eyes rolling upward.
“My Boss phone,” he said. “Private line. I had a special ring put on it so I knew it was him and could decide whether I wanted to answer it or not.”
By the end of the 1987 season, Woody had absolutely had it. A few days after the ’87 season, he told me the Phillies wanted to hire him as their general manager, but that Mr. Steinbrenner was refusing to let him out of his contract. He asked me if I could talk to him and try to reason with him. I told Woody I would, but that I was actually expecting Mr. Steinbrenner to fire me. But when I met with Mr. Steinbrenner at Yankee Stadium, he was like a different person—believe it or not, firing people was always hard for him—and he said nothing about all the acrimony that had transpired between us or the letter of insubordination. Instead, he talked about a grand new plan he had for me.
“I don’t know if you know this,” he said, “but Woody wants to leave, with two more years on his contract. The Phillies want him, but there’s only one way I’m gonna let him go.”
“What’s that?” I said.
“I’d like you to move upstairs and take over as GM and I’m gonna bring Billy back as manager.”
I thought about that for a couple of minutes, a lot of mixed emotions running through my head. Billy V? I thought. This man is absolutely crazy. At the same time, however, I knew I didn’t want to manage for him. I also didn’t have any offers from anyone else. Working in the front office, I thought, might actually be a nice reprieve and a way to enhance my baseball résumé. Plus, I would be doing a huge favor for my good friend Woody. The more we talked, the more the idea of being in charge of putting together a ball club began to appeal to me.
As Woody recalls it, “When George called me and said he was letting me out of my contract and that he was promoting Lou to GM my immediate thought was, ‘Oh my god! What has he done? Taking Lou out of the dugout is a terrible idea.’ It was true, Lou knew talent, but what a waste putting him in the front office. But Lou took the bullet for me, and I was forever grateful.”
After agreeing to terms on my new GM contract, Mr. Steinbrenner said, “You’re much better off in the front office, Lou. Why would you want to be down on the field, where you were second-guessed by me and everyone else, when you can be up here now and be one of the second-guessers?”
I liked that concept too. Like everything else with Mr. Steinbrenner, however, there were certain requirements about a new job.
“Your first order of business will be to get rid of Trout!” he declared.
“I’ll do my best, sir,” I said, “but just remember you were the one who said he was going to win me a pennant.”
“Never mind!” he shouted, dismissing me. “Just get rid of him!”
It took a while to accommodate Mr. Steinbrenner on Trout, but three days before Christmas I was able to get the Seattle Mariners to give us three pitchers for him—one of them a six-foot-eight left-hander, Lee Guetterman, who went on to have four decent seasons as a workhorse middle reliever for the Yankees. In the meantime, I moved to shore up two of our major weak spots by trading for a catcher, Don Slaught, and acquiring a veteran shortstop, Rafael Santana, from the Mets. The Santana deal especially brought to mind the unintentionally foreboding evidence Woody had left for me. My first day on the job, I sat down at Woody’s old desk, opened up one of the drawers, and found it stuffed with bottles of pills—antacids, high-blood-pressure tablets, migraine headache pills—it looked like a minipharmacy! When I got to the winter meetings in Dallas, I soon discovered why. Billy had asked me to try and find a veteran shortstop, preferably with postseason experience, and it so happened the Mets’ GM, Joe McIlvaine, had just such a player in Santana who, at thirty, was still in his prime but was being shopped because the Mets wanted to promote their top shortstop prospect, Kevin Elster. Joe and I quickly agreed on a deal—he wasn’t looking
to hold me up, and he wanted to do right by the popular Santana by trading him someplace he’d like to be. In return, I agreed to give him three borderline prospects: the outfielder Darren Reed, the catcher Phil Lombardi, and the pitcher Steve Frey. All that was needed was Mr. Steinbrenner’s approval. But I was not prepared for his reaction.
“Oh, no, no, no,” he said. “What’s wrong with you? We don’t trade with the Mets!”
“But, Mr. Steinbrenner,” I countered, “Santana’s an established shortstop who’s got a World Series ring playing in New York. Those kinds of guys just aren’t available.”
“Well, then why are the Mets looking to get rid of him?”
I tried to explain how they wanted to break in Elster, but he was having none of it.
“That McIlvaine is taking advantage of you because you’re a rookie general manager,” he said. “You tell him the deal is off.”
I’d been on the job barely two months, and already I wanted to quit. There was no way I was going back to Joe McIlvaine and reneging on the trade. I was this close to getting on a plane and leaving Dallas when I called Mr. Steinbrenner one more time and told him we needed to make this trade and it didn’t matter if it was with the Mets.
“All right,” he said, “but you tell McIlvaine I have to get one more player back if we’re giving up three.”
At that point, I rushed up to McIlvaine’s room—it was about two o’clock in the morning—pounded on his door, and told him we finally had a deal.
“But I have to have one more player, Joe,” I said. “I don’t care if it’s the third-string catcher in rookie ball. I just have to get my owner off my ass.”
McIlvaine agreed to throw in an A-ball pitcher named Victor Garcia who never made it to the majors, but I could have cared less. I could see that being Mr. Steinbrenner’s general manager was going to be just as trying as being his manager.
