Jack Downey, who was no more than five foot five and weighed about 120 pounds, was a quiet man who rarely if ever entered into debate with Jenny. She would get riled about something, inserting F-bombs between syllables at a pace of two or three a sentence, and Jack would just laugh at her.
“That’s a good one,” he’d say. “I haven’t heard that one before. Hey, why don’t you take it easy? That’s enough of that.”
But he would let her dominate the conversation, taking a back seat to the dynamo that was Jenny. The only time Jack seemed emboldened was when he sang.
Still, as tranquil and good-natured as he was, it’s hard to imagine what Downey thought of the situation he encountered on his first visit to the home where Jenny lived in early 1929. She had one son from her first marriage, who was now a young teen, and she had an infant from her second husband. She lived with her mother, a warm but unsophisticated woman from the Old Country, and from the previous century, who did not speak English and did not plan to learn it.
The household had almost no income; Jenny’s sisters and brothers brought groceries over to the house regularly, as did the priests from St. Ambrose’s. One sister, on a visit bearing supplies, recalled sitting in her mother’s kitchen and asking where Billy, Jenny’s baby boy, was.
“Out back,” Jenny said. The sister walked through the back door and saw Billy sitting in a tuft of unmown grass drinking milk out of a beer bottle with a nipple attached.
But into this world Jack Downey married, reciting his wedding vows on November 5, 1929, seven days after the stock market crashed.
And soon thereafter, the Salvini-Pisani-Martin fraternity found out something else about diminutive Jack Downey: he was a hard worker.
One of the truths about jobs in America is that many of them tend to sound like, or even depict, the nature of the work involved—accountants count, lawyers deal with the law, teachers teach.
So what does a lumper do? A lumper lifts lumps of things and loads them into a truck or a hold of a ship. That was one of Jack Downey’s early jobs down at the docks of his new neighborhood in Berkeley.
“They didn’t want to give my dad the lumper’s job,” Billy Martin, who always referred to Jack Downey as his dad, said. “They looked at this 120-pound guy and said, ‘How are you going to lift 75-pound bags of stuff into a truck?’ And my dad said, ‘Where are the bags?’
“They pointed to a big pile and he went over and hoisted one onto his shoulders and flung it into the truck. Then he grabbed about four more. They gave him the job.”
A lumper’s pay wasn’t enough, though. So Downey was a simple laborer at a local prune warehouse, where he shoveled the fruit into a vat. He also did some heavy lifting at a cider factory, working alongside his stepson Tudo and a crew of other young men.
As his family grew—Joanie, Pat, and Jack Jr. joined his two stepsons—he developed another side job as a carpenter and handyman in the neighborhood. He bought an aging Model T engine, outfitted it to work as a saw, then went down to the waterfront to collect stray driftwood. He cut the wood behind his house and sold it as firewood. The Downeys had moved into the house at 1632 7th Street, next to Nonna’s house, and Downey repaired the fixtures and rebuilt the exterior and interior. It was a two-story house, a rarity then along 7th Street. Today, it still stands out for its height.
“We never missed a meal,” said Pat Irvine. “We always had clothes, not many, but what we needed. And it was all because of Jack. And he raised Bill. He didn’t correct him in front of my mother; that was her job. She disciplined Bill when she had to.
“But Jack did everything else he could for Bill.”
Billy fondly remembered Downey.
“My dad was a great guy—quiet and small but the kind of guy who would come over your house and help you with some project even if you didn’t ask for the help,” Billy said. “He didn’t have a lot of money but he would slip a kid who needed a few bucks the money. He’d ask the kid to come help him haul some wood from the docks and then he would overpay him.
“He would go to local pickup games and help pay for a couple of new baseball gloves or a bat. They were small things but I saw him do it a thousand times in a thousand different ways.”
Everyone agreed that Jenny had the most influence on Billy as a child. She filled him with the defiance and burning determination, the willingness to try anything, and the combativeness. But Jack Downey had an understated role and a low-key bond with Billy, whom he introduced to people as his son, not his stepson. (None of the Downeys used terms like stepbrother or stepchild—then or now.)
Billy watched Jenny impose her will with a boundless fury and by railing against a thousand real or imagined enemies or obstacles, but he also watched Jack Downey pass through life fruitfully and happily without confrontation, opening doors with gestures of benevolence and goodwill.
“His mom was the fire but his dad was the compassion,” de Alba said. “And Billy had a ton of both.”
It was a sentiment affirmed by many who knew Billy well. With Billy, there were always the dual, or dueling, personalities. He was his mother’s son. He was, as Jack Downey told everyone in the East Bay area, his son.
Jenny, who was not one for admitting mistakes, talked late into her eighties about her biggest regret in life. She wished she had arranged for Jack Downey to adopt Billy when they were first married. Then all the fame that was to come in the 1950s and beyond would have been bestowed on Billy Downey—a fitting tribute, she thought.
3
IN A MARTIN FAMILY scrapbook, there is a picture of Billy at age three. He is standing alongside his house and smiling broadly. He is wearing a light-colored sweater pulled over a shirt buttoned to his neck and thick, dungaree-like pants that stop a couple of inches short of his black shoes. The front of his pants is soiled and dirty with large stains across both thighs, and there’s a smudge on his sweater, too.
“We had clothes but not enough of them and you sometimes looked a little ragged,” said Mario DeGennaro, who was born two months after Billy. “If somebody had to go to a wedding, or later in life, if you had a date, you would go around the neighborhood borrowing things. Billy might have a nice dress shirt and my other cousin might have nice dress pants. Somebody else would loan you some new shoes. Eventually you’d have a presentable outfit.
“For those of us living below San Pablo Avenue toward the docks, the parents were always in and out of work. Nobody had any education; I don’t think my mother or father went past sixth grade. It was a tough place, but people got by and there wasn’t a lot of bitching.”
The Downey house was big for the neighborhood but usually full.
“There were people everywhere—kids, grandkids, aunts, uncles—they all came to be near my grandmother,” Pat Irvine said. “They made a lot of noise, but Billy liked the hubbub I think. He was a happy-go-lucky kid.”
Ruben de Alba said Billy was popular and moved easily among West Berkeley’s various factions.
“Billy didn’t know or care about ethnic makeup,” said de Alba. “He was Italian and Portuguese with an Irish stepfather. Who was he to say anything to anybody about their background? He was well liked by the teachers, the coaches, other kids. He didn’t give anyone any trouble. Later, as we all got older, there was more turmoil.
“But when we were younger, we were always running from our little houses to someplace we could play and staying there as long as we could.”
The one place where they all ran was James Kenney Park, a rectangular stretch of grass and blacktop about two blocks from Billy’s home. It had basketball courts and some playground equipment at one end, but its primary feature was wedged against the corner formed by 7th and Delaware streets. It was a tall, chain-link-fence baseball backstop that loomed over a Major League–size baseball diamond. And beyond the diamond there was room for a vast outfield in Kenney Park, one big enough to contain 380-foot fly balls.
The dirt of the infield was manicured by Berkeley city workers who al
so cut the grass, which was more lush and green than any of the stubby lawns in the neighborhood. High fences near the backstop kept foul balls in the park. The pitching mound and batter’s boxes were made of real red clay.
It was an oasis of refinement in West Berkeley’s crude jumble of frayed houses, boarded-up businesses, and smelly factories.
In the late 1930s and during the World War II years, it was the place for boys from miles around to come play baseball, the unquestioned national pastime in America during the middle of the twentieth century. And to Billy Martin, it became a second home and, with Northern California’s generally temperate climate, a place to play year-round.
“Oh, my God, it’s like he never left the park,” said Pat Irvine. “He’d eat breakfast and disappear to the park. I don’t know what he did for lunch but he didn’t come home. Then my mother would send me to get him for dinner. She’d say, ‘Tell him he has to come eat and then he can go back to the park after that.’
“And that’s what he would do. Eat for twenty minutes and then run back to the park. Baseball, baseball, baseball—you never saw someone so in love with baseball.”
If being born in West Berkeley meant you were disadvantaged, there was an overriding benefit: it put you close to Kenney Park. And if you were a youngster who loved baseball, it only got better each fall and winter when the many Major Leaguers who hailed from the area would come home and make Kenney Park their off-season training ground.
Augie Galan, an outfielder for the Chicago Cubs and a lifetime .287 hitter, came to the park most often. His family owned a laundry six blocks away, near San Pablo Avenue. But he was accompanied by, among others, Bill Rigney, an All-Star for the New York Giants who was raised just up the road in Alameda; Les Scarsella of the Cincinnati Reds, who lived in San Francisco; and Ernie Lombardi, the future Hall of Fame catcher who had also been a star for his hometown Oakland Oaks of the Pacific Coast League. There were other noted players who came to Kenney Park, too, guys in their late teens and early twenties who had been signed to minor league contracts and were eager to play with the established stars. One of the local kids invited to play because he was a good pitcher—and eventually would play some minor league baseball—was Billy’s older half brother, Tudo.
And though Billy was eight to ten years younger than the other players, he went to these workouts, which evolved into regular weekend games.
“The other players would get on Tudo for bringing his kid brother,” Mario DeGennaro said. “Billy didn’t care. He didn’t play but he watched everything and waited.”
Billy was more than a mascot at the games. Throughout life, Billy was not intimidated by fame or celebrity. The kid from the downtrodden neighborhood that should have made him feel like an eternal outsider instead somehow found it easy to make connections with the renowned, illustrious, or legendary. He made them feel at ease with his undaunted response to their notoriety.
Years later, when Billy was acquired by the Yankees in October 1949, he stunned his new teammates the following spring by making friends with Joe DiMaggio on his very first day in the team’s clubhouse. Few people approached the famously aloof DiMaggio without invitation, let alone a raw, skinny rookie. Billy sauntered up and introduced himself, talking about their similar Italian Bay Area backgrounds.
And at the end of Billy’s first day with the Yankees, the other Yankees were floored when the distant, never gregarious DiMaggio ambled over to Martin’s locker and said, “Hey, Dago, want to have dinner tonight?”
For Billy, this kind of unceremonious approach to fame became a way of life.
“Billy thought he could relate to anyone,” said Lew Figone, whose mother was a good friend of Billy’s mother in the 1930s. Figone rose to a place of prominence in the East Bay business community as an adult, but he remained a lifelong friend, business partner, and confidant of Billy’s.
“Billy knew some people had a lot of money or better looks or more smarts, but he still thought he could talk and learn from them. He wasn’t afraid of anyone.”
This attitude was apparently ingrained by 1940, because Billy was not intimidated by the Galans, Lombardis, or Rigneys who showed up at Kenney Park. He thrust himself into the scene, asking questions, helping with equipment, warming up the outfielders and infielders before games. If a game got started and he wasn’t part of it, he would watch and offer a kind of play-by-play commentary from the bleachers. Except Billy’s version of commentary included an occasional jibe or joke. He knew how to get the players snickering.
The players took a liking to the little runt who was always watching.
“I loved being there and helped out, but I also figured that eventually someone would not show up or get hurt and they would need an extra player—and that would be me,” Billy wrote years later. “And I did get to play.”
Galan, who was a good friend of Tudo’s from Berkeley High School, took a personal interest in tutoring a young Billy Martin. He taught Billy how to change his grip on the bat if he wanted to pull a ball or punch it to right or center field. He showed him the footwork necessary to bunt for base hits. He strengthened Billy’s throwing, adjusting his motion.
Billy always came back for more. Rube de Alba remembers a workout when Galan was hitting hard ground balls to Billy. One grounder took a bad hop—or Billy misplayed it since he did not have especially soft or nimble hands as a youngster—and it struck him squarely between the eyes.
“Billy had a big mouse just over his nose and it kept swelling,” de Alba said, telling the story sixty years later. “We told Billy to get off the field. He just kept telling Augie to hit him another one. And he did not come off the field until we were all done.”
Galan appreciated the perseverance and rewarded Billy with more of his attention.
“Augie almost lived at our house,” Pat Irvine said. “He would be there talking baseball to Bill all the time.”
And if Augie wasn’t at his house on 7th Street, Billy would go to the nearby Galan house and wait outside until Augie was ready to leave for Kenney Park. He would carry his gear and listen for the next piece of advice.
As Galan, who died in 1993, would relate years later, “The thing with Billy was that I never had to tell him anything twice.”
And for every piece of instruction, Billy had a question for Augie. Why does the second baseman take the cutoff throw from right field instead of the first baseman? Why does the shortstop cover third base on a steal attempt if it’s a bunt situation? Why do the corner infielders play in when a team is trying to induce a double-play ball?
Galan had answers, and if he didn’t, he brought Billy to Rigney, the Major League infielder, who could offer expertise on the inner workings of tactics within the baseball diamond. Rigney, who would play several seasons for Giants manager Leo Durocher and take over for Durocher in 1956, had an established pedigree when it came to baseball strategy. He soon noticed that Augie Galan’s young friend Billy Martin was more than just curious about the thought that went into a seemingly simple game of baseball. Strategy was a way to make you better as a player and, in the end, make the players into a better team.
“Billy picked the brains of Rigney and Augie—all those guys—for years,” Rube de Alba said.
Because, even at twelve or thirteen years of age, Billy knew there was the game, and then there was the game within the game.
“He wasn’t like the other kids,” Rigney said in an interview thirty years later when he was an executive with the Oakland Athletics—and before Billy managed there. “He loved to play baseball but he was serious about it. He wasn’t just passing the time or showing off for his friends or for the girls watching.”
The games were his schoolwork, the diamond his classroom, and a dugout filled with Major Leaguers his laboratory staffed by the game’s certified scientists. Billy knew what he was doing. He was an apprentice in the trade of baseball. It was an art and it was a skill, but to Billy it was always more of an intellectual passion and a measure of tenaci
ty.
There was the physical component to baseball, and Billy had above-average athletic ability. But that wouldn’t get him to the Major Leagues and he knew it. He would have to do more.
Galan was the first to tell him how. Because he had been there, and not just as a flatlander who lived on the wrong side of San Pablo Avenue.
When he was eleven, Augie Galan broke his right arm in a pickup game of baseball on his way home from school. Since he was supposed to have gone straight from school to the family laundry that day, Galan hid the injury from his parents. It was a small fracture near his elbow, but since it was not set by a doctor, it healed wrong and left Galan with a deformity that inhibited his ability to throw properly for the rest of his life.
Galan learned to speed up his release when throwing the baseball in the outfield, adapting his throwing motion to make up for the deformity. He also studied opponents, learning their tendencies and memorizing how they ran the bases and where they liked to hit the ball. This made Galan a more capable left fielder, despite a weak throwing arm by Major League standards. He committed just 32 errors in 841 games in the outfield of Major League games, and though he would occasionally suffer from a sore throwing arm—an ailment that eventually ended his Major League career—he also played sixteen years in the majors with some distinction.
While Billy had no physical abnormalities, Galan knew his feisty, popular young charge was neither especially big nor strong. He was quick enough, crafty, and adept at almost any sport—basketball, football, swimming, and diving.
“Oh, I can still see Bill at the city pool on the high diving board doing flips and twirls,” said his sister Joan Holland. “The whole pool would stop when he climbed the ladder, waiting to see what he would do next. He was a good athlete.”
Undoubtedly he was, as he would prove when he got to high school. But cocktail parties in America are full of guys who were good athletes but not Major Leaguers. As a youngster, Billy was a talented athlete, but by most measures not exceptional. Galan saw himself in Billy, and on those walks back and forth to Kenney Park he preached a recurring message: Billy’s talent wouldn’t be enough; he would have to do more than everyone else with a passionate resolve unequaled by any of his peers. Galan explained something else—there was an enduring, tangible power in being the overlooked underdog because it allowed you to sneak up on people.
Billy Martin Page 3
