Billy Martin

by Bill Pennington

  Nick DeGennaro went to work there as a bartender and recalled that on opening night the place was so busy they needed eight bartenders to keep up with the crowd. Throughout the winter of 1959–60, the restaurant was busy—“at least four bartenders,” said Nick—and Billy was a constant presence.

  He and Gretchen had rented an apartment in Oakland where they would live until the Cincinnati Reds opened their spring training camp in Tampa.

  “Billy was very good working the room and talking to the guests,” Gretchen said. “For a while, everybody came and the place had a kind of buzz. We would be there all the time. Billy loved to dance and he was a fabulous dancer, good enough that he once appeared on Arthur Murray’s dance TV show.”

  When a band would play at the restaurant on weekends, Billy would also sing.

  Was Billy a good singer?

  Gretchen laughed. “I used to tell him he needed to practice,” she said.

  One night, Gretchen and Billy were sitting in a booth facing the front door when a tall man walked through the door.

  “I gasped and my mouth flew open,” Gretchen said. “I turned to Billy and said, ‘That has to be your father.’ And it was.

  “I can’t say I ever saw Billy speechless or at a loss for words but he was at that moment. They sat down and talked. It was awkward. That night was the quietest that I ever saw Billy. His dad, who looked like him except taller, sat with us for quite a while and he did most of the talking. He was talking about how he wasn’t proud about not being around when Billy was growing up but he said that Billy’s mom wouldn’t let him near Billy.

  “Billy was cordial and so was his father and it was nice that they got to reconnect, but you could also see that it wasn’t going to go too far. Billy was a little out of sorts. I don’t think I ever saw his father again after that night.”

  During that winter, Billy brought Gretchen to the house on 7th Street often. He wanted his mother to teach Gretchen some of her recipes.

  “He’d leave me there with her while she was supposed to be teaching me how to make baked ravioli or whatever,” Gretchen said. “But you could see she didn’t really want me to learn. She would leave ingredients out and when I went to the restroom she did three steps while I was gone and then wouldn’t tell me what they were.

  “She probably wanted to make sure her recipes kept Billy coming back, which is understandable, I guess. But she wasn’t welcoming in any other way either. She was a troublesome little woman.”

  In the spring of 1960, Billy left for spring training. The restaurant prospered for about six months, but the crowds slowly dwindled without the presence of its star attraction. Eighteen months after it opened, Billy Martin’s Cerro Square closed.

  “To own a restaurant you have to be there all the time,” Figone said. “None of us could do that.”

  Figone smiled, picking up a black-and-white photo from the grand opening that showed Billy and Mickey Mantle in chef hats working behind the grill.

  “We had a lot of fun there while it lasted,” he said.

  As Billy began his tenth Major League season, his face had healed from Clevenger’s fastball. It did not mean there were no scars. From the beginning of the training, Billy noticed he was shying away from inside pitches, which was far from an uncommon reaction after being hit in the head by a pitch.

  He decided he needed to be hit again to overcome his fears. So he put on a helmet and four Reds jackets and wrapped towels around his neck. He stood at the plate while batting practice pitchers deliberately hurled balls at or near his chest and arms. It did not matter. He did not overcome the fear of being hit, especially in a game situation with a big-league pitcher. It took almost two years for the anxiety to dissipate. Then it was too late.

  But Billy was the Reds’ regular second baseman. He would have to sort out his problems at the plate while playing, though it would not be easy. A lifelong American Leaguer, Billy was greeted suspiciously during his first days as a National League player. But he defused any budding tension effortlessly. It was his gift in any crowd, in any decade of his life.

  “He invited everyone out for dinner the first night and paid for the whole thing,” said Lee Walls, a Reds teammate in 1960 who would become a coach for Billy in several of his managerial stops. “He learned the names of everybody’s wife and kids. He did favors for people and played with their kids every day.”

  Almost all children loved Billy because he could talk like Donald Duck. It got a shy kid to smile every time.

  “He was the nice guy he always was,” Walls said. “If you were nice and polite to him, he would give you the shirt off his back.”

  In that spring training, Walls, like others after him, was also witness to what it was like to be Battlin’ Billy Martin.

  “We went to a bar in Tampa in the early afternoon after a workout and there was one lonely guy sitting there nursing a drink at the other end of the bar,” Walls said. “The bartender recognized Billy and bought us both a drink. The guy at the end of the bar said, ‘Hey, Fred, I’ve been coming here for twenty years and you never bought me a drink just for walking in.’

  “So Billy laughs and buys the guy a drink. The guy got up, walked over, and threw the drink in Billy’s face. In an instant, the guy was lying on the floor.”

  Walls was a fearsome, baldheaded giant who resembled the muscular guy on Mr. Clean bottles (without the smile). He had seen plenty of guys in bar fights. He had not seen anything like the five-foot-ten Billy Martin.

  “Billy hit him with one short, crushing right hand and the guy just collapsed,” Walls said. “The man knew how to throw a punch. But you know, Billy was disgusted. We drank fast, Billy left a nice tip, and we left.”

  On the field, Billy struggled at the plate. Teams continued to pitch him inside, close enough that Billy hit the dirt repeatedly. Darrell Johnson, a scout for the St. Louis Cardinals who had been friendly with Billy when the two played for the Yankees in 1957, saw Billy just before the Reds were heading to Chicago for a series with the Cubs. Johnson told Billy that the entire league had the same scouting report: Knock him down, then throw outside.

  The next day, three pitches buzzed by Billy’s hands and shoulders. After the game, he told Cincinnati reporters that he was going to retaliate if he kept getting pitched inside.

  It was August 4 in Wrigley Field, one day before the one-year anniversary of Billy’s beaning by Tex Clevenger, when the Cubs’ six-foot-two Jim Brewer, a left-handed rookie, threw a pitch that sailed toward Billy’s head until he deflected it with his left arm. The umpire said the pitch struck Billy’s bat as well and called it a strike.

  Billy was doubly incensed—with the location of the pitch and with the umpire’s call. He decided he would use a frequent tactic of hitters who were upset at the pitcher—he would make Brewer “skip rope.” This is when a batter swings at a pitch and pretends to lose control of the bat, flinging it along the ground at the pitcher’s mound. The pitcher usually has no trouble getting out of the way but the batter sends a message: I can throw things at you, too.

  On the next pitch Billy did just that, except his aim was off and the bat skittered harmlessly to the right of the mound, halfway between the mound and first base. Billy walked onto the diamond after his bat. In his version of the sequence to follow, Billy said he saw Brewer coming at him from the left as he got close to his bat. Brewer had a clenched left fist and Billy was sure a punch was coming.

  Brewer’s version was that he yelled at Billy, “You want to fight?” And he said that Billy answered, “No, kid, relax, I’m just getting my bat.”

  Unlike the fight at the Copa, thousands were watching, so what is indisputably known is that just as Billy was reaching his bat Brewer was converging on him. Billy suddenly wheeled to his left and smacked Brewer with a perfect right hand to the jaw. Billy also said—that day and forevermore—that he never hit Brewer again. As in almost every baseball fight, there was a pileup of players.

  “At one point, Brewer kicke
d our Cal McLish in the ribs and Cal went nuts,” said Lee Walls. “He just started whacking Brewer with punches to the face—three, four, five. He did some damage.”

  Brewer was taken to Wesley Memorial Hospital with a fractured orbital bone near his eye.

  “I’m sorry if he’s hurt; I’m sorry that happened, but he threw at my head,” Billy said in the locker room. “I was in the hospital for weeks last year. Nobody is going to throw at my head again.”

  When Billy was suspended for five games and fined $500 the next day, he thought no more about it. Brewer, released from the hospital, said the suspension surprised him.

  But Brewer ended up needing two surgeries to repair his fracture and an infection that invaded the area. When the Reds returned to Wrigley Field on August 22, Billy was served court papers: Brewer and the Cubs were suing him for nearly $2 million.

  Deadpanned Billy, referring to the Wrigley chewing gum heir who owned the Cubs, “Ask Mr. Wrigley how he would like it, cash or a check?”

  It did not seem so funny when the game began and fans in the right-field bleachers held up signs that read: KILL MARTIN. Chicago police escorted Billy to and from Wrigley Field for the next two days.

  Still, Billy did not take the suit seriously. He maintained he had hit Brewer on the chin once. He knew McLish had done the real damage. The suit went through two trials—the Reds testified that McLish probably caused the fracture.

  “Cal told us he did it,” Gretchen Martin said.

  In the end, Billy, as the aggressor, was ordered to pay Brewer $22,000 for his suffering and legal fees, which was more than a year’s salary. But the last harm was that Billy was linked to another brawl, and the trials kept it in the newspapers for more than a year.

  Billy batted .246 for the Reds with 3 home runs and a paltry 16 RBIs in 317 at-bats. In the 1960 World Series, which Billy did not attend, the Yankees lost in seven games to Pittsburgh.

  The defeat would result in the firing of Casey Stengel, the runaway managerial genius of the 1950s. Said Casey, “I was fired for turning 70 years old. It is a mistake I will never make again.”

  The country was moving on, emphatically putting the 1950s in the rearview mirror. John Kennedy had been elected president in November, Clark Gable died a few days later, and the first birth control pill went on the market right after Thanksgiving.

  On December 3, the Reds dealt Billy to the Milwaukee Braves, where his old Oakland Oaks manager Charlie Dressen was now in charge. The Reds got just less than $20,000 for Billy, the minimum allowed under waivers. Reds general manager Bill DeWitt said he tried to acquire a player for Billy. “No one made me an offer,” DeWitt said.

  Before the 1961 season began, a Milwaukee reporter asked Billy if he had ever gotten over being traded by the Yankees.

  “I think so,” Billy answered. “Although I admit I felt a little like a little kid whose father told him not to come in the house any more. I can still play though.”

  During spring training with the Braves, it was clear there was no starting spot for Billy. Even Dressen could not find much use for Billy once the 1961 season began.

  Billy had six hitless at-bats with the Braves before they sent him to the Minnesota Twins for a minor leaguer. Cookie Lavagetto was the Twins’ manager.

  Happy to be back in the American League, Billy was installed as the Twins’ starting second baseman and went on a tear at the plate. Seven days after the trade, he won a game with a late two-run home run. A couple of days later, Billy drove in four runs. The Twins were in their first year of existence—the Washington Senators franchise had moved to the Twin Cities—and during his first month as a Twin, Billy hit over .300. It was his last gasp as a player. Billy went into a slump that dogged his season. His batting average sank to .220, and he had to rally late just to get his 1961 season average to .246.

  “Deep down, I think Billy knew his time was ending,” Gretchen said.

  Years later, Billy said of the season, “It’s like dying because playing was something I had been wanting to do since I was a child. You never, ever admit to yourself that one of these days you’re going to have to quit.”

  Lavagetto had been fired during the 1961 season, but Billy knew and liked the new Twins manager, Sam Mele, a former Red Sox outfielder. Certain that Mele would give him a fair shake, Billy went to the Twins’ 1962 spring training camp in the then-sleepy inland Florida city of Orlando.

  Late in spring training, Billy was getting ready to leave the clubhouse at aging Tinker Field when Mele approached and asked Billy to sit down so they could talk.

  Throughout his career, Billy was renowned for being the last man out of the clubhouse—a player who never wanted to leave. It was true on this day, too. Billy and Mele were alone in the room.

  Mele had broken into professional baseball in 1946, the same year as Billy. He had played for ten years, including for six teams in his final four seasons. He had never wanted to stop playing either.

  Mele put his arm around Billy.

  “I told him that he had had a great career,” Mele said. “But I said that Twins owner Calvin Griffith and I both thought it was time for him to give it up.”

  Billy started to cry. So did Mele.

  “He started pleading with me but I knew what I had to do,” Mele said. “I told him that every good thing has to come to an end. It’s the saddest thing. We just sat there crying.”

  Billy the Kid, the one who cajoled his way into sandlot games at Kenney Park, the one who lit up Oaks Park with his vivacity and forced his way into the lineup of a Yankees dynasty, was thirty-two years old.

  18

  BILLY TURNED DOWN A three-year contract worth $100,000 to play baseball in Japan and instead accepted an offer to be a Twins scout. The job paid just $10,000 a year, but Billy was tired of life as a traveling publicity stunt and weary of living off accomplishments from another era. He was understandably vulnerable, and he also worried that if an American baseball man left the finite inner circle of Major League Baseball, he might never be let back in.

  Never lacking in energy, Billy threw himself into his new assignment with the Twins. Unwilling to be an unseen, unnoticed scout, Billy took it upon himself to be the Twins’ de facto ambassador to the community. He became a promoter and troubleshooter and hung close to owner Calvin Griffith and his brother Sherry Robertson. Curbing some of his contentious ways, he learned that an office was not a clubhouse or a ball field, and in this new phase of his life, he needed to acquire a sense of diplomacy. It was a workplace that years later would be called a “cubicle world.” These barriers were not the outfield fences Billy was accustomed to—you could not just power your best shot over them. Billy kept within the confines and played nice.

  He did hit the road on occasion and he came up with players for the Twins, helping to establish a pipeline for young players, especially from the Caribbean and Latin American countries. It was talent that proved fruitful for the Twins—and Billy—in subsequent years. Billy, to no one’s surprise, had an eye for skilled players. He begged the Twins to sign a young high school pitcher from Scottsdale, Arizona, he had scouted even though the pitcher, James Alvin Palmer, wanted the princely sum of $50,000 as a bonus. Billy himself had negotiated the deal and the Twins would have first dibs. Billy insisted it would be worth it. But Griffith balked.

  Jim Palmer, inducted into the Hall of Fame in 1990, signed with the Orioles instead and ended up in six World Series.

  To augment his salary, Billy took a second job as a sales rep at the local Grain Belt Brewery. Billy became known in countless bars across Minnesota, where he bought drinks and talked up the Grain Belt brews and the Twins with equal fervor.

  In his three years as a scout, Billy was never in trouble. There were no dustups with coworkers, bosses, or customers. He may have been working for a brewery, but his drinking habits were considered moderate. Billy had rehabilitated his reputation, at least in Minnesota. After the 1964 season, the Twins announced that Billy would be Mele’s new th
ird-base coach. It was the owner’s idea.

  Before Billy got to spring training, on December 4, 1964, Gretchen gave birth to a seven-pound, thirteen-ounce baby boy, Billy Joseph. Billy told everyone that he was most pleased that his son had inherited his mother’s nose and ears and not his. The Minneapolis Tribune ran a picture of the proud parents in the hospital with Billy holding a pen and a contract. The story said the Twins had signed Billy Joe—as he would be called until he was nearly forty—to a $100,000 contract with a $1 million signing bonus. There was a stipulation in the contract: “Player to receive $1 million with the understanding that all consultation concerning the fine arts of baseball shall be with his mother rather than his father.”

  Billy Joe, Gretchen’s only child, would have a respectable high school baseball career but never play professional baseball. But at the side of his father, he would be a close witness to some of the defining, and most memorable, scenes in the last few decades of twentieth-century baseball history.

  There was one other significant development in Billy’s life in December 1964. Attending baseball’s annual winter meetings in Nashville, Billy was walking across a hotel lobby when he spotted Casey Stengel, who was then the New York Mets’ manager, holding court with some writers.

  Billy approached and announced, “Don’t listen to this senile old man.”

  Stengel looked up and immediately launched into stories from the 1950s.

  “Now this fresh kid here,” Casey said, “he just about single-handedly beat those Brooklyn Jackie Robinsons in 1953. He broke the heart of a whole borough.”

  Billy had decided to let bygones be bygones.

  “I missed him,” he later said.

  The two retired to the hotel bar. Casey had some advice and suggestions about coaching third base. The two remained close until Casey’s death in 1975.

  When the Twins’ 1965 spring training camp opened, the writers covering the team knew things were going to be different as soon as they saw the players wearing rubber suits over their baseball pants. The rubber suits—with sneakers—were Billy’s idea of a safe way to practice sliding in the outfield grass that Billy had wet with a sprinkler. The next day, the clinic was in how to bunt. The next day it was about the hit-and-run. Then the double steal. Then stealing home.