Billy began to quiver and tremble.
“And most of all,” he continued, pausing again for almost ten seconds before softly adding, “the fans.”
Phil Rizzuto, Billy’s 1950s Yankees roommate, was watching from a few feet away.
“It was a nightmare,” said Rizzuto, who lurched forward and put his arm around Billy, leading him down a hotel corridor. “I had to get him out of there. I really thought he might have a heart attack or something. I know him, the Yankees, and this job are his whole life. I was worried he was going to throw himself off the balcony or something.”
Billy, Rizzuto, and an old Kansas City–based friend, Bob Brown, guided Billy out of the hotel and the trio walked about ten blocks in downtown Kansas City in no particular direction.
“We were just trying to absorb what had just happened,” Rizzuto said.
Then they returned to the Crown Center, entering through a side door near the kitchen. Billy had dozens of phone messages but he returned only two—to Mickey Mantle and Whitey Ford. Then Killer Kane helped Billy get a flight that night to Florida, where Mickey was playing golf.
“It was where Billy wanted to go,” Kane said. “He didn’t really have anywhere else to go.”
At the ballpark that Monday evening, Rosen addressed the team. The players expressed a mix of shock and understanding.
“I think a lot of us really felt that it was best for Billy’s health,” Roy White said. “But almost everyone felt bad for him. He wasn’t the reason we were losing.”
Nettles was angry and felt Chass and Hecht had egged Billy on, taking advantage of his vulnerability.
“It was nasty and heartless,” he said. “If you take the Yankee manager’s job from Billy, you might as well stab him with a knife.”
And tensions in the clubhouse had not diminished.
“There was certainly some resentment toward Reggie,” Chambliss said. “He had set a lot of this in motion. But at the same time, pro athletes also instinctively turn toward the task at hand—let’s win some games.”
Ron Guidry, who was in his second year and would play for Billy four more times, considered the whole scene unfathomable.
“Here was the best manager in baseball and he’s not with us anymore because of something he said,” Guidry said. “I couldn’t believe it. But you know, I learned, it was always the off-the-field stuff that got Billy, wasn’t it?”
Reggie, who did not play that night, had little to say. Asked in the locker room for his feelings about Billy’s resignation, Reggie replied, “Well, I really don’t have any feelings. I’m just kinda, maybe the word is placid.”
But the reaction back in New York was anything but placid. The Yankees’ switchboard fielded hundreds of calls, most of them condemning Steinbrenner. Some callers threatened George’s life, and many more said they would never attend another Yankees game.
The protests were real and perceptible. About twenty-five fans burned their Yankees tickets in the plaza outside the stadium, just below Steinbrenner’s office, which attracted a crowd of another hundred people or so. New York police had to disperse the demonstration.
While no one defended Billy for his comments, analysis in the news media was decidedly pro-Billy and anti-Steinbrenner. Reggie was castigated for starting the whole affair with his intemperate bunting snit.
“Billy represented every regular fan who wanted to tell his boss to shove it or wanted to tell the overpaid ballplayers to shut up and play hard,” wrote the New York Daily News’s Dick Young, the blue-collar tabloid columnist with the biggest following among everyday fans. “That’s why people love him. He has been the genuine guy they could believe in. Sure, he has his problems but they loved him for that, too. It makes him human. And what happened? Billy got screwed by the bosses and bonus baby whiners anyway.”
The outcry was relentless. Monday turned into Tuesday and it did not abate. Neither did the media reaction since Billy’s apparent demise had a crossover appeal. Sports talk radio had not yet gained a foothold in New York, but there were plenty of general news talk radio broadcasts. They did hours of programming about Billy’s cold-blooded exit.
The heartbreak of Billy’s departure—and what fans were expressing was heartbreak—pushed local and national politics aside. Everyone wanted to talk about Billy.
Yankees fans and Billy Martin fans everywhere could not stand the despair.
On Wednesday, July 26, when the Yankees returned to Yankee Stadium two days after Billy resigned, the crowd of 31,631 started chanting, “We want Billy! We want Billy!”
That was twenty minutes before the start of the game with Cleveland. They chanted it almost nonstop as the players took the field and throughout the first inning. The chant enveloped the stadium periodically throughout the game.
Hundreds of fans showed up with signs expressing their support of Billy:
BILLY, NO. 1 FOREVER
BILLY MARTIN: OUR TRUE YANKEE
WE’LL NEVER FORGET YOU, BILLY
BILLY, ALWAYS NO. 1 IN OUR HEARTS
There were a number of signs critical of George and Reggie, but security confiscated those attacking Steinbrenner. Any other signs that were outwardly profane or otherwise deemed objectionable were also seized.
That was not true of signs condemning Reggie, and there were many:
REGGIE: ARE YOU HAPPY NOW?
YOU CUT THE HEART RIGHT OUT OF US, REGGIE
BILLY’S THE ONE WHO’S SANE. REGGIE IS THE ONE TO BLAME.
Now the fans were getting in on the Gaslighting theme.
Reggie sat out the game.
Years later, Steinbrenner admitted in interviews that he had underestimated the backlash Billy’s exit would create.
“The fans loved Billy like family,” George said in a 1992 interview. “It was personal to them. He was their manager. The older Yankees fans loved him from his playing days and the younger fans loved him for helping get the Yankees back to the World Series. Either way, they loved him.”
George started second-guessing himself almost immediately. He was conflicted on several levels. There was the business side of the situation since Billy was a significant part of the Yankees brand in the late 1970s. As Morabito said, Billy was the best-known and best-liked personality on the team.
George was also feeling a level of personal guilt for his role in Billy’s unreasonable behavior. Like Billy, who would feel remorse for an outburst or a fistfight, George would feel guilt about his relentlessness and meddlesome ways.
From a public relations standpoint, the Yankees and George were taking an interminable beating and not just from the writers and fans. Mantle and Ford had already said that they would likely never return to Yankee Stadium. Others from the 1950s Yankees were chiming in with similar reactions.
And if all that wasn’t enough, deep down George had affection for Billy and worried for him personally.
“People always say George was bad for Billy,” Sapir said. “But he never meant to be. In his heart, George wanted what was best for Billy. He just couldn’t help himself sometimes. George and Billy were similar like that. They could each be their own worst enemy.
“But George would always say to me, ‘I know Billy is the best manager for the Yankees, maybe the best manager anywhere. Yeah, he drinks too much, but goddamn it, he always wins and he puts people in the seats.’”
In the hours before the Yankee Stadium fans were holding aloft signs in praise of their Everyman hero and bemoaning the loss of their beloved number 1, Steinbrenner had already hatched a plan to appease and thrill them.
On Tuesday, the twenty-fifth, the day after Billy’s resignation, George called Billy’s agent, Doug Newton, in New York. He wanted Billy to fly to New York for a meeting.
Sapir also got a call.
“What Billy did was wrong and he’s got to apologize and fix some things, but we’ve got to get him back,” George said.
Sapir agreed, then asked, “How are you going to get that done?”
Replied George, “I’ve got a plan.”
Did he ever.
Meanwhile, in Milwaukee, the Miller Brewing Company was stumped about what to do next. Two weeks earlier, it had filmed another one of its popular Miller Lite commercials with George and Billy. In the commercial, George and Billy are seated in a bar drinking Miller Lite, and the two start to argue about the merits of the beer. The argument, as scripted, ends with George firing Billy.
Everyone in the bar laughs.
The brewer had been very proud of the advertisement and informed the business press of its contents at the time of filming—provided the reporters not write about the commercial until just before it was scheduled to air in early August. Now what?
Bar patrons, even outside New York where Billy had a following, wouldn’t be laughing at George’s final line: “Billy, you’re fired.”
Miller issued a statement: “No air time is scheduled at this time.”
When Newton contacted Billy in Florida about George’s request, Billy was hesitant to leave. If George was going to offer him a front-office or scouting job, it could wait. Told that George wanted to talk about his eventual return as manager, maybe as soon as 1979, Billy flew to Newark airport and to escape notice stayed in a suburban hotel. The next day he met George in his suite in the Carlyle Hotel.
Steinbrenner spoke first.
“Billy, I woke up the day after you resigned and in my gut, I knew something wasn’t right,” George said. “It’s not right having you not manage the Yankees.”
Billy, of course, agreed.
George talked about how they were both strong-minded and opinionated. George said his weakness was that he liked to have a say in everything, and he believed that Billy’s weakness was that he didn’t like anyone butting into his business. It was, obviously, a bad combination.
“But if both of us could give a little,” George said, “maybe we wouldn’t have a problem.”
It sounded so simple. It would prove to be almost impossible. It went against their natural instincts, dispositions, and impulsive tendencies. But on this day, as they would so often in the next eleven years, neither would follow the path they promised. But like any great coupling of famed and flawed personalities, in the moments of joyful harmony, anything and everything seemed possible.
George had a stipulation. He wanted Billy to promise to cut down on his drinking. George suggested something he would suggest for years afterward: he wanted Billy to drink only beer.
In Number One, Billy said that George conceded that he, too, was drinking too much. But Billy put George off on his suggestion.
“I take a drink and I’ll get hot at times, but I’m not an alcoholic,” he wrote.
George again insisted that Billy should acknowledge publicly that he had to drink less. If Billy agreed, he soon forgot about it.
George’s plan included a bombshell. Saturday was Old Timers’ Day at Yankee Stadium, which always assured a sellout in the South Bronx ballpark. He wanted to sneak Billy into the stadium and then introduce him to the crowd during the Old Timers’ festivities as the once and future manager.
“The crowd will go wild; it’ll be tremendous,” said George, well aware that he would benefit from the reflected glow of Billy’s triumphant, unforeseen return.
But George had one other issue. He had not told Rosen or Lemon about any of his plans. They did not even know that Billy was in New York, let alone in George’s hotel suite. When Rosen was informed, he argued that Lemon deserved at least one full season. The notion that Billy would take over in 1980, not 1979, became the compromise. Lemon would become a front-office executive.
When this was relayed to Billy, he did not object. In the meantime, he said he would scout the Yankees’ minor league players, do some advance Major League scouting, and assist Lemon however he needed it. Billy went back into hiding in New York and New Jersey, waiting for Saturday.
He told almost no one.
As the retired Yankees and current Yankees arrived for Old Timers’ Day, the mood was light (the Yankees had won three of their last four games to cut Boston’s lead to eight games). About two hours before the introductions of the former players would begin, Billy was dropped off at a little-used gate near left field. A trench coat was wrapped around his shoulders and his head was covered by a floppy hat. Once inside, he was spirited to an auxiliary locker room, one used for concert acts or boxers at the stadium. Pete Sheehy met him and handed over his number 1 uniform. After he changed, Billy was hastily taken to a boiler room under the stands where he would hide until it was his turn to emerge from the dugout.
One of the few people who saw Billy heading for the boiler room was Willie Randolph.
“I was shocked and I said, ‘Billy, what are you doing here?’” Randolph said. “And he had this big grin and said, ‘You’ll see. But it’s a secret. Don’t tell anyone.’
“I remember walking back to the clubhouse thinking that this is a crazy place, man.”
The clandestine operation worked. Most of the old-timers were on the field, including Mantle, Berra, and Ford, when Yankee Stadium public address announcer Bob Sheppard leaned toward his press-box-level microphone. Sheppard began by explaining that Bob Lemon was going to be promoted to the front office in 1980, “to be general manager,” Sheppard said.
Examining the tape of the day, it is obvious that some of the old-timers on the field were puzzled by Sheppard’s digression from the usual itinerary—and by the news about Lemon’s status two seasons hence. The 1978 Yankees were sitting in the spacious dugout. They, too, were flummoxed.
Yankee Stadium in 1978 had a long, low-roofed, narrow tunnel that ran directly from the team’s clubhouse to the home plate side of the Yankees’ dugout. For those players sitting closest to the tunnel runway, at the top of the concrete steps there suddenly appeared a familiar visage. It was Billy in his home Yankees uniform.
Billy did not make eye contact and there was no time to say anything.
Sheppard went on, “. . . announcing at the same time, the manager of the Yankees in 1980, and hopefully for many years after that . . .”
Billy leaped out of the dugout, arriving on the field like an apparition.
“Number one!” Sheppard said as the center-field scoreboard flashed: BILLY MARTIN.
The crowd paused, flabbergasted. There was a brief millisecond of eerie quiet, then an eruption. It was not a typical sporting arena ovation. This was not applause springing from the anticipation of an at-bat or a long pass in a football game. It was so unforeseen, the cheering exploded like a thunderclap. After days of demoralizing hand-wringing about Billy’s fate, there in uniform, trotting onto the field and holding his cap aloft, was Billy.
The television cameras caught people hugging in the stands. Others jumped up and down in place.
Billy shook hands with the old-timers’ lineup in the middle of the diamond. The cheering went on for more than seven minutes. Every time the ovation began to fade out, Billy would doff his cap again to revive it—a move he had perfected over the years.
Sitting in the dugout, most players were grinning at the spectacle, though some looked astounded. A few shook their heads. One player appeared as if he might collapse on the spot.
“I felt like I was hit with a Jack Armstrong right hook,” Reggie later told reporters. “It felt like an out-of-body experience. Was I really seeing what I was seeing?”
In Becoming Mr. October, Reggie called it the worst day of his baseball life. He asked George why he wasn’t warned, at least told of the plan to ease the shock. Said Steinbrenner, “Well, I really didn’t have to, Reggie.”
Reggie also wrote that it would not have been a bad plan if Billy had gotten some help for his drinking in the year and a half before 1980.
At a brief news conference that followed the Old Timers’ Day festivities, Billy apologized to George for the “liar” comments.
“I did say it, I don’t know why I said it, I was angered at the time,” said Billy, who did n
ot apologize to Reggie or speak his name.
Steinbrenner stood at Billy’s side during the news conference. With a public relations coup unrivaled in American sports at the time, George had become a hero that day, too. As George absolved his once and future manager for his transgression at Chicago’s O’Hare airport six days earlier, he also knew that he was being forgiven all around Yankeeland.
“When he apologized to me it showed me that he was a man who realized that he had maybe made a small mistake,” George said. “And it was small in the total picture.”
Reporters were led to believe that Billy would announce his new drinking regimen: beer only. But when the subject was broached, Billy replied, “I’m not overdrinking. I’ve never been an overdrinker in my whole life. I like my beer and I like my Scotch like everybody else does. But I’ve never overdone, I think I always control myself well.”
“Have you promised Steinbrenner that you won’t drink for this next year and a half?” Billy was asked.
“Well, no, I haven’t,” Billy answered. “I like Miller Lite and I drink it a lot.”
The new Miller Lite beer commercial came out within days. George’s final line, “You’re fired,” was redubbed in editing so that George says, “You’re hired.”
Billy’s response in the original taping remained.
“Not again,” he says with a rueful laugh.
34
THE YANKEES WON THE game that followed the Old Timers’ Day ceremonies. In the locker room afterward, Nettles was asked for his reaction to a full day of twists and turns. He trotted out one of his favorite lines.
“Some kids want to play big-league baseball and other kids want to run away and join a circus,” Nettles said. “I’m lucky; I get to do both here.”
Billy Martin Page 40
