Billy Martin

by Bill Pennington

  Most players shrugged their shoulders and moved on. As Lou Piniella said thirty-five years later with a hearty laugh, “Look, George always felt there was a time and place for Billy to manage the Yankees. That time and place just kept changing.”

  Randolph felt similarly.

  “To us at the time, it was like, ‘Well, that’s good news, now we don’t have to feel badly about Billy anymore. It’s resolved,’” he said. “We’ll see him later.”

  But 1980 seemed a long way off.

  Billy left his news conference and watched the game in George’s box. Using a Yankees office phone, he called many friends and family. Mantle and Ford took him out for a night of celebration in Manhattan. At about 4:00 a.m., the New York Post placed the trio at P. J. Clarke’s, a foremost Manhattan saloon since the late 1800s that was, and is, a place of both élan and rank unsophistication. P. J. Clarke’s, for example, was where Jackie Onassis took her children, John Jr. and Caroline, to lunch on Saturdays in the 1970s. They got the signature dish, a hamburger that the 1950s singer and Clarke’s regular Nat King Cole dubbed the “Cadillac of burgers.” Sinatra and Johnny Carson were regulars at the bar on Third Avenue and 55th Street, rubbing shoulders with office workers from the East Side neighborhood. The saloon was big enough to fit maybe seventy patrons but small enough that every imbiber was leaning on or wedged next to someone else. There was a long, deep dining room set back from the large picture window overlooking Third Avenue. George Steinbrenner frequented the small, cramped bar and noisy, more spacious dining room in the back, too. In the 2000s, Steinbrenner became a minority owner of the joint.

  But on this night, Mantle, Ford, and Billy—and the New York Post reporters—knew that P. J. Clarke’s had a private upstairs dining room where certain patrons could go after the bar closed at 4:00 a.m. And that’s where the group, which included about ten young women according to the Post, went and remained until close to 6:00 a.m.

  Billy finally exited into a waiting limousine.

  “The rising sun cast an added glow on the golden blond tresses of his companion as they disappeared into the car,” the Post wrote.

  Billy remained in New York and New Jersey for several days thereafter. He was trying to extend one of the happiest days of his life.

  “That afternoon at Old Timers’ Day was really a shining moment for my father,” his son, Billy Joe, said. “Maybe the shining moment.”

  In August of 1978 Billy was something even he had never dreamed of—he was a resurrected Yankee hero, something that had never happened before. He had endured a proverbial Yankee death and came back to wave his cap at a sold-out Yankee Stadium again. Other Yankees, like his mentor Casey Stengel, had returned late in life to doff their caps in ceremony and tribute, but for Billy this was no farewell tour. Billy had a Yankee future.

  He recognized the reprieve. He never felt better.

  For starters, in the love/hate Billy-George-Reggie triangle, Billy believed he had won again. In the end, George had taken his side. Yes, Billy had to step away for a while, but that would calm his nerves and settle his stomach. At the moment, he felt nothing could go wrong.

  The 1978 season continued, although on August 9, the dynamic inside the team’s clubhouse was altered significantly when each of the New York City newspapers ceased to publish because of an employees’ strike. Some people think the newspaper strike, which lasted until November 5, saved the Yankees’ 1978 season. There was no Internet, and with only a few New Jersey and wire service reporters working the locker room before and after games, the atmosphere in the Yankees’ clubhouse was considerably lighter. The remaining reporters had jobs to do, too, but without the competitive intensity of the New York tabloids, whose desire to outdo one another ratcheted up the importance of every missed fly ball or budding clubhouse controversy, the locker room was a more placid place.

  It also did not hurt that the Yankees were winning at a torrid pace. By August 15, the Red Sox’ lead was down to seven games.

  “Bob Lemon was very calm and that’s what we needed,” Piniella said. “You know, change for the sake of change works sometimes. And we did not have to come to the ballpark knowing there would be all these George, Reggie, and Billy questions.

  “What we needed was some peace from that.”

  Said Roy White, “We also got healthy. Thurman’s knees were good enough that he was behind the plate every game. We saw Boston struggling and feeling the pressure. They had a history of losing late leads back then. We became a baseball team chasing another baseball team and that’s all there was to it for a change.”

  On September 7, the Yankees went to Fenway Park for a four-game series with the Red Sox’ lead at just four games.

  “You could see the tension in the Red Sox players’ faces before the game,” said Randolph, who had three hits and five RBIs in the first game, which was a 15–3 Yankees victory. “They were worried about choking away a fourteen-game lead and I didn’t blame them for feeling that way.”

  The Yankees won the next game on a Friday night, 13–2, with Reggie and Piniella hitting home runs. On Saturday afternoon and before a national television audience, Guidry faced off against the Boston ace, Dennis Eckersley.

  A scoreless game went into the top of the fourth when the Yankees began a two-out rally. The Boston defense collapsed. Yastrzemski made an error, Eckersley threw a wild pitch, and Fisk allowed a passed ball. Seven Yankees runs scored. Cruising along with that lead, Guidry went the rest of the way to improve his record to 21–2 with a shutout.

  By Sunday, with the Red Sox all but defeated, the Yankees left a farewell calling card—a workmanlike 7–4 victory that gave them a share of the AL East title. The four-game series became known as “the Boston Massacre.”

  But as decisive as the Yankees’ sweep was—they outscored the Red Sox 42–9—the teams battled throughout September. Boston eventually played the role of the underdog and made their own dramatic comeback, winning on the final day of the regular season as the Yankees lost at home. Those results left a tie atop the AL East standings, forcing a one-game playoff at Fenway.

  Billy did not attend the Fenway game. Like much of the rest of the sporting world, Billy watched on television as the game interrupted a sunny but crisp Monday afternoon in early October. Playing the game at night in prime time apparently never occurred to the television networks or baseball officials. Workers from New York to Boston stopped in offices or left for the local saloon to watch a tense game the Red Sox led 2–0 heading into the seventh.

  Then Bucky Dent lofted a soft fly ball into the net above Fenway’s Green Monster for a three-run home run. With Fenway Park silent and shocked, the next batter, Mickey Rivers, walked to home plate. Rivers had loaned his bat to Dent before the home run because he said it was “lucky”—perhaps Rivers’s best gambling hunch. Now, Rivers worked a walk from the stunned ex-Yankees pitcher Mike Torrez. A few pitches later, Rivers stole second base.

  Munson doubled to make the score 4–2. Reggie, who was the designated hitter and not playing right field, added a long home run into the center-field bleachers for a 5–2 lead, an insurance run the Yankees needed when Boston closed the deficit to 5–4 but could not finish a late rally against Rich Gossage. Carl Yastrzemski, the thirty-nine-year-old pride of New England, took the game’s final swing, popping up to Nettles.

  The Yankees were in their third successive American League Championship Series, and after vanquishing the Kansas City Royals yet again—this time in four games—they were once again playing for Major League Baseball’s championship.

  Billy watched the 1978 World Series in Texas with his son. “I remember rooting for the Dodgers against the Yankees in the first game of the ’78 World Series,” Billy Joe said. “And as soon as I did, my father said, ‘Hey, pard, what are you doing?’

  “And I said, ‘I’m not rooting for the Yankees; they ran you out of there.’ And he said, ‘It doesn’t matter; we never root against the Yankees. Besides, those are my guys out there.’ S
o we rooted like hell for the Yankees.”

  The Yankees again won in six games; Reggie hit 2 home runs and drove in 8 runs. In the twelve games of the 1977 and 1978 World Series, Reggie had hit 7 homers and driven in 16 runs.

  In early November, a Minnesota reporter caught up with Billy at the Chinese restaurant of Billy’s longtime friend Howard Wong. Billy had befriended Wong in the 1960s because Wong’s large and popular Bloomington restaurant was close to the Twins’ ballpark and to his home. Though sixteen years older than Billy, Wong connected with Billy and shared his interest in hunting and fishing.

  “Bob Lemon did a great job,” Billy told the reporter. “I always knew that was a championship team.”

  Asked about his baseball future, Billy said that all he had planned was a hunting trip to the Dakotas with Wong. Then the two men were due in Reno, Nevada, where Billy was going to do another old Minnesota buddy a favor. It sounded rather uneventful, and the hunting trip was.

  The Reno visit proved to be an errand that nearly turned Billy’s grand and spectacular Old Timers’ Day resurrection—one of the most entertaining moments in 1970s sports history—into a sardonic footnote. While the Reno trip was action packed, many of the details have never been fully reported and the established narrative of what happened is incomplete.

  There is no disputing the basis for Billy’s trip to Reno. Bill Musselman, a volatile, fiercely competitive basketball coach at the University of Minnesota in the early 1970s, became friends with Billy through Howard Wong. Musselman was a major personality in the Twin Cities after he led Minnesota to its first Big Ten basketball title in fifty-three years. But by the mid-1970s, Musselman had bounced around various pro coaching jobs. In late 1978, he was head coach of the Reno Bighorns of the Western Basketball Association. Musselman asked Billy to appear at the Bighorns’ opening home game on November 10 to give the team a boost at the gate.

  Billy agreed to come, pose for some courtside pictures, and sign autographs. Once there, he said a few words over the public address system to a crowd of about 3,500, waved to the stands, and left the basketball court.

  Billy thought his job was done. Here is where versions of the oft-repeated narrative begin to diverge. It has always been written that Billy told Bighorns officials in advance that he would not do any media interviews during his trip. That may or may not be true, but there is no doubt that the team promoted Billy’s appearance in advance of his arrival. Bighorns officials also arranged for an interview with the local paper to maximize the publicity for the team.

  Ray Hagar, a twenty-five-year-old sportswriter for the Reno Evening Gazette and the Nevada State Journal who spent most of his time covering high school sports, drew the assignment to talk to Billy.

  “The sports editor knew I followed the Yankees then because they were like America’s team—the most famous group of athletes in the country,” Hagar said in a 2014 interview. “I think the sports editor gave me the assignment as a reward.”

  Years later, Billy wrote that he went to a bar in the Bighorns’ arena and Hagar showed up wearing a Yankees T-shirt. Billy said he thought Hagar was a fan. As Billy told New York reporters later, Hagar asked some general questions and Billy answered them. After several minutes, Billy said, Hagar’s questions became more assertive and he started taking notes.

  Realizing Hagar was a reporter, Billy got angry and reached for Hagar’s notes, saying he never agreed to an interview. Billy said that Hagar brushed Billy away, and when Howard Wong reached for the notes as well, Hagar shoved Wong, who was then about sixty-five years old. Billy said he punched Hagar to defend Wong.

  Since Hagar and his newspaper later filed civil suits and criminal complaints, Hagar did not say much afterward. He did have his picture taken with a cut lip, a swollen face, and an ugly shiner—a garish, hard-to-miss black eye.

  The resolution of the court cases that came six months later—a madcap settlement straight out of a Barnum & Bailey circus—did little to clear up the actual details of the situation. It has not helped that Hagar refused to talk about what happened for the past thirty years.

  But in a 2014 interview, Hagar, then a sixty-one-year-old political columnist in Reno, said he had come to terms with his Billy Martin moment and was willing to tell his side of the story. And he also revealed a previously unreported detail: there was a spark to the fight, a heretofore latent but incendiary flash point that emanated from Steinbrenner’s office 2,700 miles from Reno.

  “I did not show up in a T-shirt; I put on a nice shirt and a tie,” he said, noting that he had a post-fight picture of himself in that attire. “I was an intimidated kid. The most famous person I had interviewed before that was the Douglas County High School coach. I had a clipboard with a list of questions and I approached Billy after he left the basketball court and introduced myself.

  “He was wasted. Just shitfaced and he told me to go fuck myself.”

  Hagar said he went to a bank of pay phones—a 1970s reference if there ever was one—and called his office. He told them what happened and added that he was not sure he should even interview someone so drunk.

  “My boss said, ‘Sure, we’ll interview the manager of the Yankees the next time he comes to Reno,’” Hagar said. “And then he added, ‘Which will be, like, never.’

  “He told me to go back and get the interview. And I said, ‘Oh, shit.’”

  By this time, Billy was in a bar by the arena entrance. Hagar returned to Billy’s side and explained that there must have been some misunderstanding because he thought the interview was prearranged.

  “And I told him that my boss was on me to get something from him,” Hagar said. “And he said, ‘OK, kid, I’ll give you the interview.’

  “So I’m going through my list of questions and he’s answering them, talking about Yankee pride and how he will stress the Yankee Way when he comes back as manager in 1980. And he says the Yankees will keep winning because they have veteran, proven players.

  “So I thought that was an opening to ask about Sparky Lyle.”

  Before leaving his newspaper office that day, Hagar had seen on the Associated Press sports ticker—the equivalent of the modern ESPN bottom-of-the-screen newswire—that Lyle had just been traded to the Texas Rangers along with catcher Mike Heath and three other minor league players for four Rangers, including a nineteen-year-old pitcher named Dave Righetti.

  Lyle was one of Billy’s favorites, the bullpen warhorse of Billy’s 1977 championship team. Heath was also a personal pet. Billy saw Heath as the likely successor to Munson.

  “I figured that Billy already knew about the Lyle trade so I asked him about it as he sat there,” Hagar said. “And then I saw that he didn’t know what I was talking about.”

  This part of the story has never been in the established narrative. But Hagar had written down all the trade details with the other players’ names and he rattled them off. Billy was incredulous, then incensed, both at the trade of Lyle and Heath, and because he had been left completely out of the negotiations.

  “You could tell he was really pissed,” Hagar said. “He didn’t want anything to do with me anymore. He was cursing and steaming mad. He was stewing over the trade and getting angrier. But I had other questions. My next one was whether he could get along with Reggie Jackson when he came back in 1980.

  “And he just kind of lost it. He started into this broadside about how writers were always trying to twist what he said to get him in trouble. He started cursing out the New York writers by name. Then he said to me, ‘I’m taking away this interview.’ And he asked for my notes.”

  Billy reached for Hagar’s clipboard, which the reporter put behind his back.

  “I wasn’t giving him my notes,” Hagar said in 2014. “Can you imagine how embarrassing it would have been to go back to the office with no notes?”

  But Billy wanted those notes and was trying to get at them.

  “Billy was agitated, from the Lyle trade mostly I think, and finally with my hands still b
ehind my back I said, ‘I’m not giving you my notes,’” Hagar said.

  It was like a line in the sand. There is a long historical record of how confrontations proceed when someone draws a line in the sand before Billy.

  “I’ve had a lot of years to think about this,” Hagar continued. “And I really think at that moment he thought I was being insolent. I was defying him. He just gave me this look.

  “He paused and then hauled off and hit me in the face.”

  Hagar’s knees buckled and his first thought was, “How did I screw up my first interview with a famous person?”

  And what about the oft-repeated claim that he shoved Wong in the scuffle?

  “That’s a total fucking lie,” Hagar said. “I was an awed, overwhelmed kid. I wasn’t going to push anyone.”

  Various parties jumped between Billy and Hagar, although not completely.

  “Things calmed down for a few seconds and then Billy popped me again,” Hagar said. “This time, I went flying over a table like in some fight you’d see in a Western movie. I got up, found my notes, and walked out.”

  The fight has never been described as a two-rounder.

  Hagar went to the hospital where he was treated for a cut lip, three chipped teeth, and a gash above his eye. He filed a criminal complaint of battery.

  Billy spoke to several New York reporters the next day. He said he was set up. And he refused to talk about the Lyle trade.

  “I didn’t know him, never punched a reporter before,” Billy said of Hagar. “Why would I want to fight him? I threw it because I felt he was going to punch me.”

  When the gruesome picture of Ray Hagar’s face was printed in newspapers across the land on November 11—Hagar said people sent him copies of the picture from Asian and European newspapers—not many people believed Billy was the victim in the fracas, or had been threatened.

  One of the nonbelievers was George Steinbrenner. Billy’s contract—he was still operating on the one that expired in 1979—had a prominent “good boy” clause. Billy was not allowed to embarrass the Yankees with his personal conduct.