Billy Martin

by Bill Pennington

  Other ballplayers had noticed Jill, who was occasionally a stringer for the Associated Press. Billy got her to go out on a date with him.

  “I agreed to go but I knew I wasn’t going alone because the thought made me nervous,” Jill said, sitting at her summer horse farm in Massachusetts during one of multiple interviews in 2013. “I called my girlfriend Jodi and told her she was coming with me. We met Billy at the Stox Restaurant by Disneyland. We waited and waited and waited and he didn’t show up at first. So we were like, ‘Oh, this is great,’ and we headed for the door. And that’s when Billy walked in with George Mitterwald, who was a coach for him in those days. So off we went, back into the bar.

  “And we just hit it off immediately. Right from the start, we had the best time together. After that, whenever we could be, we were pretty much inseparable. Although obviously, he was in Oakland and I was in Southern California so it took some maneuvering.

  “I now know a lot more about what was going on, of course. But at that time, all I knew was that we had a good time. We laughed. He was romantic and sent flowers and presents. He was the best dancer I ever knew, and when he would twirl me across the dance floor, it was breathtaking.

  “He made me feel like I was the most special person in the world.”

  But Jill was not like any other woman who had ever taken a serious, years-long twirl in Billy’s life. For starters, she came from a family well versed in the ways of big-time sports, and she was acquainted with wealth. Her father, Russell Guiver, ran a mortgage company and was a real estate developer. Russell’s brother, Harold Guiver, became a sports agent representing many NFL players. After a few years, he was named a vice president of the Los Angeles Rams. Through her father and uncle, Jill grew accustomed to attending every major sporting event in Southern California—she recalled, for example, briefly meeting Billy at the 1977 World Series through Frank Sinatra, who was acquainted with her family.

  “I was very familiar with all of that stuff,” she said.

  Jill was athletic, competing in the horse show circuit from a young age. The breeding and training of horses has remained a lifelong vocation and avocation.

  After graduating from high school, Jill attended some community colleges but was soon drawn to photography. In the late 1970s, she got part-time jobs as a photographer, landing a gig as a stringer for the Los Angeles Times and other news outlets. She also completed her training and apprenticeship to be a flight attendant for Golden West Airlines. In July 1980, a friend of a friend asked her to work the game in Anaheim where she met Billy.

  Soon, she was hopscotching the continent to be with Billy, although exclusively on the road. She knew that Billy was in another relationship in Oakland. She says she did not know how serious that relationship was.

  “He told me there was this young girl and she had a family from the Bronx that he was helping out and so there was this girl he was seeing and that it was going to end,” Jill said. “It’s not a great excuse but that’s what he told me.”

  For the rest of 1980 and into 1981, Billy saw Jill at A’s away games and during well-timed off-season visits to Southern California. Billy saw Heather when he was at home with the A’s.

  Billy’s double life was well known to the A’s community.

  “He had two steady girlfriends basically,” said Sapir. “He helped support them in two homes—Heather in Blackhawk, Jill in Newport Beach in Southern California.”

  Sandy Alderson, the current general manager of the New York Mets who has had a long career as a respected baseball administrator, started his time in baseball as the A’s general counsel in 1981. Alderson, who had graduated from Harvard Law School five years earlier, recalled how Billy felt he had higher moral standards than some of his players who would have one-night stands with random women while traveling. Billy proudly explained to Alderson that he kept to one woman on the road. And one at home.

  Billy did have to jump through elaborate hoops to maintain his dual lives. In the off-season, he sometimes told Heather he was flying to two cities—say, Denver and Kansas City—for speaking appearances when he was actually spending the week in California with Jill. Returning to the Oakland airport after his trip south, he would tip skycaps $20 or $30 so they would give him Denver and Kansas City baggage tags, which he would place on his luggage after he removed the airline tags from Southern California.

  Then he would head back to the Blackhawk house. Once in a while, someone might tell Heather that they saw Billy with another woman, a sexy blonde. If Heather asked Billy about it, he would say that the woman was friends with Eddie Sapir or dating the bachelor Mickey Morabito, since one or the other usually traveled with Billy.

  “The whole thing was kind of dangerous and crazy,” Sapir said. “And I told him that at some point, but you could only advise Billy so much on his personal life. You couldn’t tell him what to do.

  “He lived day to day, and in his mind, he wasn’t doing anything wrong. Both of his girlfriends were happy. So was he.”

  Jill, who gave rare, brief interviews in 1990 and then did not speak to any reporter, biographer, or baseball historian about Billy for the next twenty-three years, agreed to speak at length for this book. Asked if she was indeed happy in 1980–81 even though she knew Billy had another relationship, she nodded her head in agreement.

  “Granted, I didn’t know the whole story, especially what was to come,” she said. “I’m not proud of that time. But he was who I was in love with. So if he said he was going to make it good, that’s all that mattered to me. And he did make it good.

  “We had a great thing. I can’t explain it to other people. I can’t condone everything he did but in my particular circumstances, it worked out to be the correct thing to do.”

  Billy’s family did not like either woman. Heather rarely, if ever, set foot in the old West Berkeley neighborhood. Jill was not welcome there.

  The writers covering the A’s saw more of Jill than of Heather and often blamed her for his disposition day to day.

  “He fought with her,” Kit Stier, the most veteran A’s beat writer, said of Jill. “He’d come into the ballpark on the road and he’d be in a bad mood and all the guys would go, ‘Jill’s here.’”

  Said another writer, Bruce Jenkins, “You’d see Jill in the hotel bars with him and in public and Heather was sort of this mysterious figure.”

  Heather Ervolino, whom others in Billy’s circle described as someone who always tried to avoid the spotlight, has virtually never talked to reporters about her life with Billy. She refused to assist or engage with previous Billy biographers and has spurned interview requests since she and Billy separated in the mid-1980s. Heather was cooperative at various times during the research of this book and helped verify facts in the chronology of her time with Billy—important assistance since many of the details of their relationship are shrouded by misinformation.

  Remarried for several years now, with children she raised in the East Bay, Heather said she did not want to revisit in detail the soap opera–like conditions of her existence in the early 1980s. Of her time with Billy in that period, Heather preferred to recall what drew her to Billy in the first place.

  “He had a great heart,” she said. “People always associate Billy with his temper, but he had a great heart as well.”

  Her memories of Billy are, interestingly, of his loyalty and passion.

  “Billy was very loyal to his true friends and would do anything for them,” she said. “And baseball was always his greatest love and passion.”

  Of the other many convoluted or irregular details of her life with Billy, Heather, who has stayed in touch with many of Billy’s friends, called them “something from a long, long time ago.”

  Billy’s son, Billy Joe, spent ample time with Heather from 1980 to 1984.

  “I was prepared not to like her because this was a woman who came into my father’s life after my mother,” he said in 2014. “But I became a big fan of Heather’s. She was good for my fat
her and I know she loved him very much.”

  But since Billy Joe and Heather were not far apart in age, it led to some unusual moments.

  “I remember going to the mall with her friends and flirting with all of them,” he said. “I remember that Heather and I could tell people that we were brother and sister and they would believe us. We could tell them we were boyfriend and girlfriend and people would believe us.

  “The only thing they wouldn’t believe is if I told them that Heather was my stepmother.”

  Billy Joe called Heather “a pleaser.”

  “She wanted to make people happy, especially in my father’s sphere,” he continued. “If she found out what kind of food you liked, she would have it in the kitchen the next time you came over to the Blackhawk house. She was very mothering.

  “But she was also very shy by nature. My father had lots of dinners and things to go to and Heather did not want to go to those. It didn’t fit her personality.”

  She would stay home.

  “And the whole deal with Heather and Jill? Well, that was just crazy. I don’t know what to say. My father was a connoisseur of women.”

  If Billy’s off-the-field life was a bit nontraditional, when the 1981 season resumed in early August, everything in his professional life was business as usual. The A’s continued to play well. They did not keep the pace they had in the first half, but none of the four first-half “winners” in Major League Baseball were also “winners” in the second half of the strike-shortened season.

  Billy did not take some of the losing well. After one defeat, his A’s were treated to the always-memorable scene of one enraged, 160-pound manager flipping over a long table of party platters and assorted food and refreshments.

  “He did it with a lot of power, man—guys were wiping mayo and mustard off their gloves, shoes, and uniforms for the next two days,” said Zagaris, the team photographer. “But he got their attention.”

  In the inaugural American League Divisional Series, the Yankees squeaked past the Milwaukee Brewers in five games while the A’s authoritatively swept the Kansas City Royals. Heading into the AL Championship Series, another best-of-five series that began in New York, the A’s looked like the team to beat. Steinbrenner was worried and jealous. He had already dumped Gene Michael as manager, on September 6, and replaced him with Bob Lemon. Secretly, George told one and all that the A’s stunning success made him question his decision to part with Billy over the marshmallow salesman fight.

  The Yankees still had the edge in depth and experience, two things the A’s lacked. But the focus, to no one’s surprise, was the obvious story line: Billy’s upstart A’s against Steinbrenner and the owner’s post-Billy, retooled Yankees.

  “If Billy and all the ex-Yankees beat him,” Oakland’s Jim Spencer, one of the ex-Yankees, said of Steinbrenner, “I think George would be especially humiliated.”

  But the pressure on Billy was evident, too. He had willed and nurtured his young team to this moment, and he was expected to somehow steel them through the intensity of the playoff environment—or steal a victory or two. But playoff baseball is a different game from the one played in the regular season. With no long-term strategy concerns, managers try to maximize every situation with pitching matchups, and the games tend to be close affairs where a team’s pitching diversity matters more than ever.

  With sturdy starting pitchers, the A’s felt confident. But in a playoff series, a team’s bullpen is almost always tested as well. Complete games by a starting pitcher are rare. Since 1970, fewer than a handful of teams have advanced to the World Series—or won a World Series—without a stud in the bullpen or a versatile relief corps to complement the starters.

  Billy was putting all his faith in his young, homegrown starters because the penny-poor A’s had a ragtag band of castoffs in the bullpen. In their bullpen, the Yankees still had the Hall of Famer-to-be, Gossage.

  “We’re young but we’re also the future of this league—and maybe the future starts now,” Billy said on the eve of the first game.

  Maybe, but first someone had to rid Mike Norris of some typical youthful jitters as he made a start before a packed Yankee Stadium crowd and national television audience. Unfortunately for the A’s, there was no time for nervousness. The veteran Yankees pounced first.

  In the bottom of the first, Norris walked two batters. A single loaded the bases with two outs.

  Pitching to Graig Nettles, Norris quickly got two strikes. Knowing that the left-handed-hitting Nettles liked to slap two-strike pitches the other way—lofting them over the shortstop’s head—Billy moved Henderson in two steps in left field. Norris’s delivery was on the outside half of the plate, and Nettles went to left field with it, but he did not flick his bat at it; he ripped a hard line drive.

  Henderson raced back, but the ball just eluded his grasp and rolled into Yankee Stadium’s cavernous left-center field, often called Death Valley. Nettles’s double emptied the bases and the Yankees had a 3–0 lead.

  Norris and reliever Tom Underwood did not give up another run, but the A’s batters scored just once against Yankees starter Tommy John and the Yankees’ fearsome bullpen. The Yankees won 3–1.

  It was up to McCatty, who led the AL with a 2.33 ERA, to get the A’s even in the second game. But McCatty, a dominant, tough-nosed pitcher in 1980–81, was winless in five career starts against the Yankees. In the second game, he did not survive five innings against the Yankees’ bats.

  It was Billy’s worst nightmare as he had to go to his inexperienced and undertalented bullpen early. McCatty left and four A’s relievers proceeded to give up thirteen hits, including five straight after McCatty exited. The Yankees’ newest star and the league’s highest-paid free agent, Dave Winfield, had a stellar game offensively and defensively in a 13–3 Yankees rout.

  The series returned to Oakland, where a sellout crowd greeted the A’s. Before the game started, the circular stadium was in full throat, performing a new ballpark phenomenon: the Wave. Fans had also brought drums to bang and horns to blare. It was a carnival atmosphere, and when Billy took the lineup cards to home plate, he got a standing ovation. He waved his cap and his arms, encouraging more of the intimidating noise and tumult.

  The A’s got the steady starting pitching they needed from Matt Keough, Billy’s pet project. Then, Oakland’s first inning started promisingly with Henderson singling and stealing second. Dwayne Murphy, the second half of the A’s one-two punch at the top of the lineup, was at the plate. But after Murphy’s second swing at a pitch from Yankees starter Dave Righetti, Murphy collapsed to one knee, writhing in pain. He had strained a rib cage oblique muscle. Within an hour Murphy would be in an Oakland hospital getting his injury treated.

  The A’s did not score in the first inning and a tense, scoreless game ensued. Righetti, the AL Rookie of the Year, was matching Keough pitch for pitch.

  In the bottom of the fifth, Henderson swung and missed a pitch to strike out. He went back to the dugout grasping his right wrist in pain. A strain, or worse, was suspected. Henderson left the game to ice his wrist.

  Three batters later, in the top of the sixth inning, Willie Randolph, Billy’s earliest protégé with the Yankees, lashed a solo home run to left field. Keough kept the Yankees in check until the ninth inning, when Nettles contributed his second three-run double. The Yankees swept the series with a 4–0 victory.

  The raucous, rowdy Oakland–Alameda County Stadium crowd went silent, the air deflating from an inspiring two-year run that had ended quickly and ingloriously. The Yankees were heading for their fourth World Series in six seasons. Nettles, who had also made three spectacular plays in the field, was named the Most Valuable Player of the series. At a Yankees party in Oakland after the game, Nettles got into an argument with Reggie, whom he never liked. Nettles punched Reggie in the head, knocking him to the ground.

  Among the Yankees, it was said that Reggie was the only thing Nettles dropped that October.

  As the unexpecte
d and thorough sweep was being digested afterward, both teams were gracious; Piniella visited the A’s locker room to hug Billy.

  “That man taught us how to win and I wanted him to know that,” Piniella said.

  Keough approached Billy in the losing clubhouse and apologized.

  “I’m sorry,” he said.

  “Nah,” Billy said. “You did good.”

  “Not good enough.”

  Later, at his locker, Keough said he was most upset for his manager.

  “That guy got us here; that guy made it happen,” he said. “I know how much this meant to him. So it hurts not being able to help him. I know he’s very disappointed.”

  It would be more accurate to say that Billy was anguished. It was his third defeat in five appearances as a manager in the AL Championship Series.

  Reporters found him afterward, alone in his office.

  “No excuses,” he said in a low, barely audible voice as he sat behind his desk and in front of a broad wall adorned with photos of Casey Stengel and other mementos of his career. “They beat us. We battled. They just did better.”

  He looked around the room, then answered a few more questions, lamenting the injuries to Murphy and Henderson and crediting the Yankees. Finally he said, “I’ve got nothing else to say. That’s what happened. They beat us.”

  Billy got up and started to unbutton his game jersey. Then he jerked the jersey from his shoulders and in one swift, fierce, angry motion hurled it into a corner. He sank back into his swiveling office chair, his back still turned as he slouched forward and stared at the floor between his feet.

  Billy Martin, a World Series hero in baseball’s Golden Era and a world champion manager just four years earlier, would never appear in another postseason baseball game.

  38

  THE A’S LOSS IN the American League Championship Series did not diminish Billy’s star in the Bay Area or the rest of the nation. He was, in fact, hotter than ever. Billy Ball was an incorporated trademark with most of the profits divided between the A’s and Billy, although the team got the lion’s share. But Billy did a host of television commercials in the Bay Area. And he went to New York to act in two more Miller Lite beer commercials. His fame had not waned in the least.