by Bill Madden
“All I’m gonna say is, he better win,” said Steinbrenner.
“We will,” said Sapir, “Billy will be completely exonerated, and when he is, Billy is your manager.”
While the original agreement Steinbrenner and Newton hastily worked out for the ’78 Old-Timers’ Day announcement called for Martin to return as manager in 1980, the Yankees’ lackluster performance in the first half of 1979 prompted Steinbrenner to make the move even earlier. At the June 15 trading deadline, he called Rosen to tell him he’d decided to make the change. By this time, given the effect that losing his son had obviously had on Lemon, Rosen reluctantly conceded that his friend probably needed to be relieved—as much from managing as from Steinbrenner. On June 18, the Yankees announced that Martin was returning as Yankees manager and that Lemon would be reassigned to scouting from his home in Long Beach, California. “I think the season can still be turned around,” Steinbrenner told the beat reporters, “and Billy is the guy to do it. Last year I needed someone 180 degrees from what Billy was. This year I need someone 180 degrees different than what Lemon was.”
If there was any question that Martin was once again Steinbrenner’s man, it was confirmed a few days later when the owner was asked about the differences that presumably still existed between Billy and Reggie Jackson.
“No man is indispensable,” Steinbrenner said. “You can’t ask a manager to crawl on his knees. Certainly Billy has said all the right things [about Jackson] and done all the right things.” The next day, the Yankees’ press office issued a statement that said the club “felt strongly Martin had done everything expected of him in his effort to reconcile differences with Jackson and that it is clearly up to Jackson now.”
Then, on June 28, another sign that Martin was in charge: Steinbrenner ordered Rosen to once again call Bob Kennedy and the Cubs about getting back Bobby Murcer. Martin had been told the Cubs were looking to dump Murcer, whom they’d obtained from the Giants a couple of years earlier. Though Murcer had failed to realize the promise he’d shown early on with the Yankees, and the Yankees would have to take on his $320,000 salary, Martin viewed him as a left-handed power-hitting alternative to Jackson.
“Much as I was opposed to getting Murcer on principle—I didn’t like Billy’s motives and I didn’t see how he was going to help us—George didn’t care about the money and saw it as a popular move with the fans,” Rosen told me in 2007. “Plus, Bob really wanted to get rid of Murcer’s contract and I’m sure he viewed it as payback to me for that Holtzman–Ron Davis deal.”
Martin’s reemergence into power with Steinbrenner troubled Rosen greatly. He knew that over the years there had been too much animosity between them to work hand in hand now, and Martin felt the same way. Things came to a head between Martin and Rosen on July 12. Martin was with the team in Seattle when, early that day, he was informed that the Yankees’ game the next night with the California Angels in Anaheim had been switched from 8:30 P.M. to 5:30 because ABC had decided to make it their Friday-night game of the week. Ordinarily, it might not have seemed like any big deal, except that Nolan Ryan was scheduled to pitch for the Angels, and the twilight would make the hard-throwing right-hander’s 100-mile-per-hour fastballs even harder to hit.
Martin blamed Rosen for allowing the time change. “How am I supposed to get this team back in the race when the team president was making decisions like this?” he said in a phone call to Steinbrenner in Tampa.
Steinbrenner hung up the phone and immediately called Rosen, who explained that he’d sent a memo to him about the time change along with a copy of the TV schedule two months earlier. Steinbrenner, however, wasn’t placated. He quickly arranged a conference call between himself, Rosen, Baseball Commissioner Bowie Kuhn and American League president Lee MacPhail in which he insisted the game start at 8:30 and threatened to have the Yankees refuse to take the field at 5:30.
Kuhn and MacPhail reiterated that the time change had been made months ago and that ABC had a contractual right to pick up the game—which was what Rosen had been telling him all along. Steinbrenner relented somewhat.
“I don’t know, I guess we have no choice but to play at 5:30, but I’ve got to find out about this,” he grumbled. “My people lied to me.”
Martin’s fears turned out to be justified: Ryan took a no-hitter into the ninth inning before settling for a one-hit, 6–1 victory.
Rosen, meanwhile, took exception to being called a liar and asked Steinbrenner to stay on the line when Kuhn and MacPhail hung up.
When they were alone on the line, Steinbrenner said, “What do you want, Al?”
“I quit, George.”
“What are you talking about?”
“You heard me, George. Nobody ever calls me a liar and I don’t do something about it. I’m finished.”
“What are you talking about, Al? Are you crazy? I didn’t say that.”
“You did say it, George, and it hurts deeply, and I’m just not going to tolerate it.”
“Oh, c’mon, Al,” Steinbrenner said. “Look, I’m coming into New York next week after the All-Star Game. Wait till I get there and we’ll talk about it Wednesday.”
But Rosen was tired of Steinbrenner; tired of the tirades, tired of being forced to make trades he didn’t want to make, tired of dealing with Martin and tired of the New York Yankees, a team he’d hated his whole life. That Sunday, before the All-Star Game in Seattle, Daily News columnist Dick Young was waiting to check in at the hotel where the baseball officials and media were all staying when he overheard the conversation between Yankees general manager Cedric Tallis and the desk clerk.
“Is Mr. Rosen checking in with you?” the clerk asked.
“No,” said Tallis. “You can cancel his reservation. He won’t be coming.”
“What’s the story with Rosen?” Young asked Tallis.
“Oh, he’s just taking a couple of days off,” Tallis said.
Young instinctively sensed something was fishy. Rosen, after all, was a baseball man, and baseball men didn’t miss the camaraderie of the All-Star Game, especially when his close friend Bob Lemon would be managing the American League by virtue of having won the pennant the year before. Young went up to his room and immediately put in a call to Rosen, whereupon he got the real story. In the next day’s paper, Young wrote: “Turns out Al Rosen is taking more than a few days off from his job as president of the Yankees. He’s taking forever off. Unless, that is, George Steinbrenner can talk him out of quitting.”
Steinbrenner certainly tried.
He was sitting behind his desk when Rosen walked into his office that Wednesday morning and greeted his old friend warmly.
“Okay, Al,” he said, “so what’s the matter?”
“I told you, George. I quit.”
Steinbrenner reached into the right-hand drawer of his desk and pulled out a standard major league contract.
“You’ve gotta be out of your mind,” he said. “Here, take this and fill in whatever numbers and for how many years you want.”
“No.”
“Wait a minute,” Steinbrenner said. “You mean to say you’re turning down a million dollars a year for life?”
“George,” Rosen said, “we’re two very competitive guys, but one of us is the boss, who’s always right. I’d rather be your friend than to work for you, because our friendship won’t survive.”
“I don’t believe I’m hearing this,” Steinbrenner said. “I’m calling your wife so that she can hear it.”
A minute later, Steinbrenner had Rita Rosen on speakerphone.
“Hello Rita,” he said. “I want you to know that your husband is crazy! I’ve offered him a lifetime contract for millions of dollars and he’s turned me down!”
Before Rita could respond, Rosen cut in. “I may have made a lot of money, but I’d never live to enjoy it.”
Hearing her husband’s reasoning, Rita Rosen voiced her agreement. Steinbrenner shook his head incredulously. How could one of his best friends not wan
t to work for him—for as much money and as long as he wanted? It was simply unfathomable.
If Rosen had any second thoughts about his decision, they were dispelled a couple of weeks later when some friends arranged a farewell lunch for him at Le Cirque. When he arrived at the restaurant, Rosen was told by the receptionist that he had a phone call. It was Doris Walden, the switchboard operator at Yankee Stadium, informing him that Steinbrenner had just called from Tampa ordering him back to his office.
“Tell him,” Rosen said, “I don’t work for him anymore.”
ON THE AFTERNOON of August 2, 1979—an off-day for the Yankees—Steinbrenner was meeting with a couple of his financial advisors in his Yankee Stadium office when he was interrupted by his executive assistant, Jerry Murphy, informing him he had a phone call.
“God dammit, I told you I don’t want to be disturbed,” Steinbrenner said.
“I know, sir, but this call seems urgent. It’s somebody from the sheriff’s office in Canton, Ohio.”
A sudden chill went through Steinbrenner.
“I’ll take it.”
Steinbrenner picked up the phone and as he listened to the voice on the other end, the angry expression on his face began to fade.
“Oh, no,” he said. “Oh, my God. No.”
After a few moments, Steinbrenner hung up the phone and turned to the two accountants.
“I’m sorry,” he said, his eyes tearing up, “we have to end this meeting. There’s been a terrible tragedy. We’ve lost Thurman . . . gone . . . plane crash. I have to get more details.”
Shortly thereafter, Steinbrenner received another call from his friend Jack Doyle, the manager of the Canton airport, who provided him with details about the plane crash that had killed Thurman Munson, the 32-year-old Yankee catcher and captain. Munson, along with two instructors, had been practicing landings and takeoffs in the $1.4 million blue pinstriped Cessna Citation he’d bought just three weeks earlier. He’d wanted the plane so he could commute between New York and Ohio to spend more time with his family. As Doyle explained, the jet was much more powerful, much more plane than the props Munson had flown for the previous 18 months, and when he realized he was coming in too slow for his landing, he hit the throttle, but it was too late. The plane ripped through a row of treetops, tearing off a wing, before hitting the ground 870 feet from the runway, where it burst into flames. The two instructors were able to make their way out of the wreckage, but they couldn’t free Munson, who was trapped in his seat, helplessly engulfed in the fire.
Steinbrenner spent a few minutes lost in thought about Munson; how the gritty captain had played through the pain in his knees and led the Yankees to the championship, hoisting the World Series trophy on the podium just nine months earlier. Then Steinbrenner’s thoughts turned to Diane, Munson’s widow, and the three kids. And the Yankee players. Someone would have to tell them. Arrangements. So many arrangements. The press. The game tomorrow. The funeral.
“Get everybody in here, Jerry,” Steinbrenner shouted to Murphy.
The grieving would have to wait—now there were details to be worked out. Surrounded by the Yankees’ front office men, Steinbrenner began doling out assignments.
Murphy, who’d become close friends with Munson, and Larry Wahl, from the public relations department, were to fly to Canton to help Diane in any way she needed. “Killer, start working on the travel arrangements. We’re gonna need a charter to get the team back and forth from Canton for the funeral.” Morabito, Steinbrenner said, was to start contacting the media. “Wait a minute, where’s Billy?” Someone said the manager was fishing somewhere off the Jersey Shore. “Find him,” Streinbrenner instructed Morabito. “You’re in charge of that. Get back to me as soon as you do. I need him back here right away.”
Next Steinbrenner turned to Tallis. “You and I need to start calling the players, Cedric. I’ll take care of the veteran guys: Catfish, Lou, Guidry, Goose, Randolph. You start with the others.” After everyone had departed on their various missions, Steinbrenner began phoning the players. Each call Steinbrenner made was more heart-wrenching than the next. “I’ve got some terrible news. We’ve lost Thurman in a plane crash.” By the time he was done, dusk had begun to settle over Yankee Stadium. But there was now tomorrow to think about. The Yankees were to begin a seven-game home stand the next day with a game against the Baltimore Orioles. Thurman must be properly honored.
“This is what I want,” Steinbrenner told Morabito and security chief Pat Kelly, whom he had summoned back to his office. “Tell [clubhouse man] Pete Sheehy we need the black armbands on all the uniforms, and tell him I want Thurman’s locker left intact. No one is ever to use it again. It’s his forever. Replace the nameplate over it with just the number 15. That’s his forever, too. And when the players stand at their positions for the national anthem, I want no one in the catcher’s box.”
Alone again, Steinbrenner now pulled from his desk a blank piece of paper and, reaching back to his days as an English lit major at Williams, began to pen the epitaph for Munson that would appear on the scoreboard the next night and, later, on the catcher’s plaque in Yankee Stadium’s Monument Park: “Our captain and leader has not left us—today, tomorrow, this year, next, our endeavors will reflect our love and admiration for him.”
“When I first walked back in there after the phone call from Canton, George’s face was dissolving,” remembered Murphy. “He’d had his moments with Thurman and he was very much affected. And then, as if he suddenly snapped back into reality, he went into his full George Patton mode, giving us all our marching orders. I think it was therapeutic for him. No one had much time to think about this horrible event, and he was strong for all of us.”
For sure, the Yankees employees had toiled fearfully and been intimidated by their boss ever since Steinbrenner had bought the team in 1973. Even the triumphs were muted by the owner’s inherent unhappiness. But in those numbing, awful days during the first week of August 1979, he was their forceful and trusted shepherd through an unimaginable tragedy. In terms of being a leader, boss and commander in chief, even 30 years later, those who were there in that time of crisis would still agree that it had been George Steinbrenner’s finest hour.
Chapter 9
Howser and Horses
A WEEK AFTER MUNSON’S FUNERAL, as the team was trying to get on with the season, Steinbrenner was confronted by an issue so bizarre as not to be believed. It was reported in the Chicago Sun-Times by the renowned columnist Mike Royko that on the afternoon of August 1, as the Yankee team bus filled up with players in the parking lot of Comiskey Park, an attractive young woman had managed to slip past security guards and board the bus, where she pulled down her jeans and, waving a blue Sharpie, asked the players to autograph her bare behind. Of course, they eagerly obliged. Royko reported that the same girl had mooned the Yankee bus the previous two nights as it pulled away from the ballpark. For her finale, she apparently wanted to do something more personal. Royko’s column was based on an account from the mother of a nine-year-old Yankee fan who was seeking autographs from the players at the same time. He quoted the outraged mother as saying, “This blonde, about 20 years old and pretty, walked up, and they just let her on the bus. I couldn’t believe it! They wouldn’t give autographs to any of the kids, but they were signing their names on that girl’s bare butt!”
The column caused quite a furor. Baseball Commissioner Bowie Kuhn demanded that the Yankees investigate the incident, and Steinbrenner, echoing Captain Renault’s mock outrage about gambling in the movie Casablanca, responded by declaring in a statement, “If the allegations are accurate, this kind of conduct will not be tolerated. I say again, if true, I would be appalled.”
Mickey Morabito, who had told one of Royko’s fact-checkers that “when you travel with the Yankees you get to see everything”—a quote that Royko included in his piece—was the first to be summoned to Steinbrenner’s office. Steinbrenner was also upset with Billy Martin, even though the manager had been
having a drink with Morabito and White Sox owner Bill Veeck in the Comiskey Park Bards Room at the time of the incident. “He screamed at me in his office and threatened to fire me for about five minutes as I attempted to explain that Billy and I weren’t there,” Morabito remembered.
Steinbrenner then went down to the Yankee clubhouse and summoned all the suspected “signers” into Martin’s office.
“This is just unbelievable,” Steinbrenner moaned. “What’s wrong with you guys? You’ve embarrassed this organization and you’ve embarrassed me by getting the goddamned commissioner on my case again.”
“Oh, c’mon, George,” said Lou Piniella. “What are you getting so worked up for? If you’d have been on the bus, you’d have been the first one to sign her ass and you would’ve signed ‘George M. Steinbrenner the Third!’ ”
For a brief moment, everyone froze in silence. Then the room suddenly filled with laughter and even Steinbrenner forced a smile. Everyone later agreed the incident had provided a moment of welcome levity in the heavy days immediately after the Munson tragedy.
By this time, with the team in fourth place, Steinbrenner had given up on the 1979 season and begun shifting his attention to his shipbuilding business and, periodically, the Yankees’ minor league operations. Shortly after the Munson funeral in Canton, he paid a visit to the Yankees’ flagship farm team in Columbus. He had moved the Yankees’ Triple-A ball club there from Syracuse after the 1978 season because of his strong personal ties to his in-laws, Harold and Jessie Zieg—who were prominent citizens there—and changed the team’s name from the Jets to the Clippers.
