by Bill Madden
Though, as Nigro said proudly, “we outdueled them 2–1,” Steinbrenner’s two press releases earned him a one-week suspension from MacPhail. (Nigro’s term as Yankees press chief lasted only for the 1983 season, after which he resigned, issuing his own press release in which he jokingly said he was checking into a rehab center. The one thing he told me he’d always remember about his experience with the Yankees was the red phones Steinbrenner had installed in everyone’s office at Yankee Stadium shortly after buying the team in 1973. “Whenever those phones rang,” Nigro said, “it was unbelievable. People would literally leap over desks and chairs in order to grab them on the first ring!”)
Steinbrenner was hardly chastened by this suspension, something that became clear a couple of months later when he and MacPhail locked horns again over a “sticky” situation that became part of baseball lore. On
July 24, a sunny Sunday afternoon at Yankee Stadium, the Yankees were leading the Kansas City Royals, 4–3. With a runner on first base and George Brett at the plate, the Royals were down to their last out against the Yankees’ dominating closer, Goose Gossage. But just as he’d done so many times against the Yankees in those ALCS wars from 1976 to ’80, Brett was able to get around on one of Gossage’s patented heaters and launched it into the right-field bleachers for a go-ahead two-run homer. But wait. As Brett circled the bases and trotted into the dugout, Yankees manager Billy Martin and catcher Rick Cerone approached home-plate umpire Tim McClelland.
“You need to check Brett’s bat,” Martin told McClelland. “Look at how far up the pine tar goes on it. That’s an illegal bat!”
Two weeks earlier in Kansas City, Yankees captain Graig Nettles had noticed that Brett’s bat had pine tar extending about 20 inches above the tip of the handle. Nettles was aware of the little-known Rule 1.10(b), which stated that pine tar on a bat could not extend beyond 18 inches from the tip of the bat handle. When he alerted Martin to this, the manager had said, “Let’s just keep this to ourselves for now, but we may have to use it if he does something against us down the road.”
After measuring the pine tar on the bat, McClelland concurred with Martin. No question, it exceeded the legal length. Home run nullified. As soon as the umpire made the “out” signal, an enraged Brett came charging out of the dugout and had to be physically restrained by crew chief Joe Brinkman. The Yankees had won—and with the help of the umpires! What the team had not counted on was that MacPhail, upon receiving the Royals’ formal protest, deliberated for four days before deciding that, while the pine tar on Brett’s bat probably was a violation, the umpires, in nullifying the home run, had not acted in “the spirit of the rule.” MacPhail upheld the Royals’ protest (and thus the Brett homer), declared the game suspended with the Royals leading 5–4 and ordered that it be picked up with two outs in the top of the ninth inning at Yankee Stadium, on August 18, an off-day for both teams.
Steinbrenner was predictably outraged by MacPhail’s decision. “I like Lee,” he said to reporters in response to the decision, “but I feel sorry for him. He made a very dumb decision. It was a putrid decision. He’s opened up a Pandora’s box and left his umpires out to dry.”
First, Steinbrenner threatened to forfeit the game, claiming MacPhail had made such a mess of things that he didn’t want to take the off-day away from his players. Threatened with further sanctions if he did, Steinbrenner then reversed course and said the Yankees would play the game out beginning at 2 P.M., adding that he planned to charge $2.50 admission and invite busloads of kids from the summer camps to “enjoy a festive occasion at the ballpark.” This, too, met with resistance from MacPhail, who noted that the Royals were playing a night game on August 17 and, by rules, were not required to play a game the next day before 6 P.M.
“It sure tests our faith in our leadership,” Steinbrenner said of MacPhail. “If the Yankees lose the American League pennant by one game, I wouldn’t want to be Lee MacPhail living in New York. Maybe he should go house-hunting in Kansas City.”
In the meantime, a number of fans had filed lawsuits against the Yankees for charging a separate admission for the game’s resumption—lawsuits that MacPhail and Commissioner Bowie Kuhn suspected Steinbrenner actually welcomed in an effort to further delay completing the game. The pine tar follies would rage on in the courts in Manhattan and the Bronx with various lawsuits until the morning of August 18, when Bronx Supreme Court judge Orest V. Maresca granted a preliminary injunction barring the game’s resumption. This prompted baseball’s attorneys to rush downtown to a Manhattan courtroom, where, at 3:34 P.M., Justice Joseph Sullivan overruled Maresca, allowing the game to go on. After all this, the conclusion of the game turned out to be a complete mockery. When the Yankees took the field, Martin had left-handed Don Mattingly playing second base and Ron Guidry in center field. The Yankees got an out and then went down quietly, 1-2-3.
“It was a wild day,” MacPhail recalled to me years later, “made wilder by George finding a friendly judge in the Bronx.” Still, the final chapter wouldn’t occur until two days before Christmas, when, after a hearing at his office, Kuhn’s last act as commissioner was to impose financial penalties totaling $300,000 on Steinbrenner for his comments about MacPhail and other detrimental acts to baseball throughout the pine tar affair. At the time, it was the largest fine in sports history.
Amid Steinbrenner’s continuing battles with the baseball hierarchy, the 1983 season was not going well on the field for the Yankees, once again fraying his relationship with Billy Martin. His vows “this time it’s going to be different” and “this time we understand each other” and “this time we’ll communicate better”? By June 15, he’d forgotten all of them. After losing four of the first five games of a road trip to Milwaukee and Cleveland, the Yankees’ record stood at 29-30 on June 14, and rumors were swirling that Martin was once again on the firing line. Word was Steinbrenner had found out that Martin had defied his order to hold a workout for the team in Milwaukee on the off-day before the first game of the trip. Two days later, Martin was caught on a local telecast carrying on with his girlfriend (who would later become his fourth wife) during the Yankees’ 6–2 loss to the Brewers. Instead of his customary perch on the top step of the dugout, Martin was sitting on a stool alongside the dugout, right in front of the visiting club box, where his girlfriend, Jill Guiver, conspicuous in a bright yellow sundress, had a front-row seat. The cameras periodically caught her passing notes through the fence with her toes to the smiling Martin. At one point, a frantic WPIX-TV producer, Don Carney, rushed into the press box and asked the writers if they were going to report Martin’s actions, saying, “I’m very reluctant to show any of this.”
Usually, when Steinbrenner was feuding with a manager, he would make himself unavailable while allowing his adversary to either dig himself deeper or weather the storm on his own. When I called him on this occasion, however, he surprised me by getting right on the phone. I asked him how much validity there was to the rumors that he was upset over Martin’s behavior.
“I’m not happy about a lot of things I’m hearing about Billy,” Steinbrenner said. “He promised me he was going to have them work out in Milwaukee and he didn’t, and look what’s happened. We’re playing like shit. I can’t have this. I think I’m gonna have to make a change.”
“You’re going to fire Billy?” I asked.
“He’s giving me no choice. But I’ve got an idea that I’d like your thoughts on. What would you think about Yogi as the manager?”
Yogi Berra? Yogi, then the bench coach, was a nice guy, as different in demeanor from Martin as you could get. Aside from Art Fowler, Martin’s pitching coach and drinking companion, he was also Billy’s most trusted aide.
“That’s an interesting one,” I said. “If you fire Billy, you’re going to have to replace him with someone equally or more popular with the fans, and Yogi certainly qualifies in that regard. I know the players respect him, but you’re aware that he was already fired once before as Yankee manag
er?”
“Yeah, but that was 20 years ago, and I wasn’t the owner,” Steinbrenner snapped. “So what do you think? You like the idea?”
“Hey, if this is what you think you have to do, what’s not to like about Yogi?” I said.
I knew Steinbrenner well enough to know I wasn’t the only person he might be sounding out about this. This was not something I felt I could sit on, so I wrote in the next day’s Daily News that Billy was in trouble again with George, that he was on the verge of being fired for his transgressions in Milwaukee and that his likely replacement would be Yogi.
Even though he had not fully made up his mind to fire Martin, Steinbrenner got the result he wanted. The Yankees were floundering in fifth place, but they were all over the newscasts—and Martin’s agent, Eddie Sapir, was on the phone begging for a meeting. That night, Steinbrenner met with Sapir and Martin at the Pewter Mug restaurant in Cleveland. He didn’t want Martin at the meeting, but Sapir insisted, saying that Billy had a few things he wanted to discuss with Steinbrenner as well.
In response to Steinbrenner asking about his behavior in Milwaukee, Martin said, “These allegations that I’m not keeping my mind on the game are unjust. There’s no way, George. You’re listening to too many other people. I’ve got this team playing hard, and my head is in the game.”
“Now, now, Billy, just calm down,” Sapir said. “We asked for this meeting to clear the air about everything, and there’s no need to get worked up at George.”
“It’s okay,” Steinbrenner said. “If Billy feels he wants to get some things off his chest, let him say them. This meeting wasn’t because you were going to be fired, Billy. You have my commitment to manage the team for the rest of the season. I’m still not happy about the results so far, especially the pitching, and while I’m confident you can get this turned around, we may need to go a different direction with the pitching coach.”
The next morning, the lobby of the Stouffer’s Hotel, where the Yankees were staying, swarmed with TV crews colliding with each other in pursuit of Sapir, who, standing in the middle of room, could be heard shouting triumphantly: “Billy has been vindicated! Reports of the girl were unfounded!”
Nevertheless, the firing of Art Fowler as pitching coach, and his replacement by the duo of minor league pitching coach Sammy Ellis and bullpen coach Jeff Torborg, was Steinbrenner’s sadistic way of punishing Martin and beating him down without again getting rid of him altogether. Steinbrenner loved Martin’s fire and defiance, but felt he had to remind him that he was just the manager.
Martin was wounded now, as evidenced by his drink-fueled bad behavior after the team got home to Yankee Stadium. On the afternoon of the first game of a home stand against the Brewers, Martin was late arriving at the ballpark, his haggard appearance and red eyes suggesting that he was coming directly from a bar, brooding over the firing of his best buddy, Fowler. Brushing past reporters, he went into his office and slammed the door. A few minutes later, he stepped back out of his office and stood glaring at a woman at the far end of the clubhouse, sitting on a table taking notes. Marching across the clubhouse, he confronted the woman and demanded to know what she was doing.
The woman identified herself as Deborah Henschel, a reporter for the New York Times, who was working on a research project, surveying the Yankee players on the All-Star Game voting.
“Researcher? Kiss my fucking dago ass!” Martin shouted at her. “What are you researching, dressed like a slut like that? You’re just a hussy. Now get your ass out of here!”
The next day, Steinbrenner received a call from the Times’ corporate relations department informing him that Henschel had filed a formal complaint against Martin and the Yankees. Implicit in the call was the veiled suggestion of a lawsuit.
“This is the first I’m hearing of this,” Steinbrenner said, “but I assure you there will be a full and thorough investigation. In the meantime, you have my apologies.”
Upon hanging up, Steinbrenner called downstairs to the clubhouse and asked the attendant to tell third-base coach Don Zimmer to come up to his office. Zimmer and Steinbrenner were longtime friends from Tampa, where they spent a lot of time together at the racetrack, and he was the only coach on Martin’s staff whom the owner had hired himself. Because of that, Martin distrusted Zimmer—which meant that Steinbrenner summoning him to his office put the coach in a very awkward position.
“I need to ask you about what happened in the clubhouse yesterday, Zim,” Steinbrenner began. “I know you were one of the ones closest to the scene, because other people have told me that. I just want to know, did Billy tell that woman to kiss his dago ass?”
Zimmer, who had begun to sweat, was privately thankful Steinbrenner put the question to him the way he did, leaving out the more salacious words Martin had used to insult the woman.
“Well, uh, yes, I guess you could say he did,” Zimmer replied.
“All right, I can handle that,” Steinbrenner said. “I appreciate your being honest with me, Zim.”
Zimmer, presuming the interrogation to be over, began to get up. Steinbrenner put up his hand.
“There’s one other thing I need to know, Zim,” he said. “Do you think we can win this with Billy?”
For a moment, Zimmer didn’t respond. “George, you’re asking the wrong guy!” he said before turning and walking out the door.
Zimmer would tell me years later that this was the most uncomfortable five minutes he’d ever experienced in baseball. As much as Martin made him feel like an outsider on his staff, Zimmer wasn’t about to be a party to getting him fired. Steinbrenner also met with Henschel and apologized to her for the manner in which Martin had yelled at her, before confiding: “This whole thing is very embarrassing to me and the Yankees, and I don’t know what else to tell you except that Billy is just mad in the head. I frankly don’t know what to do with him.”
Much as his instincts told him Billy was too unstable to get through the season, another part of Steinbrenner wanted to believe that Martin still had the capacity to lead the team to victory, as he’d done amid all the stress and turmoil with Reggie Jackson in 1977. However, it hadn’t helped Martin’s fragile psyche when Steinbrenner, on July 1, announced the hiring of Murray Cook, the Pittsburgh Pirates’ 42-year-old scouting director, as the new Yankees general manager. Martin interpreted the Cook hiring as another layer of authority between him and Steinbrenner and a reneging on the owner’s promise to him that he would have a say on all the trades and signings.
For Martin, the 1983 season was just as rife with conflict with the league as it was for Steinbrenner. True to his depiction on the cover of the press guide, Martin got himself in trouble twice during the first week of the season. First, he was fined $5,000 by MacPhail for criticizing umpire Dan Morrison in the season opener. Then he was ejected for arguing with another umpire, Vic Voltaggio, on April 2. MacPhail also warned Martin that he would be suspended if his comportment didn’t improve. It didn’t. Eight days after his ejection by Voltaggio, Martin got into three separate arguments with home-plate umpire Drew Coble in a game in Texas and, after finally being ejected, kicked dirt all over him. That drew a three-game suspension and another $5,000 fine. On August 5, Martin was suspended for another two games after calling umpire Dale Ford a “stone liar.”
It was as if Steinbrenner had created a monster. For all his fire at the umpires, however, Martin was unable to ignite his team. The Yankees were in fourth place in mid-August. They went 9-4 on a road trip in late August and early September, putting them in second place in the American League East and setting up a four-game showdown with the first-place Baltimore Orioles at Yankee Stadium. On September 9, behind Guidry’s seven-hit pitching, the Yankees beat Baltimore, 5–3, in the first game of the series, before a capacity crowd of 55,605, to pull within four games of the Orioles. That was the closest they got. The next day, the Orioles swept them in a doubleheader before taking the series finale, 5–3. After the game, a disappointed Martin cited injuries,
particularly those to outfielder Steve Kemp, outfielder/first baseman Ken Griffey, second baseman Willie Randolph, catcher Butch Wynegar and shortstop Andre Robertson, none of whom played in more than 118 games, as the primary reason for the Yankees’ inability to catch the Orioles.
“Right now, I’m not going to be critical of anybody,” Steinbrenner told the Daily News’ Phil Pepe at the conclusion of the disappointing series. “I promised I would not interfere this year, and I haven’t.”
True to his word, this would prove to be Steinbrenner’s last public statement on a season in which the Yankees wound up third in the AL East at 91-71, seven games behind the Orioles, who went on to win the World Series. Though Martin managed to last the entire season and the Yankees’ attendance increased by more than 215,000 from 1982, it had taken an exacting toll on the manager and the owner alike. Between them, Steinbrenner and Martin had accrued $370,000 in fines and three suspensions from the baseball hierarchy for their transgressions against umpires and league officials.
IN THE WEEKS after, Steinbrenner was silent about Martin and Yankees baseball operations. On November 7, 1983, Steinbrenner’s father, Henry, died at age 79 in Westlake, Ohio, after a lengthy battle with Alzheimer’s disease. Steinbrenner made no public comment on the passing of his father, and the service was private. It was also around that time that Steinbrenner announced he was closing AmShip’s shipyard in Lorain, Ohio, and moving it to Tampa. Though the company had recently won a $300 million contract to build five tankers for the Navy, Steinbrenner said the Lorain shipyard had lost $30 million over the previous five years, and he blamed the unions for ignoring his warnings that their work rules were so archaic and their wage rates so high that the company could save 30 percent of its labor costs by moving to Tampa. The shutdown of the 87-year-old shipyard resulted in the loss of 1,500 jobs in Lorain and incurred the wrath of U.S. senator Howard Metzenbaum (the Cleveland parking lot magnate who’d been part of Steinbrenner’s investor group in his bid to buy the Cleveland Indians back in the early ’70s). Said Metzenbaum to the Cleveland Plain Dealer after the announcement of the Lorain shipyard closing: “[Steinbrenner] had called me with syrupy, sweet promises that he would do everything he could to keep jobs in Lorain. As usual with George Steinbrenner’s promises, they soon turned into castor oil.”
