Goose had to come into the game in his place. He pitched well, struck out Freddie Patek with two outs and the bases loaded in the eighth to end a threat. But then Willie Randolph, who was in and out every other day, playing hurt, made an error in the ninth, and the Royals tied it.
Martin just kept Goose in there, playing the game like it was the World Series—again. Gossage got through the tenth, and in the bottom of the inning Munson led off with a single for us. The Royals had their own closer out there by then, Al Hrabosky, “the Mad Hungarian.” He was a lefty, threw some pretty good heat. Used to do all kinds of antics on the mound to try to intimidate batters, fume and bounce around, turn his back on the hitter when he came up.
Whatever. I came up, ready to hit—and Billy Martin gave me the bunt sign. Just like he had given me the bunt sign against Boston near the end of the 1977 season.
That was it. That was enough.
I was just so fed up with the entire scenario. I wasn’t going to play right field. I wasn’t going to play against left-handed pitching. I wasn’t going to play against right-handed pitching, sometimes.
I just turned around and looked in the dugout, hoping I hadn’t seen the bunt sign from Dick Howser, our third-base coach. I was almost making a silent appeal to Billy. I was thinking, “I’m your cleanup hitter. Now you’re asking me to bunt? What other humiliations would you like to tack on here? Would you like me to wear a court jester’s hat?”
But Billy still had Howser signaling bunt to me.
So I squared around and tried to bunt. Hrabosky wasn’t fooled; he threw one in tight and hard so I couldn’t get it down. The next pitch, I found out later, Billy took the bunt off, signaled me to hit away. It didn’t surprise me that he took the bunt off. I saw George Brett move in at third and knew the Royals were alert to the bunt now. But I didn’t know for sure, because I was through looking at signals just then. Billy Martin wanted a bunt; he was going to get a bunt. I was tired of all the crap.
Hrabosky came in again, and this time I nudged the ball foul. Dick Howser called time and ran down to make sure I hadn’t missed the sign. Because I suppose it was obvious that I was giving a half-assed effort at bunting. Dick came down, made sure I knew Billy wanted me to hit away.
But I was past that now. My conversation with myself was, “What am I doing here? If you want me to bunt, why would you hit me cleanup? Why would you do it? Put someone else in here.”
Dick Howser told me, “Billy wants you to swing away.” And I said to his face, “No, he told me to bunt. And no offense to you, but I’m going to bunt.” Dick said something like, “I hope you know what you’re doing here,” and went back to third base. Which was exactly the right thing to do, and why Howser was a good man. He wasn’t going to get in the middle. He was going to let us play this out.
I fouled off another one from Hrabosky, for strike two. Then I popped up a third one, which the catcher caught. I was out. Thurman was still on first.
I walked back to the dugout, ready for a confrontation. Ready for anything. It wasn’t like all of a sudden I had gotten hot and angry and flew off the handle. I had had enough. Enough of all of it. I said to myself, “All right, here we go,” and I went and sat down. Sat my helmet down, took my hat off. Took my glasses off, too, just the same as I did in Boston the year before. Because I knew with Billy, he’s a guy who would probably try to blindside me if he decided to take a punch.
I was ready. I hoped I had done something to create a spark, to create a confrontation. I was looking for it this time!
Gene Michael came down to me on the bench and said, “You know, Billy wants you to go inside”—go inside the clubhouse. And I looked at Gene, and I said, “Gene, you said that kind of rough and kind of rude.”
I’d always gotten along well with Gene. I always would. But I wasn’t taking anything from anyone at this point.
Gene told me, “Reggie, it’s not me. Billy wants me to tell you to go inside.” I said, “If he wants me to go inside, tell him to come here and tell me himself.”
I sat out there for another inning before I went in. Top of the eleventh, Goose was in his fifth inning of work. He would’ve got through it, too, but Thurman dropped a fly ball out in right field, where he was playing in place of me. The Royals scored four unearned runs, went up 9–5. We almost came back in the bottom of the inning, Willie hit a home run, and Thurman drove in a run.
In fact, the game ended with the very same situation we’d had the inning before: Thurman on first, me due up. Two outs, the Yanks trailing, 9–7. Billy could have let bygones be bygones, thought in the best interest of the team, and put me up there to swing away. I would’ve still been in the game.
My forced confrontation ended that possibility. Pretty honest, huh? Instead, Billy had to send Cliff Johnson up to pinch-hit for me. Cliff was a terrific hitter, but he was having a horrible year. At the time, he was hitting exactly .190.
When Billy sent him up, I headed for the clubhouse. I walked right by him and went inside without saying a word. Cliff flied out to left. Billy came down to his office, picked up his clock radio, and threw it against a wall. Then he picked up a beer bottle and threw that against the wall, too.
I was out by my locker, still in my uniform. Ready for anything. But Billy never did come out to speak to me.
It was the writers who came over and told me I’d been suspended. Billy never did tell me. The Boss had already issued a statement, backing Martin, before he had exchanged so much as a word with me: “What is paramount is a sense of command and discipline. If you don’t have it, forget it. Forget the whole organization.”
What nobody on the Yankees was willing to talk about was that Sparky Lyle had already told his manager to go to hell and walked off the field back in the sixth inning. Nobody said boo to him. I think it was Fran Healy who quietly let Henry Hecht know about it, or the story never would’ve got out.
I had my problems with Hecht at times. I’d got mad at him over that piece he wrote about me in the hotel room in Boston the year before. But he was willing to listen at least, and he went and checked what happened with Sparky. He discovered it was true, he got the facts, and I have to hand it to him: He wrote a story for the Post about how there was a double standard on the Yankees.
When that came out, the front office got very upset about it. I heard that guys like Al Rosen and Cedric Tallis even sat Henry down and told him they didn’t want it coming out. But you have to give him credit, he made sure the truth got out. Our front office was trying to deny it, but Henry told the Boss, “George, I smell a rat!”
He could do that, because Fran tipped him off to the real story. It was all around then. I think George even liked that, because it was so much PR for the team. It was what Fran used to say: “It’s better than Broadway!” Or Sparky calling it “the Bronx Zoo” in his book, or I think Nettles said something like, “Some boys want to grow up and play major-league baseball, and other boys want to run away and join the circus. I got to do both.” Loved it!
I gotta say, great lines. But I signed up to play ball.
The truth was that Billy had already lost control of his team, even before he tried to humiliate me one more time. He’d lost control of it back in 1977, I thought, but nobody truly realized it because of Fran Healy patching things up and because of Bucky not saying anything about almost leaving the team.
He lost control of it again in 1978, I felt, because he was literally wrecking the arms of our pitchers and because they wouldn’t put up with it anymore. Sparky Lyle never was a top reliever again after that season. I continue to believe that Martin lost control of his team because he would not put his personal feelings aside and do what was best for the team.
However, at the moment that wasn’t what anybody in the media wanted to hear. Nobody said anything about Lyle—the American League Cy Young winner the year before—defying his manager and disobeying orders. Somehow, that wasn’t a story. Just as nobody said anything about Bucky Dent trying to jump the
team the year before. Instead, it was all about me again.
Maybe some of the writers didn’t know about it. But there aren’t a lot of secrets that don’t get out on a ball club—or anywhere else. As Benjamin Franklin said, “Three men can keep a secret if two of them are dead.”
My defiance of Martin was newsworthy and punishable by suspension and fine. Theirs—Bucky’s and Sparky’s—wasn’t. There was definitely a double standard. Those are the facts.
I tried to defend myself a little at first. Told the press that I thought the way I’d been hitting recently, a bunt was the best idea. I said, “If I get it down, I’m a hero. If not, I’m a butt.”
You know, I was still hoping to defuse the situation. But my heart wasn’t in it. I was tired of covering up. I knew I couldn’t win. No matter. I should just take it all, no matter how unfair it was. I would still come off as the outspoken black guy with the big contract who complained and couldn’t handle the situation.
When the writers told me I’d been suspended, I said, “Really?!” And they said, “Yes. What are you gonna do?”
I remember being happy. I was glad. I wanted to bring everything to a head. I wasn’t disappointed for a moment. I felt something needed to be done, no matter what. This was it.
All I said was, “I’m going to California on the first plane smoking tomorrow morning.”
And that was what I did. I didn’t say much else. I left the clubhouse, went back to my apartment, and packed a small bag. I made a flight at nine in the morning, to San Francisco. American Airlines. The press was waiting for me at the airport, but I was a very familiar flier on American, so they dropped me off on the tarmac.
This could never happen today, but when we got to the gate, they pulled up the unloading walkway—what they call the Jetway. They allowed me to go out the door, down those stairs, and go underground and avoid the press. It was so cool!
I went down through the underbelly of the terminal, connected with a friend who picked me up, and went home to Berkeley.
Here I was at home in California, “right back where I started from.” I had no idea what was going to happen—and neither did anyone else. For all I knew, my career was over, and I was going to be vilified all over the country. And even knowing that, I still felt like a huge weight had been lifted off my chest.
21
“ONE’S A BORN LIAR”
THE NEXT DAY, I was back on a plane. Off to Hawaii. I just threw another bag together, told no one I was leaving. Talk about tripping! Color me gone!
It was a surreal situation. The team was still in turmoil. There were all these big debates in the press about what the Yankees should do with me. Suspend me for the rest of the season. Try to cancel my contract. Whatever.
At the time, I was hoping to be traded. The day after I left, the Red Sox won again, and we dropped to fourteen games out of first place. In the whole history of baseball, just one other team had ever come back from that many games down or more, and that was the Boston “Miracle Braves” of 1914. (They didn’t call them the Miracle Braves for nothing.) I was hoping the Yankees might trade me to some team that still had a chance to make the playoffs, and maybe I could show what I could do.
The more I thought about it, the more I didn’t think I would be traded. George wasn’t going to trade me. I’d tried to get him to do that before. I was a marquee attraction, regardless of whether I was a mess or not. George was not a quitter. When he set out to do something, he was going to do it, whether it was right or wrong. It was not going to just slip by. And after I’d brought everything to a confrontation, something had to be done.
By then, my feelings were, “While you’re all discussing what’s to become of me, I am, by the way, going to go to Hawaii for a few days and kick around.” And that’s what I did.
My thinking was, “Hey, here’s what’s going on, guys. You had a team that was coming apart.” I thought, “You chose to ignore this before, even as the manager came apart at the seams, wrecking our pitching staff and putting some of his best players on the bench. Hopefully, I’m bringing this to your attention. I’m bringing this to a head. I’m not so wrong as you think.
“You’re going to suspend and fine me? Okay. I expected that. At least everything is going to stop for a while. There’s going to be some discussion about how it gets fixed. I’m not coming back the way it is, and I don’t mind that.” Of course, I never said that to anyone!
I knew the Yankees still wanted me, because pretty soon they called my attorney, Steven Kay, and wanted me to come back. At the same time, they were still saying I was suspended indefinitely. They told everybody, “As long as Reggie’s not here, we’re gonna fine him and suspend him without pay.”
I said, “Fine.”
I had a nice little savings, and I didn’t have too big a house. I didn’t have too many cars, I didn’t have too many bills, and I could get through. At the time, I was doing pretty well.
I was not too worried about that fine.
I went to the hotel in Honolulu, and hung out there. Ironically, it was a place I knew from going there first with ABC for the Superstars competition—where I first met all my welcoming teammates.
I went there and just kicked around. Got lost. I knew a girl over there who was a friend. I had someone to talk to and have dinner with. The best part of it was she knew nothing about baseball. She said she had heard about my suspension, but she didn’t care. I didn’t give a hoot about going back or not. I didn’t pick up a sports page. It was nice being away from it all.
The Yankees called and asked Steven Kay to get me to come back. This time they said they had rescinded the fine. They’d found out, too, that you couldn’t suspend someone “indefinitely.” Not under the basic agreement with the players’ union—another thing we had to thank Marvin Miller for.
You had to make it a definite time. So Al Rosen decided I was suspended for five games. They asked me to come back right away, but I couldn’t get back in time. I was in Hawaii!
Billy wanted to make it seven games, but Al overrode him. Billy was making all kinds of pronouncements since I’d left. He told the press, “If Jackson comes back, he does exactly what I say. Period.” Note the “If.” He said, “From now on, nobody tells the manager or the front office what he’s going to do. Nobody’s bigger than this team.”
They asked him if he’d accept an apology from me. Billy told them, “I don’t believe in apologizing. I won’t talk anything out with him.”
Fair enough, I said. I rejoined the team in Chicago, where we were playing. I did not have to pay a fine. I flew in and went to the ballpark in a cab with Fran Healy. I went straight to my locker to get dressed. I was ready to play. I got in too late to take batting practice, but I went out on the field, got ready. Played catch, stretched, jogged, got loose. I just told myself I should go in, shut my mouth, get it out of the way, do what you’re supposed to do. Play ball.
That’s exactly what I did. And I didn’t know it at the time, but I understood afterward Billy was so perplexed that I didn’t ask for a meeting to apologize to him and the team. But I’d seen how that worked out the year before, and I didn’t really think I had anything to apologize for—to him or the team. I didn’t need to go to Billy. Neither one of us wanted to see the other.
I probably should have apologized to the team, for creating a ruckus. I did go around to each player who I thought cared anything about me and apologized to him individually. Maybe a dozen or so guys who cared to hear anything I had to say. Some could have cared less.
Billy left me on the bench that afternoon. We beat the White Sox, 3–1, in the top of the ninth, when Chambliss doubled in Piniella and then Billy called for a squeeze play, a bunt by Nettles that caught them completely by surprise and scored an insurance run.
Afterward, in the locker room, the press all came around, and Fran Healy said to me, “Whatever you do, don’t apologize.” That was right up my alley. I didn’t have to be coaxed.
You know, Fran w
as always a peacemaker, but he didn’t really like Billy. Not very many people did. He told me, “Don’t apologize, you don’t have to do that.”
Fran always had great advice. I don’t know if he had great advice about me not talking to Billy—but I wasn’t going to talk to him anyway.
All I told the press when they asked was that it was difficult coming back, but that I didn’t have any intention of not reporting. I wasn’t going to jump the team at that time and give Billy what he wanted. I told them I’d had a lot of time to think about the magnitude of the situation, the magnitude of New York. I admitted it was an uncomfortable situation.
One note here about using the word “magnitude.” A lot of the writers at the time thought it was very pretentious of me to use it, particularly when I would say “the magnitude of me.” They thought it sounded almost as if I were talking about myself in the third person.
I didn’t mean it the way they thought. All it reflected was how crazy I thought the whole situation was—all this nonsense revolving around me, and the manager, and what was said about it. I didn’t use the word to aggrandize myself, just to express how out of hand, how magnified, and out of proportion I thought everything could get.
How could I be such a big story? How could the manager and I not get along? It was crazy. I guess I was supposed to just go along with whatever Billy was trying to prove. To go through this at thirty-two years of age. I was too young to manage it. I was overwhelmed.
To have him not just put me in the lineup and get the hell out of the way—never speak to me. Just let me play ball. Why he couldn’t do that—I just didn’t get it.
At the time, it made me wonder, “Is it because I’m black and speaking my own opinion? Is it because I have a certain arrogance about me? The way I present things? Tell me what it is.”
One of the writers asked me if I would bunt again in that situation if I had to do it all over again. I told him that if I’d known what the consequences would have been, I probably would have just swung away and avoided all the hassle! I admired the guts of the guy to ask me the question. I wanted to pinch his head off.
Becoming Mr. October (9780385533126) Page 26