Lou

by Lou Piniella

  The split-season format forced baseball to add an extra tier to the playoffs, and when our first-round opponents, the Milwaukee Brewers, won back-to-back games at Yankee Stadium to tie the best-of-five first series, Mr. Steinbrenner came into the clubhouse and started reading us the riot act. After a few minutes of this, Cerone, a tough-as-nails Jersey guy, popped up: “Screw you, George. You don’t know what you’re talking about. You don’t know anything about baseball!”

  Everyone kind of froze in silence. Here was Cerone, who’d barely been with us a year and half, having the impudence to tell off the Boss in front of the whole team. You could do that with Mr. Steinbrenner, but you’d better be prepared to back it up—which is precisely what Cerone did, going 2-for-3 with a backbreaking seventh-inning homer the next day that cemented our 7–3 clinching victory. We followed that up by sweeping Billy Martin’s Oakland A’s in the ALCS—a crushing loss for Billy, who so desperately wanted to show up Mr. Steinbrenner.

  After the last game of that series I made a point to go over to the A’s clubhouse. When I walked into Billy’s office, he was seated at his desk, crying. I went up to him and gave him a hug and, in an effort to console him, said, “Whatever success we’ve had came from you, Billy. You were the one who taught us how to win, and for that you should be proud.”

  I know that made him feel good. I knew how hard Billy took losing—that was one trait we had in common—and losing to the Yankees especially hurt him. The Yankees were his life. When he got fired in ’78 and then again in ’79, I felt bad for him. We’d had kind of an evolving relationship. Early on, when Billy first came to the Yankees, I wasn’t one of his favorites, as Nettles, Thurman, Catfish, Chambliss, and Sparky were. I had to prove myself to him. In ’75 and ’76 he platooned me all the time and I think he looked at me as a platoon outfielder. It wasn’t until a game in 1977 in which there was a long rain delay that I finally felt I was one of his guys. I’d gotten a couple of hits before the rain came and just before the game was to resume he came to me and asked, “Do you want to stay in?” That’s the way he showed what he thought of you. Of course, I hit .330 that year, so he really had no choice but to keep playing me.

  As for the ’81 World Series, once again against Lasorda and the Dodgers, about all I can say is it was one big fiasco. We won the first two games in New York and were looking to put a hammerlock on the Dodgers by beating their Mexican phenom, Fernando Valenzuela, in game 3. And it looked hopeful from the outset when a clearly nervous Valenzuela walked Willie Randolph to start off the game and issued a second free pass to Winfield one out later. That brought me up, and with Valenzuela continuing to struggle with his command, I ran the count to 3-1. I knew from all the scouting reports Valenzuela’s best pitch was his screwball, but at the same time, I had never hit a World Series homer, and I thought, If I stand off the plate a little and this guy sneaks a fastball, I can really do some damage. Instead, he threw me a very hittable screwball and I pulled it right to the shortstop, who turned it into an inning-ending double play.

  Of all my at-bats in all the World Series games I played in, that’s the one I’ll never forget until the day I die. If I’d been thinking as a hitter, I would’ve gone the opposite way with it. If I’d have held back just a little and driven the ball to the opposite field it would have been good for two runs and we would have been on our way to putting away the Dodgers right there.

  Instead, the Dodgers came back to score three runs off Righetti in their half of the first inning, knocking him out in the third inning, and later, in the eighth, Lem kind of lost his mind. We were trailing 5–4 when Aurelio Rodriguez and Larry Milbourne started the eighth with consecutive singles against Valenzuela, bringing up the pitcher’s spot in the order. All of a sudden Lem gets up, looks down the bench, and hollers out, “Where’s my bunter?” I’m sitting there saying, “What?” When nobody moved, Lem shouted out again, “Where’s my bunter?” Again nobody moved, and Lem, in exasperation, shouted again, “Where’s my damn bunter?” We were all trying to hold back our laughter, especially Murcer, until he realized that the bunter in question Lemon was looking for was him!

  “Grab a bat, Murcer, and get up there.”

  Bobby was as stunned as all of us. Here was the one power-hitting threat on our bench, and Lem was ordering him to bunt! He’d probably never been asked to pinch-hit a bunt in his life—which became apparent when he popped up his bunt attempt to Ron Cey in third base foul territory, who alertly threw over to first to double up Milbourne. For the rest of the series, Bobby took such a beating, all of us yelling “Where’s my bunter?” at him, and for years afterward it became a running joke. Whenever I saw Bobby in a restaurant or bar, I’d shout out, “Where’s my bunter?”

  Meanwhile, sometime after the second game in LA, Mr. Steinbrenner got into a fight, allegedly with a couple of drunken, rowdy Dodgers fans, in the elevator of our hotel. We all kind of chuckled when we heard his story of the incident the next day; of how he defended our honor and cleaned the floor with these two ruffians. We always figured what really happened was he got into an argument with his wife and punched a wall. But a World Series that had started off so promising in New York had now quickly descended into a calamity of errors with us getting swept in LA. Game 6 back at Yankee Stadium was the final humiliation, a 9–2 drubbing that got its impetus when, with the score 1–1, Lem pinch-hit for Tommy John in the fourth inning—again with Murcer. This time there were runners on first and second with two out, and obviously, Lem was hoping for a three-run homer that would get us back on track. And darn if Bobby almost delivered on it, hitting a flyout to deep right field. But John was understandably furious at being removed from the game after just four innings. In effect, that was the end of our season right there, as the Dodgers rallied for seven runs in the next two innings against our bullpen.

  Right after the last out, on orders from Mr. Steinbrenner, the Yankees’ longtime public address announcer, Bob Sheppard, read an apology to the Yankee Stadium fans for us losing the World Series. After beating the Dodgers in both the ’77 and ’78 World Series, I suppose Mr. Steinbrenner thought we’d have no problem beating them a third time. But this was embarrassing. We’d given it our all, and now he was apologizing for our play? What a way to end the season.

  Even though I hit .438 in the ’81 World Series, I was once again uncertain about my future. I’d appeared in only sixty games in the strike-shortened season, and with Jerry Mumphrey and Dave Winfield having been brought in as right-handed bats to complement Oscar Gamble and Bobby Murcer in the outfield, I wasn’t sure just where I fit in. All these things were going through my mind back home in Tampa when I got a phone call from Mr. Steinbrenner asking me to come over to his office at American Ship. I told Anita, “Don’t be surprised if, when I come home, I’m no longer a Yankee.”

  The meeting started out with Mr. Steinbrenner thanking me for everything I’d done for the Yankees and what a good run we’d had. He asked me what I wanted to do and I told him I still wanted to play even though I knew my role might be diminished. At that point, he said, “Let’s talk about it. Have you ever had a long-term contract?” When I said no, he asked, “Well, would you like one?” He caught me completely by surprise.

  “Well … uh … sure,” I said.

  “Good,” he said. “Here’s what I’m gonna do. I’m gonna give you a three-year deal for $300,000, $350,000, and $400,000.”

  I was flabbergasted. I thought I was stealing money. This, I thought, more than made up for all those times I felt I’d cheated myself out of money. I’d be forty-one before this contract was over. The next day, Anita called Mr. Steinbrenner to thank him, and he told her that was the first time he’d ever gotten such a call from a player’s wife. But as I was soon to learn, with Mr. Steinbrenner there was always a catch—which in this case was a weight clause that required me to get under 205 pounds or be subject to daily fines of $250. I had never had a weight problem, so I didn’t think much of it at the time. But this was George�
��s way of maintaining the upper hand.

  Anita and I were enjoying a wonderful relaxing winter, content in the feeling that, for the first time, we had financial security when, in mid-January, who shows up at my door but Hopalong Cassady, the former Ohio State Heisman Trophy–winning running back who worked for Mr. Steinbrenner as the Yankees’ minor-league fitness coach. He was dressed in a sweat suit and carried a duffel bag.

  “Mr. Steinbrenner has instructed me to start working you out, Lou, in preparation for spring training,” Hoppy said, handing me the duffel bag. “Remember what Mr. Steinbrenner said about your weight? We’ll I’m here to make sure you get there the right way.”

  I didn’t know what to say. Hoppy informed me he’d gotten permission to use the track at the University of South Florida, where he’d taken the liberty of setting up an obstacle course. After I was done running the course, Hoppy said, we would then go over to the gym, where I’d work the Nautilus machine. The first day, Hoppy got himself a cup of coffee, went up in the stands, and blew his whistle for me to start running my laps around the track. “You’re going to need to get under forty minutes,” he said.

  Well, it took me a little over an hour, and as I came in, Hoppy was shaking his head. “This is embarrassing, Lou,” he said. “I’m ten years older than you and I can do this course faster than that.”

  The second day I did the course there was no improvement and Hoppy was just as critical of my performance, again maintaining that he could easily run it under forty minutes.

  “I’ll tell you what, Hoppy,” I said. “You know that Spanish brandy you like so much? I’ll bet you a bottle of that and two hundred dollars that you can’t do this course in under forty minutes.”

  “You’re on,” Hoppy said.

  The next day, I took the whistle and went up in the stands with a cup of coffee and watched Hoppy huff and puff his way around the track. He couldn’t do it either—for three more days he tried—but I gave him the brandy and the $200 anyway. When I got to spring training in Fort Lauderdale a couple of weeks later I weighed in right around 210 pounds, but when Mr. Steinbrenner saw my weight sheet, he confronted me in the parking lot, frowning.

  “I can’t believe I had my fitness guy pick you up three days a week to get you in shape and you come in here still overweight,” he fumed.

  I thought he’d laugh when I told him what had happened with Hoppy—it was stupid on my part—because that made him even madder. “That damn Hoppy,” he said. “Played too many games with a soft helmet.”

  Alas, that wasn’t the end of it. For the next two weeks Mr. Steinbrenner was relentless in enforcing that weight clause, ordering Lemon to play me in A games and B games without a day off, all the while fining me $250 a day. At one point I had to be restrained from coming to blows with Lem. After playing a night game following a B game in the afternoon, I was so tired and my feet were hurting so much that I pulled off my shoes and heaved them over the right field fence. Lem did not take kindly to that, and after he called me out, I charged at him as the other players got between us.

  Calculated on his part or not, the weight clause issue wound up serving a second purpose for Mr. Steinbrenner. After I began complaining to the writers about being treated like “Little Orphan Annie” and he fired back, saying I would be lost if I ever had to go into business instead of playing baseball, it dominated the back pages of the New York tabloids for a week.

  Running and fitness were the orders of the day that spring of ’82. After our loss to the Dodgers in the World Series, Mr. Steinbrenner, noting the continued success of the Royals and Reds on their artificial turf, determined we needed to go in a new direction—to a speed team—and brought in two of the Reds’ fastest players, Ken Griffey Sr. via a trade and Davey Collins as a free agent. When we arrived at camp we were greeted by Harrison Dillard, the 1948 Olympic gold medal hurdler, who had set up a series of running drills for us. For the first week all we did was run in these heavy sweat suits and we weren’t allowed to pick up a bat. The writers all thought this was very amusing and began calling us the “Bronx Burners” in their stories, which got Mr. Steinbrenner highly annoyed.

  I felt bad for Lem. It was a particularly difficult spring for him. He had all these outfielders—Mr. Steinbrenner had hedged his bets on the speed game by resigning me and Murcer—and he had no idea what he was supposed to do with them. During the course of the 1982 season, the Yankees went through forty-seven different players, three managers, five pitching coaches, and three hitting instructors. Mr. Steinbrenner was seemingly in a constant state of panic, firing Lemon after just fourteen games, bringing back Stick. That first day on the job, Stick asked me, “What do you think?” I told him, “Stick, you’ve made a terrible mistake. This is a mess and I don’t know how you’ll ever be able to sort it out.” It turned out that night was the game in which Reggie made his spectacular return to Yankee Stadium with the Angels after Mr. Steinbrenner had decided not to re-sign him, and he hit a monster home run off Guidry. As he circled the bases, the crowd of nearly fifty thousand rose in unison and all started chanting “Steinbrenner sucks!” Watching this from his box, Mr. Steinbrenner was apoplectic. After the game he summoned Stick and his coaches up to his office. Stick told me when he got to the office, Mr. Steinbrenner was standing in the door and greeted him by saying, “You’re killing me, Stick!” His first game! He managed the team for the next three months before Mr. Steinbrenner fired him after we lost both ends of a doubleheader on August 3. For his third manager of the 1982 season, Mr. Steinbrenner turned to Clyde King, his longtime confidant.

  At one point, we lost 12 out of 15 games in September, and we finished up 79–83, in fifth place. Despite the glut of outfielders, I was able to get into 102 games—the last time I would play 100 games—and hit a very respectable .307. But it was hardly a satisfactory season for me, as the realization set in how far we had gone astray from the ’76–’78 glory years when Thurman was our leader and rock.

  Clyde King was a smart man. Even though he looked like a college professor with those horn-rim glasses, he was tough. He was also Mr. Steinbrenner’s man and everybody knew it, to the point where we thought a lot of the time George was writing out the lineups for him. As such, we all assumed he’d be back as manager in 1983. But when reports came out the last week of the ’82 season that Billy had torn up his office in Oakland after an argument with the A’s general manager, Sandy Alderson, all of a sudden, Clyde had no chance.

  I wish I could explain the fatal attraction between Mr. Steinbrenner and Billy Martin. When I think about it—hiring and firing a man five times to manage the Yankees—it’s incomprehensible. Only George Steinbrenner could contrive something like that. When Billy came back for the third time in 1983, no player on the team had ever experienced anything like that. But Mr. Steinbrenner loved toughness and he also understood that baseball was entertainment—and Billy provided both. Billy was his star and Billy more than anyone else could get him regularly on that coveted back page of the tabloids.

  Sadly, with each of his succeeding tours of duty as the Yankees’ manager, things with Billy seemed to get crazier and crazier, and even though we bounced back with 91 wins in 1983, the season was punctuated by one tempest after another between Billy and the umpires, Mr. Steinbrenner and the league officials, and Billy and Mr. Steinbrenner. From the Yankees’ standpoint it will probably be most remembered for the Pine Tar Game, which dragged on for over a month through the courts of New York after Billy initially succeeded in getting a two-out, two-run, ninth-inning homer by George Brett off Goose Gossage nullified on July 24 at Yankee Stadium.

  What happened was, before the game, Graig Nettles had been watching Brett taking batting practice with a bat that had pine tar on it beyond the legal limit of 18 inches up the handle. When he alerted Billy to this, Billy said, “Okay, but we’re not going to say anything about it now. Let’s wait and see what happens during the game.” When Brett hit the homer, Billy raced out of the dugout, screaming to t
he umpires to check the bat and, upon inspection, they agreed the pine tar on it exceeded the legal limit. That’s when Brett went totally crazy, charging the umpires like a wounded bull in a scene that is still replayed on the TV sports networks every July 24. Once again, Billy looked like a genius, although Nettles deserves the credit for being the heady player he was.

  But it was short-lived genius for us when the Royals appealed and American League president, Lee MacPhail, citing the “spirit of the rule” (whatever that was), overturned the umpires’ decision, restored the home run, and ordered the game picked up in the ninth inning 3½ weeks later. During that time, Mr. Steinbrenner fought MacPhail’s decision through the courts and made a public statement that MacPhail, who lived in Manhattan, “might want to go house-hunting in Kansas City.” That got him docked with a one-week suspension and a fine of $50,000 from Commissioner Kuhn. On the other hand, Billy was suspended twice during the season by MacPhail for his run-ins with umpires. It was chaos throughout, and after the season none of us were surprised when Mr. Steinbrenner once again fired Billy.

  What was a surprise was his decision to elevate Yogi from the coaching staff to succeed Billy, if only because Yogi had never openly expressed interest in managing again after he’d been fired twice before—by the Yankees in 1964 and the Mets in 1975, despite having taken both teams to the World Series. In addition to it being another disappointing (third-place) season teamwise, I could see the end coming for me in 1983. I missed most of the last two months with a sore shoulder and dizzy spells, which may have been a recurrence of that inner ear problem I’d suffered in 1975. I hit .291 but in only 53 games, and at the end of the year I was joking with the writers about the “angel of death” circling overhead around me.