The Bears won 26 of the final 35 games in 1968 to finish in fourth place. After Billy’s arrival, the Bears were 66–50, a .569 winning percentage that equates to 92 wins in a 162-game season. As soon as the season ended, the two American League expansion franchises wanted to talk to Billy about their managerial jobs, but Billy said his loyalty was to the Twins.
Cal Griffith knew what he had to do, but he was an eccentric man by nature and highly unpredictable. Billy still worried him. Nonetheless, the 1968 Twins had been a ringing disappointment. Ermer was fired. On October 11, the Twins gave Billy a one-year contract worth $50,000. The move thrilled the Twin Cities area where Billy retained unquestioned popularity. As for his unruly side, Sid Hartman, an influential Minnesota columnist whom Billy had befriended and could count on as an ally, reported that Billy had mellowed.
“As an adult, he’s learned to be calm and not lose his temper,” Hartman wrote. “He can be down-right easy-going.”
Griffith had a different take. Asked about hiring Billy, Griffith answered, “I feel like I’m sitting on a keg of dynamite.”
19
TAKING OVER THE TWINS was nothing like taking over the Denver Bears. The core of Twins talent that won the pennant in 1965 and finished second in 1967 was still there. The team had underachieved the previous season, but there was an infusion of youth from Denver as Billy brought Nettles, Mitterwald, and infielder Rick Renick with him. The Twins still had Harmon Killebrew and Oliva, who were Hall of Fame–caliber talents. The pitching was strong with veteran starters Jim Kaat and Jim Perry and closer Ron Perranoski.
The key player to Billy was the twenty-three-year-old Rod Carew, whom Billy had helped win the Rookie of the Year award as a coach in 1967. Without Billy for most of 1968, Carew had slumped.
“He was my father and my brother,” Carew said nearly twenty-five years after Billy’s death. “He did not just coach you. He nurtured you—the whole you.”
Carew came into baseball with a reputation for being hot-tempered and moody. Even in his prime as he was being elected to eighteen consecutive All-Star teams, he remained reserved and not easily approached by new teammates or reporters. As a young player, Carew would smash equipment and stalk off fields in frustration.
Billy went to him and said he had to tone down his act.
“I laughed at him and said, ‘You’ve got some nerve telling me to tone it down—you of all people,’” Carew said in 2013. “And he said, ‘You’re right, I didn’t always control myself but that doesn’t mean I’m wrong about you. You’re too good to throw your career away.’”
Carew’s recollections of Billy are rich and multifaceted. He recalls every detail of 1969.
“People think he came in and started ordering everyone around,” Carew said. “That’s an incomplete picture. He had rules but he was also out there ninety minutes before every spring training practice working with me and other young players. I had some bad fielding habits and he’d stand behind me as I took ground balls.
“And I can still hear his voice behind me, ‘Get your butt down, Rodney. That’s it. Good, now soften your hands as you reach for the ball. That’s it, Rodney. Do it again.’ He would be out there in the hot sun for hours with me and other guys who wanted to get better. There was no end to his dedication to making baseball players.”
Billy tailored his instruction in that first spring training to each player. He wanted the right-handed-hitting Killebrew to occasionally hit the ball to the opposite field, something he never did. And he wanted Killebrew to play third base, where he had not played regularly for years. But Billy had a reason—Killebrew at third got first baseman Rich Reese, a .322 hitter, into the lineup.
Billy wanted the left-handed Oliva, who normally hit the ball to all fields, to think about pulling the ball to right field more often so he could drive in more runs with men in scoring position. He wanted César Tovar, who played all over the infield and outfield, to steal whenever he felt like it. Carew also had a green light. Everyone else was to run only on orders from Billy.
Billy’s first spring training as a Major League manager was unusually relaxed, more like a baseball laboratory where he taught basic principles—how to squeeze bunt and hit-and-run—even if he did not worry about other traditional spring training goals, like conditioning. Like Stengel, Billy did not have long workouts and he did not care what his players did off the field so long as they showed up on time and paid attention while on the field.
“He came to me and said, ‘Your average dropped in 1968 because you hit the ball in the air too much,’” Carew said. “I don’t know how he knew that when he was in Denver but he was right. He said, ‘You’re fast, let’s learn to bunt and let’s learn to keep the ball on the ground.’ And he taught me how to do both.”
Carew became one of the best bunters in the modern history of the game and a master of the one-hop single through the infield. Carew nearly hit .400 in 1977 and won seven AL batting titles (his first was in 1969).
And then there was Billy’s pet project—attempting to make Carew the best stealer of home plate in the history of baseball.
“He came to me and said, ‘We’re going to drive the league crazy,’” Carew said. “And it’s not a gimmick, it’s a very effective way to get runs and demoralize the other team. During batting practice I would stand out at third base and he would be behind me teaching me how and when to break for home.
“There is a timing to it and it’s based on the pitcher’s windup. He showed me how to get a walking lead so I could more easily accelerate. You had to read the pitcher’s windup because every pitcher gets to that point in their windup when they cannot change their motion. They can’t speed up and they can’t pitch out. Sometimes I would leave too soon and sometimes I would leave too late. Billy would be there, instructing me for hours. It’s an art and I was amazed at how much he knew about it.”
Carew was not the only one schooled in how to steal home, or steal in general. Everyone, including Killebrew, was expected to run. Killebrew stole second and third base in an exhibition game. Ted Williams, the Washington manager, was incensed when Billy had his team deftly execute squeeze bunts on consecutive pitches in a preseason game.
“When am I supposed to practice the squeeze? In May?” Billy asked afterward when Williams protested.
Like Casey Stengel, Billy had little reward and incentive programs for the team. Getting hit by a pitch in a game meant a player could leave early. Stealing second and third base in one sequence on the bases was worth $100. Mitterwald recalled that before one spring training game in southern Florida, Billy said he had a reward for the team if they did not make an error in the game and if they won by at least five runs.
“We hadn’t made an error but in the ninth inning we were still only up four runs,” Mitterwald said. “Billy didn’t call it, but two guys got together and pulled off a double steal of second base and home so that we got the five-run lead.
“After the game, we got on the bus and we’re all thinking, ‘Hey, where’s our reward?’ It was like a three-hour ride back home. About thirty minutes into the trip, Billy had the team bus stop at a roadside bar and we all poured into it for about ninety minutes. Everyone was having a great time. Billy picked up the tab for the whole thing.”
The Twins opened the season on the road and lost their first four games. But when they returned to Minnesota for the home opener, it was clear the locals still believed in Billy. The game drew the biggest crowd in the history of the franchise.
Carew electrified the crowd—if not all of baseball—when he stole home in the seventh inning to tie the game. The game-winning hit came on Killebrew’s single to right field, the opposite field. The Twins kept winning, and Billy became more and more audacious.
In one game, with the bases loaded, they attempted a triple steal. The runner on third did not break until the catcher, a bit confused and not sure where to throw, heaved the ball toward third base. Everyone was safe. Billy tried another triple steal thr
ee games later. This time, the catcher threw wildly over the third baseman’s head and two runs scored.
By the first week of May, the Twins were on an eight-game win streak and had taken over first place in the newly formed AL West. The 1969 season was the first after the American and National leagues had split into two divisions each.
“We were just a different kind of team—no one had seen such speed and aggressiveness,” Carew said. “We confused the other teams. Billy saw things we didn’t see. He looked at the game in three-inning sets. Set up certain things early, then look for the pitching matchups or baserunning matchups you want in the middle innings.
“The end of the game was about defense and a veteran pitcher who knew how to close out a game. We weren’t just running all over the place; it was all very strategic.”
The 1969 Twins pitching staff pitched 41 complete games—the staff of thirty-seven-year-old Baltimore manager Earl Weaver pitched 50 complete games, an average of almost one in three. Perranoski, whom Ermer had used only against left-handed batters, was Billy’s full-time closer in Minnesota. He appeared in 75 games, won 9 of them, and saved another 31. Perranoski’s season earned-run average was 2.11.
“He gave a lot of guys the confidence to succeed,” Perranoski said. “I know he rejuvenated my career.”
Carew said Billy had an especially close relationship with the Latin players.
“I often thought he got along better with us than the white guys,” Carew said with a laugh decades later. “We sometimes were quiet and kept to ourselves. People called us moody, or worse, lazy. We were just young kids living away from home and not necessarily fitting in.
“Billy got to know us before he judged us and figured out what made us tick. At one point, I was really upset because my parents were divorcing. My mind wasn’t on the game. I just wanted to go home. So in one game I hit a ground ball out and just turned from first base and ran right into the clubhouse. I was in there taking my uniform off when Billy walked in.”
Said Carew, “I’m leaving.”
Billy said, “Rodney, talk to me.”
“I don’t feel like talking.”
Billy turned to the guard at the door to the clubhouse and ordered him not to let Carew out.
“Go get a cop if you have to but he better be here when this game ends,” Billy said.
After the game, Carew told Billy about his parents.
“And Billy said to me, ‘I understand, I come from a broken home, too. But you can’t leave a game, you can’t walk out. You have responsibilities to your baseball family, too. You want these guys to know you can be trusted to play hard and be there for them. If you want to arrange a quick trip home to see your parents we can do that at some point. But talk to me first.’
“I apologized and I did not go home. I played harder. That’s what I loved about him.”
Carew hit .332 in 1969 with 56 RBIs and he stole home 7 times (the record for one season is 8 steals of home, and Carew nearly tied it as he was called out in a controversial, close play late in the season). Leo Cárdenas hit .280 and drove in 70 runs. Tovar came off the bench to hit 11 home runs with 52 RBIs and a .288 batting average.
“That Twins team just terrorized the AL West,” said Charlie Silvera, Billy’s former Yankees roommate who became a Twins coach. “Billy had such balls as a manager. He would squeeze bunt with a five-run lead, he didn’t care.
“Back then, before every game was on TV, the baseball adage was that you played conservative at home when your fans and executives were watching. Then on the road you could take risks or run a trick play because no one from your front office or hometown was watching. But Billy didn’t care where we were, he did whatever he thought would work. He never considered whether he would be second-guessed. The most important thing was keeping the other team guessing. He never wanted there to be a pattern about his moves.”
Billy also played all kinds of head games to get a mental edge on his opponent. In 1969, the young and promising Oakland A’s were the Twins’ closest rivals. When the A’s came to Minnesota for the first time, Billy was irked when Oakland’s twenty-three-year-old slugger Reggie Jackson slammed two home runs as the A’s built a 7–0 lead.
When Reggie came to the plate late in the game, two pitches whizzed by his head. Jackson charged the Twins pitcher, Dick Woodson. The benches cleared.
“That’s the kind of manager Billy Martin is,” Reggie said after the game. “If someone is beating his club, he’s going to put a little fear in that team’s heart. I don’t blame Woodson. He was following orders. I blame the manager.”
Billy denied he was throwing at Jackson and said that as the two teams were being separated on the field, Jackson threatened him.
“He yelled at me that he was going to get me,” said Billy, not looking overly worried. “I want somebody to write that so that if we ever get in a fight, he won’t be able to sue me and say I started it.”
Off the field, Billy’s image continued to be reshaped. Joe Durso, a baseball writer at the New York Times from the 1960s to the 1980s, once told a story about how Billy and Gretchen would have all the New York writers over for dinner whenever the Yankees were visiting.
“I remember being struck by this domesticated Billy,” Durso said. “We ate dinner and drank some wine, but not a lot. Billy showed off his garden. He lived on the edge of this rural area with rolling fields. After dinner, Billy would sit in a rocking chair in his living room and smoke a pipe as he talked about American history or current events.
“He was a country squire. There was a metamorphosis.”
But not everything was so peaceable. Billy’s life path usually diverged whenever a sense of consistency set in. Since he was a teen, he desperately pursued normalcy and tranquillity. And just as often, once it was achieved, some set of circumstances, some of them surely created by Billy, would fill his life with uncertainty and insecurity again.
Twenty years after his death, his son, Billy Martin Jr., wondered if his father didn’t just get bored when everything was going right.
“He thrived under pressure but eventually it would get to him and he wanted some quiet,” Billy Jr. said. “But that wouldn’t last long. It was like he missed the tension. He’d do something to bring the pressure back into his life again.”
Or, a deep-seated distrust of authority figures—an attitude bred into many West Berkeley Boys and passionately promoted inside the walls of 1632 7th Street—still welled inside the forty-one-year-old manager of the Twins, even if he did now smoke a pipe and placidly hold court in a living room near rolling midwestern fields.
Whatever it was, there were piecemeal episodes of disorder in 1969, little things that someone else might have avoided or smoothed over—especially with the team in first place. But that is not what usually happened in Billy’s life.
There was, for example, the contretemps Billy created over the daily nap time of Twins owner Calvin Griffith. Griffith had requested that Billy meet with him two or three times a week before home games to talk about the team. Griffith said he would be available in the afternoon anytime except between 5:00 and 5:30 p.m. because that’s when Griffith took his daily nap.
Early in the season, Billy visited with Griffith often, especially as the team struggled to find its footing. But he grew tired of the exercise. The team was winning, and Billy did not like explaining some of his moves and decisions. But Griffith was insistent.
Before a game in June, Billy came to Griffith’s office and knocked on the door just after 5:00 p.m. Billy said it was the only time he could talk to the owner. Awakened, Griffith asked him to adjust his schedule and come back another day, but not between 5:00 and 5:30.
A few days later, Billy again knocked on Griffith’s door just past 5:00 p.m. Griffith explained the timing of his daily nap once again. A week later, Billy was back, knocking at 5:15 p.m. Exasperated, Griffith at that point told Billy not to bother with the meetings any longer.
Billy’s guile was not confined t
o triple steals and suicide squeeze bunts.
If the nap issue left Griffith vexed, then Billy’s fight with Twins pitcher Dave Boswell terrified him. Boswell was a temperamental but gifted starting pitcher, a six-foot-three, 190-pound right-hander who by 1969 had already posted three double-digit-victory seasons for the Twins.
During a trip to Detroit in August, Boswell was inactive because of a shoulder injury, but Billy still required all the pitchers to run twenty laps from foul line to foul line before games. When Art Fowler, Billy’s pitching coach, reminded Boswell of his running duties before a Thursday night game, Boswell swore at Fowler and refused to run.
After the game, which the Twins lost, Billy went to a bar called the Lindell A.C., owned by Jimmy Butsicaris, the best man at Billy’s 1959 wedding to Gretchen. The Lindell A.C. was a big place not far from Tiger Stadium and one of the first sports bars in America with the walls and tables lined with jerseys and autographed photographs. It was the Toots Shor’s of Detroit.
On this night, Billy was drinking with Fowler and Bob Allison, one of his outfielders. While it might have been baseball tradition that managers did not drink with their players—or at least not for too long—Billy felt otherwise. He liked most of his players and he wanted to be with them. He would talk baseball and he would hear things from the players’ perspective about the team. Boswell, whom Billy liked and always called “Bozzy,” was at the bar, too, but across the wide room.
Billy asked Fowler how the pitchers’ running had gone before the game, and Fowler told him about Boswell. Billy told Fowler that he would address it with Boswell before the next day’s game. The group had a couple more drinks and Fowler went back to the team hotel. Once Fowler left, Boswell came over to Billy.
“Art told you about my not running, didn’t he?” Boswell asked.
“That’s his job,” Billy answered.
“I’m going back to the hotel to kick his butt, the little squealer,” Boswell said.
Billy Martin Page 21