Billy Martin

by Bill Pennington

  “I remember leaving the clubhouse after our last game in 1975,” Piniella said. “I had an awful season at Shea Stadium and I was hurt. I hit .196. Billy was standing at the door and he says to me, ‘Lou, don’t worry about it. Go home and get healthy. We’re going to win the pennant next year and you’ll be a big part of it.’

  “He told other guys that, too, and you know what? We believed him. And those who didn’t believe him, it’s like he knew who they were because by the time we got to spring training, they were off the team.”

  On September 29, the day after the 1975 regular season ended, Casey Stengel died. Billy went straight to Casey’s home in Glendale, California, and on the night before Casey’s funeral slept in his mentor’s bed.

  “Billy said he wanted to do it to connect with Casey one last time,” said Charlie Silvera.

  Billy, Silvera, and Yankees infielder Jerry Coleman were pallbearers at Casey’s funeral, carrying the casket from the Church of the Recessional. The pastor reading one of Casey’s eulogies quoted the Los Angeles sportswriter Jim Murray, who wrote upon Casey’s death, “God is certainly getting an earful tonight.”

  Billy stayed another night at Casey’s home before flying to the Bay Area to go hunting with Lew Figone. With Mrs. Bowlin’s permission, Billy took with him some of Casey’s old long-sleeved T-shirts that he had worn under his Yankees uniform. On occasion, Billy would wear them beneath his Yankees uniform and would show visitors the “37” stenciled underneath the collar of the shirt.

  Over the next several weeks, Gabe Paul cleaned house when he traded Bonds to the Angels for center fielder Mickey Rivers and right-handed pitcher Ed Figueroa. On the same day, Paul sent Medich to Pittsburgh for pitchers Dock Ellis and Ken Brett and a twenty-one-year-old second baseman who had batted only .164 in 61 at-bats for the Pirates in 1975, Willie Randolph.

  In the newspapers the next day, the news was all about the trading of Bonds, the powerful All-Star (who would never be an All-Star again). The other focus was on the acquisition of Ellis, who had won 96 games in nine seasons for Pittsburgh but was considered a mercurial head case. Ellis would end up winning 17 games for the 1976 Yankees, but the key players in the trade, as Billy saw it, were Rivers and Randolph, whom he thought was a steal.

  Rivers had driven the Angels crazy with his impulsive personality and because he ran up fearsome debts at the racetrack. He rubbed some teammates the wrong way, jabbering constantly in an almost nonsensical language of his own. He was a fleet outfielder, though he had a weak arm. But he was also known as Mick the Quick, leading the American League the previous season in stolen bases (70) and triples (13). He had flair, he unnerved pitchers when he was on base, and he pressured opposing infielders because he chopped balls into the ground and could then beat the throw to first base. He was the leadoff hitter Billy was seeking.

  Randolph, meanwhile, had almost as much speed as Rivers and more bat control. He had hit .339 in Class AAA in 1975 and had been a top prospect coming out of Brooklyn in 1972. But Billy and Paul loved Randolph’s Brooklyn-bred toughness and determination—he never smiled on the field—and they appreciated his skill set: he could bunt, execute the hit-and-run, steal bases, hit line drives in the gap, and turn the double play as smoothly as any second baseman in baseball.

  It was a gamble to turn the second baseman’s job over to an unproven rookie, but Billy believed in taking chances on some rookies as Casey Stengel had with him.

  Billy liked his remade roster. It had characters, as all Billy teams usually did, and it had character. But as he looked toward spring training he was also distracted.

  His managerial career was a source of excited pride. His personal life was a mess.

  In November, his daughter with Lois, Kelly Ann, had been arrested for trying to smuggle 450 grams of cocaine out of Barranquilla, Colombia, as she boarded a flight for Miami. It was a serious offense, and the Colombian authorities grew more interested in prosecuting Kelly Ann when they found out she was the offspring of a famous American personality. Kelly Ann, who had put the cocaine in plastic bags and strapped them to her legs, also would not identify who had given her the cocaine.

  Kelly Ann was twenty-two, a secretary living near Berkeley, and she ran with a rough crowd. Though she initially claimed she had been duped into carrying the drugs, she later confessed to her father that she was trying to make some extra money on a drug-running mission.

  Billy was obsessed with trying to find back-channel ways to get Kelly Ann cleared of the charges. The case lingered for many weeks as Billy tried to call in every favor from his extended network of friends. Frank Sinatra made some calls as did Bill Reedy, who worked for a politician with ties to then President Ford. The Yankees used their resources and arranged for a respected lawyer. Billy called then Secretary of State Henry Kissinger because Kissinger was a renowned Yankees fan. Kissinger promised to look into the matter. Colombian officials also extorted tens of thousands of dollars from Billy.

  The ordeal weighed on Billy. He blamed himself for not being more a part of Kelly Ann’s life. Through the years, Kelly Ann had visited her father and lived one summer with Billy, Gretchen, and Billy Joe in Minnesota, but father and daughter were far from close.

  In January, Kelly Ann was sentenced to three years in jail, but because of the official lobbying of Billy’s friends in high places, she avoided a hardened Colombia jail. She was instead confined to a convent where she was watched over by nuns. It was understood that she would likely serve about two-thirds to one-half of her sentence.

  As for his other child and the family left behind in Texas, Billy did return to live with Gretchen and Billy Joe for weeks at a time in the off-season. It was an uneasy standoff. Neither filed for divorce. Gretchen made visits to New York and Billy made visits to Texas.

  “It was tough; I was just trying to get through school and sports,” Billy Jr. said. “They wouldn’t give up on it, but you could feel the sadness—for everyone.”

  Billy was seen on the Manhattan bar circuit, and there was always the occasional one-night stand for companionship. But he was a lonely figure.

  “I remember Billy coming into our offices all the time that winter,” said Mickey Morabito, the Yankees’ assistant public relations director who would become a lifelong friend and confidant of Billy’s. “It was strange to see him hanging around the office like that in the off-season. Managers don’t usually do that. He had rejoined the Yankee family, but I think it was the only family he had.”

  27

  IN 1976, SPRING TRAINING camps did not open as baseball’s owners and players sparred over the terms of a new era of free agency created by several court cases won by the players’ union. Billy was disgusted. He believed the spring training period was essential to instilling his fundamentals. Besides, at this stage in his life, depriving him of a baseball team to lead left him in a personal purgatory.

  Then, on March 1 came another blow. George Steinbrenner’s suspension was supposed to extend to November. Instead, Baseball Commissioner Bowie Kuhn shortened Steinbrenner’s suspension so he could reinstate him immediately.

  Billy’s life as Yankees manager would never be the same.

  The labor discord was settled in mid-March with spring training cut to twenty days. Billy was not thrilled, but he was delighted that his players were soon filling the clubhouse.

  He was less excited by the presence of Steinbrenner in that clubhouse as well.

  Billy had never had an owner who treated the locker room as his place of business, too. Late in the 1975 season, Steinbrenner—a former assistant college football coach as a young man who himself had never played football—had taken to taping pep talks for his players on an audio cassette. Prohibited from going into the locker room himself because of his suspension, George ordered Gabe Paul to have the speeches played for the players before certain big games as a way to motivate them.

  The cassette player would be placed on a stool in the middle of the clubhouse with the volume turned high
.

  The first speech was just two minutes long. The next one a week later was a little longer. When the third speech went on for more than three or four minutes, Billy emerged from his office, stalked toward the middle of the clubhouse, and kicked over the stool. Then he pushed the stop button on the cassette player.

  The players roared their approval. Paul would later ask Billy if he was playing George’s tapes to the players and Billy would say he was. In fact, after Billy kicked over the stool, players took turns stopping the Steinbrenner speeches, rushing to the cassette player and forcefully banging on the stop button.

  But now Billy knew that Steinbrenner could deliver his speeches in person. And there would be no stop button to push.

  So Billy negotiated a settlement. It was all right for George to be in the clubhouse for individual chats with players but no oratory.

  That left the spring training fields for George to roam.

  “George just loved to be seen and be involved, and truthfully, I think he thought he was helping,” said Lou Piniella, an outfielder on the 1976 team and a future manager for Steinbrenner. “And at first, I think it just amused Billy. George would come strutting by and say something like, ‘OK, Piniella, now let’s whip that bat around.’ Or, he would watch the infielders and shout, ‘Step lively, boys.’

  “And Billy would be standing there with his hands in his back pockets biting his lip. Then George would turn his back and walk to the next field and Billy would wait a minute and say, ‘You heard the man, step lively, boys.’ And everyone would start quietly laughing, turning away so no one could see.”

  Another time, one of the Yankees starters sprained an ankle and athletic trainer Gene Monahan had the player hustled into the dugout. Coaches gathered on the bench as Steinbrenner rushed over, peering into the scrum encircling the player. Monahan was pressing ice to the ankle, which was swelling nonetheless.

  “Do something,” Steinbrenner yelped. “Don’t you have any colder ice?”

  Steinbrenner was not just a noisy interloper the Yankees appeased. The players appreciated that he spent money on the roster. The Yankees’ spring training home had been renovated with a more spacious locker room and additional fields. One of Steinbrenner’s first acts was to upgrade the Yankees’ travel arrangements. The team now had newer jets to fly them around the continent, and they stayed in the best hotels whatever the city.

  Bill “Killer” Kane, the Yankees’ traveling secretary who became a friend to both Steinbrenner and Billy—a difficult daily double—recalled that the upgrades were ordered by both men.

  “George was obsessed with the Yankees always looking first-class,” Kane said. “So we had to have the best planes, the best buses, the best bus drivers, the best-made uniforms. George spent his money; there was no limit for that kind of stuff.

  “Billy, meanwhile, wanted to make sure the players’ lives were easy and that they felt special. One of the first things he told me was that he wanted Chivas as the only Scotch served on the planes when we traveled. I told Billy that I didn’t think we served Scotch at all and he said, ‘That’s not right; give the players the best. Let them have a drink to relax when together on the road. Let them have fun.’

  “So we had Chivas on all our flights. And good food, too—shrimp cocktail, steak, you name it. It was Billy’s idea that they should feel honored to play for the Yankees. And George thought the same thing.”

  Kane, from 1976 to the mid-1980s, was in a unique position to assess the thorny, benevolent, multifarious relationship between Billy and George Steinbrenner. Kane, who died in 2013, not only transported the team around America, he oversaw every detail for players, coaches, manager, owner, and the beat writers and broadcasters. Billy ran the team on the field and Pete Sheehy and clubhouse manager Nick Priore supervised everything inside the clubhouse; Kane, whom everyone called “Killer,” controlled everything outside the clubhouse and the field.

  Kane, who smoked unfiltered Lucky Strike cigarettes and closed many a hotel bar, was like a character from a Damon Runyon novel. But he was a real-life throwback, a funny Irishman with a twinkle in his eye and a thick Bronx accent who had been around the Yankees since 1961 when he was a statistician for legendary Yankees announcer Mel Allen. Killer, who picked up his nickname from an old comic book hero, had all-seeing eyes and was present, it seemed, for everything that mattered to the Yankees. As chief of provisions and accommodations, he knew every secret on the team. Who else got a player’s—or the manager’s—mistress a hotel room and a ticket to the game that night? Who else knew that the player’s—or the manager’s—wife had called Killer just before the same game asking for a hotel room and a ticket to that night’s game so she could surprise her husband on their anniversary?

  Who else stalled the wife on the ticket and then transferred the mistress to another hotel during the game? On the same day, who else would just as seamlessly arrange for another player to fly home during an off day in a long road trip so the player could spend some extra time with his wife during her difficult pregnancy? Nobody would even know the player was missing, except Killer. If George or Billy asked, Killer would lie and say he saw the player in the hotel lobby that morning. In truth, the player would be flying in the next day, landing just four hours before game time. And Killer would take a cab to the airport to personally pick up the player so that Killer and the player could arrive at the ballpark together, as if they had just come from the team hotel.

  Killer knew everything about everybody. Who was cheap, who was afraid to fly, who got manicures on the road, who pretended to not drink but actually was getting drunk nightly in his hotel room, and who didn’t bother to have state taxes withdrawn from his paycheck—a frequent Billy misstep.

  Perhaps because he knew too much, Killer was the only Yankees employee to be fired more often by Steinbrenner than Billy. And he was rehired more often than Billy, too. Kane, who walked with a pronounced limp because of a childhood bout with polio, took confrontations with George to levels even Billy never tried. Killer and George, arguing over travel arrangements, once came to blows in a New Orleans hotel lobby during the exhibition season. Kane threw the first punch.

  Nothing really came of the fight, and the next day the two went back to work together. Neither Killer nor George ever spoke to each other about their tussle. Other times George would fire Killer and banish him from the Yankees’ offices, or Killer would quit during a dispute and go home. Like George Costanza in Seinfeld, Killer would simply come back to the office the next day as if nothing had happened.

  Steinbrenner liked it this way. For all the words that have been written about Steinbrenner, he was not vindictive or mean-spirited. He could be a terrible boss, cruel and unyielding. Not many people truly enjoyed his company for long stretches of time because he was too opinionated and unrelenting.

  But he also had a soft spot for authenticity. Guile disturbed him, but those who spoke their minds intrigued him. He was drawn to them. And so, he fired and rehired Killer Kane and then threw his arm around him and took him to dinner. He did the same with Billy.

  “Billy and George had a lot of affection for each other,” Kane said in 2012. “They were like two cousins who loved each other but couldn’t stop fighting either. They rubbed each other the wrong way without even trying. But they both wanted the same thing. And in the end, George wanted the best for Billy and Billy wanted the best for George because that was best for the Yankees. And they both knew that.

  “It’s just when they disagreed, it was usually a loud disagreement.”

  Kane laughed heartily.

  “I guess that’s kind of an understatement,” he said.

  But in the spring of 1976, things were almost entirely peaceable at the dawn of what was later known as Billy I. George needed Billy to show him and his Yankees how to win. And he wanted a showman at the helm. George might have strutted around Fort Lauderdale, but once the regular season began, he generally kept his distance. He had brought Billy in to deliver th
e Yankees their first pennant since 1964. He got out of the way and watched Billy mold the 1976 Yankees in his image.

  Before the opening game of the 1976 season in Milwaukee, Billy, with a black armband on his sleeve commemorating the death of Casey Stengel, assembled his team for a clubhouse speech.

  “He didn’t say much,” Piniella said. “The first thing he said was, ‘We’re winning the division this year and then we’re winning the pennant.’

  “Then the next thing he said was, ‘The only way that doesn’t happen is if you don’t believe in what I’m going to ask you to do. This is a good team and we’re going to scare the shit out of the whole league if you buy into what I’m trying to do. Trust me, you do that, and we’ll win.’

  “And then he walked out the clubhouse door and headed for the dugout. I was standing next to Thurman and he turned to me and said, ‘That SOB is going to win us a pennant. I believe him.’”

  The Yankees lost the opening game of the 1976 season in Milwaukee when forty-two-year-old Hank Aaron, who was playing his last season, knocked in three runs with two hits in a 5–0 Brewers victory.

  But the second game of the season sealed Billy’s hold on his players. By the end of that game, they all believed in him. To them, he had performed a baseball miracle akin to Jesus Christ turning water into wine. He had literally turned nine innings that ended in defeat into a victory.

  The game on Saturday, April 10, in Milwaukee was a cavalcade of runs and daring plays. Down 6–4 in the top of the ninth, the Yankees scored five runs, including one on a suicide squeeze bunt. But in the bottom of the ninth, the Yankees reliever, Dave Pagan, loaded the bases before facing the Brewers’ third baseman, Don Money.

  Money laced a long drive into the left-field seats for a game-winning grand slam. The home crowd was jumping up and down in the grandstand, and the Milwaukee dugout spilled onto the field. The Yankees outfielders had begun to dejectedly head off the field.