Steinbrenner told the New York press that the outcome of the Nevada civil and criminal proceedings against Billy could prevent him from ever managing the Yankees again.
Eddie Sapir called Steinbrenner for a clarification.
“George told me that Billy had to be found innocent of the criminal charges or have them dismissed and he said that Billy could not be found liable in the civil case either,” Sapir said. “George said if Billy paid Hagar any settlement money in the civil suit that was the same as losing it. If Billy didn’t win both cases, George would cut him loose.
“I called Billy and told him what George said. Billy said, ‘Judge, I slugged this guy. I didn’t mean to and I wish I didn’t, but how are we going to get away with saying it never happened?’
“And I didn’t know the answer to that but the more we talked, Billy kept saying, ‘I told them in Reno that I didn’t want to do any interviews. If only those fuckers had listened to me.’”
That’s when Sapir decided the whole mess was the Bighorns’ fault. That became the line of attack he took. Sapir threatened to sue the Bighorns’ owners because they failed to keep a verbal agreement to shield Billy from the press. He also contacted Hagar’s attorney, who was Hagar’s neighbor and not terribly experienced, and asked what Hagar wanted.
“I was idealistic, and though people told me to go after a lot of money, I told my attorney that all I wanted was my medical bills paid and I wanted an apology from Billy,” said Hagar, who had amassed about $7,500 in medical expenses, most of them for dental work.
Sapir went back to the Bighorns and said Billy would not sue the team if the Bighorns gave Hagar a check for $7,500. The team balked. Sapir kept up the pressure, explaining the grounds for the suit and revealing his ammunition. (Wong agreed to testify that Billy repeatedly told the team on arrival in Reno that he would not talk to any reporters and a Bighorns official assured Billy that he would be kept away from the press. Wong also said Billy was defending himself from a belligerent Hagar.)
As Sapir schemed, Hagar tried to get on with his life. The day after Billy punched him, Hagar went to his brother’s wedding where he was the best man.
“The bride was furious because no one was paying attention to her,” Hagar said. “Everyone wanted to talk to me about my fight with Billy Martin. It was awful.
“They took two sets of wedding pictures. One with me in it and my big black eye and one without me in it. You can guess which one they kept.”
The settlement was on May 24, 1979. Billy, Sapir, and Wong flew to a news conference in Reno. All the details of the deal had been arranged ahead of time. Well, almost all the details. The Bighorns had caved and one of the owners cut an $8,000 check that would be publicly presented to Hagar. For that sum, Hagar would drop the criminal charges.
But there was still the matter of Billy apologizing to Hagar.
“We were flying to Reno and Billy was in a good mood,” Sapir said. “This had been hanging over his head and he was happy it was going to be behind him. And I said, ‘Skip, there’s just one more thing. This Hagar guy wants you to apologize to him at the news conference.’
“And Billy got this look on his face and I thought, ‘Uh-oh.’ He said to me, ‘Eddie, I didn’t cause this fight. I’m sorry but I ain’t getting up and apologizing.’”
At the news conference, which was well attended with photographers and television camera crews from all over Nevada and California, all the principals involved sat at a long table before the media. The Bighorns’ chief owner, Bill Meyers, produced the $8,000 check. The civil suit and criminal charges were officially dismissed. Bill Musselman got to his feet and explained that the whole situation was an unfortunate misunderstanding.
Hagar, dressed in a suit, awaited the apology from Billy. Hagar had been told that Billy would speak at the news conference but Billy did not go to the microphone at the rostrum. Sapir did instead.
“I’m really glad we’re all here and that this is all behind us now,” said Sapir, dressed in an elegant suit with a showy, bright flowery tie. “I have talked to Ray and I have talked to Billy and I want you all to know how sorry they both are. They really both wish this never happened.”
Sapir had no authority to speak for Hagar, but he was on a roll.
“So this is the end of this,” the judge said, grinning. “They’re both sorry, but as they say, love is never having to say you’re sorry.”
And with that, Sapir stepped away from the rostrum and encouraged Hagar and Billy to shake hands, which they did, as dozens of flashbulbs popped. Both men smiled.
“We left that room and got on a plane for Vegas to celebrate,” Sapir said. “And we were having a drink on the plane and Billy says, ‘Judge, that was just beautiful.’”
Later that afternoon, in a radio interview in New York, Steinbrenner announced that Billy would soon sign a new contract to manage the team in 1980.
Asked why the deal had been agreed to on that day, George answered, “I never said he wasn’t going to manage in 1980.”
35
THE OFF-SEASON OF 1978–79 might have started with a bang-bang in Reno, but otherwise, Billy kept a low profile. In mid-December, he did lend his name to an upscale Western apparel store on 69th Street near Madison Avenue in Manhattan. It was called Billy Martin’s Western Wear.
The store, which sold expensive leather boots, belts, cowboy hats, shirts, and other Western-themed goods, would eventually move to the gilded Trump Plaza complex and was a busy and profitable midtown Manhattan enterprise for more than thirty years. It would ride the coattails of the Urban Cowboy craze.
But on the first day of operation, it was Billy who was center stage at a news conference, and he charmed both the sports and fashion press.
Asked what he knew about clothing trends, he answered, “I know that some people in New York long for the wide-open spaces of the range. They can’t get there but they can feel some of that freedom with a nice pair of boots and a cowboy hat that expresses a kind of Wild West attitude. And, they just look nice. Even with a fancy suit.”
When the topic turned to baseball, Billy handled questions about Reggie with aplomb, although he typically could not resist one dig at the Yankees right fielder.
When reporters noticed that the store had multiple photographs of Billy, Mickey Mantle, Whitey Ford, and Casey Stengel—but no pictures of Steinbrenner or Reggie—Billy answered with a grin, “Yeah, that’s right. I want to get some pictures of George.”
By early 1979, Billy was about twenty pounds heavier than he was when he resigned the previous season. He scouted other Major League teams for the Yankees and occasionally visited the organization’s minor league system. That summer, the Yankees were about to begin a period of prudent amateur drafts. Among their 1979 picks was a line-drive-hitting first baseman/outfielder, Don Mattingly of Evansville, Indiana.
Billy occasionally had dinner with Bob Lemon. Lemon needed the companionship. Ten days after the Yankees’ 1978 World Series victory, his son Jerry had been killed in a one-car automobile accident on an Arizona highway. Jerry Lemon was twenty-six years old and the youngest of the Lemon children.
Lemon was always an easygoing guy. He called everyone, from clubhouse boys to cleanup hitters, “Meat.”
“Take a few pitches and work a walk, Meat,” he would tell a batter in the on-deck circle.
“You got a question, Meat?” he would ask a reporter.
Lemon, a Hall of Fame pitcher, was once asked if he ever took a tough loss home with him.
“No,” he said. “I left it in some bar along the way.”
But in 1979, Lemon was haunted by the loss of his son. He had never been a disciplinarian. His managerial philosophy was to stay out of the way of talented players. But in 1979, an emotionally distracted Lemon was not fully paying attention either.
“We were a veteran team and veterans often don’t want to do much in spring training anyway,” said Piniella. “But that spring, we really kind of took advantage o
f the situation. We were sleepwalking through the spring, and poor Bob Lemon wasn’t there mentally to give us a kick in the ass.”
Not surprisingly, the Yankees quickly fell several games back in the standings at the start of the 1979 season. The team was lethargic and distracted.
Lyle had written a book with author Peter Golenbock, The Bronx Zoo, a salvo fired from the safety of the Texas Rangers’ clubhouse. It was hard on Reggie and George Steinbrenner and the Yankees’ crazed culture. The Yankees faced days and weeks of inquiries about the book, which became a bestseller.
Then on April 19, two heavyweights, the six-foot-three, 200-pound Rich Gossage and the six-foot-four and 215-pound backup catcher/designated hitter Cliff Johnson, got into a wrestling match in the shower after Gossage made a few verbal jabs at Johnson in the clubhouse after a game.
“That fight in the shower sounded like two semi tractor-trailers colliding,” Piniella said.
In the tussle, Gossage fell against the shower wall and tore a ligament in the thumb of his pitching hand. He would be out for two months and never truly regain his form until the next season. If the 1979 Yankees had an irreplaceable player, it was Gossage.
Others were ailing, too. Munson’s knees were so bad he was occasionally forced to play first base, making Heath’s departure more noticeable. Reggie had a variety of leg issues. Everyone’s production seemed condensed—Nettles, Chambliss, and Reggie all had lower-than-usual power numbers at the plate. The pitching staff was a mess.
“The 1979 team was tired,” said Randolph, one of the few Yankees to have a stellar season. “Not just physically tired but maybe tired from all the stress of 1977 and 1978.”
Billy was aware of the losing and the mounting frustration of George Steinbrenner, but he remained removed from it until May, when on a trip to New York Steinbrenner first talked to Billy about managing the Yankees earlier than expected.
While there might have been plenty of excuses for the Yankees’ 1979 malaise, Steinbrenner was hearing none of it. The Yankees were the two-time defending World Series champions, and the Boss wanted another title. He called Billy and asked if he should fire Lemon and have an interim manager until Billy took over in 1980.
Billy convinced George to let him try to resuscitate the 1979 team—so long as it would not affect his tenure in 1980.
“Because the best way to build a winner is from spring training on,” Billy said.
George said he understood that 1979 was not the litmus test for 1980. That would still be Billy’s team. “No matter what happens,” George said, using that phrase yet again.
On June 18, with the Yankees eight games out of first place—their record was 34–31—George fired Lemon and brought Billy back.
Told a few days earlier that the move was imminent, Billy had called Lemon to warn him. Billy said he often felt sympathy for the managers he was replacing, especially when they were friends like Lemon. But there is a saying in baseball: Managers are hired to be fired. Billy knew the adage well. Collectively, the fraternity of managers rarely held a grudge. Each of them had replaced someone at some point, and it almost certainly had not happened after their predecessor retired.
The exiting manager felt bad and might be peeved. The new manager saw fresh opportunity, even if he knew the time would likely come when the shoe was on the other foot.
In 1979, Lemon said, “It’s OK. Maybe you can get the boys playing again, Billy.”
Lemon stayed on as a Yankees consultant. Al Rosen cried when he had to fire Lemon. Within a month, Rosen had resigned from the Yankees and never came back.
Stepping into this vortex of gloom, Billy was excited to have his number 1 jersey back on even if he sensed the enormity of the challenge facing him.
“It’s going to take a total turnaround but we’ve got the championship players for that,” Billy said on June 18 as he arrived at LaGuardia Airport on a flight from Chicago where he had been playing in a charity golf tournament.
At the airport, he was greeted by a mob of about two hundred Yankees fans and reporters who had been tipped off about his arrival.
“Thanks for the nice welcome,” Billy said. Asked about what the 1979 Yankees needed, Billy said that “Reggie is the key guy to getting this turned around.”
At Yankee Stadium the next evening, a crowd of just more than thirty-five thousand stood and cheered as Billy brought out the Yankees’ lineup card before the game. Throughout New York, a dull, hot summer got a little livelier. As the New York Knicks’ general manager, Eddie Donovan, told a reporter that day, “Billy is New York.”
Billy tried to infuse his team with some of his emblematic fire and tenacity by managing the team from the third-base coach’s box in his first game back. It did not matter; the Yankees lost to the Toronto Blue Jays, 5–4.
The next day, the Yankees won the opening game of a double-header but lost the nightcap, and in that game they lost another starting pitcher when Jim Beattie took a line drive off his pitching hand.
In the next game, Billy was up to his old tricks in a 3–1 victory. He put an infield shift on Toronto’s left-handed power hitter John Mayberry at a critical juncture of the game—an unusual defensive strategy in 1979—and got a groundout to the extra infielder who was playing in short right field.
At the start of the ninth inning, Billy left the left-handed reliever Jim Kaat, his former player on the 1969 Twins, in the game to warm up. The Blue Jays sent up a right-handed pinch hitter to lead off the inning. Billy countered with right-handed reliever Ron Davis.
“That’s the matchup I wanted,” Billy said after Davis induced three fly-ball outs to end the game.
It was the first of four successive victories. But that was all the magic that was left in the Yankees’ 1979 season. The next day, Steinbrenner made public Reggie Jackson’s demands to be traded. Reggie did not want to play for Billy. Steinbrenner said the team tried to deal Reggie but could not receive fair compensation.
Reggie continued to ask to be traded, and he was sitting out with a leg injury as well. Steinbrenner kept urging his best slugger to give Billy a second chance in what would later be called Billy II.
“I keep telling Reggie that he should try Billy again,” Steinbrenner told reporters. “The first time I ate broccoli, I didn’t like it. The second time I didn’t like it. Now it’s one of my favorite vegetables.
“I know Reggie is distraught but he should come out of it.”
Which, amazingly, is apparently what happened. Reggie called Billy and the two talked. Reggie showed up to play the next day. The Yankees lost anyway.
“Billy has been great; I’m just not in playing shape,” Reggie said.
Reggie did hit three home runs in his next four games, but the Yankees struggled nonetheless. In every way large and small—call it karma, the law of averages, old age, whatever—it was not the Yankees’ year. It was evident in every meaningful or insignificant step along the way. In Seattle, they lost 16–1, and Billy was ejected from the game by umpire Nick Bremigan for arguing a call at first base. Billy immediately started kicking the dirt near first base on Bremigan’s shoes.
But the game was being played in the Seattle Kingdome where the artificial surface had only small cutouts of dirt near the bases. Bremigan simply moved onto the artificial surface portion of the infield where there was no dirt.
Billy was flummoxed. No ump had ever escaped in that way.
Two nights later, Nolan Ryan one-hit the Yankees. Two days after that, the Yankees lost on a walk-off two-run homer.
But what was a dreary, cheerless season would then turn tragic.
Munson, the first Yankees captain since Lou Gehrig, was raised in Canton, Ohio, and despite ten years as a Yankee, he never permanently moved his family from the town where he grew up. To make it easier to fly home to his wife and three small children in Ohio, Munson had trained for his pilot’s license. The Yankees’ spring training complex was adjacent to the Fort Lauderdale executive airport, and it was easy for Munso
n to log hundreds of hours in the cockpit. By 1978, he had acquired his flying license and often spirited Piniella on jaunts to the Bahamas and elsewhere.
Most off days, whether the Yankees were at home or on the road, Munson flew his Beechcraft Baron, a turboprop plane, to Canton, catching up with his family and trying to ensure some normalcy in his household. Munson also flew Piniella and Reggie Jackson, whom Munson had accepted and now considered a friend, back to the New York area after a game in Baltimore one evening.
“He was totally in control of that plane,” Piniella said. “I remember he buzzed his house and avoided a thunderstorm with a new flight plan. He was a good pilot in the Beechcraft.”
But later in June 1979, Munson decided to buy a Cessna Citation, a sleek, powerful, twin-engine jet that cost him $1.4 million. It would cut the flying time to Canton, but it worried his friends, family, and teammates because of its higher speeds and because the pilot had to acquire multiple advanced skills—and be able to perform them without hesitation. It was the difference between being able to drive a sports car on an interstate and a stock car on a racecourse.
Munson showed off his new jet to Piniella and Bobby Murcer, a good friend from the early 1970s Yankees who rejoined the team in a mid-season trade.
“I know that Bobby Murcer and I both told Thurman that he didn’t need that big, scary jet,” Piniella said. “It looked like a rocket ship. You couldn’t tell Thurman some things. He was going to have that jet.”
More influential voices in Munson’s sphere thought he should get rid of the Cessna, in which Munson had logged only thirty-three hours of flight time. His wife, Diana, was pretty sure she had convinced him to sell it as soon as the season ended.
On August 1, the Yankees finished a series in Chicago, and the team returned on a charter flight to New York. August 2 was a day off, so Munson did not go to New York with his teammates. Instead, he flew the Cessna to Canton. He had been certified as a jet pilot about two weeks earlier.
Munson noted some minor problems with the Cessna on the way home but rose early to have breakfast with his children. He then visited with his in-laws and some friends and headed to the Akron-Canton Regional Airport for lunch. He was not planning to fly that day, but when he saw a flight instructor, David Hall, and another friend and pilot, Jerry Anderson, he offered to show them his new jet and practice some touch-and-go landings.
Billy Martin Page 42