Pinstripe Empire

by Marty Appel

  Righetti, in a much-debated decision, replaced Gossage in the bullpen and proved to be a worthy successor, saving 31 games. “Rags” found himself a teammate of Mike “Pags” Pagliarulo, who came up from Columbus on July 7 to play third base after Harrah failed to hit.

  In 1984 the Yanks also added free agent Phil Niekro, who signed a two-year contract after spending his entire career with the Braves. He used his knuckleball to win 32 games for the Yanks over two seasons, with the final win being the 300th of his career. He became the first player to win his 300th while wearing a Yankee uniform.28 By then the Yanks had added his brother Joe, also a knuckleballer, to the staff.

  At the same time, they lost pitcher Tim Belcher as compensation in the free-agent draft. Belcher was selected by Oakland, even though the Yankees drafted him after the list of protected players was due. Belcher would win 146 games in the majors, and hurled eight shutouts in 1989.

  The Yanks got off horribly and were twenty games out of first at the All-Star break. Steinbrenner took out his frustrations by firing the bullpen coach, Jerry McNertney, for “failing to impose discipline” in the bullpen, and by hauling Yogi and his coaching staff into his office to berate them for the team’s performance. Exasperated, Yogi could take the lecture no more and flung a pack of cigarettes across Steinbrenner’s desk and into his chest. He essentially dared the Boss to fire him, and shouted, “This is your [expletive] team, you put this [expletive] team together, you make all the [expletive] moves around here, you get all the [expletive] players no one else wants!”

  Yogi wasn’t fired. In the second half of the season, they had the best record in the majors, 51–29, but it was too little, too late, as they finished third, seventeen games out, with just 1.8 million in home attendance, their first time under two million (except for the ’81 strike season) since they moved into the renovated Yankee Stadium.

  During this period, a whole new segment of fans began to follow baseball through fantasy leagues, where individual player performance mattered and team performance didn’t. Because enrollment in the leagues involved a generally modest fee, it was a form of gambling that greatly increased interest in baseball. Gambling’s relationship with baseball quietly went back to the nineteenth century, the low point being the Black Sox scandal. For years, NO BETTING signs loomed large in ballparks, and when state-run lotteries became legal, the sports leagues fought to keep their games off-limits.

  No team was more wagered on than the Yankees, according to Danny Sheridan, USA Today’s sports gambling expert. “The Yankees are THE brand name in all sports,” he said. “With that notoriety, comes a loyal following of bettors—probably up to a million nationally for a big series. Bookmakers know baseball bettors will wager on them at any price, especially at home, and they raise their odds on them accordingly.”

  DON MATTINGLY EDGED Winfield for the batting title on the final day of the season, a thrilling race between teammates won by Mattingly’s .343 to Winfield’s .340, when Don went 4-for-5 on the final day. After Mattingly’s fourth hit, Winfield grounded out, forcing Don at second. A pinch runner went in for Dave allowing the two of them to come off the field together. They came off to a terrific ovation, arm in arm.

  But there were overtones to the batting race in ’84. Disappointed though he was about losing (he had never won a batting title), Winfield was hurt by the boos he heard when he came to bat, compared to the cheers for Mattingly. “Stuff like that hurts, believe me,” he wrote. “It stays with you.” While it was easy to see the fans rooting for the smaller guy, the guy who came out of nowhere to challenge the $21 million man, to pretend there weren’t racial overtones would be to ignore that race still mattered and that most fans at the game were white.

  Mattingly was the first Yankee batting champion since Mantle’s Triple-Crown season of 1956—twenty-eight years—and the first left-handed Yankee since Gehrig in 1937 to hit .340 or better. His 207 hits were the first of three straight 200-hit seasons, which hadn’t been done since Gehrig, from 1930–32.

  Chapter Thirty-Six

  RICKEY HENDERSON WAS A Christmas Day baby who threw left, batted right, and was acclaimed as the greatest leadoff hitter in the history of baseball. He hit more leadoff home runs, stole more bases, scored more runs, and walked more times than anyone who ever played the game.

  When the Yankees traded for him on December 5, 1984, giving up five promising players and cash, he had already topped 100 stolen bases three times by age twenty-five. He was arguably the best player in baseball, and certainly the most exciting. He took his place atop a Yankee lineup that also included Mattingly, Winfield, Griffey, Baylor, and Randolph. This was a good team.

  But all of these blessings wouldn’t get Yogi into May. Despite promising to trust him, Steinbrenner fired the Yankee icon when the team started 6–10, even though Mattingly, Winfield, and Henderson were all hurting.

  GM Clyde King sought out Yogi in the cramped visiting manager’s office at Comiskey Park. He closed the door and delivered the news. Yogi had been fired twice before, but at 6–10 in April? With his three best hitters hurt?

  The players reacted with a fury. Baylor threw over a garbage can. Curses were hurled at the absent owner.

  As for Yogi, he was a baseball lifer, and he knew how the game worked. What really got him was the way in which it was done. This, to him, called for a dismissal by the owner, not by King.

  Yogi went on the first bus to the airport with the team, sitting up front as managers do. It took two buses to travel this party. This was the same route taken when Phil Linz played his harmonica twenty-one years before. Because Yogi would not be getting on the plane with the team and going on to Texas, the bus driver was instructed by Bill Kane to stop first at the passenger terminal before proceeding to the tarmac, where the players would get right off and onto the waiting charter.

  At the passenger terminal, Yogi rose, collected his bags, and began to depart. Suddenly, hands began clapping—an ovation in the bus for the departing skipper, a beloved figure in baseball history. And, yes, the ovation, heard in the second bus, prompted the ovation to continue there. Dale Berra was crying in the back of the first bus. That was his dad.

  The two buses circled around to go the tarmac. Players could see the lonely, unmistakable figure of Yogi Berra, alone on the sidewalk, entering the terminal to go home.

  This one really hurt Berra, and this proud man decided that as much as he bled Yankee blue, he would never again return to Yankee Stadium so long as George Steinbrenner owned the team. He was first a man of principle, and this defied his principles.

  He occasionally cheated and snuck back to the stadium to see Pete Sheehy, maybe to collect something for a charity auction, or just feel the presence of Yankee Stadium. But he never went back when Steinbrenner was there.

  His New Jersey neighbor John McMullen, once a limited partner in the Yankees (“There is nothing as limited as being a limited partner of George Steinbrenner,” he said), now owned the Houston Astros. He reached out and offered Yogi a coaching job with the Astros, and Yogi took it. The Astros won their first division title in his first season. He stayed until 1989, when he finally retired from full-time baseball work.

  In 1998, the Yogi Berra Museum and Learning Center opened at Montclair State University, and it provided Yogi with a destination to talk baseball, meet fans, and feel honored and appreciated. It was just a short drive from the fork in the road that led to Yogi’s home. As with many things in Yogi’s life, the museum’s success exceeded expectations.

  And it was there, in 1999, fourteen years after his firing, that George Steinbrenner came to see him and to apologize. Broadcaster Suzyn Waldman brokered the deal. Yogi’s family was encouraging him to accept the apology so that his grandchildren could see him get cheered at Yankee Stadium.

  Steinbrenner arrived a little later than announced (“You’re late,” was the first thing Yogi said), but clearly everyone was ready to bury the hatchet. The two, along with Carmen Berra, retreated int
o Dave Kaplan’s museum director’s office. Steinbrenner began by saying, “I made a big mistake,” and Yogi interrupted him to say, “Oh, I’ve made mistakes too.” By acknowledging that an apology was due and accepted, but by responding as he did, Yogi’s wisdom had won the day. He put the Boss at ease in a most unusual situation for a man of his power. From then on, Yogi would be a fixture at special events, in spring training, and whenever he felt like taking in a game.

  “I never saw Mr. Steinbrenner happier than on the drive back to the stadium after that meeting,” said his media-relations director Rick Cerrone.

  YOGI’S SUCCESSOR WAS Billy Martin, back for his fourth turn as manager. “George and I have the greatest relationship I’ve ever had with him,” he said. The media, and most fans, let out a collective sigh, although to some he remained one of the top in-game managers in baseball.

  One thing that Billy had this time was Henderson, who had thrived under him in Oakland. And Rickey delivered, scoring 146 runs, belting 24 homers, and stealing 80 bases, breaking Fritz Maisel’s seventy-one-year-old club record. He was only thrown out 10 times. His run-scoring prowess was amazing. If he was on third, he would take a lead, almost willing home plate into his pocket. Henderson on third always felt like a sure run, and he’d often get there on a walk and a couple of steals. His runs-scored total was the most in the league since Ted Williams in 1950, and the most by a Yankee since DiMaggio in ’37. He became the first player in AL history with 20 homers and 50 steals.

  Martin also had Bobby Meacham and Dale Berra, who made the blooper reels for ’85 when both were tagged out at home by Carlton Fisk on a single play. It made them look bad, but it turned out that Lou Gehrig and Dixie Walker, Yankee teammates in 1933, had done the same thing. It would have made the play less painful and more comical had it been known at the time.

  A SAD NOTE in the summer of ’85 was the death of Pete Sheehy at seventy-five. Pete suffered a heart attack, and his passing broke a link that went to the very origins of the team, as Pete had come aboard in 1927 to assist Pop Logan in the clubhouse, and Logan had gone back to the first season, 1903. Pete was Yankee history, and his funeral, at a small church in New Jersey, drew DiMaggio, Martin, Berra, Michael, Bobby Brown, McDougald, Roy White, Guidry, Mattingly, Righetti, Baylor, and a large contingent of front-office people and former employees. Steinbrenner sat quietly in the back row.

  “I’ve known the man for thirty-five years and today was the first time I’ve met his wife,” said Martin, one of the eulogists.

  Knowing of Big Pete’s secrecy with matters involving players, I waited a few seasons to gain his trust before I attempted to draw him out in conversation. One day in the early seventies, I finally said, “Pete, tell me about the Babe.”

  He was silent for a few moments, and then said, “He never flushed the toilet.”

  The Yankees wore black armbands on their sleeves for the remainder of the season after Pete died.

  With his passing, his longtime assistant Nick Priore took charge of the Yankee clubhouse, with Rob Cucuzza succeeding him in 1998. Cucuzza’s father, Lou Sr., had worked the visiting clubhouse since 1977, with Lou Jr. running it after starting as a batboy in 1979.

  IN 1985, DON MATTINGLY won the league’s MVP Award, the first Yankee to do so since Munson. He drove in 145 runs, the most by a Yankee since DiMaggio’s 155 in 1948. He reached his peak in home runs with 35.

  The Yanks played great ball throughout the summer, going 38–18 in July and August and scrambling into a good pennant race, with an eleven-game winning streak carrying them into September. Ron Guidry was rebounding from 10–11 to a 22-win season, while Righetti was on his way to 29 saves. By September 12, they had moved to within one and a half games of division-leading Toronto. But suddenly they lost eight straight, including three to the Jays, and by September 22 were six and a half out with only fourteen games left. And as the losing streak unfolded, Martin seemed to melt down with it.

  The streak followed a dressing-down by Steinbrenner. “This is a test of Yankee heart and Yankee pride!” he said in the clubhouse, shortly after a confrontation with player-rep Winfield over distribution of material urging the players to support a drug-testing plan proposed by Commissioner Peter Ueberroth.

  During the streak, the Yanks blew a 5–3 lead to the Indians when reliever Brian Fisher allowed six runs in the ninth. Martin blamed the game on third-string catcher Juan Espino’s pitch calling.

  In another loss, Martin ordered lefty-hitting Pagliarulo to bat right-handed. Pags struck out looking. Even he wondered what was going on.

  Then there was the time Martin scratched Ed Whitson from his start, referring to him as “Whatchamacallit” to the press and claiming he had a sore arm. Whitson knew nothing about this.

  Whitson had signed as a free agent with the Yanks after a 14–8 record with San Diego in ’84. A seven-year veteran, the six-foot-three right-hander met all the Yankees’ scouting requirements to move into the rotation. But he started out 1–6 with a 6.23 ERA after 11 starts, and the patience of Yankee fans was never their strong suit. Although he would go 9–2 from that point with two shutouts, he’d lost Martin’s confidence. He would come to be the first name recited when people began to talk about the “New York factor,” the supposed difficulty of transitioning to New York after pitching in other cities. It became a new gauge of mental toughness for pitchers—something that had previously been unidentified during the years of Giants-Dodgers-Yankees. Suddenly, even if the players were Hall of Fame–bound like Randy Johnson, or just successful elsewhere like Kenny Rogers, Terry Mulholland, Jack McDowell, or Javy Vazquez, the question “Can he pitch in New York?” became part of the dialogue.

  By the following year, it was decided that Whitson would only pitch in road games. It had gotten that bad.

  In loss number eight, in Baltimore, Martin forgot that rubbing his nose was actually a sign for a pitchout. He did it twice. Rich Bordi, pitching instead of Whitson, threw two pitchouts and wound up walking Lee Lacy before Cal Ripken delivered a game-winning single.

  That night in the lounge of the Cross Keys Inn, where the Yankees were staying, Martin got into a verbal fight with two honeymooning young couples, apparently telling one that “your wife has a potbelly.” Martin denied this, claiming he had said she had a “fat ass.” Some shoving ensued, but when Billy suggested taking the fight outside, his opponent failed to show.

  Sometime after midnight on Saturday night, back in the Cross Keys lounge, Whitson was engaged in an argument with another patron. Martin and Dale Berra went to his aid, at which point Whitson turned on Martin and they tumbled to the floor and had to be separated by other players. Martin questioned Whitson’s claim that he had “sucker-punched” him, and suggested that Whitson couldn’t “hold his liquor.”

  Whitson continued to scream at Martin, and Martin went back toward him. Players were holding Whitson back, but he managed to kick Martin in the groin. Said Billy, “Okay, now I’m gonna kill you, now you did it.”

  Round three continued outside, with Whitson, now unrestrained, rushing at Martin. The two crashed to the pavement, punching away. “You’ve tried to bury me here; you’re trying to ruin me,” shouted Whitson.

  Whitson was sent home the following morning; Martin went off to the hospital with a broken right arm. Whitson, thirty, was a well-conditioned professional athlete. He should have had the sense to walk away. Billy, fifty-seven, was as thin as ever at 165 pounds, and too old for this stuff. Yet Billy could look in the mirror and see the same guy who had fought Clint Courtney almost forty years before. There was no gray hair, no potbelly. A challenge was a challenge. And his drinking never abated.

  Whitson would pitch just once more that season, in a Yankee win at Toronto, which put them two out with two games to play. But they lost 5–1 the next day, officially knocking them out of the playoffs. Phil Niekro won his 300th on the season’s meaningless final day. The Yanks wound up with 97 wins, and finished two out.

  On October 27, the
morning of the seventh game of the World Series between Kansas City and St. Louis, Billy was fired a fourth time. This one was announced by conference call from the Bronx to reporters in Kansas City. His replacement would be hitting instructor Lou Piniella, who had never managed before. Steinbrenner did not take part in the call; Clyde King made the announcement.

  PINIELLA HAD LONG been a favorite of Steinbrenner’s. A Tampa neighbor with a winning personality and a drive to win, he would ultimately go on to win more than 1,800 games as a manager, the fourteenth-best total in history.

  Once, as a player, Lou, among others, had missed a photo shoot that Steinbrenner had arranged. Threatening retaliation, Steinbrenner went down the list of offenders one by one, citing, “no more free tickets,” “no more favors,” as the names appeared. Finally, getting to Piniella, he said, “Oh don’t worry. I’m gonna really [expletive] him! I’m gonna make him the manager!”

  The time had come. Being a favorite son had its disadvantages. He got a three-year contract.

  But despite his expressions of confidence in Piniella, Steinbrenner kept Martin as a close advisor in ’86. The team came out of spring training with its pitching staff in ruins—new “ace” Britt Burns had a damaged hip and would never pitch for the team; Phil Niekro was released. Guidry had a horrible 9–12 season and the team never did settle on a shortstop or a catcher. Steinbrenner continued to complain about Winfield, both his performance and his foundation. Rasmussen, who Martin said was “soft,” would be the team’s only double-digit winner, going 18–6, while Righetti saved 46 games, a major league record.

  Newcomer Mike Easler hit .302, and Henderson bettered his ’85 performance by stealing 87 bases and hitting 28 homers, although his batting average dropped more than fifty points to .263. Pagliarulo added 28 home runs of his own.

  But it was again Mattingly who was the team’s best player, leading the majors with 238 hits, breaking Earle Combs’s team record of 231 set in 1927. His 388 total bases were the most by a Yankee since DiMaggio in ’37. His 53 doubles broke Gehrig’s team record of 52, also set in ’27. He lost the batting title to Wade Boggs .357 to .352, when Boggs sat out the last weekend with a sore hamstring and Mattingly went 8-for-29 in pursuit.