by Ron Guidry
But the hardest thing during this entire time was feeling invisible. I wasn’t a “name guy.” The guys who I hung around with in the bullpen accepted me for who I was, but I didn’t get the nod from anyone else because I wasn’t doing a job yet. I didn’t have a function. It’s not like I was doing the job badly, I just wasn’t playing at all.
Off the field, I didn’t have a routine yet either. I hadn’t earned the right to act in a certain way that might attract attention because I hadn’t paid my dues. It’s not like I could jump right into the shenanigans and do what everyone else was doing. Young guys like me and Willie Randolph, who was playing his first full season in 1976, didn’t do anything to step out of line. We stayed on the straight and narrow. On the other hand, you’d see high-priced guys like Catfish Hunter parade through the locker room, go through his mail, sign some autographs for fans, drink some coffee, shoot the shit with Munson, and hash things out. It was their routine.
At the core, there are two types of acceptance in the clubhouse: for the player you are and for the person you are. But you can’t show the person you are without showing the player you are. And I didn’t have the opportunity to show the player I could be because I wasn’t playing. You can have a great personality, but if you’re not playing, you’re not helping the team. Guys don’t look at you the same way.
Naturally, you grow closest with people who do the same job as you. I was closer with the guys who pitched than I was with the everyday players. That didn’t mean I couldn’t be great friends with them, but I had more to talk about with the other pitchers. The hitters didn’t want to get into the nitty-gritty about how to set hitters up, they just wanted to know how to hit the ball. I was going to learn more from talking to the pitchers.
When I sat down in the bullpen, I had Sparky Lyle on one side and Tidrow on the other. These are two great pitching minds, and two people who became great friends. Sparky didn’t say very much. Tidrow would talk to me more. He would tell me how to set up hitters and attack them. He would make me watch other pitchers who were left-handed and threw the ball hard like I did. I would watch those lefties when they were pitching against us. Vida Blue, a star pitcher on Oakland at the time, was one of them. Vida threw hard and he had a great breaking ball. I looked at what he was doing, and I could see why he was so successful. That was the whole thing for me: developing a different pitch to go along with my fastball. I threw hard, but I just didn’t have that something else. That’s where Sparky came in.
During this miserable period when I wasn’t pitching, Sparky started to work with me on throwing a slider. Like me, he was a lefty, and we had similar mechanics. He was also one of the best relievers in the game. We talked about how to throw a slider it, how to use it, and when to use it. When Billy inevitably called the bullpen and told me to get up and throw, Sparky made me work with it a little bit more each time. And I was finally starting to get it.
I just didn’t have the chance to show it.
* * *
—
Turn right: Triple-A. Turn left: home. After those forty-seven days without getting a chance to pitch, being sent back down to the minors, packing up the car—that’s when I broke down. I was on I-80, five miles away from the turnoff, from the fork in the road. Five minutes from giving up on baseball.
“I can do the job, but I’m never going to get a fair shake. This guy doesn’t trust me,” I told Bonnie, referring to Billy Martin. As much as I’d tried to stay positive, I was sick of the shit Billy was shoveling. Going back to Triple-A would be a total mismatch, given everything I’d learned from Tidrow over the last month and a half about how to pitch. More important, now I had the slider I developed with Sparky. I felt like I had everything I needed to succeed in the majors. But I couldn’t get into a game.
“If I go back to Syracuse, I might be there for one week and get called right back up,” I told her. “You might have to pack up the car and come back to New York to meet me.”
“Look, if it’s worth one more try that might make the difference, I’m willing to do it,” Bonnie told me. “If you quit and you go home, it will be the first time I’ve ever known you to quit something before you realized whether or not you were good enough to do it.”
“Okay, I’ll give it one more shot,” I said. “But if it doesn’t work, that’s it.”
“Okay, fine,” she said.
And as quick as that, I saw the intersection and went right.
4
“GET YOUR ASS OFF MY MOUND”
For the sixth time in my first seven starts in ’77, I had taken the New York Yankees into the ninth inning with a lead. And for the sixth time, I stood on that mound and silently seethed at the familiar sight of Billy sauntering from the dugout in his bowlegged duck walk to take me out.
It was June 16, 1977. We led the Royals 7–0. And Billy’s routine was quickly growing old. It made my blood boil. Back then, pitchers finished games—we didn’t automatically hand the ball off. Not like today. It made me want to take a swing at Billy, the way Billy took a swing at so many people since he first picked up a glove. As a player and as a manager, Billy Martin was a fighter. Scrappy, like a bantam rooster, quick to come at you. He never felt it was his job to be chummy with his players. And he sure as heck had never been chummy with me. Since the first day I put on a Yankees uniform, he had been at me, alternately pushing and ignoring me. He insulted me, demeaned me. And even now that I was in the rotation, pitching well, he didn’t trust me.
He kept coming out during the ninth inning, when I was a couple of outs away from ending the game. Every time the same thing happened: someone would get on base, and he would immediately hop out of the dugout. As he reached the top step, he’d signal with one arm or the other. Give me the righty. Give me the lefty. Either way, my day was done. By the time he had reached the mound, all he would say was “Good job,” and I was out of the game. It was too late to say shit. The decision had already been made. The reliever was already jogging in from the bullpen. I was in the dugout by the time he reached the infield.
Every time it happened, I got more and more fed up. This was about more than simply being taken out of a ball game. I was pissed because in essence what Billy was saying was, he didn’t trust me. Didn’t matter how well I was pitching. But doing something about it wasn’t so easy. Was I supposed to challenge him? The great Billy Martin? Was that the smart move for a twenty-seven-year-old pitcher who, at that moment, could’ve very well been home riding a tractor in Louisiana? All I knew was that while I respected Billy as a manager, I wasn’t afraid of him.
* * *
—
After I decided not to pack my bags and head home the summer of 1976, I didn’t have to wait long to get called back up. A month later, in early August, I became a New York Yankee again. After seventy-eight days—forty-seven riding the pine, thirty-one in the minors—I was back in the show. Of course, Billy still trusted me about as far as he could spit. For example, I was trotted out in the middle innings of a game we were already losing 4–0 to the Orioles. I gave up three runs in three innings and we lost. I got back in the next day—we were losing badly again—and this time threw two shutout innings. Then I spent two weeks on the bench.
My next appearance, August 22 against the Angels, brought me face-to-face with the Boss. We were down 4–0 with one out in the seventh, and Billy brought me in to replace Catfish Hunter, who’d left runners on first and third. Here in a nutshell is the frustration of pitching: You can sometimes throw great pitches, get weak contact from the hitter, and yet it’s a hit. The opposite is equally tough on hitters. They can whack the bejesus out of the ball but hit it right at a fielder for an out. Today a bunch of dinks and dunks found some open space. Eight outs later, I had given up five hits. I let Cat’s two runners score in the seventh and allowed two more to cross home in the ninth. We scored eight runs in the bottom of the ninth, then lost in extra innin
gs. It was a crushing loss.
But losing the game wasn’t as demoralizing as what happened next. My brief career as a Yankee had hardly been noteworthy to this point. I felt invisible and hardly used. But George didn’t buy the team to sit back and watch. He put himself in the thick of it. He wasn’t out to make friends, either. He was out to win. Steinbrenner thought he knew everything, and he wanted to know why the left-handed pitcher who people kept telling him not to trade had a dismal 10.12 ERA on the season. In four relief appearances that year I had allowed nine runs. The two runs I allowed in two and two-thirds innings actually lowered my ERA. So he called me into his office. The king wanted an audience. He wanted to lash out at the little-used, twenty-fifth guy on the roster.
“When,” he snapped, “are you gonna start pitching?”
I didn’t know what I was supposed to say to that. The fact was, Billy didn’t want to pitch me. He only stuck me in when it didn’t matter. I had proven myself in Triple-A. Still, the organization sent me up and down, jerked me left and right. But some in the front office had a feeling I had something, that I could be something. There was a reason other teams were desperate to trade for me. With everything I had learned from Sparky Lyle and Dick Tidrow, the pitching coaches saw in me the makings of a major-league pitcher, a starter. Except I was only being tossed into blowouts. I never faced pressure situations against other lefties, when I could be most effective.
“By our reports,” Steinbrenner went on, “you should be striking out every batter you face.”
That was George Steinbrenner in a nutshell. His irascibility, his expectations, his outlook, how he confronted people. I was supposed to strike out every batter I faced. That is the world George lived in. I told him that was impossible, and I was never put in the right situations. They warmed me up almost every game and never used me. Then, when they did, I had warmed up in every game all week and wasn’t fresh. I was being treated like clubhouse furniture and was getting blamed when I didn’t perform.
When I told him that, he said, “That doesn’t excuse how you pitched.” He wouldn’t hesitate to send me back to Syracuse, he snapped. If George was trying to get under my skin, he was succeeding. Then, before stomping out of the room, he said disparagingly, “Guidry, you’ll never be able to pitch in this league.”
* * *
—
Things didn’t get much better for me as the ’77 season kicked off. The team was already unhappy with me because I refused to go to Venezuela to play winter ball, as they suggested. Bonnie was due, and we’d had a bad experience in Venezuela the previous year. Then I sucked again during spring training. I had never worried about the results in spring training before, but Billy and the front office did. And my results weren’t pretty. In six games I had a 10.24 ERA. Then I was hurt and missed some starts. When I came back, I wasn’t yet at full strength and got smacked around pretty good. If there was one thing in the entire world George and Billy could agree on, it was that I stunk. And like George, Billy told you exactly how he felt.
That, for better or for worse, was just Billy. What you saw is what you got with him. For a long while I didn’t like it, but he never shied from telling me his opinions. And until I proved myself to him, nothing would change. But he wouldn’t lie to you. He’d say it to your face. He’d tell it to the press. He’d say it in the locker room. It might have been his biggest problem as a manager—that he was so blunt, straightforward, and steadfast in what he believed.
But that’s how Billy had defined himself as a player. And he had become a Yankees legend. A second baseman on the great Yankees teams in the 1950s, he wasn’t the guy who hit for power. But he solidified his status in other ways. There were the actual things he did on the field, like the incredible performance that made him MVP of the 1953 World Series. But with Billy, it was always more about attitude. He had a feistiness that resonated with fans in the Bronx. He wasn’t particularly big, strong, or fast. The Yankees baseball cap never seemed to fit quite right on him, like his head was too big in the front and too narrow at the back. But he wasn’t about fitting in, he was about playing baseball, grinding, fighting, and winning.
And he had the same sort of attitude as a manager. He was a winner, although it was never easy or pretty. In Minnesota, Detroit, and Texas, before George hired him, he had been a winner. But he also left a bitter taste in people’s mouths because he was rough around the edges. He would get into fights. He would drink. He never looked quite healthy, though it was tough to tell if that was just because he worked himself to the bone. There was no questioning his work ethic. George must have known all of this when he hired him. As much as they fought, it was that competitive spirit that made them kindred souls.
That was the sort of attitude that led Billy to lay it all out on the line with people. For me, as someone who was struggling, that was tough. “If there’s anybody in this league you can get out, lemme know,” Billy snarled at one point. “I’ll let you pitch to him.”
* * *
—
In April of ’77 two things—both completely out of my control—turned everything around. The first happened in a game I was watching from the bench. Our fourth game of the year, we opened a series in Kansas City. We came in having lost two straight, and even though it was only April, our results were starting to get the team on edge. This was a team that everybody—fans, the media, George, Billy, and the guys in the clubhouse—expected to win it all. We had reached the World Series in 1976. The Reds steamrolled us in a four-game sweep. But honestly, we were just happy to be there. Not only was it the first trip for the Yankees to the World Series since George bought the team in 1973, it was the first time we’d made it since the days of Mickey Mantle and Whitey Ford in 1964.
A 1-2 start means nothing over the course of a baseball season. Except in New York, with the attendant personalities. In the off-season, we had added Reggie Jackson, the power-hitting star outfielder, to the mix. If a team could win the World Series based on magazine covers, you’d have thought that with signing Reggie, we had a lock on the title. But that’s not how baseball is played. We got a good hitter, without question. But with his personality, bringing him on board was like pouring gasoline on an already combustible situation. Even the smallest spark could set things off. Trade rumors, including rumors involving me, swirled. Folks questioned Billy’s competence. George and Billy fought each other fiercely in public—and in private. And fans and the media began to openly wonder if George’s micromanagement was the root of the problems. As the New York Times put it that April: “It would be the ultimate in irony in the wacky world of the Yankees if the goose that laid the golden egg stepped on the egg and splattered it.”
It was with these tensions in the background that we approached the game in Kansas City. It might’ve been only the fourth game of a 162-game season, but it felt far bigger. And beyond all the hoopla around us, the Royals weren’t just any other team. They were our expected competition in the American League, the team we beat in last year’s playoffs. They had some great ballplayers in George Brett, Hal McRae, Al Cowens. It was as much of a litmus test of how good we were as you could imagine so early in the season. You could sense the excitement in Kansas City and the anxiety in our dugout. Billy rejiggered the lineup before the game, moving Jim Wynn up to the cleanup spot. That sent Reggie from fifth to sixth in the batting order, a constant source of anger for George, who wanted his star slugger batting fourth. Royals fans packed the stadium; they were excited because their team had started the season 3-0. I read afterward that one fan dressed as George handed out fake dollar bills to the Kansas City fans. April baseball games don’t get more intense.
That game was tied 4–4 after five innings. For another seven innings, neither team scored. Dock Ellis had started the game for us and threw six innings. Then Sparky came in in relief and went five without allowing a run. And Tidrow got through the twelfth. Now, Tidrow was one of the two most imp
ortant guys in my development as a pitcher. The previous season, he had taught me how to attack hitters and explained the strategy behind it. At the same time, he supported me psychologically while I was getting shit from Billy and George. He and Gabe Paul, our general manager, had my back.
Before Billy put Tidrow in the game, he had called the phone in the bullpen. He asked me if I was ready. I said yes. Then Sparky got on the phone to talk to Billy and had a confused look on his face. He turned to Tidrow, instead of me. “You’re in the game.” Dick got the Royals 1-2-3.
But Dick was a righty, and lefties hit him much harder than righties. Batters typically struggle more against same-handed pitchers. And in the thirteenth, he had to face the top of the Kansas City order, which featured two lefties. George Brett came on with one out and a runner on second. He was given an intentional walk. McRae flew out, to make it two outs, before another lefty power hitter, John Mayberry, came to the plate. I was ready in case Billy called. As a lefty, I was perfect for the spot. Especially with the slider I had developed thanks to Sparky. I knew I could be tough against lefty batters. Mayberry hit .226 against lefties and .266 against righties in his career. But Billy didn’t call me in, and Mayberry smacked one of Tidrow’s pitches off the wall, and that was the game.
When we went into the clubhouse after the game, the reporters were all over Billy. “Why did you leave Tidrow in? Why are you warming Guidry up if you’re not going to use him in that situation?” I was wondering the same thing myself. A lot of us were. Nothing against Dick, it was just that the numbers said I was the better choice. But Billy hated all that crap. And he hated people questioning him or second-guessing him. He tried to brush off the reporters. Dick’s a veteran, he said. Guidry doesn’t have the experience.