by Bill Madden
In what sounded much like the familiar refrain he would make after tough Yankee losses in years to come, Steinbrenner said of his sentencing: “All things considered, I can’t be critical, because what happened, happened. [The prosecutors] were fair and tough. I’m not sure if I’ll invite them to my next party, but thank God the country has guys like that.”
(Steinbrenner remained a convicted felon, unable to vote, until January 19, 1989, when President Ronald Reagan, in one of his final acts before leaving office, pardoned the Yankees owner for his 1972 illegal campaign contributions—along with industrialist Armand Hammer, who had also been found guilty of making illegal contributions to Nixon, worth $54,000.)
Clearly embarrassed by his now very public involvement in the Watergate scandal, Steinbrenner became an infrequent visitor to his favorite Cleveland haunts, the Pewter Mug and Mushy Wexler’s Theatrical Grill, or the Cleveland social events where he’d always been a fixture. Then in late 1974, Steinbrenner revealed that he was moving AmShip’s headquarters, as well as his family, to Tampa. He explained the move as being made primarily because his wife, Joan, wanted to live in a warmer climate. Privately, however, he told friends that he was sick and tired of being “abused” in the Cleveland newspapers and not appreciated for all the humanitarian work he’d done for the city.
What he never explained was why he broke the law for $25,000 when he could have contributed the entire $100,000 himself, without involving his AmShip employees in this elaborate fake bonus scheme. And what was his ultimate motivation? To win favor with the Nixon administration after he’d previously gotten considerable financial and tax relief for the Great Lakes shipping industry from the Democrats?
“I honestly don’t think it was any of that,” said Evans. “I honestly believe George just wanted to be closer to power. It was strictly an ego thing with him.”
Steinbrenner got away with a slap on the wrist from the government, but his indictment and guilty plea created a much more serious problem for him with baseball. Commissioner Bowie Kuhn had been monitoring Steinbrenner’s legal proceedings. In his 1987 memoir, Hardball, Kuhn wrote, “Illegal contributions may be one thing, but obstruction of justice is quite another.”
As Kuhn noted, the latter was a serious charge for which people went to jail. The last baseball owner to go to jail, St. Louis Cardinals owner Fred Saigh (sentenced to 15 months in 1953 for tax evasion), was ordered by then-commissioner Ford Frick to sell the team. This was not a prospect Kuhn relished having to deal with, and when Steinbrenner hired Williams, the commissioner privately hoped the Yankees owner would be able to totally exonerate himself.
In a meeting with Kuhn shortly after revelations of his involvement first broke in the news, Steinbrenner maintained that the offenses he was alleged to have committed occurred in 1972, before he bought the Yankees, and that they therefore had nothing to do with baseball. Kuhn replied that those facts would not prevent him from taking serious disciplinary action if Steinbrenner were convicted. Though confounded by Kuhn’s stance, Steinbrenner pledged to give the commissioner “every cooperation on this,” while reassuring him that “there will be no reason for you to do anything.”
Once the indictment came down, Steinbrenner decided to remove himself from the daily affairs of the Yankees, citing his need to concentrate all his time and energy on his defense. “Perhaps anticipating a suspension,” Kuhn said, “George beat me to the punch and, in the process, earned some credit with me. Also to his credit, he never tried to hide from the seriousness of the matter.”
Kuhn was admittedly surprised when Steinbrenner was able to plead guilty to a single felony count of the indictment, but he was still greatly troubled by the obstruction of justice to which the Yankees owner had also pleaded guilty. In a meeting in his office with Steinbrenner and Williams a few days after the sentencing, Kuhn said he was not persuaded by Williams’s argument that, since Judge Contie had settled for a fine and no jail time, there should be no suspension.
Kuhn mulled his decision for a couple of weeks, all the while having trouble getting past the fact that Steinbrenner had pleaded guilty to a felony that could have included jail time. Finally, on November 27, in a 12-page ruling, Kuhn announced that he was suspending Steinbrenner for two years, declaring the Yankees owner “ineligible and incompetent” to “have any association whatsoever with any major league club or its personnel.” Kuhn went on to say in the ruling that “an essential element of a professional team sport is the public’s confidence in its integrity. Attempting to influence employees to behave dishonestly is the kind of misconduct which, if ignored by baseball, would undermine the public’s confidence in our game.”
Steinbrenner was in his office in Tampa when he was notified of Kuhn’s decision. He immediately called Yankees P. R. man Marty Appel in a rage.
“How dare he call me incompetent!” Steinbrenner screamed at Appel. He then began dictating a statement of his own, as the 24-year-old neophyte PR director frantically scribbled down his words.
“Naturally, we are shocked beyond belief by Mr. Kuhn’s decision. It is certainly a wonderful Thanksgiving Day present. I will be meeting with my attorney, Edward Bennett Williams, in the next few days. We haven’t yet had time to carefully study the full decision. But we understand that Mr. Kuhn has found that I am ‘ineligible and incompetent.’ It is impossible to understand how the commissioner of baseball could call me incompetent.”
“As much as George seemed hung up on that ‘incompetent’ word, I think he knew down deep it was a legal term, and he just used it as a PR opportunity to win some sympathy points,” said Appel.
A few days later, Kuhn sent a letter to Steinbrenner clarifying the terms of his suspension, stating: “For as long as [Steinbrenner] remains on the Ineligible List, he shall not exercise any of the delegated power, duties or authority of the General Partner; visit or be physically present in the Yankee offices or clubhouse; confer, consult, instruct, advise, or otherwise communicate, either directly or indirectly, with the person or persons to who such powers, duties and authority are delegated. These prohibitions shall not be interpreted as prohibiting Mr. Steinbrenner from associating with such persons on a purely social basis, during which there shall be no discussion of the affairs, financial or otherwise, of the New York Yankees.”
Those “persons” to whom Kuhn referred were Patrick J. Cunningham, the Bronx Democratic leader, whom Steinbrenner quickly named acting general partner and general counsel, and Gabe Paul, who, as team president, would continue to handle all the day-to-day baseball and business operations of the Yankees. At the time, Cunningham was a major political figure, and Kuhn was satisfied that, between him and Paul, the Yankees were in capable hands. He was also satisfied that the underlying terms of the suspension—preventing Steinbrenner from having any public communications regarding baseball as well as from attending baseball meetings—were a “significant deprivation for a man of George’s ego.”
For Gabe Paul, the one upside to the Watergate scandal was that Steinbrenner finally became the hands-off owner he had promised to be when he bought the team. On April 27, Paul executed a multiplayer trade with his old assistant general manager in Cleveland, Phil Seghi, in which the Yankees sent pitchers Fritz Peterson, Steve Kline, Fred Beene and Tom Buskey to the Indians in exchange for first baseman Chris Chambliss and pitchers Dick Tidrow and Cecil Upshaw. It proved to be a complete fleecing of his former team on Paul’s part, as Chambliss and Tidrow became important cogs in the Yankees’ 1976–77–78 championship teams while, of the four pitchers Cleveland obtained, only Peterson would have another good season (with a 14-8 record in 1975) and all but Buskey had retired by 1977.
Under Bill Virdon, the backup manager choice to Dick Williams, the 1974 Yankees, who were picked to finish somewhere near the bottom of the American League East, wound up in second place, 89-73, two games behind the Baltimore Orioles, thanks to a fierce late-season rally. In mid-August the Yankees had been in fourth place with a 60-61 record,
but they won 29 of their next 41 games—including a sweep of the Indians, their second-to-last opponents of the regular season—and boarded an airplane to Milwaukee with a chance to win the division. That chance was gone by the end of the flight, where the Yankees partied a little too hard. Things got really rambunctious as they checked into the Pfister Hotel, where reserve catchers Rick Dempsey and Bill Sudakis got into a fistfight. All of a sudden, players were wrestling and rolling all over the floor. Bill “Killer” Kane, the Yankees’ traveling secretary, said the scene was “like one of those old-fashioned furniture fights in the westerns with tables and lamps crashing to the floor and bodies flying over the couches.” Bobby Murcer, the Yankees’ best player, who led the team with 88 RBI, broke his finger attempting to separate the combatants.
The next day, the Yankees lost 3–2 to Milwaukee when Lou Piniella, Murcer’s replacement in right field, dropped a fly ball that started a tying rally for the Brewers in the eighth inning, and the Orioles beat the Tigers in Detroit to win the division. Disappointing as the ending was, Steinbrenner, who was traveling with the team and had witnessed firsthand the Yankees’ three-game sweep of the Indians in Cleveland (in which they scored 28 runs), was ebullient over the way his team had played. In Cleveland, adhering to the terms of Kuhn’s suspension, he had waited outside the clubhouse to extend congratulations to his players, but in Milwaukee, with the season over, he was unable to restrain himself.
“I don’t care what they do to me,” he said to reporters as he strode into the visiting clubhouse after the final game. “I want to be with these guys. They played like champions.”
“It was all very harmless,” said Phil Pepe, the Yankees beat writer for the New York Daily News. “The season was over and George just wanted to celebrate with his players, and Bowie let it pass. Nothing was ever said, at least not publicly.”
Nevertheless, Gabe Paul thought Steinbrenner’s eagerness to socialize with his players was a detriment to the operation of the team. In terms of player-management relations, Paul was strictly old school. He believed the players were nothing more than chattels of the team; in order for the club to maximize profits, salaries had to be held in line. Above all, he would say, you can never fall in love with your players. It was therefore no surprise that, to a man, the Yankee players detested him—and no surprise that Paul resented the camaraderie Steinbrenner enjoyed with them.
In particular, Murcer, the team’s star center fielder (whose $100,000 contract had been cause for one of Steinbrenner’s celebrated flaps with Mike Burke), had a very chummy relationship with the owner. Murcer had introduced Steinbrenner to fellow Oklahoman Mickey Mantle and could occasionally be seen dining with the Yankees owner in Manhattan. According to Murcer, during that time, Steinbrenner assured him, “As long as I own this team, you’ll be here.”
But when the Yankees moved to Shea Stadium in 1974 because of the renovation of Yankee Stadium, Murcer’s performance suffered dramatically. He had the perfect left-handed swing for Yankee Stadium’s short (344 feet) right field porch, but at Shea, where the right field fence was some 30 feet farther away, his fly balls invariably turned into routine outs in front of the warning track. After averaging 25 home runs per season for his first seven years with the Yankees, he hit just 10 in 1974, only two of them at home. In addition, Virdon, noticing a deterioration in Murcer’s defensive skills in center field, moved him to right (replacing him in center with Elliott Maddox, a singles hitter the Yankees had obtained that spring from the Texas Rangers). The move to Shea and the move to right had been a double-barreled blow to Murcer’s ego, and it didn’t help him either that Steinbrenner had become disconnected from much of the day-to-day baseball operations.
Between Murcer’s slippage as an elite player and Steinbrenner’s preoccupation with his Watergate defense, Gabe Paul saw an opportunity to rid himself of a player he felt had way too much influence with the owner. At the 1974 World Series in Los Angeles, between the Dodgers and the Oakland A’s, Paul’s longtime friend Cappy Harada, a scout for the San Francisco Giants, told him that the Giants were shopping their two-time All-Star right fielder Bobby Bonds, the fourth player in baseball history to hit 30 homers and steal 30 bases in a single season.
Paul swiftly arranged a meeting with Giants owner Horace Stoneham at Candlestick Park in San Francisco on October 14, where he proposed a trade: Murcer for Bonds, straight up. Stoneham said he’d have to discuss it with his chief scout, Charlie Fox, and suggested they talk further at the World Series gala in Oakland the next day.
Stoneham had a reputation for being a heavy drinker, so Paul felt it would be the perfect venue in which to extract a favorable deal from the Giants owner. However, when they met at the cocktail party, Stoneham said he’d have to get Doc Medich, one of the Yankees’ best pitchers, in the deal—which Paul flatly rejected. That night, he called Steinbrenner to inform him where things stood.
“Just take it easy, Gabe,” Steinbrenner said. “We can’t chase it.”
Paul agreed. The next day, Stoneham called him back.
“Do you still want to make the Murcer-for-Bonds deal?”
“Absolutely,” said Paul.
“Okay,” said Stoneham. “We’ll do it, one for one.”
After agreeing to wait until after the World Series to announce the trade, Paul immediately called Steinbrenner, who was delighted: “This is one of the greatest deals we ever made!”
However, the next morning, Steinbrenner called Paul with a new idea. He’d had lunch in Cleveland the day before with Ken Aspromonte, the manager of the Indians, who had told him the Kansas City Royals were looking to move their first baseman, John Mayberry, and their center fielder, Amos Otis.
“Mayberry and Otis would be even better than Bonds for Murcer,” Steinbrenner said. “Can’t we do this?”
“No, George, we can’t,” said Paul. “We can’t renege on our word with San Francisco.”
“Well, Aspromonte tells me that Murcer is overrated.”
“George,” Paul screamed, “that’s what we’ve been telling you for a long time!”
“Now all of a sudden he’s got Aspromonte as one of his new advisers,” Paul groused in private into his tape recorder. “Imagine Kenny coming in here and looking over my shoulder. That’s all I need. I hired him in Cleveland, for God’s sakes!”
At least he’d been able to convince Steinbrenner about the honor in keeping an agreement with another owner.
Four days after the 1974 World Series, on October 21, the Yankees called a press conference to announce the Murcer-for-Bonds deal. Marty Appel remembered the glow on Paul’s face as he summoned him into his office at 9 o’clock that morning.
“I want you to hear this phone conversation,” Paul said after instructing his secretary, Pearl Davis, to call Murcer at his home in Oklahoma City, where it was 8 o’clock.
“Bobby? Gabe Paul here. Did I wake you? Oh, I’m sorry. But you know that old saying: Only whores make a living in bed. Anyway, I’ve got some news for you, which you may not like at first but will be a terrific opportunity for you. We’ve decided to go in a different direction here. We’ve traded you to the San Francisco Giants.”
On the other side of the line, the groggy Murcer was bewildered.
“Did I just hear that right?” he said.
The conversation continued uneasily for another couple of minutes before Paul told Murcer that if there was anything the Yankees could do for him to let him know, and ended the call. Upon hanging up, he looked at Appel and said, grinning, “Well, what did you think of that?”
But because of Paul’s haste to call Murcer to inform him of the trade, news of the deal leaked out before the Giants were able to hold their press conference, which was scheduled for that morning in San Francisco. This prompted an angry, drunken phone call from Stoneham to Paul at about 4 o’clock in the afternoon New York time.
“You beat the announcement,” Stoneham slurred. “How could you? I’m getting killed out here. They’re saying I
wanted Medich in the deal and when I couldn’t get him, I went ahead and did it anyway. I never asked for Medich!”
Paul speculated that Murcer had probably called Players Association chief Marvin Miller to ask about his rights and that was how the story had leaked out.
“What are you telling me?” Stoneham said. “That he doesn’t want to report?”
“No, no. Everything’s okay. He’s going to love San Francisco. I told him what a great opportunity it is for him.”
Nevertheless, Paul decided to call United Press International columnist Milton Richman and ask him to write a nice column about Stoneham and how the Giants owner had only wanted Murcer in the deal. The following February, Murcer reluctantly reported to the Giants’ spring training camp in Phoenix, where he would go on to have an All-Star season (hitting .298) but an otherwise miserable two-year existence in chilly San Francisco before being traded to the Chicago Cubs.
A month after unloading Murcer, Paul was able to rid himself of another of Steinbrenner’s favorites: Gene Michael, the light-hitting backup shortstop, who had turned down the club’s contract offer of $45,000 for 1975. Instead of negotiating any further, Paul called Michael and informed him he was being released.
“You gotta be kidding!” Michael said.
“No,” Paul said, “this is what we’ve decided to do.”
“Does Mr. Steinbrenner know about this?” Michael demanded.
Paul, clearly annoyed by Michael’s assertion that Steinbrenner would have never approved of him being released, said: “There’s no retreat on this. I don’t care who you call.”
After hanging up, Paul thought: “The guy was a damn fool to turn down $45,000. I just hope Steinbrenner doesn’t do something equally foolish by bringing him back.”