The Mouth That Roared

by Dallas Green

  The staff I assembled included four former major league managers: Lee Elia, Pat Corrales, Frank Howard, and Charlie Fox, as well as two other solid baseball guys, Billy Connors and John Stearns.

  The Yankees were accustomed to winning titles. That must have made the 1980s a frustrating time for George. After winning back-to-back championships in 1977 and 1978, the Yankees had entered a historic dry spell. Since the 1910s, the team had never gone an entire decade without winning at least one World Series. When I came on board, that streak was in jeopardy of coming to an end. The Yankees were coming off an 85–76 season, a decent record for most teams but the worst mark in six years for the Yankees.

  The moment I took the job in New York, my friends in Philadelphia started making bets on when George would kick me to the curb. Former Phillies owner Bob Carpenter told me as much when I ran into him at a University of Delaware football game. I got a hearty laugh out of that. I hoped I would be the son of a bitch who convinced George to fade into the background.

  * * *

  Before taking the Yankees job, I had spent only one month of my 33-year baseball career in the American League. That month came in the spring of 1965 when I pitched six games for the Washington Senators.

  Still, I understood that Yankee Stadium was hallowed ground.

  I recognized that the first time I attended a game there in 1956. After my second year of pro ball, a couple of friends and I decided it would be fun to try and get tickets for a postseason game in the Bronx.

  Kenny Mahan, Bill Kelly, and I ended up securing bleacher seats for Game 5 of the World Series between the Yankees and the Brooklyn Dodgers. We took the train up from Wilmington and arrived at the stadium hours before game time. We were among the first people in the bleachers when the gates opened. It was a thrill to see Jackie Robinson, Gil Hodges, and Duke Snider trot out onto the field for pregame warm-ups. When they left, Mickey Mantle, Yogi Berra, and Enos Slaughter took their place.

  It was a great day already, and the game hadn’t even started.

  With the series tied at two games apiece, Sal Maglie and Don Larsen each carried shutouts into the fourth inning. Then the Yankees got on the board when Mantle hit a Maglie pitch into the stands. The Yankees scored again in the sixth to take a 2–0 lead.

  The Dodgers couldn’t get to Larsen.

  In the seventh inning, I looked up at the scoreboard and noticed Brooklyn had nothing. No runs, no hits, no walks, no base runners.

  I wasn’t rooting for either team, but at that point, I started to cheer for history. And Don Larsen delivered it, throwing the only perfect game to date in a World Series game.

  I didn’t view managing the Yankees as just another baseball job. They were a special franchise. I learned that on the day Berra jumped into Larsen’s arms to celebrate the perfect game. I was excited to wear the same pinstripes as Ruth, DiMaggio, Gehrig, and all the other Yankees legends.

  I knew full well, however, that tradition doesn’t win pennants. Ballplayers do.

  * * *

  My problems in the Bronx started before the season did.

  I would have put a starting outfield of Dave Winfield, Rickey Henderson, and Claudell Washington up against anyone in the majors.

  Unfortunately, that lineup never materialized.

  George promised he would retain Washington, who was a free agent, but he allowed the Angels to outbid him. At least we still had Winfield and Henderson—or so I thought.

  Early in spring training, Winfield left the field with back spasms. A few weeks later, he underwent surgery to remove a herniated disc. He didn’t play a game all season.

  That still left us with Henderson, the best leadoff hitter in the game. But I soon learned that when Rickey was dissatisfied, he hardly played like it.

  Starting in spring training, Rickey caused me headaches. He arrived late for camp in protest of George’s refusal to renegotiate his contract following a season in which he hit .305 and stole 93 bases. When asked my thoughts on Rickey’s tardiness, I stated in no uncertain terms that I, not Rickey, was leading the Yankees. The New York press ate it up and braced itself for a Dallas Green meltdown when Rickey finally showed his face at camp.

  A few days later, I saw Rickey stroll into our spring training complex. I immediately invited him into my office for a little chat.

  “Nice to see you, Rickey,” I told him. “Now that you’re here, I want to make sure you understand that, from now on, you show up on time and play your ass off. We’ll need you this season.”

  That was it. There was no yelling or screaming. But the newspapers still had a field day writing about the behind-closed-doors showdown between Rickey and his new manager. They didn’t know what transpired, so they used their imagination.

  Did my words get through to Rickey? Not a chance.

  He pouted during spring training, though he was occasionally generous enough to show off his talent by request. Elia had never seen Rickey in person but knew he had led the American League in steals eight out of the past nine years. An injury in 1987 was the only thing that prevented that from being nine out of nine. Before a spring training game, Elia told Corrales he wanted to see Rickey steal a base. Corrales, who seemed to get through to Rickey better than anybody on my staff, relayed the message to him. During the game against the Mets, Rickey reached base against Dwight Gooden and took off for second on the next pitch. He went in standing up. And that was the first and only base Rickey swiped all spring.

  Rickey promised to be a laugh a minute all season.

  At least George and I only butted heads once during spring training. It was over an older Mexican pitcher George wanted to release after a rough outing. Because we had a round of cuts scheduled in a couple of days, I didn’t see the urgency of letting him go before then. It would only serve to embarrass him and possibly strain our relations with the Mexican league. But George sent Bob Quinn down to tell me to do it right away. I said I wouldn’t. Then Syd Thrift, who had just been hired as the team’s vice president of baseball operations, paid me a visit to reiterate that George wanted the guy gone immediately. I told Syd that if George felt so strongly about it, he could come down and take care of it himself.

  The guy got cut that night. And he got the news personally from the owner.

  * * *

  Already without Winfield in body and Henderson in spirit, I also had to make do with the loss of starting shortstop Rafael Santana because of a bone chip in his elbow.

  When you lose two big bats and a slick-fielding middle infielder and have doubts about the attitude of your star left fielder, the last thing you can afford is a thin starting pitching rotation. A few months before the season, the team traded Rick Rhoden, whose streak of seven consecutive double-digit-win seasons made him one of the most consistent pitchers in the majors. Longtime Yankee Ron Guidry had elbow surgery in spring training and retired before making it back.

  Steinbrenner and Quinn didn’t consult me before trading Rhoden to the Astros for three minor leaguers. I didn’t make a stink about it, though. After all, I was the guy who once said general managers shouldn’t tell managers when to bunt, and managers shouldn’t tell general managers when to make trades. Then again, George was notorious for blurring those lines.

  We picked up starting pitchers Dave LaPoint and Andy Hawkins, but that still left us a couple of arms short of a full rotation. That’s when George offered a contract to 45-year-old Tommy John, who was just 14 wins shy of 300. He had gutted out nine wins for the Yankees in 1988, but I doubted he could keep it up much longer at his age. George wanted him on the club, and I honestly didn’t see any better options, so Tommy entered the season in our starting rotation. Not only that, he was our Opening Day starter. And he earned a victory that day.

  It remained our only win for quite a while.

  We started the season 1–7 and were outscored 57–15 during the seven-game losing s
treak. We got trounced almost every night.

  The season was still young, but the verbal fireworks were about to begin.

  “I’m getting sick and tired of watching it, sick and tired of seeing pitchers not get people out and seeing us get one, two, three hits,” I screamed after an 8–0 loss to the Blue Jays in which we got just one hit. “If there was a bright spot, we’d look for it, but I don’t see too many.”

  Only in New York could the media question a manager’s job stability eight games into his first season with the club. But that came with the territory. Philadelphia and Chicago each had two major newspapers. The greater New York area had five: The New York Times, Daily News, New York Post, Newsday, and the Star-Ledger. And each tried to one-up the competition on a daily basis.

  Some of the scribes reached George in Tampa, where he was looking after his sick mother, and asked him whether I should be worried about my job.

  Even George wasn’t ready to throw me under the bus quite yet. “Dallas Green will continue to manage this team this year, no matter what,” he told the Times. “I’m committed to him, and he knows it. I know that some people will say that’s usually the kiss of death from me, but it isn’t.”

  * * *

  Despite his soothing words in the press, George was clearly rattled by our slow start.

  It wasn’t long before he started taking jabs at my coaches. He blamed first-base coach Pat Corrales for Rickey Henderson’s dramatic decline in stolen bases, and he chastised third-base coach Lee Elia for not scoring more guys from second base on singles. This was George being George. It wasn’t as if Pat could steal the bases for a clearly unmotivated Rickey. And Lee couldn’t make guys like Ken Phelps and Steve Balboni fast enough to round the bases more quickly. I’d guess Rickey, if he felt like it, probably could have run from home to second faster than either of those guys could have run to first. My coaches were among the best teachers in the game, and it made me angry to hear them unfairly criticized.

  When Don Mattingly struggled at the plate early in the season, George went after our hitting coach, Frank Howard.

  Slumps are part of the game. Even career .300 hitters like Donnie went through rough patches. A month into the ’89 season, he was hitting just .200, but I had no doubt he would soon regain his form. But George felt we had a crisis on our hands. He told me he wanted Lou Piniella, my predecessor as manager, to come down from the Yankees broadcast booth to work with Donnie on his swing. I had a problem with that. Lou was a good hitting coach, but he wasn’t our hitting coach. Hondo was.

  “We’re on top of it,” I told George. “If you want Hondo and Lou to compare notes, that’s fine with me. But I want Hondo to be the one who works with Donnie.”

  “No, I want Lou to come down,” he repeated.

  With the season just a month old, I wasn’t yet at the point where I felt I would gain anything by openly defying George.

  I went to Hondo and explained what was going on. To his credit, he didn’t get territorial.

  “Bring him down, D,” Hondo said. “If it helps Donnie, that’s great. If not, it was worth a try.”

  I didn’t take it nearly as well as Hondo. The whole situation kind of frosted me. I sensed the nitpicking against me and my coaches was just beginning.

  Lou worked with Donnie, who brought his average back up to a respectable level. I guess we’ll never know whether that was the result of a professional hitter’s adjustments or a meddling owner’s intervention.

  You would think George’s deep involvement in the daily operations of the ballclub would have negated the need for a general manager. You’d be wrong. Late in spring training, George decided he needed two GMs. Bob Quinn, the GM who hired me, carried the official title, but Syd Thrift shared the duties of the job.

  I didn’t have a real problem with this unusual arrangement. Syd and I got along well, and Bob and I had known each other since I was the Phillies’ assistant farm director and he was GM of our Double-A team. Syd and Bob were knowledgeable baseball guys, but George all but neutered them. Rather than devising and implementing strategies, they simply did what George wanted. And that kept them plenty busy.

  At the end of the day, it was George who ran the show. A shocking revelation, I know.

  * * *

  By the time George traded a disgruntled Rickey Henderson to the A’s, my honeymoon with the Yankees was long over. When he left the Bronx, Rickey was hitting just .247 and on pace for a career low in stolen bases. Rickey didn’t get his new contract from the Yankees, so he took his poutiness out on the field with him.

  In return for Rickey, Oakland sent us two relief pitchers and outfielder Luis Polonia. Before long, those relievers, Eric Plunk and Greg Cadaret, joined the starting rotation. And Polonia and Mel Hall, neither of whom was with us at the start of spring training, were sharing time in left field.

  Depleted by injuries and limited in talent, it looked like we might still salvage the season. In mid-July, we were a game over .500 and in second place behind the Orioles.

  Several guys stepped up to help our patchwork team stay competitive.

  Deion Sanders, who made his major league debut at the end of May, infused energy and excitement into the clubhouse. At second base, Steve Sax, in his first year with the Yankees, went out and had an All-Star season, more than filling the shoes of the departed Willie Randolph. And Alvaro Espinoza, the fill-in at shortstop for Santana, gave us a workmanlike effort every day.

  Arguably our best pitcher was closer Dave Righetti, who busted his ass and saved a lot of games. Lee Guetterman was also effective out of the bullpen. Unfortunately, the rest of our relief corps cost us a lot of games. Our starting pitching wasn’t much better. Andy Hawkins ended up leading the team in wins and losses, with 15 apiece. No other pitcher on our staff won more than six.

  At the end of July, we lost nine of 10 games and fell all the way to sixth place in the American League East. Despite that slide, we were still only 7½ games out of first.

  George intimated that changes might soon take place, but he insisted my job was safe. He blamed injuries and underperforming players for the disappointing season. The situation required patience, he told reporters.

  * * *

  There has always been a misconception that George and I were constantly at each other’s throats during my time with the Yankees. The truth is George rarely picked up the phone and called me. He occasionally asked to sit down with me and my coaches, but he ended up canceling those meetings more often than not. Other than the dispute over how to handle Mattingly’s slump, we co-existed pretty well. He didn’t ask me to fill out the lineup card a certain way or demand that I play anybody. He did, however, issue edicts from time to time, like when he pissed off the team by banning beer on the team’s charter flights. That came after Rickey Henderson told the media that several members of the previous year’s team drank to excess.

  All in all, George and I had a functional relationship—until we didn’t anymore.

  I’ve never been one to run from a fight, whether it’s with a player, owner, manager, or general manager. And I found myself in a hell of a fight after George second-guessed my coaches and me one too many times. It came during an August series against the Minnesota Twins. George complained about the defensive positioning of our outfielders and my choice of a pinch hitter in the ninth inning of a game. He also wondered aloud if we were getting the most out of our players.

  I wasn’t going to let George get away with that.

  “The statement that ‘Manager George’ made about game situations is a very logical second-guess,” I told a couple dozen reporters who were about to dazzle their editors with the best back-page story of the baseball season. “And hindsight always being 20-20, that’s why managers get gray…It’s easy [for George] to view it from above.”

  I felt I expressed my feelings well. But most of what I said was immediately forgott
en. Everyone seized on two words: Manager George.

  The last Yankees manager to stand up to George like that was Gene Michael, who literally dared George to fire him in 1982. George obliged.

  I wasn’t daring George to let me go. I just didn’t appreciate his penchant for telling veteran baseball guys how to do their jobs.

  And he didn’t appreciate that I called him out for it.

  George tried to laugh off the comment. “It was a cute remark,” he told reporters. “He’s a cute guy.”

  He thought I was a cute guy? That was a first.

  George also reminded everyone of his background in coaching. I guess carrying a clipboard on a college football sideline for a couple of years had taught him to recognize when outfielders were playing too deep.

  As George and I went back and forth in the press, Piniella jumped in the fray by suggesting I move center fielder Roberto Kelly up in the batting order.

  Everyone was suddenly a critic. But George once again affirmed I was his guy.

  His loyalty to me was a mile wide and a centimeter deep. I knew I wasn’t going to be in the Bronx much longer.

  * * *

  Less than two weeks after my third vote of confidence from George, I got fired.

  I knew something was brewing when I heard George, who rarely traveled with the team, had tagged along on a road trip to Detroit. We had just gotten swept in Milwaukee to fall 10 games under .500 for the first time all season. Nobody was in a particularly good mood.

  In the first game of the series at Tiger Stadium, Righetti helped me go out a winner by recording a five-out save.

  Early the next morning, George summoned me to his hotel suite.

  “Dallas, I wanna make some changes,” he told me. “I’m going to replace the coaching staff.”

  He was going to fire my coaches but spare me? I didn’t buy it.

  “Look, George, I’m going to make this easy for you,” I replied. “You’re using my coaching staff to get back at me. I hired the coaching staff. I think they’re excellent baseball guys. If you’re going to fire them, you might as well fire me.”