Steinbrenner, the Last Lion Of Baseball (2010)

by Madden, Bill

  “Maybe,” said Steinbrenner, “but none of these guys you’re talking about are stars. One guy we haven’t talked about is Reggie Jackson.”

  Jackson, who had twice led the American League in homers for Finley’s Oakland A’s and was named Most Valuable Player in 1973, was the only marquee player on the free agent list. Once Finley realized he wasn’t going to be able to sign him, he had traded Jackson to the Baltimore Orioles midway through the 1976 season. Shortly after the trade, the Orioles were in New York for a series against the Yankees, and Jackson, never one to miss an opportunity to regale the media masses, got to talking with a group of Yankees beat reporters from the tabloids about his impending free agency.

  “All I know is,” Jackson said very calculatingly, “if I ever played in New York, they’d name a candy bar after me.”

  At the World Series in New York a few months later, Jackson made his intentions even clearer. He had decided to attend game three at Yankee Stadium and was on his way to have dinner in the Yankee Club when the receptionist at the door stopped him from entering.

  “I’m sorry, Mr. Jackson,” she said. “Your name is not on the list here. I can’t let you in.”

  Recognizing Jackson waiting at the door, Fred Matthews, the manager of Steinbrenner’s Bay Harbor Hotel, in Tampa, who had been brought to New York by the owner to oversee the luxury boxes and the restaurants for the Series, rushed over to intervene. As the receptionist began explaining the situation, Matthews wrote Jackson’s name on the back of the list and instructed her to let him in.

  “Forget it,” snapped Jackson. “Next year, I’ll own this fuckin’ place!”

  Steinbrenner had most assuredly heard about the incident.

  “The way I see it,” he continued to Paul and Martin, “we need a cleanup hitter and we also need a star.”

  Martin blanched. “George,” he said, “we’ve got a cleanup hitter in Chambliss, and we won this year without a star.”

  But Martin could see where this conversation was going, especially when Paul said nothing. Steinbrenner had made up his mind. The Yankees owner was going to take full advantage of free agency, just as he had with Catfish Hunter two years before. Steinbrenner would bring Reggie Jackson to New York, where they would name a candy bar after him.

  And the New York tabloids were going to eat it up.

  Chapter 6

  Turmoil and Triumph

  IT TOOK GEORGE STEINBRENNER all of a week to get his man.

  Reggie Jackson already had a pretty good idea about what life would be like in the “great metropolis,” as his friend Howard Cosell was so fond of calling it. Jackson knew what sort of off-the-field marketing and promotional opportunities New York offered. Still, having played almost all his major league career in Oakland, Jackson had begun to think of himself as a West Coast guy, and Los Angeles and San Diego both appealed to him.

  On November 4, 1976, Major League Baseball conducted its first “re-entry draft” at the Plaza Hotel in New York. The 24 existing clubs (the expansion Toronto Blue Jays and Seattle Mariners were not allowed to participate) were selecting for the right to negotiate with the 22 players who had played out their “renewal” years, each of whom could be selected by up to 12 teams and become free agents in the aftermath of the McNally-Messersmith decision.

  As soon as the draft was over, Steinbrenner instructed Gabe Paul to set up meetings with the agents for Cincinnati Reds ace left-hander Don Gullett and Jackson, both of whom had been selected by the maximum 12 clubs. Paul was to concentrate his efforts on Gullett, while Steinbrenner said he would personally handle the Jackson recruiting effort. Paul reported back to Steinbrenner that Jackson was planning to make some trips to the other clubs that had drafted him, but because his Arizona-based agent, Gary Walker, refused to travel by airplane, that would take some time.

  “It’s my understanding,” Paul told Steinbrenner, “Jackson has told the agent he’d like to know by Thanksgiving where he’s going to play next year.”

  “Okay,” said Steinbrenner. “Tell them I’d like Reggie to come to New York at the beginning of that week. I’ll take it from there.”

  On November 18, Steinbrenner and Paul completed the first part of their free agent quest by signing Gullett to a six-year, $2 million contract. That night, Steinbrenner took Thurman Munson to dinner at “21” for a dual purpose. He wanted to celebrate their acquisition of the preeminent pitcher on the free agent market and, more important, he wanted to sound out the Yankee captain as to whether the team would welcome Reggie Jackson.

  Steinbrenner told Munson that he was inclined to sign Jackson despite his reputation for being a “hot dog” and a me-first player, but that Paul and Martin preferred to sign Grich to play shortstop.

  “Go get the big guy,” Munson said. “He’s the only guy in baseball who can carry a team for a month, and don’t believe all the other stuff you’ve heard about him. He plays hard all the time. We can always trade for a shortstop.”

  This was all Steinbrenner needed to hear, though Munson had an ulterior motive for encouraging him to sign Jackson. The previous spring in Fort Lauderdale, Munson had met with Steinbrenner at the owner’s apartment in the Galt Ocean Manor hotel, where the two had discussed the coming era of free agency. As a catcher who hits .300 and drives in 100 runs, Munson noted, he figured to get top dollar on the open market.

  “But my desire is to remain a Yankee,” Munson had told Steinbrenner, calculatingly. “All I ask is that, other than Catfish, I will always be the highest-paid player on the team.”

  “That’s sounds fine to me,” Steinbrenner said.

  For good measure, Munson had asked Bill “Killer” Kane, the team’s traveling secretary, to accompany him to the meeting as a witness.

  Now, buoyed by Munson’s endorsement of a potential clubhouse rival, Steinbrenner arranged to spend a day in New York with Jackson, showing him the sights and the power spots while schmoozing with him about the advantages of playing for the Yankees in the country’s biggest media market.

  On the Monday before Thanksgiving, Jackson arrived in New York after having previously visited with Expos owner Charles Bronfman, the Seagrams whiskey heir, in Montreal, and in San Diego with Ray Kroc, the McDonald’s hamburger magnate who owned the Padres. In his mind, Jackson had set a figure of $3 million for five years as the baseline for his first free-agency contract. But Bronfman knocked him and his agent off their feet by offering $5 million. Years later, Jackson would say that the reason he didn’t sign with the Expos was that he just couldn’t see himself living outside the U.S.

  Steinbrenner had no idea how high Bronfman had already raised the Reggie stakes when he picked Jackson up in his limo to go to lunch at “21.” Meeting them there were three of the most prominent real estate moguls in New York: the Fisher brothers, Zack and Larry, and Tony Rolfe. Steinbrenner had also invited his close pal Bill Fugazy, who had made his name as a power broker in New York with his high-profile travel and limousine business. Jackson had never been to “21” but was well aware of its reputation as a place where New York’s most powerful businessmen met for lunch. Accordingly, he made sure to wear a tie (which was definitely not his custom, especially at lunch), though he later admitted to being taken aback at the saloon-like decor: checkered tablecloths and uncarpeted wooden floors.

  During lunch, Steinbrenner told Jackson that his friends, the Fishers and Rolfe, would find him an apartment in Manhattan, and Fugazy assured him that he’d have a limo at his disposal anytime he needed a ride. Jackson, in his 1984 autobiography, wrote that he was awestruck by the whole scene: “These guys seemed to represent all the business and radiate all the action of the Big Apple.” The final touch, Jackson wrote, was when, on the way out, he spotted a pipe in the smoking case by the front door that was priced at $60. When he casually commented that it seemed an exorbitant price for a pipe, Larry Fisher insisted on buying it for him.

  Standing on the sidewalk in front of “21,” Steinbrenner suggested to Jackson that t
he two of them take a little walk. As they headed east along 52nd Street, then turned left onto Second Avenue and headed uptown, passersby gradually began to recognize them: the owner of the Yankees and the most celebrated free agent in baseball strolling Manhattan together, smiling and waving as a cabbie hollered, “Sign him, George!” or a cop on the corner greeted them, “Welcome to New York, Reggie.” All the while Jackson wondered to himself if Steinbrenner hadn’t staged this whole thing for his benefit.

  When they got to 71st Street, Steinbrenner said, “Here’s the brownstone where I live. Let’s go up and talk.”

  Once they were settled in the living room, Steinbrenner wasted no time cutting to the chase.

  “So what exactly are you looking for, Reggie?” he asked.

  “Gary and I want $3 million.”

  “Oh, I can’t pay you that much!” Steinbrenner protested, laughing. “It’ll screw up my whole salary structure!”

  From there, they began to feel each other out, Steinbrenner reiterating the financial advantages of playing in New York and Reggie asking if the owner had talked to any of the Yankees players about signing him. Steinbrenner finally said he was prepared to offer Jackson $2 million for five years, to which Reggie, his meeting with Bronfman still fresh in his mind, laughed. “You’re not even close, George—and that doesn’t even include the Rolls-Royce I’d like to have as a sort of signing bonus.”

  They didn’t agree to terms, but both knew what they wanted, and that was each other. They agreed to get together again in a few days, on the Wednesday before Thanksgiving, at the O’Hare Airport Hyatt, in Chicago. This was convenient for Steinbrenner, who afterward would continue on to Culver Military Academy in Indiana to spend Thanksgiving with his son Hank. What he didn’t know was that Jackson and his agent had chosen this site because it was a convenient midway point for all of Jackson’s suitors to fly in with their final bids. When Steinbrenner walked into the Hyatt and saw Baltimore Orioles general manager Hank Peters sitting in the lobby, he was stunned. He quickly realized what was happening and thought: “I don’t know how many other people are here, but I’m going to be the last to leave.”

  When he sat down with Jackson and Walker in their room, Steinbrenner said he’d considered what Jackson had said to him two days earlier in New York and was increasing his offer to $2.9 million for five years. When Jackson reminded him that he wanted a Rolls-Royce as part of any deal he made, Steinbrenner shrugged. He wouldn’t buy the car himself, he said, but he’d throw in an extra $60,000 to cover the expense of it, scribbling all the details down on a Hyatt cocktail napkin. Smiling, Jackson reached for the napkin and wrote on the back of it: “I will not let you down. Reginald M. Jackson.” Thus, for $2.96 million Reggie Jackson became a New York Yankee.

  Jackson would, within a year’s time, live up to his pledge to Steinbrenner, but it would be a tumultuous relationship that barely lasted to the press conference in which the Yankees announced Jackson’s signing. The Sunday after Thanksgiving, Steinbrenner phoned Yankees public relations director Marty Appel and instructed him to book a room for Jackson at the Americana Hotel, on 52nd Street, where visiting teams stayed when they played the Yankees and where the press conference would be held the next day.

  But at 1:30 A.M. Appel was awakened by the ringing of his telephone. On the other end of the line was Steinbrenner, screaming at him to “get your ass into the city and straighten out this problem with Reggie or else it’s gonna be your ass!” Appel learned that Jackson had brought along a female companion, but his room at the Americana had two twin beds in it. Frantically, Appel called the night manager of the hotel, who informed him that Jackson was threatening to leave town. Worse, the manager told Appel that all the rooms at the Americana came with twin beds.

  At Appel’s urging, the manager corralled Jackson as he was heading out the door and put him on the phone.

  “Stay right there, Reggie,” Appel pleaded. “I’ll be back to you in five minutes with a new room.”

  Appel called the Plaza, where he was able to secure a suite for Jackson. But upon calling back to the Americana, the manager told him he’d found a foldout double bed for Jackson, who had retired for the night. Relieved he still had a job, Appel managed to get a few of hours of sleep before hustling to the Americana to prepare for the 11 A.M. press conference. But when he arrived, he discovered that Steinbrenner had instructed Yankees in-house counsel Joe Garagiola Jr. to change some of the language in the contract at the last minute. Naturally, Jackson’s attorney, Steven Kay, balked at this, and by 10:15 the contract still wasn’t signed. Finally, Steinbrenner came into Kay’s room, where the negotiations were going on, and resolved the impasse by ordering Garagiola to remove the language from the contract. In front of Jackson and Kay, he blamed the whole misunderstanding on Garagiola. The embarrassed Garagiola said nothing, but at that moment privately concluded that if he was going to continue practicing law, it would be in a private practice or for somebody other than George Steinbrenner.

  At the press conference, Jackson, wearing a pale gray suit with brass buttons, blue shirt, silk tie and alligator shoes, heaped praise upon Steinbrenner for winning him over to the Yankees. “He took it on his own to hunt me down. It was like trying to hustle a girl in a bar. I got the feeling I was his personal project to be with the Yankees.” It was when Jackson later told the media, “Sometimes I just underestimate the magnitude of me” that the other Yankee players in the room looked at each other with raised eyebrows.

  Steinbrenner had invited a carefully selected entourage of Yankees to show support for his newest star: iconic coaches Yogi Berra and Elston Howard (the first black Yankee), Roy White (the most prominent black player on the team) and Munson. Conspicuous by his absence was Billy Martin. Nobody knew why Martin wasn’t there, but it later became very apparent that the manager resented the way Steinbrenner had been fawning over Jackson. After watching the press conference on TV, Martin complained to his friend Nick Nicolosi, manager of the Sheraton Hotel in Hasbrouck Heights, New Jersey, where he was staying, “George takes Reggie to all the best restaurants in New York and he never once even took me to lunch.” When Jackson said, “It’s going to be great with the Yankees because George and I are going to get along real good,” Martin groused, “He’s gonna find out real quick that George isn’t the manager.”

  The following spring in Florida, Martin was admittedly bitter about the addition of his new $2.9 million right fielder, and his mood gradually worsened as Steinbrenner began nitpicking over his management style—things like not riding on the team bus to the Grapefruit League games (Martin drove his own car) and not playing his regulars enough. Things came to a head on March 26 in St. Petersburg, after the Yankees lost to the Mets in a game that was telecast back to New York. In the days leading up to it, Steinbrenner had continually harped about the importance of winning spring training games under the misguided belief that the team’s Grapefruit League performance affected ticket sales back home for the regular season—making the Mets game, in his mind, doubly important. After the game, a seething Steinbrenner, with Gabe Paul in tow, stormed into the clubhouse and began venting about the loss to Martin, who was sitting in the corner of the room with his pal Mickey Mantle.

  Enraged at being dressed down in front of his best friend and his players, Martin shouted back, “Get the fuck out of here, George! I won’t have you yelling at me in front of my players!”

  “I’ll do whatever I want,” Steinbrenner yelled.

  “No, you won’t, George,” said Martin. “Not here. You can’t come in here and yell at me and my players.”

  “Oh, no?” said Steinbrenner. “Do you want to be fired right here, right now?”

  “If that’s what you wanna do, George, then go ahead. Fire me!” Martin screamed, edging closer to Steinbrenner.

  As Martin kept approaching, Steinbrenner walked backward until they were both almost up against the wall in the trainer’s room, at which point Paul, worried that Martin might throw a pun
ch, stepped between them alongside the trainer’s table. Instead of hitting Steinbrenner, Martin slammed his fist into a tub of ice water, splattering ice all over the 67-year-old Paul. As the players listened to the fracas out in the clubhouse, Yankees trainer Gene Monahan scurried out of the trainer’s room, “his face whiter than his trainer’s garb,” according to Sparky Lyle. The shouting died down and, a few minutes later, Martin walked out of the training room and left with Mantle. Steinbrenner came out next, turned to Yogi Berra in the coaches’ room and told him he would be taking over as manager.

  “Huh-uh,” said Berra. “This is Billy’s club, George.”

  “We’ll see about that,” Steinbrenner said. Then, pointing to “Killer” Kane, the traveling secretary, he said, “You get Billy to my apartment in Tampa at 9 o’clock tomorrow, and don’t be late!”

  When Kane returned from dinner to the Bay Harbor Hotel in Tampa (where the Yankees were staying for a series of Grapefruit League games on Florida’s west coast), he was distressed not to find Martin at his usual perch in the bar. He did find Berra, who suggested he get a key to Martin’s room and wait for him there. Berra volunteered to wait with Kane, and they sat in Martin’s room telling baseball stories until 5 A.M., when a bleary-eyed Billy finally walked through the door.

  “What are you two guys doing here?” Martin said.

  “George wants to see you at his apartment at 9 o’clock,” Kane said,

  “and he asked me to take you there.”

  “Oh, shit,” Martin grumbled. “Just what I need. More bullshit from this guy.”

  After a few hours of sleep, Kane picked up Martin and delivered him to Steinbrenner’s Tampa apartment for what would prove to be the first of many meetings between the owner and the manager in which a temporary understanding would be reached—only to last until the next Yankees loss or conflict between Martin and Jackson. At this meeting, Billy was able to convince Steinbrenner that it made no difference if he traveled to the spring training games in his own car instead of the team bus.