Steinbrenner, the Last Lion Of Baseball (2010)

by Madden, Bill

  “I’ve been told to tell you guys he isn’t here,” Morabito said, smiling.

  “Doesn’t he realize we’re looking right at him?” one of the reporters asked.

  “All I know is, he told me he’s not here,” Morabito said, now unable to contain his laughter.

  Later, as the Yankees fell further behind in the game, the writers asked Morabito to make another attempt at getting Steinbrenner to talk to them. This time, Steinbrenner could be seen shouting and gesturing at the PR man, then suddenly rising from his chair. In his attempt to make a hasty retreat from Selig’s box, Morabito forgot about the low overhang separating it from the press box and conked his head, toppling to the floor. As he lay there, dazed, Steinbrenner continued berating him.

  “It was just an astounding scene,” remembered Selig. “I thought Mickey might be dead. Here was the poor kid lying there on the floor and George, oblivious to the situation, standing over him and still screaming at him.”

  Over the All-Star break, Steinbrenner resolved to right the ship. In a meeting with Rosen, Tallis and Martin, he said that 34-year-old Roy White, the longest-tenured Yankee, and backup center fielder Paul Blair should both be released, and that Munson, because of his knees, should be taken out from behind the plate and moved to right field, with Reggie Jackson becoming the designated hitter. Mike Heath would take over as catcher. In addition, Lou Piniella would be benched, occasionally sharing the DH duties with Jackson, and Gary Thomasson, a reserve player obtained from the Oakland A’s at the June 15 trading deadline, would take over in left field.

  “We’re playing horseshit and we’re going to go with the younger players,” Steinbrenner declared. Then, to the surprise of the men in the room, he added: “And from now on, Cedric will be more prominent in the baseball operations and Al Rosen will concentrate more on the business affairs.”

  This was just another example of Steinbrenner’s mercurial behavior—that he would diminish a friend whose knowledge of baseball he had declared invaluable only a few months earlier.

  Martin managed to talk Steinbrenner out of releasing White and Blair, but said that the other moves Steinbrenner wanted to make all seemed reasonable. Given Billy’s penchant for rebelling at any interference with his managing, Steinbrenner was pleasantly surprised. Steinbrenner went down to the clubhouse for the first time that season, accompanied by Martin, in a seemingly united front as they addressed the players to announce all the changes.

  With Martin standing behind him, Steinbrenner laid out his plan for turning the season around: “I’m not gonna lie down and die like a dog and neither are you guys,” he said firmly. “I expect you to accept whatever role you’re given without griping and do it as best you can. I’m paying you guys a lot of money and we’re gonna do it the way I want to do it. And the way Billy has agreed is the proper way to do it. If you don’t like it, I’ll try to accommodate you elsewhere.”

  The next day, Steinbrenner and Martin taped a Miller Lite TV commercial that had been arranged by Martin’s agent, Doug Newton. The ad, in which they argued about whether Miller Lite tasted good or was less filling, concluded with Steinbrenner saying: “Billy, you’re fired!” to which Martin responded: “Oh, no, not again!”

  Ironically, in another three weeks, they’d be doing it for real.

  OF ALL THE changes Steinbrenner implemented, the one that would provoke the most protest was moving Reggie Jackson from right field to designated hitter and once again in and out of the cleanup spot. Jackson regarded this as a slight on his defensive skill, an insult compounded by the fact that now he wasn’t even the everyday DH. Similarly upset was Lou Piniella, the other half of the new DH platoon and the one Martin used only against left-handed pitchers. Piniella, too, still considered himself a regular. With each passing day, Jackson became more and more miserable.

  Jackson had been trying to get a meeting with Steinbrenner for two weeks when, on July 17, the owner finally agreed to hear him out. Steinbrenner was sitting at the big round table in his office at the Stadium with Rosen and Tallis when Jackson and his business agent, Matt Merola,

  entered the room. When Reggie voiced his refrain about not being able to play for Martin, suggesting that it would probably be in everyone’s best interest that he be traded, Steinbrenner abruptly cut him off.

  “I agree with Billy about your outfield play,” he said. “That’s why you’re the DH. But I do want you batting cleanup.”

  “But I’m not even doing that every day,” Jackson countered.

  Until then, Jackson had considered Steinbrenner his biggest ally, and maybe his only one. But when the owner told him that it had been his decision to make Jackson the DH, Jackson’s insides began to boil. “How could this guy turn on me like this?” he thought. “How did I get to here from last October?”

  From there, the discourse became more and more heated until, according to Jackson, Steinbrenner inadvertently uttered the “boy” term in the course of scolding his disgruntled slugger.

  “Who the hell do you think you’re talking to here?” Jackson screamed, leaping up.

  As Merola and Rosen sought to calm Jackson, Steinbrenner said, “I think you should just leave, Reggie.”

  “I don’t feel like leaving.”

  Steinbrenner stared hard at Jackson, then stood abruptly and walked out. A few minutes later, his head spinning at having accomplished nothing while instead making matters worse, Jackson left with Merola and took the elevator down to the clubhouse. Once he was gone, Steinbrenner returned to the office and said to Rosen: “I’m sick and tired of his whining. He needs to just shut up and start producing.”

  JULY 17 WOULD turn out to be the nadir of the 1978 Yankee season—and the beginning of the end for Billy Martin as Steinbrenner’s manager. The Yankees were playing the last night of a three-game series against the Kansas City Royals, having lost eight of the previous ten games. At Steinbrenner’s request, Jackson was hitting cleanup. After going hitless his first four times up, Jackson came to the plate in the tenth inning with the score tied 5–5, with one out and Thurman Munson on first. When he looked over at third-base coach Dick Howser, Jackson was dumbfounded to see that he was being given the sacrifice sign. This was the first time all season he’d been asked to sacrifice, and when the first pitch from Royals reliever Al Hrabosky came in high and inside, he backed away.

  Noticing that the Royals infielders had picked up the sacrifice sign and moved in, Martin called it off. Jackson, however, decided to bunt anyway. He didn’t care that he was openly defying Martin’s orders. It seemed that everyone was trying to humiliate him now, and in his personal frustration he bunted and missed the next pitch, then bunted the next two foul, striking out, much to the amazement of Royals catcher Darrell Porter, who said later to reporters that he couldn’t understand what Reggie was trying to do. Martin was not amazed—he was livid. After the Yankees lost the game, 9–7, in the 11th inning, putting them 14 games behind the first-place Red Sox, the manager unleashed a torrent of fury in his office as Cedric Tallis sat there nodding in agreement.

  “How dare he defy me?” Martin screamed. “Who the fuck does he think he is? I’m running this team. This time he’s gone too far. I’m finished with him!”

  Afterward, Martin fumed to the gaggle of reporters as they furiously scribbled down his words. “There’s not gonna be anybody who’s gonna defy the manager in any way. Nobody’s bigger than this team!”

  He then read a prepared statement that said Jackson was suspended without pay “for deliberately disregarding the manager’s instructions during his at-bat in the 10th inning.” Asked later if he planned to talk to Jackson about the incident, Martin said, “I don’t talk about it. If he comes back, he does exactly what I say, period. I’m not getting paid $3 million. I don’t disobey my boss’s orders.”

  When the writers approached Jackson’s locker for his reaction, he complained, “I was just trying to move the runner over and help the team. How can they say I’m a threat to swing the
bat when I’m not even an everyday player? I can’t win here. No matter what I do, I come off as a big greedy moneymaker against a poor little streetfighter.”

  The next day, an off-day before the Yankees embarked on a seven-game road trip to Minnesota, Chicago and Kansas City, Martin announced that Jackson’s suspension would last five days, adding: “This is probably the best thing that’s happened in a long time. It’ll pull the team together.”

  At first, it looked like Martin was right. Ron Guidry and Ed Figueroa threw back-to-back shutouts against the Twins, then the Yankees won the first two games in a three-game series against the White Sox. But on the day of the final game in Chicago, Martin’s ebullient mood turned sour with Jackson’s return to the team. Seeing the mob of reporters around Jackson in the visiting clubhouse of Comiskey Park, Martin grew angrier and angrier. He began filling out the lineup card. In the cleanup spot, he penciled “Roy White, DH.” That’ll serve him, he said to himself. When Jackson looked at the lineup card and saw that he wasn’t playing, he simply shook his head.

  Even the 3–1 getaway victory (making it a perfect 5-0 road trip without any help from Jackson) failed to improve Martin’s mood. The day before, Martin had been further aggravated after a conversation he had with White Sox owner Bill Veeck in Comiskey Park’s Bards Room. Veeck was in a playful mood, drinking beers with some friends, when Martin came in after the 7–2 Yankee victory and joined him at his table.

  “I suppose I have only myself to blame if we get swept by you, Billy,” Veeck said, “considering you could have been managing for me this weekend.”

  “What do you mean?” Martin asked.

  “Oh,” said Veeck, “didn’t you know? Last month George wanted to trade you to me. We were going to trade managers, you for Lemon, but I felt I needed to get a player in the deal as well.”

  “That sonofabitch,” thought Martin. Steinbrenner had tried to get rid of him behind his back.

  When the team bus arrived at O’Hare International Airport on Sunday, Martin called New York Times beat reporter Murray Chass aside. Earlier, Jack Lang of the Daily News had shown Martin a copy of his story in which Jackson had refused to admit he was wrong in the bunting incident. Now Martin wanted Chass’s opinion as to whether that constituted conduct detrimental to the Yankees.

  “I’m saying, ‘Shut up, Reggie Jackson, we’re winning without you,’ ” Martin said. “If he doesn’t shut his mouth, he won’t play, and I don’t care what George says.” As Martin spoke, Chass was writing everything down in his notepad. And, lucky for the reporter, the Yankees’ charter flight to Kansas City was delayed, giving him time to dictate his new story back to his office from a pay phone. It also gave Martin more time to further drown his anger in drink.

  A half hour later, Chass was waiting at a newsstand with New York Post reporter Henry Hecht when Martin approached him.

  “Did you get all that in the paper?” he said.

  When Chass assured him he had, Martin smiled with satisfaction. But he was not through whining about Jackson. As the three of them walked to the gate where the Yankees’ plane was boarding, Martin, his eyes reddening, continued his diatribe.

  “You know he’s a damn liar,” he said of Jackson.

  Then, just as they arrived at the gate, Martin said, “The two of them deserve each other. One’s a born liar, the other’s convicted.”

  Damning words that would live in Yankee infamy. Martin would later say he didn’t know why he’d included Steinbrenner in his wrath; perhaps his conversation with Veeck the previous day was still fresh in his mind. But he did, invoking the aspect of Steinbrenner’s life that the owner was most sensitive about: his Watergate felony conviction.

  When the plane landed in Kansas City, Chass and Hecht rushed to the pay phones. The first call Chass made was to Steinbrenner, who was home in Tampa.

  “He said what?” Steinbrenner shrieked. “Let me have that again?”

  After Chass repeated Martin’s quote, Steinbrenner hung up and immediately called Rosen, who had just retired to bed in his Manhattan apartment. Steinbrenner told him the story, then said, “Now I want you to get on a plane to Kansas City and fire Billy.”

  According to Rosen, Steinbrenner was so upset, he made no mention of who was supposed to replace Martin. But Rosen had just the man in mind: Bob Lemon (whom Veeck had fired anyway after his manager trade discussion with Steinbrenner).

  “Bob was just the calming influence I knew the team needed,” Rosen said, “and I think George had enough confidence in me to make the decision.”

  First, however, Rosen had to make sure Steinbrenner wasn’t going to change his mind. Armed with a statement dictated by Steinbrenner that Martin was being relieved of his duties out of consideration for his health, Rosen checked in at the Crown Center Hotel in Kansas City shortly before 3 P.M. Monday. He was preparing to go to Martin’s room when Mickey Morabito intercepted him in the lobby.

  “Billy’s resigning,” said Morabito. “He’s written a statement that he’s going to read to the press downstairs in the lobby.”

  After meeting with Martin in his room, along with Cedric Tallis (who had accompanied the team on the road trip), Rosen led the quartet downstairs, where Martin, his hands shaking and fighting back tears beneath his dark glasses, read his letter of resignation.

  “I owe it to my health and my mental well-being to resign. At this time I’m also sorry for the things that were written about George Steinbrenner. He does not deserve them, nor did I say them. I’ve had my differences with George, but we’ve been able to resolve them. . . .”

  Now who was lying?

  Back in Tampa, Fred Matthews, the manager of Steinbrenner’s Bay Harbor Hotel, was going over some bills in his office when the house phone rang. It was Steinbrenner calling from the bar.

  “What are you doing?” he asked.

  “Nothing much, I’m just winding up some stuff,” Matthews said.

  “I’m in the lounge. C’mon down.”

  As they sat at the bar listening to the soft jazz of the Bill Himes Trio, Matthews noticed that Steinbrenner seemed melancholy and, uncharacteristically, ordered a second drink.

  “You got a problem, Boss?” he said.

  “Yeah,” said Steinbrenner, “I just fired Billy.”

  “He just sat there for about an hour, listening to the music,” Matthews recalled. “He just wanted company.”

  Meanwhile, with Martin gone, Rosen announced that Dick Howser would manage the Yankees for the Monday-night game in Kansas City. He then called his old friend and Cleveland Indians teammate, Lemon, who was home in Long Beach, California, where he was working as a scout for the White Sox.

  “The conversation took all of five minutes,” Rosen remembered. “I told him I needed him and he said: ‘Where do you want me to be, Meat [Lemon’s term of affection for all his friends]?’ He never asked why I needed him or how much he was going to be paid. He just said he’d be on the next plane to Kansas City.”

  Rosen was ecstatic over the turn of events. He had replaced Martin, whom he detested, with his best friend. But his satisfaction would prove to be short-lived, as he had no way of foreseeing or comprehending the perverse “love-hate” dynamic that was developing between Steinbrenner and Martin.

  According to Martin’s agent, Doug Newton, Billy made the decision to resign because he wasn’t about to give Rosen the satisfaction of firing him. After listening to Martin’s almost incoherent ramblings, the alarmed Newton called Steinbrenner.

  “I’m very concerned about my client’s mental state right now,” Newton said. “He’s resigning without any consideration for how it will affect him financially.”

  “We’ll take care of him in that regard,” Steinbrenner said. “But there must be conditions. Do you think Billy could say he resigned because he has a drinking problem?”

  “No fucking way!”

  “Well, we have to handle this in such a way that it can’t be on my head and make me look bad,” Steinbrenner sai
d. “I’ll take care of Billy and find something for him, but you’ve got to make sure Billy says this was in the best interest of the New York Yankees.”

  It was agreed then that Martin would cite health reasons for having resigned and that the Yankees would pay him for the remaining year and a half on his contract under the condition that he not have any derogatory things to say about anyone in the organization, particularly Steinbrenner. But then, the next morning, as Rosen was lining up Lemon, Steinbrenner phoned Newton back. The owner was having pangs of guilt—which would be a familiar pattern in all of his future manager firings.

  “Doug,” he said, “I don’t feel good in my gut, I don’t feel right that Billy’s not the manager of the Yankees.”

  “Well, Billy doesn’t feel good either,” Newton replied. “His heart is broken.”

  “I want to keep him in the organization,” said Steinbrenner. “Do you think he’d entertain being a scout or a front office assistant or something?”

  “All he wants to be is manager.”

  “Well, I want him to be the manager again.”

  “If that’s the case, George,” said Newton, “if you want him to come back and be the manager, why don’t you just announce that he’s coming back as manager next year, and do it in front of 50,000 fans on Old-Timers’ Day?”

  “By God, that’s a helluva idea.”

  On Thursday of that week, two days before Old-Timers’ Day at Yankee Stadium, Newton, Martin and Steinbrenner held a secret meeting at the Carlyle Hotel to discuss a hitch in their plan. In his anxiousness to bring Martin back for the 1979 season, Steinbrenner had forgotten he’d promised Lemon a full year as manager. He couldn’t go back on his word, he told Newton by phone before the meeting.