Steinbrenner, the Last Lion Of Baseball (2010)

by Madden, Bill

  “Fine,” shot back Kane, “you do that. Go find somebody else. I don’t need to take your shit anymore,” and he stormed out of the office.

  After Kane left, Steinbrenner phoned down to the ticket office for Jerry Murphy, who had helped out as traveling secretary for a couple of road trips the year before. The 25-year-old Murphy had originally been hired by the Yankees as a batboy in 1971 and worked off and on in various capacities in the front office while he was going to college at Fordham, in the Bronx. Steinbrenner took a liking to him and eventually made him his executive assistant. When Murphy reported to Steinbrenner’s office on this occasion, he had no idea he was about to get a promotion.

  “You’re taking the team to Boston,” Steinbrenner said.

  “I’m what?” Murphy said. “I don’t understand. Killer’s the traveling secretary.”

  “Fuck Killer,” Steinbrenner said.

  “I don’t want to fuck Killer!”

  “Oh,” said Steinbrenner, “so you want to fuck me?”

  “I don’t want to fuck anybody! I can’t just take over this job on a moment’s notice.”

  Exasperated, Steinbrenner told Murphy to go down to Kane’s office to make sure all the arrangements for the trip to Boston were in order.

  When news of the Yankees’ loss reached Fenway Park, the scoreboard operator flashed a message: THANK YOU, RICK WAITS. A couple of hours later, the Yankees were boarding their charter flight—in Newark—for the short hop to Boston. Steinbrenner, now in an even fouler mood, was sitting by himself in the front of the plane when Piniella sidled up the aisle and stood over him.

  “Oh, what’s your problem, George?” he said. “Cheer up. We’re going to go up there and kick their ass tomorrow, and you’re gonna get another payday out of it!”

  MONDAY, OCTOBER 2, dawned bright and seasonably cool in Boston, a crisp early-autumn day, perfect for a championship baseball game. For a baseball man like Al Rosen, it didn’t get any better than this: Fenway Park, New York and Boston playing one game for the season, and his man, Bob Lemon, in charge of the Yankees. Thirty years earlier, as a 24-year-old rookie with the Indians, Rosen had been in Fenway under the very same circumstances as part of a Cleveland win over the Red Sox in a one-game playoff for the American League pennant. But today Rosen had a dilemma. It was Yom Kippur, and as a practicing Jew he was torn about attending the game instead of being at temple. “So much of my heart and soul had gone into that season, especially with everything I’d been through with George, I just decided I had to be there,” Rosen told me in 2007. “I got only one letter from somebody who castigated me for sitting there in the Yankee box in front of all those people. I wrote him back and said: ‘How did you know I was at the game? You should’ve been in temple!’ ”

  The game turned out to be a classic. Ron Guidry, who had fashioned one of the single greatest pitching seasons of all time in 1978—his record was 24-3 at that point—started for the Yankees against former Yankee Mike Torrez. Steinbrenner had dismissed Guidry as “nothing more than a Triple-A pitcher” 18 months earlier, when Gabe Paul had refused to include him in the deal with the White Sox for shortstop Bucky Dent, so it was somewhat ironic that his new ace would hold the Red Sox to two runs over 62⁄3 innings, while the slap-hitting Dent knocked a three-run homer over the Green Monster to give the Yankees a 3–2 lead, which they never relinquished, eventually winning the game 5–4. When the team got back to New York shortly before 8 P.M., an ecstatic Steinbrenner took “Killer” Kane aside in the Yankee Stadium parking lot.

  “C’mon, Killer,” Steinbrenner said, putting his arm around the traveling secretary, “let me take you to dinner.”

  BECAUSE THEY HAD used Guidry in the playoff, the Yankees’ pitching rotation was off-kilter as they went into the postseason. It didn’t matter. Rookie Jim Beattie held the Kansas City Royals to one run over 51⁄3 innings in the Yankees’ 7–1 win in the opener of the American League Championship Series, and after losing game two when Ed Figueroa was pummeled for five runs in the first two innings, the Yankees overcame a three-homer onslaught by George Brett off Catfish Hunter to win game three, 6–5. In that game, Thurman Munson, who went 3 for 4, responded with a monstrous two-run homer in the eighth inning into the left center field bullpen to put the Yankees up for good. The home run, which proved to be the turning point of the series, was Munson’s first in 54 games and only his third all season at Yankee Stadium. It traveled an estimated 475 feet and prompted Royals manager Whitey Herzog to exclaim: “That darn Thurman sure hit it, didn’t he?”

  For most of the 1978 season, Munson had been miserable. His knees ached, the pain in his shoulder hampered his throwing, and while Steinbrenner had redone his contract the previous year, making it a five-year deal worth $1.7 million through 1981, he was still annoyed at being put off so long by the owner and was talking more and more about wanting to play closer to his home in Canton, Ohio. But when the Yankees won game four, earning them a World Series rematch against the Dodgers, Munson seemed rejuvenated, hitting .320 with another seven RBI. The Dodgers were winning the series 2–1 when a controversial play in game four changed the series. With the Yankees trailing 3–1 in the sixth inning, Reggie Jackson, running from first to second, broke up a double play by swiveling his hip and blocking with his right leg L.A. shortstop Bill Russell’s relay throw to first. Dodgers manager Tommy Lasorda argued in vain that Jackson had deliberately interfered with the ball and the Yankees went on to win the game, 4–3. They clobbered the Dodgers 12–2 the next night, then wrapped up their second-straight world championship with a 7–2 win in Los Angeles two nights later.

  During the celebration in the visitors’ clubhouse afterward, Steinbrenner sought out Munson, whom in 1976 he’d made the first Yankee captain since Lou Gehrig, and asked him to accept the World Series trophy from Commissioner Bowie Kuhn.

  “I want a duplicate of this trophy for my den,” Munson said. “I don’t care what it costs, George, just tell the jeweler to make another one just like it, okay? Now, don’t give me any shit about this or I’ll demand to renegotiate!”

  Here they were, two stubborn, hard-nosed adversaries, now standing side by side on the victory podium, laughing and hugging, Steinbrenner in a suit and Munson in his skivvies and dirty socks, as someone drenched them from behind with champagne. It was a moment, Steinbrenner said afterward to reporters, he would cherish forever. “He asked me if I’d inscribe CAPTAIN OF THE YANKEES on the trophy,” Steinbrenner said. “Anything he wants. And I know he’s talked about wanting to go home, but he isn’t going anywhere. Even if he wanted to, I wouldn’t let him.”

  IN THE WEEKS following the World Series, George Steinbrenner’s first act of business was getting rid of the Yankees’ disgruntled reliever, Sparky Lyle, who all season had made his feelings known about having to share the closer’s role with Goose Gossage.

  Trading Lyle, it turned out, was one of the rare issues upon which Rosen and Steinbrenner found themselves in agreement. “Sparky wanted out of there as badly as George wanted him out of there,” Rosen said. “Even though the ‘two closers’ situation worked out okay, everyone pretty much agreed that Sparky and Goose couldn’t continue to coexist.” During the ALCS, Rosen’s top scout, Jerry Walker, had raved to him about a young left-handed pitcher he’d seen with the Texas Rangers’ Double-A farm team in Tulsa earlier that summer. “It must have been 110 degrees the day I saw him,” Walker said, “and this kid was throwing harder in the ninth inning than he had in the first! It was unbelievable!”

  His name was Dave Righetti. Rosen wrote it down, while making a mental note to tell Steinbrenner that when they began shopping Lyle their first call should be to his friend Brad Corbett, owner of the Rangers. “I guarantee you Corbett’s probably never heard of this kid Righetti,” Rosen told Steinbrenner, “and this will be an opportunity for us to get a real good pitching prospect.”

  When Steinbrenner, with Rosen sitting across from him in the Yankee Stadium office, called Corbett on November
10, he found the Texas owner only too eager to acquire the services of a former Cy Young Award–winning closer and Yankee icon. As they talked, the proposed trade got larger and larger, until nine players would be changing teams, the principals being Lyle and catcher Mike Heath going to the Rangers, and Gold Glove–winning center fielder Juan Beniquez coming to the Yankees. After an hour of talking, everything was just about agreed upon when Steinbrenner said, “We have to get one more player to make it an even five-for-five, Brad.”

  “That’s fine,” Corbett said. “Do you have any player in mind?”

  “Uh, yeah,” said Steinbrenner. “You’ve got a pitcher, a left-hander, I think, at Tulsa—what’s that guy’s name, Al? Spaghetti? Oh, right, Righetti. We’d like to have him, and we’ll throw in some cash to help offset Lyle’s salary.”

  “You got a deal, George,” said Corbett.

  When the trade was announced the next day, Graig Nettles famously said: “In one year, Sparky went from Cy Young to sayonara.”

  Righetti went on to have a distinguished career with the Yankees, first as a starting pitcher who hurled a no-hitter against the Red Sox on July 4, 1983, and then as a closer who led the American League with 46 saves in 1986 and was selected to two All-Star teams. Rosen would look back fondly on that day when he and Steinbrenner teamed up on one of the best trades in Yankees history.

  “That day was like we were back in Cleveland together,” Rosen said. “It was fun. Unfortunately, there was otherwise very little fun working for George. It [1978] had been a very trying season in which we prevailed against all the odds and adversity, but George never allowed himself the sheer enjoyment of it. Afterward, it was like he wasn’t interested. George had his demons, which I can only assume came from his father, who was also never happy or satisfied.”

  Indeed, the good feelings were gone barely a month later, when Steinbrenner and Rosen tried to get Rod Carew, the seven-time batting champion the Minnesota Twins were eager to deal because he would become a free agent after the 1979 season.

  For Steinbrenner, the sudden availability of the Panamanian-born Carew, who had grown up just across the Harlem River from Yankee Stadium in Washington Heights, was irresistible. He ordered Rosen to aggressively pursue a trade for the 33-year-old first baseman at the December winter meetings in Orlando, Florida. But on the third day of the meetings the San Francisco Giants announced that they had made a deal with the Twins for Carew, pending the superstar first baseman’s approval. Rosen remembered the day—December 7, the 37th anniversary of the Japanese bombing of Pearl Harbor—as one of the worst in his time with the Yankees. Moss Klein, the Yankees beat reporter for the Newark Star-Ledger, was talking with Rosen in his suite about another matter when the telephone rang. Hearing the screaming voice on the other end of the phone and realizing it was Steinbrenner, Klein got up to leave, but Rosen motioned to him to stay. For a few minutes Klein stood uncomfortably as the red-faced Rosen, unable to get a word in, let Steinbrenner rage. Finally, Rosen said, “There’s no point in talking until you’ve calmed down, George,” and hung up the phone. Smiling at Klein, he said, “No big deal. This is my life now as president of the Yankees.”

  But then Carew rejected the trade to San Francisco, citing a desire to remain in the American League, and Twins owner Calvin Griffith, in turn, rejected an offer from the California Angels, giving Rosen a chance to make his move. He offered to give the Twins first baseman Chris Chambliss, Beniquez, the center fielder they had just acquired from the Rangers, plus two top prospects, infielder Rex Hudler and left-handed pitcher Chris Welsh, and Griffith immediately accepted. But Carew, despite his New York roots, didn’t want to go to the Yankees either, asking instead that Griffith go back to the Angels and try to work out a deal with them.

  Infuriated by this rejection, Steinbrenner called his public relations director, Larry Wahl, and dictated a statement to be read to the reporters covering the meetings: “We have great respect for Carew as a player, but if a man doesn’t want to play for the New York Yankees, in the greatest baseball city in the world, and has stated that New York would not be his first choice, and that he’d be more comfortable playing someplace else, then I don’t think it would be fair to our fans in New York or to the other ballplayers on our team, who have won two world championships in a row, to pursue the Carew matter any further.”

  ON THE SAME day that Steinbrenner and Rosen were consummating the Sparky Lyle trade back in November, Billy Martin had been involved in a barroom fight in Reno, Nevada, with a local newspaper reporter named Ray Hagar. Martin had gone to Reno as a favor to his friend Howard Wong, a Minneapolis restaurateur, to do some promotions for the Reno Bighorns of the minor league Western Basketball Association. The coach of the Bighorns, Bill Musselman, had previously coached at the University of Minnesota, where Wang had befriended him. During the course of signing autographs and doing interviews, Martin apparently took offense to some of the questions Hagar was asking about his relationship with Reggie and Steinbrenner, and a quarrel ensued in which Billy threw a punch at the sportswriter. News of Martin’s latest dustup traveled fast; the next day, Martin’s agent Doug Newton, who hadn’t heard from Steinbrenner or anyone else from the Yankees in months as he’d tried to finalize Billy’s deal, got a call from Al Rosen.

  It had become apparent to Newton that Steinbrenner intended to renege on their agreement. Between the team’s dramatic comeback under Lemon and all the subsequent unreturned phone calls, Newton concluded that Steinbrenner no longer wanted any part of Martin. Rosen’s phone call only confirmed that.

  “We’ve just heard about this latest incident regarding Billy,” Rosen said, “and I have to tell you, Doug, we’re a little bit concerned. Mr. Steinbrenner’s position is that unless Billy is completely exonerated, he’s not going to be coming back as manager.”

  “You want to run that by me again?” Newton said.

  “You heard me. And even if some sort of settlement with the reporter is worked out, that won’t be satisfactory to us. He’s got to be completely exonerated.”

  Rosen was not-so-secretly delighted by this latest public scrap involving Martin, seeing it as a further validation of his decision back in August to replace Martin with his man, Lemon. However, Rosen did not realize the impact another incident—the death of Lemon’s youngest son, Jerry, in an automobile accident—would have on his friend. Lemon began to drink heavily over the winter break and withdrew from the day-to-day operations of the team. It was during spring training that Rosen fully understood the degree of Lemon’s suffering.

  Still, before the season began, Rosen had every reason to feel optimistic about the Yankees repeating as champions in 1979. He had bolstered the pitching rotation with the free agent signings of proven veterans Luis Tiant and Tommy John, who had won a combined 30 games in 1978. Even though Lemon spent many a late night that spring drinking with friends in his favorite Fort Lauderdale haunts and seemed disinterested in the team, the spring was mostly devoid of the usual Yankees turmoil. But just 12 games into the season, after a 6–3 loss to the Baltimore Orioles at Yankee Stadium, Goose Gossage scuffled with the lumbering 6-4, 225-pound catcher–first baseman Cliff Johnson in the clubhouse shower. A seemingly harmless exchange of verbal barbs had escalated into a full-blown fight and, at one point, bracing his fall on the slippery floor, Gossage landed on his pitching hand with Johnson on top of him, spraining a ligament in the thumb of Steinbrenner’s $2.75 million reliever and necessitating surgery that would sideline him for three months. Steinbrenner initially threatened to dock Gossage’s salary for every day he spent on the disabled list but relented when the reliever asked what he would have done if someone had punched him in the face.

  Johnson, on the other hand, was not spared Steinbrenner’s wrath. On June 15, he was traded to the last-place Cleveland Indians, prompting Reggie Jackson to observe cryptically to the reporters, “Around here, you mess with the ‘G-men’ [Gossage and Guidry] and soon enough the big man with the boats is gonna get you.
”

  By now, Al Rosen had grown weary of trading ballplayers on Steinbrenner’s angry impulses. On May 22, Rosen was at home watching the Yankees game in Detroit on TV. The Yankees were leading 12–0 when, in the eighth inning, the Tigers erupted for seven runs. The primary victim of the rally was Dick Tidrow, who came on in relief of Tiant and gave up a two-run single, a sacrifice fly and a two-run double, and threw two wild pitches. It didn’t matter that the Yankees held on to win the game 12–8, or that Tidrow’s versatility as the setup reliever and doing spot starting assignments had made him an invaluable cog on the ’76-’77-’78 teams. Steinbrenner wanted him gone.

  When the call inevitably came minutes after the game had ended, Steinbrenner screamed at Rosen, “Get rid of Tidrow now! I don’t care how you do it, or who you trade him to, but I want him off this team by tomorrow.”

  Given the urgency of this latest ultimatum, Rosen resignedly dialed up his old friend Bob Kennedy, the general manager of the Chicago Cubs, who had still not forgiven him for getting him to agree to take the chronic malcontent Ken Holtzman the previous year.

  “What kind of cancer are you looking to unload on me this time, Al?” Kennedy said.

  “I promise you, Bob, Tidrow’s a good guy and I think he can still pitch,” Rosen begged, “but Steinbrenner has ordered me to get rid of him. I have no choice. I’ve gotta move him. I’ll take anyone you want to give me.” (Kennedy agreed to take Tidrow in exchange for Ray Burris, a 29-year-old right-hander, who went 1-3 with a 6.18 ERA for the Yankees before Rosen sold him to the Mets at the end of the season.)

  With Gossage out, the Yankees fell further and further behind in the American League East pennant race as the season moved into June. Like Gabe Paul before him, Rosen had become weary of Steinbrenner’s constant harangues. Even worse, Steinbrenner was beginning to blame Lemon for the team’s shortcomings. “He’s just not into it, Al,” Steinbrenner said after a five-game Yankee losing streak in June. “They’ve stopped playing for him.”