Steinbrenner, the Last Lion Of Baseball (2010)

by Madden, Bill

  For his part, Fay Vincent was publicly unmoved by the Spira extortion conviction.

  “The federal case against Mr. Spira has no relationship at all to any baseball matter, including Mr. Steinbrenner’s status as it pertains to his agreement with the commissioner,” Vincent said in a statement.

  STEINBRENNER’S VICTORY OVER Spira was about the only thing the Yankees won in 1991. On the field the team was only slightly less moribund than the year before, finishing 71-91, in fifth place. It was an especially trying season for Gene Michael, who found himself facing off with Steinbrenner and team captain Don Mattingly over separate issues.

  According to the terms of his agreement with Vincent, Steinbrenner was permitted to participate in Yankees matters in four general areas: media agreements, stadium lease business, bank financing and partnership meetings. That last area, one limited partner observed, “was a loophole that George drove a Mack truck through.” Though he was prohibited from being directly involved in any baseball matters, Steinbrenner was able to make his feelings known at the quarterly meetings between Yankees partners and thereby obliquely impose his will.

  At other times, Steinbrenner used the press to make his wishes known to Michael, as he did on August 24, 1991, as the general manager was struggling to close a deal with the overall number-one pick from that June’s amateur draft, 19-year-old left-hander Brien Taylor, and his high-powered agent, Scott Boras, for a bonus of about $850,000 to $900,000. That day, Steinbrenner was quoted by Steve Marcus and Jon Heyman of Newsday as saying, “I just don’t know what my people are doing or what they’re thinking. If they let him go, they ought to be shot.”

  This, of course, emboldened the resolve of Boras and Taylor’s mother, Bettie, and the negotiations dragged on until August 26, when Michael capitulated to a record $1.55 million deal. The next day, Steinbrenner was back on Michael’s case in Newsday, telling the same two reporters, “Never in my wildest dreams would I have paid a kid a million and a half. I said I’d love to see [the Yankees] sign their first-round draft choice. I never said ‘go spend a million-and-a-half.’ No goddamn way! I’m getting damned tired of people spending my money like this.”

  Michael was tempered in his response to Steinbrenner’s criticism, taking pains to note that at least he’d been able to hold the line on giving Taylor a major league contract (as Boras had vigorously sought), which would have limited the Yankees’ control of the pitcher to just six years, when he would be eligible for free agency.

  “If he was here, he would have signed him,” Michael said of Steinbrenner. “I guarantee you. He probably would have signed him with a little more showmanship because he’s better at that than me. But he probably wouldn’t have gotten him off the major league contract, as I did. I didn’t want to defend myself, but I will. I don’t rip him. I don’t do that.”

  But in a later closed-door meeting of the Yankees partners, Michael lit into Steinbrenner when the owner renewed his criticism of the Taylor signing. “You don’t know what the fuck you’re talking about, George,” he said. “If it wasn’t for all that stuff you said in the papers, we could’ve signed the kid for a lot less.”

  “I think Stick really impressed the partners that day, standing up to George the way he did,” said Marvin Goldklang, one of the limited partners. “We were all kind of taken aback, as we weren’t used to seeing George challenged like that, and Stick asserting himself like he did made you feel like he knew what he was doing.”

  Earlier that month, Michael found himself squarely in the middle of a public relations fiasco with Mattingly that ultimately led to Merrill’s undoing as manager. With the Yankees in a slump of 15 losses in 20 games, Michael sensed a lack of discipline on the team, represented by Mattingly’s hair, which now went past his collar, in violation of the grooming rules Steinbrenner had instituted in 1973. Michael ordered Merrill to tell Mattingly to get a haircut or else face a fine and a benching. Mattingly refused, and was subsequently benched by Merrill and fined $250, touching off a brouhaha with the fans and the media that embarrassed everybody involved.

  The day after the benching, Michael rescinded the fine and all but apologized to Mattingly, saying the penalty was “too severe” and stating that he had “overreacted. I made statements to Stump before the game that if Mattingly didn’t get his hair cut, he shouldn’t play. I didn’t mean that minute, or before the game. It was a miscommunication between Stump and myself, but Donnie was wrong in refusing.”

  Mattingly, who was tired of losing and dissatisfied with the direction the ownerless Yankees seemed to be taking, later revealed to reporters that he had asked Michael to trade him, and used the incident to further criticize the organization. In response, Steinbrenner told reporters, “I won’t get into second-guessing Stick or Stump, but anytime in the past when Donnie’s hair has been long, I’d put my arm around him and say, ‘What happened to your barber? Did he die?’ ”

  The biggest loser of the 1991 season wound up being Merrill, who was fired by Michael the day after the season ended. In Steinbrenner’s absence, Merrill had been the only Yankees manager to last a whole season since Lou Piniella, in 1987. But even after suffering the ignominy of being blamed for the shortcomings of an organization in disarray, Merrill found himself under further siege. A few days after being fired, he was summoned to the commissioner’s office. It seemed Vincent’s bird dogs were convinced Merrill had been in steady communication with Steinbrenner during the season, a charge he adamantly denied.

  “What part of the word ‘no’ don’t you understand?” Merrill told Vincent’s interrogators.

  “Well, if you insist you didn’t talk to Steinbrenner,” said one of the inquisitors, “why don’t you just tell us who did?”

  “I don’t know,” Merrill insisted. “Even if I did, why should I tell you anything? That’s your job, not mine.”

  In a 2009 interview, Merrill admitted he was uncharacteristically belligerent at the hearing with the commissioner’s men. “It was probably the worst time of my life,” he said. “It was the first time I’d ever been fired, the first time I’d ever failed, and now these guys were questioning my integrity.”

  For the rest of October through the World Series, Michael anguished over whom to hire to be his manager. Billy Martin was no longer waiting in the wings, and Lou Piniella was managing the Reds in Cincinnati. Michael felt that Merrill’s lack of major league experience had hurt the team, and his first instincts were to find someone who had had some success as a major league manager. He interviewed Hal Lanier, who had won a division championship with the Houston Astros in 1986, and Doug Rader, who had won 91 games with the California Angels in 1989. But the limited partners didn’t like either option. “They’re both kind of in that category of recycled managers who got fired someplace else,” said Marvin Goldklang, who then urged Michael to consider Buck Showalter, the team’s third-base coach under Merrill. “Granted, he doesn’t have experience as a major league manager, but at least Showalter is one of ours,” Goldklang said, referring to the fact that Showalter had come up through the Yankees system, first as a minor league player and later as manager of their farm teams in Oneonta, New York, Fort Lauderdale and Albany from 1985 to ’89. Michael decided to go with the 35-year-old Showalter.

  On December 6, Bob Nederlander announced that he was stepping down as Yankees general partner, leaving yet another leadership vacuum at the top of the Yankees hierarchy. Steinbrenner created more havoc by naming Daniel McCarthy, his Cleveland lawyer and another Yankees limited partner, as Nederlander’s successor. The problem with McCarthy was that he, along with another of the limited partners, Harold Bowman, had also filed suit against Fay Vincent in the aftermath of Steinbrenner’s banishment. In their suit, the two had complained that the value of their investment in the Yankees had been severely compromised by the removal of Steinbrenner as general partner. The suit was later dismissed by a federal district court judge in Cleveland, but Vincent hadn’t forgotten, and McCarthy’s term as acting Yank
ees general partner was to be short-lived.

  Unfortunately for Michael, it was not nearly short enough. In the two months McCarthy ran the Yankees before Vincent could formally reject him (as he had Leonard Kleinman the year before), Michael was prohibited from signing any free agents. At the December winter meetings in Miami Beach, Michael sat forlornly in his small room at the Fontainebleau Hotel, unable to make a deal for free agent third baseman Steve Buechele (whom he coveted), while Mets general manager Al Harazin, who was staying in the Frank Sinatra penthouse suite, was commanding the back pages of the New York tabloids with a series of spectacular acquisitions: Cy Young Award–winning pitcher Bret Saberhagen and sluggers Eddie Murray and Bobby Bonilla.

  In early January, after weeks of media criticism of the Yankees’ penurious ways, Michael got a call, not from McCarthy, but from Steinbrenner’s son Hal, instructing him to fly to Los Angeles to sign free-agent outfielder Danny Tartabull. Michael didn’t like Tartabull as a player, but he was the last high-profile free agent still on the market. At the time, Tartabull’s agent, Dennis Gilbert, had only one other team, the Philadelphia Phillies, still in the bidding, and they were said to be topped out at four years, $20 million.

  Accompanying Michael on the trip to Los Angeles was Steinbrenner’s son-in-law Joe Molloy, who was married to the owner’s younger daughter, Jessica, and was widely speculated to be the next in line when Vincent rejected McCarthy as general partner. After a few hours of negotiations, Michael and Molloy told Gilbert that the Yankees were prepared to offer Tartabull a five-year deal for $25.5 million. Throughout the discussion, Gilbert had been sure to let it be known that he was still in serious negotiations with the Phillies, and as he pondered the proposal, Molloy suddenly interjected: “Well, if that’s not enough, Dennis, you’ve got to come back to us—”

  “No, no, no,” Michael said, cutting Molloy off. “This is it, Dennis. This is our final offer. We’re not going any higher, so you need to decide if you’re going to accept it!”

  Gilbert accepted, and Michael got the player he really didn’t want. He also got an unsettling introduction to what it was going to be like working for a privileged Steinbrenner son-in-law who didn’t have a clue about baseball or business. It turned out neither Tartabull nor Brien Taylor lived up to the money Michael signed them for, Tartabull flaming out after one good season and Taylor never making it past class Double-A in the minors after tearing up his shoulder in a fight back home in North Carolina. But little by little, Michael was making the Yankees better with under-the-radar signings like Farr, Howe, Sanderson and catcher Mike Stanley, all of whom contributed to the slightly improved 76-86 record in Showalter’s maiden season as manager, in 1992. And though it would take another four years before anyone realized it, the most significant development during that ’92 season was the decision of scouting and player development VP Bill Livesey to take a 19-year-old high school shortstop from Kalamazoo, Michigan, named Derek Jeter as the Yankees’ number-one pick in the June amateur draft.

  AS EXPECTED, ON February 28, 1992, Vincent rejected Daniel McCarthy as the next Yankees general partner. Two weeks later, Steinbrenner nominated his son-in-law, Joe Molloy, whom Vincent would later approve. Four days earlier, in one of his final acts as interim general partner, McCarthy had fired Leonard Kleinman as Yankees COO after Kleinman refused McCarthy’s order to drop his lawsuit against Vincent. That Vincent expressed almost no reservations about a member of Steinbrenner’s immediate family being tapped to run the Yankees was telling of other events going on behind the scenes now that both McCarthy and Kleinman were no longer part of the Yankees power structure.

  Vincent was starting to feel heat from the executive council and had indicated to Steinbrenner’s attorneys, Burns and Levine, that he would be open to reviewing Steinbrenner’s status, on one condition: that Kleinman drop his suit. In early April, Kleinman’s attorney, Bob Costello, got a call from Steinbrenner’s Tampa attorney Bob Banker explaining what was in the works.

  “Vincent, I think, is starting to feel some pressure from our petition with the executive council,” Banker said, “but we really do need now for you to get Leonard to drop this suit. Vincent’s aware of how damaging it will be for him if he gets dragged into court with this suit. That’s why he won’t act on George until it goes away.”

  From the beginning, Costello had known exactly how the Kleinman suit was going to play out—which was why he had negotiated a new contract for Kleinman with the Yankees that would compensate the COO to the tune of $1 million in the event he was fired. At 11:10 A.M. on April 24, Kleinman received $1.05 million by wire from Florida. An hour and a half later, it was announced he’d dropped his suit against Vincent. That afternoon, Vincent told Murray Chass of the Times that he suspected Steinbrenner might now want to discuss with him a possible return to active duty with the Yankees.

  Still, it was another month before Steinbrenner got his first face-to-face meeting with Vincent since he’d signed off on his life sentence from baseball. The May 19 meeting at the Ritz-Carlton Hotel was also attended by Steinbrenner’s attorney, Arnold Burns, and Vincent’s deputy commissioner, Steve Greenberg. While Steinbrenner made it clear he was hoping to get his sentence reduced and eventually be reinstated now that he’d made the Kleinman lawsuit go away, Vincent would make no promises. Afterward, Vincent was uncharacteristically terse and evasive about the meeting, saying only: “We met. We talked. No decision was reached.” Burns, however, felt that the very fact that Vincent had agreed to further discussions boded well for Steinbrenner eventually being reinstated. But before this happened, there would be another series of events that would further erode the owners’ faith in Vincent.

  On December 19, 1991, the Yankees’ troubled relief pitcher Steve Howe was arrested on charges of cocaine possession in Kalispell, Montana—the seventh time that Howe had been involved in drug or alcohol problems, leaving a cloud over his head when he reported to spring training the following February. He was allowed to pitch while awaiting trial and was the Yankees’ most reliable reliever for the first two months of the 1992 season. Then, on June 8, on the advice of his attorneys, he filed an Alford plea of being guilty to a charge of attempting to possess cocaine, in hopes that, by essentially pleading no contest to the charge but not the crime, Vincent would allow him to continue pitching. “It’s a decision by an individual not to go to trial,” explained Yankees general counsel David Sussman. “It’s fair to say there’s a legal distinction between an Alford plea and a guilty plea.”

  Nevertheless, Vincent’s view of Howe was that of a serial drug offender in baseball who needed to be dealt with—severely. No sooner had Howe filed his plea than Vincent announced he was suspending the pitcher indefinitely. The Players Association immediately filed a grievance on Howe’s behalf, causing Vincent to make the mistake that would prove his undoing: in a letter to the 26 owners on June 18, Vincent announced that he was revoking baseball’s rules of procedure. Vincent said the rules had “no practical benefit” and that recent lawsuits against the commissioner’s office had “intentionally misinterpreted them.” As a result, Vincent concluded, “I am revoking them and will hereby proceed informally” and announce rules “on a case-by-case basis.”

  “When Vincent sent that letter, it really opened everyone’s eyes,” said Jerry Reinsdorf in a 2007 interview.

  As part of the grievance procedure on behalf of Howe, the Players Association subpoenaed Yankees president Jack Lawn as well as Michael and Showalter to testify before baseball arbitrator George Nicolau. When Vincent learned that they’d testified, he was furious, and on July 1, an hour before the Yankees were to play an afternoon “getaway” game against the Kansas City Royals at Yankee Stadium, he summoned the three to his office at 350 Park Avenue—and informed them that they could not bring legal counsel to the meeting, yet another blatant abuse of power.

  “I cannot understand how you three would voluntarily appear at the Players Association hearing without the consent of the commi
ssioner and then, at that hearing, be critical of the commissioner’s decision on Steve Howe,” Vincent said.

  Speaking for the three of them, Lawn responded by explaining that the Players Association had subpoena power, compelling them to testify.

  “Nevertheless,” Vincent said, “in making your decision to testify, you have effectively tendered your resignations from Major League Baseball.” Then, looking directly at Lawn, he added, “You should have laid aside your conscience and principles in order to testify in support of the position of the commissioner on the Howe matter and not contrary to it.”

  As Lawn listened, stupefied at Vincent’s assertion, the commissioner pressed on.

  “I could not believe that you would all testify because of your interest in seeing Steve Howe in a Yankee uniform.”

  “That’s not why we testified,” Lawn said firmly. “We testified to tell the truth.”

  “But then why would you want to testify?” Vincent asked.

  “Because,” said Lawn, “if a month from now I pick up the paper and see that Steve Howe killed himself, at least I would have known I tried to help. As I learned in the Marine Corps, you don’t abandon the wounded.”

  The three left Vincent’s office under the impression they were going to be tossed out of baseball. When Lawn got back to Yankee Stadium, he was greeted by Bob Costello, who had been enlisted by Michael to represent him in the matter, only to have Vincent reject him as the GM’s counsel. “Did he really threaten to throw you out of baseball?” Costello said.

  “Yeah,” said Lawn.

  “What are you planning to do?”

  “Fuck him,” said Lawn.