July 24, 1983—In one of the most controversial, just plain bizarre incidents in the annals of the national pastime, longtime Yankee nemesis George Brett was called out after belting a go-ahead homerun in the ninth inning because he had applied too much of a sticky substance to improve his grip on the bat. The pine-tar incident was appealed to the office of the American League Commissioner, whose ruling overturning the umpires’ decision landed on the front page of The New York Times, earning more coverage than many consequential Supreme Court decisions receive.
The game against the Kansas City Royals came in the third—or was it fourth? (does it really matter?)—go-round of Billy Martin at the helm of the Bronx Bombers. Naturally, critics fumed and fans chuckled, Billy was the one who called the foreign stuff to the attention of the umps.
What did you expect? Whenever there was trouble, Billy the Kid was in the thick of it, and had been going back to when he first came up to the Yankees in1950—at the Copacabana brawl (the incident that led to his trade from the Yankees was a celebration of his 29th birthday), with pitchers in bars, with Reggie Jackson in the dugout, with a marshmallow salesman in another bar, with bathroom attendants in a strip joint….Gosh, did I leave anything out?
And to be sure, on the baseball diamond Billy was a master of gamesmanship. Not sure what that concept means? Well, Joseph Epstein, that wondrous practitioner of the familiar essay, had an article earlier this week in The Wall Street Journal, about the quartet of books by British author Stephen Potter that set the terms for it. Potter called it “the art of winning games without actually cheating.”
Now, I’m not saying that Billy strayed from the straight-and-narrow as far as ethics went, but let’s just say he would have found …limiting Potter’s description of gamesmanship as “the art of winning games without actually cheating”—though I bet he would have perked right up if he could hear Epstein define it as “how to strip doubt, undermine confidence, spread unease, and encourage hopelessness in one’s fellow human beings.”
The thing of it is, Billy had been known to do the very thing to the exact same team he was facing now. Come with me on a flashback to 1977, when the Yankees were down 2-1 in the American League playoffs to the Royals going into Game 4 .The starting pitcher for the Royals for this pivotal game was Larry Gura. Not taking well to the cut of the man’s jib, Billy exiled him to the Royals the first chance he had after taking over as skipper of the Yankees in 1975. Gura had gone on to enjoy a fair amount of success, and was doubtless bent on showing up his old boss.
And what did Billy think of Gura at this point? "If I had my way," said Martin the day before the fourth game, "I'd put a bodyguard around his house tonight and get him a chauffeur so he didn't get in an accident on his way to the ball park...The more he wants to beat us, the more fine he'll try to make his pitches. And when he gets too fine, that's when he can't get anything over."
Perhaps you know the rest—as Billy hoped, Gura got psyched out, yielding four runs in the early going of Game 4, and the Yankees went on the win the pennant and the World Series for Billy….
And now, here he goes again in July 1983, walking up to the umps after Georgie Ballgame has been accepting teammates’ congratulations for getting them thisclose to winning. He was bound to pull a rabbit out of his hat again.
But Billy can’t accept all the credit (or, if you’re a Yankees hater, the blame) for the protest. You see, Yankee third baseman Graig Nettles had put him up to it.
Just like Nettles to do something like that. When the eccentric young pitcher Mark “The Bird” Fidrych was mowing down hitters right and left in 1976 for the Detroit Tigers, Nettles came out to the mound before the game and began spreading around black beans, just to disturb the rookie’s concentration. His teammates gave him the nickname “Puff” for his uncanny ability to play a practical joker or start a rumble with an opposing team, then disappear when you went looking for him.
As Nettles watched Brett complete his victory circuit around the bases, he quickly recalled how umpires had nullified a hit by the late Yankee captain Thurman Munson for having pine tar more than 18 inches from the knob of his bat. If the Yanks could lose by the rule, maybe they could win by it now. Quickly, he mentioned it to Billy, who asked the umpire crew about it.
So they went out and measured the stuff. Well, if an umpire had called Munson out for 18 inches of the stuff, what on earth were they going to do with Brett’s bat, which featured “heavy pine tar” 19 to 20 inches from the tip of the handle and a lighter version of the same for another three or four inches? Just what you’d expect. Yeah, this might have been a bad rule, and it certainly was an obscure rule, but rules were rules, and the Royals’ third baseman was out.
Not so fast, ol’ George said—and some other choice stuff, too, as he came running out of the Royals dugout faster than his longtime teammate John Mayberry could chase a nice, juicy steak. Thus started a donnybrook of epic proportions.
After the dust cleared, the umpire crew declared that Brett was still out. But now it was the Royals’ turn for gamesmanship, as they brought it to the attention of American League Commissioner Lee MacPhail. If George Steinbrenner ever had any lingering affection for the former Yankee GM, it was gone by this point, when MacPhail ruled that, yes, the bat was, technically, against the rules. But upholding what he termed the “spirit” of the rules, MacPhial overruled his umps. Forced to play out the rest of the game and protesting the whole while (star lefty Ron Guidry was playing center field for maybe the first time since, oh, Little League), the Yankees couldn’t muster enough runs to nudge out their old rivals.
Before the pine-tar incident, the Yankees showed signs of breaking out of their lethargy, going 17-10 for July. But in August, probably distracted from the task at hand by the fallout from that one at-bat, the Yankees only recorded a 54.8% winning percentage, and ended up in only third place for the year, behind the eventual World Series champs, the Baltimore Orioles.
Of all the comments about this strange, strange game—and the even stranger rule that inspired it—Goose Gossage, the closer who served up the gopher ball, had the best line of all: “I’ve always been proud of all the home runs I gave up,” said Gossage. “But that was probably my proudest one, because we had so much fun with it.”
The game against the Kansas City Royals came in the third—or was it fourth? (does it really matter?)—go-round of Billy Martin at the helm of the Bronx Bombers. Naturally, critics fumed and fans chuckled, Billy was the one who called the foreign stuff to the attention of the umps.
What did you expect? Whenever there was trouble, Billy the Kid was in the thick of it, and had been going back to when he first came up to the Yankees in1950—at the Copacabana brawl (the incident that led to his trade from the Yankees was a celebration of his 29th birthday), with pitchers in bars, with Reggie Jackson in the dugout, with a marshmallow salesman in another bar, with bathroom attendants in a strip joint….Gosh, did I leave anything out?
And to be sure, on the baseball diamond Billy was a master of gamesmanship. Not sure what that concept means? Well, Joseph Epstein, that wondrous practitioner of the familiar essay, had an article earlier this week in The Wall Street Journal, about the quartet of books by British author Stephen Potter that set the terms for it. Potter called it “the art of winning games without actually cheating.”
Now, I’m not saying that Billy strayed from the straight-and-narrow as far as ethics went, but let’s just say he would have found …limiting Potter’s description of gamesmanship as “the art of winning games without actually cheating”—though I bet he would have perked right up if he could hear Epstein define it as “how to strip doubt, undermine confidence, spread unease, and encourage hopelessness in one’s fellow human beings.”
The thing of it is, Billy had been known to do the very thing to the exact same team he was facing now. Come with me on a flashback to 1977, when the Yankees were down 2-1 in the American League playoffs to the Royals going into Game 4 .The starting pitcher for the Royals for this pivotal game was Larry Gura. Not taking well to the cut of the man’s jib, Billy exiled him to the Royals the first chance he had after taking over as skipper of the Yankees in 1975. Gura had gone on to enjoy a fair amount of success, and was doubtless bent on showing up his old boss.
And what did Billy think of Gura at this point? "If I had my way," said Martin the day before the fourth game, "I'd put a bodyguard around his house tonight and get him a chauffeur so he didn't get in an accident on his way to the ball park...The more he wants to beat us, the more fine he'll try to make his pitches. And when he gets too fine, that's when he can't get anything over."
Perhaps you know the rest—as Billy hoped, Gura got psyched out, yielding four runs in the early going of Game 4, and the Yankees went on the win the pennant and the World Series for Billy….
And now, here he goes again in July 1983, walking up to the umps after Georgie Ballgame has been accepting teammates’ congratulations for getting them thisclose to winning. He was bound to pull a rabbit out of his hat again.
But Billy can’t accept all the credit (or, if you’re a Yankees hater, the blame) for the protest. You see, Yankee third baseman Graig Nettles had put him up to it.
Just like Nettles to do something like that. When the eccentric young pitcher Mark “The Bird” Fidrych was mowing down hitters right and left in 1976 for the Detroit Tigers, Nettles came out to the mound before the game and began spreading around black beans, just to disturb the rookie’s concentration. His teammates gave him the nickname “Puff” for his uncanny ability to play a practical joker or start a rumble with an opposing team, then disappear when you went looking for him.
As Nettles watched Brett complete his victory circuit around the bases, he quickly recalled how umpires had nullified a hit by the late Yankee captain Thurman Munson for having pine tar more than 18 inches from the knob of his bat. If the Yanks could lose by the rule, maybe they could win by it now. Quickly, he mentioned it to Billy, who asked the umpire crew about it.
So they went out and measured the stuff. Well, if an umpire had called Munson out for 18 inches of the stuff, what on earth were they going to do with Brett’s bat, which featured “heavy pine tar” 19 to 20 inches from the tip of the handle and a lighter version of the same for another three or four inches? Just what you’d expect. Yeah, this might have been a bad rule, and it certainly was an obscure rule, but rules were rules, and the Royals’ third baseman was out.
Not so fast, ol’ George said—and some other choice stuff, too, as he came running out of the Royals dugout faster than his longtime teammate John Mayberry could chase a nice, juicy steak. Thus started a donnybrook of epic proportions.
After the dust cleared, the umpire crew declared that Brett was still out. But now it was the Royals’ turn for gamesmanship, as they brought it to the attention of American League Commissioner Lee MacPhail. If George Steinbrenner ever had any lingering affection for the former Yankee GM, it was gone by this point, when MacPhail ruled that, yes, the bat was, technically, against the rules. But upholding what he termed the “spirit” of the rules, MacPhial overruled his umps. Forced to play out the rest of the game and protesting the whole while (star lefty Ron Guidry was playing center field for maybe the first time since, oh, Little League), the Yankees couldn’t muster enough runs to nudge out their old rivals.
Before the pine-tar incident, the Yankees showed signs of breaking out of their lethargy, going 17-10 for July. But in August, probably distracted from the task at hand by the fallout from that one at-bat, the Yankees only recorded a 54.8% winning percentage, and ended up in only third place for the year, behind the eventual World Series champs, the Baltimore Orioles.
Of all the comments about this strange, strange game—and the even stranger rule that inspired it—Goose Gossage, the closer who served up the gopher ball, had the best line of all: “I’ve always been proud of all the home runs I gave up,” said Gossage. “But that was probably my proudest one, because we had so much fun with it.”
No comments:
Post a Comment