August 1, 1975—With his multi-million dollar players falling further and further behind in the pennant race, New York Yankees owner George Steinbrenner did something he would resort to frequently over his next three decades running the team: firing his manager.
Bill Virdon, whose stress on defense and fundamentals had helped the Bronx Bombers in 1974 to their best record since their dynasty years ended after the 1964 season (only two games behind the division-leading Baltimore Orioles), could do nothing to turn the team’s fortunes around by mid-summer. Only a game out at the All-Star game, the Yankees had slipped further behind the Boston Red Sox, who were cruising to the American League East pennant, led by wondrous rookies Fred Lynn and Jim Rice.
A highly competent, self-contained, self-disciplined baseball man, Virdon had, nevertheless, only been The Boss’ second choice for the job, because Dick Williams was still under contract to the Oakland A’s.
The pursuit of Williams was actually a signal, if major-league baseball ever needed it, that this was an owner willing to circumvent the rules. And so Steinbrenner proved in Virdon’s case. Suspended by baseball commissioner Bowie Kuhn for making illegal campaign contributions to the re-election campaign of Richard Nixon, the owner was supposed to be barred from any activities involving the team for two years. But he hadn’t let that be a hindrance in signing free-agent Jim “Catfish” Hunter the prior year, and he wasn’t going to let it stop him now.
The team, the Yanks’ owner decided, needed someone to light a fire underneath it. And it wouldn’t hurt that the man Steinbrenner had in mind not only had a reputation for turning around underachieving teams, but that he was a link to the great dynasty that had existed in the Bronx throughout the 1950s.
Enter Billy Martin, a player who surpassed his everyday totals in the biggest games, a manager with an insatiable hunger for winning—and a man with a recurring instinct for self-destruction.
In the back of Steinbrenner’s mind, I would argue, were other motives, as generous as they were self-aggrandizing: to bring home a prodigal son, and to set right an injustice to a player who was an indelible part of Yankee glory.
Two and a half years later, those motives could be seen in their purest form, when Steinbrenner brought back home run king Roger Maris for opening day of the 1978 season. CBS, the team’s previous owner, he felt, had treated Maris shabbily after baseball’s single-season HR recordholder had fallen victim to injuries, so he wanted Maris to feel part of the Yankee family again.
Martin’s case was more complicated, because he was a far more complicated man than Maris. The two-time MVP in the 1960s was, to the astonishment of at least some sportswriters, a family man who never left a blemish on the team.
The same could not be said for Martin, who had departed the Bombers partly because of his involvement in a 1957 brawl at the Copacabana on the occasion of a birthday party for the Yankees' second baseman. Bristling at a heckler of Sammy Davis Jr., he had challenged the drunk to step outside. Subsequently, the heckler was beaten to a pulp in the men’s room (either by a bouncer or, very possibly, though he escaped indictment, by Martin’s teammate, tough and burly ex-Marine Hank Bauer.)
It was Martin—the player most expendable among the group out that night, by virtue of a replacement waiting in the wings (clean-living Bobby Richardson) and his declining statistics—who was made the scapegoat for the incident, and sent packing, never to return as a player to his old team—the only one he really ever wanted to play for.
With his playing days over, Martin began to establish a reputation as a manager with potential for exploding as much as for winning. Wherever he went—the Minnesota Twins, the Detroit Tigers, the Texas Rangers—he took moribund squads and made them exciting to watch again, as he applied lessons on “small ball” (the bunt, the hit-and-run, the surprise maneuver) he had learned from the Yankee manager (and, one can’t help feeling, surrogate father) who had mentored him early in his playing career, Casey Stengel.
Each time, however, he would self-destruct, getting himself fired, more often than not as a result of fistfights. (Among his “opponents”: his own pitcher, Dave Boswell; two team traveling secretaries; a sportswriter; a marshmallow salesman; and, late in his Yankee tenure, Ed Whitson.) This track record led Yankee general manager Gabe Paul to warn Steinbrenner presciently that “Your temperaments aren’t compatible. There are going to be problems.”
But Steinbrenner wouldn’t listen, and so Martin was hired. It was too late for the Yankees' fiery manager to make his impact felt on the ’75 pennant race, but the next year he led them to the American League pennant.
We all know what happened afterward: the near-firing in ’77, followed by the World Series win; the actual firing in ’78 following an alcohol-fueled tirade against Reggie Jackson and Steinbrenner (“One’s a born liar; the other’s convicted”); the astonishing announcement at the next Old Timers Game that year that Martin would return for the 1980 season; then more hirings and firings over the next decades.
How many of us can still believe that Martin was hired to manage the same team five different times –and that he was set to run the Yankees again when he died in an auto accident (very likely alcohol-related) on Christmas Day in 1989?
In retrospect, I would argue, the Steinbrenner Era was marked by two periods. The first was the Joe Torre age of consistent postseason appearances, not to mention four World Series titles, over the course of a decade. The other was the Billy Martin age. All the honorable men who managed the team in between Martin’s turns at the helm—including (but not limited to) Bob Lemon, Dick Howser, Gene Michael, Lou Piniella, and Yogi Berra—now seem like substitutes for the scrappy little brawler in his opera bouffe duet with the Yankees’ owner.
Bill Virdon, whose stress on defense and fundamentals had helped the Bronx Bombers in 1974 to their best record since their dynasty years ended after the 1964 season (only two games behind the division-leading Baltimore Orioles), could do nothing to turn the team’s fortunes around by mid-summer. Only a game out at the All-Star game, the Yankees had slipped further behind the Boston Red Sox, who were cruising to the American League East pennant, led by wondrous rookies Fred Lynn and Jim Rice.
A highly competent, self-contained, self-disciplined baseball man, Virdon had, nevertheless, only been The Boss’ second choice for the job, because Dick Williams was still under contract to the Oakland A’s.
The pursuit of Williams was actually a signal, if major-league baseball ever needed it, that this was an owner willing to circumvent the rules. And so Steinbrenner proved in Virdon’s case. Suspended by baseball commissioner Bowie Kuhn for making illegal campaign contributions to the re-election campaign of Richard Nixon, the owner was supposed to be barred from any activities involving the team for two years. But he hadn’t let that be a hindrance in signing free-agent Jim “Catfish” Hunter the prior year, and he wasn’t going to let it stop him now.
The team, the Yanks’ owner decided, needed someone to light a fire underneath it. And it wouldn’t hurt that the man Steinbrenner had in mind not only had a reputation for turning around underachieving teams, but that he was a link to the great dynasty that had existed in the Bronx throughout the 1950s.
Enter Billy Martin, a player who surpassed his everyday totals in the biggest games, a manager with an insatiable hunger for winning—and a man with a recurring instinct for self-destruction.
In the back of Steinbrenner’s mind, I would argue, were other motives, as generous as they were self-aggrandizing: to bring home a prodigal son, and to set right an injustice to a player who was an indelible part of Yankee glory.
Two and a half years later, those motives could be seen in their purest form, when Steinbrenner brought back home run king Roger Maris for opening day of the 1978 season. CBS, the team’s previous owner, he felt, had treated Maris shabbily after baseball’s single-season HR recordholder had fallen victim to injuries, so he wanted Maris to feel part of the Yankee family again.
Martin’s case was more complicated, because he was a far more complicated man than Maris. The two-time MVP in the 1960s was, to the astonishment of at least some sportswriters, a family man who never left a blemish on the team.
The same could not be said for Martin, who had departed the Bombers partly because of his involvement in a 1957 brawl at the Copacabana on the occasion of a birthday party for the Yankees' second baseman. Bristling at a heckler of Sammy Davis Jr., he had challenged the drunk to step outside. Subsequently, the heckler was beaten to a pulp in the men’s room (either by a bouncer or, very possibly, though he escaped indictment, by Martin’s teammate, tough and burly ex-Marine Hank Bauer.)
It was Martin—the player most expendable among the group out that night, by virtue of a replacement waiting in the wings (clean-living Bobby Richardson) and his declining statistics—who was made the scapegoat for the incident, and sent packing, never to return as a player to his old team—the only one he really ever wanted to play for.
With his playing days over, Martin began to establish a reputation as a manager with potential for exploding as much as for winning. Wherever he went—the Minnesota Twins, the Detroit Tigers, the Texas Rangers—he took moribund squads and made them exciting to watch again, as he applied lessons on “small ball” (the bunt, the hit-and-run, the surprise maneuver) he had learned from the Yankee manager (and, one can’t help feeling, surrogate father) who had mentored him early in his playing career, Casey Stengel.
Each time, however, he would self-destruct, getting himself fired, more often than not as a result of fistfights. (Among his “opponents”: his own pitcher, Dave Boswell; two team traveling secretaries; a sportswriter; a marshmallow salesman; and, late in his Yankee tenure, Ed Whitson.) This track record led Yankee general manager Gabe Paul to warn Steinbrenner presciently that “Your temperaments aren’t compatible. There are going to be problems.”
But Steinbrenner wouldn’t listen, and so Martin was hired. It was too late for the Yankees' fiery manager to make his impact felt on the ’75 pennant race, but the next year he led them to the American League pennant.
We all know what happened afterward: the near-firing in ’77, followed by the World Series win; the actual firing in ’78 following an alcohol-fueled tirade against Reggie Jackson and Steinbrenner (“One’s a born liar; the other’s convicted”); the astonishing announcement at the next Old Timers Game that year that Martin would return for the 1980 season; then more hirings and firings over the next decades.
How many of us can still believe that Martin was hired to manage the same team five different times –and that he was set to run the Yankees again when he died in an auto accident (very likely alcohol-related) on Christmas Day in 1989?
In retrospect, I would argue, the Steinbrenner Era was marked by two periods. The first was the Joe Torre age of consistent postseason appearances, not to mention four World Series titles, over the course of a decade. The other was the Billy Martin age. All the honorable men who managed the team in between Martin’s turns at the helm—including (but not limited to) Bob Lemon, Dick Howser, Gene Michael, Lou Piniella, and Yogi Berra—now seem like substitutes for the scrappy little brawler in his opera bouffe duet with the Yankees’ owner.
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