This Day in Yankee History (Impulsive ‘Boss’ Fires Livid Yogi)

Apr. 29, 1985—After promising as late as spring training that he would let Yogi Berra manage the New York Yankees for the entire season, principal owner George Steinbrenner abruptly fired him before the first month had even ended.

The cause was not misconduct, a breakdown in relations with players, or defiance of the man the media had nicknamed “The Boss,” but a 6-10 record following an 87-75, second-place 1984 finish.

Berra’s replacement, Billy Martin—hired for the fourth time—didn’t produce the desired result, either, going 91-54, good for an overall 97-64 season—leaving the Bronx Bombers second once again in the American League East division. Forget about a pennant, the minimum that the Boss expected: Martin couldn’t even get the team into the playoffs.

Though Berra did not express anger initially (“He’s the boss, he can do what he wants”), at some point his dismissal began to gnaw at him. It wasn’t until years later that his grievance was aired: after 30 years with the organization, he felt that Steinbrenner owed it to him to deliver the bad news himself rather than to entrust the dirty job to General Manager Clyde King.

And so, the Yankee great—a Hall of Fame catcher, coach, and manager beloved by teammates, players, and fans—vowed to boycott all Yankee-related functions for as long as Steinbrenner remained in charge of the organization.

Fourteen years passed before Berra relented. In the process, he accomplished something remarkable: He became perhaps the only employee in the Steinbrenner Era to get the better of the Boss.

With each passing year—even with the team winning World Series again after a decade without even being in the playoffs—Steinbrenner suffered a public-relations embarrassment for his cavalier treatment of the most visible remaining link to the DiMaggio-Mantle dynasty.

At last, with Yankee radio announcer Suzyn Waldman as a diplomatic go-between, the standoff concluded with Steinbrenner showing up at the opening of the Yogi Berra Museum and Learning Center in Montclair, NJ. All the way over from the Bronx to the museum, the owner had never looked so nervous, an associate recalled later, according to this 2015 article by the New York Times’ Harvey Araton.

But in a short meeting behind closed doors, Berra got what he wanted: an apology.

Think of it: a powerful man forced to travel abjectly to the turf of the one who had brought him to heel. How often does that happen?

Quite apart from the shabby treatment of the lovable Berra, was his removal warranted? Did the results justify it? To both questions, I would answer no, for these reasons:

*The three most important Yankees that year—Don Mattingly, Dave Winfield, and Rickey Henderson—were, at that point, still not at full strength because of injuries. In other words, this team had not yet started to fire on all cylinders, but it would do so shortly—if only Steinbrenner had given it a chance. In short order, they were about to become an offensive powerhouse this season.

*One complaint that Steinbrenner had voiced about the squad in the past few weeks—a “lack of discipline” on the field—was spurious. In addition to the three players mentioned previously, this Yankee team featured veterans like Don Baylor, Ken Griffey Sr., Ron Guidry, and Phil Niekro. Motivation and self-discipline were not problems for this group.

*The removal continued to destabilize a team in desperate need of a calming influence. This was the 12^th managerial change since Steinbrenner had taken over the club in 1973. The players liked and got along with Yogi.

*Speaking of “destabilizing,” Martin was about to fall into familiar habits. Martin favored a fast, aggressive style of play that had become known as “Billy Ball.” But sometimes his non-traditional style of play could backfire. That’s what happened late in the year, when he sent third baseman Mike Pagliarulo to the plate to bat right-handed, late in a crucial September game against the Detroit Tigers—even though “Pags” was not a righty, or even a switch-hitter. The move failed. Worse, as Steinbrenner’s carping predictably picked up again, the alcoholic Martin got into one of the barroom fights that had come to mark his career as player and manager, this time with his own pitcher, Ed Whitson. While Martin ended up with a broken ulnar bone in his right arm, his inconsistent but high-priced starter came away with a broken rib and fractured hand.

*If Martin was overrated as a manager, Berra was underrated. Martin’s insistence on complete games by his starters effectively killed on the best young rotations in baseball when he managed the Oakland A’s following the 1981 season. He might have produced immediate improvements for the teams he managed, but the gains were temporary, as he exhausted the patience of owners and players alike. On the other hand, Berra had already managed two pennant-winning teams that probably shouldn’t have even made it that far. In 1964, he had managed a proud but aging team of Yankee sluggers to the seventh game of the World Series before they fell to the St. Louis Cardinals. In 1973, with Rusty Staub—a productive but not traditional cleanup hitter—batting fourth, he took the Mets to the World Series, too—even knocking off the powerful Cincinnati Reds in the playoffs before falling to the Oakland A’s in the Fall Classic.

With his 10 championship rings, Berra had long been loved by Yankee fans not just as an important contributor to the team’s success but also as a colorful character famous for malapropisms—sometimes real, sometimes invented by others—that became known as “Yogisms.” His often basic, awkward communication skills led sportswriters particularly to underestimate his knowledge of pitchers and feel for the game.

But the long cold war with Steinbrenner enhanced the respect with which he was held. For years, it had been the pugnacious Martin who had garnered sympathy for his fights with the owner, even though it had often been manifested in boorish, self-defeating antics.

But, by standing stubbornly on principle without acting out, it was now Berra who had become an object of sympathy, as well as a stand-in for anyone who had to endure a bumptious, bullying boss. When the dust had settled, though no longer working on baseball, he had become the beloved elder statesman of the Yankees, a position he retained until his death 10 years ago.

(The image accompanying this post, of Yogi Berra in 1984, was made available by the New York Yankees via tradingcarddb.com.)

This Day in Baseball History (Yanks’ Bill Dickey Clubs 3 HRs)

July 26, 1939—In perhaps the greatest offensive performance of his career, catcher Bill Dickey belted three home runs, leading the New York Yankees to a 14-1 run of the St. Louis Browns, continuing a turnaround for the Bronx Bombers that would lead to victory that fall in the World Series.

When I mentioned to a friend that I would be blogging about Dickey, he laughed and said, “Oh, you mean the OTHER Number 8!” It was Dickey’s misfortune to be overshadowed by another catcher who surpassed him in career home runs, World Series rings, and hold on the popular imagination: Yogi Berra. The two wore the same uniform number, and with both going to the Baseball Hall of Fame, the team eventually retired the number as a way of honoring each.

As it happened, Berra might not have developed into what he became without Dickey. But more on that shortly…

The first half of July 1939 had been rough for the Yankees in general and Dickey in particular, marked by the devastating medical diagnosis that ended the career of the catcher’s road roommate and best friend, Lou Gehrig, and the team’s tribute to the slugger on July 4—“the most emotional day I’ve had in my life,” Dickey would remember. 

After a five-game losing streak just before the All-Star Game, the Yanks lost a July 13 game they led 4-1 going into the bottom of the eighth inning, then saw their pennant lead over the Boston Red Sox shrink to just 5½ games. Then they righted the ship, winning seven straight away games against the Cleveland Indians and St. Louis Browns.

Back in New York on the 26^th, traps set through Yankee Stadium caught 5,000 Japanese beetles that had mysteriously invaded the ballpark. Maybe the Browns were nettled by what had gotten into the field that afternoon, because they were utterly powerless to stop a Yankee onslaught that included at least one run in every inning.

Leading the way was Dickey—but then again, nobody was particularly surprised. At 32, Dickey was, like Gehrig, mature in age and manner—a necessity on a team with its share of brash young players—and, thus, a model on how to comport one’s self.

At the same time, he was still in the prime of his career. Dickey was probably only surpassed at his position in the 1930s by Mickey Cochrane and Gabby Hartnett. He may have taken special satisfaction in his offensive explosion on this day because he’d been advised by his first manager, Miller Huggins, to concentrate on making contact rather than hitting the long ball, as the team already had someone who specialized in the latter department (Babe Ruth).

Dickey would finish the 1939 campaign by batting .302—the last time his average would be over .300—with 24 homers and 105 runs batted in. That fall, he would cap it all by clubbing two home runs and 5 RBIs in the World Series against the Cincinnati Reds.

Moreover, he remained sterling on defense. He had mastered the art of adapting to conserve his physical skills as long as possible (notably, adopting a one-handed catching technique, saving his right arm from wear and tear), while the years had only deepened his savvy in the linked arts of knowing how to get opposing batters out and how to get the best out of his own pitching staff, a lineup ranging from strong, silent Red Ruffing to ebullient but erratic Lefty Gomez. 

(Once, facing muscular slugger Jimmie Foxx, Gomez shook off all Dickey’s called pitches till the catcher walked to the mound to ask what he did want to throw Foxx. “Nothing,” Gomez responded: “Let’s wait a while. Maybe he’ll get a phone call.”)

The last link to the Ruth-Gehrig team of the late 1920s, Dickey served as the bridge to the Joe DiMaggio-led dynasty of the late 1930s and 1940s. Remarkably, though, his influence extended into the mid-Sixties. It happened like this:

In 1946, with his own playing days winding down, Dickey took over as manager from Joe McCarthy, who, after clashing with new general manager Larry MacPhail, parted ways with the team. But Dickey had his own differences with MacPhail and quit with 14 games left in the season.

Before the 1949 season, however, a new GM, George Weiss, asked Dickey to serve as a coach under new manager Casey Stengel, with one special assignment: take young catching prospect Yogi Berra under his wing. The team had no doubt about his ability to hit, but his defense was suspect. 

So Dickey got to work—as Berra put it, “learning me all his experience.”  It involved fouls, pop-ups, plays at the plate, controlling the pitcher and the game, knowing everything on the diamond—in effect, acting as the on-field stand-in for the manager. Dickey would do the same for Elston Howard, the 1963 American League MVP.

"Bill Dickey isn't just a catcher,” wrote sportswriter Dan Daniel. “He's a ball club."

Casey’s ‘Assistant Manager’: RIP, Yogi

“Why has our pitching been so great? Our catcher, that’s why. He looks cumbersome but he’s quick as a cat." —New York Yankees manager Casey Stengel, quoted in Jeremy Stahl, “Yogi Berra Wasn’t Trying to Be Witty,” Slate, September, 2015

Casey Stengel, who died 40 years ago today, knew a thing or two about how a comical persona can camouflage innate baseball intelligence. One senses, then, a deep affinity between him and his catcher, Yogi Berra, who likewise bridled at the image reporters created of him—until he learned how to play them as much as they played him, in the form of humorous ads (like the Aflac commercials) in his old age..

I wish I could say my noticing the nature of this relationship was unusual, but the marvelous sportswriter Jimmy Cannon, who covered both on a daily basis in their heyday in the 1950s, beat me to it. In one of his last columns before his death in 1972, Cannon observed the difference in style between manager and player (Casey, “excitable and flamboyant”; Berra, “slow and patient”), before shrewdly outlining their similarities:

“Why are they so alike, yet so different? They are both cunning and unafraid. Neither worries much about anything. Their luck holds, too. People couldn't believe it when Stengel was originally brought to the Yankees as their manager.... He was a marvelous entertainer, but they put him down to be a minor league manager. He had no dignity. George Weiss, the great baseball man who then ran the Yankees, understood him. Stengel was sharp with a hick’s stealth which he disguised with his comedian’s routines. Berra and Stengel share the ruthlessness a manager must have. It is the acceptance that failure can’t be tolerated. Neither pampers players. Like all humorists. Stengel has a streak of cruelty in him. He can be devious and savage in his estimates of players. Innocence dilutes Berra’s appraisals, but they can hurt because his candor can be brutal. They are both secretive. But Stengel conceals a private opinion in a cascade of words; Berra merely shuts up.”

Forget all the “Yogi-isms” you read before and after his death last week; probably at least a fifth were invented, either by friends like Joe Garagiola who wanted stories for the chicken-dinner circuit, or by sportswriters who found it easier under deadline simply to invent a good story rather than to verify an existing one.

What was not invented about Berra was his place in the record books. Central to his achievement were his three Most Valuable Player Awards; the three no-hitters he caught (including Don Larsen’s perfect game, the only one ever taught in the World Series); and an unprecedented—and still unmatched--10 World Series rings won as a player.

What gets overlooked about Berra nowadays may be even more important: his field generalship. Only baseball insiders or contemporaries of his could appreciate it. In his 2009 biography, Yogi Berra: Eternal Yankee, Allen Barra observed that Yogi not only mastered the catching lessons taught by the Bronx Bombers’ brilliant retired backstop, Bill Dickey, but also that, in the wake of Joe DiMaggio’s devastating injury in the first half of 1949, Stengel had relied heavily on the 24-year-old as his stopgap RBI producer until Joltin’ Joe returned to action.

The Yankee manager became famous for his “Stengelese” potpourri of non sequiturs, doubletalk and tomfoolery, but he could speak perfectly plainly when it came to his catcher—or, as he put it, his “assistant manager.” He relied on him to pounce on bunts, “quick as a cat,” and to throw out baserunners; to indicate where players should shift on the field; to get a pitcher through a dangerous opposing lineup when he didn’t have his best stuff; and to distinguish, in a close game, when a pitcher could still get outs and when he was running out of gas.

The “Ol’ Perfessor,” who introduced “instructional school” in training camp, could react sharply if a player didn’t absorb lessons readily enough (the prodigiously talented Mickey Mantle came in for special grief at his hands). But he never had reason to complain about Berra, which he let the press know in a direct fashion highly unusual for him:

“They say Yogi Berra is funny. Well, he has a lovely wife and family, a beautiful home, money in the bank and he plays gold with millionaires. What's funny about that?"

Rest in peace, Yogi.

Adventures in Commuting, Part I: Through the NJ Urban Wilderness, by Bus

"If you don't know where you are going, you might wind up someplace else."—Attributed to Yogi Berra

The syntax here might be a bit—er, unorthodox—but most people know exactly the wisdom behind these words by New York Yankee great Yogi Berra, who turned 90 years old the other day. As the recipient of 10 World Series rings, the Baseball Hall of Famer knew the importance of a carefully prepared plan before game time—and, just in case that didn’t work and your starter’s best pitch wasn’t up to snuff, the equal importance of  a good backup plan.

The other morning, it quickly became clear, the bus driver for my Transport of New Jersey (TNJ) route for my morning commute got behind the wheel without an adequate backup plan in case of a foul-up. After careful consideration, the other passengers and I decided that he had struck out.

But then again, that’s the kind of judgment you’d expect when a commute that normally takes an hour drags on for another two.

This past week, in analyzing the little-appreciated impact of the Bridgegate scandal that now imperils Chris Christie’s Presidential run, a local columnist noted the spike in blood pressure that can occur when just 20 extra minutes are tacked onto a commute. Multiply that over 18 times, and you will wonder why the whole batch of us didn’t end up in the hospital.

The day didn’t get off to a great start. Despite arriving at the bus stop in my hometown of Englewood, NJ, the same time as the day before, it had taken me 15 minutes longer to get a bus—any bus—headed toward my bus destination, the Port Authority at 42^nd Street in New York. I was ready to take any of three different routes: the 20, the 14E, or the 166-X.

But the first bus to arrive, a 166-X, was standing-only. Taking that was a non-starter. You do not want to take a bus for longer than a couple of miles and endure the requisite swerves, jolts, or, more often, long spells of standing still that add intolerable pressure on your heels.

Several minutes later, another 166-X arrived. Actually, three buses arrived in a row—a common occurrence when one bus picks up all the passengers waiting forever while the one supposed to follow 20 minutes later eventually overtakes it.

The bus I took was the first of the three to arrive at our stop. Quickly I boarded it. Later, after we understood the qualities of our driver, several other passengers wondered if it would have turned out differently for all of us if we had only taken one of the other two buses.

From the number of stops we made and the number of passengers hopping on, it felt to me as if nobody was getting on the other buses. In hindsight now, another possibility looms: that the TNJ, starved for funds by a governor with dreams of success in tax-averse Iowa, had cut lines and service.

Well, time to suck it up, I figured. Once we got on the highway, we’d make up for the time. I fished a magazine out of my bag and got lost in my reading.

I should have known better than to be so optimistic. This, after all, was my morning commute, where anything could happen.

Suddenly, I became aware that the bus was barely moving. Someone across the aisle told me she had heard about a tractor-trailer accident that was messing up traffic into the Lincoln Tunnel. Indeed, the area I saw just outside the bus looked nothing like I was familiar with, nowhere near our normal tollbooth.

“I’ll bet we’re headed for the train station in Secaucus,” someone behind me said. This news, while hardly ideal, was at least indicative of progress. A couple of years before, when a problem developed on the approach into the Lincoln Tunnel, we had been brought to the Secaucus station. The PATH train, I knew from then, would leave me off around 34^th Street, but I could make my way to work pretty easily from there.

The only trouble was, the bus inexplicably hurtled past this exit as well. 

By this time, I wondered if a dangerous lunatic had succeeded in overpowering our normal driver and was driving us to, oh, North Philly or New Jersey’s Pine Barrens, for reasons best known to himself. Unwelcome thoughts gripped me of someone then overpowering him and driving, like Sandra Bullock in Speed, nervously at the wheel.

A passenger confidently strode to the front of the bus. “Hey, driver, do you know where you’re going?” he asked. “ ‘Cuz right now, there are a lot of people back there in a panic.” How did he know what I was thinking?

The response was curt. The passenger shrugged, explaining to someone while making his way back to his seat, “We have to let him find his way.”

When we passed a sign for Newark, my anxiety mounted.  Some people speculated that the driver might be heading for Jersey City just before he did a U-turn and got on I-95 North. “He’s going to try for the Lincoln Tunnel again, only this time from the south,” someone else declared authoritatively.

Not everyone was so confident, though. Another passenger strode to the front of the bus. “Driver, do you have a game plan for getting us to New York?” he asked.

“Yes,” the driver said dismissively.

We drove on. A sign for the tunnel loomed to the right—bigger than life, with no discernible traffic on the exit. It looked so inviting. The route was there for the taking. I thought I had never seen anything so wonderful in my life. I smiled to myself.

The smile didn’t last long. Our driver should be moving into the far-right lane for the turn. Instead, he was in the next lane over. It began to seem entirely conceivable to me that, if the driver didn’t act more quickly, he—or, more accurately by this point, we—might miss the exit.

Other passengers had the exact same reaction, and began to sound like a Byrds hit of the Sixties: “Turn! Turn! Turn!” they yelled all at once, from what seemed like more than half the rows on the bus.

“Listen, I know what I’m doing,” the driver said.

We rode for several more minutes. No other sign appeared offering a route into New York. The Vince Lombardi Rest Stop, the last on the turnpike, appeared off on the right. “I wish I could be left off here, call Uber, and have them take me home so I can stay there the rest of the day,” I heard a middle-aged female passenger say not far behind me.

A weary, resigned silence had settled on the bus like a shroud when our driver cleared his throat. “Folks, my apologies,” he said. “I took the wrong route. I’m sorry. I’m going to turn around again and see what I can do this time.”

Earlier in the route, I would have been angry and triumphant over the admission. By this time, I felt exhausted and forgiving. He had, after all, manned up, without making excuses. 

But more than that: When I had stepped on the bus, the driver looked in his mid-to-late fifties. Now, this two-hour-and-counting ride must have aged him a minimum of 15 years. My guess was that he hadn’t been on this job long since he knew so little about the area. But he would surely be counting the days to retirement at this point, even if he were to be pushed to leave early.

After his second U-turn, the driver pulled over on the turnpike, opened his door and spoke to a state trooper. If he asked for directions, that was taken care of in short order. Our driver seemed more in the mood to vent to a friendly face about difficulties without a radio to communicate with or a GPS to guide him.

I finally made it to my midtown office, three hours after I left my house that morning. When I had finished relating what happened that morning, a colleague came up with a surprising question: Did I know the driver’s name?

“No, I don’t,” I answered. “Why do you ask?’

“Think it could have been Moses?” he asked. “After all, he led his group through the wilderness forever, too.”

I thought that this would be the end of this week's commuting problems. Little did I know that another horror story would unfold the very next day, enough to shrivel up a commuter's spine and harrow his very soul...

(The image accompanying this post was created by my friend John. To my knowledge, Charlton Heston was never a TNJ bus driver.)

Flashback, July 1980: Bench Sets All-Time HR Mark for Catchers

Johnny Bench set a record for most career home runs by a catcher with his shot off Montreal’s David Palmer. The 314th round-tripper for the Cincinnati Red slugger on July 14, 1980, also gave rise to one of the great congratulatory telegrams of all time, from the man whose mark he surpassed, the New York Yankees’ Yogi Berra: “Congratulations, John. I knew my record would stand until it was broken.”

Bench had a few other things in common with Yogi, besides power: both were multiple-MVP Hall of Famers (Berra with three, Bench with two); both were winners when it counted, in the World Series; and both were at the heart of the most feared lineups of their age, with Berra eventually gaining 10 World Series rings and Bench two.

Over the decades, certain positions have produced rather good-humored arguments about which of a trio of contemporaries happened to be the greatest. In the early part of this decade, discussions revolved around shortstops Derek Jeter, Alex Rodriguez and Nomar Garciaparra; in the Fifties, they involved New York centerfielders Mickey Mantle, Willie Mays and Duke Snider; in the Seventies, the fights raged over catchers Bench, Thurman Munson and Carlton Fisk.

The centerfielder argument was resolved, in its way, as amicably as you can get: all three men eventually won World Series rings and plaques in Cooperstown. Even the shortstop arguments of this past decade have abated, as Garciaparra’s career declined after he left the Red Sox and A-Rod switched to third in deference to Jeter’s place with the Yankees.

But the ‘70s catcher dispute still left its share of bitterness, largely because of the player whose career was shortened the most, in a tragic plane accident: Munson.

If pressed, I would cede primacy among catchers to Bench, who not only possessed awesome power but one of the most blistering arms in the business. (Brooks Robinson, a foe in the 1970s World Series, later observed that the first time he saw Bench throw out a runner heading for second, the ball “stayed at a level of about two feet off the ground all the way. It was like a bullet. He zipped it right out there.”) And, Yankee fan that I am, I still have to tip my cap to Fisk for his extraordinary durability.

But the fiercely proud Munson bristled over comparisons to his great rivals not just for position bragging rights but for championships. Munson—who, like virtually all Yankees worth their salt, hated, just hated, all things Red Sox—had an additional reason to hate Fisk: he felt sportswriters preferred his league rival because of his smoother image.

Munson was also miffed at how the media treated Reds manager Sparky Anderson’s comment after his star became the 1976 World Series MVP: “Don’t ever compare anyone to Johnny Bench.”

Munson had a right to feel annoyed. His team might have been swept in the Series that year, but it was in no way due to their catcher, who batted .529 over the four games—a performance that, under different circumstances, would have netted him the championship MVP.

Nevertheless, Munson might have done well to pay attention to the truth expressed so vividly in Berra’s famous telegram. Records are meant to be broken. Twenty-four years after Bench surpassed Yogi’s mark, the two men—along with Fisk and Gary Carter—showed up at a tribute to Mike Piazza after the Mets catcher surpassed not just Berra and Bench, but now Fisk, with the 352nd homer of his career.

That night in 2004, Piazza spoke with a true sense of history and wonder about “the catching fraternity.” Indeed—I’m not sure even the most knowledgeable of baseball fans can appreciate viscerally the game awareness, pride and toughness it takes to squat behind the plate, day after day, absorbing every kind of physical punishment—then get up and smack home runs. In that light, it’s difficult to imagine where the Yankees and Red Sox rivalry of the past decade would have been without their stalwart backstops, Jorge Posada and Jason Varitek.