Becoming Mr. October (9780385533126) (22 page)

This is what I mean about Billy Martin making a team all about him. This is what I mean about his big strategy always being something that turned the spotlight on him. “Billy-ball.”

It sounds like a good, fundamental, by-the-book play, right? Get the winning run on with nobody out, bunt him over to second. But how well is that going to work with a guy who hasn’t bunted in years? How does it make sense with a guy like me with power—and also good speed, so he can stay out of the double play?

That whole season, I grounded into exactly three double plays. Three of them. Chances were, I was either going to get a hit, get a walk, fly out, or strike out. A good manager doesn’t treat his players like interchangeable pieces. He doesn’t pretend one’s the same as the other and they can all do the same things. All you’re likely to do is distract your player, as well as do the wrong thing by asking him to do something he can’t do.

Do you ask Babe Ruth to bunt—or Cookie Lavagetto? Willie McCovey—or Phil Rizzuto?

But I was learning. Billy Martin said bunt, I was prepared to bunt. Reggie Cleveland threw in on me, though, so I couldn’t get the bat out and had to take it for a ball. I looked back down to Dick Howser—and now the bunt was off. Cleveland threw a fastball, and I fouled it off.

I looked back at Howser. The bunt sign was back on. Tell me, does this make any sense at all?

I got ready to try to bunt again, but Reggie Cleveland threw another ball in. It was like they were picking up the signs, which maybe they were. It was like they knew I was going to try to lay one down.

Personally, I thought they were making a mistake. If it was my team and Reggie Jackson wanted to bunt, let him bunt.

Instead, the count fell in my favor, the bunt was taken off, and Cleveland hung a slider. It was room service. The rest is history.

I hit that ball to right-center, over the 407-foot sign, probably fifteen to twenty rows deep in the stands. Ball game. The whole place
was shaking again; the crowd was going nuts. They were chanting, “Reg-gie! Reg-gie!” again. I think that’s when I finally won them over for good.

And at the plate, whattaya know, there was a whole mob of my teammates. Slapping my back, pounding away at me. Billy Martin, too. When we got back in the clubhouse, he even told me, “I’m sorry I gave you the bunt sign.”

Getting Billy Martin to say he was sorry—getting him to say he made a mistake on the ball field … I wanted to know who that really was wearing his uniform. I just told him, “I understood the situation well.” (Which I didn’t.)

We’d won, that’s what mattered. Some of the other players and Ray Negron pulled me back out to the dugout, and the fans were still there, still shouting for me. I took off my cap and waved it, I gave them a bow, they went wild.

That felt really good. That felt like what I came to New York for, what I imagined it could be. And afterward in the clubhouse, in the interviews, maybe I got a little carried away, but I didn’t care.

I told the media, “If Reggie plays well, if we win, and if Billy and Reggie get along and George looks good, sociologically this city will be in better shape. I may be crazy, but that’s what I believe.”

What I meant by that was, I guess, that just then anything seemed possible. Despite everything we’d all been through, despite all the nonsense, we really could put it together and make it work. And I know it probably doesn’t apply, but it seemed like it could be an example, maybe, for all of New York then. That if we could come together, anybody could.

With the Son of Sam murders, the economy in the tank, the riot that summer, it just seemed like the right thing to say at the time, to say that we could all come together as a city. That was what it felt like, especially in the excitement of that moment. That was what was so strange with my first two years with the Yankees.

There were all these moments when it just seemed, “Good, great, we won, everything’s right with the world now. Let’s hope it stays that way.”

But it never did.

T
WO WEEKS AFTER
the Reggie Cleveland game, I hit a grand-slam home run in the first inning against the Indians. We rolled from there, 10–0. It was my twentieth game-winning hit of the season—and with that win we clinched at least a tie for the division title, going four games up with four games to play. The race was over. Time for the playoffs. Ahhh!

In those days the league championship series was still best three out of five, you against the other division winner. Only two teams in the league playoffs, and not seven games, five. It was almost sudden death, a short series, and you were always playing a great team.

We would be playing Kansas City, which was a formidable organization. They were outstanding at the plate, outstanding in the field. They had a deep staff, led the league in pitching.

They had the great George Brett at third, Hal McRae, a tremendous offensive player, and Al Cowens, who had a terrific season in the outfield and at the plate. Amos Otis in center, great offensive and defensive player. Darrell Porter behind the plate. Big John Mayberry, left-handed power hitter at first, Frank White and Freddie Patek, a couple excellent gloves up the middle who were also good offensive players. Whitey Herzog was their manager; he was a good one, a Hall of Fame manager. Their general manager at the time was John Schuerholz, who of course went on to have a great career in Atlanta, too, and became one of the greatest general managers of all time.

We won 100 games; the Royals won 102. They had a season a lot like ours, but without the clubhouse drama. They had a tough race with two or three teams most of the way, then got hot down the
stretch and just ran away and hid. They pulled off winning streaks of eight, ten,
sixteen
straight games. Won thirty-five out of thirty-nine and went from five and a half back at the start of August to ten and a half up by mid-September. They came close to beating the Yankees the year before, when I was with Baltimore, and they wanted this bad. The Royals thought they were the better team, and they wanted to prove it.

They always played us tough, regular season, postseason, whenever. We’d split the ten games in the regular season. They were especially tough at home, where they went 55–26 and beat us four out of five that summer. This year, they would have the extra game there. They were a team built for the AstroTurf they had at home, in Royals Stadium. When you play on turf, you need lots of speed on defense. The ball travels so much faster on carpet. They were a team that could steal bases, run down anything in the outfield. They were going to be hard enough to beat. It didn’t help that our manager would play them with a handicap.

When we finally won the division title, it seemed like there was a kind of truce in the clubhouse. At least, I did my part to try to make it that. I’d make sure to stop in Billy’s office, just talk with him a little. Not much, just a little—Fran thought that would be a great idea. For his part, Billy would come in and make sure the writers saw him come by my locker and say, “How you doin’ today, Big Guy?” or “We need you today, Big Guy.” Like we were all getting along.

Now, I knew from some of the writers that when they asked him how he really felt, Billy told them, “Off the record? He’s a piece of s—t.” But I went along with the act. I figured we didn’t need any more distractions. I even went into his office after we clinched the division and offered him a drink from my champagne bottle. We drank together, and he told me, “You had a hell of a year, Big Guy. I love you.” I guess he thought I had changed my name to Gullible.

Was it all a pretense? I don’t know. I don’t know if Billy Martin knew how he felt, either. Maybe he meant some of it. Maybe it was more that he was already trying to lobby for a new contract from Gabe Paul and George. He was in the papers trying to take credit for everything, saying about George, “He’ll find out these guys aren’t that easy to manage.” So subtle.

George wasn’t having any of it. “He’s crazy if he tries to take credit for our success,” he said. “I would just tell him that he’s not indispensable. That this is just another example of his immaturity.”

I couldn’t argue with that. Even the best managers in the game, guys who were light-years ahead of Billy, didn’t win when they didn’t have the team. If you don’t have the horses, you can’t win. And that’s something Billy never cared to understand.

I was past caring much about what Martin said about anything by then. And even though I thought I was getting along with Thurman better than ever, he was quoted as saying, “How could I ever like that blankety-blank after what he said about me?”

That really got me. I think we really became friends; I think we were in the process of becoming friends even then. But Thurman had his pride, and people were continuing to tell me that he was still grumbling about the fact that he didn’t get the bonus money he thought he was promised and that he was still bitter about the article in
Sport
magazine. He was a very prideful man, Thurman, but I respected him no matter what he thought. If I can’t control something, if it’s beyond my capabilities, then I try to move forward. That was all I could do.

So even though it seemed like we were going into the playoffs full of serenity, there were still a lot of resentments just under the surface. How much it distracted us, I don’t know. I just knew you couldn’t let up against the Royals, they were too good a team.

First game, they smoked us in New York, beat Don Gullett, 7–2, when his shoulder tightened up. We had pitching issues now. Catfish hadn’t pitched in a month, with his bad arm. Figueroa pulled a muscle in his last start; he was out nine days. Billy had to pitch Dick Tidrow almost seven innings in relief of Gullett. We were running out of arms.

Ron Guidry came back and pitched a three-hitter against them the next day to even the series. Thurman got three hits; Cliff Johnson had a double and a home run. But now we had to go to Kansas City, and all the Royals had to do was to win two games out of three to beat us.

When the series moved out there, they beat Mike Torrez, 6–2. They
beat him just chopping the ball into the turf, the way they liked to do. Now we’re down, 2–1, in games, we had to win both games remaining in their park—and we didn’t really have a pitcher for the fourth game.

We didn’t have any off days in that series. Gullett’s shoulder was still bothering him, and he’d just gone three days ago. Tidrow had pitched most of a game, Catfish was out, Torrez had just lost, Guidry had only two days of rest. We were in trouble. Suddenly we were down to a six-man staff, counting Sparky.

Billy decided to throw Figgy, even though he was still hurting from that muscle he pulled. He gave it his best, and we got him some runs early, got up, 4–0, but he couldn’t get out of the fourth inning. Billy brought in Tidrow again, but he didn’t have anything, either.

So Billy brings in Sparky with two outs in the third inning still, with our lead down to 5–4 by then. I think that shows the whole difference in relief pitching from now. You’d never bring a closer in that early now. And Sparky had pitched over two innings just the day before.

He’d had a tremendous year that year for us, one of the great years for a reliever. He pitched 137 innings, won thirteen games, saved another twenty-six, and earned the Cy Young Award. He was tough, and he had tremendous endurance. It was nothing for him to come in and pitch three innings.

As it happened, in that fourth game of the 1977 ALCS he went the whole rest of the way. Five and a third innings, two singles, no walks. That must be one of the all-time great relief performances in a postseason game. Thurman drove in an insurance run with another single … and we were still alive. The series was all even, 2–2.

And Billy Martin decided to bench me.

He told the press it was because I didn’t hit Paul Splittorff, who was starting for the Royals. It was true I didn’t have a great season against him. He was a good left-hander, a mainstay of their staff, great control. Counting the first game of the playoffs, that year I was 2–12 against him, although I hit a double and my first home run as a Yankee against him, in Kansas City. But he pitched all of us tough. That year he was 3–0 against us, going into that last game of the playoffs.

It was true, too, I’d been having a bad series. I was only 1–14 in the championship series, with just a lousy single. It was about the worst
playoff series I ever had. I just stunk. But a lot of guys weren’t hitting that well. Nettles hit .150 on the series; Bucky wasn’t hitting. Chambliss went only 1–17. But all those guys were going to start; they were playing.

I honestly didn’t know what Billy thought he was trying to do. I don’t know if he was trying to make a statement, show he could win it all without me. I heard in 1981 that George Steinbrenner got into the same head when he was about to let me go. George did things at times with an advisory committee. He tried to listen to his advisers, and then he did the implementation. The loudest voice saying “Reggie Jackson’s career is going to end quickly” belonged to our hitting coach, Charley Lau. That was the story I heard, anyway. George then tried to show that the Yankees could win the 1981 World Series without me and tried to sit me down.

That didn’t work out so well.

What was Billy thinking? I don’t know. At this point, I didn’t know, and I didn’t care why. It was an insult, and I was offended. Billy didn’t even have the guts to come and tell me to my face. What I heard was that he told Stick Michael, who was one of our coaches then, to go tell me. Gene told him, “I ain’t telling him. You tell him.”

That was Billy. If he was pleasant, he would talk to me. If he had something negative to tell me, he wouldn’t talk. Not to my face, anyway. He would say a lot of things behind my back.

When Gene Michael wouldn’t do his job for him, he went to Ellie Howard to do it. Ellie told him to get lost. Finally, he found Fran Healy and asked
him
to tell me. Fran told Billy, “Why don’t
you
tell him?” But Billy said, “No, you do it for me. You go tell Reggie.”