Becoming Mr. October (9780385533126) (25 page)

A
S WE WENT
into the World Series, the press attention died down a little bit. Thank you. Mostly because whenever anybody asked me anything, I replied, “I just work here.”

Also because there was a big fuss after they screwed up Joe DiMaggio’s tickets, and he refused to throw out the first ball of the Series. I was a little surprised they didn’t blame that on me, too. I kind of expected Billy Martin to say the assistant ticket manager hadn’t been the same since they signed me. Anyway … thank you, Joe.

We were facing the Dodgers, who were a tough, well-rounded team. Back in that stretch, they took four pennants in eight years, 1974–81. They had that infield that played together forever: Steve Garvey at first, who hit for average and power. Davey Lopes at second, who could do almost anything, hit home runs, steal bases, field great. Bill Russell at short, Ron Cey at third, “the Penguin,” who could hit home runs and was a very good glove.

In the outfield they had Rick Monday, my fellow Arizona State alumnus. Dusty Baker, who was a terrific power hitter. Reggie Smith, a great all-around player, who used to pound us in the postseason. Veterans like Steve Yeager behind the plate.

They had a very deep pitching staff and a very diverse one. Guys who threw hard, guys who were crafty, all outstanding pitchers and competitors. Starters like Don Sutton, who’s in the Hall of Fame. Tommy John, Rick Rhoden, Burt Hooton. Charlie Hough, who was a
knuckleballer. Doug Rau. Elias Sosa out in the bullpen. They were an outstanding staff.

I couldn’t help but wonder how good they’d be if I’d signed with them. Like us, they stood up to all comers in the season. They beat out a great Reds team that year, ended Cincinnati’s streak at two straight world championships. They beat a very strong Phillies team in the National League Championship Series, one that had Luzinski, Schmidt, Carlton, Bowa, Maddox, Gary Matthews, Bake McBride, Bob Boone. They were playing great ball—and the way the media set it up, they were the good guys against us free-agent bad guys, the Earps against the Clantons. Tommy Lasorda always had them talking about team loyalty and “bleeding Dodger blue.” Sometime during the Series, Lou Piniella said the biggest thing the Dodgers had to fear was that they might hug themselves to death.

We were still hurting for pitching. Remember, our playoff series went five games, so we had just one day off between the end of the ALCS and the start of the World Series. The Dodgers had only two days off, but that gave them enough time to get their rotation lined up. We were just lucky Don Gullett was able to get out there and pitch the first game, even though his shoulder and his back were hurting. He was wild, he walked six guys, hit a batter, allowed five hits, but he pitched well when it counted. Going right after guys, striking them out, and using our big ballpark to his advantage.

They were hitting him hard in the first inning, belting the ball all over the Stadium, but he got out of it with only two runs when Thurman threw out Reggie Smith trying to steal. Mickey Rivers cut down another run when he threw out Steve Garvey at home. I was back in the four spot, in right field, and I helped keep a rally going in the bottom of the first with a hit. We came right back, got a run, then tied it when Willie Randolph homered, took the lead when Willie walked and Munson drove him in with a double.

Billy brought on Sparky again with two on and one out in the ninth, and for once Sparky let up a run to tie it. But he was unhittable again after that, pitched all the way through the twelfth, and in the
bottom of that inning Paul Blair—Billy got me out of there again, for defensive purposes—singled in Willie with the game winner.

That was a nice win—Billy Martin’s first World Series win, ever—but we still needed a pitcher. I thought maybe Billy would throw Dick Tidrow, because he’d pitched so well as a starter down the stretch.

Instead, he put Catfish Hunter out there. Catfish hadn’t pitched in more than a month, since he’d been bombed by the Blue Jays, an expansion team that year. It seems that he’d changed his arm slot, coming back after being hit by a batted ball on Opening Day. By October, his arm was killing him, he could barely come overhand when he pitched—and he had some sort of bladder inflammation that they thought was a hernia at first.

But Billy was going to put him out there. In the World Series.

It hurt me to see that. It hurt me to see what Catfish went through all year. It hurt me to see him humbled in front of a national TV audience.

Catfish was a great, great pitcher. Hall of Famer, Cy Young winner. Won more than twenty games five years in a row. He’d been a great big-game pitcher, a great postseason pitcher for us in Oakland as well, went 7–2 for us in October—4–0 with a save in the World Series. They worked him like a mule in New York. His first year for the Yankees, 1975—in part under Billy—he threw 328 innings and thirty complete games. For a team that finished third, twelve games out of first.

It seemed as though somebody didn’t care; they just pitched his arm off. Threw him another three hundred innings the
next
year. Now he looked done, at the age of thirty-one.

The story they gave out in the World Series was that this was Billy’s strategy to get his pitching set up. If Catfish could take up a day, he could pitch Torrez, Guidry, and maybe Gullett with sufficient rest.

But many felt this was the result of Billy not setting up his staff right, going back to early September. He could’ve started Ken Holtzman—if he hadn’t decided he was useless for some reason. He could’ve started Ken Clay, who was a rookie but pitched very well for us at times. He could’ve pitched Tidrow, who’d been tough for us all year, was excellent down the stretch, and was well rested.

He should’ve at least pitched Catfish sometime before, instead of leaving him to rust for a whole month. I said it at the time: “They
probably should’ve pitched him somewhere along the line, don’t you think?”

But Martin just threw him out there anyway. First batter up, line drive. It was caught. So was the second one. Then Reggie Smith hits a double off the center-field wall. Ron Cey homered to left. Steve Yeager hit a homer the next inning to deep left. Reggie Smith hit a monster shot, into the bleachers in right-center. I was in right field, and I remember watching it and saying, “Wow, Reggie hit a bomb.”

By then, even Billy had to come get him. It was 5–0; the game was over.

But guess what?
Then
he brings in Tidrow, who pitches almost three innings of shutout ball.
Then
he brings in Ken Clay, who throws another three shutout innings, doesn’t even give up a hit. Then we’re down 5–1 in the ninth … and Billy brings in Sparky, who’s been pitching his arm off for us, to throw another inning. We lose, 6–1.

After that game, the big consensus among the writers was what a genius Billy Martin was for sacrificing Catfish to line up his pitching. All I saw was a manager who had put a guy out there who was injured, who couldn’t pitch, and made him throw until the game was lost—and only then brought in two guys who were lights out. Either one of them could have started the game. Then Billy wasted his closer for a useless inning.

That’s great managing? You managed your pitchers like that today, they would run you out of town. They would never stop talking about it on sports radio.

I was steaming. After that game, I was just slinging it back at Billy. I went into the locker room and told the writers, “Cat hasn’t pitched for a month. In a World Series, how do you make a decision like that with a guy like Hunter? Cat did his best, but he hasn’t pitched!”

I knew that was speaking out of turn, but I said what I said, and I meant it. In Oakland, if you’d said anything like that about Dick Williams using a pitcher, he’d’ve come back and said his piece, and we would move on.

I knew I was putting my hand back in the buzz saw by speaking out, but I didn’t care anymore. I was fed up. Billy had told me he’d start me every game in the World Series, but he was already hinting he’d bench me in the next game because Tommy John, a left-hander,
was going. When I challenged the idea, he cracked, “Splittorff isn’t pitching, is he?”

Gosh, we were
so
close. He didn’t like it so much when the press ran over and told him what I’d said about Catfish. When we got out to Dodger Stadium and had our workout there, he told them, “He can kiss my dago ass.”

The writers were just about in ecstasy with that one. They ran back to me, and I told them, “I’d respond for you guys, but what difference would it make?”

Billy wasn’t letting it go. He told the press, “If he’s going to say things that hurt the club, and if he doesn’t hit Tommy John, I may have to think about making a change. He has a little growing up to do.”

Nice, huh? Another little threat, put on a little more pressure. How me criticizing him about humiliating Catfish hurt the club, I still don’t know. Just how me saying anything would affect the club in the field, I don’t know either.

Billy wouldn’t stop, and the reporters just kept winding him up. He got in a few more digs, saying I wasn’t hustling in the field. Oh, that again. He started going on about what “a true Yankee” does and doesn’t do. That man
loved
to talk about being a true Yankee. He said, “A true Yankee player doesn’t criticize another Yankee player or the manager.”

I don’t think a day went by that Billy didn’t knock somebody on the club. I don’t think a day went by that he didn’t knock
me
. He was always saying, “If I’m going to back that prick, why doesn’t he back me?” But he never backed me. Not for a minute. He was saying, “In Oakland, the players criticized the manager. The manager runs the club here, and he should’ve learned that this summer.”

In Oakland, actually, we never criticized the manager much at all, because he was a man about things, he could take it if somebody looked sideways at him.

Of course, then it got out of hand. Billy trying to needle me, trying to get in my head, saying, “He’s putting a lot of pressure on himself. Now he’d better get a couple of hits.” I thought, “Billy, that’s not going to work. You need to go down another road, bro. Not dealing with pressure? That’s not on my menu.”

He got Thurman to jump into it, which was hurtful to me. Talking about that
Sport
magazine article again. Thurman was quoted as saying, “We have a chance to win a Series ring and a guy is second-guessing the manager. If I was hitting .111, I wouldn’t be second-guessing the manager.”

After that, Fran came and talked to me, and George came and talked to me as well. George told me to apologize, and he gave me a statement to read out on the field. I didn’t really much care anymore. I realized by then, if we lost, I was going to get the blame. And as long as it looked like I was responsible, they were never going to fire Billy.

So I went and read this statement. I mean, you can probably tell from it how serious I was about it all. It reads like a television script: “In the emotion of wanting to win the World Series, maybe I said something I shouldn’t have said and it was taken the wrong way. I have no desire to comment on anything Billy Martin does in handling the ball club because he has won the pennant two years in a row, and I’m pleased to be a member of this club. I’ve had a good year because of the way he handled me.”

It was nonsense. The way he handled me? Right. And he never apologized to me, not about that, not about anything.

He was the genius because he threw away a ball game in the World Series and humiliated a great pitcher. And I was the bad guy because I objected.

By then, I was just doing whatever it took for me to stay in the lineup. It took Gabe Paul to defuse the whole situation. He got out to L.A., and he made fun of it all, told the press, “This is another chapter in the tumultuous life of the 1977 Yankees.”

He told them, “Controversial ballplayers are many times better ballplayers because they are not afraid of the consequences.” He said, “We judge players by what they do on the field. If we want all nice boys, we’ll go to the church steps and collect them.”

Amen.

I just wanted to get back on that field. And that field was Dodger Stadium, where I had always played well. Tommy John was a very tough
pitcher, tough lefty, ground-ball pitcher, but I plunked a single to left in the first, drove in Munson. Took second when Dusty Baker overran the ball, and scored on a hit by Piniella. I had a walk and scored another run later.

We got on top early, and Mike Torrez gutted it out, pitched another complete-game win, had nine strikeouts. What’s more, I could feel I was starting to get on a roll again.

You can feel it when it starts to come. You start staying back on the ball longer, and you stay
through
the ball longer. The body is staying in the hitting zone longer; you’re staying on the ball and driving it into left-center field more—for me, a lefty hitter. I was
seeing
the ball longer, and going with the pitches more where they were located, in or away.

When you’re trying to do too much, you come
off
the ball. Your thoughts are to pull the ball to your power field even before it’s thrown. You have the wrong picture in your mind. What you
need
to do is to use the whole field, not just your pull side.

If you stay over the ball, go through the ball longer, then you’re staying on balance. You’re keeping your body on balance and driving everything correctly.

Nowadays, they work a lot with film, with coaching. I don’t even remember if we had a hitting coach in 1977. I don’t remember one. You could go to Yogi. My hitting coaches were really Lou Piniella and Thurman, who was a great hitter. Both fundamentally very sound. You could go and talk to them.

Just why it comes and goes … it’s in the mind. You got to have a little less going on. We all know that grooves come and go. In the mind, the body has a feel. It has a lot going on. You have to focus on the baseball and where it’s coming from and take the barrel of your bat to the ball. You have to think only of squaring the baseball. You can’t think about what you’re going to do before you hit it. Stay back and use the entire field. You can’t think big. You have to stay within yourself.