Becoming Mr. October (9780385533126) (34 page)

But once I finally got in his office with George, he told me right off that I just wasn’t a good enough outfielder to be out there. That irked me, and we started to get into it. I think I told him something like, “Look, I still have the desire to play my heart out for you. But if you’re not going to play me—if you’re not going to treat me like a complete ballplayer—please trade me.”

That seemed reasonable enough to me. But George got angry, started going on about how I should decide whether I really had the desire to play in New York or if I wanted to be traded. Essentially, he was ignoring what I’d just said, and he was getting madder and madder.

He stood up and shouted at me, “You better get your freaking head on straight, son!”

I could not believe it. Here it was, a year later, another meeting with the owner about all the turmoil on the team … and once again somebody is telling me I’d better get my head on straight? Like it was my fault?

I was so angry. I stood up, too. I told him, “Who the hell do you think you’re talking to?”

He still wouldn’t back down. He just said, “I’m talking to
you
!”

I was furious. I told him, “I’m not your son! Don’t you ever talk to me like that again as long as you live.”

Al Rosen, who was there, tried to calm us both down, but we
weren’t having any of it. George told me, “Jackson, get the hell out of my office!”

I told him no. So
he
walked out instead. I had just chased George Steinbrenner out of his own office, which I think must be the only time that ever happened. It was pretty funny, in retrospect. But nobody was laughing about it at the time. You couldn’t believe the crap that went on.

Later, I realized that George had completely diverted the conversation I was trying to have about him trading me. Now that I think back on it, I think that was probably the purpose, and he was good at it. I know George respected people who came back at him. He would go away and think about it. If you didn’t stand up to him and battle back, he’d steamroll you …

We still had a game to play, against the Royals at the Stadium. Another Monday night game, about mid-July. Why so much always seemed to happen on these national broadcast games, these Monday night games, I have no idea. Kansas City had beat us in the first two games of the series, and we were just trying to salvage one—just trying to hang in the race.

Frankly, I think most of us believed that was already beyond us. We were thirteen games down by then, in fourth place. You don’t come back from that far behind. Or so many of us thought.

Billy still wouldn’t put me in the field that night, but he did write me in to the number four spot. We were facing Paul Splittorff. Remember him? I suppose this was another one of Billy’s little games, his attempts to show me up, putting me in now against the guy he wouldn’t start me against in the playoffs the year before. I couldn’t keep up with how he was thinking, it made no sense.

We got off to an early lead, got up 5–1 on them. Catfish was pitching for us, and you know, suddenly he didn’t look half-bad. His ball had movement again. But he hadn’t pitched much, and he was tired out by the fifth. Sparky had to come in and take over for him. Lyle got out of the fifth, pitched a one-two-three inning in the sixth … then came in and told Martin he was done for the night.

Sparky told him, “I’m not a f—ing long reliever.” Then he walked back down to the clubhouse, took a shower, and left the Stadium. Just like that. I loved it.

For Sparky, it was the last straw in what had been a humiliating season. He had a good point: He wasn’t being used properly. Almost nobody on our staff was being used properly. Sparky was not a three- to four-inning pitcher. But you know, when Sparky said he wasn’t playing anymore, his manager didn’t cuss him out on national television. Nor did he “try” to take a poke at him.

Goose had to come into the game in his place. He pitched well, struck out Freddie Patek with two outs and the bases loaded in the eighth to end a threat. But then Willie Randolph, who was in and out every other day, playing hurt, made an error in the ninth, and the Royals tied it.

Martin just kept Goose in there, playing the game like it was the World Series—again. Gossage got through the tenth, and in the bottom of the inning Munson led off with a single for us. The Royals had their own closer out there by then, Al Hrabosky, “the Mad Hungarian.” He was a lefty, threw some pretty good heat. Used to do all kinds of antics on the mound to try to intimidate batters, fume and bounce around, turn his back on the hitter when he came up.

Whatever. I came up, ready to hit—and Billy Martin gave me the bunt sign. Just like he had given me the bunt sign against Boston near the end of the 1977 season.

That was it. That was enough.

I was just so fed up with the entire scenario. I wasn’t going to play right field. I wasn’t going to play against left-handed pitching. I wasn’t going to play against right-handed pitching, sometimes.

I just turned around and looked in the dugout, hoping I hadn’t seen the bunt sign from Dick Howser, our third-base coach. I was almost making a silent appeal to Billy. I was thinking, “I’m your cleanup hitter. Now you’re asking me to bunt? What other humiliations would you like to tack on here? Would you like me to wear a court jester’s hat?”

But Billy still had Howser signaling bunt to me.

So I squared around and tried to bunt. Hrabosky wasn’t fooled; he threw one in tight and hard so I couldn’t get it down. The next pitch,
I found out later, Billy took the bunt off, signaled me to hit away. It didn’t surprise me that he took the bunt off. I saw George Brett move in at third and knew the Royals were alert to the bunt now. But I didn’t know for sure, because I was through looking at signals just then. Billy Martin wanted a bunt; he was going to get a bunt. I was tired of all the crap.

Hrabosky came in again, and this time I nudged the ball foul. Dick Howser called time and ran down to make sure I hadn’t missed the sign. Because I suppose it was obvious that I was giving a half-assed effort at bunting. Dick came down, made sure I knew Billy wanted me to hit away.

But I was past that now. My conversation with myself was, “What am I doing here? If you want me to bunt, why would you hit me cleanup? Why would you do it? Put someone else in here.”

Dick Howser told me, “Billy wants you to swing away.” And I said to his face, “No, he told me to bunt. And no offense to you, but I’m going to bunt.” Dick said something like, “I hope you know what you’re doing here,” and went back to third base. Which was exactly the right thing to do, and why Howser was a good man. He wasn’t going to get in the middle. He was going to let us play this out.

I fouled off another one from Hrabosky, for strike two. Then I popped up a third one, which the catcher caught. I was out. Thurman was still on first.

I walked back to the dugout, ready for a confrontation. Ready for anything. It wasn’t like all of a sudden I had gotten hot and angry and flew off the handle. I had had enough. Enough of all of it. I said to myself, “All right, here we go,” and I went and sat down. Sat my helmet down, took my hat off. Took my glasses off, too, just the same as I did in Boston the year before. Because I knew with Billy, he’s a guy who would probably try to blindside me if he decided to take a punch.

I was ready. I
hoped
I had done something to create a spark, to create a confrontation. I was
looking
for it this time!

Gene Michael came down to me on the bench and said, “You know, Billy wants you to go inside”—go inside the clubhouse. And I looked at Gene, and I said, “Gene, you said that kind of rough and kind of rude.”

I’d always gotten along well with Gene. I always would. But I wasn’t taking anything from anyone at this point.

Gene told me, “Reggie, it’s not me. Billy wants me to tell you to go inside.” I said, “If he wants me to go inside, tell him to come here and tell me himself.”

I sat out there for another inning before I went in. Top of the eleventh, Goose was in his fifth inning of work. He would’ve got through it, too, but Thurman dropped a fly ball out in right field, where he was playing in place of me. The Royals scored four unearned runs, went up 9–5. We almost came back in the bottom of the inning, Willie hit a home run, and Thurman drove in a run.

In fact, the game ended with the very same situation we’d had the inning before: Thurman on first, me due up. Two outs, the Yanks trailing, 9–7. Billy
could
have let bygones be bygones, thought in the best interest of the team, and put me up there to swing away. I would’ve still been in the game.

My forced confrontation ended that possibility. Pretty honest, huh? Instead, Billy had to send Cliff Johnson up to pinch-hit for me. Cliff was a terrific hitter, but he was having a horrible year. At the time, he was hitting exactly .190.

When Billy sent him up, I headed for the clubhouse. I walked right by him and went inside without saying a word. Cliff flied out to left. Billy came down to his office, picked up his clock radio, and threw it against a wall. Then he picked up a beer bottle and threw that against the wall, too.

I was out by my locker, still in my uniform. Ready for anything. But Billy never did come out to speak to me.

It was the writers who came over and told me I’d been suspended. Billy never did tell me. The Boss had already issued a statement, backing Martin, before he had exchanged so much as a word with me: “What is paramount is a sense of command and discipline. If you don’t have it, forget it. Forget the whole organization.”

What nobody on the Yankees was willing to talk about was that Sparky Lyle had already told his manager to go to hell and walked off the field back in the sixth inning. Nobody said boo to him. I think it was Fran Healy who quietly let Henry Hecht know about it, or the story never would’ve got out.

I had my problems with Hecht at times. I’d got mad at him over that piece he wrote about me in the hotel room in Boston the year before. But he was willing to listen at least, and he went and checked what happened with Sparky. He discovered it was true, he got the facts, and I have to hand it to him: He wrote a story for the
Post
about how there was a double standard on the Yankees.

When that came out, the front office got very upset about it. I heard that guys like Al Rosen and Cedric Tallis even sat Henry down and told him they didn’t want it coming out. But you have to give him credit, he made sure the truth got out. Our front office was trying to deny it, but Henry told the Boss, “George, I smell a rat!”

He could do that, because Fran tipped him off to the real story. It was all around then. I think George even liked that, because it was so much PR for the team. It was what Fran used to say: “It’s better than Broadway!” Or Sparky calling it “the Bronx Zoo” in his book, or I think Nettles said something like, “Some boys want to grow up and play major-league baseball, and other boys want to run away and join the circus. I got to do both.” Loved it!

I gotta say, great lines. But I signed up to play ball.

The truth was that Billy had already lost control of his team, even before he tried to humiliate me one more time. He’d lost control of it back in 1977, I thought, but nobody truly realized it because of Fran Healy patching things up and because of Bucky not saying anything about almost leaving the team.

He lost control of it again in 1978, I felt, because he was literally wrecking the arms of our pitchers and because they wouldn’t put up with it anymore. Sparky Lyle never was a top reliever again after that season. I continue to believe that Martin lost control of his team because he would not put his personal feelings aside and do what was best for the team.

However, at the moment that wasn’t what anybody in the media wanted to hear. Nobody said anything about Lyle—the American League Cy Young winner the year before—defying his manager and
disobeying orders. Somehow, that wasn’t a story. Just as nobody said anything about Bucky Dent trying to jump the team the year before. Instead, it was all about me again.

Maybe some of the writers didn’t know about it. But there aren’t a lot of secrets that don’t get out on a ball club—or anywhere else. As Benjamin Franklin said, “Three men can keep a secret if two of them are dead.”

My defiance of Martin was newsworthy and punishable by suspension and fine. Theirs—Bucky’s and Sparky’s—wasn’t. There was definitely a double standard. Those are the facts.

I tried to defend myself a little at first. Told the press that I thought the way I’d been hitting recently, a bunt was the best idea. I said, “If I get it down, I’m a hero. If not, I’m a butt.”

You know, I was still hoping to defuse the situation. But my heart wasn’t in it. I was tired of covering up. I knew I couldn’t win. No matter. I should just take it all, no matter how unfair it was. I would still come off as the outspoken black guy with the big contract who complained and couldn’t handle the situation.

When the writers told me I’d been suspended, I said, “
Really?!
” And they said, “Yes. What are you gonna do?”

I remember being happy. I was glad. I wanted to bring everything to a head. I wasn’t disappointed for a moment. I felt something needed to be done, no matter what. This was it.

All I said was, “I’m going to California on the first plane smoking tomorrow morning.”

And that was what I did. I didn’t say much else. I left the clubhouse, went back to my apartment, and packed a small bag. I made a flight at nine in the morning, to San Francisco. American Airlines. The press was waiting for me at the airport, but I was a very familiar flier on American, so they dropped me off on the tarmac.

This could never happen today, but when we got to the gate, they pulled up the unloading walkway—what they call the Jetway. They allowed me to go out the door, down those stairs, and go underground and avoid the press. It was so cool!

I went down through the underbelly of the terminal, connected with a friend who picked me up, and went home to Berkeley.

Here I was at home in California, “right back where I started from.” I had no idea what was going to happen—and neither did anyone else. For all I knew, my career was over, and I was going to be vilified all over the country. And even knowing that, I
still
felt like a huge weight had been lifted off my chest.