Becoming Mr. October (9780385533126) (36 page)

Henry knew at once how big a story he had. He came back over to me where I was walking through the airport with Fran. Henry came up to me, and he said, “I think Billy’s gonna get fired. Wait’ll George hears about this!” He said, “He talked about George, and he talked about you, Reggie, and he was so upset that you didn’t come and apologize to him and the team.”

I didn’t even
think
about it. I just wanted to be out of the way. I just couldn’t believe I was getting tagged for Martin blowing up and calling me a liar. I hadn’t said anything to him. I didn’t even understand his comment. I didn’t know who he meant. When I first heard that quote, I was honestly trying to figure out which one of us was supposed to be which. I was like, “What did I do?”

There’s another thing a lot of people don’t know about that quote. It wasn’t even original. It was something a couple of guys on the team came up with. They’d been saying it about Steinbrenner and
Billy Martin himself
—not me!—since back in spring training. Billy picked up the line and used it about George and me.

Henry was excited because he had a story, and he was reporting it. He thought Billy was going to get fired. He didn’t like Billy, either. Of course by that time, a lot of people were fed up with Billy. Even the players who
liked
Billy were uncomfortable with the way things were going.

The writers went ahead and called George from the airport and asked him for a reaction. He was stunned by it. Who wouldn’t be?
The team had finally started to win—we won
that afternoon
—and here was Billy telling him off. For nothing. George hadn’t said a word to him since we’d been winning.

The next day, after we got into Kansas City, Billy had that awful press conference at the Crown Center hotel. Standing on the balcony, sunglasses on inside the building. His hands shaking. He looked like a man ten years older than he was yesterday!

He told the writers he had a statement to make and he wouldn’t say anything else, “now or forever, because I am a Yankee and Yankees do not talk or throw rocks.” It was pretty late for him to decide that. He went on to say he was quitting to help the team win the pennant and for his own health and “mental well-being.”

He apologized to George Steinbrenner for saying what he said about him—then said he didn’t say it.

Surprisingly, he didn’t mention any apology to me. He then went on to thank the front office, the media, the writers, the coaches, and the fans. Everybody but the players who made him a champion.

By the end he was sobbing. Not everybody was impressed. Roger Kahn wrote in the
Times
, “Babe Ruth and Lou Gehrig went out of the arena more quietly to face their death.” Pete Gammons wrote, “Martin had to be led away from the news conference in tears, which was good for a few laughs.”

I wasn’t laughing. I can’t honestly say I was sorry to see him go, but I wasn’t laughing. Phil Rizzuto had to come up and lead him away, I think. I don’t know if the Yankees even had anyone official there.

I don’t know how I’d describe the whole scene. But it was fitting. Because once again, Billy was alone.

It was such a weird time. I didn’t know all that was going on at the time. Fran knew more than I did, people talked to him, they didn’t talk so much to me. I was suspended; I was back on the team. I was the problem; Billy was the problem. We’re on our way to Kansas City,
we’re going pretty good … and Martin? He was getting fired? What happened? What did I do?

Certainly I understood it takes two to tango and I was one of them. I regret the way this turned out. I remember at the time Fran Healy was telling me how to handle the press, what to say. He warned me, “They’ll blame you; they’ll make you out to be the villain.”

I basically remained quiet. Did whatever Fran told me. He would pick out a few things to say, and I would say them. Basic things about Billy, like, “This is his decision. I’m just going to go along with management. I don’t have anything against Billy.” It’s tough to say things you don’t mean.

I was very fortunate to have people around me who helped get me through the hard times, people like Fran, Gary Walker, my family, and others. I remember one of George’s friends, Tony Rolfe, lots of times talking through all the nonsense that went on.

All these individuals were constantly giving me good advice, keeping my head straight, and pointing me toward what mattered most in life. I’m grateful to this day—I’ll always be grateful—that they were there to help me.

I don’t know that Billy was ever that fortunate. Throughout the time we were both on the Yankees, there were always people around him who kept telling him that he was right, and that George was wrong, and that I was the problem with the team.

Those people might have meant well. The fans meant well, siding with him through everything. They loved Billy as the underdog, and I understood that. However, ultimately, I don’t think they did him any favors.

That helped to keep him from ever acknowledging that he might not be thinking clearly—that he might be wrong. And they did not make Billy face what had become a real problem in his life, which was his drinking.

Occasionally, someone said something. I remember hearing a
story about a day in 1977 when Billy was tying one on after a loss, and Gabe Paul looked at him and said, “You’re drinking like we won.” But those sorts of interventions were all too few and far between.

The reporters covering our team also didn’t do Billy any favors by not writing about his drinking. Too often in our society, we celebrate public figures when they’re on top and kick them when they’re down, forgetting that the person involved is not just a picture in a newspaper or an image on a TV screen but a living, breathing,
bleeding
human being. A human being who could use our help before it’s too late.

Being honest is a virtue. It hurts, as we all know. But sometimes it is a necessity.

Billy Martin was a human tragedy, in the real sense of the words. He defied long odds his whole life and maximized his abilities in the game. He helped the Yankees win five rings as a player and another one as manager. He fought hard his whole life—but too often, it seemed like he was fighting himself.

I was disappointed that we were never able to get along. I always felt we had some things in common, particularly a strong desire to compete, to win any way we could.

I never understood why he was so antagonistic to me from almost the moment I joined the team. Even though I understood the reasons intellectually—Billy was upset that he hadn’t been consulted about signing me, he felt that I was the one who questioned his authority, he thought I would disturb the team chemistry, and all that jazz.

Emotionally, though, I didn’t understand why he could never move past all that, in pursuit of our mutual desire to win. I couldn’t understand why he was so determined to undermine me at every opportunity. It was as if he was trying to prove something that he himself didn’t quite understand.

Billy once told some writers about me, “He’s not a hater, he doesn’t know how to hate. Raschi and Reynolds knew how to hate, I know how to hate.”

I never had the privilege to play with Vic Raschi or Allie Reynolds, his old teammates. I’m sure they were great pitchers and fierce competitors. But I bet they knew how
not
to hate, too.

Billy was right, I was not a hater. When I heard about him saying
that, I had and still have no comprehension of the thought process behind it!

I didn’t hate Billy. I didn’t hate anybody. If I didn’t like someone, I just kept a distance. Still do. I just get away from them, or whatever it is that’s agitating me. If you can’t control it, prepare. If it’s raining outside, take an umbrella. If you don’t have one, wear a raincoat. If you don’t have either, wait until it stops raining. Do whatever it takes.

“Reggie doesn’t know how to hate”—he was trying to call it a weakness. But I would call that a strength.

Billy Martin went out on a winning streak. In his dream job, managing the Yankees. Managing the team the way he wanted, with me on the bench. And somehow it wasn’t enough. He had let his demons take over.

That tells me that there was plenty more going on with Billy that we didn’t see. It tells me that his problems went beyond whatever fracas he was having with George or me on any given day. He had everything he claimed to want—and then he was gone. That tells me that knowing how to hate makes no sense.

Billy was gone—and then he was back.

Just five days later, at our Old-Timers’ Day, back at the Stadium, they made a surprise announcement that Billy would come back to manage the team in 1980.

It was probably the worst day in my baseball life. Nobody warned me about it beforehand. I didn’t see Billy in the clubhouse; they were keeping him under wraps. Then there he was, running out on the field after all those Yankee greats, grinning from ear to ear. We had a big crowd, more than forty-six thousand, and they went crazy.

I asked George later why he didn’t give me a heads-up. He said, “Well, I really didn’t have to, Reggie.”

Would’ve been nice, though. That’s the short story on that.

The longer story was I think he really did it just to appease the fans, keep them quiet. And a couple days later, Billy was already spouting off, telling reporters, “I’ve always said I could manage Adolf Hitler,
Benito Mussolini, and Hirohito. That doesn’t mean I’d like them, but I’d manage them.” A few days after
that
, he told the press that he didn’t have any malice in his heart toward me: “I’ve done everything I could to help the young man and now he has to help himself.”

Yeah, that was Billy Martin, my mentor. Now I was a murderer sprung from jail, a born liar, and Hitler, Mussolini, and Hirohito, all rolled into one. It was a few days after that, I think, that he told the press that Fred Stanley, our backup shortstop, made more contributions to the team than I ever did.

You know, it wouldn’t necessarily have been so bad to plan to bring Billy back in 1980—if somebody was going to use the next year and a half to get him some real help. But that wasn’t going to happen. Instead, he was the same old Billy. He was just going to do what he wanted, say what he wanted, and come back anyway.

At the time, the Boss said, “All that happened in the past is meaningless.” Which was just the problem. If you don’t learn from the past, if you don’t learn from experience, what do you learn from? How do you know the way forward?

Bringing Billy back, ignoring his past, meant the Yankees were just going to go around in circles. Which is what would happen.

But on Old-Timers’ Day, we played the Twins. I had two hits and threw out Roy Smalley trying to take an extra base after a single. We won, 7–3. That was what we did. We were professionals.

P
RIVATELY
, I
TOLD
myself that—one way or another—I would be gone by the time Billy Martin came back in 1980. I would
make
them trade me, somehow.

Then I just put it out of my mind. I think a lot of us were stunned that Billy was supposed to come back, but we just put it away. It was like what Lou Piniella said: “Nineteen eighty is a year and a half away. We can’t worry about that.”

It’s too hard to play baseball and try to be successful—try to go out there every day and get hits—and have distractions. Those who’ve never played, you can’t understand the difficulty of the daily grind and the demand for excellence. It is a struggle. It was hard to do for me. I chose to stay inside myself, it made it easier to be gruff because I felt it helped me play better.

I still had the feeling of being overwhelmed by the city. I don’t blame New York. But sometimes when I was alone in my apartment, my mind would just get stale. I lived right across from the Metropolitan Museum then, at Seventy-ninth and Fifth, and I would look out over the museum and the park, and I would just drift. I enjoyed seeing the sun set to the west, over the Dakota building. I enjoyed the park, the trees and green, from where I was on the twentieth floor. It was nice and peaceful to look below and chill out, relax.

At the ballpark, it was bad at first, though not as bad as it had been the year before. Predictably, the fans blamed me for Billy’s self-destruction. They hung up signs saying things like, “Billy’s the One Who’s Sane, Reggie’s the One to Blame,” and “Reggie, Are You Happy Now?” (Yes.) There were ones a lot worse than those, which
security had to take down, they were so profane. When I’d come up, some of them would chant, “Bunt! Bunt!” for a while. (And much worse things.)

With all that pressure, there was a deep loneliness inside. That was the first time I ever really felt that. There was a need for help, and I recognized that. That forced me to go to the place where I had to go, to go to things that I needed as a human being. And those things were mainly God, Jesus, and the friends who supported me.

I had a girlfriend in California I could talk to and the other friends I’d made through the Boss in New York. Fran Healy was a great sounding board for me, as always; he’d help me with peace of mind. It was great as always seeing my brother Joe and my dad. They were still telling me, “Keep beating on the ball.”

I probably saw my family three or four times a month that year. After the 1977 World Series, George wanted to do something special for me. He offered to buy me a car, because I guess he heard somewhere that I liked cars. I didn’t need a car, so I got one for my dad. We bought it from our local dealer, Webb Cadillac, in Wyncote, Pennsylvania. My dad loved it. It had a remote start, so in the winter you could start it up, warm it up before you got in. He would drive up from Philadelphia to the game, or my friend George Beck or a couple of his friends would drive him up and back.

I really got back into reading Biblical passages and talking about faith with my friend Gary Walker. At this time in my life, I was having such difficulty, and Gary was very helpful. I didn’t feel alone when I talked to him. I didn’t have time to try to figure out Billy Martin. I had that need for guidance. I was in survival mode.