Becoming Mr. October (9780385533126) (15 page)

But when you’re back in the office every day, I would be in a situation
where I felt it was necessary to talk. I’m going to clam up, walk by you enough times that you’re going to reach out and say, “Hey, man, what the hell’s wrong with you? You’re too important a figure to walk around like nothing’s happening.” So eventually we would have some kind of conversation.

I’m not here to say my way was the right way. But this is what I did to try to get it out.

That’s how I saw it at the time. Me against them: “We don’t need to go to dinner; we don’t need to be buddies. I’m good with it. I don’t even need to come into the locker room. I’ll dress down in the street. I can go dress around the corner.”

So I told the writers afterward I had a bad hand, that’s why I didn’t shake hands after that home run off Lee. I knew they wouldn’t buy it. I didn’t expect them to. I was just saying stupid stuff because I thought what was going on was stupid.

Of course they went and asked the other players if they believed me. They asked Thurman for a quote. He said, “He’s a f—in’ liar. How’s that for a quote?”

I didn’t care. Except for Fran Healy, and maybe a couple of other guys, most everybody on that team was against me anyway. I wasn’t going to let them get away with everything they did in the clubhouse, stare at me, curse me from across the room, kick my equipment bag. Refuse to locker next to me, not even ask for my side of the story. I wasn’t going to let them do that and then have them act like it was all okay out on the field. That they were above it all. I wasn’t going to pretend that that wasn’t going on.

We get back in the clubhouse. Billy Martin tells the writers about me, “Ask him about the ball that got away from him at the start of the eighth. He probably forgets about those things.”

Here’s a manager, his team’s in crisis, and all he can think to do is taunt one of his best players about a fielding play. He was right that I forgot about things like that. That’s what you have to do as a major-league ballplayer: forget about the mistakes you make and move on.

But Billy wasn’t going to let anything go. Have you ever heard of
anything like that? You ever hear any manager saying anything like that today?

Things just kept deteriorating from there. A day or so later, someone put a note in my uniform pants that I found when I put them on. It said, “Get your f—in’ ass out of here.”

I saved that note for a long time. I never did find out for sure who put it there. Whoever did it, the whole situation was getting out of control fast. Finally, the next day or the day after, I went into Billy’s office and had a meeting with him and the coaches. I told him I thought we should have a team meeting so I could apologize. By then, I was just trying to do the right thing.

Billy told the press he didn’t think we should have a meeting. I don’t know why. I just thought, “Wow, why would he say it was a bad idea?”

So instead, over the next couple days, I went around and apologized to everybody in the clubhouse myself. I said, “I just want to tell the guys I’m sorry for not shaking their hands after I hit the home run.”

A lot of them, including Thurman, didn’t say anything. Some of them had been out in the bullpen, and a couple of them told me, “What are you apologizing to me for? I wasn’t there!”

One of them told the writers, “Can you believe this? This is becoming a f—ing circus.” Another one said, “It’s like
Mary Hartman, Mary Hartman
,” the soap opera send-up of the time. Both said it anonymously, of course.

I didn’t see why it kept going. I mean, we got into it, and I apologized. That kind of thing happens on a team over the long season, especially when you have a lot of high-spirited guys trying to win. For me, it was over.

A couple days later, I hit another home run, and when I came in the dugout, I shook every hand I could find. I would’ve shaken the peanut vendor’s hand if he’d come down there. Thurman made sure to go and walk to the other end of the dugout. Nice …

A little later, Thurman tripled and scored. I tried to shake his hand. He ignored me. The next day, he scored a run, and I stuck out my hand to him on the on-deck circle. He ran right past me. I felt like a traffic cop.

When the writers asked me about why he didn’t take my hand, I told them, “I don’t think he saw it.” When they asked him, Thurman said, “I saw it.”

I thought that was funny, but I had no one to share a laugh with—only Fran, and he was in the bullpen.

I told the press, “I’m just trying to be a good guy.” And I was.

Next game, Thurman shook my hand again.

“Peace, it’s wonderful!” It seemed like things were starting to get right again. By now Billy had started taking me out of right field in the late innings because he said he couldn’t trust my fielding. This was his way of showing me up and maintaining control, showing George and me.

I just ignored that. I just kept coming to the park, trying to play my game.

By mid-June, we were in first place again, and I thought we might finally be ready to turn everything around and play like I knew we could.

Then we went to Boston.

I
KNOW
I’
VE
had worse days in baseball than that series up in Boston. I just can’t remember when.

The Red Sox that year were a great team, with a great lineup. Tremendous. Jim Rice, George Scott, Freddie Lynn. Yaz. Dwight Evans, Carlton Fisk. They had Butch Hobson batting ninth, where he hit thirty home runs and drove in 112 runs.

That’s how good they were, their number nine guy driving in 112 runs. And we caught them just when they were getting hot.

Second pitch of the first inning in the first game there, Rick Burleson hit a ball off Catfish Hunter into the screen over the Green Monster in left. Next batter, Freddie Lynn, homers to right-center. Before the first inning was over, they had hit four home runs. Four of their first six batters.

We actually came back in that game and tied the score, but later Dick Tidrow gave up a couple more home runs, and we lost, 9–4.

You thought, “Wow! These guys are just killing us!”

You know, you never like to get beat like that. And I was very concerned about Catfish, because it was obvious that his arm wasn’t right, not being able to get out of the first inning. I’d never seen that from him before. But sometimes you just run into a team that’s hot, and there’s nothing you can do. I mean, it was just
June
, and that was just one game. It was a drubbing—but after it was over, we were still just a half game out of first place.

The next afternoon, I was still feeling pretty good. I was feeling like, they got us yesterday, let’s go get ’em today.

But what I heard much later from Fran Healy was that Billy Martin
was already thinking before the game of what he could do to embarrass me. I only found this out in 2012.

Why, I don’t know. Before the game, I was sitting on the bench with Bucky Dent. Billy didn’t have any confidence in Bucky’s bat; he kept making him bunt all the time and pinch-hitting for him. The day before, he put on a squeeze play with Bucky at the plate and Lou Piniella on third and me on second. It was just the third inning, with one out, and the score was tied. But Billy had Dent try to lay one down, and he missed the pitch and Lou was tagged out at the plate, and there went the rally.

Billy comes over to us before the game, and he tells Bucky not to worry about missing that bunt. Then he says to me, “I thought it was a good play. What did you think?”

Now, all of a sudden, he wants to know what I think. He wants me to back him up in front of Bucky.

I thought, “Whoa, here’s the enemy, at my locker. Now we’re buddies? Huh? I was born at night, but I wasn’t born last night.”

So I told him, “If you really want my opinion, I think Bucky feels like you take the bat out of his hand, making him squeeze in the second and third inning.”

What was I going to say? “You don’t trust your hitter enough to see if he can hit a single in the third inning of a tie game in June?” If he wanted to put on a squeeze, fine. But if he wanted to ask my opinion, I was going to tell him the truth.

I think in the end Bucky Dent proved he could hit the ball all right in Fenway Park.

Who knows, maybe that was another test, I don’t know. Maybe I was supposed to prove my loyalty to Billy by going along with whatever he said.

Whatever the case, come the seventh inning, they’re hitting Mike Torrez hard this time. The Sox are up 7–4, and they get a runner on, and then Jim Rice takes a full swing—and hits a pop fly out toward right. I was playing Rice deep because … he was Jim Rice, a great slugger who’d hit thirty to forty home runs a year.

Right field is a sun field in Fenway Park. Rice took a big cut, but he hit the ball off the handle of his bat and flared a short pop into shallow right. I took a step back at first, and only then did I see it
was flared. Then I honestly thought Willie Randolph had it, so I held up. But the ball kept going over his head, it fell for a hit. I ran in and fielded it, but with the big swing, the sun, and the step back, the ball fell in. Rice was running all the way, and by the time I could get to the ball, he had a hustle double.

Billy goes out to make a pitching change then. But that wasn’t all. When he got the ball from Mike Torrez on the mound, Mike said later, Billy told him, “Watch this.”

Thurman told Fran Healy the same thing later. When Billy got out there, Munson said, “How’d that ball drop in?” Then, while they were out on the mound waiting for Sparky Lyle to come in from the bullpen, Martin told them, “I’m going to go get that son of a bitch,” looking out at me. Mike said, “Billy, don’t do it.” But he was already getting Paul Blair to go out to right field and replace me.

The crowd saw Blair coming before I did. I was talking with some of the players over the railing in the bullpen in right, like I usually did during a pitching change. I heard this roar from the crowd, and I looked around, and there was Paul Blair, coming out to take my place.

I was in total amazement. Completely surprised. I asked him when he got out there, “You coming after me?” And he said yeah, and I asked him why. And Blair said, “You got to take that up with Billy”—though I felt Blair was enjoying it.

I ran back to the dugout, and Billy was waiting for me on the top step. He was ready for it. It was like he was onstage, and he was dying to show me up.

I put my arms out and I asked him, “What’s going on?” I asked him, “What did I do?” because I genuinely didn’t understand.

He said, “What do you mean, what did you do? You know what you did!”

I responded, “No, I don’t!”

I just didn’t know what was going on. I said, “What are you talking about?” and I started to walk away. And he goes off again. He started cussing, and he was so mad he was incoherent. I couldn’t understand him very much.

I took my glasses off when I came into the dugout, and people took that to mean I was getting ready to fight. But I came in there with complete control. I was disappointed, I was confused, it was hot
and muggy, and I was sweating. You sweat, your glasses fog up. And I was a little concerned, because he had a reputation as somebody who would sucker punch you, so I wanted to be prepared for that.

But I knew enough not to fight Billy Martin. I knew at that time, 1977, here I was the highest-paid player in the game, black, and my thoughts were then—and still are today—that people were going to say, “I told you
they
”—blacks—“can’t handle the money. I told you that they don’t know what they’re doing when they’re on top. Look at how they act.” Regardless, I was representing minorities at this time and on this stage.

There was no way I was going to embarrass my community, or my family, or George Steinbrenner. No way I was going to embarrass
myself
by getting in a fight with this guy and scar my career.

Martin was older, a little guy, and he liked the sauce. And regardless, he was still my manager. He was the acting authority. I’m a black man. I would lose every way you could add it up in that situation if I had responded physically.

So I basically turned away. I said, “Billy, I don’t know what the
freak
you want …” I told him, “You are not a man.” And I walked away.

And he’s yelling behind me, “I’ll show you whether I’m a man or not!” He was yelling that he was going to kick my butt and all this kind of stuff.

Billy was almost fifty years old by then, and he must’ve weighed 155 pounds soaking wet. All that alcohol was going to his brain if he thought he was going to whup me.

I just said, “If you think you’re going to kick my butt, you must be crazy.” And I walked out of the dugout and down to the clubhouse.

Afterward, they said how Dick Howser had to grab him, and Ellie Howard and Yogi Berra had to grab him. But you have to look at how close Billy Martin was to me in those pictures of the dugout. Now, Howard was a great catcher; Yogi was a great catcher. Those guys had great reflexes.

But neither one of them would’ve been able to stop Billy Martin if he really wanted to fight me. Nobody could have got between us if he wanted to go.

He knew he was acting. He didn’t want to take me on. It would’ve been like ordering an ice cream cone and getting a whole gallon.