The Mouth That Roared (33 page)

Due largely to Ryne Sandberg and his young teammates, the Cubs won a division title two years after my departure. Jimmy Frey didn’t have to do much to improve the team. By and large, it was my guys who won the division. And it was my guys who lost to the Giants in the National League Championship Series.

That was the beginning of the end for the Cubs. Jimmy wasn’t cut out to be a general manager. Under his leadership, the team went into a tailspin after the 1989 season. The Tribune Company replaced him with Larry Himes in 1991. Under Himes, the Cubs continued to struggle.

With the Cubs, it’s all a vicious cycle, I guess. After some good years in the early 2000s, the Cubs cleaned house again before the 2012 season, hoping another new regime might finally get them to the promised land.

I had really hoped to get them there first.

The next team I went to practically lived in the promised land, though it had been in exile for more than a decade when I got there. It just so happened that team had an owner who liked to shoot his mouth off as much as I did.

George Steinbrenner and I went way back.

When I pitched for Triple-A Buffalo in 1960, George came to town a lot to check the operations at his family’s shipping company. He was close friends with Max Margolis, the owner of the Royal Arms, a tavern located below the $8-a-week apartment I shared with teammate Bobby Wine. George would pop in on weekends while Bobby and I were having dinner. Sometimes we’d stick around and have a few drinks with him. He seemed intrigued by our baseball careers. “I’m gonna buy a team someday,” he informed us. We thought that was just talk. At the time, George’s sports experience was limited to playing a season at halfback for Williams College and serving as an assistant football coach at Northwestern and Purdue.

But wouldn’t you know it, George followed through on his promise by purchasing the Yankees in 1973. I guess George had a lot of affection for his time in Buffalo. He immediately hired Margolis to run the restaurant at Yankee Stadium. And whenever he ran into Bobby, he’d reminisce about the nights at the Royal Arms.

While I was GM of the Cubs, George and I developed a mutual respect for each other, probably because we were both no-bullshit kind of guys. George told me he liked how I went about business in 1980 with the Phillies. He also admired that I was helping make the Cubs relevant again. He’d rib my Tribune bosses at owners meetings by saying, “I should have hired Dallas before you did. Maybe I’ll still have that chance.”

That was just George’s style. He never violated baseball’s tampering rules, nor did he ever let me know I’d be a front-runner for any job openings with the Yankees.

In 1988, George ousted Lou Piniella as manager for the second time in less than a year. That’s when I got a call from Yankees general manager Bob Quinn, who was the son of former Phillies GM John Quinn. Bob asked if I’d be interested in field managing again. Without getting into the details of my failed plan to manage the Cubs in 1988, I told Bob I was open to the idea. Before the conversation ended, he offered me the job. A few days later, I signed a two-year contract. The opportunity was too attractive to pass up. It gave me a chance to associate myself with one of the most storied franchises in all of sports.

Sylvia and I rented a house about 10 miles from Yankee Stadium in Saddle Brook, New Jersey. Two-year contract or not, I’d be working for George. We decided to enter into a month-to-month lease agreement with the landlord.

On the day of my hiring, I told reporters I knew what I was getting into. “Any management situation is liable to explode,” I said. “I know it’s part of the game. I’m not afraid to cross any bridge that comes to me.”

George had hired and fired a parade of managers since buying the team. You didn’t have to be a math whiz to figure out how often he changed his mind about someone. In 16 years, he had ordered 16 managerial changes.

I came in under a different set of circumstances, however. I was only the second manager hired from outside the Yankees organization. And I was the first George permitted to hire his own coaching staff. To me, that was acknowledgment from the top that the team needed an infusion of new blood.

The staff I assembled included four former major league managers: Lee Elia, Pat Corrales, Frank Howard, and Charlie Fox, as well as two other solid baseball guys, Billy Connors and John Stearns.

The Yankees were accustomed to winning titles. That must have made the 1980s a frustrating time for George. After winning back-to-back championships in 1977 and 1978, the Yankees had entered a historic dry spell. Since the 1910s, the team had never gone an entire decade without winning at least one World Series. When I came on board, that streak was in jeopardy of coming to an end. The Yankees were coming off an 85–76 season, a decent record for most teams but the worst mark in six years for the Yankees.

The moment I took the job in New York, my friends in Philadelphia started making bets on when George would kick me to the curb. Former Phillies owner Bob Carpenter told me as much when I ran into him at a University of Delaware football game. I got a hearty laugh out of that. I hoped I would be the son of a bitch who convinced George to fade into the background.

*

Before taking the Yankees job, I had spent only one month of my 33-year baseball career in the American League. That month came in the spring of 1965 when I pitched six games for the Washington Senators.

Still, I understood that Yankee Stadium was hallowed ground.

I recognized that the first time I attended a game there in 1956. After my second year of pro ball, a couple of friends and I decided it would be fun to try and get tickets for a postseason game in the Bronx.

Kenny Mahan, Bill Kelly, and I ended up securing bleacher seats for Game 5 of the World Series between the Yankees and the Brooklyn Dodgers. We took the train up from Wilmington and arrived at the stadium hours before game time. We were among the first people in the bleachers when the gates opened. It was a thrill to see Jackie Robinson, Gil Hodges, and Duke Snider trot out onto the field for pregame warm-ups. When they left, Mickey Mantle, Yogi Berra, and Enos Slaughter took their place.

It was a great day already, and the game hadn’t even started.

With the series tied at two games apiece, Sal Maglie and Don Larsen each carried shutouts into the fourth inning. Then the Yankees got on the board when Mantle hit a Maglie pitch into the stands. The Yankees scored again in the sixth to take a 2–0 lead.

The Dodgers couldn’t get to Larsen.

In the seventh inning, I looked up at the scoreboard and noticed Brooklyn had nothing. No runs, no hits, no walks, no base runners.

I wasn’t rooting for either team, but at that point, I started to cheer for history. And Don Larsen delivered it, throwing the only perfect game to date in a World Series game.

I didn’t view managing the Yankees as just another baseball job. They were a special franchise. I learned that on the day Berra jumped into Larsen’s arms to celebrate the perfect game. I was excited to wear the same pinstripes as Ruth, DiMaggio, Gehrig, and all the other Yankees legends.

I knew full well, however, that tradition doesn’t win pennants. Ballplayers do.

*

My problems in the Bronx started before the season did.

I would have put a starting outfield of Dave Winfield, Rickey Henderson, and Claudell Washington up against anyone in the majors.

Unfortunately, that lineup never materialized.

George promised he would retain Washington, who was a free agent, but he allowed the Angels to outbid him. At least we still had Winfield and Henderson—or so I thought.

Early in spring training, Winfield left the field with back spasms. A few weeks later, he underwent surgery to remove a herniated disc. He didn’t play a game all season.

That still left us with Henderson, the best leadoff hitter in the game. But I soon learned that when Rickey was dissatisfied, he hardly played like it.

Starting in spring training, Rickey caused me headaches. He arrived late for camp in protest of George’s refusal to renegotiate his contract following a season in which he hit .305 and stole 93 bases. When asked my thoughts on Rickey’s tardiness, I stated in no uncertain terms that I, not Rickey, was leading the Yankees. The New York press ate it up and braced itself for a Dallas Green meltdown when Rickey finally showed his face at camp.

A few days later, I saw Rickey stroll into our spring training complex. I immediately invited him into my office for a little chat.

“Nice to see you, Rickey,” I told him. “Now that you’re here, I want to make sure you understand that, from now on, you show up on time and play your ass off. We’ll need you this season.”

That was it. There was no yelling or screaming. But the newspapers still had a field day writing about the behind-closed-doors showdown between Rickey and his new manager. They didn’t know what transpired, so they used their imagination.

Did my words get through to Rickey? Not a chance.

He pouted during spring training, though he was occasionally generous enough to show off his talent by request. Elia had never seen Rickey in person but knew he had led the American League in steals eight out of the past nine years. An injury in 1987 was the only thing that prevented that from being nine out of nine. Before a spring training game, Elia told Corrales he wanted to see Rickey steal a base. Corrales, who seemed to get through to Rickey better than anybody on my staff, relayed the message to him. During the game against the Mets, Rickey reached base against Dwight Gooden and took off for second on the next pitch. He went in standing up. And that was the first and only base Rickey swiped all spring.

Rickey promised to be a laugh a minute all season.

At least George and I only butted heads once during spring training. It was over an older Mexican pitcher George wanted to release after a rough outing. Because we had a round of cuts scheduled in a couple of days, I didn’t see the urgency of letting him go before then. It would only serve to embarrass him and possibly strain our relations with the Mexican league. But George sent Bob Quinn down to tell me to do it right away. I said I wouldn’t. Then Syd Thrift, who had just been hired as the team’s vice president of baseball operations, paid me a visit to reiterate that George wanted the guy gone immediately. I told Syd that if George felt so strongly about it, he could come down and take care of it himself.

The guy got cut that night. And he got the news personally from the owner.

*

Already without Winfield in body and Henderson in spirit, I also had to make do with the loss of starting shortstop Rafael Santana because of a bone chip in his elbow.

When you lose two big bats and a slick-fielding middle infielder and have doubts about the attitude of your star left fielder, the last thing you can afford is a thin starting pitching rotation. A few months before the season, the team traded Rick Rhoden, whose streak of seven consecutive double-digit-win seasons made him one of the most consistent pitchers in the majors. Longtime Yankee Ron Guidry had elbow surgery in spring training and retired before making it back.

Steinbrenner and Quinn didn’t consult me before trading Rhoden to the Astros for three minor leaguers. I didn’t make a stink about it, though. After all, I was the guy who once said general managers shouldn’t tell managers when to bunt, and managers shouldn’t tell general managers when to make trades. Then again, George was notorious for blurring those lines.

We picked up starting pitchers Dave LaPoint and Andy Hawkins, but that still left us a couple of arms short of a full rotation. That’s when George offered a contract to 45-year-old Tommy John, who was just 14 wins shy of 300. He had gutted out nine wins for the Yankees in 1988, but I doubted he could keep it up much longer at his age. George wanted him on the club, and I honestly didn’t see any better options, so Tommy entered the season in our starting rotation. Not only that, he was our Opening Day starter. And he earned a victory that day.

It remained our only win for quite a while.

We started the season 1–7 and were outscored 57–15 during the seven-game losing streak. We got trounced almost every night.

The season was still young, but the verbal fireworks were about to begin.

“I’m getting sick and tired of watching it, sick and tired of seeing pitchers not get people out and seeing us get one, two, three hits,” I screamed after an 8–0 loss to the Blue Jays in which we got just one hit. “If there was a bright spot, we’d look for it, but I don’t see too many.”

Only in New York could the media question a manager’s job stability eight games into his first season with the club. But that came with the territory. Philadelphia and Chicago each had two major newspapers. The greater New York area had five:
The New York Times
,
Daily News
,
New York Post
,
Newsday
, and the
Star-Ledger
. And each tried to one-up the competition on a daily basis.

Some of the scribes reached George in Tampa, where he was looking after his sick mother, and asked him whether I should be worried about my job.

Even George wasn’t ready to throw me under the bus quite yet. “Dallas Green will continue to manage this team this year, no matter what,” he told the
Times
. “I’m committed to him, and he knows it. I know that some people will say that’s usually the kiss of death from me, but it isn’t.”