The Mouth That Roared (34 page)

*

Despite his soothing words in the press, George was clearly rattled by our slow start.

It wasn’t long before he started taking jabs at my coaches. He blamed first-base coach Pat Corrales for Rickey Henderson’s dramatic decline in stolen bases, and he chastised third-base coach Lee Elia for not scoring more guys from second base on singles. This was George being George. It wasn’t as if Pat could steal the bases for a clearly unmotivated Rickey. And Lee couldn’t make guys like Ken Phelps and Steve Balboni fast enough to round the bases more quickly. I’d guess Rickey, if he felt like it, probably could have run from home to second faster than either of those guys could have run to first. My coaches were among the best teachers in the game, and it made me angry to hear them unfairly criticized.

When Don Mattingly struggled at the plate early in the season, George went after our hitting coach, Frank Howard.

Slumps are part of the game. Even career .300 hitters like Donnie went through rough patches. A month into the ’89 season, he was hitting just .200, but I had no doubt he would soon regain his form. But George felt we had a crisis on our hands. He told me he wanted Lou Piniella, my predecessor as manager, to come down from the Yankees broadcast booth to work with Donnie on his swing. I had a problem with that. Lou was a good hitting coach, but he wasn’t
our
hitting coach. Hondo was.

“We’re on top of it,” I told George. “If you want Hondo and Lou to compare notes, that’s fine with me. But I want Hondo to be the one who works with Donnie.”

“No, I want Lou to come down,” he repeated.

With the season just a month old, I wasn’t yet at the point where I felt I would gain anything by openly defying George.

I went to Hondo and explained what was going on. To his credit, he didn’t get territorial.

“Bring him down, D,” Hondo said. “If it helps Donnie, that’s great. If not, it was worth a try.”

I didn’t take it nearly as well as Hondo. The whole situation kind of frosted me. I sensed the nitpicking against me and my coaches was just beginning.

Lou worked with Donnie, who brought his average back up to a respectable level. I guess we’ll never know whether that was the result of a professional hitter’s adjustments or a meddling owner’s intervention.

You would think George’s deep involvement in the daily operations of the ballclub would have negated the need for a general manager. You’d be wrong. Late in spring training, George decided he needed
two
GMs. Bob Quinn, the GM who hired me, carried the official title, but Syd Thrift shared the duties of the job.

I didn’t have a real problem with this unusual arrangement. Syd and I got along well, and Bob and I had known each other since I was the Phillies’ assistant farm director and he was GM of our Double-A team. Syd and Bob were knowledgeable baseball guys, but George all but neutered them. Rather than devising and implementing strategies, they simply did what George wanted. And that kept them plenty busy.

At the end of the day, it was George who ran the show. A shocking revelation, I know.

*

By the time George traded a disgruntled Rickey Henderson to the A’s, my honeymoon with the Yankees was long over. When he left the Bronx, Rickey was hitting just .247 and on pace for a career low in stolen bases. Rickey didn’t get his new contract from the Yankees, so he took his poutiness out on the field with him.

In return for Rickey, Oakland sent us two relief pitchers and outfielder Luis Polonia. Before long, those relievers, Eric Plunk and Greg Cadaret, joined the starting rotation. And Polonia and Mel Hall, neither of whom was with us at the start of spring training, were sharing time in left field.

Depleted by injuries and limited in talent, it looked like we might still salvage the season. In mid-July, we were a game over .500 and in second place behind the Orioles.

Several guys stepped up to help our patchwork team stay competitive.

Deion Sanders, who made his major league debut at the end of May, infused energy and excitement into the clubhouse. At second base, Steve Sax, in his first year with the Yankees, went out and had an All-Star season, more than filling the shoes of the departed Willie Randolph. And Alvaro Espinoza, the fill-in at shortstop for Santana, gave us a workmanlike effort every day.

Arguably our best pitcher was closer Dave Righetti, who busted his ass and saved a lot of games. Lee Guetterman was also effective out of the bullpen. Unfortunately, the rest of our relief corps cost us a lot of games. Our starting pitching wasn’t much better. Andy Hawkins ended up leading the team in wins and losses, with 15 apiece. No other pitcher on our staff won more than six.

At the end of July, we lost nine of 10 games and fell all the way to sixth place in the American League East. Despite that slide, we were still only 7½ games out of first.

George intimated that changes might soon take place, but he insisted my job was safe. He blamed injuries and underperforming players for the disappointing season. The situation required patience, he told reporters.

*

There has always been a misconception that George and I were constantly at each other’s throats during my time with the Yankees. The truth is George rarely picked up the phone and called me. He occasionally asked to sit down with me and my coaches, but he ended up canceling those meetings more often than not. Other than the dispute over how to handle Mattingly’s slump, we coexisted pretty well. He didn’t ask me to fill out the lineup card a certain way or demand that I play anybody. He did, however, issue edicts from time to time, like when he pissed off the team by banning beer on the team’s charter flights. That came after Rickey Henderson told the media that several members of the previous year’s team drank to excess.

All in all, George and I had a functional relationship—until we didn’t anymore.

I’ve never been one to run from a fight, whether it’s with a player, owner, manager, or general manager. And I found myself in a hell of a fight after George second-guessed my coaches and me one too many times. It came during an August series against the Minnesota Twins. George complained about the defensive positioning of our outfielders and my choice of a pinch hitter in the ninth inning of a game. He also wondered aloud if we were getting the most out of our players.

I wasn’t going to let George get away with that.

“The statement that ‘Manager George’ made about game situations is a very logical second-guess,” I told a couple dozen reporters who were about to dazzle their editors with the best back-page story of the baseball season. “And hindsight always being 20-20, that’s why managers get gray…It’s easy [for George] to view it from above.”

I felt I expressed my feelings well. But most of what I said was immediately forgotten. Everyone seized on two words: Manager George.

The last Yankees manager to stand up to George like that was Gene Michael, who literally dared George to fire him in 1982. George obliged.

I wasn’t daring George to let me go. I just didn’t appreciate his penchant for telling veteran baseball guys how to do their jobs.

And he didn’t appreciate that I called him out for it.

George tried to laugh off the comment. “It was a cute remark,” he told reporters. “He’s a cute guy.”

He thought I was a cute guy? That was a first.

George also reminded everyone of his background in coaching. I guess carrying a clipboard on a college football sideline for a couple of years had taught him to recognize when outfielders were playing too deep.

As George and I went back and forth in the press, Piniella jumped in the fray by suggesting I move center fielder Roberto Kelly up in the batting order.

Everyone was suddenly a critic. But George once again affirmed I was his guy.

His loyalty to me was a mile wide and a centimeter deep. I knew I wasn’t going to be in the Bronx much longer.

*

Less than two weeks after my third vote of confidence from George, I got fired.

I knew something was brewing when I heard George, who rarely traveled with the team, had tagged along on a road trip to Detroit. We had just gotten swept in Milwaukee to fall 10 games under .500 for the first time all season. Nobody was in a particularly good mood.

In the first game of the series at Tiger Stadium, Righetti helped me go out a winner by recording a five-out save.

Early the next morning, George summoned me to his hotel suite.

“Dallas, I wanna make some changes,” he told me. “I’m going to replace the coaching staff.”

He was going to fire my coaches but spare me? I didn’t buy it.

“Look, George, I’m going to make this easy for you,” I replied. “You’re using my coaching staff to get back at me. I hired the coaching staff. I think they’re excellent baseball guys. If you’re going to fire them, you might as well fire me.”

I didn’t have to do any arm twisting. I later found out my replacement, Bucky Dent, had already arrived in Detroit.

The meeting with George didn’t last more than a few minutes. I didn’t like his decision to let me and my coaches go, but I accepted it.

For one last time, we both told our stories in the press. I explained that loyalty to my coaches precluded any chance of me staying if they all got fired. George countered by saying I had intentionally provoked him with the “Manager George” comment because I knew I couldn’t turn the Yankees into a winning team.

After I was fired, I went back to speak to George. It was to ask him for a favor. Hondo was going through a divorce at the time and having a rough go financially. Elia, Corrales, Fox, and I could afford to be unemployed for a while, but I hoped George could find a place in the organization for Hondo.

George had his flaws, but at the end of the day, he was a decent man. He called in all the coaches except Hondo and told them they were gone. Then he called in Frank and asked him to replace Bucky Dent as manager of Triple-A Columbus.

Hondo’s reply to George impressed the hell out of me: “Thanks, George, but I came in with the big boy, and I’m leaving with the big boy.”

That was an incredible display of loyalty and friendship.

*

Whoever had August 18 was the winner of Mr. Carpenter’s pool.

My time with the Yankees ended almost as soon as it began. Under Dent, the team finished the year 18–22. After another slow start in 1990, Bucky got the axe, too. That made 18 managerial changes in 17 years for the Yankees.

Looking back on my months as Yankees skipper, I’m disappointed I wasn’t given more time to produce positive results. We didn’t have a really talented baseball team in 1989, but I would have liked to stick around long enough to manage under better circumstances. It’s frustrating when you don’t have an opportunity to do the job you’re hired to do. Of course, it’s difficult to function in any job where your boss is seeking to control you.

I guess we were doomed from the beginning by my big mouth and George’s lack of patience.

After leaving Yankee Stadium for the last time, I never spoke to George again. It wasn’t a conscious decision on my part. We just never had a reason to talk. I never went back to Yankee Stadium again, either, not for an old timers’ game, the last game at the old stadium, or the first game at the new stadium.

Maybe events would have turned out differently if I had taken the Yankees job a year later. In July 1990, Major League Baseball commissioner Fay Vincent came down hard on George for hiring a gambler to dig up dirt on Dave Winfield. Vincent banned George from any involvement in the day-to-day operation of the Yankees. The ban was lifted a couple of years later, but even after regaining the ability to push his agenda, George chose to take a backseat in running the team.

The old George insinuated himself too much into situations others were better equipped to handle, but I still admired and respected his overall intentions. Unlike a lot of owners, he wanted to win, and he put his money where his mouth was.

I don’t regret having taken the Yankees job. I enjoyed wearing the pinstripes and managing in the House That Ruth Built. Those days hold a special place in my memory.

I
WASN’T THE ONLY MEMBER
of the Green family to go from the Cubs to the Yankees before the 1989 season. My son John had pitched reasonably well in the Cubs system for four years, and while I still questioned whether he had enough talent to reach the majors, I knew he could hold his own at the minor league level.

I asked George Bradley, the Yankees vice president of player development, if he had room for John down on the farm. I didn’t apply any pressure and wasn’t asking for any favors. I just gave him my honest assessment of John’s abilities. Bradley had enough faith in my judgment to make a trade for John.

John was with me at spring training before reporting to Single-A Fort Lauderdale. At 25, he was one of the oldest players on the team. But that didn’t bother him. He knew from having grown up with me as a father that promotions came to those who earned them. John posted a 3.40 ERA in 21 relief appearances in the Florida State League, enough to earn a call-up later in the season to Double-A Albany-Colonie. He pitched even better for that club, where he played for manager Buck Showalter and helped the team win the Eastern League championship.