Lou Page 13

  “Billy got in a fight with Whitson and got beat up pretty good,” he said. “He’s up in his room. He’s been looking for Killer.”

  We went up to Billy’s room, and I have to say he was a pretty pathetic sight. He was standing there in his underwear, his arm in a sling, with scratches and cuts all over his face. But Billy being Billy, he was not about to nurse his wounds and call it a night.

  “I want you to go knock on Whitson’s door and tell him I want to finish this thing,” he told me.

  I thought, The scotch is really lying to him. I never did go to Whitson’s room. The next morning, I was shocked to see Billy at the ballpark, sitting in the visiting team manager’s office, making out the lineup. He managed the whole game with his arm still in a sling. After the game he asked me to accompany him in his private limo for the ride back to New York. He was happy about winning the last two games of the series against Weaver, and he even mused about possibly winning manager-of-the-year honors. But he was worried about how Mr. Steinbrenner and the media were going to look on his fight with Whitson.

  With all the nonsense and Billy’s trials and tribulations, we still wound up winning 97 games in 1985—the final one an 8–0 shutout by “Father Time” Phil Niekro that was his 300th career victory—and I thought that would probably be enough to warrant Billy’s coming back. But then a week went by after the season with no word from Mr. Steinbrenner about Billy. He finally broke his silence by declaring that he was going to leave the decision on the manager entirely up to Clyde King and his new assistant general manager, Woody Woodward. “I will have no hand in this whatsoever,” he said.

  Everybody knew that Clyde, a teetotaler who’d been a pitcher for the Dodgers in the ’40s and ’50s when they were the Yankees’ archenemies, had absolutely no use for Billy. So this was the kiss of death for Billy. After a couple of weeks of Clyde and Woody supposedly going through an interview process for the job, I got a call from Clyde asking me to come to the stadium to talk about becoming the new manager.

  I never did ask whether there really had been an actual search, but years later Woody revealed what happened: “Anyone who was around George Steinbrenner knows there were times he didn’t want to be the guy to fire someone or hire someone, and in this case, we were told that firing Billy and hiring Lou was what we were going to do. My guess is there was no thorough search on Clyde’s part, because he didn’t include me in any interviews. The one part that disturbed me about Lou was that he’d had no managerial experience. I did feel he’d learned a whole lot from Billy, who was a great manager when the game started, and I felt he had all the attributes to potentially become a Hall of Fame manager. But we were still talking about hiring a manager with no experience—in New York.”

  When I got to the stadium, Clyde greeted me warmly in his office and got right to the point.

  “Lou, we’ve decided to make a change with the manager and we want you to take over for Billy,” he said. “I trust this is what you want to do and I’ve already taken the liberty of drawing up this contract. We’re prepared to start you off at $150,000.”

  “A hundred and fifty thousand dollars?” I said. “That’s what I was making as a coach, Clyde! I can’t manage for that.”

  “No, no, no,” Clyde protested. “You were making $75,000 as a coach. I have your contract right here.”

  “That’s my Yankee contract, Clyde,” I said. “You need to call down to Mr. Steinbrenner’s office at American Shipbuilding in Tampa and check the separate contract I have with him for an additional $75,000.”

  Clyde was flustered. He was just now learning about the inner workings of Mr. Steinbrenner and the kind of secret deals he made irrespective of his general managers. We wound up agreeing to $200,000 (and nothing extra from American Ship) and so, befitting my uniform number, I was Mr. Steinbrenner’s ninth different manager in fourteen overall changes since he took ownership of the Yankees in 1973.

  Even though it happened quicker than I had anticipated, I felt I could handle the job. If I didn’t, I would have asked Mr. Steinbrenner for more time. On the other hand, I always thought he’d treat me differently from how he treated all his other managers, that he’d have more patience with me. I also never thought Billy would be coming back all the times he did. I was very naive. I remember how proud I was getting on that plane in Newark for Fort Lauderdale in February 1986 to start my managing career. It was an exciting time.

  My first order of business was putting together a coaching staff, and I will be forever grateful for Clyde and Woody bringing in Joe Altobelli to be my bench coach. We all agreed I was going to need a good, sound baseball man to sit beside me, preferably someone who had previously managed in the big leagues, and Altobelli, who’d managed sixteen years in the minor leagues before managing the Giants from 1977 to 1979 and then winning a world championship with the Orioles in 1983 (the year after Weaver retired), fit the bill perfectly. Joe’s experience and knowledge were invaluable, as well as his calming influence when Mr. Steinbrenner started getting on me. I still remember his assuring words midway through the ’86 season when, on a flight home from a road trip, he said, “Well, young pup, you’re ready now.”

  The team I inherited from Billy was much the same as that of ’85, with one notable exception. Over the winter, Mr. Steinbrenner, in an effort to shore up an aged and uncertain starting pitching rotation—which consisted of the Niekros, Phil (46) and Joe (42), Guidry (36), Whitson, and 42-year-old Tommy John, whom we’d signed as insurance—engineered a trade with his friend Jerry Reinsdorf, the owner of the White Sox, for Britt Burns, a talented left-hander who’d won 18 games in 1985. I’ll never forget the meeting we had at Mr. Steinbrenner’s Bay Harbor Hotel in Tampa in December, shortly after I’d been named manager. Clyde, Woody, and all the scouts were there, along with five or six peripheral minor-league operations people Mr. Steinbrenner always included in the meetings who could be counted on to agree with him on everything. The discussion was the prospective trade for Burns, which Mr. Steinbrenner assured was going to be a steal for us, even though there were some medical issues with him. “Young left-handers like this just don’t become available,” he declared, “so we have to move on this quickly before some other team gets to Reinsdorf.”

  At that point, Dr. John Bonamo, our team physician, stood up. “George,” he said, “I can’t emphasize this strongly enough. You cannot trade for this guy. I’ve seen his medicals and they’re awful. He’s got a degenerative hip condition and he’s a disaster waiting to happen.”

  Mr. Steinbrenner looked at Bonamo and frowned.

  “Okay, doc, we’ve heard you. You can go now.”

  After Bonamo left the room, Mr. Steinbrenner looked around and said, “He’s a doctor, what does he know? We’re baseball people here. You guys all saw Burns pitch last year. Did he look like an accident waiting to happen?”

  Nobody said anything, and a couple of days later we traded Joe Cowley, who’d won nine games as a rookie for us in ’85, and Ron Hassey, our hard-hitting backup catcher and a big Yankee Stadium fan favorite who’d hit .296 with 13 homers, to the White Sox for Burns.

  Despite some apprehensions about my starting pitching rotation, I felt really good about my team—how could you not with a lineup that included Rickey Henderson, Dave Winfield, Don Mattingly, Willie Randolph, Ken Griffey, and the two kids, Pagliarulo and Meacham, who had performed so well in ’85? It was therefore grounds for much consternation on Mr. Steinbrenner’s part that most of them were absent from the lineup for my debut as the Yankees’ manager on March 8, 1986, against the Orioles at Fort Lauderdale. It didn’t help either that Weaver was back managing the Orioles, having come out of retirement the year before. For the Yankees’ opening game of spring training, Mr. Steinbrenner had invited all his high-powered New York friends, Donald Trump, Chrysler’s chairman, Lee Iaccoca, and Bill Fugazy, the limousine mogul, only to have my first lineup stacked with nobodies. Shortly before game time, Mr. Steinbrenner burst into my office.

/>   “What the hell are you doing?” he screamed. “Who the hell are these guys in your lineup? Where’s Rickey? Where’s Mattingly? Where’s Winfield? I’ve got all my friends from New York here and you’re making me look like an idiot. They didn’t come all the way down here to see Columbus! And I would think you would want to beat Weaver in your first game.”

  I tried to explain to him that, in spring training, you want to bring your veterans along slowly while, at the same time, you try to get a good look at your youngsters early on. But he was having none of it, and I wound up telling him to leave me alone and let me run spring training the way I have to. Fortunately, we won the game, but instead of congratulating me afterward, Mr. Steinbrenner came down to the clubhouse holding up a huge sign with a picture of a gorilla and the inscription: “Patience, my ass! I’m gonna kill somebody!” It hung in the locker room the rest of the spring.

  A week later we were in Dunedin to play the Blue Jays with Britt Burns making his second start of the spring. In his previous start, he’d demonstrated a 92-plus m.p.h. fastball with good movement, along with a biting curve and changeup, and I’d thought we might really have an ace here. But after covering first base on an infield grounder in the first inning against the Blue Jays, Burns suddenly winced in pain and came limping off the field. He had to be helped to a car, where he was taken back to the Bay Harbor and then flown to Fort Lauderdale. Upon examination by our spring training team physician, Dan Kanell, it was determined Burns was indeed suffering from a degenerative hip disease. That’s when Mr. Steinbrenner called me and said, “Don’t worry. I’ve talked to a specialist at the University of Florida who said they can give Burns a hip transplant and he’ll be back pitching for us later in the season.”

  In fact, Burns never pitched again, and I had a gaping hole at the top of my rotation.

  Even before Burns broke down, I had determined to get a good, long look at three young starters, the lefty Dennis Rasmussen and the rookie righties Doug Drabek and Bob Tewksbury, with an eye on easing them into the rotation in the likelihood of my older starters breaking down. The six-foot-seven Rasmussen was a hard worker who’d especially impressed that spring, and I was ready to anoint him as my fifth starter when, on a windy day against the Texas Rangers in their bandbox of a stadium in Pompano Beach, he gave up three home runs in front of Mr. Steinbrenner, who was sitting in the stands with Billy. All spring, Billy had been bad-mouthing Rasmussen to Mr. Steinbrenner, saying he was “soft” and didn’t throw hard enough, and after that game Mr. Steinbrenner told the writers that Rasmussen had just pitched his way to Columbus. This led to my first major argument with him. I begged him to let me keep Rasmussen, and with Clyde King present, told him how important I thought it was to bring a young pitcher along in our rotation. The next day, he called me and said, “Okay, I’ve reconsidered. I know this managing job isn’t easy and there are times you have to do things you don’t want. If you want Rasmussen you can have him, but under one condition.”

  I was trying to figure out what he was getting at.

  “What’s that?” I said.

  “You’ve got to release Phil Niekro.”

  My heart sank. Release Phil Niekro? He was one of the classiest, most decent human beings I had ever known in baseball, a future Hall of Famer who’d won 16 games in each of the last two seasons for the Yankees. He’d done nothing to deserve this. But apparently Mr. Steinbrenner—and even King, the man who signed him originally—felt that Phil, who would turn forty-seven on April 1, couldn’t be counted on to win much more.

  This was my introduction to the worst part of being a manager—having to tell a player he’s being released. To this day, releasing Phil Niekro was the hardest thing I ever had to do in baseball. I couldn’t throw the organization under the bus. I had to tell him this was everybody’s decision, but typical of Phil, he made it easy for me.

  “I understand, Lou,” he said. “I’ve enjoyed my time here and I wish I could’ve pitched for you. But I’m not done. I know I can still help some team.”

  He wasn’t done either. He signed on with the Indians a few days later and won 18 more games for them over the next two seasons to finish with 318 for his career. As it turned out, Phil made 34 starts for the Indians in 1986, while the rest of my rotation—with the notable exception of Rasmussen—all fell apart. Guidry and Joe Niekro started out 8–1 up to May 10 before sustaining injuries and went 10–21 the rest of the way. John was also on the disabled list for two months. And then there was Whitson, the high-stress Tennessean who even before his scrap with Billy had a terrible time adjusting to New York after years of pitching in laid-back San Diego and the designated hitter–less National League. The five-year, $4.5 million free-agent contract Whitson signed with the Yankees in 1984 was another example of Mr. Steinbrenner’s blind allegiance to the player agent Tom Reich. For that kind of money, the fans expected Whitson to pitch like an ace—and when he didn’t, they got on him, in his words, unmercifully, to the point where he claimed they would follow him home from Yankee Stadium and put tacks in his driveway.

  I started Whitson against the Royals in the second game of the season and he couldn’t get out of the third inning, leaving to a chorus of boos and catcalls from the Yankee Stadium crowd. He pitched much better in his next start against the same Royals, only this time in Kansas City, and at that point, after consultation with Clyde King and my pitching coach, Sammy Ellis, we decided to have Whitson start only on the road. He was actually a pretty good pitcher, but he really struggled in New York, fighting it, and by mid-June, with his ERA nearly 7.00, we decided to trade him. Right before we did, he came to me and said, “I’ve got to beat this,” and asked me to start him in New York. The day he was supposed to start, I was in my office when our team trainer, Gene Monahan, summoned me to the trainer’s room. There was poor Whitson, sitting there on the trainer’s table, hyperventilating, trying to catch his breath.

  “We’ve got to scratch him,” I said, and a couple of days later we traded him back to San Diego.

  Meanwhile, I had to find yet another starter, and for the rest of the season I moved Drabek and Tewksbury into the rotation, and they both pitched well. Along with Rasmussen, who justified my confidence in him in the spring by leading the staff with 18 wins, the three young starters were some of the most satisfying aspects of the ’86 season. But after being 56–43, only three games out of first place, on July 27, we went 14–17 through August and gradually faded out of the race. We had lost four of the first five games of a road trip when we were playing the Indians in Cleveland on August 2, in the Saturday national TV game.

  I was in a bad mood to begin with and looking to take my frustrations out on somebody when I remembered something Mr. Steinbrenner had told me when he hired me as manager: “Remember, baseball is entertainment, and if you get kicked out of a game, put on a nice show!” I knew he’d be watching the game, and when a close call at first base went against us in the sixth inning, I charged out of the dugout, hollering and kicking dirt and quickly earning an ejection, at which point I then flung my hat to the ground and began kicking it as well.

  As my tirade continued, our bat boy picked up my cap, which was one of my props, and handed it to me. “Put that cap down!” I screamed at him. “You’re ruining my show!”

  Terrified, he dropped the cap and scampered back to the dugout.

  After the game, which we lost, 6–5, in ten innings, I happened to mention it was Anita’s birthday, and when the writers got back upstairs to the press box, they called her to ask if she’d seen my performance on national TV.

  “All I can say,” she said, sighing, “is that I’m forty-three years old today and I feel like I’m married to a four-year-old.”

  Considering all the pitching problems, I felt I’d done a pretty decent job to finish the season with 90 wins. Nevertheless, Mr. Steinbrenner was slow to give me a vote of confidence about the next year and was mostly silent after an ominous (or is the word “anonymous”?) column by his pal H
oward Cosell appeared in the Daily News in early September in which Cosell essentially said I’d done a terrible job and “that at least 10 or more games were lost” because of my managing. When I called Mr. Steinbrenner about the column, he vehemently denied having anything to do with it—even though Cosell was a visible frequent guest alongside him in his private box throughout the season. It probably didn’t help either that, across town, the Mets were on their way to winning the world championship. A week after the season, Mr. Steinbrenner finally called and said he was giving me another year.

  At the same time, Clyde King was able to convince Mr. Steinbrenner to let him return to being a special adviser, which meant his assistant, Woody Woodward, would be ascending to the general manager’s job. I’ll say this about Clyde: he was a master at navigating the nomenclature. I actually had worked more closely with Woody during the ’86 season, as he made a lot of trips with the team and was usually the person who called me about player personnel decisions the front office was making. Woody and I had a lot in common—he was a native Floridian who went to Florida State and had been a shortstop in the majors with the Braves and Reds in the ’60s. He was the same age as I was and he was a very astute baseball man. In one of our first get-togethers after I was officially coming back, we both agreed that, in all our trade and free-agent dealings, we needed to have an eye on getting the team younger. In particular, we needed to make sure we held on to our young starting pitchers, Rasmussen, Drabek, and Tewksbury.