Pinstripe Empire (63 page)

As an example of diminishing good behavior, the Yankees had obtained a pitcher named Jim Hardin from the Orioles in ’71. He drove up from Baltimore with all of his possessions in his car and parked it outside the players’ entrance on 157th Street. He went downstairs to “check in” with Pete Sheehy, and then back to the street to retrieve his stuff. It was all gone. Someone had broken into his car in the ten minutes he was in the clubhouse and taken everything in broad daylight.
¹⁹

Discipline became Steinbrenner’s style with the stadium environment as well. George told Pat Kelly, his stadium manager, to buy lots of white paint and cover up the stadium graffiti every morning.

“We’ll outlast them, and we’ll win,” he said. “We can buy a lot more paint than they can.”

It worked. The graffiti artists surrendered and found other places. It was one of the first victories New York would experience with this public nuisance.

THE HOME OPENER featured another conflict between Steinbrenner and Burke. When Bobby Murcer (whose number was on the haircut list) made the game’s next-to-last out, Steinbrenner bristled. “There’s your goddamn hundred-thousand-a-year ballplayer,” he shouted.

Murcer signed a $100,000 contract in spring training, joining DiMaggio and Mantle as the only Yankees at that level.

ON APRIL 25, nineteen days into the season, Burke resigned as co–general partner. I distributed a simple release in the press box during a day game. Burke requested that he become a limited partner and make a settlement on his personal-services contract. That was done, and Burke got into his 260Z and drove off. His Yankee days were over.

He would go on to run Madison Square Garden, where he found the going equally rough with the Knicks and Rangers. Ultimately his reputation was that he had “humanized” the Yankees, made them a more fan-friendly team, but just couldn’t produce winners

The media always liked him, but acknowledged his shortcomings. Howard Berk followed him to Madison Square Garden soon after, making him the first employee to leave the team after the new ownership arrived. Many would follow.

In 1982 Burke retired and moved to Ireland, where he died in 1987. I attended his memorial service at St. Patrick’s Cathedral and found myself sitting next to author Kurt Vonnegut. Maybe that was all you needed to know about Michael Burke; he could attract Vonnegut but never did find a second baseman to replace Clarke.

AS FOR THE Yankees of 1973, they were in first place from June 20 to August 2, and once again we got busy with playoff and World Series preparations. On July 20, in a twi-night doubleheader with the White Sox at Yankee Stadium, knuckleballer Wilbur Wood started and lost both games. (He was
knocked out early in the first game; Fishel leaned over to me in the press box and predicted he’d start the nightcap.) The fiftieth-anniversary season was shaping up as a thrilling one.

Gabe Paul moved into Howard Berk’s office, and although MacPhail was still the general manager, Paul clearly had become an influential force. At the trading deadline, the Yankees got Sam McDowell from the Giants and Pat Dobson from the Braves, two proven workhorse starting pitchers.

“If we don’t win now, we only have ourselves to blame,” said Murcer.

McDowell was the hardest-throwing Yankee starter since Bob Turley: A 10-strikeout game for him was routine. He had built his reputation under Paul with the Indians but now was in need of a comeback. Unfortunately, alcohol was consuming his life and seriously damaging his career. Dobson, a tenacious right-hander, had been one of four Oriole starters to win 20 in 1971.

But the two additions won only 14 games in the second half of the season, and the team went into an overall collapse, winning just 20 of 52 after their high-water mark. Not only did bad play doom them to fourth place in the AL East, but the fans had had it with the manager, and Houk heard boos and saw banners at every home game. Those three pennants in 1961–63 were now a distant memory.

Not only that, but the Mets, managed by Berra, were in a close race, and despite an 82–79 record—just two wins better than the Yankees—won the NL East, beat the Reds in the NLCS, and took the World Series to seven games before losing.

ON AUGUST 1 at Fenway Park, in the ninth inning of a 2–2 game, Munson barreled hard into Boston catcher Carlton Fisk. The collision quickly escalated to punching, emptying the benches into a big brawl. Both catchers were ejected.

Despite their geographic proximity, Boston and New York did not yet have the “rivalry” that would become the best one in sports. A true baseball rivalry requires that both teams be strong (unlike traditional college football rivalries), and, going back to the sale of Babe Ruth, the Red Sox seldom were. The exception, in the late forties, came and went.

But now, with Munson and Fisk emerging as stars, a rivalry was taking hold. Both had come up briefly in 1969. Munson had won Rookie of the
Year in 1970, Fisk in ’72. Their teams were getting better. The Sox almost won the division in ’72 as the Yanks challenged, and in ’73, the Yankees were playing better baseball into the summer months. One could almost feel tensions rising. Munson and Fisk would genuinely come to dislike each other and embody the growing enmity, which is still in place forty years later. Many felt it first come together in that bang-bang play at the plate.

The Yankees played their final game in the original Yankee Stadium on September 30. Duke Sims, a backup catcher purchased six days before, hit the last home run in the park where Ruth had hit the first.

A crowd of 32,238 came out for the finale, and each fan received a record album,
Yankee Stadium: The Sounds of 50 Years
, narrated by Mel Allen.

Sadly, Houk had to go to the mound to relieve Peterson in the top of the eighth, and the fans really let him have it.

“It was like thousands of people booing my own dad for something he didn’t do, right in front of me,” wrote Peterson in his memoir.

The Yanks lost 8–5, finishing with an 80–82 record after all those weeks in first place. Mike Hegan, obtained in August, made the final out. With that, the fans set about taking Yankee Stadium home with them. Those who didn’t storm the field for pieces of sod wiggled their seats loose from the concrete, breaking the legs in the process and going home with a mangled souvenir.

Seats were made available to season-ticket holders, and then what was left were sold by E.J. Korvette’s department store for $5.75 plus five proofs of purchase from Winston cigarettes.

Much of the other treasures of the park were purchased by collector-author Bert Randolph Sugar, who gave Yankees controller (and later president) Gene McHale $1,500 in two checks for the right to first inspect what was available, and then to haul it off. At the time, there was no real “collectibles” market, and the Yankees were faced with paying to store the material or disposing of it for a quick payday. “I put two kids through college with the stuff and had plenty left over,” said Sugar, who proved to be a visionary when it came to memorabilia.

WHILE THE FAN mayhem on the field continued, we gathered all the media into the press room for an unexpected announcement. I had been phoning the New York TV stations since the third inning to tell them to be at the stadium at the end of the game. Amazingly, they weren’t planning on being
there for the final out. In fact, UPI had asked me to send the final summary and box score to them and I had to call them and say, “Look, I can’t cover the postgame story for you—you have to send someone!”

Into the press room, still in his number-35 uniform, came Ralph Houk. He stood by the bar and announced with sadness that after thirty-five years in the organization—including his distinguished war service—he was resigning. (His boat in Florida was called
Thanks Yanks.
)

The press did not expect this. Neither did the team employees, some of whom were weeping.

But no tears need have been shed for Houk. A pretty good politician in his own right, he had already made a deal to manage Detroit in 1974, having spoken with Tiger general manager Jim Campbell about it during the waning weeks of the season. Eleven days after the Yankee announcement, he was announced as the new Tiger manager. He would later manage the Red Sox, too, but took neither team to the postseason.

Houk’s departure from the Yankees was certainly tied to his new working conditions. He didn’t like the new owner questioning his moves. He’d had it pretty good for a long time. First Topping, then Burke, and certainly MacPhail, never second-guessed him. Suddenly he felt like an employee and didn’t like the change in structure one bit. He complained to close friends about it, citing Steinbrenner as an outsider who “didn’t know anything about baseball.” He resented Steinbrenner bringing in the baseball clown Max Patkin to entertain fans between innings. He resented Steinbrenner criticizing his veteran bench players, particularly an aging Johnny Callison. When rumors cropped up that MacPhail might leave to succeed the retiring Joe Cronin as American League president, that was all he needed to hear.

Demolition of Yankee Stadium began the very next morning, October 1.

While the outer wall would stand, the interior would essentially be gutted and restyled to allow unobstructed views from every seat. There was a small ceremony that Monday morning, at which Claire Ruth received home plate and Eleanor Gehrig received first base. Mayor Lindsay made the presentations. Sam McDowell, of all people, represented the players. He was just there to clean out his locker.

The front-office staff would move to the Parks Administration Building in Flushing Meadow Park, across the street from Shea. I had spotted the building from the Grand Central Parkway and suggested it in a memo to Lee MacPhail. It had been the World’s Fair headquarters building a decade before, and Gabe Paul would take Robert Moses’s corner office. MacPhail,
in his waning weeks before succeeding Cronin, would occupy a smaller office across the hall, and then his place would be taken by Tal Smith as executive vice president, reporting to Gabe, who was now officially the team president.

Tal would bring Pat Gillick with him from Houston as coordinator of player development and scouting, and he, like Smith, grew to be among the most respected men in the game. Their stays, however, were brief.

And now we had a manager to hire and a new ballpark to share with the Mets.

OAKLAND BEAT THE METS IN THE ’73 World Series, and Dick Williams emerged from it with the reputation as the game’s best manager. But he couldn’t take Charlie Finley’s meddling, and so, like Johnny Keane nine years earlier, he quit right after the triumph.

Using a middleman named Nat Tarnopol, a record-company executive, Gabe Paul made overtures to Williams and began to sense that this could be Houk’s successor. (Tarnopol employed Williams as a VP and was a Yankee season box holder.) It would be a blockbuster announcement, to be sure.

In the weeks following the Series, as speculation increased on Williams coming to New York, pressure was also growing on Bowie Kuhn to follow the progress of Steinbrenner’s Watergate-related entanglements. Although all allegations had occurred prior to his coming into baseball, Kuhn was concerned about integrity issues involving an owner. On August 23, 1973, Steinbrenner pled guilty to authorizing $25,000 of illegal campaign contributions to the Nixon reelection campaign, filtering the money through American Ship Building employees as phony bonuses that allowed him to exceed the contribution limit. He also pleaded guilty to being an accessory after the fact by attempting to cover up the crime—obstruction of justice.

Steinbrenner, who was also a regular contributor to Democratic senator Ted Kennedy, was doing what he felt the shipbuilding business required, and had been instructed on procedure by Nixon operatives. It was a bad decision. He was hardly alone in the scheme; he was the seventeenth person indicted under similar charges, and AmShip was the fourteenth corporation so charged.

A week later he was sentenced: two fines totaling $15,000, and a $10,000 fine for the company. There was no jail time, but it was a felony conviction. (He was pardoned by President Reagan in 1989.)

It was the obstruction of justice portion of his crimes that bothered Kuhn, and the settlement put it front and center on the commissioner’s desk.

Steinbrenner had voluntarily removed himself from daily activity with the team after his indictment, pending the outcome. But on November 27, Kuhn suspended him for two years, saying, “Attempting to influence employees to behave dishonestly is the kind of misconduct which, if ignored by baseball, would undermine the public’s confidence in our game.”

For a true absentee owner, suspending him from daily involvement with the team would have rung hollow. But clearly, in his eleventh month of ownership, Steinbrenner had demonstrated enough hands-on activity so that Kuhn felt the punishment would indeed be one with teeth, not just a meaningless pronouncement.

Steinbrenner was shocked. He quickly named Yankee counsel Patrick Cunningham, head of the Bronx Democratic Party, as the acting general partner. And while Steinbrenner was to have no contact with Gabe Paul or anyone else in the front office, it became clear that he had the means to weigh in on major decisions. Kuhn admitted to me some years later, “Of course I knew, and I couldn’t object to his involvement in big money decisions. So long as he didn’t flaunt it.”

THE WINTER MEETINGS arrived, and the Yankees still had no manager. I had been instructed to prepare a few releases for people under consideration, among them Williams, Frank Robinson (still an active player), our coach Elston Howard, sixty-one-year-old Birdie Tebbetts, and sixty-five-year-old Al Lopez. But no announcement was made at the meetings. Howard would have loved the opportunity to make history as the first black manager and had many supporters.

On Monday, December 16, Gabe summoned me to his office and told me to arrange an elaborate, well-catered press conference to announce the signing of Williams. Even at a dollar a shrimp, he approved a shrimp bowl. Already settled in our modest offices in Queens, which really had no room for a lavish event, we chose Feathers in the Park restaurant in nearby Flushing Meadow, an exquisite setting.