Perfect: Don Larsen's Miraculous World Series Game (18 page)

Not surprisingly, Martin emulated much of Stengel’s style when he became a manager. Stengel had been a disciple of the legendary John McGraw, who had managed the New York Giants at the turn of the twentieth century during the “dead ball era” when the emphasis was on running, fielding, and strategy. Lessons learned from those days became the guidepost for Stengel in his career as a manager. Like McGraw, he did not always use the same players day-in and day-out. Instead, he platooned them according to a complex set of factors that were never entirely understood by the players but often resulted in left-handed hitters being played more often against right-handed pitchers and right-handed hitters being played more often against left-handed pitchers. There would also be a mix of bunts and steals and other plays to keep the opposing team off balance—all of which was absorbed by Martin. He too would use a mix of platooning, base running and bunts to keep the other team off balance when he assumed managerial reins after his playing days were over. “I never saw opposition managers pitch out more when a guy got on base and do crazy things because they were managing against Billy,” said former teammate and longtime broadcaster Tony Kubek. “Billy was Casey’s boy, and I think Billy picked up much of that from Stengel.”

However much they liked each other, Stengel could not ignore reality when Martin first started playing for him in Oakland in 1948. Martin played second, short, and third, and, while he batted a respectable .277, it was hardly the kind of performance that would justify a promotion to the major leagues. When he received word that the Yankees had hired him to take the helm for the 1949 season, Stengel had to tell the Berkeley native that he would have to remain with the Oakland club. “It wasn’t too bad,” Martin remembered, “because he told me it wouldn’t be long before he called for me.”

True to his word, Stengel—impressed with Martin’s improved performance at Oakland that year (a .284 average with thirteen home runs and ninety-one runs-batted-in)—had the Yankees buy his contract shortly after the 1949 season was completed. As he had predicted, Billy Martin, the brash kid from West Berkeley, was going to play for the New York Yankees.

The promotion was accompanied by considerable fanfare in the press (one sportswriter noting that “Martin is a scamper kid with a generous nose and rather large feet”). The young rookie lived up to his billing. From the first days of spring training in 1950, he displayed the kind of spirit that would be the hallmark of his playing and managerial career. When the Yankees played an exhibition game against the Dodgers, Martin began screaming at Jackie Robinson (who had won the National League’s Most Valuable Player award in 1949), “You big busher. It’s a good thing you’re not in my league. I’d have your job in a week.” And when longtime Yankee coach Frank Crosetti held a drill to show infielders how to execute a doubleplay, Martin was quick to say, “No, no, that’s not the way you do it, Cro.” But nowhere was that spirit more evident than in Martin’s approach to Joe DiMaggio, the team’s All-Star center fielder.

Other players—even those who had known DiMaggio for years—found him to be cold and aloof, a man who could sit for hours in the locker room with a cigarette while he sipped a cup of coffee or nursed a beer and said very little to those around him. (Tommy Henrich, who played next to DiMaggio in right field for eleven seasons, said that the San Francisco native “was a loner to us on the team as much as he was a loner to the general public.”) The other players were friendly but respectful when DiMaggio walked into the clubhouse, invariably dressed in an expensive suit with a white dress shirt and silk tie, and rarely would anyone have the confidence to initiate a conversation with the Yankee star. Martin disregarded that established etiquette, using informality when addressing DiMaggio (“Hi, Dago”), playfully emulating the veteran player’s peculiar dressing habits in the locker room (taking off his pants first while still wearing his shirt and tie), and even pulling pranks on the solemn center fielder (including the time he had DiMaggio sign a ball with a pen that squirted blue ink all over DiMaggio’s white dress shirt—which drew an angry look from Joe until Billy explained that it was invisible ink that would soon disappear).

Martin’s confidence in the locker room was matched by his exuberance on the field, especially after the first game of his big-league career. The Yankees were losing 9-0 to the Red Sox at Fenway Park in Boston. The game appeared to be a lost cause when Stengel sent Martin into the field in the sixth inning. In his first major-league at bat in the eighth inning, Martin hit a double off the left-field wall to drive in a run. DiMaggio followed with a home run, and other Yankees continued to bombard the Red Sox pitchers until Martin came up for a second time in the inning with the bases loaded. He proceeded to hit a single to drive in two more runs and, by the time it was over, the Yankees had won the game by a score of 15-10. The sportswriters crowded around DiMaggio’s locker after the game, but he pointed to Billy at the locker next to his and said, “What about that kid? He’s the one you should be talking to.”

Although he had set a new record by getting two hits in his first two major-league at bats in the same inning, Martin did not see much action afterward. Stengel continued to use Jerry Coleman at second base, and Martin was forced to sit next to the manager on the bench most days. Stengel enjoyed the company of the young player, but it was not enough—in part because the Yankees had Snuffy Stirnweiss, a veteran second baseman who had enjoyed some stellar years with the team. Stengel informed Martin one day in May that he was being sent to the Yankee farm team in Kansas City to bring the club down to the required roster of twenty-five players. “You’ll be back in about thirty days,” Stengel promised, “and when you come back, you’ll stay here.” Martin was not happy, and Stengel encouraged him to express his frustration to George Weiss, the Yankee general manager.

A rotund man of medium height and strong convictions, Weiss was a humorless guardian of the club’s prerogatives. He was not receptive to the young player’s complaint. “You’re going to go down there, son,” Weiss responded angrily after Martin expressed his opposition to being sent to Kansas City. “You’ve got to learn.” Martin started to cry and, as he left the office, began shouting at the somber man behind the desk. “You’ll be sorry,” Martin said. “I’ll show you.”

The Yankees eventually sold Stirnweiss’ contract to the St. Louis Browns, and Martin returned to the club in June. But the twenty-six-year-old Coleman was having a good year at the plate and was widely recognized as one of the smoothest-fielding second basemen in the American League. So Martin was forced again to spend most of his time on the bench with Stengel. Still, Billy was excited just to be there and continued to be one of the team’s principal voices during the games, always shouting encouragement for his teammates or throwing barbs at the opposing team’s players.

Although he played in only thirty-four games that first season, the Yankees gave Billy a full cut on his World Series share, which he used to have an operation to reduce the size of his nose and to marry Lois Berndt, a girl he had known at Berkeley High School. It was, so Martin hoped, the beginning of a new life as a major-league ballplayer. And then he got his draft notice. The Korean War was raging and the army needed soldiers. Martin had other goals. He wanted to be with the Yankees when they broke for spring training in February. He began complaining to the army shortly after he got to Fort Ord in California that he was trying to support his stepfather (who had suffered a heart attack) and mother as well as two brothers, a sister, and his wife’s family—all on a private’s salary. In due course the army released him on hardship grounds, and by March he was with the Yankees in Florida.

However much he enjoyed being with the team, 1951 proved to be a frustrating year for Martin. Jerry Coleman was still available, and the Yankees had a new rookie—Gil McDougald—who had a talent for playing second as well as third. The result was not a good one for Billy. He eventually played in only fifty-one games, had no home runs, and drove in only two runs—six fewer than he had driven in the year before. In retrospect, the only noteworthy event for Martin in 1951 was meeting Mickey Mantle.

Martin had already read about the power exploits of the nineteen-year-old rookie from Commerce, Oklahoma. When he saw him at the spring training camp, Martin approached Mickey and simply said, “Hi, Pardner.” A shy teenager who had difficulty conversing with strangers, the Oklahoma native held out his hand and mumbled, “Mantle.” Thus began a friendship that would last the rest of their lives. The two of them began to spend time together before the games (often having water-pistol fights), after the games (often quizzing long time clubhouse manager Pete Sheehy about his days with Babe Ruth and Lou Gehrig), going out to dinner after the games, and, after Mantle got married in December 1951, spending summer evenings at each other’s rooms in the Concourse Plaza Hotel in their bathing suits (because the hotel had no air-conditioning). It was a friendship that Mantle cherished, especially in those first days with the Yankees, and later he would say that “my best pal on the Yankees during my earlier years with the club was Billy Martin.”

The friendship was no less important to Martin in those early days, especially when Lois sent him divorce papers in the fall of 1952 shortly after their daughter Kelly was born. Martin was not one to easily absorb emotional setbacks, and Lois’ decision to leave him was no exception. He moved to Kansas City for the winter, but he spent much of his time on the phone with his wife, begging her to return. Nothing had changed by the spring of 1953 when he was rooming with Mantle on the road, and the breaking point came when Martin finally realized that Lois was not going to change her mind. As Mantle remembered, Billy “literally tore” their hotel room apart. Mantle did what he could to console his roommate, and, as Martin later confessed, “Only my friendship with Mickey saved me from going over the edge.”

There was, however, a cost to both of them for that close friendship: alcohol. As a teenager, Martin had vowed never to drink until he was twenty-one, and he was forced to break that promise only because of a spiking wound he suffered while playing for the Oaks in 1948. Anxious to stitch up the wound, the club physician asked someone to fetch some bourbon. Martin drank the alcohol and watched while four players held him down and the doctor completed the procedure.

Ironically, Mantle too had never had anything to drink while growing up in Oklahoma. But Billy and New York’s nightlife changed all that, and by 1953 Mantle and his good friend began to frequent bars and restaurants, where they could indulge their new habit. At first, it was simply fun. “If you could drink all night, get a girl, get up the next day, and hit a home run,” Mantle remembered, “you passed the test.” The drinking expanded when Billy came to Commerce to spend the winter with Mantle and his wife after the 1953 season. Both players were now making more money than they had ever anticipated, and, unlike most other players, neither felt the need to secure an off-season job. They would get up in the morning, tell Mickey’s wife, Merlyn, that they were going hunting or fishing, and wind up in a bar by noon. It was a lifestyle that would prove to be their undoing in later years, but, at the time, it seemed like harmless pleasure to both of them.

In the meantime, Martin’s star began to rise on the playing field. By 1952, Jerry Coleman had been called back to duty by the marines, McDougald was playing most of the games at third, and Martin had settled into playing second base. Neither his play nor his bat reflected any exceptional talent, but his competitive spirit was extraordinary. (“Billy wasn’t pretty to watch,” said Mantle, “but he would always find a way to beat you.”) And, as before, he was always ready to accept any challenge from opposing players. So Martin did not hesitate when Jimmy Piersall, the emotionally troubled shortstop for the Red Sox, persisted in baiting Martin throughout the spring and then ridiculed the Yankee second baseman’s still enormous nose during a warm-up before a game at Fenway Park. (“Hey, Pinocchio,” Piersall yelled, “what’s with the schnoz?”) Martin responded by saying, “Let’s go.” The two men threw down their gloves and raced to the tunnel underneath the stands that joined the clubhouses for the Red Sox and the opposing team. They were followed by a retinue of players and coaches from both teams who were anxious to stop the fight, but the two pro tagonists arrived first. Piersall threw a punch to the side of Martin’s head, but the Berkeley native quickly brought Piersall to his knees with two rapid punches to the stomach. Piersall was later placed in a mental institution because of continuing emotional struggles, all of which made Martin feel “terrible” about the altercation.

Still, Stengel delighted in Martin’s aggressive attitude. “It should wake my other tigers up,” he told a sportswriter. But some of his teammates sometimes bridled at Martin’s take-no-prisoners approach to any mistakes on the field. Moose Skowron, who joined the Yankees as a first baseman in 1954, remembered his first experience with Martin. He let a throw to first base sail over his head for an error. Martin watched the play in disbelief and then threw his glove up in the air as an expression of his frustration. “I went after him in the dugout,” said Skowron, and a fight would have ensued if Mantle had not intervened to say, “Enough is enough.” But Skowron yelled a final warning to the Yankee second baseman: “Don’t show me up on the field.”

Whatever their individual experiences, Martin’s teammates nonetheless understood his value to the team. He was a spark plug who was ever vigilant to do what he could to help the team succeed. The more critical the situation, the more focused he became. “He was always there for the big play,” remembered Yankee third baseman Andy Carey.

Nowhere was that perspective more evident than in the seventh game of the 1952 World Series at Ebbets Field. The Yankees were leading that pivotal contest 4-2 when the Dodgers loaded the bases in the seventh inning. Stengel, following instincts that remained inscrutable to outside observers, allowed the left-handed Bob Kuzava to remain on the mound to pitch to the right-handed Jackie Robinson with two out. Kuzava threw a sharp curve that resulted in a high pop-up between the pitcher’s mound and first base. Kuzava kept calling for first baseman Joe Collins to catch the ball, but it soon became clear that Collins had lost the ball in the sun. As the ball started its descent, Kuzava watched in horror as Dodger players were running around the bases—meaning that the score would be 5-4 if the ball were allowed to drop. And then, out of nowhere, Martin raced in from second base and caught the ball right before it reached the ground. The play ended the inning and proved to be the turning point in the Yankees’ ultimate victory.