Damn Yankees by Edward Drobinski - HTML preview

Damn Yankees

Page 306

departed for the California Angels, but other Yankees from Martin's earlier tenures remained, such as Randolph and Ron Guidry, and the team had added strong players like Dave Winfield and Don Baylor. Steinbrenner had pledged non-interference but, as the team struggled early in the season, resumed his second guessing of Martin, both directly and by leak to the media. As relations between owner and manager deteriorated, Martin had conflicts with reporters and a brawl with a patron in an Anaheim bar.

One particularly Billy incident happened when Steinbrenner

announced through the press that he insisted upon a lineup change. When questioned by the press about it, Billy said; “Last I heard Steinbrenner is not filling out the lineup card.” He made no changes.

During the 1983 season, Martin was involved in one of the most controversial regular season games, known as the Pine Tar Incident, when Martin challenged a home run by George Brett on the grounds that the amount of pine tar on the bat broke the rules. Brett was ruled out and the home run disallowed. As this occurred with two out in the top of the ninth, it ended the game with the Yankees leading 4–3. American League President Lee

MacPhail ruled in favor of the Royals' protest. The game was resumed some weeks later with Kansas City leading 5–4 and two