Damn Yankees by Edward Drobinski - HTML preview

Damn Yankees

Page 310

Piniella returned as manager, but was fired at the end of the 1988 season after the Yankees played sub .500 ball during his second stint. Steinbrenner replaced him with Dallas Green. The Yankees saw little success under Green in 1989, and he was fired in August, replaced by Bucky Dent. Steinbrenner was unconvinced that Dent could lead the Yankees back to a championship, and planned to keep Martin close at hand as manager-in-waiting should Dent falter in 1990. He apparently told Martin of this during a November meeting at Yankee Stadium. Soon afterward, Martin got in touch with several of his former coaches and told them to be ready to join him for a sixth managerial tenure with the Yankees.

Bill James noted that; "Billy Martin, of course, improved every team he ever managed in his first year in control, usually by huge margins. Within a year or two, all of those teams were

ready to get rid of him." According to Chris Jaffe in his book evaluating baseball managers, "Martin would do whatever it took to win that day.”

In 1988, the “Elias Sports Bureau” proclaimed Martin the best manager in major league history, based on modeling that found that Martin's teams won 7.45 more games per year than they

should have as predicted by statistics, higher than any other manager. He was the first manager to have led four different