For the sixth time in my first seven starts in ’77, I had taken the New York Yankees into the ninth inning with a lead. And for the sixth time, I stood on that mound and silently seethed at the familiar sight of Billy sauntering from the dugout in his bowlegged duck walk to take me out.
It was June 16, 1977. We led the Royals 7–0. And Billy’s routine was quickly growing old. It made my blood boil. Back then, pitchers finished games—we didn’t automatically hand the ball off. Not like today. It made me want to take a swing at Billy, the way Billy took a swing at so many people since he first picked up a glove. As a player and as a manager, Billy Martin was a fighter. Scrappy, like a bantam rooster, quick to come at you. He never felt it was his job to be chummy with his players. And he sure as heck had never been chummy with me. Since the first day I put on a Yankees uniform, he had been at me, alternately pushing and ignoring me. He insulted me, demeaned me. And even now that I was in the rotation, pitching well, he didn’t trust me.
He kept coming out during the ninth inning, when I was a couple of outs away from ending the game. Every time the same thing happened: someone would get on base, and he would immediately hop out of the dugout. As he reached the top step, he’d signal with one arm or the other. Give me the righty. Give me the lefty. Either way, my day was done. By the time he had reached the mound, all he would say was “Good job,” and I was out of the game. It was too late to say shit. The decision had already been made. The reliever was already jogging in from the bullpen. I was in the dugout by the time he reached the infield.
Every time it happened, I got more and more fed up. This was about more than simply being taken out of a ball game. I was pissed because in essence what Billy was saying was, he didn’t trust me. Didn’t matter how well I was pitching. But doing something about it wasn’t so easy. Was I supposed to challenge him? The great Billy Martin? Was that the smart move for a twenty-seven-year-old pitcher who, at that moment, could’ve very well been home riding a tractor in Louisiana? All I knew was that while I respected Billy as a manager, I wasn’t afraid of him.
After I decided not to pack my bags and head home the summer of 1976, I didn’t have to wait long to get called back up. A month later, in early August, I became a New York Yankee again. After seventy-eight days—forty-seven riding the pine, thirty-one in the minors—I was back in the show. Of course, Billy still trusted me about as far as he could spit. For example, I was trotted out in the middle innings of a game we were already losing 4–0 to the Orioles. I gave up three runs in three innings and we lost. I got back in the next day—we were losing badly again—and this time threw two shutout innings. Then I spent two weeks on the bench.
My next appearance, August 22 against the Angels, brought me face-to-face with the Boss. We were down 4–0 with one out in the seventh, and Billy brought me in to replace Catfish Hunter, who’d left runners on first and third. Here in a nutshell is the frustration of pitching: You can sometimes throw great pitches, get weak contact from the hitter, and yet it’s a hit. The opposite is equally tough on hitters. They can whack the bejesus out of the ball but hit it right at a fielder for an out. Today a bunch of dinks and dunks found some open space. Eight outs later, I had given up five hits. I let Cat’s two runners score in the seventh and allowed two more to cross home in the ninth. We scored eight runs in the bottom of the ninth, then lost in extra innings. It was a crushing loss.
But losing the game wasn’t as demoralizing as what happened next. My brief career as a Yankee had hardly been noteworthy to this point. I felt invisible and hardly used. But George didn’t buy the team to sit back and watch. He put himself in the thick of it. He wasn’t out to make friends, either. He was out to win. Steinbrenner thought he knew everything, and he wanted to know why the left-handed pitcher who people kept telling him not to trade had a dismal 10.12 ERA on the season. In four relief appearances that year I had allowed nine runs. The two runs I allowed in two and two-thirds innings actually lowered my ERA. So he called me into his office. The king wanted an audience. He wanted to lash out at the little-used, twenty-fifth guy on the roster.
“When,” he snapped, “are you gonna start pitching?”
I didn’t know what I was supposed to say to that. The fact was, Billy didn’t want to pitch me. He only stuck me in when it didn’t matter. I had proven myself in Triple-A. Still, the organization sent me up and down, jerked me left and right. But some in the front office had a feeling I had something, that I could be something. There was a reason other teams were desperate to trade for me. With everything I had learned from Sparky Lyle and Dick Tidrow, the pitching coaches saw in me the makings of a major-league pitcher, a starter. Except I was only being tossed into blowouts. I never faced pressure situations against other lefties, when I could be most effective.
“By our reports,” Steinbrenner went on, “you should be striking out every batter you face.”
That was George Steinbrenner in a nutshell. His irascibility, his expectations, his outlook, how he confronted people. I was supposed to strike out every batter I faced. That is the world George lived in. I told him that was impossible, and I was never put in the right situations. They warmed me up almost every game and never used me. Then, when they did, I had warmed up in every game all week and wasn’t fresh. I was being treated like clubhouse furniture and was getting blamed when I didn’t perform.
When I told him that, he said, “That doesn’t excuse how you pitched.” He wouldn’t hesitate to send me back to Syracuse, he snapped. If George was trying to get under my skin, he was succeeding. Then, before stomping out of the room, he said disparagingly, “Guidry, you’ll never be able to pitch in this league.”
Things didn’t get much better for me as the ’77 season kicked off. The team was already unhappy with me because I refused to go to Venezuela to play winter ball, as they suggested. Bonnie was due, and we’d had a bad experience in Venezuela the previous year. Then I sucked again during spring training. I had never worried about the results in spring training before, but Billy and the front office did. And my results weren’t pretty. In six games I had a 10.24 ERA. Then I was hurt and missed some starts. When I came back, I wasn’t yet at full strength and got smacked around pretty good. If there was one thing in the entire world George and Billy could agree on, it was that I stunk. And like George, Billy told you exactly how he felt.
That, for better or for worse, was just Billy. What you saw is what you got with him. For a long while I didn’t like it, but he never shied from telling me his opinions. And until I proved myself to him, nothing would change. But he wouldn’t lie to you. He’d say it to your face. He’d tell it to the press. He’d say it in the locker room. It might have been his biggest problem as a manager—that he was so blunt, straightforward, and steadfast in what he believed.
But that’s how Billy had defined himself as a player. And he had become a Yankees legend. A second baseman on the great Yankees teams in the 1950s, he wasn’t the guy who hit for power. But he solidified his status in other ways. There were the actual things he did on the field, like the incredible performance that made him MVP of the 1953 World Series. But with Billy, it was always more about attitude. He had a feistiness that resonated with fans in the Bronx. He wasn’t particularly big, strong, or fast. The Yankees baseball cap never seemed to fit quite right on him, like his head was too big in the front and too narrow at the back. But he wasn’t about fitting in, he was about playing baseball, grinding, fighting, and winning.
And he had the same sort of attitude as a manager. He was a winner, although it was never easy or pretty. In Minnesota, Detroit, and Texas, before George hired him, he had been a winner. But he also left a bitter taste in people’s mouths because he was rough around the edges. He would get into fights. He would drink. He never looked quite healthy, though it was tough to tell if that was just because he worked himself to the bone. There was no questioning his work ethic. George must have known all of this when he hired him. As much as they fought, it was that competitive spirit that made them kindred souls.
That was the sort of attitude that led Billy to lay it all out on the line with people. For me, as someone who was struggling, that was tough. “If there’s anybody in this league you can get out, lemme know,” Billy snarled at one point. “I’ll let you pitch to him.”
In April of ’77 two things—both completely out of my control—turned everything around. The first happened in a game I was watching from the bench. Our fourth game of the year, we opened a series in Kansas City. We came in having lost two straight, and even though it was only April, our results were starting to get the team on edge. This was a team that everybody—fans, the media, George, Billy, and the guys in the clubhouse—expected to win it all. We had reached the World Series in 1976. The Reds steamrolled us in a four-game sweep. But honestly, we were just happy to be there. Not only was it the first trip for the Yankees to the World Series since George bought the team in 1973, it was the first time we’d made it since the days of Mickey Mantle and Whitey Ford in 1964.
A 1-2 start means nothing over the course of a baseball season. Except in New York, with the attendant personalities. In the off-season, we had added Reggie Jackson, the power-hitting star outfielder, to the mix. If a team could win the World Series based on magazine covers, you’d have thought that with signing Reggie, we had a lock on the title. But that’s not how baseball is played. We got a good hitter, without question. But with his personality, bringing him on board was like pouring gasoline on an already combustible situation. Even the smallest spark could set things off. Trade rumors, including rumors involving me, swirled. Folks questioned Billy’s competence. George and Billy fought each other fiercely in public—and in private. And fans and the media began to openly wonder if George’s micromanagement was the root of the problems. As the New York Times put it that April: “It would be the ultimate in irony in the wacky world of the Yankees if the goose that laid the golden egg stepped on the egg and splattered it.”
It was with these tensions in the background that we approached the game in Kansas City. It might’ve been only the fourth game of a 162-game season, but it felt far bigger. And beyond all the hoopla around us, the Royals weren’t just any other team. They were our expected competition in the American League, the team we beat in last year’s playoffs. They had some great ballplayers in George Brett, Hal McRae, Al Cowens. It was as much of a litmus test of how good we were as you could imagine so early in the season. You could sense the excitement in Kansas City and the anxiety in our dugout. Billy rejiggered the lineup before the game, moving Jim Wynn up to the cleanup spot. That sent Reggie from fifth to sixth in the batting order, a constant source of anger for George, who wanted his star slugger batting fourth. Royals fans packed the stadium; they were excited because their team had started the season 3-0. I read afterward that one fan dressed as George handed out fake dollar bills to the Kansas City fans. April baseball games don’t get more intense.
That game was tied 4–4 after five innings. For another seven innings, neither team scored. Dock Ellis had started the game for us and threw six innings. Then Sparky came in in relief and went five without allowing a run. And Tidrow got through the twelfth. Now, Tidrow was one of the two most important guys in my development as a pitcher. The previous season, he had taught me how to attack hitters and explained the strategy behind it. At the same time, he supported me psychologically while I was getting shit from Billy and George. He and Gabe Paul, our general manager, had my back.
Before Billy put Tidrow in the game, he had called the phone in the bullpen. He asked me if I was ready. I said yes. Then Sparky got on the phone to talk to Billy and had a confused look on his face. He turned to Tidrow, instead of me. “You’re in the game.” Dick got the Royals 1-2-3.
But Dick was a righty, and lefties hit him much harder than righties. Batters typically struggle more against same-handed pitchers. And in the thirteenth, he had to face the top of the Kansas City order, which featured two lefties. George Brett came on with one out and a runner on second. He was given an intentional walk. McRae flew out, to make it two outs, before another lefty power hitter, John Mayberry, came to the plate. I was ready in case Billy called. As a lefty, I was perfect for the spot. Especially with the slider I had developed thanks to Sparky. I knew I could be tough against lefty batters. Mayberry hit .226 against lefties and .266 against righties in his career. But Billy didn’t call me in, and Mayberry smacked one of Tidrow’s pitches off the wall, and that was the game.
When we went into the clubhouse after the game, the reporters were all over Billy. “Why did you leave Tidrow in? Why are you warming Guidry up if you’re not going to use him in that situation?” I was wondering the same thing myself. A lot of us were. Nothing against Dick, it was just that the numbers said I was the better choice. But Billy hated all that crap. And he hated people questioning him or second-guessing him. He tried to brush off the reporters. Dick’s a veteran, he said. Guidry doesn’t have the experience.
Then a reporter asked him the question that had been on my mind for a couple of years now. “How in the hell is he going to get that experience if you never bring him in?”
The second night in Kansas City the same scenario played out. We were tied 3–3 in the seventh after our starter that day, Ed Figueroa, gave up back-to-back doubles, and the top of their lineup was coming up. Billy looked to his pen. On other days, Sparky would’ve been the obvious choice. But he had thrown five innings the day before so he wasn’t available. The phone rang in the bullpen, and I was in.
I would’ve loved to be sitting next to Billy at that moment, because I’m sure he was furious he had to put me in. But with Sparky unavailable, Tidrow having pitched the prior day, and Billy having faced all those haranguing questions from the media, he didn’t have much of a choice. But for Billy, it was a win-win. If I blew it, he was vindicated. If I pitched well, the Yankees would win.
In any event, I was thrilled to be in the game. This wasn’t just my first game of the season—it was the first time I was pitching in a game that mattered. And I hadn’t pitched in the ’76 playoffs. It was a pivotal game and a chance to prove myself. What I didn’t like was that George Brett was the first guy I had to face, with a man on second base.
George Brett is one of the greatest hitters to play the game. He batted over .300 in his career and hit more than three hundred homers. He hit for power and average. He hit a huge home run in the playoffs against us the previous year, tying game five at 6 apiece. Forget lefty on lefty, this guy could hit anybody.
And he hit me, roping a single right up the middle. Damn. Except Mickey Rivers, our fastest outfielder, was playing center. And Royals Stadium had turf in the outfield, so the ball skidded fast. On grass, especially when it’s wet, the ball can slow down so that it takes a while for the outfielder to get to it. In Kansas City it zipped right to Mickey, who fired home and nailed the runner from second base at the plate. Phew. Then, with two outs, I walked McRae to face Mayberry, the other lefty. And I struck him out. I pitched two more scoreless innings after that without allowing a hit, and we scored in both the eighth and ninth to win 5–3. It was my first major-league win.
You know what Billy told the reporters after the game? “I planned that all along. I wanted to bring Guidry along slowly.” Yeah, sure. Like I said, it was a win-win for Billy.
My second break came at the end of April. I was getting into games sporadically but still wasn’t one of the main guys. And then those trade rumors that had been swirling around the clubhouse finally came to fruition. Except it wasn’t what so many people expected—the deal didn’t involve me. That was Gabe Paul’s influence. He had seen the reports about my stuff in the minors and knew I could be good. He also had a hunch that if other teams wanted me, there was a reason. So we ended up trading pitcher Dock Ellis, a guy Billy and George disagreed about. Billy saw Dock as an important part of his rotation. George saw a pitcher who had called him out in the press for underpaying him. These days, Ellis is most famous for saying he was on LSD during the no-hitter he threw with the Pirates in 1970. In any event, he was gone, traded to Oakland, and in return we got Mike Torrez.
The Yankees traded for Torrez on Wednesday, April 27. He was expected to start that Friday, April 29. Should have been no problem. But instead of flying straight to New York, Torrez flew home to Montreal first to tend to a family health issue. Remember, this was before everybody could communicate so easily and send a quick text message or e-mail to clarify what was going on. Not everything was made clear to the team, and Torrez didn’t know he was slated to start. And the afternoon of the game, Billy had no starting pitcher. He couldn’t use Tidrow or Sparky because they were his setup guys in the bullpen, and he couldn’t turn to some of the other relievers because they had pitched prior days. So after I got to the ballpark, as I was leaving the clubhouse to go to the bullpen, Billy called me over. Our interaction was brief and to the point.
“You’re going tonight.”
“All right,” I said. And with that I was the starting pitcher.
Nobody expected much of me. I had been working as a reliever, preparing to take the ball at a moment’s notice. I had started only once in the big leagues, in 1975, and that was in a meaningless game in September, against the Red Sox, where I gave up four runs in five and one-third innings. Not impressive. But not dreadful, either. Anyway, it felt like a lifetime ago. And by that day I was a totally different pitcher, with everything I’d learned from Tidrow and the slider I worked on with Sparky. But those things had made me a viable reliever. Could I prove myself as a starter? I wasn’t so sure. Nobody expected me to blow hitters away. Billy told me he wanted me to make it through five innings; the bullpen could go the rest of the way. But even he understood that it’s no small thing to learn you’re the starting pitcher right before the first pitch.
An hour later I stood on the rubber at Yankee Stadium against the Seattle Mariners, 60 feet 6 inches from home plate. I struck out their leadoff man, but then things started unraveling quickly. Craig Reynolds singled. Steve Braun walked. Juan Bernhardt singled. Bases loaded, one out. This could’ve gone one of two ways. I could’ve given Billy every reason to never call my name again. Or I could prove myself by working my way out of it.
First came Bill Stein, who I struck out. That was an especially big deal, because with the bases loaded, there are a lot of ways to score a run. Fanning him meant it didn’t matter how I got the next guy, Danny Meyer. An out, any out, would end the inning.
Meyer was a lefty, which I liked, but he had dangerous power. In ’77 he hit twenty-two homers with 90 RBI. I worked the count to 2-2. The slider I threw next is what baseball folks like to call a cement mixer—basically, the ball spins but doesn’t move. Usually it’s hit a far ways off. Meyer connected…but it went foul. I wasn’t about to make the same mistake again. Next I threw a good slider. Strike three.
As rattled as I was in the middle of the inning, I had proved to Billy—and to myself—that I could work my way through a jam. I struck out the first two guys in the second inning as well. The first five outs were all Ks. By the time Billy pulled me for Sparky with one out in the ninth, I had allowed just seven hits and no runs, and won 3–0.
I may have sent a message with that start, but it didn’t get results immediately. Even though I was lights out that day, once Torrez arrived we had our five starters. I went eight games over nearly two weeks without setting foot on the mound again, before I got another relief appearance. Then, on May 17, Billy needed me to start again. Catfish had gotten hit around the last time he was out and spoke up about a sore shoulder that had been bothering him.
For eight innings in that start, the A’s couldn’t touch me: three hits, no runs. We scored twice off Vida Blue, one of the finest pitchers in the game and someone I had studied closely. We were a lot alike in how we worked. He wasn’t especially tall or burly, but he was a lefty who threw fire and destroyed batters with a killer breaking ball. He was a big reason that Oakland won three straight World Series titles from 1972 to 1974. He was also from Louisiana, albeit a very different part of the state. Essentially, he was somebody I tried to model myself after, in more ways than one.
I took the mound in the ninth with that 2–0 lead and promptly gave it away. Home run. Out. Home run. Walk. As quick as that, it was 2–2, with the winning run on base. Out came Billy. The game was knotted up, and I was in danger of letting it completely fall apart. Sparky came in and got a double play to salvage the tie—and save my ass. Sparky didn’t leave until the game was over…in the fifteenth inning. If I remember correctly, he joked that he crawled off the field, he was so tired, throwing six and two-thirds shutout innings before our bats put up three runs to give us a 5–2 win. I was upset because I’d given up the two bombs. But the bigger picture was that I had pitched well again. Good enough that there was no taking me out of the rotation. In my next four starts, I pitched well enough to get into the ninth three more times. I had pitched into the ninth inning in five out of my first six starts.
Which raised the question: When was Billy gonna let me finish one of these dang things?
That was the question racing through my mind during that start against the Royals. I had been pitching well. You don’t consistently pitch into the ninth if you don’t have good stuff. But each time, Billy shuffled out to yank me. Sparky asked me about it. So did Bonnie. I knew I was good enough to finish what I started. But Billy didn’t seem to think so.
The game against the Royals, though, had a different feel. First, we had a commanding 7–0 lead. In a close game, I could understand pulling me: Sparky was the best damn relief pitcher in baseball. Give Sparky a lead, and you win the ball game, simple as that. And beyond Sparky being a mentor and teacher, I can’t overstate the importance of knowing, as a starting pitcher, that I had Sparky behind me in that bullpen. Sometimes as a starter you can try to outdo yourself because you don’t trust the relief pitchers to hold your lead. I never had to worry about that with Sparky. He could get ready at a moment’s notice and shut the other team down. Most important, he could do that for several innings. You don’t see relief pitchers like Sparky Lyle anymore. Today, most closers come in and get three outs. Sparky could come in during the middle of a game and finish it off. For him, that was routine.
Sometimes when I showed indications of tiring, giving up a hit or walk, pulling was the right thing to do, even if it was frustrating for me. This time, though, even after I walked George Brett to start the ninth, I knew I was still pitching well. All game, the Kansas City hitters couldn’t touch me. This dangerous, powerful Royals lineup had just three hits against me. And with a lead so big, there was no reason to bring in Sparky. It would be a waste. Still, after I walked Brett, out came Billy. He was taking me out—or so I thought.
This time, however, the process didn’t play out the same way. When Billy stepped out of the dugout, he usually signaled for the reliever immediately. At the same time, Thurman would time his walk to the mound to arrive right when Billy did. They’d tell me I’d done a good job and that was that. But this time Billy didn’t signal. And Munson, instead of walking gingerly from behind the plate to reach me, burst into a jog to get there before Billy.
Thurman was our captain for a reason. You could describe him a lot of ways: tough, grizzled. More than anything, he was ornery. He didn’t get along with everyone, but he didn’t have to. His job was to lead, and what made him so damn good at it was that he always had the pulse of every situation, in the clubhouse or on the field. Understanding why he was so important had to do with smaller moments like this. He knew not finishing games was eating me up. He also knew Billy. And he was busting his ass to beat Billy to the hill to give me the lay of the land. He covered his mouth with his glove so nobody could see what he was saying.
“You have to tell him something. Tell him anything, or he won’t let you complete the game.”
“Okay,” I told him. By not immediately bringing in a reliever, Billy seemed to be feeling me out. When he arrived moments later, he didn’t say “Good job” like he usually did. Instead, he asked: “Well, what do you think?”
“You really wanna know what I think?” I said.
“Yeah, I really wanna know.”
“I think you oughtta get your ass off my mound so I can finish my damn game.”
Billy looked at me for a moment. Then he said, “Okay, you got it.”
And he went back to the dugout. It was all a mind game, a test. It might sound brazen or stupid to challenge Billy Martin that way. But the truth is, that’s exactly what he wanted to see. Billy was a brawler. He wanted his players to fight too, to burn with the same fire that consumed him. If you can fight me, he thought, you can fight anybody. And I wasn’t afraid of Billy. I had been sent up and down to the minors, forgotten and abandoned in the bullpen, insulted and driven to the brink of quitting. Nothing could faze me. If you’re man enough to come out here, I’m man enough to tell you to get the hell out of my office. And to tell the truth, I’m pretty sure that’s what he wanted to hear. He wanted to know what I was made of inside. When I told him to get off my mound, I think it made him feel better. I got the next three guys out, for my first complete game, a 7–0 shutout. From that point on, he never took me out of a game again until he asked me how I felt. We established something between us in that moment that would allow me to anchor the New York Yankees rotation. Trust.