“Dirty sons of bitches,” Thurman huffed.
Contrary to what you might see in the movies, being a world-class leader doesn’t necessarily involve standing up on a chair and giving a motivational, rah-rah speech. Thurman Munson wasn’t just our captain in title. He was the best leader you could draw up for our baseball team. He didn’t lead by giving us corny pep talks or lectures every day. He led by example. He led by playing damn near every game even when he was aching. He led by demanding excellence not just from himself but from the twenty-four other guys in the clubhouse. If I threw ninety-nine pitches for strikes, he wanted to know why the one hundredth was a ball. If we won six games in a row, he’d be irate that we didn’t win seven.
Thurman didn’t talk just to hear his voice, or because he thought it was the captain’s job to do so. So when Thurman did speak, you stopped what you were doing and you listened hard.
And after game two of the Series, Thurman felt the need to speak up. He didn’t stand up in front of his locker and demand everybody’s attention. He just aired his feelings—his anger at our play—to some of us in the clubhouse lounge. There were seven or so guys there: Thurman, me, Graig Nettles, Lou Piniella, Catfish, a couple of others. After everything we had been through in our 1978 season—the daily altercations between George and Billy, Billy and Reggie, and ultimately Billy’s firing, Lemon becoming manager, our comeback, the one-game playoff against Boston—we trailed 2–0 to the Dodgers in the World Series. He walked into the lounge, poured himself a cup of coffee, and started talking.
“I wouldn’t mind losing to those sons of bitches if we were playing good,” Thurman said. “Or if it was our first World Series. But goddammit, we’ve been here the last two years. We won last year. We’re the world champions. We’re better than the way we’re playing.
“You see that little son of a bitch right there?” he said, pointing at me. “If he wins the game tonight, we can go on to win four games in a row. Then we got ’em.”
We needed to be shook up. We were the defending world champions. We hadn’t played for shit for the first two games. But that was in Los Angeles. Now we had three games in our park. We should be able to win three games at Yankee Stadium. Then it’s 3–2 and we can go beat the shit out of ’em over there. But if we lost tonight, it would be a totally different story. Our cages needed to be rattled. Thurman rattled them.
His message was simple. Forget the off-the-field stuff. Not many teams come back from a fourteen-game hole in the middle of the summer to make the playoffs. Especially trailing a team as good as Boston. Yet, this is how we came out of the gates in the World Series, playing a team we knew we were better than? If we were playing an incredibly good team like the Cincinnati Reds team that beat us in ’76, that would have been one thing. Thurman was saying he wouldn’t mind losing the World Series to a team like that. But not to the Dodgers. We just weren’t playing as well as we should have been.
Thurman talked about the team. He wasn’t mad about how one person hit or one person pitched in the first couple of games. He wasn’t telling Reggie that for us to win, he had to hit three more home runs a game. He wasn’t telling me I had to throw a perfect game. He was saying we all had to chip in.
It reminded us about how it had been this season when we were at our best. You could look at our entire roster over the last two seasons and find games where every single person stepped up. That’s what made us such a tremendous team. We helped one another, complemented one another, compensated for one another. It was an important reminder for us all that day.
Throughout the season, Nettles would come up to me on occasion when I was pitching and say he wasn’t 100 percent. He never made a ruckus or begged out of the lineup. He played 159 games that year, after playing 158 the year before. He was our most consistent hitter, an All-Star who could hit for average and probably deserved an MVP at some point. Day in and day out, he produced for us.
But he would communicate to me when he was sore and might not have his usual range. Third base is a demanding position, because it requires a good arm and lightning-fast reaction times. By letting me know, I could adjust my pitching to try to cover for him. There are certain balls that are more likely to go down the third-base line, and I could do my best to avoid throwing those. He got so many important hits behind me, I’d do anything I could to help him out.
Before game three of the World Series, though, he didn’t need any help. He told me he felt great. And his play saved my ass and our team. I didn’t have the same overpowering stuff that I had most of the season. No reason in particular, but some days I just couldn’t throw as good as others. But because Graig was feeling limber, and told me so, I could play to that advantage. When the guys behind you are able to make great plays, as a pitcher you don’t care as much if you have great stuff, as long as you have good enough control. I kept throwing sliders in; they weren’t as sharp as they had been most of that season, but Graig and the other fielders kept gobbling them up.
The box score in game three—nine innings, one run allowed—doesn’t tell the full story of the game. I only struck out four guys. I gave up eight hits and seven—seven!—walks. I have never walked so many batters before or since in my entire major-league career. What made the difference was our defense. They just kept hitting the ball to Graig, and he kept picking them off. He started a double play in the second. He nabbed ground ball after ground ball, and I was happy to let the hitters keep hitting them.
We won that day 5–1. We won game four in the tenth on a walk-off single from Lou. Another game, another big moment when Lou stepped up. Beattie threw a complete game behind an offensive barrage to give us game five by a score of 12–2. As quick as that, we were up 3–2 in the series, with damn near everybody chipping in and doing their job, just like Thurman said. After we’d rattled off three straight, game six in Los Angeles felt like a foregone conclusion. We won, and for the second straight year, the season ended in champagne.
I would argue that the New York Yankees, as long as they have existed, have held a special place in American baseball lore that goes beyond our ability to win. The Yankees pinstripes are recognizable internationally. The navy blue, the NY, it’s not just a uniform and logo, it’s a brand, one that’s as well known on the other side of the world as it is in the Bronx. The seasons, players, owners, and managers come and go, but the Yankees culture perseveres. That can make it difficult, and confusing, for people to pin the root of what sustains that culture.
One popular idea, especially in my era, is that it came from the top down. George was instrumental in reestablishing Yankees culture. He didn’t just want us to play like champions. He wanted us to act like champions; he wanted us to look like champions. The rules he established after buying the team in 1973 are both famous and infamous: no long hair, no beards. To play for the New York Yankees, you’re expected to look the part. We weren’t part of a tree house, with a bunch of guys grabbing gloves and bats and messing around. We played for a world-class organization and had to act accordingly.
But to be truthful, I always saw it a bit differently. The Yankees culture wasn’t invented in some owner’s box and applied like sunscreen to the players. In fact, it was the other way around. The players themselves changed over the years, but their steadfast commitment to winning never did. It’s an organization that has been blessed with uncanny leadership. Which is why I like telling that story about Thurman before game three of the ’78 World Series. Our clubhouse culture wasn’t what you read about on the back pages of the sports sections or heard about on the radio. It was about our day-to-day focus on accepting nothing but excellence.
Think of the players people recall when they think of the Yankees: Babe Ruth, Lou Gehrig, Joe DiMaggio, Mickey Mantle, Roger Maris, Phil Rizzuto, Billy Martin, Whitey Ford, Yogi Berra, Thurman Munson, Willie Randolph, Reggie Jackson, Mariano Rivera, Paul O’Neill, Joe Torre, Jorge Posada, Andy Pettitte, Derek Jeter…I could name fifty more in a heartbeat. In that group alone, though, you have ballplayers of every stripe. Some were charismatic and charming. Others would’ve been happiest if they never once saw their name in the papers.
But there are a few qualities that I have observed over the years that have defined the best Yankees leaders, icons, and stars—and as a result, our culture. The first is what Thurman showed us in the clubhouse: an unrelenting refusal to accept anything but winning. As a young player called up to the team in ’75, I found having someone like Thurman as your catcher and captain completely changes your perspective. You demand the best from yourself because if it’s not your best, or if you’re not playing up to your standards, you’re going to get an earful. That’s a great thing for a team in any walk of life. To reach the top, to win back-to-back World Series titles, you need teammates who are willing to get angry when the team gets complacent.
That’s something I saw a lot of on the great Yankees teams over history. Thurman Munson was tough—he’d get in our faces when he needed to be. But I’d describe Thurman as ornery. The Yankees of earlier eras, like the 1950s teams with Yogi, were mean. Beyond being a tremendous group of baseball players, that’s what made those teams so good.
I got to know many of those players on Old Timers’ Day, or when they’d visit the stadium. But I was especially lucky to see that on a day-to-day basis with Billy, and Yogi Berra, who was our bench coach (and later our manager). I had a close friendship with Yogi. But what I’ll say here is what an incredible leader and competitor he was—even if he didn’t have movie-star looks, or the easy eloquence you might expect from a New York star. Same with Billy. Neither was especially tall or good-looking. But they demanded nothing less than the best from their teammates, and later, as coaches and managers, from their players.
They wouldn’t abide players not playing the game right. It is not a coincidence that the only baseball team ever to win five straight World Series had Yogi Berra on it. And Billy, too, for most of the run. I’m not sure there have ever been two smarter, more stubborn people to step onto a baseball field. Reporters and even teammates would make insulting jokes about Yogi’s intelligence, and how he stumbled over his words. But Yogi was absolutely brilliant. As a hitter, he had a combination of power and contact that simply doesn’t exist anymore. Some people ridiculed him for swinging at too many pitches out of the zone. But consider this: He never struck out more than 38 times in a season. He struck out just 414 times in his career and hit 358 home runs. This five-foot-seven catcher wouldn’t let any pitcher beat him. Only one player in baseball history with at least 300 homers has fewer strikeouts, and that’s Joe DiMaggio, Yogi’s teammate.
As a catcher, Yogi made his pitchers’ worlds better than they were without him, as Thurman did with me. And the numbers back me up. The ERA of the Yankees pitchers was better with Yogi behind the plate. He might be remembered for some funny quotations, but beneath that Yogi was a fierce competitor with an uncanny baseball mind, whose passion for the game fueled those Yankees teams. Here is just one example. When the Yankees were fighting for the pennant in August of 1951, Yogi had to be held back by his teammates, who were afraid he was going to sock the home-plate umpire after a ball-four call against the team. The entire team was stunned by his outburst. But it sent a clear message about just how much Yogi cared. Nothing got in his way.
To win day after day in the dog days of summer, year in and year out, you need somebody like that on the team to light a fire under your ass. A manager can only do so much, because he’s not playing. It’s best when that motivation comes from a teammate. When you flip through the generations of Yankees teams, the best teams had guys like Yogi and Billy and Thurman. The game has evolved over the years, and players who have that mean streak like Billy or Thurman are a rarer thing. They don’t really make ’em like that anymore. But the Yankees championship team in the late nineties didn’t just have the poetry and purpose in Derek Jeter. They had Paul O’Neill, who had that kind of fire. When I’d go to spring training as a coach, he really stood out. He would have fit right in with those older teams. I’d see him get red-faced and ride teammates, urging them on. Players like that, when they apply their passion the right way, are part of the glue that holds Yankees teams together.
Another defining aspect of Yankees culture, to me, is the unselfishness of the players who taught everything they knew to the younger players, the next generation. It’s something I think about often, because I’m so grateful guys like Dick Tidrow and Sparky Lyle took me under their wing and helped to transform me into the person and pitcher I became. The thing is, they didn’t have to do that. And they didn’t do it begrudgingly. They actively sought me out. Which says a great deal about their character, because in some ways I was a threat to their jobs. While they were teaching me, I was a reliever. The better I became, the more dispensable they would be. But they didn’t think like that. They saw a young player in need of guidance and stopped short of nothing to give me that.
The first time Sparky saw me throw, I was experimenting with a curveball and a slider. He was baffled. There’s nothing good about having two mediocre breaking balls. It’s much better to have one really good pitch. What he discovered was that I was getting bad advice from some of my coaches in the minors.
“Who’s trying to help you down there?” he said.
“Well, nobody?” I replied.
When I was sent back to the minors, he and Dick would talk about how they just couldn’t wait until I came back up so they could help me out. See, to Sparky it was paying it forward. As a young player with the Red Sox, he threw five innings and got dragged back out onto the field by Ted Williams, who wanted to talk to him about one of his pitches. He learned how to throw the slider to fool batters from one of the best hitters of all time. Then Sparky taught it to me.
They didn’t just teach me the physical stuff, though. There were some strategic things that they passed on as well. Like how Dick would break down batters with me, and explain how to set them up, where to throw pitches, and when to throw which ones. On a day-to-day basis, veterans like Thurman, Tidrow, and Sparky showed you how to carry yourself as a professional baseball player. Which was never more important on a team that, at least in the public eye, didn’t always act like professionals. In 1977–78 people sometimes thought we were a bunch of squabbling children. But contrary to perception, the way most of the players went about their business was as professional as it gets. They taught me to not get rattled. People could act like screwballs before games and after games. That’s one thing. There were plenty of bad days in the Yankees clubhouse. They showed me you can fight one another all you want, but once that national anthem plays, you’re fighting with one another. You’re fighting to win, together.
Having veterans who lead like that creates a cohesive team culture. As players and competitors, we shared a belief in playing the game the right way.
It’s one of the things that make Old Timers’ Day at the stadium such a treat for me. Obviously, it was cool to see legends like Mickey Mantle and Roger Maris and shake their hands. But you also got to hear their stories and learn from them. They didn’t just ride off into the sunset when they were done playing. It’s something George understood, the importance of having the former stars and players around, whether for Old Timers’ Day or down in Florida for spring training. Think about the resources I had around me as a player. Not just Thurman, Sparky, and Billy Martin. Yogi Berra, our bench coach, had the locker next to me. Next to Yogi was all-time great Elston Howard.
These guys weren’t just great baseball players, they were world-class teachers of the game. As a player, I routinely walked into the clubhouse, sat down at my locker, and faced Yogi. “I’m pitching today,” I’d say. “Tell me something.” He always had something. As great as he was as a player—ten-time World Series champion, three-time MVP, Hall of Famer—you had to drag stuff about him out. He was humble that way. But ask him for pointers or advice on the game of baseball? He was a walking encyclopedia. He’d always have something to offer about one of my pitches, or approaching batters, or the mental aspects of the game.