Crime in Sports - The Bronx Is Burning Billy Martin Part 7

Episode Date: January 11, 2026

This week, we find Billy Martin at the brink of a triumphant season, that would cement his managerial legacy. The problem is, there's going to be much drama, in the process. From fighting, in the dugout, on national televison, with his star player, to fighting with the team owner, at 2 am, after everyone has had a few cocktails, to causing a scene, by fighting with his wife, during a celebration... Billy is starting to unravel! All of this while NYC expeciences a huge blackout, and The Son of Sam runs rampant!!   Fight your star player, in front of the world, challenge someone who says they have a 160 IQ, and drink, cheat on your wife, and begin to fall apart with Billy Martin - Part 7!!   Check us out, every Tuesday! We will continue to bring you the biggest idiots in sports history!!   Hosted by James Pietragallo & Jimmie Whisman   Donate at... patreon.com/crimeinsports or with paypal.com using our email: [e-mail] Get all the CIS, STM & YSO merch at crimeinsports.threadless.com   Go to shutupandgivememurder.com for all things CIS, STM & YSO!!   Contact us on... instagram.com/smalltownmurder facebook.com/crimeinsports [e-mail]

And welcome back to crime in sports. Yay! Oh, yay indeed, Jimmy. Yay indeed. My name is James Petrick Allo. I'm here with my co-host. I'm Jimmy Wiseman. Thank you folks so much for joining us today on another crazy wild episode of crime in sports.

Very apologetic that we could not give you this part of Billy Martin last week. It was physically impossible. I really wanted to. I had my wisdom teeth pulled about. 48 hours prior to when we were supposed to record. And I thought I'd be, I was hoping I'd be ready. And there's the only time I could do it. We barely have a weekend off every once in a while.

So I had it done on a Saturday. And I'm like, maybe by Monday. And it was in fucking possible to do. So we apologize for that. Feeling better this week. But yeah, we hope you enjoyed the Otani gambling scandal. It could not be more apt to what's going on today. Unbelievable.

With people constantly getting busted gambling and the Dodgers winning the World Series. and me not buying a drop of any of it. Who knew? Allowing that to be legal was going to cause so many problems. Everybody. Pretty much everybody. Why did we allow degenerate gamblers to influence our way of life? It's fucking wild.

Oh, man, the lobbies, if you knew the lobbying money that these gambling outfits spend. Holy shit, you wouldn't even ask that question anymore. It's crazy. They're right up there. Right up there with pharmaceutical people and that kind of shit as far as lobbying. So it's a lot. We'll get to everything we have to get to anymore. First of all, shut up and give me murder.com is the site.

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Patreon.com slash crime in sports. That said, Billy Martin, you're up, buddy. Here we go. Let's do this. We're back with Billy Martin here. We are going to pick up on April 5, 1977, the beginning of the 77 season. things are looking good Billy's all happy

Yankees are fired up and they're already talking about him being fired the season has not even started yet he's asked about being fired because he keeps getting fired and that's the thing that happens

and Billy says with him yeah being Steinbrenner he said he might just do it for to get the publicity so this is Billy's not helping a situation He might do it just to get the press to talk about it. Yeah, if you're asked that, do you think your owner will fire you?

You could take the diplomatic route. Yeah, yeah, I think it might be done. Yeah, you could say like, you know, maybe, you know, like, but you know, that's up to him. He's the manager of the team, the owner of the team, but I'll tell you what, I'm going to work my butt off to get the team to the world, be, bit, bit, bit, bit, bit, you do all that shit. He says, I mean, if he wants the publicity, he'll do it, you know, he's a loudmouth attention seeking asshole and all. Probably the wrong thing to say, but that's Billy, you know what I mean? They ask him, can you live with the fear of firing? The fear of it.

Is there a fear when you just kind of invite it? When you invite it, when you have no, and you're telling people, I mean, if it happens, it happens. You know what I mean? Yeah, it doesn't sound like fear. But it doesn't scare you? Is there really fear? Well, also, yeah, you're inviting it, number one. And if you work for George Steinbrenner, that's just part of the game.

Yeah. He says, I'm going to have to. He says, but it's not going to change the way I manage. He said, he pays me to manage, and that's what I'm going to do. That's what the word means, manage. As a manager, you've got to live and die on your own convictions. No owner has the right to tell a manager who should be in the lineup. If he does, then don't fire the manager.

If he loses, fire the owner. Oh. Really? Yeah. I think we know how that works. Yeah, no, that's not how that works. Yeah, the owner does everything with his money, so that's a different start. Yeah, you can't fire the owner.

That's awesome. So, yeah, that's not going to happen. So Billy, somebody, a photographer approached him at the end of spring training and said, Billy, I have a picture of you in a Texas uniform, but none in a Yankee uniform. Do you mind if I take your picture in a Yankee uniform? And Billy said, not at all, but you better take it today. I might not be wearing it tomorrow. It might be a different one tomorrow.

Yeah, now this is what I mean. This is like right away. The season has not started and he's challenging Steinbrenner to fire him. Just challenging him. I'm doing an Indianster's next week. It could happen. It really could. And part of this whole thing is really the thing that's going to blow up their relationship is Reggie Jackson.

Steinbrenner bought Reggie so he could play right field and hit cleanup, period. Put him in the lineup before, you know, let's do it. Billy doesn't really like Reggie and puts him in the lineup wherever he feels like it. You're D.H. You're D.H. and hitting 7th now. Oh, okay. And George is like, I didn't pay a guy millions of dollars to hit 7.

Okay? Paid a guy millions of dollars to clean up. Billy said in this lineup, no. I didn't pay a guy a bunch of money to maybe see him in the third inning. Yeah, that's the thing. I want him up as much as possible for that kind of money. Yeah. This is not good.

Now, here's a thing to Reggie and other people. Some people accuse Billy of racism. Oh. And then some people are like, what fuck are you talking about? Basically, people who he doesn't like and who don't get along with him say he's racist. And players who do get along with him say he's not racist. So all the Spanish players from the 60s definitely don't say he's racist. All the Spanish-speaking guys and Dominicans from there because he was the guy who made them, you know, told everybody, don't fucking treat them bad.

These guys are fucking good ballplayers and all that shit. But either way, it's interesting here. He said, I would almost want to say that I never had a relationship with him. This is Reggie Jackson. I don't know what it was. Looking back, I think he never liked me. But at the time, I had no idea. I thought he would like me.

No, he thinks, Reggie thinks everyone would like him. Yeah. Now, Reggie, I love Reggie Jackson because he's kind of a crazy person. So you kind of have to like him. And he's a legend. He's a legend. And also, in my family, my dad's cousin and Reggie Jackson are best friends. Like, best friends.

They are businesses together every year at the Hall of Fame. Like, you know, my uncle, he posts pictures of them hanging out together at Reggie's house and all. So, like, we all had Reggie Jackson gear as a kid and autographed Reggie Jackson stuff. So in my family, Reggie is, you know, he's gold. There's no talking any shit about him. But like, a lot of people, he's kind of an asshole. You know what I'm saying? If you're not best friends of him, he's kind of a dick.

and he's known for it. Anyway, he goes on, he was from the Bay Area and I had played there. He was a scrappy guy and I always played hard-nosed baseball. Where was the problem? Reggie doesn't, he's not a real hard-nosed baseball guy. Reggie's a, he'll slack off going after a ball in right field and that kind of thing every once in a while. One more fundamentals, yeah. Billy doesn't like, okay, seems like Billy doesn't like, if I had to put it into looking at it

and kind of synthesizing it into a, like a digestible morsel. Billy doesn't like guys who are immensely physically talented that don't play as hard as he did. Doesn't like that, period. Yeah, he doesn't. He'd rather have a guy who's half the talent but tries twice as hard. All right. Which ideally, you'd like a guy with all the talent that tries just as hard as he can. That's ideal.

Yeah. The Kobe Bryant type, Michael Jordan type, you know. Yeah. immensely. The guy that's got all the talent and he's up at 2 a.m. practicing. Can dunk from the foul line and he's at the gym at 5 a.m. after he drank till 2 in the morning. That's the guy you want. And he's got a game tonight. And he's got a game tonight. That's what you want. But that's not Reggie. It's just not. It's just not. You know, so what are you going to do? Reggie also wrote that he was disappointed.

This is from Reggie's book, Becoming Mr. October. He was disappointed that all but one of the black players on the Yankees, Willie Randolph, sided with Billy. he said as a group the black players were unwelcoming to him to Reggie oh yeah they weren't welcoming to him which is odd I would say and I don't think I don't know if that's true or not again

this is Reggie's this is Reggie's very specific little sliver of a prism of what he sees you know what I'm saying so you never know that's an interesting thought so I don't know why the black players would be unwelcoming to him

doesn't make A ton of sense. But I don't know. Was he a hero to the black community? No. Reggie Jackson? No. No.

No, no at all. I mean, maybe to some people, I'm sure, but not. Yeah. He's not a guy who, no, he doesn't really scream that. Reggie's about Reggie, period. Wow. He's not a guy who's, you know, about a movement or about a cause or about any of that shit. He's, what's my paycheck?

He's just, yeah. Yeah. His activism surrounds Reggie's big house. Exactly. Surround's Reggie's big house. Let's make it bigger. Reggie going out to nice restaurants and Reggie doing that kind of thing and people liking Reggie. That's my activism.

Yeah. So now, Ricky Henderson, this is, and Ricky Henderson is the best quote of all time, obviously. He's amazing. He's a fucking crazy person and I love him. There's a guy with Ricky who he's like a, we don't know how hard Ricky works. Who knows? He's an enigma. But he would, when he was like 43.

he had the body of a fucking Olympian who was 21 years old. So he must have worked pretty goddamn hard or else he's the most genetically gifted person who's ever lived. How old was he when he died? Not very old, right? Ricky. Did he? Yeah. Shit, didn't he just die?

Yeah. Just die? That was like recently. Yeah, Ricky Henderson just died. 60s or something. Yeah, that's fucking terrible. He looked great all the time. Always.

He was in great shape. That's really shocking. Yeah, he was the, they called him the man. of steel. Yeah, it was incredible. 65. He was born in 1950. Was he 58? Oh, my God. I knew he was in the 60s. Yeah. 65. That's not that, that's fucking young. That's young. It is young. It is young. But you know,

dude, Ricky's crazy, though. You could see him being like, yeah, my doctor told me to, you know, drink lots of water. I said, you need to drink battery acid in the morning. That makes you healthy. Like, that's some crazy shit, Ricky would say. And if you mix it with milk, it doesn't burn. Yeah. Ricky cracks open an energizer at 7 a.m. every morning. Ricky makes a duracell smoothie every morning.

It's very nice. It makes that rabbit go, so what's the difference? You never know, Ricky's nuts. He died in pneumonia, so it's going to be something. You know what I mean? He was an asthmatic his whole life, so that's not good. That's crazy. He had weak lungs.

The best runner in the history of the game had asthma. Week lungs. That's incredible, isn't it? Wow. There's other guys that were like, when they were kids like that. So anyway, Ricky said about, this is about, you know, Reggie's whole thing. Ricky said, quote, Reggie is a friend, but that's the most wrong thing he's ever said.

Which, by the way, is the only sentence Ricky Henderson ever said in his whole career that didn't have the word Ricky in it, which is pretty impressive. It's pretty good. In a book called Jonathan Mahler's Ladies and Gentlemen, the Bronx is Burning, that Bronx is Burning book that they made the series about. they talk all about this. And there's a lot of books. There's this book. There's the Sparky Lyle book. So you get it from the outside.

Then you can get an inside locker room view of what's going on. And basically, the guys on the team did not like Reggie Jackson, period. Reggie wanted to come in and say, I am the guy now. And he fucked it up too. He went to a reporter and said, I'm the straw that stirs the drink.

And the whole team is really going to go on what I do. Yeah. And this is a bunch of guys that have been playing together a while. and they had a captain in Thurmond Munson, so that just kind of pissed everybody off. They're like, who the fuck are you? You just got here.

Well, that's, that's, that's, and terribly tragically. Yeah, yeah, that's going to be over with pretty soon. Why do you like to fly? So he could get home to see his family. Yeah. Otherwise, he saw them in the fall otherwise. If he had an off day. Never.

That makes sense. If he had an off day, go home to see his family. What's he going to do? It was him flying it, though, right? No, he had a private plane, a little time. tiny plane. He'd fly back to Ohio and didn't quite work out. Not smart. You spend enough time in those

little fucking planes. You're going to crash at some point. That's bad. Maybe he should have stayed in the fucking Bronx. I mean, say... Yeah, maybe buy a little place down there. I get to move your family. I don't know what to tell you. Move them to Jersey somewhere. Cross a bridge rather than

fly a plane. But I'm in fucking Pennsylvania an hour away from the city. It's the same as Ohio. You'd never know the difference. It's the same shit. You still got to cross bridges, which is only slightly less horrifying, but infinitely more safe. That's a normal people, though. Only

to you. Yeah. Infinitely more safe in comparison, though. You're not going to, the chances of dying on them is much more slim. Than flying your tiny fucking propeller plane in the dark. Single-inch and pro-plane and Ohio fucking snowstorms.

Jesus. Well, it's a summer, so there's no Ohio snowstorm. But still. He's still good. You know what I mean? Well, not in July. No, but he still could be flying in snowstorms if he's going back and forth all the time. Yeah, but I mean, baseball's played in the summer and that's when he's flying. He's not flying in the winter, I don't think. He's home in the winter. Probably just staying put, yeah?

Yeah, he's home in the winter, I think. Unless he takes those kids up in that fucking plane for entertainment. Sure, he's taking him for a fucking whirl every once in a while, messing it all up. So this guy said that Chris Chambliss, who is the Yankees first baseman, also a black guy, and he's the guy who hit the heroic home run against the Royals in ALCS that year. He said one night he was listening to Reggie complain in a hotel bar, and he said he finally confronted him. He had enough of the shit. Really?

He said, Reggie, you know what you'd be? Do you know what you'd be if you were white? Oh. Reggie said what? And he said, just another damn white boy. He said, be glad you're black and getting all the publicity you do, getting away with all the shit you do. That's what he said. That's what Hamlet's told him.

He'd go, you'd just be some other fucking white boy. who's hitting some home runs you'd be darrell evans no one would fucking care you know what i mean anybody care about darrell evans no there you there you go exactly so that's what he said um this is between the black guys i don't fucking know how i'm not black and it's not the 70s so i have no idea how that's working i'm gonna another flight or what the fuck happened i'm gonna take chandless's word for it i don't know what it was like to be a black professional athlete in 1977 so um in new york In New York, too, very specific. So the guy who wrote that book also noted that in the summer of 77, while the Reggie Billy shit was all over the New York newspapers, that's all they talked about.

Oh, here we go. We got it all. It's all, you know, drama and everything. The city's only black newspaper, the Amsterdam News, sided with Billy Martin. So even the black newspaper sided with Billy Martin, which is crazy. To them, they said Reggie was not a people's hero like Mahalaj. Alid, Joe Lewis, or Ray Robinson. He was just a guy making his money and not caring.

He wasn't going to the community. Yeah, yeah, right. Doing fucking workshops for kids or trying to do any of that shit. He was just, he was trying to, they were saying, basically, he was trying to fuck white models and living on the Upper East Side. Like, what the hell's black about that is what they, that was their point of view. He's not changing his name and then forcing people to call him a new name that is so different from his birth name. Yeah.

So Reggie's, uh, 2013 book. brought the issue back up again. When contacted about Reggie's book that year, Maddox here, the one who played for Billy in Texas, remember Bill Maddox who he sent away and ended up being a very, very good player that won a batting title or two. He said he agreed with Reggie. So you got that guy and then a bunch of other people

come to Billy's defense. Willie Randolph said about racism from Billy Martin, that's not something I saw from Billy. He said, Reggie went through a lot and I respect him so much, but I don't know about that. And basically, Reggie, or Willie was Reggie's only white or black friend on the team. Really? So he was his buddy, but he said, I never thought about that with Billy Martin.

He goes, that's, race never came into it. He doesn't care if you're from another fuck. You could be from Jupiter. If you'll run and play hard, he'll love you. He doesn't give a fuck who or where you're from. It doesn't matter. But he probably will bring that up when he yells at you when you don't run out that fucking flyball.

Possibly. So Roy White said Billy, and Roy White is black, by the way. Not to be confused. Sorry. Oh, wow. That could be confused. Roy White is black. He said, Billy, a racist, there are plenty of words I would use for Billy.

That isn't one of them. Big nose. That's the one. No, I'd use hook nose, guinea, dago, things like that. So he said maybe Reggie saw something in Billy that he had seen before and attributed it to racism. This is from the Billy book. They said, but there's a little proof that any racial prejudice was in Billy's life. They said there was plenty of people he didn't like, and they ran the gamut, white, black, Latin Asian.

He just didn't like a lot of people, but didn't matter. There was never a core reason why of who they are. It was more like what they are. They said he had plenty of enemies too. He also had a host of African American players from Rod Karoo to Ricky Henderson, who viewed him as a benevolent father figure and essential to their maturation. more than five of his Latin-born players named one of their children, Billy, in his honor. Oh, wow.

I mean, this is what I mean. He, because he really took them in. There's a little Puerto Rican guy running around there named Billy. That's crazy. Remember the guys from the twins in the 60s? Yeah. Like a bunch of those guys named their kids Billy. Fascinating.

You know, I mean, that's the way it was there. So they said that on every one of his coaching staffs from 76 to 89, he had black assistant coaches, which was not common back then at all. It really wasn't fucking common. They said he had major public shouting matches and confrontations with players, executives, reporters, and umpires, as well as several celebrated bar room fist fights

in an adult life spent literally, or spent entirely illuminated in the media spotlight. There's no preponderance of trouble with men or women of color. They're like, everything Billy did is public. Everybody knows about his fight. If he said the N-word, somebody or he even a whisper to somebody else

it would have came out basically is what they're saying like there's so there's too much of billy on record knowing everything he dislikes for him to have hidden anything that he didn't really like you know his son billy said you could call my dad a lot of things in a place like this you could see it all on the wrong night this was sitting in a bar in Texas he said he might drink too much he might hit on somebody's

girlfriend he might take offense at something someone said and want to punch him. He made a lot of mistakes, but nobody ever called him a racist. A racist. Reggie needs to look in the mirror. My dad was a lot of things, but racist wasn't one of them. Fair enough. Caru, whose daughter, by the way, is Billy's goddaughter. Oh. Yeah. Which is odd. So Rod Carew converted to Judaism and then made Billy Martin a racist day go godfather. Perfect. Who's also 10 years, 15 years, his senior probably? Probably about that. Maybe a little more, 20 maybe.

Do you generally pick somebody much older than you to be the godparent of your children? Yeah. In the event that something bad happens to you. Oh. You know what I mean? Yeah. There's more of a chance that's going to happen to him, in it. I guess, yeah.

But I mean, fuck, man. Past the 90s. Eventually, yeah. Nobody was thinking of the godparents actually is taking the children. Yeah. And then eventually, yeah, it's more of an honor bestowed upon a friend rather than really boring. And by the time that kid's old and, or by the time. By the time something bad happens to me, that kid's probably going to be so old that

Billy doesn't need to do anything for him. I probably made the worst time in Godfather decision. Rod is my son's godfather and he died the day of the christening. So I think that was bad. I think that literally that day. There was a fucking priest waiting for him and he was dead. I mean, that's not good. We had to reschedule that one.

So anyway, when Reggie's race comments were mentioned to him in 2013, Rod Karoo just shook his head and said, quote, Reggie knows better. I don't know why he would say that. And it's interesting that no one rushed to agree with Reggie. I never met a manager in all my decades of baseball then or since who got it along better with guys of color than Billy. So that's not just something. That's just not something I ever saw.

And I was around the guy for 25 years and knew most of the players that played for him in those 25 years. He said, we know the truth. There was just something between those two guys. Reggie and Billy didn't get along. We have people like that, someone who you just can't seem to get on the same page with. I never talked to Reggie or Billy about it, but I never had to. It was there. Also, Mickey Morabito, the Yankees Public Relations Director from 76 to 80.

He spent a lot of time with the team, obviously. He said there were days when they loved each other and there were days that they hated each other. Something about Reggie irked Billy. Something about Billy irked Reggie. I don't know what's going on between us. Reggie said in 1977. I'm not sure in April 9th, 19th, I don't know what's happened.

It's just very weird. He just like, I think part of it was, and this, Reggie's an asshole in a lot of respects. He really is. Like, when you read Sparky Lyle's book, you go, Jesus, Christ, this guy is a fucking pain in the ass. But at the same time,

there's something there that I don't think it's weird. He's a dick, but Billy saw him as an extension of George Steinbrenner, I think, personally. Almost like a... Yeah, because it's... Steinbrenner's christened him as the,

my tool that I'm going to use to get up your ass. Yes, yeah, totally. But not only that, he's like the rat in the unit, like in the wire or something when they sent a guy to spy on everybody. That's the way Billy looked at him. He's George's boy. He has lunch with George. And then it goes on in here, he's going to go tell George about it.

Yeah. You know, I think that's what it is. So I don't think Reggie could help him. that being George's guy. You know what I mean? Just couldn't help. George loved him, period. Through no fault of his own other than playing baseball well.

That's it. So I think if like Reggie was there when he got there, probably wouldn't have been a big deal. But it was like, oh, you're going to bring this guy in. So the 1977 Yankees can't argue with on the field. 100 wins, 62 losses. Dang. First in the AL East. Yeah. They win the ALCS over Kansas City in five games, go to the World Series, beat the Dodgers

and six. Dang, yeah. World Series fucking champion. He's unfirable, right? Yeah. And they're number one in the American League in attendance as well. So every metric you can

put for baseball success, people showed up. You made the most money of anybody, and you won the goddamn World Series. Anything else you can ask from the man? And you beat those chicken shit losers that ran from us. Yeah, exactly.

And you beat. those assholes. That's from the Patreon there. They took off, the son of a bitch. Yeah, they ran from fucking Brooklyn. Oh, man. So this is, you know, the Yankee Stadium had just been renovated, so I mean, he was making more money. This is terrific for George.

He should have been thrilled. And this is the, wow, what a fucking roster. This is crazy. Chris Chambliss. I'm going to read some interesting guys. Bucky Denton with that home run, obviously. Doc Ellis, the acid-taking, no-hitter-throwing guy from the from the Pirates. Ron Giddry, who was just

absolutely vicious back then. Just quite the squad. Catfish Hunter. Reggie Jackson. Cliff Johnson, Dave Kingman. Dave Kingman, I forgot he was on that team. Thurman Munson, Sparky Lyle, Mickey Rivers, Willie Randolph, Lou Pinella. A lot of guys on the squad, man.

This is a really put-together squad here. And the coaching staff, by the way, is Billy Martin. And you have Elston Howard, who is a Yankee, great. First Black Yankee, by the way. Dick Houser, Yogi Berra, Art Fowler, his always pitching coach, and Bobby Cox is on his staff. Oh, no, shit. He's the guy who brought Bobby Cox into the Major League coaching circles. Bobby Cox started it.

Hall of Fame, Atlanta Braves manager for 30 years or 25 years. So here is about Reggie's. This is the June issue of Sport Magazine hit the stands on Monday, May 23rd, 1977, with a title called Reggie in No Man's Land. So there we go. This is when he said, quote, I'm the straw that stirs the drink. Ficked it all up. He said Munson thinks he can be the straw that stirs the drink, but he can only stir it bad. That's the problem.

Don't say, say, say, I'm the straw that stirs the drink. Fine. Yeah. He stirs it backwards. Yeah, he stirs it counterclockwise. I ordered it shaking, not stirred. He fucked it all up. Yeah.

I wanted it blended. So to say that the most beloved guy on the team by everybody who plays catcher gets the shit beaten out of him on a day. Catcher in the 70s was a hard position. Everybody that came home ran into you. It's just the way it was. It's not like now where you're not allowed to touch anybody and everything is played like a game of high school girl softball from the 40s or something. You know, they didn't want to make their boobs bounce too much or whatever. They wear a glove to slide, James.

That's what I mean. They wear a mitten to slide. A mitten. It's not even a glove. When I see them give the guy the mitton, I'm like, get the, and not to sound like we're 100 years old, but how many bases did Ricky Henderson steal without the aid of a mitten? And I never saw him jump up and go, oh, God, my hand and run off the field. He just slid me was fine.

William Maze Hayes would staple the leather one that's fine. Willie Maze Hayes would staple the leather one that stole the glove up on the wall. That's it. Not a mitten, a fucking leather glove. He wouldn't have any room on his wall for a bunch of oven mitts. This is pathetic. That's what it is.

It's crazy. It's a fucking giant oven mitt. It's ridiculous. The first time I saw it was like, what is this a handle K? Oh, that's nice. Your grandma gave you an oven mitt. Terrific. I thought it was like the plastic mask that broken nose players wore in the 80s in the NBA.

I thought maybe he had a friend. I thought maybe he had a fractured thumb or something. But no, it's so that he doesn't fracture his thumb. Fucking insanity. On the very off, rare occasion that you're going to run your hand into something. It's as soon as they get to the base, they run, oh, here's your mitten. It's like. Don't touch that hot fan.

Now, your grandmother has a batch of cookies coming out in about 30 minutes, so we're going to need that back. They're peanut butter. They're peanut butter. She made those out fast. She made enough for everybody, so we're all very excited about it. You want him soft. We're going to need that oven mitt. She said, though, give me my oven mitt back.

That was the problem. It's crazy. Fucking goddamn. So this guy, yeah, you can't talk shit about the catcher who every day gets the living shit beaten out of him back there. And is the captain and plays hard and doesn't complain and plays with injuries. That's the thing. You're getting hit, but also being just fucking heckled by it. just taking a verbal abuse too all day.

It's a lot. Being a catcher. It's just a lot being a catcher. And especially, like I said, back then, the equipment wasn't as good. Yeah. Guys could beat the shit out of you. And Munson was always playing with leg injuries. And everybody knew he was playing hurt all the time and everything like that.

And you're talking shit about the guy. It didn't make. And he's been on the team forever. And he's the captain. So the guys were like, who the fuck are you to come in here and talk shit about this guy? I don't even know him. So that's kind of. And their knees were fucked too.

Always. Oh, always. Yeah. They didn't have those those fucking wedges they sit on now that help a lot. None of that shit. The point was build your ass, so you can sit on that. That's why you saw guys like Tony Pena and guys like that sometimes just sitting on the fucking ground with their leg out. Like, they're tired.

They're beat. So the article was filled with quotes from Reggie, praising himself and predicting how he could help the imperfect Yankees. They're all fucked up, but I'm perfect, so it'll work. The interview with Sport magazine writer Robert Ward took place inside the banana. boat bar on the beach in Fort Lauderdale. So a couple of drinks going on. Not a good time. Reggie might not have said that in the clubhouse after a loss.

You know what I'm saying? Probably not. According to the story, minutes into the interview, Billy Martin, Mickey Mantle and Whitey Ford walked into the bar and started playing backgammon in another section of the bar. Reggie bought them around to drinks. Of Billy, he said, quote, he's no dummy. He's smart.

He knows I can help this team. team. Billy is a winner. We won't have any problems and I'll make it easier for him. You know, yeah. He also added that he had to lead the team, though. That's the only way they'd be successful. He was the team leader. He said, not in Thurman Munson specifically. He can't do it. He called him insecure and jealous. Really? Now, here's what Thurman was pissed off about. Thurman was given a guarantee by George Steinbrenner that he would be the highest paid Yankee. He basically gave him favored nations. He said, you're the captain. Anybody except Catfish Hunter who we had to pay to get.

Oh, really? Thurman wanted to pay to get him. He said, that's fine. Anybody else besides catfish hunter, if we pay somebody, we will give you that amount of money. But then when Reggie got signed, they didn't give Thurman Reggie money. So Thurman was pissed. He was like, he promised me this. And now he's not giving it to. And now he's making it. So this guy's the team leader because he's like, well, I'm getting paid twice as much as you. So obviously I'm twice as important. That's how it works. So he was pissed off.

Now, Reggie, now the article came out and the Yankees were pissed off. Obviously. It didn't work. Reggie said he was misquoted. That was his claim, which that's not going to work.

Munson had a response when he was told that Reggie insisted he was misquoted. Munson said, for 3,000 fucking words, he was misquoted? I doubt that. Literally. I don't think so.

There's a lot of misquoting in those thousands and thousands of words. He wrote a novel and put Reggie's name in it all over and it's crazy. Misquoted. Just got to have it in context. Oh, man. So this was a big deal. They went to Billy and Billy played it kind of upper, he just said fucking, I'm not going to say anything. He said, I don't care about it. Not important, which was the smart thing to say. No need to do any of that.

But by the time the Yankees headed out to batting practice, they said, said no one but Reggie's good friend, the backup catcher Fran Healy, was making any attempt to talk to Reggie. So no one would talk to Reggie that day. They just, they acted like it was no big deal, but everyone was like, fuck that guy, persona non grata, basically. Sure. They said the silent treatment continued throughout the pregame, just ignoring Reggie. Okay. Now, the Red Sox were up four to two in the seventh inning that night when Reggie hit a solo homer. So he crossed home plate, Pinella, who's the on deck hitter, was waiting with the outstretched hand like you do.

Give a guy a high five or whatever. Reggie ran right past him without acknowledging it. Didn't give him a slap. Team player. Not okay. Yeah. See, Panella, even though he's pissed at him, was still, congratulations. This is what you do on a team, and Reggie didn't want to play that shit.

So as is customary, the book goes on to say, a gaggle of Yankees, players, and coaches, and Billy waited near the step of the dugout nearest to home plate to greet and congratulate Reggie. But Reggie ran through foul territory toward the other end of the dugout away from those guys. There's everybody waiting at the top steps, the ones closest to the dugout, and they're closest to home plate. And then there's the other entrance.

And he went the other entrance. He went around and went to go literally around. Didn't want to go near everybody, which is so asking for Trump. So Barry Barnes. Worse. It's fucking worse than Bonds. He descended the steps without a. acknowledging anyone and sat down in the corner of the dugout.

Not cool. So after the game, the Yankees lost four to three. Reporters asked Reggie why he refused to shake hands with his teammate, and he said his right hand was sore and he didn't want to aggravate it. Oh, I can't be giving all those high-fives. Can't be doing all those hands. You know, it gets crazy out there. That's amazing. Told of the excuse, Munson, who, Munson didn't really talk to reporters that much.

She didn't get any honesty for months and he just go, well, you know, we went out there. We tried our best. I don't know what to tell you. Like, that's all you'd get out of Munson. He wasn't a big quote machine. He said, quote, he's a fucking liar. He screamed across the clubhouse. Oh, man.

Years later, Reggie said the obvious. It was just a reaction to the silent treatment he'd gotten before the game. So he was being pissed off. He said, you guys are going to be that way. Okay, I'll deal with it is what he wrote in his book. He said, let's just move on and be open about it. You don't like me. I don't like you.

you, why hide it? He said that he was sulking, and he said, and so they asked Billy Martin about the dugout snubbing. Billy Martin was also on the top of the step, so he knew that he went around. Oh, yeah, yeah, he watched it. Billy said, quote, I didn't notice. I'm all broke up about it. Which I think is a great strategy with Reggie is to he wants attention.

Pretend you don't see his horse shit. Ignore him, basically. Yeah. Oh, I didn't, I didn't even. see that. Wow. Yeah. What do you think of that chick's giant tits? Aren't they bouncing?

I didn't even notice them. I don't know. Missed them. That's the guy who she's going to go home with. You know what I'm saying? So maybe that's what it is. So May 25th, 1977, there's an article here saying, Billy Martin, the Yankees self-destructing manager.

Meanwhile, they're in first place. They're crushing it. Yeah. It just became this narrative that they would just keep talking about. You know what I mean? It was a narrative, period. That was that. So this article says, quote, I'm going to miss Billy Martin.

Pretty soon he'll be gone unless he corrects his ways. And history shows that Billy Martin will not correct his ways. He has a death wish. He should be the happiest man in the world. He could be, but he's not. He drives himself to trouble, to tensions, to confrontations that are not needed. He challenges his superiors to duels. He slaps them across the face with a glove, leaving them no alternative.

They talk about how it happened over and over and all the other places. They said it would have happened by now but for the intercession of Gabe Paul. George Steinbrenner, the chief owner, wanted to unload his defiant manager last week. He wanted to fire Billy Martin in fucking May of a season they won 100 games and won the World Series. Dumb.

But Gabe Paul, the general manager, prevented it. He said, he asked George Steinbrenner, you want to win the pennant, don't you? And Steinbrenner said, of course I do. And he said, Martin will win it for you. So stop, just deal with it. So he said win it, how?

He is disrupting the team. The entire organization is what Steinbrenner said. But Gabe Paul said, shut up, doesn't matter. Let him fucking, let him do it. Who cares? You know what I mean? I guess a week earlier, Martin had bitched publicly about the Yankees' front office for a failure to make a roster move.

The Yankees had an opening, and Martin wanted Elrod Hendricks, a catcher recalled from Syracuse. And Gabe Paul thought, he, called somebody else up. So he called Billy Martin and he said, we have to talk about this thing right now. I'll come over to your place tonight. And Billy said, not tonight. I have something to do.

Tomorrow, the team bus leaves for the airport at three. I'll be at your office at one. That'll give us two hours to talk. But then Billy Martin didn't show up. Oh? So they find Billy Martin $2,500 for missing the meeting here. And Paul said the things he said about George were just terrible. and Steinbrenner said, and untrue.

Martin lied about the whole situation. He's been in violation of his contract four distinct times. He could be fired right now. So they said Martin's troubles go beyond the front office. The air in the Yankee clubhouse is foul with uneasiness. Players tiptoe around, hardly speaking. They hide in their plush lounge like rich recluses. The Yankees clubhouse used to be a fun place.

Now it's a funeral, oppressive. Newsmen ask questions apologetically. Why did you go down to the far end of the dugout after you hit the home run? Somebody asked Reggie, my hand is bothering me. He said facetiously. So they talk about that. So they said, why did you do it? And Reggie said, it's not easy here.

That's all I want to say, it's not easy here. So they go on to that. And basically, they're just talking about how shitty it is. June 19, 1977. Okay. This is an interesting thing. This is when him and Reggie have some beef in the dugout here. Here we go.

And Billy said, I show a player up when he shows the club up. This was, okay. This is literally an almost fist fight in the Yankee dugout during the Yankees Red Sox game. What did they say? They said in an obvious expression of displeasure, Martin, the Yankees manager, removed Jackson from his right field position in the teeth of a Boston threat in the sixth inning. Jackson ran cautiously after a Red Sox hit.

He fucking lased after a ball, period. He just totally just came up short on it. Didn't hustle after it. You can see the play. It's a big, you can look it up on YouTube. Did he miss it? Yeah, he just kind of trotted up, played it on the bounce. Didn't act like he needed to really attack it.

And Billy lost his fucking mind and pulled him right out of the game in the middle of the inning at right field, which embarrassed Reggie. Yeah. And pissed him off. So Jackson, in full view of a national television audience, trotted into the dugout and confronted Martin arms waving. Now, what do you think is going to happen when you confront Billy Martin in public with your arms waving? Yeah, he throws punches and shit. He's going to throw a punch.

Now, Elston Howard, who's a big son of a bitch too, he's a big ex-Yanky catcher, big guy at that point, step between them when Martin tried to pursue Jackson down the runway to the club. He's twice Billy's size and half his age. He'd kill Billy Martin. Leaving the stadium. He could rip Billy in half. And he's like, I'm going to fight that giant guy. I don't give a fuck.

So he tried to chase him down the clubhouse, the runway to the clubhouse. Dick Houser and Yogi Berra held him back. Martin said, quote, I only ask one thing of my players. Hustle. He said, it doesn't take any ability to hustle. When they don't hustle, I don't accept that. When a player shows the club up, I show him up. That's fair.

He said, you know, the confrontations here now compared with previous ones, this is much worse. He's had problems with players, but never this bad. He said, it's the worst I've had. Words were said that I didn't like it all. So this was a big fucking deal, this whole thing. And, yeah, I don't know, man. You can't do that. You can't lays after a ball like that and then get mad when you get called out on it.

Yeah. They asked Elston Howard about it, and he said, I didn't do a damn thing. He said, I've always been a peacemaker. I don't know. This shit's my fault. I was trying to stop it. Hey, no, that's right. According to the cameraman on the NBC TV camera on the side of the Yankee dugout that swung right to the dugout, Martin yelled, cover that fucking thing about the camera to the players.

Like, cover up that shit. To a bat boy when he saw the camera pointed. The bat boy went over and tried to drape a towel over the camera lens. Oh, shit. You don't disobey Billy. You go do it. No, no, no. You know what I mean?

So to shield it, but the cameraman just pulled it off and kept filming it because this is good TV right here. Sure is. Billy said, what's television got to do with the game? Well, kind of everything. It's where all your money comes from at this point. Not then, but at this point in the game. Do they tell you how to win? He said, we won without him last year, didn't we?

That's what he replied about Jackson. By the way, when someone asked about him. So, yeah, Reggie had no play on the fly ball. that's the thing. Reggie wasn't going to make the play. No. He wouldn't make it either way. He wasn't going to make it. But he didn't try.

That's the thing. Yeah. But maybe he's so good playing devil's advocate. Oh, yeah, yeah. He's so good that he knows that he can't make it. So he just looks lazy because he's so good and so athletic. It just looks lazy. It looks easy.

A lot of people said that about Joe DiMaggio, that he was. so smooth that it looked. So talented. Yeah. And Bernie Williams was the same way. It just looks easy. They run like deer and they're so smooth that they make it look like they're not hustling when it's just, they're just graceful. You know what I mean? They're moving their ass off. They just

look amazing. They're just graceful. That's all. Yeah. This isn't what Reggie. Reggie's not graceful. You can tell when he's hustling when he's not. He's a stocky son of a bitch. He's muscular. There's a lot of man. Big giant thighs and shit. He's thunder and after shit. So he said, but he didn't chase. it. And Rice was running hard

from home plate, saw that Reggie was slowing approach and took second base on it. That's why you hustle. You hustle to the ball to keep him from taking an extra base because back then guys will take a fucking base. Now they'd hope, but back then they would. So Billy said, you're, fuck

that. Billy came out to pull the pitcher out of the game and put Sparky Lyle in. After Lyle reached the mound, Billy returned to the dugout and that's when he sent Paul Blair out to right field, which is also a very funny piece of footage to watch a man run out to right field and basically the Yankees have two right fielders for a minute. Because Reggie's like, what's going on?

And Paul Blair's like, you just see him shrugging going. I don't know, man. They just sent me out there. So I guess you should go in. And he's like, I'm not going. He's like, I don't know, dude. I'm not going back in that dugout telling Billy I, you know, you sent me back. Billy sent me out here.

I'm going. So anyway, Lyle, who can't stand Reggie Jackson in this fucking book at all because he just stirred the shit on the team and didn't like him. he paused to watch all this and said, oh, this ought to be good. He thought he was like, this is great. This is fun. Reggie seeing Paul Blair running,

you know, you see him on the film pointing to his chest and he says, you're here for me? Like, you're coming in for me? He said, what's going on? And Blair said, you got to ask Billy and shrugging. Go run in there and have a chat with him about it. You should go talk to him. I'll be out here.

I'll be out here about it. He said, he told me I'm in for you. and Blair years later said he knew exactly what was going to happen next. He said, he said, I was happy to be out in the outfield so I didn't have to be near it. And he laughed. I don't want any part of that. I want to stay right here. No part.

So he ran in and went up to Billy and said, what did I do to get pulled out? And Billy jumped up from the bench and said, you showed me up by not hustling, so I'm going to show your ass up. Reggie said, what the fuck are you talking about? You know what he's talking about. just watch Jim Rice take a fucking second base on a blooper to right field. That's why, you dummy. So Billy said, you know what the fuck I'm talking about. You loafed after that ball.

Anyone who doesn't hustle isn't playing for me. So that's when Reggie pulled off his glasses. Oh, he's got those gold rim glasses. Yeah. Now, Reggie said that wasn't because he was planning to fight, but because his glasses were getting fogged up in the sweat and the heat. I'm so mad. Yeah.

So Reggie told Billy, you're not a man. So then Billy heard that turn around and said, I ought to kick your ass. I'll show you a man. So Reggie said, who do you think you're talking to, old man? Oh, no, don't say that. You think you're talking to old man. You showed me up on national TV. So that's when Billy said, cover that fucking camera up to the bat boy,

because he was going to go snuff Reggie out, basically. So then NBC's Joe Gargiola, who's the play-by-play guy or the color man, said they're going to confront each other right here. hearing the dugout. They're going to do it. This is a good TV, man. In the Yankees radio booth, now we got Phil Rizzuto watching the quarrel.

They're ex-teamates and everything. And Rizuto said, oh, Billy's really hot now, watch out. He knows Billy. He's going to punch somebody. I know this. This is not going to go well. And Billy charged it. Reggie. He tried to fight him, which is insane. To fight one of your own players is insane.

And your biggest one. And a big giant guy, half your age. The most popular, all of it. So Yogi Berra, who'd known Billy since 1949, and like Rizzuto, knew when shit was about to go off with Billy, had already gotten in between him and Reggie knowing that this is going to happen. Elston Howard grabs Billy, and you can see that. And he tried to grab Reggie because he's big, so that helped. So in this, they say from the book, unnoticed in the drama, the two men had maneuvered like trained bar bouncers accustomed to diffusing confrontations. I guess if you're one of Billy's coaches, stopping him from getting in fights is probably half your job.

You know what I mean? Watching the two former Yankees catchers moved tactically in in tandem without saying a word was Ron Guidry, the young pitcher who was sitting on the dugout bench, old Louisiana Lightning there. As Gidry told author Harvey Arriton, Berra and Howard both stood up as soon as Billy told Blair to get his glove. They knew there was going to be a fight as soon as he sent Blair into the game. Blair, gloves. Oh, shit, get up. Gidre said they had the smarts to know that this doesn't look good.

Something's going to happen here. Nobody else did, just them. Me, I'm sitting there on my butt, never even thought about getting up. Yeah. And that doesn't know Billy Martin that well, too. He just came up and Gidry's not, you know, hasn't known Billy for 20 years. Gidry actually thought that maybe it would be best if Billy and Reggie had the fight. And many thought it was inevitable right then to get it over with.

Yeah, Gidre said at that moment, if you asked me, I would have said we should let the sons of bitches go. Just let him fight. So it happens. Whatever. Okay. So Elston Howard, though, said the two were never really close and less than friendly later in life about him and Billy. But Howard did not much like the way Reggie conducted himself either. With several current and former Yankees listening one night in 1977, Howard was asked where Reggie would have fit in on the ground.

Yankee teams of the 50s and early 60s. Howard said fifth outfielder, which is a huge insult. Yes. Not even the first guy coming in. Fifth outfielder. Yeah. A pinch hitter essentially. Yeah.

A pinch fucking hitter. But Howard knew that letting Billy and Reggie duke it out would be an epic embarrassment to the entire franchise and that he and Yogi spent way too much time trying not to let any of this shit happen to let all the, the image of the Yankees be torn asunder by this bullshit. Berra, Yogi, who was 52 years old at the time, which, by the way, yogi at anything under 70 just seems really weird, doesn't it? Yeah, I've never seen him as a young man.

It's so strong. Even as a young man, he looked like he was 68 years old. He's always had giant ears and giant nose. Jowls and, yeah, he just always looked like an old man. So they go, Berra, 52 years old, was a bear of a man at the time. And he grabbed, because Yogi, he, looks like this little guy. He was a thick son of a bitch. Yogi hit a lot of fucking home runs and he was a tough bastard. He got real skinny there in the end. Wait, well, he was old old. He's

dead. He's dead. Yeah, yeah. Yeah, yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Poor little guy. But yeah, and you seem as a small skinny man and he's like, oh, that little guy used to play baseball. Yeah, no, he was still a big guy. I mean, to play catcher in the 40s, you had to be a tough son of a bitch. I mean, you were getting run over a lot. So at the time, he grabbed Billy by the belt and crotch, which was an especially. effective way to control someone. Yeah. You grab their nuts sack in their belt. They're not going anywhere.

That does nothing for the legend of yogi being tiny either. Reached up and grabbed his belt. He just knew. He was bigger than Billy. Yeah, I know. I know. I'm just saying it. In my head, I see him being just this little dinky old man. It's so cute.

That's funny. Billy said Yogi had hands like vices. He's an old catcher. He's strong hands. He said, I wanted to get it Reggie in the worst. way, but yogi had a hold of me. I also wanted to keep both the balls in my sack. He had a hold of me. All of me.

All of me. He said that Reggie, meanwhile, was not exactly straining to get at Billy, but he was close enough and agitated enough until Howard moved him away. When the two combatants, at least momentarily neutralized, were at least momentarily neutralized, Torres, Mike Torres,

told Reggie in Spanish to go to the clubhouse and cool off. Another teammate, Jimmy Wynn, helped push Reggie to the ramp to the locker room. Reggie screaming as he left, you never liked me, to Billy. They said it had been fewer

than 12 furious seconds, yet it left the dugout in a national TV audience spent. In homes across America, there was a collective gasp and gulp. It was as if any if baseball fans nationwide had inched toward their television screens to take in every millisecond of the dugout drama,

then lean back in their easy chairs to let out attention relieving exhale. Billy was the best known manager in baseball. Reggie was one of the four or five best known players in the game. On a beautiful Saturday afternoon in Boston, they nearly had a toe-to-to-fist fight, and it was framed in the confines of an undersized bench area. Like, well, it's small in there, so, you know, that happens. Wow. Has there ever been a scene like that in an American sport?

The answer was probably yes, but it had never been broadcast on national television, is the thing. Everybody didn't see it. Now it's happened a bunch of times. Yeah. Robert Auri and Danny Ains with the town. It's happening. All over. Carlissimo?

Who was that? PJ, that was in practice. That wasn't on national TV, though. That wasn't a practice. When he choked a coach, didn't he do that on a game? Fuck no, it was during a practice. No one was there. No cameras were there.

Only team guys were there. Yeah. I swear I've seen it. You have not seen it. Really? Or maybe they had a camera in the practice facility, but certainly wasn't on national television or during a game. I swore there was like a picture of it.

Possibly. There might be a still because they used to always tape practices so they could look at films and stuff. So it's possible it's on film. I'm pretty sure. But it definitely didn't happen during a game on TV for sure. Did anybody ever choke a coach during a game? No, definitely not.

Just throw a towel at them or point at them or something like that. So soon after, this is when people started to take sides. That's the thing. They said watching a videotape of the game, it's fascinating. to see how quickly Billy and the rest of the Yankees try to pretend that nothing of consequence occurred. Yeah, it was kind of a big deal. They said there was complete calm in the Yankees dugout.

Billy turned his attention to the field, mute and still, but for a twitch of his eye. On the Yankees bench, the players stared straight ahead. Lyle threw a pitch to Carl Yostremski, who grounded it to first, Fisk flied out, no run scored, the whole team was in the dugout. A clubhouse boy ran over to Lou Pinella. Penella said, quote, this kid said Reggie wanted to see me in the clubhouse. All the players were sitting on the bench just going about their business.

No one wanted any part of this. But I went into the clubhouse and found Reggie standing there in a t-shirt and his uniform pants. Reggie told Pinella he'd left his baseball spikes on so he would have good footing in the clubhouse carpeting during the fist fight he planned to have with Billy when the game was over. He's getting ready. That's kind of cheating in it. You're right? Shit. You're bigger than him and you need track.

Traction? I guess he's been told Billy will throw a bunch. He's going to throw his hardest one. Fuck, yeah. Pinella said, I told Reggie to get a beer, shower, and go back to the hotel. You can't have a fight with the manager. That's no good for you. No good for Billy or the ball club.

Reggie, who had doubled and singled earlier in the game, responded that Billy had humiliated him on national television. Right. Now, Fran Healy, Reggie's best friend of the team, arrived in the clubhouse as well. Healy strongly advised Reggie to fucking go home. Leave the park and go. Finally, Reggie dressed and was escorted to the little-used Fenway Park exit in center field.

He emerged into the sunlight of Lansdown Street and then walked unnoticed to the Boston Sheraton a few blocks away. After the game, which the Yankees lost 10 to 4, Billy was irritated, but certain he had done the right thing. In his manager's office, beneath Fenway's grandstand, was the same one where Casey Stengel once expounded on the verily. virtues of Billy's fight with Jimmy Pearsall. Now Billy sat behind the manager's desk, his back to a red brick wall, facing a throng

of reporters from New York and Boston. Billy said, you can't let any player think he's bigger than the team and his teammates deserve maximum effort. When a player shows up the team, I show up the player. So the reporter said, did you think twice about pulling Reggie in a close game? And Billy said, we won last year without him, didn't we? We don't need him. Yeah, yeah, yeah.

They said, did you consider a more conventional means of discipline? And he said, how do you find a superstar? Take away his Rolls Royce? Yeah. Because traditionally, you'd find the guy $500. This guy's making $2.9 million. What are you going to do? Take away his car.

Yeah, I don't have the power to do that. They said, was the incident bad for baseball since the game was on national television? And Billy said, what's television got to do with the game? Did that help us win? I don't care if it went out to the whole world. He loves to get clarification on things. What's that got to do with this? What's that got to do with this?

What's love got to do with this? What's love got to do? Why are you even asking this shit? Yeah. Fuck's your prob. So the task took several hours. They tried to find Reggie at this point and said they couldn't find him for several hours because he was at the Sheraton. Eventually, after fielding multiple requests,

Reggie invited a handful of his favorite New York writers to his hotel suite where he was drinking a bottle of white wine with Mike Torres. Reggie walked around the sweet shirtless and holding a Bible. Come on, a glass of white wine in one hand, Bible and the other. You're going to tell you some shit. Shut up, Reggie. What are you doing? You imagine that shit? That's awesome.

He's like fucking Jimmy Swaggart, but shirtless. This is what we need. The glass of white wine is the capper, I think. That's what makes it hilarious. It could be any drink, and he's drinking like. No, no, no. No, a shardinet is the funniest. Like a mom of three at three in the afternoon.

For sure. He's drinking a reeling is hilarious. Like he's got a cheesecake in the fridge. So wild. Is the Bree chilled? Well, bring it out. Jesus, what are we doing here? My reasoning is...

Is it solid yet? Bring it out. My reeling is getting room temperature. We can't have this. I like a slight chill in my white. It's a jello cheesecake. It's not even baked. No, no, not at all.

Oh, God. He said he had just received a call from the Reverend Jesse Jackson. Jesse Jackson called him for some reason. Reggie said, it makes me cry the way they treat me on this team. The Yankee pinstripes are Ruth and Garrigan, DiMaggio, and Mantle. But I'm just a black man to them who doesn't fucking know how to be subservient. I'm a big black man with an IQ of 160. Wait, what?

making $700,000 a year and they treat me like dirt. They've never had anyone on their team like me before. No, they've never had anybody holding a glass of reeling claiming to have a 160 IQ. No one has ever done that before. You are right, Reggie.

That's a fact. Wow. Only a moron would say that. I would definitely check and see how much white wine has been drank from these bottles. Is this motherfucker serious? Just open the trash

and see how many bottles are in. Yeah, an IQ of 160, eh? Isn't the most 120? No, no. What? What? No. No.

No. No, no, no, no, no and no. Highest ever records like 180 or 90 or some shit. Really? Some physicist, Stephen Hawking, they said, is like a 180 or some shit. Einstein had like a 160 and, you know, he fucking like figured out how to split the atom, things like that. You know what I'm saying? Yeah.

Isn't that the highest IQ test measures, though? No, no, it measures all the way up. Yeah, you can be over 200 in an IQ test. What? Yes, yeah. It's 120. Who's recorded that fucking high? Oh, God, Jesus.

Thank God, 120 isn't the highest. Imagine if 120 was the highest and the average is 100. That would mean everybody's fucking, most of the country is dumb as fuck. I just thought the chasm between 100 and 120 was that. Oh, yeah, no, no, no, no. I know for a fact that's not. No. Now I'm fascinated with smart people, but we'll get, we'll move on.

We'll talk after the show. Reggie's probably not one of those, though, is the point. 160 seems a bit much is what I'm saying. That's a little high, yeah. That's a little high. Maybe baseball IQ. There you go. Well, at baseball IQ, we would have known to hustle after that ball.

Jim Rice will take seconds. So I give him a lower baseball IQ, actually. His behavior has just negated that argument. That's the thing. The problem is this is when the year Reggie becomes fucking, you know, Mr. October and all that shit. Oh, yeah, yeah, yeah. So asked about George Steinbrenner, Reggie said, I love that man. He treats me like I'm somebody.

The rest of them treat me like dirt. Yeah. Billy, meanwhile, was about four blocks away at a bar called Daisy Buchanan's. He's hanging out at a bar. So they got to go talk to him and all that kind of shit. Sounds like a rad place, though. That's a great name for a bar. Yeah, yeah, it's not bad.

Now, I guess Moribito here got Billy back to the hotel. And Moribito said he was really upset. You know, Billy always felt he had to stand up for himself or for the Yankee way. He thought he might lose the respect to the team if he didn't. But after it was over, he usually felt terrible. Not because he thought he was wrong, but because he knew there would be trouble. For a guy who was in a lot, he really did. didn't like trouble.

He said, though, there were a lot of nights like that in 77 and 78. He was Billy being Billy, and being Billy took a big toll on him. He'd be very upset and not know how to process all of it. And also the next day in the newspapers, it's all that's on the front page or the pictures of all this shit. And, yeah, Steinbrenner is a little bit pissed off. He called Gabe Paul, the general manager, and said, this is how my team is perceived around the country. We look like lunatics and screaming maniacs. Get Reggie and Billy together and fix this.

Good fucking luck. So Gabe Paul called Billy's house and talked to Gretchen, his wife. Oh. Okay. So Gretchen said, Billy said he was going to breakfast in Gabe Paul's room with Reggie. He promised me he'd remain calm. He wanted to get it over with. But I was worried.

I knew Billy didn't think Reggie was a good teammate. So the breakfast, according to the book, was a bizarre. meeting. Gabe Paul tried to get both men to admit they overreacted. Neither would admit that. And the notion especially annoyed Billy, who expected Paul as part of management to support the manager. Reggie spoke to Paul as if Billy weren't in the room, accusing him of trying to embarrass him.

Reggie insisted he did nothing wrong and that he hustled after that fly ball, which he obviously watched the fucking footage. He didn't hustle at all. I mean, I've seen it 100 times. Not at all. Interesting. Yeah. Billy Reggie said

was just looking for an excuse to blame him for something. Billy jumped up from his side of the table and said, quote, get up, boy, I'm going to kick the shit out of you. So now Reggie turned to Gabe Paul and said, you heard it, you heard him call me boy. Yeah. And he said, Gabe, you're Jewish.

You understand the comment. How do you think I feel when he says that to me? Billy said it's just an expression. We call each other boy where I grew up, Which back in the day, they all did call each other, boy. That was. It's also a demeaning. It means you're not a man.

It has no racist context to it when you call. That's what Billy's saying, right? No, he's saying that's just how an expression that I use on everybody all the time. Yeah. Okay. Which I've heard many accounts of Billy in bar fights with big rednecks calling a boy. So that's just how he talks to people. When he's talking to a black guy in the 70s who's on his team, he should probably.

He should probably understand that that's a different context, but he just, that's why I call everybody. It has nothing to do with that. But understand context and place and time and that's, you know, whatever. So Gabe Paul ordered Billy to sit down and soon realize this shit wasn't going to work, basically. The next day, Billy insisted the meeting had brought a resolution to the dispute, though. Billy told the reporters, we went over everything and everything turned out fine. There's no problem. Yesterday is history.

Okay. So the next 24 hours played out like the Cuban Missile Crisis, the book says. The explosive device in this case was Steinbrenner, who arrived in Detroit, convinced he should fire Billy for failing to get the best out of Reggie. Oh. So Fran Healy, the backup catcher and Reggie Confidant, now by the time the Yankees left Detroit three days later, Healy was being called Kissinger, like negotiating between powers, basically. On Monday, Healy met Reggie for lunch in the lobby of the team's hotel. here. Now Healy explained that the two had to work together to keep George from firing Billy. Healy's reasoning was twofold. One, it would probably not be the best thing for the team.

And two, if Billy was fired, his Legion of Fans would mercilessly attack fucking Reggie Jackson. He would be hated by the fans after that. He said, and so with most of the rest of the team, Reggie's life would go from complicated to untenable. Reggie agreed, and Healy and Reggie went to see George in his hotel room. Reggie pleaded with George not to fire Billy because it would look as if Reggie were running the team, and that would make not only all the fans, all the team hate him too, and that would be fucked. George agreed to spare Billy, but only if he and Reggie called a truce. So Billy allowed Phil Rizzuto to persuade him to play golf in the morning. When Billy returned to the hotel, Fran Healy was waiting for him and explained what had already happened that day.

Healy said Billy was pretty shaken, but he started to realize he had to do something right away, so he called George. It was 5 p.m. and the Yankees were to play at Tiger Stadium at 815. Billy went to George's room where George laid down some new ground rules for his manager. Principally, he wanted Billy to be civil to Reggie at all times. Okay. As a first show of unity, Billy called Reggie and the two agreed to drive to Tiger Stadium together. Uh-huh. You put them in a car together.

They got to come up with something. kill each other or come up with a fucking plan. At 6 p.m. with Billy at the wheel of a rental car, the manager and player who two days earlier had nearly slugged it out at Fenway, drove to the ballpark. Imagine being a Detroit area baseball fan, driving home from work and pulling up at a stoplight and seeing Billy Martin driving Reggie Jackson to the ballpark.

That would have been interesting. Billy and Reggie arrived at Tiger Stadium, uneventfully, and walked into the clubhouse together. With Steinbrenner seated in an upstairs suite for the game, Billy brought the lineup card to the umpires at home plate just before the first pitch, like always happens. The Tiger Stadium fans who liked baseball fans everywhere were well aware of the Boston confrontation, rose to their feet and gave Billy a standing ovation. Billy waved his cat, because also he was in Detroit, we remember.

So when Reggie took his place in right field, he was roundly booed. He too waved his cap like Billy did when he waved his cap. He waved his cap to the booing, which I love. I also love. Hello, that's me. There you go. Me. I don't give a fuck.

Yeah, wait. Who cares? You're paying. I'm getting paid. Shut off. I'll be the heel. Yeah. Whatever.

Someone's got to be the heel. Fuck it. Either way. You're watching me and you care. You're paid to get in, man. That's great. That's it. So during the game, the Yankees issued a statement.

They said there will not be a change in our organization. We don't feel there's a better manager than Billy Martin, and we want the Yankees to have the best. So, yeah. and now Healy, in his last act of Detroit diplomacy, got Reggie and Munson to go to dinner with him that night after the game. That's an accomplishment. Thurman is not easy to deal with. He's prickly, and he doesn't do shit. Yeah.

So, I mean, he's a maybe because Healy's a backup catcher, they knew each other. Maybe that's how he did it. I'm not sure. It didn't settle much. Munson was still pissed off, but at least they were on speaking terms now. So there's that. Billy said yesterday it felt like I had a 600 pound weight around my neck. Today it only feels like 300 pounds.

That's nice. Now, near the halfway point in the season, the Royals swept the Yankees in Kansas City. And during that series, Reggie made an error one night and then another in the next game. The second came when he butchered a ball in right field with Sparky Lyle on the mound, which should have been a double, became an inside-the-park home run when Reggie dropped the ball at his feet three times. I've seen this footage, too. He picked it up, dropped it, picked it up, dropped, it picked it up, drop.

Couldn't get a hold of it. That's pretty good, yeah. After the inning, Sparky Lyle in front of the rest of the team told Reggie in the dugout to get his head out of his ass. Oh? Which is fine. You boot a ball. It bounces off your glove. Everybody makes mistakes.

You can't fucking throw a ball three times. Get your shit together, dude. What are you doing? Three times. Reggie, but also you're not supposed to show up your fielders. You're supposed to go over there and go, it's all right. You get them next time. Don't worry about it.

That's the magnanimous thing to do. Reggie said nothing to Lyle, although he told reporters about it afterwards, which further incensed Lyle. Like, talk to me, motherfucker. I came up to you. Billy stayed out of the dispute. Billy said, I didn't hear anything. I know we didn't hit enough to win the game. There you go.

Yeah. So all sorts of shit going on here. This is a lot. Okay. Here's some stuff. Reggie Jackson in the newspaper. This is in the Tallahassee Democrat, but it's from the New York News here by a guy named Dick Young.

He says, Reggie Jackson has this little disconcerting habit of his. You're arguing a point with him, and he reaches into his pocket and takes out a fat roll of $100 bills and starts counting them under your nose. That makes him right.

That's like the old... Because he's made money at this. He's right? I don't know, man. I don't know if that's the... That's like the Mr. Show sketch where they go, you know, the list of who's the best,

who makes the most money? He goes, Einstein. It's supposed to be real smart. He goes, very, very poor. He goes, and he'll show like some other guy and go, this guy, much better guy, a lot of money. Look at his house. Look at his house. And this was the same thing they used to do with Roger Maris back in the day.

Roger Maris, people would harass him at certain times. And he would go, yeah, well, I make 80 grand a year. How much money you make? This is when that was a lot of money. And so after a while when people would heckle, the teammates would go, come on, Raj, hit him with your wallet. Let's go. They're like a nice comeback asshole That's all you got

Oh man that's fucking funny Maybe that bat's not strong enough That's all That's all Pull your wallet out Come on Raj hit him with your wallet You know that's what you're going to say So they go on to say

He is loaded with What is this It's hard to see this With contumly This wonderfully mixed up man But what somebody like Billy Martin puts When someone like Billy Martin puts him down Reggie reaches for the old crutch.

They're treating me like, oh, they're treating me like an N-word. He screams at reporters. This guy says, Ali did that 12 years ago, but better. Okay. Because they were calling him that. You know what I mean? Funny thing, two weeks before Reggie's exciting dugout brawl with Billy Martin, I was screamed at in the Yankee Clubhouse by Martin and shoved.

You needn't be black for Billy Martin to abuse you. He's not bigoted. He'll fight anyone who doesn't agree with Billy Martin. George Steinbrenner told Jackson in a private meeting, cut out this racist thing. He says, Steinbrenner said, never has a man's color or where he goes to church been a part of my life. It's an insult to me when you say that and I'm ticked off about it.

Now, shape up and play the way you can and get along with your manager. I don't expect you two to hug each other and have breakfast together, but you've got to pull together. Then he told Billy Martin, Steinbrenner did. You haven't been working at your job. On the fields, you're great, but you don't do your homework in the office. You're coasting on last year's pennant. Forget it.

The first year you win, it's easy. It's 10 times tougher to repeat. Who is George Steinbrenner talking to? Yeah, right. Is he talking to himself? He's been in baseball for literally five years. Yeah. Billy Martin's been in baseball since the fucking day he shot out of his mother's cooch.

Yeah. This is ridiculous. It's nothing new for him. This is nothing new. And he's actually repeated World Series and won multiple. Yeah, he's done it before. He knows how this works. Steinbrenner does not.

It is. It's pretty funny. he said if I want to keep you here but don't let me down this time you'll push me over the wall again and I'll promise you I'll throw you over it then he told Thurman Munson you were my leader last year you'd come up to the office put your feet on my desk and we'd chat what happened you and Reggie have a beef okay it's over he comes to you and extends his hand you don't shake his hand and say get the fuck out of here that stuff is out so anyway Munson said to him it felt like that cyber energy didn't want him to be the leader. Oh? He wanted it to be Reggie Jackson. So it's a sibling rivalry, essentially, at this point. Sure, sure.

It's what it is. Mommy likes the little brother better, and that's that. So Billy Martin survived the whole thing, though, and everything like that. But it's a lot. Yeah, that's too much. Now, at home, Billy's got a whole other thing going on here. Oh? They said, here's from the book.

With school out for the summer, Gretchen and Billy Joe had moved into the New Jersey hotel suite. Gretchen would not stay the entire summer. For the most part, Billy Joe remained with his father. Gretchen said later, it was uncomfortable. I knew what was going on with Billy when I wasn't around. It was as I expected when he went to New York. I knew it was ending. It was coming apart. Meaning when she's not there, he's out drinking fucking broads and doing what he does. Now I'm here. It's all falling apart. Billy Joe went to all the home games with his father and often went on the road with the Yankees. It was an enjoyable time for him, running around in Yankee Stadium, wearing a miniature replica of his father's number one jersey, and spending days and nights with a father he had not seen regularly since Billy took over the Yankee job in 1975. A post-game routine developed win or lose.

Billy Joe said later, after games, we'd usually go to a restaurant with the coaches. We'd get a big table, but my dad would go off to the bar by himself. He would sit there kind of nursing his drink with this intense look, and you could see the wheels turning in his. head. He was replaying the game. Jesus, you could almost see him going over situations. Should I have hit for that guy? Did I take a pitcher out too late? Should I have bunted there? If it was a tough game or a loss, he might stay there for two drinks. But most of the time, just from his body language, you could see when he was wrapping up his thoughts on the game and he had put it away. Then he would get up and come over to the table and say, hey, part, how's your day? Where are you going to get for

dinner. Then he could rejoin the crowd, but he had to replay the game first. It was like a ritual. They said, Billy Joe was 13 at the time. Imagine being 13 and this is your summer. That's the coolest fucking thing in the world. Not bad. Oh my God. That is amazing. Fucking amazing. Billy Joe said that Reggie went out of his way. He said that he'd hang out with the other children and the other players and often with Reggie Jackson. He said, Reggie went out. He said, out of his way to be nice to me. He played catch with me almost every day. He probably did it for obvious reasons, but the fact is he did it, and I think my dad appreciated that. They did have a relationship. They did clown around and talk to each other. They weren't always at odds. Those

peaceful times just always seemed to have had an expiration date. Yeah, Billy Joe said about the whole 77 season, it was stressful but fun. I did notice on some of the worst days my dad would not eat, not much, and that worried me. He'd drink, though. Like his job. It's like blazing saddles. A man, drink like that and doesn't eat, he's going to die. I mean, that's, you can't do that. He's not good.

He's going to die. Billy Joe said also at this time, years later, he was told about the fact that during the 77 season, Billy was a mess and he was struggling and juggling girlfriends while his wife was staying in his hotel room and his kid was with him. It's hard. Billy Joe said he hit all that for me then. It was just the two of us. I never saw any women when I was there. But he said later on in life, he knew better. He said, there were things that were harder to deal with when I got older and wiser.

I knew better. But remember, he and my mom were together nearly 20 years. My dad never wanted to do anything to disrespect my mom and certainly not in front of me. Okay. Later on in July, he's still having problems. He still thinks he's going to get fired all the time. He said, quote, it's like being on death row. You never get used to it.

You never know when they're coming to get you. Oh, man. Probably worse than because death row, you tend to. Yeah, you get a warrant and it's all signed. They come to you and ask you what you want for dinner, for Christ's sake. That's how you know you're going to die when they go, anything you want, bud. Free haircut. Free haircut and a steak dinner, you know you're fucked at that point.

Billy's not getting that shit. Imagine if George took him to a barber shop, put a T-bone in front of him, and that was like, I got bad news for you. As soon as he hands the card to him and it's just all steak, I'm being fired, aren't I? Ah, fuck. Shit. So an anonymous Yankee player told the newspaper,

there is no discipline on this club, not one damn bit. He said there used to be, but there isn't now. He's letting the guys get away with anything they want. Uh-huh. One of the gripes of some veterans in the Yankee Clubhouse has been turned into a, that is one of the complaints about the clubhouse. clubhouse is that it's been turned into a day nursery. Players are bringing their kids to work with them.

What? One outfielder said, this is supposed to be a place of business. You don't see a banker or a stockbroker taking his kids to the office with him. And by the way, this is a lot of what came into later on, the reason why baby Ken Griffey Jr. He was such a fucking whining baby. One of the greatest players of all time, but good God, get over yourself. You're not special because your dad was fucking Ken Griffey. Sorry.

He said he'd never, ever, ever play for the Yankees because when his dad played for the team, they wouldn't let him run around on the field and sit in the dugout. Well, guess what? Oh, is that right? Abs of fucking looting. Look it up. I wasn't allowed to run around in the dugout or fucking either or play on the field when I was a kid either. So shut the fuck up, you spoiled.

Talk about a spoiled little fucking brass. That's a crazy quote. They wouldn't let me run the faces. I wanted to run and they didn't. Let me. That's literally what he said. If the Yankees were the only team that gave me a contract, I'd retire. Yep.

And why is that? Because they wouldn't let him run. Because they wouldn't let him play on the field. Get your blank kids out of here, they said. Yeah, because that's how it was. Get your fucking kids out of here. Get your fucking kids out of here. It's the worst.

Jesus. Take a fucking hike. You're a great hitter and all, but maybe all that anger is why your face got so bloated. Oh, yeah. You got real bloated there. Boy, is he a fat fuck now? Yeah. Carries all in his fucking face.

He's also in his mid-50s. I mean. Oh, he's got to be older than that, right? I want to say he's born in about 70. Holy fuck, he's only 55. 55 because he was 19 when he came up and that was 89. Yeah, that's 70. Yeah.

I guess that's what happens when you come up so young. Yeah. You get to be famous forever. Forever and ever. Yeah. This outfielder said, yeah, it's supposed to be a place. a business, you don't see a banker or a stockbroker taking his kids to the office with him. Yeah, that's true.

Truth, absolutely. They said, Billy Martin, they feel is responsible for such things. But he brings his kid, that's why. So he can't tell other people he can't bring your kid. He should run a tighter ship. He's a fine manager once the game starts, but between the foul lines, as they say, but he doesn't pay enough attention to the other details. Little things that engender dissatisfaction, little things that lead to big things.

I think the way he looks at it is the way Casey Stengel used to play it as you guys are all men and adults. Yeah, yeah. And professional athletes. You should figure all that bullshit out. I don't care what the fuck you do there. It's a John Madden thing. I care about what you do on the field. You show up on time and play hard on the field.

I don't give a fuck what you do off the field, not my concern. Yeah. You make enough money to handle your fucking life. Yeah. The problem is with baseball, the guys are together every single day for six fucking months. Plus. I mean, that's, so you kind of have to manage it like it's like a, like a weird like, uh, sorority dormitory or something and you're the, you're like the sorority mom or some shit.

It's weird. So they said, oddly enough, Billy Martin's basic philosophy is that managing on the field is the easy part. Managing the clubhouse is the difficult part of his job. He said this often and he said it again. He said, it's the clubhouse that's killing me is what Billy said. Martin said other things in the flood of relief that followed his reprieve. he said, I really didn't think I was going to get fired when I was called upstairs. I think they would have called me at home.

Gabe is a classy guy. He wouldn't have done it this way. This doesn't change anything. He said, I, what is this? I have something. I can't, the newspapers messed up there, something about eight in a row. He said, I've never run scared in my life and I won't start now. I don't want this feeling to spill over to the players in the clubhouse.

I've got an obligation to the fans to push the Yankees to a pennant. Okay. August 7th here, renewed conflict between Billy and Reggie. Nice. Yankees are five games back from the Red Sox. Yeah. And this is, by the way, 77, this is if you've seen like the summer of Sam or any of these movies. This was not the only thing going on in New York at the time.

It was a busy time for New York, yeah. 77, you had the big blackout. You had the son of Sam going on. All this shit was going on. So this was a really crazy time. And the Times Square murder. There was a lot of things going on there that made a lot happening. Well, that was just normal, though.

Is it? In 77, you go to Times Square, you get murdered. It's like a 50-50 chance at that point. Like, it's a toss-up, really. You make it out with your I-Heart in New York shirt. You should be just grateful that you got taken advantage of for it. They didn't have those shirts back then because they would have used the heart as a target for the knife to stab you. It was a different thing as they robbed you.

That shirt is a target. It's a target. So during this time by August 7th, Martin had pledged to bat Jackson clean up the four spot, but he rarely does that at all. Oh. Munson asked Pinella, this is all from the book here. Munson asked Lou Panella, why is it so damn important to bat Reggie fourth? And Pinella said, who the hell knows? Who can figure that guy?

He just wants it. He just wants it. That means he's important. And Munson said, but it is important to him, isn't it? And Pinella said it sure as hell is. As Pinella tells the story, the pair had a few more drinks. They knew Steinbrenner was on the trip with the team, and Munson suggested they go up to the owner's room and talk about the team after having a bunch of drinks. Let's go upstairs and talk strategy now.

Pinella said, that's not do that. Yeah, yeah. Let's say, that's not say we did. Munson said, Lou, George likes you. If you come with me, he'll listen. We can help the ball club. Everyone's pissed off. Let's go talk to George.

Come on. I'm storied for making great decisions. Bring your drink. Bring your drink. Yeah. Hey, you know what? Let's fly to my house. Come on, Lou.

What do you say? Let's go off in the sky and talk about it. Hop in the plane. Let's go. I've had a few drinks. Who cares? So they had another drink and it was almost midnight. And Pinella said years later, so now we're getting some courage.

He said, so we get George's room number from Killer Kane and went up there. That's the Yankee's secretary guy. We knocked on the door and George came to the door in silk pajamas. Nice. That's hilarious. He put on a bathrobe and sat down and listened. We both wanted Reggie to bat forth just to shut him the fuck up and see if that would help. George had always requested that his hotel suite have a fully stocked bar.

George enjoyed a drink back then, too. He just rarely did so in public. He wouldn't go down to the bar and drink with the players. He would do it in his room. Drink in his office, like a gentleman. Like a gentleman. Yeah, he said they made drinks and George went to a blackboard. That's another thing he always requested for his sweet.

A blackboard. Imagine you're a hotel staff and you're like, okay. Fully stock bar, that's funny. He wants a roll away bed. Yeah, we can provide that extra pillows and iron. Absolutely. The safe, no problem. Oh, yeah, and a blackboard he needs.

Or a roll away blackboard. Go down to PS 126 and grab that and bring it back and rolling over here. With a thing full of chalk? Is that what you were asking? A blackboard. And an eraser. No, no, an eraser. he's going to have to erase things, obviously.

And if you can give him two erasers, that way you can bang them together to clean him. That would help too. Otherwise, he's going to have no way of doing this. I'm going to need two. A bottle of window. George was writing names on the blackboard. Rivers, Randolph, Pinella, Jackson.

The players said they would back the move if George stayed off Billy's back and if George talked to Reggie about keeping his mouth shut. He's like, listen, you hit him clean up. We won't fucking bitch. You leave Billy the fuck alone. that's the way this works here. That's what we're going to do here.

Keep your fucking tell Reggie to shut the fuck up. Stop talking shit, making Billy then have to show that he's in charge of him. Just tell him to shut up. So that's how it works. He said he would get to bat forth, but that had to end the public feud. Reggie had to shut the fuck up after that.

Pinella and Munson volunteered to help George convince Billy of the wisdom of the move because he loved Thurman Munson and Lou. So he said, we'll go to Billy with you and say this is what the players want too. Now, he said at this point it was almost 2 a.m. And the occupant of the suite next door to George's had come back from his German dinner, which included a few postmeal brandies. Billy heard familiar voices through the fister walls.

Oh, we're at the fister in Milwaukee. We've been there. That's the haunted joint in Milwaukee that we've been. It's a nice hotel. Great place. Very overrated, though. Incredibly old. It's incredibly old.

The rooms are fucking tiny. And shitty. They're not great. They lean on the historic aspect of it more than more than the class of it. The lobby's dope. You walk in. Beautiful. It's that old time lobby with the big bar right in front of the desk.

Yeah. They have the front desk and when you walk in there's a big bar area lounge. It looks like the 70s, like a big lounge bar with like low tables and shit with people drinking. It looks cool. And in the wintertime when you walk in there, you can feel how much they care about you by how warm and nice it is. It's so nice. Yeah, which it could be 66 degrees in there. It doesn't matter.

It's just outside of the Milwaukee winter. Yeah. It's take coat off weather and it's beautiful. It's nice. The only great thing about that is they have food late there. That's what's good about it. I got in there at like 1130 and got a steak and I was like, this is awesome. Yeah, this place rules, but the rooms are fucking tiny.

Anyway, Billy soon heard familiar voices through the fister walls and soon was pounding his fist on the door to Georgia's suite. Billy shouted, I know you're in there plotting against me, God damn it. Plotting against me. I can hear it. You know, Billy's had a few pops by 2 a.m. Jesus Christ, dear. I know you're conspiring. Yes.

George hustled Pinella and Munson into the bathroom. He hid them. Think about what's going on here. Two grown men, major league baseball players, being one former MVP of the league being hustled into a fucking hotel bathroom. Like you snuck two girls into your bedroom in high school and they're both agreed to give

you a blow. And now your mom is knocking on the door. And now your phone's like, do you want meatloaf? Ask yeah. Asking if you like your eggs over easy or scramble tomorrow morning. You're like, go away mom. My dick's hard. So George told them, be quiet. There might be trouble. What are you talking about? You're all adults.

This is insanity. There might be trouble. There might be trouble. He's going to start punching everybody. And then he let Billy in. Billy opened the door and said, take your job and shove it, George. I don't want it anymore.

Yeah, he's fucking out of here. So George said, Billy, just calm down. Yeah. So George, or Billy then said, who's in here, George? Where are they? Where are they? Let me out of.

I heard voices. George said, I got a couple of fucking girls in here. What are you talking about? Picked up a couple ladies down at fucking, you know, wherever. So George said, I don't know what you're talking about, Billy. But Billy stormed toward the... Jesus Christ, this is the most ridiculous thing I've ever heard. Storm toward the bathroom and flung the door open.

Who's in there? And I picture one of them sitting on the toilet and the other leaning against the sink just like, oh, shit. Or even better, both of them like huddled in the shower together with the curtain. Closed, you can just see their outline in the curtain. Their pants at this point have to be down by their ankles. They have to. Someone's pissing. Yeah.

Somebody dick is out. So Billy screamed, two traitors! This is awesome. Billy, you are crazy. And Pinella and Munson were literally two of Billy's top three favorite guys on the team. Two traitors. Accusing them of high crimes. You treason as fuck.

Son of a bitch. Munson said, come on, Billy. We're just trying to help. And Billy said, I don't know. need any of your goddamn help. Yeah. And didn't leave the room, though. No.

Then just walked toward the sweet sitting area and sat down on one of the couches. He's not leaving either. Let's talk about it. Let's have a chat. Pinella and Munson walked over and sat on either side of him. Billy, chill out. They started talking about the team and why Reggie should bat forth. This isn't the conversation you have with Billy at 2 a.m. after he's shit face. Yeah, you just kicked the door in screaming Johnny Pageman.

Trailer's. Yeah. Take this job. The conversation went on for more than an hour with Billy insisting he wouldn't be told what to do. And so Pinellas said, what's wrong with at least trying Reggie it for? Just try him. You'll like it. It's like trying to get a kid to eat his fucking, you know, to eat his Brussels sprouts.

Just try it. It's okay. You like them. They're sweet. It's fine. I put sugar on him. Penella said, we need to do something. We're the best team in baseball and we're not playing like it.

So they talked about other shit here, no more tampering from George. Like part of the deal is George will stay out of it now. This is great. It's good for you. By the way, this is according to the book and reality, the first of dozens of times that that would be promised and wouldn't happen. George cannot not tinker. They said, and also it'll get Reggie to shut the fuck up. It'll be perfect for everybody.

So they said in a soft voice, Billy said he would bat Reggie force. if that's what everybody else wanted. Fine. So they said the quartet shook hands, everybody went to bed. The next day, George told the writers that he was stepping

into the background of everything and declared that Billy was the manager for the rest of the year no matter if they lost every fucking game from now on. I'm staying out of it this year. Which they said

sounded like big news except no one in New York read about it. On the night of July 13th, while the Yankees were losing to Milwaukee, lightning strikes in an upstate New York generator

substation caused a blockage of electricity being transmitted to. This is the blackout. So this whole thing happened and no one ever heard about it because blackout was front page. That's it. Nice. So they set a series of missteps and bad luck coupled with a stifling heat wave

taxed the city's electrical grid beyond capacity and just after 930 p.m. The five boroughs of New York went dark. I've actually seen a documentary thing of how this happened. All five, uh-huh. Several fuck-ups this caused. Yeah, that would have to. There's basically a line that goes into the city and it was

blocked. So all the electricity was done. I think Long Island. That's a terrible way to set that up, especially in the biggest city in America. It's the 70s, too. Yeah. Also, we weren't investing a lot in infrastructure back then at all, much like we're not now, but same thing. We weren't really doing that. So that's what ended up happening. Now, this was a big deal. I think parts Long Island had power, I want to say, I heard. There was a different, a separate feed for them or some shit. I'm not sure. There may have been a substation down the, no, it had to be a power plant out there.

Something. So, well, no, it was coming on a different line for some reason from somewhere else. Coming from a different way? Coming from somewhere else. I could be wrong. I just thought I remember hearing about that. That's crazy that there's only one main feed feeding all five pearls. That's insane.

I don't know the electrical grid of New York City off the top of my head. I think I saw something 20 years ago on the documentary. I'm not positive. Give me a minute. But I know what? But you know the highest fucking IQ. I don't know that either. I really don't.

I just know it's definitely not 120. I'm impressed by that. I'll take that over the grid. We'll talk IQs after the show for sure. We'll get all into that shit. And also electrical grids of New York City. As a matter of fact, next week, pause from the Billy Martin series. We're going to do a special on the electrical grids of New York City.

And I'll do the southwest of America. We're going to get to the bottom of this. Yeah, you do. We're going to get to the bug. This is Jimmy's area here. This is my fucking wheelhouse, babe. Jesus. He worked at the electric company a long time.

He knows what's up there. I don't. So this is, I mean, a fuckload of looting. And the city goes crazy. I mean, this is bonkers bat shit. I believe it. Yeah. I mean, that's the end of day's shit.

When you can't turn your TV on and then you can't go over to your neighbor's house and they can turn. Yeah. When every TV within. Driving distance is gone. Yeah. Shit was like the Warriors. It was just people went nuts. Oh, God.

Yeah. And this is back in the day when, you know, crime was way worse than, you know. Like New York City now, I hate when people like are afraid of New York City. That's the most annoying fucking thing in the world. Only because I'm a stats guy. I love stats. And New York City is safer now than it was literally a hundred years ago. It's safer now.

It's safer now than when people were wearing fucking tons. top hats and flapper dresses, it's safer. By not even close, it's safer. Like, there was, I think in 1993, I want to say somewhere the year might be off or whatever, 92, 94 or whatever. In 1993, there was like 2,800 murders in New York City. Yeah. Last year, there was 300.

Yeah. That's how safe it is. Yeah. It's like 90% safer. I've ridden that subway and that, I was not scared as much as I was just pissed that that I was having a confrontation. Yeah, the guy other one's going to happen. That's what it is.

You have inconveniences and things that cause you anger. A legitimate problem. And that's a mental health issue. If you pile millions of people into any small area, you're going to have that kind of thing. But not, you know, massive, organized savagery upon the populace. It's also the first time I'd been in New York City. On the subway, yeah. And I was basically Crocodile Dundee, just unleashed on the city going, what is this?

Without the confidence or knife. Or a way to defend myself. That's the only thing. That guy certainly would have beat me to death with his chicken bones. Maybe. That's fucking amazing. So the Yankees heard about the blackout. They said few of them lived actually in New York City.

Most of the people lived, most of them lived in New Jersey because a lot of them had families. Sure. Like in the Burbs in New Jersey and there was still power in Jersey. So Roy White said, I remember thinking. what the hell else is going to happen during the season. This is a crazy season. Yeah. So despite all of this shit, all this George's sweet, you know, up in his sweet fucking

talks and high level, high level truce talk. DeBottery and, yeah. Billy did not bat Reggie fourth the next day or the day after that. Oh, shit. So he didn't abide by it. One week after that, Billy's, you know, still keeping up here. Reggie occasionally batted fourth, but only for one day in that he was back to fifth or sixth. In a bar in Seattle on August 7th, Pinella and Munson cornered Billy and asked,

what about our deal? What the fuck are you doing? The Yankees are five games behind Boston, too. Let's do it. Three days later on August 10th, Reggie batted fourth. And his first at bat as the new cleanup hitter, Reggie drove in a run off Vita Blue. Great pitcher, Vita Blue. The Yankees won at home six three, the first of four successive victories. Reggie remained the cleanup hitter for the rest of the season after that. At roughly the same time the game was ending on August 10th,

about 10 miles north of Yankee Stadium, that is one of the David Berkowitz deals. That is when they busted Berkowitz right there. Oh. That is when he got into his car and they came up to him and he said, you got me. That was that famous thing because they were waiting outside. I love this, by the way.

He said, you got me. They said, who are you? And he said, you know me. You know why. Verkowitz said, that's why you're out here. And the guy said, I don't, you tell me. And he said, I'm the son of Sam. All right.

And he had his fucking gun in his paper bag. Yikes. Reggie hitting fourth just said, I'm just more comfortable in that part of the batting order. It lets me be me, meaning hitting cleanup. He can't be me if you're hitting fifth, obviously. Yeah. And Reggie would get hits on seven of his next.

next 14 at bats with seven RBI and two home runs. So can't argue with that. Reggie likes the spotlight. You put Reggie in the position with guys on base and the fucking lights on him. That's when he hits best. That's just the way it is. And, you know, Reggie drove in 20 runs in the next 23 games and the Yankees won 19 out of those 23 games.

Jesus. Billy approached Reggie after one of his better games that August after another Yankees victory and said he wanted to reward Reggie with something. some kind of gesture. What do you want? I want to give you something. And Reggie said, fly in some crabs from Baltimore for the post-game meal tomorrow. That's what I'd like.

And Billy did it. Billy obliged. He had a bunch flown in a feast for the whole team. And the Yankees won that next night, too. So they had a big crab feast. Reggie hit over 300 for the rest of the season, driving in almost 45 runs. I love a good story about like a whole bunch of wins or a big specific win. And when at least one person comes out and says, I was just in a mood that I needed to win.

And when you get a belly full of crabs on the boss's dime, it makes you want to perform. It absolutely does. We got a couple of crabs from that friend of yours. Oh, yeah. And it was the greatest thing in the world. It felt great. It made us want to perform. It was after the show.

And yell at our old agents and fire them. It was wonderful. They got another show after the show. They really did. They got a good two-hour show in a hotel lobby. I was like I was fired an agent. An agency. It was through no fault of their own pretty much too, by the way.

They're just a bad guy that they hired. Well, they hired a guy who was a fucking goddamn lunatic. A scam artist. Lunatic. Yeah. A crazy person who almost ruined our entire careers. Shout out to our agents now who are wonderful, amazing people who never once embarrassed us ever.

They only do good for us. Ron Guidry is another person that Billy was hard on. Ron Guidry, a lot of people don't know who he is, Ron Guidry. Are you real familiar with Ron Guidry? I'm not familiar with him, but I know how to spell his name because I've seen it in a lot of print and I've heard stories about him. Heard tell he's wonderful. Gidry's one of these guys. He was a great pitcher, but he wasn't around for 20 years.

Oh. He was a small, kind of a frailish guy who injured sometimes. No, but when he was on, he was. fucking amazing. Lefty, great Louisiana Lightning. Now, Gidre, this is when he was young, Gidre said, oh, he was brutal to me at first. Billy, Billy's

kind of famous for being hard on rookie pitchers. That's what he's famous for. Oh, really? And Gidre said, I'd walk someone and he'd be yelling from the dugout. You call yourself a pitcher. Pitcher my ass. You're a candy ass. Throw the ball over the plate, you pussy. Titcher my ass. That's encouraging to your pitcher.

Yeah. He's out there, terrified. My ass. My ass. He said I was pretty intimidated by him at first, and I thought he hated me. In fact, George Steinbrenner routinely wanted to trade Gidre, but Billy stood up for his young, rail, thin, left-hander, and Gidry said that Billy's haranguing taught him how to win. Gidry said, all of us were much more afraid of letting him down than we were of our opponents. And because of his intensity, I started to find the toughness in me to make good, daring pitches, and tough situations.

I got better and better, and then at one point, I knew it was my time to stand up to Billy. Yeah. With Gidri on the mound in 77 and the Yankees clinging to a one-run ninth-inning lead in an early September game in Boston, Billy approached the mound with runners on first and second. Lyle was warming up in the bullpen. Gidri said, as Billy got next to me, I told him, the best thing for you to do is just to walk

away. Yeah. I said, get off my mound and go back in the dugout so I can finish this game. Get off my mound. Get off my mound. Take a fucking hike. That's what Billy wanted from. him.

Yeah? He said he smiled, turned, and walked away. Is that right? He wanted to see he was tough. He wanted him to go, this is my fucking game. I'm going to finish it. Fuck off. That's what he wanted from.

That's a tough guy. That's what he wants. How do you do? Tell me to get lost. Yeah. He said, I got out of the jam and he never bothered me again. He knew his job was done. He was a master psychologist on top of all the other things that have been said about him.

Yeah, because I mean, if you're, but there's a certain point of like pride with some pitchers, too, that they don't want to come out. even when they know they're fucking done. Yeah. Will Billy let him stay in? He let him stay in because that's what he wanted. He wanted him to stand up for himself and he wanted him to say, I can get out of this.

Fuck off. I'm kind of the confidence to get out of this shit. And it worked. Fair enough. That's what you got to do. If the guy has no confidence to get out of jams, he's never going to be a great pitcher for you. You can't pull a guy every time he's in a jam.

Yeah. Yeah. So that's it. Billy Martin later on here, they said, here's a quote from him about August. What is this about August? What date is this? The 7th, the 14th, August 7th, 1977, talking about the Yankees and all this crap.

And Billy said, I wanted to sweep the angels and we lost two out of three. I figured we could sweep here. We need a streak. But all these little things, that's all everybody's talking about. We're losing and all I hear about is beards and contracts. I'm sick of all this stuff that's been written and said all season. It interferes with baseball and it's ruining the season. Thurman Munson was growing a beard and he refused to admit the reason for growing the beard.

And the reason was that Steinbrenner doesn't allow beards and he doesn't really give a fuck what Steinbrenner thinks. And he's like, well, tell me to shave it then because it ain't happening. So anyway, he said, I can't stop Munson from growing a beard. I don't think any manager has that kind of authority to stop your follicles from operating. He said, sure, there's a code here about beard, about beards. You know why he's doing it, and I can't stop him. He came to me before this trip started nine days ago, and I said, and said, I'm going to grow a beard, Billy. I hope it doesn't get you in trouble, but I'm going to wear a beard.

He's like, fuck. This is great. Perfect. Thanks a lot. Here's Billy at one point here. Lou Pinella recalled another Billy moment from the final weeks of the 77 season. By late September, the Yankees had a three-and-a-half-game lead in Boston on Boston and Baltimore with roughly eight games remaining. Penella said we were playing in Baltimore and it was that time of the season when every win mattered.

So we were leading 5-2 and it starts raining in the top of the fifth. If you know about baseball, they have to play four and a half. That's a game. So if you got through the top of the fifth, then you could call the game. Oh, actually, it would be the bottom of the fifth because they would have to hit. Then you could call the game and the winner is the winner. The winner is the winner. So with the rain starting to come, Billy wants this game over with.

He wants to get this inning over with. He said, so we're leading 5-2 and it starts raining in the top of the fifth. I'm on the on-deck circle. Billy calls me over and says, Lou, I want you to strike out. Oh. Swing and miss three pitches. I don't care where they are. Let's get the fuck out of here.

Get the fuck out of here. He said, I thought he was crazy, but I did what he said. So did Chambliss after me. Quickly the inning was over. Then the Orioles went down in order in the bottom of the fifth. Between innings, it started to really rain like pouring rain, a deluge. We never played the sixth inning. ended up being called, we won five to two.

How about that? He said, I don't know how he knew it was going to start pouring rain and that we had to get the top of the fifth inning over with quickly, but that was his plan and it worked. Smart. And he knew that we could get the Orioles out in the next inning. Quickly. In the next inning. Yeah.

One, two, three. So during all this, the Yankees won 40 of their last 50 games. Not bad. They were down a lot. They only won the division by two and a half games. Wow. You've been winning the last 40 out of 50. And they needed to charge 40 games to do it.

Yep. So that's a lot. Now they said Billy looked like a man who looked like, you know, he was hidden behind dark glasses. He was losing weight, drinking excessively. Just kind of like a little feral, recluse weirdo, just kind of sitting in there. He said it was the fourth time one of like you took something feral and pinned it up. And they're like, fine, I'll sit here. It was the fourth time one of Billy's teams had one of.

a division title. After the final game, fans were lining up outside the River Avenue gates at Yankee Stadium for the $1.50 bleacher seats for the upcoming playoff series with Kansas City. Inside the stadium, seated beneath a portrait photograph of Casey Stangle, Billy sat smoking a pipe. Okay. On the shelf behind his desk were two Civil War books. Billy turned philosophical. Oh, boy. Civil War books. He said, I might have been almost fired three or four times this year, but who cares. We're here now, but we're only one third of the way. Part two is with Kansas City, and then

part three is the World Series. When you're a Yankee, you're always looking at the big picture. He said, the Yankees haven't won a World Series since 1962. That's too long. He then donned a beige cashmere sweater and light blue pants and drove over the George Washington Bridge to Jersey. Very

70s. Get out there, Mr. Rogers. Beige cashmere sweater and light blue pants is very 70s. And I'm going to go home and change it a different sweater and a cardigan and some comfy shoes. So Billy did all that, and he drove over to Jersey. Eddie Saper said he had met me at the bottom of the barrel. That's a bar.

And we were sitting at the bar there for a while. And he says to me, judge, I have to get these guys a World Series championship. There aren't any excuses left. I've got to win one as a Yankee manager or what's this all been worth. What does it mean? That's what it said. So the postseason, you got the Yankees and they split the first two games with the Royals at Yankee Stadium in the divisional series here. Or it would be the ALCS back then.

Sorry. They split those and then it goes from there. So this is kind of a grudge match, by the way. There's a lot of Yankee Royals hostility back then. Sure. This series, you'll see a lot of fights. This is, I believe, when Brett slides in the third and fights with Greg Nettle. and there's a lot of fights going on.

Fist fights. I'm talking fucking thrown blows here. Passion. Yeah. In the second game of the 77 ALCS, Kansas City's Hal McCray executed a football-style rolling body block while breaking up a double play. In today's game, the collision with

Willie Randolph there, which catapulted McCray over the base at about waist-high knocking Randolph into the outfield grass would have drawn a multi-game suspension. Nowadays, yeah, you get, forget, about it. In 1977, it was just a hard play at second base. That's what he did.

McCrae got up, dusted off his uniform, and jogged off the field, the teams played on. So they said McCrae's takedown did seem to awaken the Yankees who had lost the opening game of the series. They scored three runs in their half of the inning after Randolph was bulldozed and won six to two. Okay. So then they go to Kansas City. McCrae said, maybe I'm playing in the wrong

era, but there's more of that to come. more of that tough baseball. Billy had a message for McCray. He said, quote, you tell him that the Royals have a second baseman they like too. His name is Frank White and he'll have to catch a double play ball at second base one of these games. In other words, we'll get you back, motherfucker. So you're hanging your team. You better check with your teammates to see if they want that treatment before you start giving it to other people.

Kansas City's Dennis Leonard pitched a complete game four hitter to dominate the Yankees in game three. So it looks like the Yankees could be eliminated the next game at Royal Stadium. Whitey Herzog, the manager of the Royals, used to be the Rangers manager that Billy took over for, and then future manager of the Cardinals wins the World Series there. He said, everyone's rooting for us. Nobody likes the Yankees. Told of Herzog's comment, Billy said, he ought to keep his mouth shut or somebody will shut it for him. Oh, Whitey said, I'm ready when he is. Let me know where.

I don't think you want that, Whitey, from what I've understood here. So, yeah, this is very interesting here, this whole thing here. Now, there's some benching moments here, which is a thing here. We'll talk about. There's some fighting. Okay. Gurra was the pitcher. This is the first inning of the third game.

Mickey Rivers doubled and Greg Nettles singled. With runners at first and third base, Munson hit a ground ball, George Brett at third. Brett threw to second base to try to start the double play. Nettles crashed into Roy White, the second baseman, as promised. Nettles didn't so much attempt to slide as he hit White shoulder to shoulder, throwing an elbow as both players somersaulted toward the outfield grass. It was just a tackle.

It was just a forearm shiver, like some 1950s tackle on a whiteboard. side receiver. It was crazy. Which is what they said they were going to do. Nettles was out, and an hour later he left the game because he felt dizzy from the collision, but Mickey Rivers scored on the play. Gura was the Kansas City pitcher, and Billy

had been goading him since the day before. Billy told reporters, I'm so anxious to face Gura, I might send a bodyguard to his house tomorrow to make sure he gets to the ballpark safely. I don't want him getting in an accident. I need him on the mound for game four. So Billy would ride

Gera mercilessly during the game, and by the second inning, it was four-nothing Yankees. Herzog said, I don't know what Gura was doing out there. He was throwing fastballs and sliders. He wins when he uses his change in curve up and curveball. Billy would howl every time he threw a breaking pitch. Candy ass, you're afraid to throw the fastball. He said, we're going to wait for a goddamn fastball. As much as the Yankees pounded on Gera, Yankee starter Ed Figueroa was also struggling. In the fourth inning, the Yankees were leading 5'4 when the Royals put runners on first and third base with two outs and George Brett coming to the plate. Okay. Now, in a move that was very unorthodox, it seemed absurd at the time. Billy brought his closer, Sparky Lyle,

to the mound to face George Brett, which is crazy. Now, Sparky wins the Syung Award this year. That's the kind of closer he was. As Billy later explained, if the royals took the lead, the Yankees might never recover and would have been eliminated from the series. So Billy said, why save your closer for some other moment when this could be the do-or-die moment that decides a do-or-die game? And Sparky Lyle got George Brett to fly out to left field, then pitched five more scoreless innings. Oh, shit. Yeah. Not fucking around, Sparky.

He was a bad motherfucker. Okay. Now, Martin benched Reggie Jackson from the starting lineup in game five, feeling that he did not hit Royals pitcher Paul Splitorf well. In the eighth inning with the Yankees losing 3-1, Martin put Jackson in as a pinch hitter, and Jackson singled off reliever Doug Byrd to drive in a run. This is from the book here. They say throughout the night after game four and on through the next day,

Billy consulted with his coaches about whether to play Reggie in right field or replace him with the right-handed hitting Paul Blair. Reggie had been having problems in right field on the artificial turf, because it's very bouncy. During the afternoon before the game, Billy went to see Steinbrenner to inform him he might bench Reggie. George, who had given Reggie millions of dollars principally for postseason prowess from Oakland, was incredulous.

Billy and George took a walk through Kansas City's Crown Center Hotel Lobby. They were going to get coffee. Billy explained that all of his coaches thought Reggie should sit too. They had seen Reggie struggle mightily against Splitorff, who had been in the American League since 1970, and used his long arms in six-foot-three frame to Flummix left-handed power hitters. He had handily defeated the Yankees in game one of the series. Reggie was two for 15 off Splitorff in 1977.

Dang. He's sitting about a buck 50 off him. Let's put him down. Yeah. So Billy and George happened to pass Catfish Hunter as they walked through the lobby. Billy said, hey, cat, can Reggie hit Splitorf? Hunter without looking at them, pausing, or anything, just kept walking, said, not without a fucking paddle, and just kept walking.

It ain't happening. No, that a battle. Not a chance. Nope. So then George said, fine, it's your call as the manager, and you'll get the credit if we win. But if we lose, you're going to get the blame there. Then he went to Catholic Church, four blocks from the hotel, Billy did, with Eddie Saper, the guy. Saper said, Billy went in and prayed.

He was very quiet. We were there for maybe 20 minutes. Just me and him in a pew in an empty church. He said, once Billy got to the ballpark, he called Healy in his office. He wanted Healy to tell Reggie he wasn't star. Healy said, I'm not telling him. You're the manager. You tell him. And Billy said, if I tell him, things might get ugly and that doesn't help the team.

Healy said, why don't you have one of the coaches tell him? And he said, well, they won't do it. No. So Healy said, well, neither would I. Come on, what the fuck? So Billy said, I know it's a rotten thing to have you do, but you have the best, you have the best chance of telling him and calming him down too. If things go our way, I'm going to need Reggie later in the game. We need to keep him in a good frame of mind so he can help us win.

he said and then tell him if he does this without making a scene and we win I'll praise him to everybody and I'll make it up to him during the World Series. So he said, all right, fine, I'll tell him. So Reggie was upset. He wanted to confront Billy. He said, you're humiliating me in front of national TV. But he said, no. He said, Healy told him, listen, this is the message.

This is what Billy said. It's in the best interest of the team. It's nothing personal. Cheer for the team on the bench. Do it for the cameras. look like you're fucking on board. Yeah. And just ignore it.

So Reggie said, okay. In becoming Mr. October, Reggie's book, he wrote that he only pretended to be cheering for the Yankees because he was a broken man. Uh-huh. Wow. Regardless of anything, he saw a good game. In the first inning, Brett tripled off Gidreed or drive-in McCray.

Brett slid hard at third base at the end of the play, his momentum propelling him into Nettles, whom he shoved with a forearm to the chest. That was the thing. He slid in, knocked into him, and then kind of shoved him off with a forearm, even though the only reason they were that close is because you ran into him.

Okay. So Nettles responded by kicking Brett in the ribs as he laid on the ground. All right, fuck you then. Brett jumped up and threw a right hand punch that grazed the top of Nettles head and knocked off his cap. Nettles turned and jammed his right hand

into Brett's face and slammed the Royals third basement of the ground. Nettles was a tough son of a bitch. Sounds like that. The bench is emptied, but no one seemed to want to get thrown out of the game. It's a pennant deciding game. It was mostly just a lot of wrestling around. Billy watched the tussle with a bemused grin.

He stood apart and ended up with his left arm draped affectionately over the Royal's shortstop Freddie Patech, as if they were at a barbecue watching the grill heat up. This is crazy, isn't it, buddy? A little tiny guy. A little tiny guy. Oh, man. In another sign of the Times, no one was ejected. Which is bench clearing huge brawl with fists being thrown.

No one ejected. No, not one. No. Splitorf and the Royals took a 3-1 lead into the eighth inning when Randolph laced a lead-off single. Herzog replaced split-off with Bird. Billy said, we will always be grateful that he did that. He accused Herzog of over-managing the moment. He felt he had to do something rather than just chilling the fuck out.

So that opened the door for Reggie's pinch hit, and he did. Reggie wrote that he was, quote, kind of stuck between, should I give it my all or should I just say, Martin, dude, you think I stink? Let me just stand there, take three strikes and go back to the dugout. You fucking better not. That's crazy. But they said Reggie had many layers to his motivations, but giving up rarely crossed his mind. And besides, in Reggie's words, it would only make him as a big fool, as big a fool as Billy. He'd look terrible. Reggie instead turned on a bird fastball and smacked a crisp liner to center field that cut the Royals lead in half. In the Yankees' ninth inning, Blair rewarded Billy's faith in him with a single. Then Roy White drew a pinch hit walk. Rivers single tied the game. With White at third and one out, Randolph's deep fly ball to center field put the Yankees ahead. Another run scored on an error by Brett.

His second of the game was the final indignity for the Royals, who for a second straight year would fall short, undone. by defensive lapses and lack of clutch game late game. Damn it. So, yep, that is that. Now, anyway, Reggie, or I'm sorry, Paul Blair, said that was the most pressure I've ever had on me because Billy gave me a chance and I didn't want to let him down. That took a lot of guts from Billy to start me and keep me in there. He probably gets fired if I make it out and we lose. Champaign is going everywhere and Steinbrenner didn't, he said, oh, no, my new suit.

Billy came by and just poured champagne on his fucking head all over him as he was saying that. Yeah. I don't know my new suit. Don't. It's celebration. It's celebration. He said in front of everybody, Billy said, thanks for almost firing me. And George said, what do you mean almost?

So Billy headed to his office where he began praising Reggie to the press. Oh. He kept up his end of the bargain. He said he really showed me some kind of class. A lot of other people would go off and sulk, but he was just, just terrific about it, a real man. Yeah. Yeah.

Reggie entered Billy's office with a magnum of champagne in his hand, and Reggie said, want some, and Billy said, I will if you will. And Reggie sat beside Billy on a couch in the office. They toasted, and Billy said, I love you, big guy. You did great tonight. And Reggie smiled, put his arm around Billy as a ton of photographers took pictures of them drinking champagne. Well, so it's a great picture, by the way.

Yeah? It's a fucking cool picture. 77 World Series against the Dodgers is a crazy. That's a cool one. I remember years ago, like 20 years ago, they were selling a DVD set of this shit. And I have like the DVDs and every game is a DVD on the set. And they have extras and all this cool shit.

It's fucking awesome. You can just put it in. It's like the original broadcast. You can just, I'm going to pretend it's 1977. It's cool as shit. That's where at one point they say, I think that's when,

when Howard CoSell says that ladies and gentlemen, the Bronx is burning because they cut to, they show big plumes of smoke beyond the Yankees Centerfield, Yankee Stadium Center Field. Yeah. So anyway, Reggie thought he was going to be benched in the third game of the series against Tommy John, of Tommy John's surgery fame.

Yeah. Reggie said, I'm not swinging well, and you know what happens then. He had one hit in Six World Series at Bats up to that point. When Reggie's remarks were relayed to Billy, he said, I'm not taking Reggie out. Reggie's in there. Splitorff isn't pitching for them. So he's, he's in. Back, the writers went to Reggie with Billy's comments.

The Splitorff reference incensed Reggie, who was packing his bag for L.A. Where the next three games would be played. He said, I don't need to take that from nobody, especially from him. I know what I can do. If he did, we might be a lot better off. Meanwhile, he was trying to just say, look, he has a hard time against Splitorff, but he's in there. That guy's not pitching. That's the only time I bench him is because he has a hard time with that guy.

So that's a lot. It's a little too much here. So the Yankees get to Dodger Stadium here. And anyway, Billy asked, why do we have to do all that kind of talk and all that shit? Now we're trying to win the World Series. He's pissed off. He's like, why are we doing this? He said, I told Reggie after the Kansas City series that he would play every game in the World Series.

Where's his memory? What happened to that 180 IQ of his? 180 now. Oh, man. So they had a conference in Gabe Paul's hotel room, smooth matters over, and the Yankees win games three and four. The next day, Reggie doubled and hit a long home run, and Ron Guidry and Ron Guidry, the Yankees' lowest paid player

with a salary of $30,000 at the time. Jesus. Pitched a complete game four-hitter. What year? 77. 77, a man-making 30 grand a year. pitched a complete game four inning no hitter. That four hitter.

A complete game, four hitter. Oh, wow. A complete game four hit. Pitch the whole fucking game four hits. Yeah, four to win. And preserved when Pinella climbed defense and denied Ron Say of a game tying home run and gave the Yankees a three one lead in the series. So it's a lot.

They said, had you overcome all this crazy shit on the team? And Reggie said, you should probably give Billy Martin the Nobel Peace. prize for managing this damn crazy team. Sure. Any prize Billy's not going to get it to that one, I would say. You know, manager of the year maybe, but peace prize, no. Billy said, I accept, with deep humility, I accept and thank you very much. He said, well, what award would you nominate Reggie for?

And Billy said, the good guy award. He's a good guy. So that's very funny. Now, the Yankees lost game five, sent the series back to New York. prior to game six, the Yankees announced that Martin had been given a bonus and an extended contract taking some of the pressure off of him,

which is nice. Gretchen, his wife, said, I had to take my phone calls in the lobby about anything that wasn't directly related to the sixth game. He wanted to concentrate. He said the pressure at that point was enormous. The Yankees simply couldn't come home and lose the World Series. There was talking in the newspapers

that Billy was going to be fired immediately if they lost the World Series. Billy heard it all. You could see in his eyes the pressure he was feeling. Interesting. Now, this is when Reggie becomes Mr. October. Oh?

The Dodgers had regained the lead in this game three to two in game six when Reggie came to the plate with a runner on in the fourth inning. Bert Houton's on the mound, and he hit the first pitch out over the right field. Crushed it, home run. Greeting him at the top of the steps after his

Homer was Billy. Billy patted Reggie on the cheek lovingly while vigorously shaking his hand. Pinella made it five, three, Yankees with a sacrifice fly. In the fifth inning, Reggie again hit the first pitch, this time from reliever Elias Sosa, over the right field wall again. Uh-oh. And crushed it again.

That's a two-run homer giving them a seven-three lead. But by the time Reggie came to the plate in the eighth inning, now they're chanting Reggie, Reggie, Reggie in there, too. This is, he's up against Charlie Huff. Charlie Huff played until we were teenagers, for Christ's sake. played for out because he's a knuckleballer. Remember he looked like 67 years old when he was playing?

Who did he play for? The Rangers for a long time when we were kids. Yeah. Remember they had like Nolan Ryan and Huff and it's like, anybody over 45 you guys will sign? It's crazy. Now Reggie loved to hit against knuckleballers, which is rare.

Most people don't like knuckle ballers. Reggie loves a knuckle baller. And Reggie hit Huff's first delivery. This is a fucking shot that he hit out too. How he could muster the power to get a knuckle ball out like that. Because you use the pitch power. If it's a 98 mile an hour pitch, you make the right contact. It's going far based on how fast it was coming in.

A knuckle ball, it's all your power. You got to crush that shit. And he swung from his fucking heels and hit about a 450 foot bomb into the centerfield bleachers. I mean, it was a fucking shot. It's a lot. It went over the painted batter's eye area and everything. Yeah, it's a lot. lot. So that's three straight pitches off three different pitchers he had home runs off of. That's

incredible. So Babe Ruth had hit three home runs in a World Series game in 1926 and in 1928, but no one had ever hit three home runs on the first three pitches that they saw in a World Series game like that. From three different pitchers. Three different pitchers, yeah. He had hit a home run on the first pitch of his last at bat of the fifth game as well. So he had hit four home runs in his last four swings of the series off four different pitchers. He's seen four pitches and hit four fucking home runs

off him against four different pitch. That's incredible. That's amazing. New York Times columnist who covered Babe Ruth back in the day. That's how old he was. Said not even that demigod smashed three in a row off three pitchers, let alone four. Reggie had five home runs in the series, which was another

first. He passed Steve Garvey at first base after the third homer and Garvey kind of gave him a little clap, like, Jesus Christ, that was pretty impressive. Did he clap or did he smack his ass? He hit his glove. Okay. Oh, right, right, right. But it was a clap.

Like, it was a, like, nice work. Pretty fucking impressive. I can't do that. That was pretty good. And also, I'll be crazy later and went for office like a fucking asshole. And then do radio, right? Yeah, probably. Yeah, I think that's what he's doing.

So this was thousands of fans overwhelmed the cops and tore off. the field. This is a crazy fucking thing. Television networks wanted interviews with Billy and Reggie. So they did one together with their arm around each other's shoulders. Each one of them had a bottle of champagne, which they drank. Reggie laughed

and said, this man, he said, this man deserves the Congressional Medal of Honor, the Purple Heart, everything. The Purple Heart. Purple Heart. Let's go back to the Nobel Peace Prize. Billy said this guy was sensational, one of the greatest World Series performances

you'll ever see. And so, Billy was asked about whether he had imbued his team with a fighting spirit, and Reggie said, yes, anybody fights you, Skip, he's got to fight both of us. Anybody who fights you, said Billy,

he's got to fight both of us. So now they're thick as thieves. If you win, you are good. You are all good. Oh, man, I can't wait. This is going to enter the era of Billy's womanizing pretty soon,

and that's amazing. Yeah. He has, he hooks up with a story about him. He hooks up with this chick that everyone thinks is 16. What? She's not 16. She's an adult, but barely. And it's a, it's really fucking crazy.

Why'd he do that? Oh, man. That is fucking incredible. So, um, Billy here, um, he said, I want you to send this, he took his jersey off. I said, I want you to send this jersey off. I said, I want you to send this. to that violante kid he wrote. He said, my heart is with you.

I think that was, was that the guy, one of the guys who got shot by son of Sam? Who was it? I don't think so. Violante? I can't remember who that is. That kid. Sam? Is it Sam Villalante?

No, I don't know. It just says that violante kid. Okay. I'm not sure. So anyway, remaining in the clubhouse after all this was a handful of Yankees, including Reggie Jackson and Thurman Munson. They hugged. Munson had been asking for a trade to Cleveland

so he could be nearer to his family in Canton, would have saved his life if they did it. He wouldn't, he'd be alive. You don't have to fly from Canton to Cleveland. You can drive that shit. He was heading to a party down the hall under the right field stands. Dave Anderson chronicled this remarkable exchange

in the next day's New York Times. Munson said, I'm going down to the party here in the... I'm going down to the party here in the ballpark. Just white people, but they'll let you come in. Come on down to Reggie, joking around. Reggie laughed and said, I'll be there. Wait for me.

It's like, it's just white people, but you can come. Reggie, but Reggie stood at his locker talking with reporters for 25 minutes, and finally Munson returned and said, hey, N-word, you're too slow. That party's over, but I'll see you next year. And Reggie said, you'll be back. And he said, not me, but you know who stuck up. Munson said, not me, but you know who stuck up. up for you N-word? You know who stuck up for you

when you needed it? And Reggie said, I know, but you'll be here next year. We'll all be here. Now, you have to understand this is a very different time, by the way. Watch blazing saddles. The reason why they use the N-word back then a lot is you use the N-word to make fun of people who use the N-word. That

was the way it was. It's like, doesn't that sound ridiculous? And that showed that you were like hip to that shit. You get it. You get it. That's what that was. Now it's just the word is uttered. It's horrible. whatever, but back then there was a context of things that people would understand. Well, the context of it now seems to be just to piss people off, which is the exact same reason that you would use it back then. I mean, not then, but you know what then.

Yeah, yeah, yeah, it's, I mean, but I mean in the 70s, like, you knew context. And if anybody tried to say, oh, that's a racist comment by months. And Reggie would have said, man, shut the fuck up. You don't know what you're talking about. Context is key. Yeah. Nowadays, it's all about rage and clickbait and all that shit. So it doesn't matter.

He just said, he said the N word, and then everybody would freak out not knowing that that was the thing. Because nowadays, that's not the context. It's a different context. It's just different. I'm not saying that you should use the N word now. I'm saying things were different now. Everybody used the N word a lot. Please.

Stop making a case for it. I'm definitely not. If you can do that real quick, I don't understand a case for fucking people knowing what context was and people understanding, understanding nuance of how things work. before. But that's a long gone time and you're not going to get that. It's crazy, isn't it? Yeah, it is. Because now people just go, well, you can just say it, so I'm saying it. And then people would say it just to piss people off.

Open dialogue's impossible now, James. Now it's impossible. Don't try to have a conversation with anybody. Fuck everybody. I'm not listening to anybody. Everybody can shut up. Call each other whatever you want. Leave me alone. How's that? So they said Martin had

fought the other teams in the league, fought his star player, fought his owner, who respected no man, and said it would be the only one, only world championship of Martin's managing career, and it was a painful one. Yeah? Okay. Now, we will end on this here. Okay.

Billy drove, drove with Billy Joe and Gretchen to the New Jersey party. It was a mob scene with loud music, few players and a diverse collection of fans and hangers on who had been drinking since before the game started. The boozy crush of the packed room, Billy twice had a drink knocked

out of his hand, was overwhelming. Billy, usually the life of the party, was getting agitated. Oh, boy, what do you think is happening now? This is how big he died. This is how big he died? Didn't he have like a fight at a record release party or some shit? And then they left when he got shot?

He was at that big giant party. There was tons of shit going on. He didn't really have any fights, though. There was no, there was no confrontation there was. There was a, everywhere. There was a company. There wasn't like anything like that, though. That just meant there was a conference party.

That was a stretch. That was a stretch. I don't know. I felt like it was real. Nah, that was a stretch. You stretch far for that one. He stretched like a first baseman waiting for the throw on that one. It just didn't make it.

I think Tupac died the same way too. After a party. Tupac, not a party, but a fight in a casino. So close to it. That's close. After a fight, right? After a fight, yeah, you got a big brawl in that lobby. If you combine their two deaths, you'd have something.

There it is. This is so fucking Vicky died. There you go. Now we get it. Perfect. We nailed it. See, we got there. Uh-oh.

He's about to get shot in a phone. fucking SUV. Billy or a fucking seven series beamer, either one. Billy wrote years later, all the problems we had all year long had left me exhausted. The fighting to win the division title,

fighting to win the pennant, fighting to win a World Series, the fight against the owner who doesn't respect you, all year long battling for players against him, and he's telling the players just the opposite. It was all tearing me up

and making me sick. It was a miracle I didn't have a stroke or a nervous breakdown. Now, this book goes on to say there were other discomforting undercurrents to the party, specifically the makeup of the guest list. Some of those pressing closest to Billy, who was the guest of honor, gave him more than a hint of what Billy, his star bigger than ever, had become. Gretchen Martin, standing in the Denver airport three years earlier, had foreseen the consequences of her husband taking the Yankees' job. Now, somewhat unexpectedly, given the utter triumph of the moment in her 18 years as Billy's wife, Gretchen was coming face to face with her own premonition.

In addition to the frenzy in the room, two or three women Billy had befriended during his years living in New Jersey, perhaps intimately befriended, or at the party, and vying for at least some of Billy's attention of this night of the great celebration. Gretchen saw what was going on but did not tolerate it in this setting. Yeah, did not tolerate it in this setting. Billy Joe was in the room too. Billy and Gretchen began quarrelling loudly in front of other guests at the World Series celebration party. Mom and son are having a big problem. Well, mom is at least.

The son doesn't really know what's going on. Billy had a drink in his hand and threw it to the ground, smashing the glass. He turned and stormed out of the party. Yeah. Billy Joe said they had lots of fights, but that was the final one that mattered. That was it. That was the fight. Oh, no.

Years later, Gretchen summarized her feelings, and she said, they said, what did she said to Billy? And she just said, quote, play me or trade me. That's what she said to Billy. Either I'm your wife or I'm gone. Fuck off. Wow. Billy left the hotel ballroom for the bottom of the barrel bar there.

He wrote later on, I sat there all by myself. I sat there and rested where no one else could bother me. Interesting. We could do this quick, quick. Quick Lasorda story. Tommy Lasorda. I don't fucking guinea manager. I love play me or trade me.

That's beautiful. That's a great way to put it. You imagine being... Shit he understood. Yeah. A wife just hitting you with like the best negotiation argument ever from any player to their manager. Play me or trade me. Shit, that's good.

You know what? We're staying together. That was pretty awesome. So Tommy LaSorda, another guinea manager. Billy and LaSota were like best friends, the book says. Two baseball lifers from meager means. We knew we were two lucky SOBs, but we also knew we had worked like dogs for everything we got,

LaSorda said later in an interview. Lasorda put in 22 seasons as a minor league player and manager before getting his chance to manage in the big leagues in 76. Yeah, man. Wow, he was an old man when he got up there, huh? Yeah, it took him forever. Wow. He said, we could share that.

And one other thing, if Billy Martin was your friend, he's the best friend you ever had. Lassarra recalled an off-season visit to Minneapolis in the late 60s when Billy was the Twins' third base coach. Lassorda was the Dodgers manager in Ogden, Utah, a rookie league team. Lusorta said, I called ahead and told him I was coming to Minnesota for a couple of days. I was visiting some college player they wanted me to talk to. Billy met me up at the airport and we took a cab to my hotel. I asked him why he didn't drive his car. and he said a cab was easier, which I thought was odd.

Yeah. But I check in and we go to my room and I unpack a little. We're talking and catching up. And then we went down and had a drink in the lobby and we're still sitting there. And I saw that Billy had this bracelet on his wrist, like the kind they give you when you're in the hospital. Oh? I said, Billy, what's that? And he said, oh, yeah, I'm in the hospital.

I had hernia surgery the other day. Wow. I'm in the hospital like now. Right now. Yeah. I left to pick you up and drink and then I'm going back. picking you up and then I'll go back and I'll recover from this. I was shocked.

I said, are you crazy? And he said, relax, I'll go back in a couple hours. I wasn't going to let you come here and have to have you hang out by yourself. I said, I could have just met him at the hospital. And he said, I didn't want to worry you. That's crazy. He said, he just waved his hand to me and he said, what fun would that have been? Yeah.

But he did look kind of pale. So I made him finish his drink and go back to the hospital early. That is crazy. And then finally, Billy and Gretchen divorce proceedings between Billy and Gretchen had not yet begun, although each would contact

lawyers within the next month. Billy Joe said they were upset about the divorce. I thought they were both better off. So, there you go. Let us end it there. And we can start next time here with Billy.

Terrific. Imagine Billy now unhinged and not married. What's going to happen? It is going to be fucking wild. And we are to find out all about that next week, and a whole lot more. And this week, I understand that this is kind of just the 77 season. The 77 season is the subject of multi-part documentaries about 10 different fucking books. It's one of the most covered things there is. So it is impossible to not spend two hours on the 77 season. Just because, like I said, the sources, there's so

much. Love it. Every bit of minutia has been documented. Yeah. So we have to do that. I promise from here on we'll buzz through a little bit more and we won't go one season on an episode. I'd love to, but life definer though.

That's what I mean. I'd love to just do it season and a time. But, you know, I think this will be a 36-parter at that point. We can't do that. So we will buzz through. And this is when Billy's going to get into more fighting, booze and womanizing and all sorts of crazy fun and also getting picked up for his problems as well. can't do that shit forever and not end up in jail

Eventually, you know, yeah, running to the ball. Billy's going to have that going on. I've heard it has a long arm, Jameson. I've heard that too. It'll reach it. Yeah. So there you go, everybody. If you like this show, get on whatever app you're listening on.

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So not only do you get the ad free, you also get shoutouts. Oh, yes. Jimmy, hit me with the names of the people who would never, ever, ever pull us from a right field of a game and start a fight with us in the dugout on national television. Play me or trade me, baby. Jimmy hit me with them right. Fucking now. This is executive producer, Gary Howard in Atlanta.

Gary. Ian Stevens. and happy birthday, Ian. Happy birthday. And Dan Forbes, keep up the good fight, bud. You're doing great. Peyton Meadows. The Shasta, Shesha, Zimmerman.

I don't know what that means. I don't know it either. Other producers this week are Ryan Bender, Happy Hour in Granberry. I think it was Texas. God damn it. I didn't write the state. Somewhere, Google it. Janice Hill.

Oki Kolis. Jacob Whitey, Wilde. Wilde. Samantha Wallace. Joyce would no last name. Stephanie Armstrong, Brooke Meadowcroft, Jocelyn would know last name. Ashley Duke, Bertie Gall, Charlie Edwards, Christina Blakely, Julie would know last name. Brian G. Aaron Kennedy, Madeline Moore, Amisha Motto, would no last name. Trisha Robinson, Carl Alwert. Carl Wirt. Not just not some of it, all of it. All of it. L.P. The letters LNP. Doc Hollabay. You know the Salt. Doc Hollabay. Jake Rhodes. Tiffany would know the last name. Saul, Dave, Samantha Lowe, Leanne French, Norma Wright, KCC, Aero, April, Evans, Sokow Portman, Corey Patterson, Gabriel, Gabrielle, Hammond, Annie B, Joelle, Joel, perhaps, Ria, Raya, Emily would know last name. Rich M-O-E, Melanie Rogers, Jenny Lean, J-Law, Alicia Holloway, Mrs. Coup, Karen would no last name. Barbara Kish. Kim Swazki. Zawadsky. Evan Mack. Jess would no last name. Mary Miller. Kim Wilbert. Henry Mattson. Connie Weaver. Posey Parkour. Tyler Christie. Nicholas Chips. Rissa J. Megan Jacobson. Sherry Christensen. Ryan Anderson. Ryan Oakes. Steve Holler. Justin Odendahl. Kay would no last name. Denise would no last name. Susan Michelle Odom. Candy. Birdsell. Caroline. Weber, Michael West, Monica Ricks, Jeff Raley, Whaley, Mike Cormier, Samantha, and no last name, Christy Griner, Elise C, Erica Carlson, Angela French, Billy Rinkles. All right.

Michaela. That's a gal, actually, I think. That's a gal, actually, I think. Well, it's an I-E. It could be whichever you want to be. It sounds like a euphemism for a but-haw. It does. For Billy Rinkles over here.

No offense, Billy Rinkles. Or the sack, you know what I mean. Miles, Miles Clerking, Michaela Griffith, I said that, D.D. Silverston, Sylvester.

Megan Matthews, Kobe Peterson, Silverston, it's the same thing. Adam Saltzman. Raquel would no last name. Tiffany Sloan, Michael Geary,

Stephanie would no last name. Jane Lombardo, Corey Williams, Shelby Murray, W. No, that's VW. Heath Smith, Maddie Grunwald.

I think I might be dyslexic. That might be. Really? Deanna. would know the last name. Gina Bowers. That'll explain it. It's certainly a start.

It's hard to read names, dude. That's hard. I'm sorry. You're doing great. Crazy Cat Lady in Boston. Tracy Workman, I used to like this one podcast. This one? Why did you used to like?

I don't know. D.L. Johnson. Why are you giving us money if you don't like it anymore? What's the matter? Birdie Ray. I used to like this. Take my money. Kimberly Chavez.

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Has to be. A little bit of that Mantle money. Hugo Kinneard, Kenaird, send us his shit. Jordan, any of your great-grandfather's shit you got laying around. Send us something. Yeah. Jordan Tornabine. We won't sell it, I promise that.

Edward Egan. Kevin White. Kevin, if your uncle's Reggie, send that shit. Jesse Burns. I can get us Reggie shit. We got that. No, Reggie White. That was Jesse White.

Oh, Kevin White. Immediately went to Jackson. That's the only Reggie you know. Kyle Lamfear, Jeff S. Robert would know last name. Jennifer Wilson, Ashley S. Steve Perrill, Austin Fink, David Phelps, Sangamaria. Sagamaria.

Seja Marie. All right. Christy Harp, Sherry, I've tried my best. Sherry Bacinger, give me some of your mom's shit. Callie Brown, Anna Marie P., Shelby Pike, Robin Baldda, Bebop with no last name. And also, anybody that had a hand in making that new documentary from Peacock about that dirtbag, Gacy.

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