Hello everyone! At the time that I’m penning this, it is one week until Opening Day of the 2024 MLB season. Forget Christmas, this is my favorite day of the year! Last month, we looked at the playing career of one of baseball’s more colorful characters in Billy Martin. He is most famous for managing though and is considered one of the best. Billy’s exclusion from the Baseball Hall of Fame is a travesty and needs to be corrected! Martin’s five different tenures with the New York Yankees is an entire article itself. Check in next month for that story. There is plenty to unpack regarding his stints with teams other than the Yankees.
Billy finished up his playing days with the Minnesota Twins. He was immediately hired as a player scout and was sent out to evaluate talent at the college and minor league level. One of his best finds was a pitcher named Jim Palmer. He urged the owner to sign him immediately. Calvin Griffith balked at the signing bonus that Palmer was asking for and declined. Palmer went on to be a Hall of Famer with the Baltimore Orioles. He was my favorite pitcher as a young Oriole fan. Martin managed to keep his drinking and pugilistic forays to a minimum and was promoted to third base coach for Minnesota in 1965. Billy worked with the Twins players, teaching them to be more aggressive on the base paths to generate more offense. He was being considered for the manager position but couldn’t help himself and punched the Twins traveling secretary.
The Twins and Martin’s former team the Yankees shared a charter flight and were causing a ruckus. The secretary asked Martin to intercede, and he refused. When Billy asked for his hotel room key, the secretary threw it at him, and the fight was on. When the current manager was replaced, someone other than Martin got the job. He was offered the chance to manage the Triple A affiliate in Denver and quickly accepted. It would give him valuable experience. The team was a miserable 8-22 when he took over. Calling a meeting with the players, he made sure they understood that he was the boss and followed his orders without question. If they lost, he told them exactly why it happened. A week after the season ended, the Twins offered Billy the manager’s position for the 1969 season. Owner Clark Griffith stated that it felt like he was sitting on a keg of dynamite.
The season started and the Twins looked like a completely different team. They had two long winning streaks and took over 1st place. Minnesota’s decrepit old Metropolitan Stadium was setting attendance records even in April, when was so cold that the patron’s beer froze in their cups if not consumed quickly enough. When Reggie Jackson of the Oakland A’s hit two consecutive home runs in a game and took a leisurely stroll around the bases to show off, the next at bat started with a pitch aimed at his head. Jackson got back in the box and was knocked down again. In a foreshadowing of things to come between Martin and Jackson, Reggie started screaming at him and then charged the mound, starting a full-scale brawl.
Griffin, the Twins owner, was hands on and wanted Martin to meet with him to discuss the team’s progress. Billy’s thought was that the team was in 1st place under his guidance and that was good enough. Martin found out when the owner’s afternoon nap time was and showed up then for his required meetings. When pitcher Dave Boswell and outfielder Bob Allison got in a fight outside a bar that the three were drinking at, Martin jumped in and helped Allison pummel the pitcher. The Twins went all the way to the AL Championship Series after being mediocre to terrible for the past decade. Martin and Griffith disagreed on who to pitch in the third and deciding game. Martin chose Bob Miller, who was shelled, and the Twins lost the series. When Griffith asked why he didn’t pitch his favorite, Jim Kaat, Billy replied, “Because I am the manager, not you” Even after the best season in Twins history, it was determined that Martin was too much trouble, and he was fired. The fans were livid, and attendance sank.
Billy was hired by the Detroit Tigers for the 1971 season, an odd choice for a franchise not known for controversy. The Tigers, World Series champs just three years ago, had been a losing team two years in a row. Martin immediately lit a fire under the Tigers in his usual fashion. He berated players for poor play, continued his war with umpires, and even shouted at the organ player for the Oakland A’s for playing songs that were “distracting” I’m sure a rendition of “Three Blind Mice” for the umpiring crew would have been acceptable. Detroit management were already getting anxious at Billy’s behavior. Detroit was 91-71in 1971, a 12-win improvement from the previous season.
He was rewarded with a two-year contract and a raise. It only took him to the second game of the season against the Orioles and manager Earl Weaver to get ejected for arguing with umpires. I’m surprised that the umpires didn’t go on strike that day, having to deal with those two volatile personalities! The Tigers went all the way to the AL championship series before losing to A’s. 1973 started and finished with a familiar refrain. Martin’s continued volatility with his players and upper management was not offset by winning baseball as the Tigers fell to 4th place by the All-Star break. In August, frustrated by Gaylord Perry of the Indians allegedly using his famous spitball and the umpires not doing anything about it, Billy in a post-game press conference admitted to ordering his pitchers to throw spitballs and was suspended by the American League. The next day, he was fired.
The Texas Rangers were a horrible 47-81 when owner Bob Short told his then manager Whitey Herzog that he would fire his own grandmother to hire Billy Martin. Whitey was fired two days later for Martin and quipped “I’m the grandmother.” Billy was the de facto general manager also as he was given complete control over the roster. The Rangers improved from a 105-loss season to finish with a record of 84-76. The next season didn’t go as well, and the Rangers were 12 games out of 1st place by the end of June. His drinking once again got out of hand, and he was fighting with the front office and his players. Not sure why Billy hated team travelling secretaries. He punched out his second one for organizing a players wives club. His feud with the Rangers owner culminated in Martin instructing the team organist to play “Thank God I’m a Country Boy” for the 7th inning stretch instead of “Take Me out to the Ball Game”. On July 20th, he was fired. Stay tuned next month for the New York Yankee years where Billy was hired and fired five times! I’ll leave you with another Billy Martin quote. “There’s nothing greater in the world than when somebody on the team does something good, and everybody gathers around to pat him on the back”
