chapter oneNOTHING TO ATONE FORON THE EARLY EVENING of October 1, 1978, after six months of roistering with an intensity unmatched in the long history of hyperkinetic, high-proof roistering that so enriches the annals of American baseball, the New York Yankees found themselves tied for first place. The team had won 99 of 162 games, a commendable winning percentage of .611, but so had their traditional rivals, the Boston Red Sox. Autumn had taken hold along the eastern seaboard, bringing bright clear skies and quickening winds. The regular season of '78 was history. Still, in a sense, the teams found themselves just where they had been some six months earlier on Opening Day, April 8-tied, toe to toe, and glowering. As nature is said to abhor a vacuum, baseball abhors a tie, so now the Yankees were going to have to fly to Boston and meet the Red Sox yet again in a single-game playoff on October 2. As more than one sportswriter pointed out, the entire season for the two teams was coming down to one game. The regular season had ended and it had not ended. (In an interesting theory advanced by the author W. P. Kinsella, a ball game can stretch from the first inning clear to infinity. Uniquely among team sports, baseball proceeds outside of time. There is no clock.)By every reasonable standard, the 1978 Yankees should have been terminally exhausted. Their opening-day manager, Alfred Manuel "Billy" Martin, had been drinking so heavily that his personality, none too tranquil when he was sober, had erupted with repeated explosions of anger, hatred, and paranoia, until he had finally gotten himself "resigned" back in July. While his great predecessor, Casey Stengel, mellowed with drink, booze turned Martin into a human Gatling gun. "You always wanted to be around Billy for the first drink," suggests Gene Michael, then the Yankees first-base coach. "You never wanted to be around him for the last one."I knew Martin when he was a young infielder for Stengel's Yankees. He was a winning ball player who could be fine, if somewhat raucous, fun. But he also had an unpleasant, combative side. During spring training in 1953 he turned to the late Ben Epstein, a genial reporter for Hearst's tabloid Daily Mirror, and said, "I hear you used to be a wrestler.""Yeah," Epstein said. Years earlier he had earned a living in his home state of Arkansas by wrestling as "Pat Rollo, the Undefeated Middleweight Champion of Bulgaria." Standing in the marble lobby of the Hotel Soreno, Martin said, "I'll show you some holds." Epstein said fine, although Martin was twenty-five years younger than he. "How's this?" Martin said, hoisting Epstein and starting an airplane-propeller twist. "Off," Epstein said, no longer quite so genial. Martin dropped Epstein to the lobby floor, believing that he was terminating the episode. But Epstein rallied, applied one of his Bulgarian flips, and left his opponent helpless. With Allie Reynolds and a few other Yankees watching, Epstein applied Excerpted from October Men: From Chaos to Triumph with the 1978 New York Yankees by Roger Kahn All rights reserved by the original copyright owners. Excerpts are provided for display purposes only and may not be reproduced, reprinted or distributed without the written permission of the publisher.
