Our first manager was Bob Lemon, the gentle breeze. He lasted about three weeks. Then came Gene Michael, the tactician. He took us into mid-summer. Then we turned to Clyde King, the pastor.
It was a wretched time to be a Yankee fan, an era when George Steinbrenner fired managers in the manner that TV networks drop unwatched sitcoms. It was a long time ago. Lindsay Lohan wasn't even born. Neither was Joba Chamberlain and Phil Hughes. America was mired in recession, and Ronald Reagan was pulling the solar panels off the White House, so we could get back to relying on cheap oil. It's a year that Yankee fans -- hell, Republicans, too -- prefer to forget. Cue the Memory Hole, everybody. But, hey, it happened.
Clyde King died yesterday. Throughout the mess-ups of the 1980s, he always kept his dignity.
Good man. Sad day.
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So when the 1982 season was over, and King wanted to stay on for '83, George, being The Great Leader that he was, decided instead to hire Billy Martin [again] and gave him a five-year contract. [Why would anyone give the unstable Martin a five-year contract? If YOU were a Great Leader, you wouldn't have to ask.] We improved to 20 games over .500 that year, finishing 3d, but George fired Billy anyway because the players said he was driving them crazy.
So Billy became an "adviser," and Yogi got a two-year contract as manager. But we won only 87 games in '84, finishing 3d again, and we started 6-10 in 1985, so Yogi got fired, and, of course, Billy returned as manager because, The Great Leader said, Billy had got his health back, even though nobody had said Billy had gotten fired because he was sick.
We were 91-54 the rest of the year and finished 2d. But Billy got fired again in October, probably for having gotten into a couple of bar fights, including one with one of his own pitchers [Ed Whitson], and Lou Piniella replaced him. The Great Leader said that he did not make this decision himself: the responsibilty for it belonged to Clyde King.
Then Billy came back, after Piniella got fired, in'88, but Billy got fired later that year, being replaced by, of course, Piniella, etc., . . .
Now do you young whippersnappers understand why some of us old geezers wanted to puke when we saw the giant monument to The Great Leader unveiled in September?
Buck Foston says,
The King is dead. Long live the King.
Cute story. Makes me want to be better. Thanks for sharing. You are wonderful.
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