Four days on the job, the first four days of my life covering the Yankees, and there I was in a phone booth in the back of the press box in old Memorial Stadium in Baltimore, dialing the number for American Shipbuilding in Tampa, hoping to somehow reach George Steinbrenner.
This was July 11, 1977, the summer and season dramatized and captured so well by the TV series, “The Bronx is Burning,” and it was on this particular day that a story appeared in two competing newspapers in which a “prominent” Yankee had charged Steinbrenner with dictating the lineup and batting order to manager Billy Martin.
Four days on the road, not a single source on the team, and I’d been told by my boss — The Boss to me, never mind George — that I needed to get Steinbrenner’s reaction and I needed to get it on the record. With that I was given the number for the switchboard at American Shipbuilding, at the time Steinbrenner’s secondary business.
It was maybe 8 or 9 p.m., the Yankees were in the process of losing their third straight game, and after two rings a voice that even then was instantly recognizable answered the phone (yes, he answered the switchboard phone!). Upon hearing my salutation, he began speaking so quickly I could barely cradle the receiver in one ear while simultaneously writing furiously in my notebook.
Steinbrenner ripped the Yankees. He ripped the pitching staff. He lauded the Orioles. He didn’t have the slightest idea who I was, and he didn’t care. He was livid. He wanted to talk. He wanted to own the Back Page.
And then, the dénouement: “You know who that ‘prominent player’ probably is?” Steinbrenner shouted. “I bet you it’s Carlos May! It’s Carlos May because since we brought him over he hasn’t done anything worth a damn and now he’s out of the lineup and it’s Carlos May who went to the papers to complain. I’m telling you it’s Carlos May!”
Let me explain. Even four days into the assignment, I recognized that no one in his right mind would refer to May, pretty much at the end of the line by then in his second season with the Yankees after enjoying a fair amount of success previously with the White Sox, as a “prominent” player.
Still, I had something from Steinbrenner. I had his accusation against a player on his own team, and I had it on the record. Now my job was to
confront May in the visitors’ post-game clubhouse.
“Uh, Carlos?” I said after moseying over to his locker. “George Steinbrenner just told me that he believes you’re the ‘prominent player’ who said that he was dictating the lineup to Billy.”
May looked at me. Apparently he didn’t appreciate the irony of being identified as a prominent player by the owner (or maybe he did), for his response was as follows:
“GET THE BLEEP OUT OF MY FACE! GET THE BLEEP OUT OF MY FACE! GET THE BLEEP OUT OF MY FACE!”
Martin then came sprinting out of the manager’s office, grabbed me by the collar, and got me the bleep out of May’s face by dragging me away, for my own protection.
Four days on the job and I had had my first interaction with George Steinbrenner.
*
I covered the Yankees intermittently at home and on the road through 1982, on the scene for large swatches of the lunacy that marked The Bronx Zoo era that featured George, Billy, Reggie and Thurman; in and out of Steinbrenner’s graces, handed a Back Page one day, frozen out of the loop the next.
This was now Aug. 6, 1979, in the post-game clubhouse the night of Munson’s funeral. I had traveled with the team to Canton, Ohio, for the service and returned with the club to cover the game. Steinbrenner and I had been feuding for weeks and weren’t on speaking terms. Who knows why?
Standing at Jackson’s locker after the game in which Bobby Murcer had driven in all five runs of a bottom-of- the-ninth, 5-4 victory only hours after delivering a eulogy for his best friend, I felt a strong hand clap me on the back and grab me by my shoulder blade.
Steinbrenner.
“Life is too short for this petty nonsense,” he said, offering his hand. “Let’s remember that.”
Soon after, I wrote something, he didn’t like it, I called him, he answered (no caller-ID in those days), and before I could finish my name, he’d hung up on me.
The Era of Good Feeling lasted less than a month.
*
In 1981, after a first half of that strike season in which Jackson, in the final season of his contract, batted below .200, I received an unsolicited call from Steinbrenner — I mean, a “source close to Steinbrenner.”
It was my turn again. George wanted it out there, he wanted it on the Back Page of The Post.
“Reggie needs an eye exam. Reggie needs glasses.”
Got me the Back Page all right. Also got me a call from Jackson, with whom I had always had a good relationship.
“Until this story I was thinking about having you write my autobiography with me,” Jackson said. “But now I’m going to give it to [Mike] Lupica.”
True. All of it true, the truth stranger than fiction, Steinbrenner larger than life, today larger than death.
larry.brooks@nypost.com