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The New Stats Explained
by Ryan T. Campbell
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Johanna quoted in the Chicago Tribune about Fan Safety.
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This Month
Hunter Manchak reviews
Phil Pepe's The Ballad of Billy and George
Thursday Oct. 30, 2007 9:00pm
As I read Phil Pepe's book The Ballad of Billy and George: The Tempestuous Baseball Marriage of Billy Martin and George Steinbrenner, I wondered what it would be like to have done so with no previous knowledge of the two principle characters or the team that brought them together. I believe that doing so would have left me believing the book to be fiction. Many of the events chronicled within are so ridiculous, the cast so caricatured that at times I was left shaking my head as I read, wondering how it could possibly all be true. Nevertheless, the personalities are real, the events all took place, and the book's presentation of them makes for a very entertaining read.
Part of what makes the story so interesting is just how complementary everyone involved truly was. I mean this not in the sense of Steinbrenner, Martin and the players being similar people or even being on the same page professionally-certainly this was not often the case. Rather, the mix was just right in a literary sense, where each of the personalities involved was in just the right balance to propel the story forward with enough intrigue to keep the reader coming back for more.
It would not have been enough to have a draconian owner that demanded success and obedience from his inferiors. That story comes up so much in business and in sports (even with Steinbrenner in other times) that it's not really unique or interesting. The relationship likely would have ended, as many others have, with a simple firing, and the interested parties moving on. Similarly, it would not be a terribly engaging tale to simply have the irascible manager who ran afoul of team rules, baseball customs and indeed, the law itself.
No, what makes The Ballad of Billy and George interesting is the interplay of Martin and Steinbrenner, and inevitably arriving at the inevitable conclusion that they were truly cut from the same cloth. Both were singularly passionate about winning, demanding of excellence from those around them, and of course, prone to irrational outbursts and fits of (self-) destructive behavior.
Not surprisingly, such similarities left the two at odds just as often as on the same page (hence Steinbrenner's five hirings and five firings of Martin). Martin was Steinbrenner's right hand man as often as he was a phantom limb. By the same token, Steinbrenner was a sometimes father figure and sometimes tormentor for Martin-oftentimes vacillating between the two extremes in amazingly short order. Pepe's descriptions of the two men's mercurial relationship and the subsequent effects on the rest of the team make for a truly entertaining read.
I suppose it's fitting that Pepe's book was released during the team's final season at Yankee Stadium. With a third place team anticlimactically closing down one of sports' most hollowed cathedrals, it was impossible not to feel a bit of longing for the greatness of Yankee past-even for those of us who would root for 29 other teams before cheering on the Bombers. In the same way, Pepe's book was a dirge for the team's storied past, making it clear just how much things have changed in the Bronx, and not necessarily for the better.
With the Boss ailing and possibly nearing his final days, there were no clubhouse jeremiads before key series in September. There was no one lighting fires under top players, be it directly to them or passive-aggressively through the media. And when the team failed to make the playoffs for the first time in fourteen years, there was no one to greet them in the locker room and let them know that "there will be changes." Instead, the season came and went with a surprising lack of fanfare and a new pair of team stewards that seem more intent on going through the motions of passionate ownership than actually feeling and believing it.
From an economic sense, baseball is at or close to its all time acme. Nowadays, when people criticize the game it's usually over competitive imbalance claims, or over the effects of performance-enhancing drugs. But you don't often hear much bemoaning the loss of the game's collective personality. This was, for me, one of the most poignant (and possibly unintended) themes that ran throughout Pepe's book. For better or worse, Billy and George made the sport interesting: to watch, to cover, and to simply experience.
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