DONNIE BASEBALL: Mattingly was one of few bright spots on the Yankees of the 80s
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There’s a whole slew of baseball fans who don’t remember a time when there was no DH in the American League, when there were just the two leagues and no divisions, there was no scoreboard in the corner of your TV screen, and when 50-home-run seasons were as rare as Halley’s Comet.Some people would consider the here and now a potential low point in Yankees history, given the fact that the Pinstripers, the highest-payrolled team each of the last eight seasons, have not won a championship since the year 2000 (and their archnemesis, the Red Sox, have — at the Yanks’ expense). It’s not for us to say whether Yankee fans suffer more when they’re strung along all season long rooting for a powerful and talented team, only to see it falter at the end (sound vaguely familiar, Sox fans?) — or if it is tougher for the fandom if the team year in and year out was just plain bad.
And for a lot of folks, it is tough to remember a time when the Bombers weren’t perennially competitive. But settle in, children, and I’ll tell you a tale: for there was such a time that is considered the “dark period” for New York Yankees fans of a certain generation, when the team was not an annual playoff contender and Fall Classic aspirant. There was actually a period before Joe Torre and Derek Jeter and Mariano Rivera when the Yankees really did, well, you know, s--k. They were ordinary or worse and annually were buried in the American League standings, and even though the same blusterous man oversaw the operation — George Steinbrenner — and they had baseball’s highest payroll, it just didn’t matter. The Yankees, between the AL pennant-winning year of 1981 and the title year of 1996, actually did not win one pennant nor even a divisional crown during that entire 15-year period, and instead were chronic underachievers and oftentimes the butt of jokes throughout the land. Yes, kids, those were the days.
For Red Sox fans, those are known as the golden years of the two teams’ ancient rivalry. The Sox weren’t world-beaters themselves during that stretch, but they did capture the pennant in 1986 and divisional honors in 1988 and 1990.
But we’re not talking about Boston right here and right now; we’re looking at the team that won back-to-back world titles in 1977 and 1978 and collected additional hardware in 1996, ’98, ’99, and 2000. But not only did the Pinstripers have a title drought throughout the ’80s and early ’90s; they were the crown princes of foolishness, and even the polish and class that the current edition often exudes still has a difficult time overshadowing some of the exploits that made the Yankees the laughingstocks of the majors way back when.
Given some of the lunk-headed moves that the Yankees made then, it is difficult to believe that George Costanza was not part of the organization, given the franchise’s front-office ineptitude. The team was still up to its old tricks even in those days regarding free agency, and no organization was more free-wheeling with its checkbook in offering big-money contracts to available players. Sure, the Yanks did harvest some home-grown talent, including the likes of Ron Guidry, Don Mattingly, and Mike Pagliarulo, but the majority of the top-flight players that littered the roster during those years were signed free agents. The list is remarkably impressive, but like now, only one major-league team back then was able to afford the bidding wars for these marquee players’ talents: Dave Winfield. Reggie Jackson. Catfish Hunter. Don Gullett. Goose Gossage. Tommy John. Luis Tiant. Ken Griffey. Rickey Henderson. Don Baylor. Steve Kemp. Jack Clark. Bert Camperneris. Danny Tartabull. And so on.
Some of those players produced, but many did not, and though this era confirms defensive Yankee fans’ theory — that just spending the most money does not guarantee a title — the sub-par performances turned in by the team’s big-money players were not the primary reasons for the Yankees’ being the object of ridicule.
For that, one had to go to the managerial merry-go-round that began in earnest in 1978 — the Yanks’ last title before the onset of the 18-year drought. In that particular season, the Yankees employed three managers during the course of the year, with (remember this name) Billy Martin getting the axe in late July despite a 52-42 record and a defending world champion on the field. (Martin had called Jackson and Steinbrenner “liars” in the days leading up to his dismissal, an exit which was termed a “resignation for health reasons.”) Interim manager Dick Howser lost but one game following Martin’s tenure before he too was shuttled, and recently-fired White Sox manager Bob Lemon was brought in to right the ship. Yet in a strange turn of events which provided the harbinger of madcap things to come, the Yankees on Old-Timers’ Day (just four days after Lemon’s arrival) announced on the centerfield scoreboard during pre-game ceremonies that Martin would return to manage the team in 1980 — nearly two years down the road.
