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« on: May 16, 2009, 07:02:03 AM »
I'm a lifetime Yankee hater, bit I'll always love Billy Martin. Baseball genius and total nutjob.
- On August 4, 1960, Martin, then playing for the Reds, charged the mound in the second inning after receiving a brushback pitch from Chicago Cubs pitcher Jim Brewer. Martin threw his bat at Brewer, who picked up the bat and started to hand it to Martin as he approached. Martin punched Brewer in the right eye, breaking his cheekbone. Brewer was hospitalized for two months, and Martin served a five-day suspension. The Cubs sued Martin for $1 million for the loss of Brewer's services. While the Cubs dropped their case, Brewer pursued his, and in 1969, a judge ordered Martin to pay $10,000 in damages. When informed of the judgment by the press, he asked sarcastically, "How do they want it? Cash or check?"
- Martin's fights as a player also included bouts with Jimmy Piersall, Clint Courtney (twice), Matt Batts and Tommy Lasorda.
- After a 1978 incident with Reggie Jackson in which Martin suspended Jackson for bunting against orders, Martin was forced to resign after telling reporters, "They deserve each other. One's a born liar [Jackson], and the other's convicted [Steinbrenner]." (Martin was referring to Steinbrenner's conviction for making illegal donations to Richard Nixon's 1972 election campaign).
- Martin managed the Detroit Tigers from 1971 to 1973. He guided the team to a first place finish in 1972. During the 1972 American League Championship Series, Oakland Athletics shortstop Bert Campaneris threw his bat at Detroit pitcher Lerrin LaGrow after being hit by a pitch. In the ensuing brawl, an infuriated Martin had to be restrained by umpires and teammates to prevent him from going after Campaneris. The Tigers lost the series three games to two.
- While posing for a baseball card as the manager for the Detroit Tigers in 1972, Martin gave photographers the middle finger. The gesture went unnoticed until after the card's release.
- In one especially infamous incident, on June 18, 1977, in the middle game of what would prove to be a three-game series sweep by the Boston Red Sox at Fenway Park, Martin pulled Jackson off the field in mid-inning for failing to hustle on a ball hit to the outfield. The extremely angry and highly animated Martin had to be restrained by his coaches from getting into a fight with Jackson in the dugout during the the nationally-televised Saturday afternoon game.
- Martin's sparring opponents as a manager also included two traveling secretaries (Minnesota's Howard Fox and Texas' Burt Hawkins) in a fight outside of Howard Wong's in Bloomington, Minnesota; Jack Sears, a fan outside Tiger Stadium; a Chicago cab driver who preferred soccer to baseball; sportswriter Ray Hagar, in a Reno casino; marshmallow salesman Joseph Cooper; two bar patrons, in Anaheim and in Baltimore; and two bouncers in an Arlington topless bar.
- On September 22, 1985, Martin fought one of his pitchers, Ed Whitson, who broke one of Martin's arms.
- Sometimes he would literally draw a lineup out of a hat if the team was struggling to win such as on April 21, 1977 with the Yankees and August 13, 1972 with the Tigers in the first game of a doubleheader, in the year before the introduction of the designated hitter.
"Billy Martin proved what a powerful strategic tool paranoia is. He believed that everyone was against him. And so he spent every waking moment figuring out how imaginary enemies could be defeated in their nefarious plots. And sometimes he not only created strategies to defend against things that would never be done against him, but he realized that those attacks were in themselves novel and he would then try those attacks that he had already dreamed up a defense for. That's why he was so wonderful at suicide bunts and double steals and any way that you could humiliate or psychologically defeat the other team, he was sure that's how the world reacted to him. He was sure the world hated him. And so he turned that really raw, frightened paranoia into wonderful strategic intelligence."
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