April 19, 1977 - Blue Jays 8, Yankees 3
- Sal Maiorana
- Apr 19, 2017
- 2 min read
NEW YORK - Oh boy, you knew it was coming, especially after this debacle, New York’s fifth straight loss and eighth in its first 10 games.
George Steinbrenner met with the media before the game and tried to quell the rumors that he was about to blow Yankee Stadium up. No, he wasn’t going to fire Billy Martin, he wasn’t going to send Reggie Jackson back to Baltimore, and no, he had not lost confidence in the highly-salaried team he had put together (some would say purchased).
“If they don’t win, they stay like this, then blame me, it’s my fault, mine and Gabe Paul’s,” Boss George said. “I’m not managing them and I’m not coaching them, but Gabe and I put this team together. They’re going to turn this thing around and very soon, mark my words. I have every confidence in them. We’re going to win the pennant. Billy’s the man to turn it around. If anybody says I’m on Billy’s back, he’s a liar. I haven’t talked to him about the ballclub since spring training.”
Of course, no one believed that, especially in light of the blow up the two had late in spring training, but onward Steinbrenner pressed.
“It’s not a win-or-else situation,” he continued. “It’s to perform up to capabilities. Billy’s not going to be judged on anything other than the performance of the ballclub. You can’t set a calendar to that and I never would for Billy.”
For his part, Martin seemed to have the owner’s back when he implied that George hadn’t been pestering him every second of every day. Martin did not say the same about the persistent New York media. “Every time I pick up a paper,” he fumed, “I read it’s Martin against Reggie Jackson, it’s Martin against George Steinbrenner. It’s a lot of bull and I’m getting fed up with it.”
The Blue Jays original theme song from the inaugural 1977 season.
After the game, during which rookie right-hander Gil Patterson made his major league debut and was knocked around for four runs on four hits and two walks in 3.1 innings, Martin was asked if he was starting to feel the pressure.
“Are you relaxed if your house is burning down?” he shot back, rhetorically. “Every team goes through about three slumps a year no matter how good the team is. We’re having ours now. It looks worse than it is because the season just started and we haven’t won yet. But we’ll start winning. These guys are human, they’re not robots. They’re not hitting, but they will.”
Martin also was asked to describe his relationship with Jackson, more probing into the benching of the slugger in Milwaukee. At the time, it appeared pretty obvious Martin had done so as a punishment for Jackson talking about his sore elbow to the press. Martin tried to paint a different picture this time, saying, “Reggie had a sore elbow and he told the press that he had a sore elbow. I asked him if his elbow hurt and he said ‘yes.’ So I didn’t use him. I refuse to play injured ballplayers.”
Sure, that was the reason. What a year it was shaping up to be.
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