May 24, 1977 – Yankees 6, Red Sox 5
- Sal Maiorana
- May 24, 2017
- 4 min read
NEW YORK – In his book All Roads Lead to October, author and former New York Post sports writer Maury Allen recalled a story about an encounter one day with Mickey Mantle, with whom he’d had an occasionally frosty relationship. Allen was standing around the batting cage sometime in the mid-1960s watching batting practice and Mantle looked over to Allen and said, “You piss me off just standing there.” Fast forward to 1977, and substitute Reggie Jackson for Maury Allen, because it seemed as if that year Reggie also pissed off everybody by just standing there.
Pinstriped Armageddon. That’s what it was like around the Yankees right about now, especially when the June issue of Sport magazine hit newsstands. Contained therein was an article – still famous 40 years later – authored by Robert Ward that sprayed gasoline into a Yankee clubhouse that was already ablaze and burning hotter than the numerous fires that literally were burning the Bronx to the ground in the spring and summer of 1977.
Ward wrote a feature story on Jackson and his joining the Yankees, and the interview had taken place back in spring training at a time when Jackson was not in a good place as he was very unhappy with the cold-shouldered way he had been received by his new teammates.
In the story, Ward quoted Jackson as saying, “You know, this team ... it all flows from me. I’ve got to keep it all going. I’m the straw that stirs the drink. It all comes back to me. I should say me and Munson, but really, he doesn’t enter into it. He’s being so damned insecure about the whole thing. Munson thinks he can be the straw that stirs the drink, but he can only stir it bad.”
Thurman Munson was the Yankees' best player in the 1976 World Series loss to the Reds.
It went on and on from there, and the more Jackson spoke, the worse it got. The final version made Jackson look terrible. Jackson claims to this day that he was misquoted, and he says it was the worst screwing he had ever received from the press. But the Yankees never believed that, and when the players read it, to a man, they were livid. How dare this prima donna come to town and call out the captain, Munson, like that.
Remember, the year before Munson had batted .302, driven in 105 runs, won the American League MVP award, guided the Yankees to their first AL pennant since 1964, then batted .529 during New York’s loss to the Reds. Pretty good stir job, that was.
Fran Healy, who was Munson’s backup and one of the few Yankees who befriended Jackson from the start, tried to soothe things over by telling Munson that perhaps Jackson had been misquoted. Munson’s reply: “For three fucking pages?”
Munson said very little to the media about this, but when he was told the interview had been months earlier, before he and Jackson had come to a relative détente, Munson shrugged and said, “I don’t care if he said it four years ago.”
Billy Martin had been made aware of the story, and that, along with what happened the night before when Jackson had ignored his teammates after hitting a home run, prompted a meeting in the manager’s office with Jackson and the coaching staff.
“We just talked about what happened, and about things in general,” Martin told the press, not willing to divulge much. “His comment was he had no reason for what he did, it just happened, which I accept. This is just me thinking, but when a guy wants to do good and does bad, the guy gets down on himself.”
Mickey Rivers doubled home the tying run in the seventh and then scored the winning run on a single by Thurman Munson.
Reporters flocked to Jackson’s locker after the Yankees had beaten the Red Sox to gain a split of the brief two-game series, but for once, he wasn’t talking. Interestingly, many of the fans who had been mostly gracious to Jackson in the first month and a half, turned against him and booed him when he was announced for his at-bats. And when Munson stepped in, he received an enormous ovation each time.
Jackson went 0-for-2, drew a pair of walks, but did not figure into the scoring. In fact, he was one of only two batters who did not bat in the decisive seventh inning when the Yankees erased a 5-2 deficit with a four-run rally. Graig Nettles and Carlos May hit back-to-back home runs on consecutive pitches by Luis Tiant, then Bucky Dent singled, took second on a sacrifice by Willie Randolph, and scored on Mickey Rivers’ game-tying double. Munson then earned the biggest roar when he plated Rivers with a single for what turned out to be the winning run.
In what was a clear shot at Jackson, Martin said of Munson’s clutch hit, “Leadership is done by example, not by mouth.”
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