June 11, 1977 – Yankees 6, Twins 5
- Sal Maiorana
- Jun 11, 2017
- 3 min read
NEW YORK – Mount Lou erupted in the bottom of the second inning.
Piniella thought he had walked on a 3-2 pitch from Dave Goltz, only to have umpire Bill Deegan ring him up for a strikeout. Piniella went nuts. He slammed his bat to the ground, started screaming at Deegan, and after Billy Martin came running out to hopefully rescue his player, Piniella threw his bat on the ground in the general direction of Deegan.
Ejection, and ultimately a three-game suspension. Not that anyone was surprised because during a four-decade baseball career, this was not an uncommon scenario for Piniella, one of the all-time hottest heads in the game.
Imagine what it must have been like for American League umpires when they had to do a Yankees game with Piniella and Martin in the same dugout. Martin, of course, was public enemy No. 1 of the men in blue, right up there with his Baltimore counterpart, Earl Weaver. Martin once said of umpires in general, “They’re out to get me.” And to emphasize his point, he relayed a story from his days as manager of the Texas Rangers. “Two National League umpires (who didn’t have to deal with Martin in an era pre-interleague play) asked me in spring training why the umpires in my league were out to get me.”
It’s unlikely the umpires were “out to get” Martin, but you can be sure there were times when a call was a 50-50 proposition and the umpires didn’t hesitate to go against Billy.
Piniella was never paranoid about umpires like Martin, nor did he despise them the way Martin did. He just had a volcanic and often uncontrollable temper as a player and a manager which was simply part of his DNA.
The best of Sweet Lou:
“Yes, I had a bad temper,” Piniella once admitted. “I guess I was trying to succeed too much. I probably was trying to exceed my capabilities and was expecting perfection all the time. When I couldn't reach it, I'd get mad at myself. But then I realized I wasn't going to do it and I don't know anyone who can be perfect. Everywhere I played, they talked to me about it. ‘We know you can do this and that,’ they said, ‘but you've got to control your temper.’ People have told me it kept me out of the majors a couple of years.”
One time in the minors, in 1967, Piniella was angry about striking out, and when he went out to the outfield for the next half inning, he kicked the fence as hard as he could. As he was walking back to his position, a 15-foot section collapsed and landed right on top of him. Another time when he’d made it to Kansas City, he struck out to end a game and he was so furious, he walked right out of the stadium, in uniform, and hailed a cab to get home.
Piniella was known to kick dirt on the umpires, cover the plate with dirt, uproot a base and give it a heave, empty the bat rack on the field, throw helmets on the field, and obliterate water coolers. Some of his outbursts were legendary, and the advent of YouTube has brought them back to life.
Here was the famous play in the 1978 ALCS when Piniella was thrown out at the plate.
Without Piniella, the Yankees still went on to beat the Twins. Catfish Hunter labored through five innings and thanks to four innings of relief work by Sparky Lyle was rewarded with the victory. The Twins had 10 hits and a walk off Hunter in scoring four times, but then Lyle allowed just three hits and a run to earn his 12th save.
“It’s happened to me before,” Hunter said. “No pop. I had no curve, no fastball, all I had was my control. It had nothing to do with my shoulder; I’ll pitch again whenever they tell me.”
The Yankees were down 3-0 in the fourth when the bats woke up. They used four hits and a Minnesota error to score twice, then took the lead with a four-run uprising in the fifth. Willie Randolph hit a go-ahead two-run homer, and after Chris Chambliss and Carlos May reached base, Graig Nettles and Paul Blair – who replaced Piniella - chipped in RBI singles.
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