Rusty’s Blog

Many of my friends described the passing of Braves announcer Skip Carey as though part of their childhood died. Mine too.

Other people have favorite game calls they can share. I don’t have any specific memories, despite listening to him call hundreds of games.

He was just always there. And now he’s not. And that’s sad.

I had never watched a game at Yankee Stadium, and flew up there a couple of weeks ago to watch one before it’s closed after this season. As I related to a drunken Oakland A’s fan at a table adjacent to mine at Yankee Tavern before the game, you should pay respect to your enemy when he’s on his death bed, even if you hate him.

I figured everyone who visits Monument Park before a Yankees game probably has their photo taken with the Babe Ruth or Mickey Mantle memorials, so I had mine taken with Billy Martin. Baseball fans who are my age remember Billy Martin as an enigmatic punchline, a manager whom George Steinbrenner hired and fired and re-hired several times.

Before he was a manager, he played second base on some of the great 1950s Yankee Teams. His boozing and hellraising became such a problem that manager Casey Stengal, who was a father figure to Martin, shipped him off to Kansas City. He never really grew out of it, ultimately dying in a car crash on Christmas in 1989 after a night of heavy drinking with a buddy.

If you’ve ever seen a manager kick dust on an umpire, he owes Billy Martin for his schtick. By most accounts, Martin was as monumental a pain in the ass to work with as his public persona indicated he would be.  Yet, he was a winner, playing for four World Series champions and managing one.

I was inspired to have my picture taken with Martin by this tribute to him in Monument Park, which is my favorite thing that I saw during my trip:

It reads:

Billy Martin

Uniform Number Retired: 1986

As a second baseman in the 1950s and a manager in the 1970s and 1980s, Billy played key roles in the building of the Yankee’s winning tradition. There has never been a greater competitor than Billy.

In 1973, before I was born, Yankee Stadium underwent a renovation which left it almost unrecognizable compared to the days of Bobby Murcer, when Monument Park actually was in center field and players would sometimes have to hunt for a long flyball among the stone spectres of Ruth and Gehrig.

Some people might get weepy about Yankee Stadium closing after this season, but they really shouldn’t. It’s a pretty good place to catch a game, but it’s not what it used to be.

After reading that tribute to Martin, I was assured that the Yankees couldn’t kill the underlying class of the organization, no matter how hard they try.