Bring in the Relief Manager!

By BJ. Phillips

George Steinbrenner has created a farm system for skippers

It was precisely what this twisted baseball season needed. Just when fans thought the game would never be the same, when the bogus second-season pennant races were making a mockery of won-lost records, when the strike-broken season had robbed every asterisked statistic of meaning, New York Yankee Principal Owner George Steinbrenner returned the national pastime to normal: he fired his manager. Steinbrenner changes managers about as often as most fans change underwear, though he does it with more anguish and bigger headlines. The latest victim was Gene Michael, the eighth Yankee manager in as many years to succumb to Steinbrenner's peculiar style of baseball by psychodrama.

After an entire season of publicly being second-guessed by his boss, Michael summoned reporters to complain about Steinbrenner's threats to fire him. A onetime Yankee shortstop, coach, farm-system manager and general manager of the club under Steinbrenner, Michael, 43, persisted in holding to the old-fashioned notion that the manager in the dugout, not the owner in a VIP box, knows best when to call on a relief pitcher. Said Michael: "It's not fair that he criticizes me and threatens to fire me all the time. I'd rather he do it than talk about it."

So Steinbrenner obliged him. One week later, Michael was ousted in favor of Bob Lemon, a Hall of Fame pitcher with Cleveland during the 1940s and 1950s.

Lemon thus stepped in to make his second appearance as relief manager for Steinbrenner. In 1978 Lemon was named to replace Billy Martin after Martin called Steinbrenner a convicted liar. Lemon took the Yankees to the World Series championship that year but in one of the game's strangest turnarounds, was himself ousted in June of 1979--in favor of Martin. Martin lasted until the end of the season before departing for Oakland, then Dick Howser moved onto the hot seat. A year later, after winning the most regular-season games in baseball (103, vs. 59 losses), Howser was replaced by Michael.

By this time, Steinbrenner had forced out enough Yankee managers to create a kind of bizarre farm system for managers. Included on the roster: Ralph Houk of the Boston Red Sox, Bill Virdon of the Houston Astros, Martin in Oakland. The list was extended last month when Howser was named to replace Jim Frey at Kansas City. Frey had taken the Royals to the World Series in his rookie season, but this year the club got off to a terrible start (twelve games behind Oakland in the American League West when the strike started).

The latest rendition of musical managers was written last week in Montreal, where Dick Williams was relieved after five seasons. He was replaced by Montreal's farm-system director, Jim Fanning. For the past two years, Montreal had been in contention until the final weekend, and this year the Expos were determined to go all the way. But a string of losses hurt those hopes, and Williams was shown the door. Oddly enough, even he had been tickled by the icy ringer of Steinbrenner. Williams was offered the post of Yankee manager after Houk departed, but he was then guiding the Oakland A's, and Owner Charles O. Finley refused to release him from his contract. Virdon was hired in his stead. If Steinbrenner proceeds normally, Williams should be an ex-Yankee manager by the end of the 1983 season.--B.J. Phillips

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