Sport: Nice Guys Always Finish . . . ?

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"Trouble follows me," said Billy Martin, and the quarrel between these two perverse and powerful men often distracted people from a team that was full of fascinating conflicts. It was a sullen, gifted and divided ball club. Watching the owner and manager clash, the players eventually came to distrust them both. Stars such as Catcher Thurman Munson and Outfielder Mickey Rivers asked to be traded. The pitchers were often in revolt against the manager and each other. But the Yankees somehow were too talented not to endure. At season's end Martin, for all his sleepless nights, looked like a managing genius. And Steinbrenner, for all the ridicule he took from his manager and the press about his Prussian discipline, had boldly lifted the Yankee franchise back to solid profits and even some renewed glory.

Martin, the man of high emotions, saw the championship—as he saw everything—in personal terms. "This was a goddam tough team to manage. I held this club together. That man," he said, referring to Steinbrenner, "almost cost us the pennant." Steinbrenner saw it more coldly. "We put this team together without Billy; we got him the best players money could buy. He's crazy to take the credit for our success."

The biggest name money could buy was Outfielder Reggie Jackson, whom Steinbrenner, over Martin's strong objections, signed last winter to a $2.9 million five-year contract. From the day Jackson stepped into the clubhouse, the Yankees, already out of sorts, were never out of trouble. Jackson's huge salary was highly resented and even more so was his erratic play. The players treated him like an outcast. But for Martin, Jackson always posed a different kind of threat: the big slugger, he feared, might come between him and control of his players. By the middle of June what Martin had worried about had happened: the Yankee clubhouse was a shambles. Brooding and set to explode, Martin decided he must have a public showdown with Jackson to preserve his authority. "All the players were waiting for it," he said later. When Jackson loafed fielding a hit in Boston, Martin yanked him off the field. The dugout brawl that followed—Martin tried to attack Jackson—was seen on national television. Steinbrenner, astonished by the outburst, was set to fire Martin, then decided against it. He felt it would destroy both Jackson and the team. As for Martin, he viewed the incident as the turning point of the Yankee season. "I won my locker room back," he said. "Jackson cost this club a lot of games this year. He's a decent, smart man, but he's baseball dumb."