I already knew that Bily Martin was hired and fired as the Manager of the New York Yankees several times, I knew he was an Alcoholic, and that caused him to get to in some fights at bars, and I also knew that he had a temper on the field and would have quite a few disagreements with the umpires.
After I read Rickey Henderson: The Life and Legend of an American Original by Howard Bryant, I wanted to read more about Billy Martin. Billy was the Manager of the Oakland Athletics and coached Rickey in Oakland and also in New York as a Yankee.
Well, this book was superb as it chronicled Billy’s days a player and a manager. It was a history of baseball for me as well as the New York Yankees. I had no clue that he won the World Series five times (4 as a player and 1 as a Manager for the Yankees). In addition to Billy Martin, the 1950’s Yankee’s teams also had Mickey Mantle, Yogi Berra, Joe Dimaggio, Whitey Ford, and Phil Rizzuto – just to name a few.
Reading about some of the plays and managerial decisions he made throughout his baseball life, I was able to watch them on YouTube. That was pretty cool – like a catch me made in 1952 from Game 7 of the World Series and the George Brett pine tar incident in 1983.
