Those Yankees, They’re Doing Their Damnedest : They Bicker, Draw Fines and Hit Homers in Bid to Thwart ‘Good Guys’ of East

In Toronto, a Blue Jay outfielder makes a long run before dropping a fly ball and gets a nice-try-anyway cheer from the crowd.

In New York, a Yankee makes the same play and gets a flashlight battery in the side of the head.

When a reporter walks into Toronto Manager Bobby Cox’s office, Cox shows him to an easy chair and serves coffee.

The same reporter walks into New York Manager Billy Martin’s office and asks if Martin can spare five minutes. “No,” Martin barks. “But whataya want, anyway?”

In Toronto, the chairman of the board of the brewery that owns the team takes the players out to dinner and asks them how he can improve the franchise.

In New York, the owner schedules workouts on days off and berates his players for losing to a pitcher who has just won his 300th game.

The title race in the American League East, considered by many to be the best division in baseball, is beginning to look like a two-team affair. It’s the New York Nasties chasing the True Blue Jays and, at this point, warmth and innocence has a three-game lead.

That’s the way they look at it in Canada, certainly. A clear cut case of good vs. evil. The Yankees have long been a team that baseball fans loved or loved to hate, and that intensifies when they’re winning.

At the moment, New York is winning--13 of the last 14 games going into Wednesday night’s game at Anaheim Stadium--and the Yankees seem quite eager to prove that Leo Durocher was right when he said nice guys don’t finish first.

The boys from the Bronx are living up to both the Zoo and Bombers nicknames these days. The owner and the manager are bickering. Players are missing games and being fined. And just about everybody in the lineup is hitting the ball over the fence.

Can the World Series be far behind?

Here are a few excerpts from the last three weeks of the Yankee diary:

Aug. 2--Martin is released from the hospital, where he was recovering from a punctured lung suffered while getting an injection for a sore back. He arrives at Yankee Stadium in time to see two of his players tagged out at the plate on the same play and his team lose to the Chicago White Sox, 6-5 in 11 innings. It is the Yankees’ ninth loss in 12 games as they fall 9 1/2 games behind Toronto.

Aug. 8--The day after the strike ends, New York sweeps a doubleheader from Cleveland. They do this without Rickey Henderson, who has gone home to Oakland to spend the strike. Don Mattingly and Dave Winfield each hit a pair of homers, and Winfield drives in seven runs, but the Yankees still trail the Blue Jays by nine. Owner George Steinbrenner, vowing to show Henderson who’s boss, fines the center fielder three days’ pay, $22,000.

Aug. 12--Catcher Ron Hassey hits two homers as New York routs Chicago, 10-4, for its seventh straight win, cutting Toronto’s lead to 5 1/2 games.

Aug. 15--Steinbrenner declares that anyone who misses the day’s scheduled workout will be fined $500. The Yanks get back to New York at 4 in the morning after having won in 10 innings at Chicago. Martin cancels the workout, saying he’s not doing it to defy Steinbrenner. Steinbrenner says he’s not angry but indicates that Martin’s job is on the line. So what’s new? In any case, most of the reporters who cover the Yankees suspect that Steinbrenner has manufactured the whole incident because the Mets have been getting too many headlines.

Aug. 19--The Yankees complete a four-game sweep of the Red Sox, winning twice by one run and twice by two runs, when Ken Griffey goes four feet over the wall to steal a home run from Marty Barrett. The play becomes known as the catch in the Yankee clubhouse and symbolizes what the Yankees plan to do to the Blue Jays.

“We’ve got seven games left with Toronto,” Martin says. chewing on his cigar. “Four at our place, then three at theirs. We’re right where we want to be now. They’re the ones looking over their shoulder.”

Martin shows a twisted grin when he tells you that life in the media free-for-all that is Yankee Stadium will make his team better prepared for the pressures of a title drive.

“Pretty soon, everybody in the world who thinks he’s a writer will be crammed into their clubhouse,” Martin says, grinning again. “And that can have an effect on a team. We’re used to it.”

While the Blue Jays bask in the unwavering devotion of their fans, the Yankees are squabbling, blowing off the press and, not surprisingly, winning all the while. If the division title does come down to the season-ending series between the teams in Toronto, it will be a matchup of contrasting baseball cultures.

“When you’re playing at Yankee Stadium, you don’t get any chances to let down,” Mattingly said. “The fans and the media don’t give you any breaks, that’s for sure. Toronto’s a whole different story. We came out of Detroit and the fans were rowdy and nasty and we went into Toronto figuring they’d be pretty excited ‘cause the Jays were in first.

“It was eerie, though. For the first three innings the fans were quiet. They just sat there and watched the game. They don’t even fight for foul balls.”

Psychological factors aside, the Yankees may be a shoo-in if they continue to play as they have the last few weeks. In the last 14 games, the Yankee team batting average is almost .310 and they are averaging more than 10 hits a game.

Henderson and Mattingly have been hot all year. Going into Wednesday’s game, Henderson was hitting .350 and Mattingly .331. Henderson led the league in runs scored with 102 and stolen bases with 55. Mattingly led the league in RBIs with 100, total bases with 255, doubles with 37, extra-base hits with 60, game-winning RBIs with 16, and was second in hits with 154.

Lately, they have been downright torrid. Before Wednesday, Henderson had hit in 10 straight games and had 3 homers and 9 RBIs over that stretch. Mattingly was working on an 18-game hitting streak during which he had produced 6 doubles, 10 homers and 21 RBIs.

So much for the Nos. 1 and 2 hitters in the lineup.

No. 3, Dave Winfield, can’t help but drive in runs, considering the number of times he comes up with one, or both, of those guys on base. So far this month, the Yankee right fielder has 6 doubles, 2 triples, 5 homers and 21 RBIs.

Cleanup hitter Ken Griffey hit .384 in 10 games before Wednesday with 7 RBIs. Catcher Ron Hassey had a give-game hitting streak with 3 home runs and 7 RBI in his last 4 games. Then there was third baseman Mike Pagliarulo, who had 2 homers and 8 RBIs in his last 7 games.

You get the picture.

It’s not just hitting, though. The Yankees have defense and pitching to complement their offensive prowess. Shortstop Bobby Meacham and Pagliarulo have solidified the left side of the Yankee infield. Left-hander Ron Guidry leads the league in wins with 16, and winning percentage. He’ll take a 16-4 record to the mound tonight against the Angels and has a 2.95 earned-run average. The Yankee staff ERA, 3.67, is more than a run better than their opponents’ 4.98.

And, if you can believe Henderson, who went to the Yankees from the Oakland A’s in an off-season trade, the team has togetherness.

“We’re doing everything we need to do to win right now,” he said. “I’m having a tremendous year, so that’s been fun, but I was really disappointed when I first heard about the trade.

“It’s easy to get distracted in New York. There’s always hundreds of reporters around and the manager-owner stuff going on. But I think most of the guys have learned to ignore all that and play ball. We realize that nobody is gonna help us out there on the field. We’re gonna win it or lose it all by ourselves.”

For a while, it appeared that the Yankees could win only at home. Their 40-15 home record is baseball’s best, but they were 23-32 on the road before winning six of seven road games.

The Yankees, who had closed to within 1 1/2 games of Toronto at one point and trailed by just 3 1/2 games on July 23, staggered through a 14-game trip after the All-Star break and found themselves 8 1/2 games behind on Aug. 1, after having lost 8 of 11.

Winfield said that the impending strike had more to do with the Yanks’ woes than the effects of playing in the other guys’ parks, though.

“It distracted me to death,” New York’s player representative said. “It was like everyone was in limbo, expecting an extended interruption in the season, wondering if the season would resume at all. You went out there and did what you could, but your mind was sometimes on other things, like how much this strike was gonna cost us.

“After that cloud was lifted, it was back to business and everyone started to concentrate on winning it all.”

It appears there’s only one team standing in the way. And, the Yankees are, as Guidry put it, “watching the scoreboard all the time.”

“It’ll come down to the two of us, head to head, in those last three games of the season,” Mattingly said. “Unless somebody goes crazy.”

And who’s more likely to go crazy than the Yankees?