BASEBALL

THE LAST YANKEE by David Falkner (Simon & Schuster: $22; 337 pp.). Billy Martin, arguably baseball’s all-time best manager, wasn’t the type of guy you’d want your daughter to bring home. He was a womanizer, a liar, a drunk and a sucker-punching brawler.

Although a hustler as a player, he self-destructed by embarrassing his bosses. As a manager, he’d seduce players into overachieving, only to ultimately shatter them with relentless pressure. A foul-mouthed tyrant, he even browbeat his hand-picked coaches, wearing them down until he turned them off. He’d blame others when things went badly and take the credit when his teams won.

Martin would play fast and loose with the truth at any time to gain any advantage from anyone, and lies pervaded his personal life. After two painfully unsuccessful marriages, he maintained a third while keeping house with the woman who would become his fourth wife. Generous with handouts, he made many friends, but few had the patience to survive.

He spent a lifetime following his mother’s instruction to “take no . . . . from anyone.” He didn’t. Winning was all that mattered to Martin, and if a confrontation required him to beat up on an opponent who was being held, that was OK, too.

Falkner’s exciting account of this turbulent baseball life and the demons that led to its end in a 1989 drunk-driving accident is peppered by the recollections of Martin’s contemporaries. Any fan of baseball, or humanity, should be intrigued and enlightened by this tale of an enormously complex man, his relationship to the game, and the harsh emotions he exchanged with it.