Welcome to Battling Bronx Bombers

My newest project will focus on one of the most tumultuous seasons in Yankees history, and one of my favorite, the George Steinbrenner/Billy Martin/Reggie Jackson/Thurman Munson melodrama in 1977 when the Yankees fought themselves harder than their opponents, and somehow ended the franchise's World Series drought.

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When the Yankees won their 20th World Series on Oct. 16, 1962 in San Francisco, I was still residing in my mother Joan’s womb, from where I would emerge six days later, right smack dab in the middle of the Cuban Missile Crisis.

If you believed some of the reports of the day, my time on Earth was going to be extraordinarily short because the United States and the Soviet Union were on the verge of nuking the planet into oblivion.

Thankfully, that didn’t happen as Kennedy won the game of chicken as Khrushchev blinked and his subs slammed on the brakes and went home. That was certainly fortunate, but what wasn’t so fortunate is that when Bobby Richardson caught Willie McCovey’s scorched line drive to end the thrilling seven-game World Series, the Yankees went into what was for them an unprecedented decline.

It didn’t start right away because they still won the AL pennant in both 1963 and 1964, losing the World Series each time, first to the Dodgers in an embarrassing four-game sweep, and then to the Cardinals in seven scintillating games.

However, when St. Louis’ Bob Gibson - making his third start in that classic Fall Classic - got Richardson to pop up to secure the Cardinals’ 7-5 victory in Game 7 at Busch Stadium, it turned out to be last hurrah for a franchise that had ruled Major League Baseball for four decades.

The fans storm the field moments after the Yankees finished off the Dodgers in Game 6 of the 1977 World Series.

It had taken the Yankees 21 years to win their first World Series in 1923, but from that point through 1962, the longest they went without a championship was three years. Three!

But as future Hall of Famers Mickey Mantle and Whitey Ford began to age out, and the once fervent Yankee farm system began to dry up, the franchise hit the skids and it wasn’t until 1976 that it won the AL before again losing the World Series in four games to the Reds.

For the Yankees, 14 years without winning a World Series was a long time, and the morbidity that engulfed this proud franchise in the mid-60s and into the early 70s when it was stripped naked of its noble heritage was hard to fathom. And for me, 1976 became the first Yankee team of my fandom to make it to the Fall Classic.

“Fans in other cities started to cheer for us, as if they felt sorry for the Yankees,” pitcher Steve Hamilton said. “That really used to make me mad.”

Tired of the mediocrity and the failure to make money, CBS, owners of the team since the mid-1960s, decided to get out of baseball. Network executive Mike Burke, who doubled as Yankees president, was told to find a buyer and it was tougher than he thought. However, after being turned down by countless businessmen and corporations in the New York area, Burke received a call from Cleveland Indians president Gabe Paul informing him that a friend of his, a shipping magnate from Ohio who was now based in Tampa, Florida, might be interested in purchasing the club.

A meeting was set up, negotiations were conducted, and one day after Burke had taken the offer back to the CBS hierarchy, the sale was approved in 1973 for a price of $10 million. The new Yankee owner’s name was George Steinbrenner who claimed on the day the deal was consummated, “I have no intentions in getting involved in the day-to-day operations of the club. I have a shipbuilding business to run.”

Of course, that proved to be laughable because Steinbrenner was more involved with his new business than any owner in MLB. The first thing he did was lure Paul away from the Indians to become president, and the edict was for Paul to turn the Yankees into champions because nothing less than a championship was tolerable.

Paul was up to the task as he pulled off trades that brought foundational players like Graig Nettles, Mickey Rivers, Willie Randolph, Lou Piniella, Chris Chambliss, Bucky Dent, Ed Figueroa, Mike Torrez, and Dick Tidrow to the team. And with MLB entering the brave new world of unrestricted free agency, Steinbrenner’s willingness to become the first big spender, he signed big-name, big-salary players Reggie Jackson, Catfish Hunter, and Don Gullett.

The Yankees finished 80-82 that first year, they hung tough in 1974 and went 89-73 and finished just two games behind the Orioles, then took a step back in 1975 and near the end of that season, Steinbrenner fired manager Virdon and began his tumultuous history with Billy Martin. When Martin began his first full season as manager in 1976, he had a team that after more than a decade of dormancy was on the verge of greatness and he guided it to a record of 97-62 and its first AL East division title and AL pennant since the divisional era began in 1969. It ended with a thud as the Yankees were no match for Cincinnati’s Big Red Machine and were swept in four straight in the World Series, but it was clear the Yankees were back, and the expectations for 1977 were soaring.

Steinbrenner had sipped champagne when his team celebrated the pennant following a heart-pounding AL Championship Series triumph when Chambliss walked off the Royals in the decisive fifth game. But what the Boss really wanted to do was gulp a bottle while having another poured over his head as he was being presented the world championship trophy by commissioner Bowie Kuhn.

That was the backdrop entering 1977, and what transpired was one of the most exhilarating seasons in team history. Of course, how else could it have gone when you mixed into one Empire State Building-sized cocktail the volatile personalities of Steinbrenner, Martin, Jackson, Rivers, Nettles, Thurman Munson and Sparky Lyle, the unrelenting fans of New York City, and the voracious New York City press?

For reporters, covering the Yankees in 1977 must have been like chronicling a pinstriped version of Armageddon. Days of Our Lives had nothing on those conflicted, ego-maniac Yankees who fought themselves more than their opponents yet somehow rose above all the controversy and drama to pull together the way great teams do when it counted the most.

Based on their behavior, the 1977 Yankees deserved to finish last in the AL East. Based on their intestinal fortitude and their play, they deserved to win the World Series. And that’s what they did, ending the Yankees championship drought at 15 years, and allowing me to finally feel what it was like to root for a champion, something my beloved Buffalo teams never gave me when I was growing up.

Over the next several months, you will get the series-by-series story of that infamous team.

The first installation of the series will be posted Friday morning, but only in The Ballpark, the new home of the newsletter at Mighty Networks. Again, I hope you make your way over there soon.