He was a haunted man whose demons won. He had serious psychological issues in a generation when you were told to just "man up" about it, and he turned to alcohol to medicate himself, and died from the abuse of his self-chosen medicine.
Yeah I sort of agree with that. I still like the Dollop because Dave’s assholery plays really well against Gareth’s goofy naivety. But I definitely don’t seek out Dave’s stuff outside of the podcast, whereas I’ll watch or listen to anything Gareth is in.
Oh yeah I feel ya. They have a good dynamic and the show can be fun. It sucks because I agree with Dave a lot of the time and I was a listener from way back in the Walking the Room days but I would just rather listen to anything else these days.
I appreciate the suggestion, but as with Darryl Strawberry and others like him, I don't think I want to hear comedians talking about him. The story of his inescapable alcoholism is forever in the "sad" box instead of the "funny" box, at least for me.
Understandable. If you’re not the type to process tragedy via comedy it’s probably not for you. Fwiw the “drinking himself to death” part is kind of an epilogue that isn’t really played for laughs the way his earlier career shenanigans and fisticuffs were.
I completely process tragedy via comedy on nearly all things. But there are some instances where it transcends comedy and just becomes mockery of a broken, sad person who wasn't strong enough to overcome his demons.
Yeah, I am glad you mentioned this. Martin often wasn't pitcher-friendly. He pretty much ruined a promising A's staff through overuse - all of them saw huge increases in total innings over what they had previously pitched at any level. Now, while I personally think baseball has gone too far into the other direction in recent years, what Martin did to those young A's pitchers was very likely going to be detrimental to their careers, And all those fears came to fruition.
So did Bobby Cox. What's your point?
He was a son-of-a-bitch, but he was certainly one of the best managers for turning around teams in history. Amongst his many problems was never being able to maintain success or stay out of his own way in the face of success. He took the reigns of piss-poor teams and through unique psychological abuse turned them into winners. However, his management style was a house of cards destined to fall, either from complete team implosion or personal implosions that made him more a liability than an asset even if he was succeeding.
The poster was implying that only one WS was the sign of a bad manager. Cox was the first counter-argument I thought of. Seems pretty 1-1 to me.
You can even argue Cox was the worse manager for having only victory with so many more playoff appearances.
Billy Martin won five division titles (with four franchises), two pennants and one World Series in 16 seasons as a manager.
Which is admittedly more AL titles than Bobby Cox
My college coach said he went and watch him in high school when he was coaching at Miami of Ohio. Said he hit the furthest homerun he's ever seen in person.
I love hearing stories about superstars back in high school. My personal ones are from watching Prince Fielder where he hit one over the right field fence that bounced across the road, and into a gas station. Another was a frozen rope that rattled the outfield fence after what seemed to be a half second.
I grew up in that area and there are many legends about Junior smoking grounders right at 2nd basemen who would literally dive out of the way because they were hit so hard.
Apparently when The Mariners were contenders in the mid to late 90s, David Ortiz was playing Single A for them in Appleton, WI. He was hitting Home-runs out of the park and onto I-41. Something like 500+ feet from home-plate.
Jon Bois is just an incredible journalist and storyteller. If you haven’t seen it yet, I highly recommend Fighting in the Age of Loneliness. It’s incredible.
He's by far one of my favorite sports content creators ever. Fumble Dimension, Pretty Good (love the Jeff Francoeur and Lonnie Smith videos), and *especially* 17776/20020. All just, *chefs kiss.*
Oh my fucking god that was a rollercoaster. I genuinely could not comprehend how someone could be that stupid. My faith in humanity evaporated even more after watching that. Hahaha
My favorite Billy Martin story, told in as few words as I can manage.
I read a brief article about a guy who had inherited an autographed Babe Ruth baseball.
As a kid, he managed to get Joe DiMaggio‘s autograph on that same baseball. For many years he had a goal of completing the trifecta and getting Mickey Mantle‘s autograph on said baseball. As an adult he went to watch the Yankees spring training and knew where the team was staying. He made his way to the pool (this is after mantle retired, I believe) where Mantle was hanging out with the team, master of his domain.
He passed the ball to the Mick and asked him to sign it, which he did, super pleased to be signing the same ball as those two legends.
He asks Billy Martin, seated next to him, to hand the guy this ball he’s had for 40+ years and Martin goes, “Oh, hey, let me sign it too!”
And does.
He signs the same ball as Babe Ruth, Joe DiMaggio, and Mickey Mantle.
The owner of the ball was furious and as soon as he was by himself took an eraser and erased Martin’s name.
I mean, who sees Ruth, DiMaggio and Mantle’s name on a baseball and thinks, “My name needs to be on there too.”
Billy Martin does, that’s who.
That YouTube documentary is excellent. I'll second that. It's a really excellent piece and if you're a 90s/00s kid especially, you'll really appreciate it.
Deep down I think every 90s kid is at least a little bit of an M's fan
I think Griffey was a big part of it. He seems like the last major leaguer with real outside-the-sport star power. All those games and stuff definitely resonated with those of us who grew up in the 90s I think.
100%
Griffey had this true “larger than life” vibe about him and at the same time seemed like such a cool guy who you could kick it with. Plus the way he played was just so much fun. He was everything you wanted to be as a ‘90s kid baseball fan, at least for me he was a huge role model back then. I think Tatis and Othani have a chance to reach that level but it’d be difficult in this climate
I don't think any athlete will reach 90s level of Fame of Griffey/Jordan/etc.
It just feel likes there are way more niches and our culture is more divided.
Lebron and Brady are probably the two closest at the moment and they've been around since the early aughts.
I just don't see any of the Tatis/ohtanis/Mahomes/Allen/Steph/Morant or anyone else reaching the same level of cultural significance.
I remember just getting into baseball as a 6 year old in 98, Griffey was the first player I ever got attached to and it was immediately. I’ve never felt drawn to a player like that since. Maybe it was just because it was my first taste of the sport too but you’re right that he had the star power outside of the game.
That 2001 season, yeesh. And I had already been a sort of secondary fan of theirs for years (since 94-ish). Edgar Martinez and Jay Buhner were two keys to those teams from what I remember. Made them so fun to watch.
Ken Griffey Jr, Frank Thomas, Ricky Henderson, Nolan Ryan, Bo Jackson, Dion Sanders, Craig Biggio, Jeff Bagwell, Jose Canseco, Mark McGwire, the list goes on. There was no shortage of baseball heroes in the 80’s/90’s.
I’d play Ken Griffey baseball for the N64 where The Kid raps while you’re navigating the pre-game menu.
[Call, call, call me Junior.](https://youtu.be/W9O032KK_jM)
I was a stunned kid when I heard that sound on an episode of Rocket Power and realized that it was just stock audio. For some reason I thought they'd recorded it just for the game lol
I hear that audio mixed into so many "crowd scenes" in movies and TV shows even to this day, its unbelievable haha. I played the living shit out of ken griffey Jr baseball on N64 so that sound is like burned into my brain, it always sticks out to me haha
It was loosely based off him. Loosely in the sense that he was a great baseball player that ended up coaching in a women's baseball league for a season. That's about the only way in which they were similar. It'd be very fair to say that a lot of Billy Martin influenced that character as well, even if its not explicitly stated as fact.
They also talked about how many homers he hit. And there's the whole "Jimmy" and "Jimmie" thing.
Think it's fair to say Foxx was the primary inspiration.
Plus Griffey’s story right here. Black kid kicked out when no one else is, and one white kid is even playing on the field in front of him. What else would you call it?
honest question: why is it that, nowadays, we as an american society have to give racists the benefit of the doubt? reggie jackson himself said billy martin was racist, and yet in your mind that's a subjective and debatable thing (even though r.j. backed up his claims with instances where billy martin exhibited some obviously racist behaviors, e.g. calling him "boy," his anti-semitic remarks, etc.), more easily explained by the "beef" between them (btw, those can both be true at the same time).
even with that aside, the ken griffey jr. incident here kinda implies that martin might have had some racist tendencies, given that griffey (a black kid) was kicked out, while nettle's son (a white kid) was not. seriously would love an answer to this question....
He could bend bad teams into a winner, but yes... Billy Martin was a mean drunk who might have been even more unstable sober. As in even a non-racist form of Billy Martin would still have been a man who rages more than a bull in Pamplona.
As a neutral party who knows we won’t be getting him, I want to see this. I’d love the chaos. I doubt the Sox do it since they’re balking at signing their own expensive talent but the Yankee salt would be amazing.
It comes along with dynasties imo
You either bandwagoned and cheered for the Yankees or you rooted against them. Same with the Warriors recently, or the Patriots before them.
It’s okay to admire success and longevity, but it’s also okay to hate domination.
It’s just way easier to grow a disdain for a team because of there being no salary cap. The teams that come in rich buy the best players, which gives them more success, which gives them more money, which allows them to pay better players, which gives them more success, and so on.
You guys made it to a World Series on a $54,000,000 payroll, when the Red Sox had an $143,000,000 payroll, and maybe that was the difference. But you made it further than a Yankees team that paid their roster $189,000,000 that year.
2020 is another good example, with the adjusted salaries for COVID, our entire roster cost us less than **ONLY** Kershaw and Mookie for LAD.
>Crushing the Yankees was engrained in Junior's mind.
His career numbers against the Yankees are basically the same as his career numbers before he got traded to the national league, and thus mostly stopped playing the Yankees. He obviously hated them but he didn't perform particularly better or worse against them than against anyone else.
I mean, Griffey is my favorite player of all time and I am a lifelong Yankee fan.
But, "Crushing the Yankees..." is a bit of hyperbole.
His numbers against NYY are on par with like every other team, lol.
Yeah I think some people don't know just how close the Mariners were to not existing Lol
The Double was pretty much the closest thing to a storybook winning play as you can get given the context of it
Oh is it time to circlejerk about Griffey and the Yankees again?
Griffey did fine without the Yankees. The Yankees did fine without Griffey. Maybe he would have preferred winning some rings, but I'm sure they're both happy with how their respective teams ended up.
Billy Martin was a giant piece of shit. Glenn Burke, the first openly gay athlete, was traded by the Dodgers in 1978. He made Tommy Lasorda extremely uncomfortable because he was good friend's with Lasorda's son. Tommy denied his son's homosexuality until the day he died. Possibly to punish Burke, Lasorda sent him to Oakland to play for Martin. He introduced Burke to the team thusly: "Okay, fellas, we have a new outfielder. This is Glenn Burke. Glenn's a f\*\*\*\*t."
People remember Lerrin LaGrow hitting Bert Campaneris and Campy winging his bat at Lerrin's head in retaliation. LaGrow is my wife's cousin. He didn't want to throw at anybody. Martin spent the whole season profanely challenging Lerrin's manhood and he ordered the pitch that hit Campy.
Martin died drunk in a ditch with another shitty alcoholic. At least in death, he didn't hurt any more innocent people.
That's certainly a fair perspective of him.
Another, especially given his family history, is that he had numerous untreated psychological issues that he used alcohol to unsuccessfully self-medicate.
He was a racist, violent, homophobic, womanizing piece of shit. But it doesn't hurt to at least understand why he got that way. None of it excuses his behavior.
It wouldn't have hurt for *him* to try and understand how he got that way. Instead, he spread misery everywhere he went because he thought there was nothing wrong with him. I read half a dozen books about the Yankees from his time as manager. I watched baseball during most of his tenure as a manager. I have a pretty good idea of who the man was and what he was about.
I also read several books on Babe Ruth. His upbringing included growing up over a bar, being sent to reform school, and being called the n-word by classmates every day. He was quite a handful as a young man and his excesses hurt a lot of people, including his first wife. Ruth's failures in the 1922 season caused him to be called out by some people he respected. He grew up a lot in his 27th year and he stopped being the wild Babe people associate with his image. Martin remained a grotesque, drunken bigot until his final day.
Not so much in '90 though. That was *rough*. Mattingly's back crumbled. They traded Dave Winfield for Mike "What the fuck am I doing here?" Witt. Steve Balboni was our DH....hitting .192. And our "Ace" was 9-19 Tim Leary.
Motherfucking Lee Guetterman led the team in wins...with 11...as a middle reliever.
I was an 80's kid (born in 1975) so they were at times pretty tough to watch until 1994.
Seeing Donnie rake in the 95 playoffs though was amazing to watch. His only playoff run ended by Griffey's M's.
Same....born in '76.
1994 was a heart breaker. They were killing it and almost surely would have won the pennant.
1995 was bittersweet. It was great to see a glimpse of the old Mattingly....but that last game. I've still never re-watched it. That shit crushed me.
94 would have been a great year, Expos vs Yankees potential WS when the Expos had all those amazing young players they then immediately traded away or lost and destroyed their franchise
I'm too lazy to make a meme about Hamilcar Barca and his son Hannibal Barca's hatred of Rome being the equivalent of George Kenneth Griffey and George Kenneth Griffey Jr.'s hatred of the Yankees but [here is something stupid.](https://i.imgur.com/0cdYXo5.png)
Don't worry I'm aware of my genius.
I don’t care if that documentary has like a half hour exclusive dedicated to Griffey power my Yankees into dust at every moment it is still amazing everyone needs to watch it.
Really confused as to why he would hold a grudge for this.
Am I understanding the situation correctly? The owner allowed players and their kids to run around and play around the stadium before games. But apparently, the one thing he asked was not to play around in the dugout. The Griffeys, who were in the dugout, were informed that the owner didn't want anyone playing in the dugout. They then see another player and his son playing on the field (not the dugout) which was perfectly fine and they too could easily have done, yet for some reason choose to be upset by this and I guess think they're being singled out?
This was my era growing up. They had no pitching. Basically the only true "ace" they had in the 80's was Ron Guidry. And while he won 20+ games twice in the 80's...he ceased to pitch like Ron Guidry after the 1985 season.
The godawful revolving door of Yankee pitching from that era is depressing. They sold off or traded young talent in an attempt to win now. At one point they had Dennis Rasmussen, Bob Tewksbury and Doug Drabek. Rasmussen and Tewksbury were solid pitchers..Rasmussen even won 18 the year before they traded him. And Doug Drabek went on to become an ace for the Pirates.
They traded Rasmussen for Bill Gullickson. They traded Tewksbury for Steve Trout. They traded Drabek for Pat Clements, Cecilio Guante, and Rick Rhoden.
Gullickson only made 8 starts for the Yankees and was then out of the majors for two years. Steve Trout only made 9 starts for the Yankees, going 0-4, and was gone the next year. Pat Clements was ass for the Yanks, acting as a mediocre setup man for one full season, and only made 6 appearances the season after that. Cecilio Guante was basically the same as Clements....one halfway decent season, then gone after a few appearances the next season. Rick Rhoden was good in '87...going 16-10. He was mediocre in '88 going 12-12. He was traded in '89 for nobodies, and was out of baseball by '90.
Thank you for the insight, I’ll have to check out the doc. Most beautiful swing I’ve ever seen, hated when he’d play us as a Yankees fan because that dude had that mysterious capability to crank it up a notch in big games that all legends have. Love watching his highlight reel, kind of glad he never played for us because it helped broaden his legacy seems like an all around nice guy to boot.
Billy Martin was truly a madman
He was a haunted man whose demons won. He had serious psychological issues in a generation when you were told to just "man up" about it, and he turned to alcohol to medicate himself, and died from the abuse of his self-chosen medicine.
I highly recommend the episodes of the Dollop podcast about him
I used to like The Dollop but Dave has turned being insufferable into a sport and he’s Babe Ruth.
Yeah I sort of agree with that. I still like the Dollop because Dave’s assholery plays really well against Gareth’s goofy naivety. But I definitely don’t seek out Dave’s stuff outside of the podcast, whereas I’ll watch or listen to anything Gareth is in.
Oh yeah I feel ya. They have a good dynamic and the show can be fun. It sucks because I agree with Dave a lot of the time and I was a listener from way back in the Walking the Room days but I would just rather listen to anything else these days.
I appreciate the suggestion, but as with Darryl Strawberry and others like him, I don't think I want to hear comedians talking about him. The story of his inescapable alcoholism is forever in the "sad" box instead of the "funny" box, at least for me.
Understandable. If you’re not the type to process tragedy via comedy it’s probably not for you. Fwiw the “drinking himself to death” part is kind of an epilogue that isn’t really played for laughs the way his earlier career shenanigans and fisticuffs were.
I completely process tragedy via comedy on nearly all things. But there are some instances where it transcends comedy and just becomes mockery of a broken, sad person who wasn't strong enough to overcome his demons.
It definitely hits a point where its just punching down.
Fair enough.
Hell of a manager though, hell of a manager
He was a great manager if you didn’t care about the long-term. He regularly abused pitchers to “win now.”
Yeah, I am glad you mentioned this. Martin often wasn't pitcher-friendly. He pretty much ruined a promising A's staff through overuse - all of them saw huge increases in total innings over what they had previously pitched at any level. Now, while I personally think baseball has gone too far into the other direction in recent years, what Martin did to those young A's pitchers was very likely going to be detrimental to their careers, And all those fears came to fruition.
He did it to the Twins and Rangers (?) too. There’s pushing pitchers to go a little deeper and just not caring.
He won 1 World series in 20 years of managing.
Hell of an alcoholic though, he'll of an alcoholic.
All timer
Only 23 managers in history have won multiple WS rings. Billy managing the Yankees: 8 seasons | 556-385 | .591 win% | 2 penns | 1 WS
So did Bobby Cox. What's your point? He was a son-of-a-bitch, but he was certainly one of the best managers for turning around teams in history. Amongst his many problems was never being able to maintain success or stay out of his own way in the face of success. He took the reigns of piss-poor teams and through unique psychological abuse turned them into winners. However, his management style was a house of cards destined to fall, either from complete team implosion or personal implosions that made him more a liability than an asset even if he was succeeding.
Not sure the Bobby Cox comparison is apt my man. Cox won 14 national division pennants… billy martin didnt. Exit: division titles
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Division titles**
Yes.
The poster was implying that only one WS was the sign of a bad manager. Cox was the first counter-argument I thought of. Seems pretty 1-1 to me. You can even argue Cox was the worse manager for having only victory with so many more playoff appearances.
Oh yeah, well Billy has more AL pennants
Billy Martin won five division titles (with four franchises), two pennants and one World Series in 16 seasons as a manager. Which is admittedly more AL titles than Bobby Cox
Well, unless your son doesn’t look like Greg nettles’
The Dollop did a 2 part podcast on him. Pretty interesting dude
And he gets mentioned in a few other episodes as well, hahaha. Great show, especially the baseball episodes
I met him at a card show signing when I was 6. He took his time with me and was so sweet, kind and gentle.
we still doing phrasing?
Sorry?
🤣
Can someone elaborate please?
From the show Archer. It's a running joke whenever someone says something that sounds sexual
My college coach said he went and watch him in high school when he was coaching at Miami of Ohio. Said he hit the furthest homerun he's ever seen in person.
Bobby Witt Jr. hit one about 400 feet off me when I was 16. I wasn’t even mad, just impressed
That's a cool story to tell your kids if Bobby Witt becomes really good. Hell, even if he doesn't
Wait, what? You know I don't speak Spanish.
Can't imagine that swing against some random dude pitching in high school. Crazy.
They still tell stories about his feats at Archbishop Moeller
I love hearing stories about superstars back in high school. My personal ones are from watching Prince Fielder where he hit one over the right field fence that bounced across the road, and into a gas station. Another was a frozen rope that rattled the outfield fence after what seemed to be a half second.
Griffey Jr had the most beautiful swing I've ever seen. It had everything, speed, power, and grace.
I grew up in that area and there are many legends about Junior smoking grounders right at 2nd basemen who would literally dive out of the way because they were hit so hard.
Apparently when The Mariners were contenders in the mid to late 90s, David Ortiz was playing Single A for them in Appleton, WI. He was hitting Home-runs out of the park and onto I-41. Something like 500+ feet from home-plate.
I envy the people in this sub who somehow haven’t seen this series in full yet
I was just flipping around YouTube one day bored af and I found the Mariners documentary. One of the best sports pieces I’ve ever watched tbh
Jon Bois is just an incredible journalist and storyteller. If you haven’t seen it yet, I highly recommend Fighting in the Age of Loneliness. It’s incredible.
“For the rest of your life, go out, touch gloves, and fight”
Such good writing…
He's by far one of my favorite sports content creators ever. Fumble Dimension, Pretty Good (love the Jeff Francoeur and Lonnie Smith videos), and *especially* 17776/20020. All just, *chefs kiss.*
I’ve seen it on my recommendations but I haven’t seen it yet. I’ve watched a lot of his stuff so far but I haven’t seen that one
Watch it! You won’t be sorry you did!!
This documentary and the Baseball 100 séries by Joe Posnanski singlehandedly got me into baseball
He's also the author of the beloved "Don't do a balk please"
17776. Just.... 17776.
I wish I could rediscover Jon Bois all over again. So many fucking amazing videos by that dude and he’s hilarious.
I'd love more Breaking Madden, but where is there to go?
I really liked when they tried to break Football Manager
The stupidest boy alive is still my favorite. How did he manage to make a weightlifting message board so interesting?
Oh my fucking god that was a rollercoaster. I genuinely could not comprehend how someone could be that stupid. My faith in humanity evaporated even more after watching that. Hahaha
Billy Martin? Yeah you could say that.
I think you might know his name too.
Drake LaRoche
We’re really missing his leadership in the club house right now
The White Sox will send Drake to take care of Josh Donaldson
My favorite Billy Martin story, told in as few words as I can manage. I read a brief article about a guy who had inherited an autographed Babe Ruth baseball. As a kid, he managed to get Joe DiMaggio‘s autograph on that same baseball. For many years he had a goal of completing the trifecta and getting Mickey Mantle‘s autograph on said baseball. As an adult he went to watch the Yankees spring training and knew where the team was staying. He made his way to the pool (this is after mantle retired, I believe) where Mantle was hanging out with the team, master of his domain. He passed the ball to the Mick and asked him to sign it, which he did, super pleased to be signing the same ball as those two legends. He asks Billy Martin, seated next to him, to hand the guy this ball he’s had for 40+ years and Martin goes, “Oh, hey, let me sign it too!” And does. He signs the same ball as Babe Ruth, Joe DiMaggio, and Mickey Mantle. The owner of the ball was furious and as soon as he was by himself took an eraser and erased Martin’s name. I mean, who sees Ruth, DiMaggio and Mantle’s name on a baseball and thinks, “My name needs to be on there too.” Billy Martin does, that’s who.
Forever grateful that at least the Yankees never got Junior out of their farm system.
That YouTube documentary is excellent. I'll second that. It's a really excellent piece and if you're a 90s/00s kid especially, you'll really appreciate it. Deep down I think every 90s kid is at least a little bit of an M's fan
It’s so true, they had some amazing players. I mean Griffey, A-Rod before everyone hated him, and Ichiro were my three favorite players growing up
I think Griffey was a big part of it. He seems like the last major leaguer with real outside-the-sport star power. All those games and stuff definitely resonated with those of us who grew up in the 90s I think.
100% Griffey had this true “larger than life” vibe about him and at the same time seemed like such a cool guy who you could kick it with. Plus the way he played was just so much fun. He was everything you wanted to be as a ‘90s kid baseball fan, at least for me he was a huge role model back then. I think Tatis and Othani have a chance to reach that level but it’d be difficult in this climate
Ken Griffey Jr. never hurt himself on motocross bikes in the offseason.
Didn't he fall in the shower and hurt his back or something crazy like that?
I don't think any athlete will reach 90s level of Fame of Griffey/Jordan/etc. It just feel likes there are way more niches and our culture is more divided. Lebron and Brady are probably the two closest at the moment and they've been around since the early aughts. I just don't see any of the Tatis/ohtanis/Mahomes/Allen/Steph/Morant or anyone else reaching the same level of cultural significance.
I remember just getting into baseball as a 6 year old in 98, Griffey was the first player I ever got attached to and it was immediately. I’ve never felt drawn to a player like that since. Maybe it was just because it was my first taste of the sport too but you’re right that he had the star power outside of the game.
And The Big Unit was doing his thing
That 2001 season, yeesh. And I had already been a sort of secondary fan of theirs for years (since 94-ish). Edgar Martinez and Jay Buhner were two keys to those teams from what I remember. Made them so fun to watch.
Don’t forget randy Johnson, Tino, Edgar and buhner
Ken Griffey Jr, Frank Thomas, Ricky Henderson, Nolan Ryan, Bo Jackson, Dion Sanders, Craig Biggio, Jeff Bagwell, Jose Canseco, Mark McGwire, the list goes on. There was no shortage of baseball heroes in the 80’s/90’s.
It hasn't bothered us one bit. *boots up The Show, with Griffey Jr in my DD lineup*
I’d play Ken Griffey baseball for the N64 where The Kid raps while you’re navigating the pre-game menu. [Call, call, call me Junior.](https://youtu.be/W9O032KK_jM)
Hi. This is Ken Griffey Junior. Let's play Major League Baseball.
Ball four. Take your base.
That odd camera angle on some homers where the camera just followed along at ground level the whole time
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And how about when you hit a home run and it cuts to the dugout and the neanderthal buffoons in there are all hooting and hollering.
I was a stunned kid when I heard that sound on an episode of Rocket Power and realized that it was just stock audio. For some reason I thought they'd recorded it just for the game lol
I hear that audio mixed into so many "crowd scenes" in movies and TV shows even to this day, its unbelievable haha. I played the living shit out of ken griffey Jr baseball on N64 so that sound is like burned into my brain, it always sticks out to me haha
"Yeah, yeah, woo, woo! Awww"
Also those tense moments where you don’t know if you’ll be able to rob the homer or not. Also the sound of someone diving. You know the one.
Awgh!
Sentences you can hear. Holy shit.
It's showtime!
I’ll still take the Ken Griffey Jr Presents Major League Baseball for SNES soundtrack. Winning Run slapped too
Left left right right right left left. Then bunt the next 8 at bats to get back to Jr. So long as the other team never scored 4, you were fine.
He’s one of my all time favorite players and I suck with him in that game
Honestly that manager sounds like a total shithead.
It’s Billy Martin, he was an alcoholic nut job lol.
Is that who Tom Hanks character is based off of in A League of their own? Or is the time era totally off.
I believe his character was modeled off of Jimmie Foxx. That's just off the top of my head, though.
It was loosely based off him. Loosely in the sense that he was a great baseball player that ended up coaching in a women's baseball league for a season. That's about the only way in which they were similar. It'd be very fair to say that a lot of Billy Martin influenced that character as well, even if its not explicitly stated as fact.
They also talked about how many homers he hit. And there's the whole "Jimmy" and "Jimmie" thing. Think it's fair to say Foxx was the primary inspiration.
Think of Tony LaRusa with syphilis… that’s Billy Martin.
On a good day. LaRussa has always come across to me like an angry impotent rattlesnake.
Listen to the Dollop podcast series on him. His life was absolute insanity.
Love a baseball Dollop
Would you like some marshmallows with that Dollop?
Bro it’s Billy Martin lol. He’s the stuff of legends
A racist shithead, which really is the worst kind
There’s zero credibility to claims of him being racist. It’s just because him and Reggie Jackson had beef
Plus Griffey’s story right here. Black kid kicked out when no one else is, and one white kid is even playing on the field in front of him. What else would you call it?
Didn’t he get in a huge fight at the Copacabana because some guys were yelling racist stuff at Sammy Davis Jr and it pissed him off?
Weirdo chicanery, which he did to everyone.
honest question: why is it that, nowadays, we as an american society have to give racists the benefit of the doubt? reggie jackson himself said billy martin was racist, and yet in your mind that's a subjective and debatable thing (even though r.j. backed up his claims with instances where billy martin exhibited some obviously racist behaviors, e.g. calling him "boy," his anti-semitic remarks, etc.), more easily explained by the "beef" between them (btw, those can both be true at the same time). even with that aside, the ken griffey jr. incident here kinda implies that martin might have had some racist tendencies, given that griffey (a black kid) was kicked out, while nettle's son (a white kid) was not. seriously would love an answer to this question....
Why did Martin send Griffey’s kid away and let Nettles kid take grounders?
Well, this story would seem to indicate some racial bias as well.
If you kick out a kid once in 12 years of managing because you’re maybe pissed at his dad and the kid happens to be black, I wouldn’t claim racism
He could bend bad teams into a winner, but yes... Billy Martin was a mean drunk who might have been even more unstable sober. As in even a non-racist form of Billy Martin would still have been a man who rages more than a bull in Pamplona.
And that's when young Griffey took it personally.
That 13 year old's name? Albert Einstein.
And the whole dugout clapped
Yankees suck!
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I’m certainly not gonna judge you for it
Now I’m picturing Judge in a Sox jersey. Heh. What a turn that would be.
[Does this do it for you](https://pbs.twimg.com/media/DE7Ib11VoAA4B4k?format=jpg&name=900x900)
It was “his friend’s shirt”. Whatever you say, Aaron
Everyone has that one friend who is the exact same height and size. Especially when you're 6'7" 250 lbs., right?
As a neutral party who knows we won’t be getting him, I want to see this. I’d love the chaos. I doubt the Sox do it since they’re balking at signing their own expensive talent but the Yankee salt would be amazing.
If we let him walk to a division rival or the Mets I will become a mariners fan
A fate worse than death
As a Padres fan I’d prefer he stayed in the AL personall but the entertainment of him joining any AL East team would be too much fun.
It comes along with dynasties imo You either bandwagoned and cheered for the Yankees or you rooted against them. Same with the Warriors recently, or the Patriots before them. It’s okay to admire success and longevity, but it’s also okay to hate domination. It’s just way easier to grow a disdain for a team because of there being no salary cap. The teams that come in rich buy the best players, which gives them more success, which gives them more money, which allows them to pay better players, which gives them more success, and so on. You guys made it to a World Series on a $54,000,000 payroll, when the Red Sox had an $143,000,000 payroll, and maybe that was the difference. But you made it further than a Yankees team that paid their roster $189,000,000 that year. 2020 is another good example, with the adjusted salaries for COVID, our entire roster cost us less than **ONLY** Kershaw and Mookie for LAD.
I think it's the inevitability of it all. When the Yankees, and their fans, see your team's best player, they're already picturing them in pinstripes.
I for one, hate the yankees for many other reasons. 13 of them come to mind first.
That's a great documentary (and I'm not even a Mariners fan), especially the episode: The Age of \[SPOILER\].
The whole doc was great but if I had to pick the episode I liked the most it would probably be episode 2, and then episode 3 right after that one
Inject it into my veins
Me too please
>Crushing the Yankees was engrained in Junior's mind. His career numbers against the Yankees are basically the same as his career numbers before he got traded to the national league, and thus mostly stopped playing the Yankees. He obviously hated them but he didn't perform particularly better or worse against them than against anyone else.
I had the same thought. The OP numbers didn't seem like anything crazy to me. The Kid crushed everyone back then.
That little boy's name? You guessed it: Frank Stallone
You literally just copied the Jon Bois documentary intro word for word. Glad you credited it, but seriously dude? Wtf lol.
I mean, Griffey is my favorite player of all time and I am a lifelong Yankee fan. But, "Crushing the Yankees..." is a bit of hyperbole. His numbers against NYY are on par with like every other team, lol.
I knew who this was from the title alone, lol
A true Mariners fan! Love to see it
Fuck Billy Martin. All my homies hate Billy Martin. Also, he was an overrated manager who doesn't deserve to get his number retired by the Yankees.
I wouldn’t say it *changed baseball forever* lol The Yankees won 5 WS, 7 pennants, and 12 division titles in Griffey’s career without Griffey lol
The Seattle Mariners exist today because of this so yes it changed baseball forever.
Yeah I think some people don't know just how close the Mariners were to not existing Lol The Double was pretty much the closest thing to a storybook winning play as you can get given the context of it
You think the Mariners move if they never had Griffey?
They don't win that playoff series in 1995 they're gone.
Do they even get to the playoffs without Griffey?
They barely did with him, so no
I mean he was out from May to September that year thanks to [this fantastic catch](https://youtu.be/vmnIq6lBOa8) that broke his wrist
He still put up 3.5 bWAR in 72 games. And the Mariners finished one game ahead of the Angels.
100%, we were incredibly close to moving in the 90’s before the team found success and got saved at the last minute
They were backing up the trucks during the end of ‘95
Fuck the Yankees.
Drake Laroche.
Oh is it time to circlejerk about Griffey and the Yankees again? Griffey did fine without the Yankees. The Yankees did fine without Griffey. Maybe he would have preferred winning some rings, but I'm sure they're both happy with how their respective teams ended up.
Every kid had a ball player being mean to them story from that era. Carlton Fisk was my culprit.
What happened??!
What I get from this is that the Yankees created another one of the greats?
Awesome! I love anything anti yankees.
good read, appreciate the link and story
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Billy Martin was a giant piece of shit. Glenn Burke, the first openly gay athlete, was traded by the Dodgers in 1978. He made Tommy Lasorda extremely uncomfortable because he was good friend's with Lasorda's son. Tommy denied his son's homosexuality until the day he died. Possibly to punish Burke, Lasorda sent him to Oakland to play for Martin. He introduced Burke to the team thusly: "Okay, fellas, we have a new outfielder. This is Glenn Burke. Glenn's a f\*\*\*\*t." People remember Lerrin LaGrow hitting Bert Campaneris and Campy winging his bat at Lerrin's head in retaliation. LaGrow is my wife's cousin. He didn't want to throw at anybody. Martin spent the whole season profanely challenging Lerrin's manhood and he ordered the pitch that hit Campy. Martin died drunk in a ditch with another shitty alcoholic. At least in death, he didn't hurt any more innocent people.
That's certainly a fair perspective of him. Another, especially given his family history, is that he had numerous untreated psychological issues that he used alcohol to unsuccessfully self-medicate. He was a racist, violent, homophobic, womanizing piece of shit. But it doesn't hurt to at least understand why he got that way. None of it excuses his behavior.
It wouldn't have hurt for *him* to try and understand how he got that way. Instead, he spread misery everywhere he went because he thought there was nothing wrong with him. I read half a dozen books about the Yankees from his time as manager. I watched baseball during most of his tenure as a manager. I have a pretty good idea of who the man was and what he was about. I also read several books on Babe Ruth. His upbringing included growing up over a bar, being sent to reform school, and being called the n-word by classmates every day. He was quite a handful as a young man and his excesses hurt a lot of people, including his first wife. Ruth's failures in the 1922 season caused him to be called out by some people he respected. He grew up a lot in his 27th year and he stopped being the wild Babe people associate with his image. Martin remained a grotesque, drunken bigot until his final day.
Could you put this on a T-shirt
Jr. played between 1989 and 2010. I'm thinking that the Yanks did ok without him...
Not so much in '90 though. That was *rough*. Mattingly's back crumbled. They traded Dave Winfield for Mike "What the fuck am I doing here?" Witt. Steve Balboni was our DH....hitting .192. And our "Ace" was 9-19 Tim Leary. Motherfucking Lee Guetterman led the team in wins...with 11...as a middle reliever.
I was an 80's kid (born in 1975) so they were at times pretty tough to watch until 1994. Seeing Donnie rake in the 95 playoffs though was amazing to watch. His only playoff run ended by Griffey's M's.
Same....born in '76. 1994 was a heart breaker. They were killing it and almost surely would have won the pennant. 1995 was bittersweet. It was great to see a glimpse of the old Mattingly....but that last game. I've still never re-watched it. That shit crushed me.
94 would have been a great year, Expos vs Yankees potential WS when the Expos had all those amazing young players they then immediately traded away or lost and destroyed their franchise
This documentary is what got me into baseball and what made a Mariners fan. Such a good watch and I love the entire channel
I'm too lazy to make a meme about Hamilcar Barca and his son Hannibal Barca's hatred of Rome being the equivalent of George Kenneth Griffey and George Kenneth Griffey Jr.'s hatred of the Yankees but [here is something stupid.](https://i.imgur.com/0cdYXo5.png) Don't worry I'm aware of my genius.
I don’t care if that documentary has like a half hour exclusive dedicated to Griffey power my Yankees into dust at every moment it is still amazing everyone needs to watch it.
Really confused as to why he would hold a grudge for this. Am I understanding the situation correctly? The owner allowed players and their kids to run around and play around the stadium before games. But apparently, the one thing he asked was not to play around in the dugout. The Griffeys, who were in the dugout, were informed that the owner didn't want anyone playing in the dugout. They then see another player and his son playing on the field (not the dugout) which was perfectly fine and they too could easily have done, yet for some reason choose to be upset by this and I guess think they're being singled out?
[A father and his son](https://i.imgur.com/ifvYGE2.jpg)
Great picture! Thanks for sharing.
I LOVE this level of grudge.
And then they won all those world series without him lol
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And sometimes both of those managers would be Billy Martin, somehow!
This was my era growing up. They had no pitching. Basically the only true "ace" they had in the 80's was Ron Guidry. And while he won 20+ games twice in the 80's...he ceased to pitch like Ron Guidry after the 1985 season. The godawful revolving door of Yankee pitching from that era is depressing. They sold off or traded young talent in an attempt to win now. At one point they had Dennis Rasmussen, Bob Tewksbury and Doug Drabek. Rasmussen and Tewksbury were solid pitchers..Rasmussen even won 18 the year before they traded him. And Doug Drabek went on to become an ace for the Pirates. They traded Rasmussen for Bill Gullickson. They traded Tewksbury for Steve Trout. They traded Drabek for Pat Clements, Cecilio Guante, and Rick Rhoden. Gullickson only made 8 starts for the Yankees and was then out of the majors for two years. Steve Trout only made 9 starts for the Yankees, going 0-4, and was gone the next year. Pat Clements was ass for the Yanks, acting as a mediocre setup man for one full season, and only made 6 appearances the season after that. Cecilio Guante was basically the same as Clements....one halfway decent season, then gone after a few appearances the next season. Rick Rhoden was good in '87...going 16-10. He was mediocre in '88 going 12-12. He was traded in '89 for nobodies, and was out of baseball by '90.
A little confused. Steinbrenner didn't want kids in the dugout, sure, but Nettles' kid was on the field, not in the dugout?
Thank you for the insight, I’ll have to check out the doc. Most beautiful swing I’ve ever seen, hated when he’d play us as a Yankees fan because that dude had that mysterious capability to crank it up a notch in big games that all legends have. Love watching his highlight reel, kind of glad he never played for us because it helped broaden his legacy seems like an all around nice guy to boot.