25 Years Later, Brett is Still A Maniac!

It just doesn't seem possible that Thursday, July 24 marks the 25th anniversary of George Brett's mighty swing against Goose Gossage that set in motion one of the most infamous events in baseball history. It has become known simply as The Pine Tar Game. Like the sticky consistency of pine tar it remains glued to my memory banks. The vision of a raving mad George Brett leaping out of the dugout to nearly attack home plate umpire Tim McClelland after he was ruled out for having too much pine tar on his bat, negating the home run that put the Royals ahead 5-4 in the top of the ninth and instead giving the Yanks a 4-3 victory, is a scene worthy of the Hall of Fame, where ironically, Gossage will be enshrined this weekend. I'm Tom Cosentino and I was a 21-year-old media relations intern with the New York Yankees during the 1983 season. There was no better place to learn the public relations trade. In one season I experienced the near firing of Billy Martin seemingly on a weekly basis, a no-hitter by Dave Righetti, Dave Winfield killing a seagull in Toronto and getting arrested for it, and numerous other memorable moments. However, nothing stands out in my mind more than the pine tar incident. It's memorable to me because when I saw how mad Brett was that day I realized how lucky I was a couple of days earlier when I had to work with him on an interview with some kid reporters for Newsday's Kidsday section. My boss, Ken Nigro had told me to go to the Royals clubhouse and coordinate the interview with the kid reporters, ranging in age from 6-10, which had been arranged by the Royals pr department. I did something similar with Red Sox great Carl Yastrzemski a couple of weeks before. When I got to the clubhouse Brett was wearing nothing but his jockstrap. I introduced myself and told him I was there for the interview he had agreed to do with the children. Brett looked up at me and said, "I didn't agree to do any interview" and proceeded to call the Royals pr staff asses. With nowhere to go I quickly pulled the shame routine and described how Yaz did this a month earlier and that the questions would be softballs. Brett's mood changed and he said if it was for kids he would do it. He said to give him 10 minutes so he could change. A camera crew from Disney Cable was there to film it and they miked Brett up. He asked me what the current forecast was and I told him it didn't look good. A storm was coming which would probably cause the game to be postponed. Brett was happy. "It's New York, I can go out," I recall him saying. He then came out and was fantastic with the kids. After at least 45 minutes, he then ended the interview and the skies opened and the storm hit. The game was indeed postponed. Where Brett ended up that night is anybody's guess, but what transpired over the next few days and month ahead became historic. Most of it has never been told. The Brett home run against Gossage came on a Sunday afternoon, the final day of a home stand. My buddy Bill Miicke, who was a media relations assistant and I were editing the hitting and pitching books that were kept by the media relations department. We kept our own version because our boss, Ken Nigro had perhaps the sloppiest handwriting ever on record. His writing was indecipherable and we needed our own version in order to make sense of the stats. Keep in mind this was the era before computers. That day, because I was toiling away at the books, I barely paid attention to the game until the ninth. Martin brought Gossage in as always to close it out and when Brett came to bat you couldn't help thinking back to the 1980 playoffs when he deposited a Gossage fastball deep into the right field seats. As soon as he swung and the bat made contact, you knew it was gone. It shot out like a rocket as did Billy Martin. The crafty Yankee skipper pointed to the bat. Earlier in the season Yankees third baseman Graig Nettles, a Brett foe, noticed the amount of pine tar and mentioned it to Martin. The Yankee skipper figured he'd wait for the right moment to use it and this was it. Brett sat down in the dugout and stared out at the happenings around home plate. I knew immediately it had to be pine tar because I remembered Thurman Munson losing an RBI a few years earlier because of having too much on his bat. When McClelland placed the bat across home plate and the pine tar exceeded the 17 inch width of home plate, McClelland's hand shot up in the out call, negating the home run and starting Brett on a rampage. I thought he might have a stroke; his veins were pulsing so much. It's amazing that he didn't deck McClelland. Gaylord Perry, who was pitching for the Royals, actually took the bat and the umpires eventually retrieved it. The bat was exhibit A in the trial that was about to come. What happened next was the true legacy of the pine tar game. In the days following the conclusion of the Sunday game, much controversy emerged. Even though the rule book plainly stated that the umpires were clearly in their rights to call Brett out for having too much pine tar, American league President Lee MacPhail decided that the original ruling was not in the best interest of the game and over ruled the decision. As a result, the home run counted and the AL ruled that the game had to be resumed from the moment of the home run. An off day, August 18 was selected, meaning the Royals would have to fly to New York to play a half inning. Now initially George Steinbrenner wanted to treat the resumption of the game as a festival, inviting camps to come out to see the game. Then, he got really ticked at MacPhail and decided the team would do everything in its power to stop the game from being played. As an intern it was my job to come up with bad trades that MacPhail made while General Manager of the Yankees. It was easy to come up with Rich McKinney for Stan Bahnsen, Bill Robinson for Clete Boyer and others. However, I also had to throw in the Sparky Lyle deal he made for Danny Cater, and the Milt Pappas for Frank Robinson trade he made while with the Orioles just to be fair. A country singer in Kansas City named C.W. McCall called us one day to play a song he recorded called "The Ballard of The Pine Tar Game." He wanted to come up and play it at the resumption on August 18. At first, this was a no-brainer. Then we couldn't touch it because we didn't want the game to be resumed. This quickly became a national story. I took the late Dick Schaap out to right field one day for a piece he did for ABC World News Tonight. I also did the same thing for Stone Phillips for NBC Nightly News. In the interim, a fan who couldn't attend the August 18 resumption, filed an injunction to prevent the game to be played. The Yankees threw their legal weight behind him. On the morning of August 18, Yankees shortstop Andre Robertson was nearly killed in an automobile accident in Manhattan. With that hanging over the team, the Bronx County Court House was the setting for the hearing on the motion to stop the game. Nigro was at the courthouse. He wrote the game notes in advance knowing full well the case would be thrown out. The UPI ticker kept ringing all afternoon with updates. I had to scramble to meet the needs of NBC News which sent a production truck for a live shot for the Nightly News. Media from around the country had flown in to cover this half inning game. Knowing the historic impact of this game, Nigro had ordered tee shirts for the press, which said "I Covered the Pine Tar Game." He also ordered a couple of cases of Oriole Pine Tar to give out as well. What we knew in the front office was that Billy Martin had something else up his sleeve. Since there was a different umpiring crew, Martin planned to protest that Brett missed first base back on July 24th. When the game resumed with George Frazier on the mound for the Bombers, Martin came out and approached the umpiring crew. They quickly pulled out an affidavit from the original umpiring crew stating that Brett touched every base. To add to the levity of the situation, Martin played rookie Don Mattingly at second base and Ron Guidry in center field as his protest of the reversed call. The Royals made out and the Yanks went down in order in the bottom of the ninth. It was over in about 10 minutes. Afterwards, a steaming mad Gene McHale, president of the Yankees came into the media relations office holding the can of pine tar. He wanted to know where it came from. When Miicke and I told him that Nigro ordered it, he was irate and told us to have Ken report to him. When Nigro eventually made his way back from the clubhouse and we told him, his reply was, "We'll, I guess I'll be gone." The Yankees never recovered from the pine tar ruling being overturned. They finished a distant third behind the eventual world champion Orioles. Nigro resigned and I went on to begin my career working for a start up company called Sports Information Data Base. Now, 25 years later, I still see Brett running out and I think back to that day when I approached him at his locker to do an interview. If he was in a different frame of mind that day, I might have had another memory etched in my mind. Instead, I witnessed something we probably will never see again and that's why it will always be one of the most memorable events in baseball history.