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There are some moments in sports history that are etched so deeply into memory that they can be recalled vividly with the utterance of just a few words.
“The Catch.” “The Shot.” “The Drive.” Phrases like these instantly take our minds back to something we’ll never forget watching in real time or as a replay for years afterward.
Sometimes they include “the” and “game” — “the Flu Game,” for instance, evokes the scene of an ill and exhausted Michael Jordan being held up by teammate Scottie Pippen as he walks off the court in Game 5 of the 1997 NBA Finals.
Today marks the 40th anniversary of one such event, and this one is perhaps the most bizarre of them all.
When you hear “the Pine Tar Game,” there is one image that immediately flashes before your eyes: an irate George Brett sprinting uncontrollably out of the visitors dugout at Yankee Stadium to confront home plate umpire Tim McClelland.
What has largely become a forgotten footnote to the events of July 24, 1983, is how that game ended … 26 days later.
Four decades on, the Pine Tar Game remains one of the strangest episodes in the long history of baseball. This is the story of its conclusion, a tale that features a set of circumstances so peculiar, you wouldn’t be able to come up with it if you were writing a Hollywood script.
An unforgettable moment years in the making
The roots of what became known as “the Pine Tar Game” go back years before it was played.
Beginning in the mid-1970s, a heated rivalry developed between the Royals and the Yankees as the two clubs met in the American League Championship Series in four of five years from 1976-80.
There was Kansas City, a midwestern metropolis with a small-market Major League team on the rise. There was New York, a city with a baseball behemoth to match the size of its personality, a team that had won 20 World Series titles and viewed anything other than a championship each year as an abject failure.
There was no shortage of intensity among the many colorful characters involved. Yankees manager Billy Martin, whose quick temper and tactical genius made him one of the most famous personalities in the game’s history, was amid the most successful run of his managerial career.
Martin guided the Yanks to the ALCS in 1976, and led New York to a World Series championship in ’77, before being fired by controversial owner George Steinbrenner during the ’78 campaign — incidentally, exactly five years before the Pine Tar Game. It was the first of five firings of Martin ordered by Steinbrenner during one of the more tumultuous eras of Yankees history.
Royals third baseman George Brett rose to prominence during this period as one baseball’s elite hitters and fiercest competitors, very nearly becoming the first player since Ted Williams in 1941 to bat over .400 when he finished at a .390 clip in his 1980 AL MVP season.
Yankees third baseman Graig Nettles was a four-time All-Star and a two-time Gold Glove Award winner from 1976-80, helping New York win back-to-back World Series titles in 1977 and ’78.
Brett, Martin and Nettles were the principal actors in the Pine Tar Game controversy. And they had quite a history.
It was Brett and Nettles who sparked a bench-clearing incident during Game 5 of the 1977 ALCS.
“I hit a triple off Ron Guidry,” Brett said. “And I was running as hard as I could, and my momentum took me up after I hit the bag and I knocked Nettles back. He stepped back and he kicked me in the face. And I got up and I just threw a haymaker at him.”
That came only days after Kansas City’s Hal McRae broke up a double play attempt in Game 2 by nearly knocking Yankees second baseman Willie Randolph into left field. It was Brett who hit the ball to third, where Nettles fielded it and threw to Randolph.
“Kansas City and New York didn’t like each other,” Brett said. “In ’77 was when it really started. To have a rivalry like that with a team outside your division, that says something. That tells you how big of a rivalry it was.”
‘I’ll go out there and kill ’em’
You never know what you’ll see on any given day at the ballpark. The Pine Tar Game is a quintessential example of the unknown universe of possibilities surrounding a baseball game when the first pitch is thrown.
Most of the contest was rather ordinary. Through the first eight innings, the Yankees were ahead, 4-3. Dale Murray, who had come out of New York’s bullpen in relief of starter Shane Rawley in the sixth inning, was looking to close the game out.
Murray retired the first two Royals of the ninth, Don Slaught and Pat Sheridan. But the next batter, U.L. Washington, singled. Up walked Brett, representing the go-ahead run.
Out came Martin, signaling to his bullpen. He summoned one of the greatest closers of all time, Goose Gossage, to get the game’s final out against one of the most feared hitters in the league.
“I would much rather face Gossage than Murray, any day of the week,” Brett said. “Murray had a really good sinker — I’m not gonna hit that out. But, you know what? There were two outs in the ninth inning.”
With the count 0-1, Brett smashed a high fastball from Gossage over the wall in right-center field to flip the script and give the Royals a 5-4 lead. No one could foresee just how wild that script was about to become.
As Brett rounded the bases, Martin emerged from the Yankees dugout once again.
“When Billy started walking out there and Nettles came in from third base, I was like, ‘Oh, no,’” said Bud Black, who started the game for Kansas City and was watching from a small black-and-white television in the Royals’ clubhouse.
“They showed the umpires, then they showed George on the bench, then back to the umpires, then back to George on the bench. They just kept going back and forth.”
“It seemed like an eternity,” Brett said.
Martin was talking to McClelland, pointing insistently at Brett’s bat as Yankees catcher Rick Cerone held it up for inspection.
“I was sitting next to Frank [White] on the bench,” Brett said. “And he says, ‘They might call you out for having too much pine tar on the bat. [Another team] did it to John Mayberry a few years ago.’
“And I go, ‘Frank, if they call me out for using too much pine tar, I’ll go out there and kill ’em.’”
McClelland took the bat and conferred with the rest of the umpiring crew. He then laid it across home plate — he didn’t exactly carry a ruler around in his pocket while umpiring, and he knew that the plate was 17 inches wide.
That’s when Rule 3.02 became one of the most famous in sports history. It stated that any substance used to make the bat easier to grip could not extend past 18 inches from the handle. The pine tar on Brett’s bat, in this case, was about 23 inches from the handle.
“Five seconds later, Tim McClelland’s going, ‘Where are you? You — you’re out,’” Brett said.
Before McClelland, who aptly pointed at Brett with the now-deemed-illegal bat — even lowered the closed right fist he had raised for the “out” signal, a livid Brett was charging toward him.
“I had to keep my word — I had to go out there!” Brett said, laughing.
Second base umpire Joe Brinkman grabbed Brett, who continued to flail wildly in an effort to break free.
“One thing that was the worst was Joe Brinkman grabbing me,” Brett said. “Because I wasn’t gonna hit Tim McClelland. I mean, come on. Every time I see Timmy, he says, ‘What were you gonna do? I’m 6-foot-5, 260 pounds. I’ve got shin guards on and I’ve got a bat in my hand.’”
Martin had been sitting on this move for a while. Someone on the club — it’s thought to be Nettles — had noticed the pine tar on Brett’s bat earlier that season. But if you’re going to use that rule, you don’t use it on a groundout to second.
The perfect opportunity presented itself in Brett’s go-ahead homer in the ninth.
“You get a two-out base hit there, they ain’t gonna challenge it,” Brett said. “They’re waiting for you to do something dramatic.”
The homer — and the histrionics that followed — certainly sparked drama. But the drama was just beginning.
The game was over. Or so the Yankees thought. The Royals weren’t going to accept this 4-3 loss without a fight.
Gaylord Perry, no stranger to accusations of impropriety on a baseball diamond, grabbed the bat out of McClelland’s hands and headed toward the clubhouse.
“All of a sudden, we hear this ruckus in the clubhouse,” said Black, who was continuing to watch in incredulity from the training room with ice on his shoulder and a beer in his hand. “And here comes Gaylord, and we’re like, ‘What are you doing?’
“And he’s like, ‘We’re hiding the bat.’”
The entire umpiring crew entered the Royals’ clubhouse, demanding the evidence be handed over.
“And Gaylord’s like, ‘What bat? What are you talking about?’” Black remembers.
Needless to say, the umpires recovered the bat and delivered it to American League president Lee MacPhail’s office. That’s not the only correspondence the league office received from that game — the Royals filed an official protest.
MacPhail ruled that the Brett home run shouldn’t have been nullified by Rule 3.02, saying that while Brett did use an illegal bat, he shouldn’t have been called out. MacPhail set the date for a resumption of the July 24 contest, from the point of the home run, to take place on Aug. 18.
But while a date had been set, there were still roadblocks ahead. Three fans filed a lawsuit against the Yankees in which they argued that their July 24 ticket stubs should be honored for entry to the Aug. 18 resumption — the club was requiring separate payment for admittance to Yankee Stadium on Aug. 18.
On Aug. 16, two days before the scheduled resumption of the game, the Supreme Court of New York issued an injunction against the game resuming. But on the afternoon of Aug. 18, the New York Supreme Court appellate division lifted the injunction in an opinion that read, in part: “Play ball.”
The court’s ruling was made over the Yankees’ strenuous objections — they were, ironically, on the plaintiff fans’ side since an injunction to resolve the ticket issue would mean further delay in resuming the game.
Still, despite Steinbrenner calling on infamous attorney and political fixer Roy Cohn to represent the club — among the notable individuals Cohn represented or assisted over the years were Senator Joseph McCarthy, real estate mogul and future president Donald Trump and mafia bosses including John Gotti — the Royals and Yankees would play baseball on this day.
So the Royals, who were supposed to go to Baltimore to open a series with the Orioles the next day, took a detour and headed for New York.
“Our closer, Dan Quisenberry, was going to pitch the ninth when the game resumed,” Black said. “Quis was a nervous wreck on the plane because he knew he was pitching. As a closer, you never go to the ballpark knowing for sure you’re going to pitch. He was a wreck for weeks after that.”
Quisenberry, who would close out Game 7 of the ALCS two years later to send the Royals to the World Series, was in the midst of a stretch of six seasons over which he led either the AL or the Majors in saves five times. He was among the best in the game, but this was uncharted territory, a good metaphor for the entire Pine Tar Game saga.
After the Royals’ plane touched down in Newark, N.J., the players who were on the roster on July 24 and hadn’t been taken out of — or ejected from — the game got on a bus to the Bronx for a 6 p.m. “first pitch.”
Italian food, a lefty second baseman and a pitcher in the outfield
“I was kicked out of the game,” Brett said. “So me and Larry Ameche — Don’s son — we went out to an Italian restaurant by the airport.”
Don Ameche was a popular film actor from the 1940s-80s. His son, Larry, was the Royals’ TWA representative. He and Brett dined at the bar while watching the resumption of the Pine Tar Game on television.
At the ballpark, the scene was surreal.
“There was virtually no one at Yankee Stadium,” Black said (the official paid attendance was 1,245). “Usually the bus rolls up, there are people everywhere and there’s this energy around the place. It was super weird.”
So was the conclusion of the Pine Tar Game.
Martin protested the Royals’ successful protest in as many ways as he could think of, both silent and vocal.
The silent protest apparently came in the form of the lineup he put on the field. Martin decided to play his rookie first baseman/outfielder, Don Mattingly — a left-handed fielder and hitter — at second base, and his All-Star left-handed pitcher Ron Guidry in center field.
“I didn’t know why it was that I had to be at second,” said Mattingly, who would go on to become one of the greatest players of the decade. “I don’t know if it was just Billy thumbing his nose at the league, or what.”
Mattingly wasn’t nervous about it. In fact, he was pretty confident about it.
“Oh, I played second all different times before getting to the big leagues,” said the nine-time Gold Glove Award-winning first baseman. “When I was young, I used to throw with both hands. I played shortstop and third base in Babe Ruth league.”
It wouldn’t be the last time Mattingly played a position nobody would’ve ever dreamed he’d play in a Major League game. On Aug. 29, 1986, Mattingly played third base against the Mariners at the Kingdome, even starting a 5-4-3 double play in the fifth inning.
Mattingly said that Guidry could hold his own at other spots on the diamond, too.
“Putting Guidry out in center is no stretch,” he said. “That dude could go get it. That’s kind of how he trained a lot, shagging fly balls out there in center field.”
If Martin was “thumbing his nose at the league,” he was doing so while not completely conceding the middle of the diamond defensively.
But there was one more theatrical move Martin had up his sleeve before the “first pitch” would be thrown.
As the Yankees’ new pitcher, George Frazier, began warming up, the Yankee Stadium organist, Eddie Layton, played a song he had learned just for this moment: “The Trail of the Lonesome Pine.”
Behind Frazier, Martin’s silent protest had taken the field. Now it was time for Martin’s continuing grievances to be aired vocally.
The umpiring crew for the resumption of the game wasn’t the same as in the July 24 proceedings. So Martin, well aware of that fact, had Frazier throw to each base before coming out of the dugout himself to confront the umpires.
Since the umpires weren’t present when Brett hit the famous homer, they wouldn’t have seen with their own eyes whether Brett actually stepped on each base while rounding them.
But Martin’s reputation preceded him to such an extent that the league office was prepared.
“So then [umpire] Dave Phillips pulls out an affidavit signed by the umpires from before,” Black said.
Brett, watching this on television from New Jersey, was amazed at the league’s foresight.
“It was unbelievable that they even thought of that ahead of time,” he said.
Finally, it was time to play baseball. And after all that buildup … the game was over in less than 10 minutes. Four straight outs were made — one to end the top of the ninth and three in the bottom half — and the Royals won, 5-4.
The Pine Tar Game became both a boon and a mild annoyance for George Brett.
From Oct. 15, 1980 to July 23, 1984, Brett was known for two things: hitting a baseball better than almost anyone in the world, and having hemorrhoids.
In the middle of Game 2 of the 1980 World Series, Brett had to leave the contest against the Phillies because of a flareup of the condition. And nobody would let him forget it.
Until that day in late July of 1983, when something much weirder overshadowed that problem.
“It’s amazing how many times you go to a private signing or something and they’ll say, ‘Hey, can you write Pine Tar Game and July 24, 1983 on there?'” Brett said. “You play 20 years and you’re remembered for one thing. For me to get more than 3,000 hits and I’m remembered for that one hit. But it could be worse.”
Brett will always be one of the greatest hitters of all time, with a Hall of Fame plaque in Cooperstown to prove it. He’ll also always be remembered for the sticky substance on his bat that led to a moment in time we can all instantly see in our mind’s eye with the mention of four words:
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