Whitson’s ERA over his previous four starts was 7.32. The Yankees had lost seven consecutive games, but with the American League East title still in reach, Billy did not trust Whitson to end the losing streak. But the flash point that weekend in Baltimore was Billy’s decision to scratch Whitson from his scheduled start on Friday, Sept.

Whitson despised the way Billy wanted to call every pitch and made each outing seem a do-or-die affair, and Billy thought Whitson lacked the stomach to handle the pressure of playing New York. The seeds for the Whitson-Martin fight had been sown months earlier. Eventually, the couple left the bar for their hotel room, but minutes later the groom, still in his tuxedo and weaving unsteadily, reappeared at Billy’s side. He bought them a bottle of champagne and danced with the bride. People would flock to him and Billy would befriend them, as he did with the newlyweds that Friday night. Despite his confrontational reputation, Billy Martin was almost always charming, engaging and sociable with strangers in bars. I joined him for a beer and related the details of the bridegroom tussle. I had witnessed the short, mostly amusing skirmish but Whitson had not. It had occurred just a few feet from where Whitson was sitting. That, not surprisingly, was the scuffle everyone was talking about the next day. The night before, in an episode that has since been overshadowed by the more momentous Whitson-Martin clash, Martin had nearly exchanged blows with a bridegroom celebrating his wedding night. I was in my first year as a traveling Yankee beat writer, but Whitson had always been easy to talk to, and besides, on this day there was gossip to dispense.

After four decades in the spotlight, and a hefty pugilistic record, it was also the last of Martin’s public fisticuffs.īut at the beginning of that long night, Whitson was at ease when I approached him at the Cross Keys Inn bar. The 57-year-old Martin would end up with a cast on his broken right arm, the first time that the volatile, fast-punching Martin lost a fight with one of his players-or with almost anyone, for that matter. Six hours later, in the same room, during a brutal if sometimes comical 20-minute brawl, Whitson would beat up his manager, Billy Martin. 21, 1985, and nothing about the scene presaged what was to come. It was early in the evening of Saturday, Sept.

New York Yankees pitcher Eddie Lee Whitson sat quietly at the bar of the Cross Keys Inn outside Baltimore, smiling as he peeled the label from the longneck bottle of Budweiser in front of him.

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