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Billy Martin is one of the most notorious managers in MLB history thanks in no small part to his tenuous relationship with a New York Yankees franchise that hired him and fired him on five different occasions. There are plenty of stories that sum up his infamous temper, but it’s hard to top the time he had his arm broken by one of his own players in a bar fight.
Martin was originally a second baseman who spent most of his career with the Yankees, and after fairly brief managing stints with the Twins, Tigers, and Rangers, he found himself back in the Bronx after being hired midway through the 1975 campaign.
The Yankees had no shot at making the playoffs when he took the reins, but Martin helped them make it to the World Series the following year, where they came up short against the Reds before redeeming themselves with a victory over the Dodgers to win the title in 1977.
However, Martin also found himself butting heads with a number of players (he tried to fight Reggie Jackson in the dugout in the middle of a game) and failed to garner a ton of favor with owner George Steinbrenner and other members of the front office. In 1978, he voluntarily stepped down in order to avoid being fired, and the on-again, off-again relationship between the two parties would continue until the manager died in a car accident in 1989.
In 1985, Martin kicked off his fourth stint with the Yankees when he was hired to replace Yogi Berra (who’d been fired just 16 games into the year). While things went pretty well for most of the season, they took a turn for the worse when the Yankees fell victim to an eight-game losing streak in September that knocked them out of playoff contention—a development that Martin did not handle very well.
Billy Martin had his arm broken by Yankees pitcher Ed Whitson in a bar fight in Baltimore
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Martin had a well-documented love of drinking to the point where many medical experts would describe his habit as a “drinking problem,” and it certainly didn’t do him any favors when it came to keeping his infamously short temper under control.
The manager was far from the only member of the Yankees who had a tendency to throw back a few adult beverages on a regular basis, and pitcher Ed Whitson was doing exactly that at a bar in Baltimore when he began trading words with a random patron who started staring at him when he started complaining about how poorly Martin and the Yankees had been treating him during his first year with the team.
As Pinstripe Alley notes, Martin just so happened to be in the bar at the time and opted to intervene after hearing the commotion. However, Whitson took exception to Martin stepping up to defend his honor, a move he apparently interpreted as the manager implying he couldn’t take care of himself.
Martin and Whitson consequently found themselves engaging in a verbal altercation that quickly turned physical. While other members of the Yankees organization who were in the bar did what they could to intervene, they could only do so much to prevent the two men from trading blows.
It was a wild fracas that included a sequence where Whitson landed a kick to Martin’s groin while his arms were being restrained. While he managed to temporarily incapacitate his foe, the manager popped back up and exclaimed “Now I’m going to have to kill you!” before lunging at him yet again.
The melee spilled into the parking lot until the Yankees peacemakers successfully separated the two men and brought them back to the hotel only to see Martin and Whitson try to fight each other yet again after they got off two opposing elevators that had opened on the same floor at the exact same time (the entire thing really sounds straight out of a comedy movie).
Martin supposedly told hitting coach Lou Pinella to head to the pitcher’s room and tell him to meet the manager in the parking lot, although he declined to relay that message. That was probably for the best, as the manager had already broken his right arm courtesy of an opponent who walked away with a cut lip and a few bruises.
What a night for the Bronx Bombers. I can’t say I condone this behavior, but I’d be lying if I said I didn’t miss the good ol’ days when athletes could hash out their issues like Real Men: by facing off in a bar fight without having to worry about everyone pulling out their phones and posting the footage on the internet.
Martin was allowed to remain with the team for the remainder of the season before he was fired around a month after it ended (he returned for one final ride ahead of the 19888 season). Whitson, on the other hand, found himself vilified by fans who convinced themselves he was responsible for Martin’s dismissal, and he was traded to the Padres midway through the 1987 campaign after making it clear he wanted a change of scenery.