We are coming up on the 50th anniversary of the 1976 season, a landmark season for the Yankees in which they broke their longest absence from the World Series (12 years) at that point in their history and began the first of two dynasties under the ownership of George Steinbrenner.
When Steinbrenner bought the team for what turned out to be $8.8 million from CBS in 1973, they were coming off another desultory non-competitive fourth place season — to which he vowed: “We will back to the World Series in five years.”
Thanks to Gabe Paul, the very astute general manager he brought in with him from Cleveland, he did it in three years. Starting with the signing of Catfish Hunter, baseball’s first free agent in 1974, Paul executed a series of trades — Chris Chambliss and reliever Dick Tidrow from the Indians in April 1974; Willie Randolph and Dock Ellis (who was 17-8 in 1976) from the Pirates for Doc Medich in December 1975; Mickey Rivers and Ed Figueroa (for Bobby Bonds) also in December 1975 — that formed the nucleus of three straight World Series teams in 1976-78. And right before Paul left the Indians in 1972 he traded Graig Nettles to the Yankees in November that year.
The Nettles trade in particular raised eyebrows in baseball circles, especially after he went on to have 11 stellar seasons in the Bronx, with five All-Star selections and including a total of 64 homers, 200 RBI and 180 runs in the Yankees two world championship seasons (1977-78), and Paul was accused of conflict of interest by knowingly helping the team he was about to join. But in his defense, Paul always claimed that outfielder Charlie Spikes, the principal player going back to Cleveland, was the Yankees top prospect at the tine who just didn’t pan out.
I don’t know if it’s merely a coincidence — probably is — but the Yankees’ hiring of Randolph to do a few pre-game shows for the YES network next summer was a welcome development if for no other reason than it’ll give them a subtle opportunity to commemorate the ‘76 season — which also happened to be Randolph’s rookie year. And even though they were swept by Johnny Bench, Pete Rose and the Big Red Machine in the World Series, the 1976 season represented a clear signal that Steinbrenner had brought the glory days back to the Bronx, with more to come.
Hopefully the Yankees will see fit to celebrate the 1976 season in different ways this year and in that respect there can be no better time to present Nettles, the greatest of all (clean) Yankee third baseman, with a long overdue and much deserved plaque in Monument Park. Heaven knows, Nettles provided more than his share of thrills and accomplishments to fill it up. To wit:
In 1976 he led the American League in homers — by a lot — 32 to Reggie Jackson’s 27 with the Orioles, and on May 20 was the principal figure in the Yankees’ epic brawl with the Red Sox in which he body-slammed Red Sox Yankee-hating lefty Bill Lee to the ground and put him out for six weeks with a dislocated shoulder.
In 1978, after catching Carl Yastrzemski’s pop fly for the final out of the Yankee-Red Sox playoff for the American League pennant, Nettles put on one of the greatest defensive performances in World Series history in Game 3 against the Dodgers, with four spectacular diving stops of ground balls — and five assists in all — that wound up saving at least four and possibly seven runs in the Yankees 5-1 victory. Nettles’ heroics turned the Series around after they’d lost the first two games in Los Angeles.
He hit .500 with two homers and 9 RBI versus the A’s as the MVP of the 1981 ALCS but the Yankees lost to the Dodgers in the World Series after Nettles broke his thumb diving for a ball in the Game 2.
(In 1971 with Cleveland, Nettles set major league records for most assists (412) and double plays (54) in a season — records that still stand.)
When he was traded by the Yankees to the Padres in May 1984, Nettles’ 250 homers for them ranked sixth on the Yankees’ all-time list behind Babe Ruth, Mickey Mantle, Lou Gehrig, Joe DiMaggio and Yogi Berra. And while his 11 years with the Yankees were often marked with verbal skirmishes with George Steinbrenner, in 1982 the Boss showed his respect for Nettles’ baseball acumen and quiet clubhouse leadership to name him the first Yankee captain since Thurman Munson’s death in 1979. Since then there have been five other Yankee captains — Willie Randolph. Ron Guidry, Don Mattingly, Derek Jeter and now Aaron Judge. But other than Judge, Nettles is the only Yankee captain since Munson not to be enshrined in Monument Park.
“Can’t tell you how thrilled I am be doing these pre-game shows for YES,” Randolph said to me Friday. “Seven decades with the Yankees! I’ve seen a lot and I think I have a lot of knowledge to share. Those ‘70s teams were really special and Graig was such a big part of them. It’s time for the Yankees to give him a little love.”
Hopefully they will — and this year. Nettles is 81 now and having some struggles physically. His No. 9 is already retired by the Yankees — for Roger Maris — but like Yogi and Bill Dickey at No. 8, it deserves to be shared.
IT’S A MADD, MADD WORLD
There’s been a big shakeup in the Yankees’ international scouting department which a lot of baseball insiders say was long overdue. Back in November the Yankees fired Donny Rowland who’d been their international scouting director for 15 years and in that time produced only a half dozen players from the Dominican Republic — most notably Luis Severino, Luis Gil, Miguel Andujar and Jasson Dominguez — who had any impact in the majors. After a nearly two-month search for a successor, Yankee GM Brian Cashman elected to stay in house and last week named 44-year-old Mario Garza, who’s spent 16 years in various capacities in the Yankees minor league and scouting departments, as the new international scouting director. Garza is a popular guy within the organization and at least in Rowland he doesn’t have a hard act to follow. Under Rowland since 2014, the Yankees signed at least 20 Latin America players to seven figure bonuses who all busted out without coming close to the majors. In dismissing Rowland, Cashman said merely “his contract had expired” but it was a lot more than that. There have been reports of buscones at the Yankees’ Dominican Republic complex skimming millions of dollars of bonus money — a practice that is said to be widespread among almost all the major league teams, but more glaring with the Yankees because of their excesses of bonus money on failed prospects.
