Billy Martin: Brilliant, Fiery, larger-than-life and The Proudest Yankee

I arrived at Gate of Heaven Cemetery in Hawthorne, New York, in Westchester County, about 40 km north of Yankee Stadium, and visited Section 25 with glove and ball in hand to  visit the scrappy Yankees infielder and hugely successful manager: Alfred Manuel Martin, better known as Billy Martin.

Billy Martin was of Italian and Portuguese descent. His father left the family when Billy was still an infant, and he was raised in West Berkeley, California, by his mother and his Italian grandmother.

The feisty second baseman played for the Yankees in the 1950s alongside Mickey Mantle and Whitey Ford. His finest moment was the 1953 World Series, when he hit .500 and drove in the Series-winning run in Game 6. It was a few years later that the alcohol and brawls escalated, and after a notorious 1957 brawl at the Copacabana nightclub, the Yankees traded him. He bounced around several teams before retiring in 1961. He ended his career with a .257 lifetime batting average, 877 hits and 64 homers.

As a manager, Billy was described as one of the sharpest in-game tacticians of his era. He anticipated situations and was famously aggressive with steals, squeeze plays and hit-and-runs, a part of the game those of us from an earlier era miss the most. However, there was a common pattern: he’d transform a team almost immediately, then clash with ownership or get into trouble and be gone within a year or two. This was most notable with the storied New York Yankees. He had five stints with the Yanks: 1975–78, 1979, 1983, 1985 and 1988, and at his untimely death, George Steinbrenner was rumoured to be offering a sixth term at the helm.

That sixth term never came. Sadly, on Christmas Day 1989, near his farm in the town of Fenton, near Binghamton, New York, his pickup truck skidded on an icy road and plunged into a ditch. He was later pronounced dead.

Billy Martin’s home and property near Fenton, New York and close to the scene of the accident. 

The irony is that the famous pitchman for Miller Lite beer would die by the very thing he spent years promoting: alcohol. He was only 61.

The beloved Yankee’s funeral Mass was held on December 29, 1989, at St. Patrick’s Cathedral in midtown Manhattan, with an estimated 6,500 in attendance and another 3,500 fans lined up outside in the cold.

Billy Martin wore No. 1 as both a player and manager, and on Billy Martin Day at Yankee Stadium on August 10, 1986, when the Yankees retired his number, he said:

“I may not have been the greatest Yankee to put on the uniform, but I was the proudest.”

Those same words are forever inscribed on his grave monument.

1928-1989

Billy was the pitchman for Miller Lite beer and would die by the very thing he spent years promoting: alcohol.