Free Becoming Mr. October (9780385533126) by Kevin Reggie; Baker Jackson

George never offered me anything to be the last person to speak to us. Only at the end of the negotiations did he throw in some more money to clinch the deal, another hundred thousand or so in bonus money. I used that money to buy the Corniche. And a Corniche Rolls-Royce was never “what I wanted more than anything in the world.”
    And that’s not how George told it to the press.
    Instead, it became a different story. One where he looked all the more generous, and daring, and smart. But I was someone who knew cars very well and was perfectly capable of taking his money and going out and buying what he wanted. Which is what I did.
    Not a big deal. I didn’t say anything at the time. I knew George didn’t mean anything much by it, that was just him trying to be the showman.
    But when I thought about it later, it was an early warning signal. I missed it. So many times, the headline is an eye-catcher but the real story is completely different.

6
“A NY S PECIFIC P LAYER ”
    T HE FIRST WARNING I got that things might not go so smoothly in New York was out in Hawaii.
    I was a broadcaster for the
Superstars
competition they would have in the off-season. You remember those, where they’d have top athletes—people like Pete Rose, Tony Dorsett, Bruce Jenner, O. J. Simpson, Walter Payton, and others—compete against each other in things that weren’t their sport, usually stuff like track and field, different events like a tug-of-war, sprints, volleyball. Then they started bringing in “SuperTeams”—the two teams that went to the Super Bowl and the World Series.
    I know it seems almost unimaginable now. That’s how different things were, back before free agency. In fact, right after that year, I believe George Steinbrenner put a clause in every Yankee’s contract prohibiting him from doing anything like it in the off-season. The talent just got too high-priced to risk on Sunday afternoon sports filler.
    That winter, they were having a SuperTeams competition out in Hawaii between the Yankees and the Reds, the two teams that had just been in the World Series. It was a great chance for me to be out there with all the guys who were going to be my new teammates. There were ten Yankees altogether, guys like Chambliss, Graig Nettles, Sparky Lyle, Roy White—I don’t remember if Munson or Piniella was there.
    They really didn’t give me the time of day. I was a little stunned, but I was trying to be cool about it. Afterward, I was asked how it was being in Hawaii with my new teammates, and I said it was uncomfortable,and I tried to be diplomatic. I don’t remember being welcomed to the team by any of the Yankees. It was awkward.
    “When I walk outside, and it’s thirty degrees, I’m not comfortable,” I said. “Do you feel comfortable in a bathtub filled with cold water?”
    I thought that would be the way to brush it off, make light of it. But instead, that just set things off. Once what I said got published, another writer asked the Yankees who were there what they thought of it, and that started a whole back-and-forth thing.
    “What were we supposed to do? Take him out to dinner?” one of them said.
    And I read that and I thought, “Well, that wouldn’t be horrible, would it? That would’ve been a normal thing to do.”
    I didn’t understand that. I was going to be their new right fielder, and it didn’t seem they wanted much to do with me. And if you don’t feel welcome, then you don’t reach out. I had friends there because I’d been with ABC for a few years, I was broadcasting with Keith Jackson and Bruce Jenner, so I had plenty to do, places to go. I didn’t need people to hang out with. I just thought that a friendly visit would have been nice. I guess I could have asked them to go out as well.
    To me, once it was over, it was over. I didn’t think too much about it. I didn’t
let
myself think too much about it. But looking back, I should have picked up on that for a sign of how things might go.
    It