After a slow start, the Rangers recovered to some extent, but near the end of June found themselves 12 games behind the A's. Al Martin was originally from Kauai, Hawaii, and was the son of Portuguese immigrants. Billy Martin Killed in Icy Crash - Los Angeles Times Soon afterward, Martin got in touch with several of his former coaches and told them to be ready to join him for a sixth managerial tenure with the Yankees. [207] Falkner noted, "he wanted to win, that was all. Nevertheless, Martin thrived there. In 1979, the team was 54108 (.333), the second-worst record in baseball, and drew less than 4,000 per home game. Billy Martin Sr Martin would manage three major league teams before his first stint as manager of the New York Yankees starting in 1975. No pitcher on the staff won more than nine games that year, and the team had the worst fan attendance in baseball. With Richardson progressing rapidly through the Yankee farm system, Martin worried that his days with the team were numbered. [225] Pennington, who covered the Yankees as a newspaper reporter from 1985 to 1989, described Martin as "without question one of the most magnetic, entertaining, sensitive, humane, brilliant, generous, insecure, paranoid, dangerous, irrational, and unhinged people I had ever met". The season came down to a three-game set between the Tigers and Red Sox, with Boston a half game ahead. The 1977 season saw season-long conflict between Martin and Steinbrenner, as well as between the manager and Yankee slugger Reggie Jackson, including a near brawl between the two in the dugout on national television; but the season culminated in Martin's only world championship as a manager. Then the Yankees left town, without Martin, who now faced playing for a seventh-place team with little hope of doing better. Childhood And Education. After his death the feud between Martin's children and his widow Jill became a prominent story in the New York newspapers. Aggressive baserunning, plus bench jockeying that may have caused Royals third baseman George Brett to make two crucial errors, helped New York win Game One, but Kansas City won two of the next three.