A sticky situation

Just another quiet day in the Bronx, July 24, 1983 (Robert Rodriguez photo)

Today marks the 41st anniversary of the infamous “Pine Tar Game” at Yankee Stadium, where Kansas City’s George Brett hits a two-run, two-out homer off New York closer Rich Gossage in the ninth inning.

The homer gives the Royals a 5-4 lead.

Or so everyone thinks at the time.

Time, though, is fleeting as Yankees manager Billy Martin, apparently at the urging of coach Don Zimmer, emerges from the dugout to tell the umpires that the homer comes with Brett using an illegal bat.

Specifically, an illegal use of pine tar on the bat with Martin claiming Brett is going beyond the 17 inches allowed by rule for applying the sticky stuff starting at the bat handle.

After the umpires meet to discuss Martin’s interpretation of the rules, rookie plate umpire Tim McClelland calls out Brett, who promptly bolts from the Royals’ dugout to, well, call out McClelland as well as the umpire’s interpretation of Martin’s interpretation and, most likely, McClelland’s lineage.

With McClelland now calling Brett out to end the game, the two-run homer is taken off the board, the Royals lose their 5-4 lead and the Yankees thus win 4-3.

Or so we think. Silly us.

“We expected that protest from the Yankees was coming,” second base umpire and crew chief Joe Brinkman years later tells Sports Illustrated.

“So, when Brett hit the home run, I knew what Billy Martin was talking to Tim about. (McClelland) waved me in and said, ‘Here’s what we’ve got’ And I said, ‘Well, he’s correct.’ … I remember saying, ‘Tim, do you want me to call (Brett) out?’ He said, ‘I got the plate. I’ll do it.’ He probably wishes that he had let me do it.”

Of course, McClelland makes the call to end the game and Brett absolutely loses his mind.

The Royals, of course, immediately file a protest with American League president Lee MacPhail, who while agreeing with the rule in general says the application of the statute by the McClelland, Brinkman and fellow umpires Drew Coble and Nick Bremigan violates the “spirit of the rule.”

In doing so, MacPhail upholds Brett’s home run, restores Kansas City’s 5-4 lead and tells the teams to resume the game at the next earliest opportunity.

In this case, that opportunity comes a few weeks later on Aug. 18, 1983, when – on a scheduled off day for both teams – the Royals and Yankees meet again in the Bronx for the sole purpose of finishing the game from the point of Brett’s homer with two outs in the top of the ninth.

Turns out the rest of the game lasts only four more outs on a total of 16 pitches over 12 minutes to finalize Kansas City’s 5-4 victory.

Yankees manager Billy Martin

A total of 1,245 fans wander into the stadium to watch the end of a game that most think already ends 41 years ago today.

In his protest of the MacPhail’s upholding of the Royals’ protest, Martin openly mocks the resumption of the game by moving the left-handed Don Mattingly from his normal spot at first base to play second base, which always – with the exception, of course, for the rest of this game – is occupied by a right-handed fielder, and then using prized starting pitcher Ron Guidry as his new center fielder.

Historians note Mattingly’s brief move to second base marks the last time in the major leagues that a left-handed fielder plays a middle infield position.

Neither Mattingly nor Guidry is involved in the final play when the game resumes in the top of the ninth inning as George Frazier strikes out the Royals’ Hal McRae for the last out before Kansas City closer Dan Quisenberry works a perfect bottom of the ninth for the save.

“It was a stupid rule,’’ Yankees third baseman Graig Nettles years later tells Sports Illustrated. “Lee MacPhail got the decision right. It was a rule that didn’t make sense.”