Slightly more than 16 years apart, Steve Howe and Billy Martin, two troubled baseball souls whose most notorious times occurred with the Yankees, died in similar accidents while riding in their pickup trucks.
Martin, who died on Christmas in 1989, had a stormy tenure as manager of the Yankees and was most notoriously known for his departures. He resigned under pressure once, and George Steinbrenner fired him four other times. Baseball commissioners suspended Howe seven times, the last time when he was pitching for the Yankees.
Both are baseball records.
PHOTO: AP
Howe was killed Friday, the authorities said, when his pickup truck rolled over in Coachella, California, about 130 miles east of Los Angeles, at 5:55am Pacific time. In 1997, when Howe was trying to make a comeback in an independent league, he was badly injured in a motorcycle accident in Montana. In that instance he was charged with drunken driving.
There was no immediate word on the cause of Howe's fatal accident.
Howe, who turned 48 last month, was addicted to cocaine and alcohol. Even his biggest supporters, including his baseball agent, Richard Moss, acknowledged that he had problems. Howe preceded the steroids era, but he underwent more tests for drugs than any player ever will for steroids. Fay Vincent, the baseball commissioner who issued Howe's seventh suspension, which an arbitrator overturned, recalled Friday that when Howe was out of baseball after suspension No. 6, he appealed to Vincent to be reinstated.
"He wanted one more chance," Vincent said in a telephone interview. "He begged me to give him one more chance. He got religion and had cleaned up his life. I sent him to the minors and had him tested. He passed all the tests. The Yankees brought him up. He almost immediately bought drugs from an undercover agent."
Vincent suspended Howe for life in June 1992. The players association challenged the suspension, and in a departure from usual practice, Moss, the union's former general counsel, argued the case before an arbitrator, George Nicolau.
"He was misdiagnosed," Moss said in a telephone interview. "He was sent to programs that had nothing to do with his disease."
Howe, Moss argued, had attention deficit disorder, and that caused his addictions. Yankees officials strongly supported Howe, an effective relief pitcher.
"George Steinbrenner was not sympathetic to Howe," Vincent recalled of the Yankees' principal owner, whom Vincent had suspended for other reasons. "When I called him and told him what I was doing, he said: `You won't have any problem from me.' But I had problems with Michael and Showalter."
Gene Michael, the Yankees' general manager, argued that baseball's drug policy was bad. Vincent strongly reminded Michael that as a club executive he was obliged to support the policy, not fight it. It's difficult to believe that any club executive today would criticize baseball's steroids testing policy. He wouldn't be around long if he did.
Nicolau agreed with Moss's argument on attention deficit disorder, finding that "an underlying psychiatric disorder" had contributed to Howe's cocaine addiction, and overturned the suspension, reducing it to time served. Howe pitched for the Yankees into the 1996 season, and they released him in June.
Howe's troubles didn't end there. Two days after he was released, he was arrested at Kennedy Airport when security officers found a loaded .357 Magnum in his suitcase. He subsequently pleaded guilty to gun possession and was sentenced to three years' probation and 150 hours of community service.
Moss said he hadn't seen Howe in a long time, but had last talked to him just before Christmas. "He told me his daughter was going to get married," Moss said.
Moss, who generally felt very highly of all of his clients, said Howe was a good person despite his problems.
"He got vilified in the press and got this reputation for being a bad guy," Moss said, "but talk to any player on the team he played for and they'll tell you he was a wonderful guy. He was a sick guy and misdiagnosed." Mossadded, "One of the proudest moments in my professional life was being able to get him back into baseball, seeing what his disease was and having him treated."
The grievance victory had to be a highlight of Moss' career. Any time a lawyer can use something like attention deficit disorder to extricate a player from his seventh baseball suspension, he has to feel good. Howe, however, needed more than a good lawyer.
A runner who stopped during a marathon in China to pose doing the splits and another who hoarded energy gels have been banned for two years, the local athletics association said yesterday. The incidents happened during Sunday’s marathon in Sichuan Province’s Chengdu and were widely shared online. Videos showed a female runner stopping suddenly and dropping to the ground in the splits position, holding up her arms in a heart shape as she apparently posed for a photograph. She “committed obstructive fouls during the race, affecting the safe participation of other runners,” the Sichuan Athletics Association said in a statement, which identified
Mercedes’ Kimi Antonelli yesterday vowed to “keep raising the bar” after winning the Japanese Grand Prix to become the youngest driver in Formula One history to lead the championship standings. The 19-year-old Italian took advantage of a mid-race safety car to jump into the lead after a dreadful start from pole position, crossing the line ahead of McLaren’s Oscar Piastri and Ferrari’s Charles Leclerc. Antonelli’s Suzuka victory came two weeks after the first grand prix win of his career in China, and sent him top of the championship standings after three races, nine points ahead of team-mate George Russell. Mercedes are struggling to
Yu Yao-hsing on Tuesday nabbed Taiwan’s only goal in the final round of qualifiers for the 2027 AFC Asian Cup, as they fell 3-1 to Sri Lanka at Taipei Municipal Stadium. Early goals from Sri Lanka in the first half left Taiwan struggling to get on the board, and Christopher Tiao’s own goal at 53 minutes sealed the team’s fate in the third round of qualifiers. While acknowledging that the defeat, Taiwan’s sixth in Group D, was disappointing, head coach Matt Ross said he saw reasons to stay positive about the team’s development. “There were lots of positive signs in terms of the
Teng Kai-wei, the only Taiwanese player on an opening-day roster in this year’s Major League Baseball (MLB) season, took his first win of the year with the Houston Astros in his season debut. Teng entered in relief in the top of the fifth inning against the Los Angeles Angels on Saturday, with the Astros trailing 5-0. He pitched 2-1/3 scoreless innings with two strikeouts, as Houston scored 11 runs during his outing to snatch an 11-9 comeback victory. The win is the Astros’ first of the season and the third of Teng’s MLB career. “It’s my first time pitching for the Astros, so
RSS