The New York Times bestseller. “The sprawling, brawling, no-punches-pulled narrative Martin deserves . . . one of baseball’s epic characters.”—Tom Verducci, bestselling author of The Cubs Way
Even now, years after his death, Billy Martin remains one of the most intriguing and charismatic figures in baseball history. And the most misunderstood. A manager who is widely considered to have been a baseball genius, Martin is remembered more for his rabble-rousing and public brawls on the field and off. He was combative and intimidating, yet endearing and beloved. In Billy Martin, Bill Pennington resolves these contradictions and pens the definitive story of Martin’s life. From his hardscrabble youth to his days on the Yankees in the 1950s and through sixteen years of managing, Martin made sure no one ever ignored him. Drawing on exhaustive interviews and his own time covering Martin as a young sportswriter, Pennington provides an intimate, revelatory, and endlessly colorful story of a truly larger-than-life sportsman.
“Enormously entertaining … Explores the question of whether a baseball lifer can actually be a tragic figure in the classic sense—a man destroyed by the very qualities that made him great.”—The Wall Street Journal
“Bill Pennington gives long-overdue flesh to the caricature … Pennington savors the dirt-kicking spectacles without losing sight of the man.”—The New York Times Book Review
“The hair on my forearms was standing up by the end of the fifth paragraph of this book’s introduction. I knew Billy Martin. I covered Billy Martin. But I never knew him like this.”—Dan Shaughnessy, bestselling author of Reversing the Curse