Cliff Johnson
April 19, 1979: The New York Yankees have a fight in their locker room. It's not the only thing that derails their bid for a 4th straight American League Pennant and a 3rd straight World Series win, but it is a big reason why they didn't even come close to the Playoffs that season.
Cliff Johnson was a catcher from San Antonio, and when the Houston Astros arrived while he was in high school, they became the closest thing he'd ever had to a home team in Major League Baseball. They drafted him in 1966, and he made his major league debut with them in 1972.
At the trading deadline in 1977, the Yankees sent Mike Fischlin, Randy Niemann, and a player to be named later (who, after the season, turned out to be Dave Bergman) to the Astros to get him. This turned out to be a very good trade, as he became a backup to Thurman Munson, and provided some pop as a righthanded pinch-hitter and designated hitter, batting a career-high .297, hitting a career-high (but eventually matched) 22 home runs, and had 54 RBIs.
Johnson did not hit as well in 1978, and when Munson got hurt again, Mike Heath seemed to become the Yankees' catcher of the future. Although Johnson had been a key figure in the 1977 postseason, especially in the AL Championship Series, he only had 3 at-bats in the 1978 postseason, even if the AL East Playoff against the Boston Red Sox is included.
Going into the Yankees' game of April 19, 1979, he had played only 5 games, going 4-for-16 with no homers and just 1 RBI. He was looking more and more like trade bait. He did not play in that night's 6-3 loss to the Baltimore Orioles at Yankee Stadium, in which Jim Palmer outpitched newly-acquired veteran Luis Tiant and rookie Paul Mirabella.
Doug DeCinces hit a home run for the O's, and Eddie Murray went 1-for-3 with a walk and 2 RBIs. Mickey Rivers and Chris Chambliss each had 2 hits, but the rest of the Yankees combined only had 4. Reggie Jackson went 0-for-3. And with Munson aching, and Heath having been part of the trade that sent Sparky Lyle to the Texas Rangers to get Mirabella and Dave Righetti, manager Bob Lemon trusted the catching start to rookie Jerry Narron, not the veteran Johnson.
After the game, Reggie did something he probably came to regret. He started kidding Johnson about his inability to hit reliever Rich "Goose" Gossage. While Johnson was showering, Gossage insisted to Jackson that he struck out Johnson all the time when he used to face him, and that he was terrible at the plate: "He either homers or strikes out." He had previously given Johnson the nickname "Breeze," in reference to how his big swing kept Gossage cool on the pitcher’s mound in hot weather.
When Jackson relayed this information to Johnson upon his return to the locker room, all the players assembled, egged on by Jackson, started laughing at him, and, in unison, loudly called him "Breeze" with some waving their arms and hands before doubling over. This infuriated Johnson, and a fight started between he and Gossage.
Johnson won the fight. Gossage tore ligaments in his right thumb, his pitching hand, and missed 3 months of the season, not returning until July 12. Suddenly, having traded Lyle, the 1977 AL Cy Young Award winner, instead of 2 great closers, now, the Yankees had no closer at all.
Ron Guidry, the 1978 AL Cy Young winner, offered to go to the bullpen. Lemon tried it twice, and Guidry ended up with a win and a save. But the man who'd put together the best pitching season in Yankee history the year before was too good to keep out of the rotation. Guidry made only 11 more relief appearances over the rest of his career.
Newly-acquired pitcher Tommy John called Gossage's completely unnecessary injury "a demoralizing blow to the team." The Yankees were 7-5 at the time, so it's not like they were doing great. During his absence, they went 41-35, not appreciably better. But 7 of those losses were what would now be called "walkoffs," and 10 others were by 1 run. If, in those 17 games, the Yankees had simply gone 1 game over .500, 9-8, they would have stayed in the AL East race for most of the season.
Also during that absence, on June 15, 2 years to the day after they got Johnson, they got rid of him, sending him to the Cleveland Indians for pitcher Don Hood, which not only served to be "addition by subtraction" -- Johnson really wasn't doing anything for them -- but also gave them a closer until the Goose returned.
But there had already been a cloud over the season. Just a few weeks after the previous season's World Series, Jerry Lemon, the manager's son, had been killed in a car crash. Bob's mind simply wasn't on baseball in 1979.
Team owner George Steinbrenner's original plan, the previous July, was that he would remove Billy Martin as manager, let Bob be the manager for the rest of 1978 and all of 1979, then, for 1980, make Bob the general manager, and bring Billy back as field manager. But, on June 18, George met with Bob, and it was agreed that Bob would remain in the Yankee organization, but not as manager. George liked to say, "I never really fired anybody," and he had a point: Pretty much anybody he fired, as manager, coach, GM, whatever, he usually offered another job in the organization. And Billy was brought back early.
Aside from Reggie, who never got along with Billy, everybody seemed to think it was the right thing to do. But there were no issues between the for the rest of the season. The team responded to Billy: From his return until August 1, they went 24-17. Although they were 14 games behind the Orioles in the AL East, they had been the sane number behind the Boston Red Sox on the previous season's July 20, and had come all the way back. Maybe, just maybe, they could do it again.
But on August 2, Munson was killed in a plane crash. Now, Narron was the only catcher on the major league roster, and he was batting .188. Suddenly, Cliff Johnson was no longer surplus to requirements, but he was also no longer there. And he was batting .287 at the time.
The Yankees went just 31-27 the rest of the way, finishing in 4th place, 13 1/2 games behind the O's. It was the only season between 1976 and 1981 that the Yankees didn't win the AL East.
The change of scenery did Johnson some good: The rest of the '79 season, he batted .271 for the Indians, hitting 18 home runs with 61 RBIs. After splitting 1980 between the Indians and the Chicago Cubs, he returned to the American League, spending 1981 and '82 with the Oakland Athletics, 1983 and '84 with the Toronto Blue Jays, most of '85 with the Texas Rangers, and the rest of '85 and all of '86 back with the Jays. He always seemed to hit well against the Yankees.
He retired after the '86 season, with a .258 batting average and 196 home runs, including 20 pinch-hit home runs, a record that stood until 2010, broken by Matt Stairs. In spite of the way he left the Yankees, he attended several Old-Timers Days at Yankee Stadium.
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April 19, 1979 was a Thursday. Actress Kate Hudson, daughter of actors Goldie Hawn and Oliver Hudson, was born.
Football was out of season. The NBA, the NHL and the WHA were all into their Playoffs, but no games were scheduled for this day. But these 5 other Major League Baseball games were played that day:
* The Boston Red Sox beat the Milwaukee Brewers, 5-3 at Fenway Park in Boston. Carl Yastzremski went 2-for-3 with a walk. For the Brewers, Cecil Cooper hit a home run, Robin Yount went 0-for-3 with a walk, and Paul Molitor went 1-for-4.
* The Cincinnati Reds beat the Atlanta Braves, 2-0 at Riverfront Stadium in Cincinnati. Tom Seaver pitched a 2-hit shutout, outpitching Phil Niekro. Johnny Bench did not play for the Reds in this game.
* The Chicago Cubs beat their arch-rivals, the St. Louis Cardinals, 3-2 at Wrigley Field in Chicago. Lou Brock went 2-for-4 with a stolen base and an RBI.
* The California Angels beat the Minnesota Twins, 6-4 at Metropolitan Stadium in the Minneapolis suburb of Bloomington, Minnesota. Rod Carew went 1-for-4 with a walk for the Angels against the team he left in the previous off-season.
* And the San Francisco Giants beat the San Diego Padres, 14-10 at San Diego Stadium (later Jack Murphy Stadium and Qualcomm Stadium). Yes, that's a baseball game, not a football game. Vida Blue outpitched Mickey Lolich. Marc Hill (who homered) and Terry Whitfield each had 4 RBIs for the Giants. Dave Winfield went 2-for-5.
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