New York Yankees pitcher Eddie Lee Whitson sat quietly at the bar of the Cross Keys Inn outside Baltimore, smiling as he peeled the label from the longneck bottle of Budweiser in front of him. It was early in the evening of Saturday, Sept. 21, 1985, and nothing about the scene presaged what was to come. Six hours later, in the same room, during a brutal if sometimes comical 20-minute brawl, Whitson would beat up his manager, Billy Martin.
The 57-year-old Martin would end up with a cast on his broken right arm, the first time that the volatile, fast-punching Martin lost a fight with one of his players—or with almost anyone, for that matter.