Billy Martin and Jim Brewer, Revisited

Post date: May 10, 2013 5:30:46 PM

Billy Martin and Jim Brewer, Revisited

For all the debate and discussion surrounding the incident between the San Diego Padres’ Carlos Quentin and the Los Angeles Dodgers’ Zack Greinke, it is interesting to see how baseball history has a way of repeating itself. Fifty two years ago a sparse crowd at Chicago’s Wrigley Field witnessed firsthand how a frustrated hitter can only take “so much” before he snaps and takes justice into his own hands, with himself and many others suffering the consequences.

On August 4, 1960 Jim Brewer was pitching for the Chicago Cubs against the Cincinnati Reds in front of a crowd of 4,209 when Billy Martin came to bat. Brewer delivered a fastball, high and inside, and Martin reflexively raised his arm to avoid being hit in the head. While Martin claimed the pitch hit him in the elbow, home plate umpire Stan Landes disagreed and called it a foul ball, saying it hit his bat. Martin was incensed, swung and intentionally missed the next pitch, and purposefully threw his bat in Brewer’s direction after missing the ball. When nobody offered to return it to him he went out near the mound to get it himself. Martin claimed that as he was bending over to grab it Brewer walked off the mound and said “you little Dago SOB” , with his left hand balled up in a fist. Martin reached up and sucker-punched the much taller Brewer in the face, knocking him to the turf, while Cubs catcher Elvin Tappe and first baseman Frank Thomas immediately rushed Martin, knocked him to the ground, and piled on. Martin’s roommate, pitcher Calvin McLish, came out to free Martin but suffered injured ribs when Brewer, still on the ground, kicked him in the chest. McLish then landed several clean punches on Brewers’ face. This embroglio was Martin’s eleventh fisticuff in just over ten years of professional baseball.

The pitch evoked some traumatic memories for the truculent little second baseman which triggered his violent reaction. One year earlier in 1959, while playing for the pennant-contending Cleveland Indians, Martin was hit in the face when the Washington Senators' Tex Clevenger lost control of a fastball. The ball hit him flush on the temple. Martin was rushed to the hospital with a broken jaw, broken orbital bone, and a shattered cheekbone. He was out of action for six weeks and returned wearing a football faceguard on a batting helmet. He vowed after the Clevenger beaning that he wouldn’t take it anymore when pitchers threw at him.

While Martin played six weeks after his 1959 beaning, Brewer did not fare nearly so well six weeks after the sucker punch. The big right-hander underwent three separate surgeries in August 1960 alone, and by mid-September - his six week mark - Brewer's vision problems were so bad that he could not see well enough to pick up a baseball, let alone pitch it.

A little more than two weeks later the Reds returned to Wrigley Field for a make-up game. Brewer and Chicago Cubs owner Phil Wrigley slapped Martin with a million dollar lawsuit, with Wrigley adding to the indignity by having the scrappy second baseman served in the visitors' locker room at Wrigley Field before the game. A shocked Martin tried to cover his anxiety by saying “Ask Wrigley how he’d like it, cash or check.” In his biography he vowed that McLish’s punches did all the damage to Brewer but kept his feelings to himself at the time. The Reds' front office initially got a lawyer to defend Martin but after they traded him to Milwaukee (and also after the Reds had a front office regime change) Martin was left on his own. Wrigley dropped his lawsuit but Brewer did not. The case went to a jury trial, which did not buy Martin’s argument that when a pitcher walks off the mound toward a batter it means that he wants to fight. Brewer was awarded $25,000 but the amount was later cut in half. Martin got the money from an acquaintance in Minneapolis and spent several years paying it off.

Brewer came back from his serious injuries and pitched seventeen years for the Cubs, Dodgers, and Angels. He appeared in three World Series for the Dodgers in 1965, ’66, and ‘74. When he retired he was 69-65 with a 3.07 ERA and more than twice as many strikeouts than walks.

There are remarkable parallels between the Quentin/Greinke incident and the Martin/Brewer incident. Quentin claimed Greinke came off the mound and gestured, just like Martin claimed Brewer came off the mound and cursed him . Greinke braced his shoulder as Quentin rushed him, and Brewer balled his fist as Martin approached the mound. Both Greinke and Brewer got the worst of their encounters, yet their assailants suffered greatly in the past in identical situations, and in Quentin’s case he was victimized by the same individual --Greinke-- many times in the past. Perhaps if Greinke had started his career in a league where pitchers have to bat he would not have included hitting hitters like Quentin in his repertoire........

Perhaps someday baseball players will realize that everyone loses a beanball war.