Pine tar book fills in the sticky details of George Brett’s infamous 1983 home run

Kansas City Royals owner Ewing Kauffman died in 1993 and George Steinbrenner’s New York Yankees sent the largest bouquet.

Those are hard words for the 13-year-old me to read, written in “The Pine Tar Game” by Filip Bondy. That kid is sure somebody sent the flowers without Steinbrenner’s knowledge and signed his name. That kid hopes Hal McRae waited at the door to roll-block that bouquet into left field.

Such was the anger and bitterness Royals-Yankees produced for a glorious decade or so, starting in 1976. Like any substantive rivalry, it was about much more than nine innings. It covered regional pride, ethical ways to build a roster and workplace decorum. George Brett’s home run in Yankee Stadium, disallowed and then — spoiler — reinstated, signaled one final major conflict before the heat between the two franchises faded away.

“During the late seventies and early eighties, the Yankees and Royals produced one of the three greatest postseason rivalries in the history of the sport,” Bondy writes. “The two franchises may have followed very different paths over recent decades, but the upstart Royals were at the time a very real threat to the haughty supremacy of the pinstriped empire.”

I followed the July 24, 1983 Pine Tar saga while on vacation in Colorado, certain the episode provided more proof of the evil residing in New York. Bondy’s book fills in all the details I missed, ignored or forgot in all the retellings. For many, the Pine Tar game is summarized by Brett’s mad rush at the umpires. Bondy’s book details how so much of the history of both teams produced that moment.

I’m sure I didn’t fully understand the big market-small market, Broadway vs. Cowtown forces at work during the late 1970s. The Royals and Yankees met in the playoffs in 1976, 1977 and 1978. The Yankees won all three. I hated them for that and expressed that anger in many teen-age ways.

When I bought Topps baseball cards at Kraus grocery store in Colwich, I most of all hoped for George Brett or Frank White. If absent, I hoped for Reggie Jackson or Graig Nettles, so I could tear the cards into tiny pieces. I rode the bus three miles to school and about two miles in the bus picked up the Freunds — Matt and his two older sisters. Matt and I loved the Royals. His sisters loved to torment us by rooting for the Yankees. We settled the arguments by keeping track of who could name the most players on their team’s roster. In my memory, Matt and I won.

His sisters, however, enjoyed three trips to the World Series and Matt and I swallowed lessons on the cruelty of life while sitting on green vinyl bench seats in a yellow school bus.

For a more balanced chronicling of the Royals-Yankees drama, Bondy is an excellent source. He covered the Pine Tar game and the aftermath for the Bergen (N.J.) Record and the New York Daily News, where he now works as a sports columnist. He weaves together the Yankees’ tradition, swagger and disfunction with tales of Charlie Finley, Rush Limbaugh, Gaylord Perry and David Cone to thoroughly document the conditions that led Brett to make his infamous sprint to home.

Certainly, the moment is not the moment if it happens in Cleveland.

The Yankees are one of those teams that everybody considers a big game — like the Dallas Cowboys, Notre Dame or Texas. The Yankees, blessed with more resources, dominated the American League. In 1955, this became personal for Kansas City baseball fans when the Athletics moved to town and soon became an unequal trading partner with the Yankees. Players such as Roger Maris, Clete Boyer and Ralph Terry went to the Yankees. Nobody much remembers who the Athletics received.

“The 1961 Yankees, one of the greatest teams in baseball history, featured 10 former Athletics,” Bondy writes.

Kansas City’s place as a baseball town improved when the Athletic’s moved to Oakland in 1968 and when Kauffman purchased the rights to an American League expansion franchise. The Royals began play in 1969, won 85 games in 1971 and made the playoffs in 1976. It was the model way to turn a team of spare parts into a winner “in large part because of the owner’s enterprising methods and his ability to delegate key duties to competent men,” Bondy writes.

In 1976, it became so clear.

Steinbrenner’s Yankees bought great players, which, while legal, wasn’t sporting. The Royals won with homegrown stars and wise trades. Steinbrenner ran his mouth to the press, fired people at a whim and ran an unseemly circus with crude manager Billy Martin, whom he fired five times. Kauffman sedately, respectfully ran the Royals and let his baseball people do most of the work.

A New York way. A Midwest way. No mystery as to what that meant.

As Bondy points out, both themes had their flaws. The Yankees won with many of their farm-system stars, such as Mickey Mantle, Thurman Munson and Ron Guidry. John Mayberry’s mysterious flop in the 1977 playoffs and the cocaine scandal that battered the Royals in the 1980s chipped away at their image.

But enough of the narrative rang true to make for great theater that Bondy captures and contrasts.

Baseball suspended Steinbrenner twice, once for illegal campaign contributions to Richard Nixon. Steinbrenner fired a public relations director for flying home for Christmas. Martin, while married, passed notes from the dugout during a game to his girlfriend. Kauffman, although not known for paying employees well, made the Royals a civic treasure and went to great lengths to keep the club in Kansas City after his death.

The playoff rivalry ended in 1980, when the Royals eliminated the Yankees and Brett homered off Rich Gossage in New York to end the frustration. In 1983, the emotions continued to run hot when Brett again homered off Gossage in the Bronx.

If you’ve seen the highlight of Brett charging out the dugout, aiming for umpire Tim McClelland, you know what happened. The Royals trailed 4-3 in the ninth inning when Brett homered with two outs and U.L. Washington on base for a 5-4 lead.

“All sanity left the building,” Bondy writes of the aftermath.

The Yankees protested the amount of pine tar, a sticky substance used for grip, and the umpires agreed.

Most of the book is about the fun, emotion and silliness of the games. Bondy’s most important chapter details how the Royals appeared to win, lost, and then won again when they appealed McClelland’s call of out.

Credit goes to Dean Taylor, Kansas City’s assistant director of scouting development, who watched the game on TV and immediately went to the rule book. His letter, telexed to AL president Lee McPhail, provided the evidence for the reversal and a resumption of the game.

The book is blessed with great timing. Both the Royals and Yankees appear destined for the playoffs this season. A meeting will no doubt work up all those old memories. Bondy’s book serves as perfect preparation for what could happen — again — in October between two very different franchises.

This story was originally published July 27, 2015 at 6:53 PM with the headline "Pine tar book fills in the sticky details of George Brett’s infamous 1983 home run."