The Pine Tar Incident
George Brett had a helluva stroke and then almost had one Gather around, young ones. I’m about to tell you about how Major League Baseball Hall-of-Famer Billy Martin turned fellow Hall-of-Famer George Brett into a human volcano. Which is quite the turnaround because Billy Martin was famous for his eruptions. Brett’s team, the Kansas City Royals were playing the Martin-managed New York Yankees that day. The backstory is that both teams hated each other, in a sporting sense. It wasn’t hatred like the Hatfields and the McCoys or the Montagues and the Capulets. That’s a whole other story. The teams in the late ’70s and ’80s were perennial playoff opponents. They often met in the American League Championship Series for the right to advance to the fall classic. The World Series. The Yankees, of course, dominated the Royals. They’d brush past them like the Royals were the weak peasant pretenders to the throne. The Royals were a folly standing in the way of the Yankees’ right...