Fifty years ago this week the Yankees as we know them — and as we knew them — were reborn.
George Steinbrenner — still more a curiosity than a personality as he neared the end of his first suspension from baseball — gathered his baseball people at the Carlyle Hotel at Madison Avenue and 76th Street. Commissioner Bowie Kuhn had granted Steinbrenner a waiver to conduct the meeting, knowing he was going to lift the ban March 1.
Gabe Paul, the GM, was there with a few assistants. Billy Martin, hired the previous August for his first term as manager, was there. So was Marty Appel, the 27-year-old PR chief, whose eyes and ears would serve as the meeting’s critical chroniclers.
Steinbrenner got right to the point: 1976 would need to be a turning point for the franchise he’d bought three years earlier. The Yankees had finished outside the money for 12 straight seasons. The Red Sox were young and had nearly won the World Series. The Mets were still the preferred team in the city: attendance, TV ratings and they boasted the town’s two brightest baseball stars in Tom Seaver and Dave Kingman.
