Billy Martin

Billy Martin

Alfred Manuel Martin Jr. was an American Major League Baseball second baseman and manager. He was known as a scrappy infielder who made considerable contributions to the championship Yankee teams of the 1950s. In each of his stints with the Yankees he managed them to winning records before being fired by team owner George Steinbrenner or resigning under fire.

About Billy Martin in brief

Summary Billy MartinAlfred Manuel Martin Jr. was an American Major League Baseball second baseman and manager. He was known as a scrappy infielder who made considerable contributions to the championship Yankee teams of the 1950s. In each of his stints with the Yankees he managed them to winning records before being fired by team owner George Steinbrenner or resigning under fire. Martin died in an automobile accident in upstate New York on Christmas night, 1989, and is fondly remembered by many Yankee fans. The last team for whom Martin played, the Minnesota Twins, gave him a job as a scout, and he spent most of the 1960s with them, becoming a coach in 1965. As manager, Martin led the team to consecutive American League pennants in 1976 and 1977; the Yankees were swept in the 1976 World Series by the Cincinnati Reds but triumphed over the Los Angeles Dodgers in six games in the 1977 World Series. In 1980 to 1982, he managed the Oakland Athletics, earning a division title with an aggressive style of play known as \”Billyball\”, but he was fired after the 1982 season. He was given his father’s name; the elder Martin, usually Al, was born in Kauai, Hawaii, but his mother’s birth name was Juvanini, but she went by the first name Jenny for most of her life. There is some doubt that Jenny and Al ever married, but they lived together as a couple for a time during which Billy was nicknamed Tudo, nicknamed for a truck. The couple had a son, Frank, whom she later claimed was unfaithful, and later claimed that she had a second son, Tudo Pisani, nicknamed Frank Tudo.

The son, nicknamed Billy, had moved to Hawaii, and had moved the family to Oakland, California, about the time of the 1906 earthquake, when she also changed her last name to Pisani. The family moved across the San Francisco Bay to San Francisco, but moved back to Kauai in the mid-20th century, when the earthquake struck. He died in a car accident in 1989, but is still remembered as one of the greatest baseball players of all time. He is survived by his wife and two children, both of whom are active in the baseball community. He also leaves behind a son and a daughter, Billy Martin III, who played for the Oakland Oaks in the Pacific Coast League in the late 1950s and early 1960s. Martin was the hitting star of the 1953 World Series, earning the Most Valuable Player award in the Yankee victory. In 1969, Martin was made Twins manager in 1969. He led the club to the American League West title, but was Fired after the season. He then was hired by a declining Detroit Tigers franchise in 1971, and led theteam to an American League East title in 1972 before being Fired by the Tigers late in the 1973 season. In 1975, he was quickly hired by the Texas Rangers, and turned them for a season into a winning team but was fired amid conflict with ownership in 1975.