Yankees versus Dodgers Redux

The Yankees return to Chavez Ravine tomorrow night, the first trip there since 1981, when the Yankees were embarrassed by the Dodgers, losing four in a row after winning the first two games of the '81 World Serious.

It was a bizarre time for the Bronx Zoo. In Game Six, Yankee manager Bob Lemon had Bobby Murcer bat for Tommy John, who had and was pitching effectively, in the fourth inning. Hilarity ensued as Murcer flied out and LA went on to pound mercilessly John's successors. The loss led to a public apology by Steinbrenner (though not, as rumor has it, for demanding the pinch hit gambit in a phone call to the Yankee dugout).

But the most bizarre occurence of the serious was Steinbrenner's alleged brawl in a hotel elevator in LA.

They were drunk and profanely abusive, Steinbrenner related at the time, adding that they talked about the "chokers" who played for the Yankees and the "animals" who lived in New York. Steinbrenner most likely thought his players had choked, and he had not always spoken in glowing terms about every aspect of New York, but they were his players and his city. These brash young men, one of whom wore a Dodgers cap, had no business bad-mouthing his players and his people.

Steinbrenner said he responded with an obscenity, whereupon one of the men hit him on the side of the head with a beer bottle he was holding. Steinbrenner, 51 years old at the time, said that in rapid succession he threw three punches - two rights and a left. Down went the first miscreant; down went the second.

Despite a variety of injuries to George (split lip, cast on his hand), and the expectation that the two louts -- missing teeth, according to the Boss -- would sue, the miscreants never came forward.

One more chapter in Yankee lore and in the bizarre saga of one George Steinbrenner.