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Old 04-04-2017, 05:33 PM
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Neil
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Location: Connecticut
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Great story Mike. They do seem to be some of the most unpretentious athletes you'd ever want to meet. Humble and fan friendly. Let's hope it stays that way. Believe it or not Billy Martin was a great guy towards fans too. Grew up in the Bronx and spent many many days at Yankee Stadium. He was managing the Yanks I think it was '77. Not good with dates, but me and a few of the boys had great seats behind the plate one night. Steinbrenner and Billy were having a contract dispute at the time. One of the guys made a sign that read; Hey Steinblubber give Billy what he wants. Martin saw it from the dugout, heard us yelling it throughout the game. Several times during the game he came up to the top step of the dugout monitoring to us to quiet down. We were about 12 beers into the game each so that wasn't going to happen. Anyway the game ends. We're hanging around the stadium long after the game. We had purchased a couple of six packs from a local bodega. We never expected what happened next. Billy comes out the press gate and heads to his Lincoln town car, license plate NY 1. He sees us, we see him and he waves us over. We spent the next hour in the vacant players parking lot while Billy shared a couple of beers with us leaning up against his town car. Just chatted the hour away about normal stuff. We didn't ask for autographs, we were all kind of drunk and shocked but he made our summers. But, I digress, this is a hockey forum. Hope I don't get time in the Chateau Bow Wow for telling this story.


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