Catfish Hunter’s Yankees deal helped change baseball forever

A most important golden anniversary passed this week. New Year’s Eve marked 50 years to the day since the Yankees flew Catfish Hunter up to their temporary offices (Yankee Stadium was midway through its renovation) and interrupted the celebratory plans of the whole of the city’s baseball writing corps. 

George Steinbrenner was nowhere to be seen because he, too, was nearing the midway point of his own quasi-renovation, waiting out a suspension for admitting illegal political contributions that emerged during the Watergate investigation. 

But his fingerprints were all over this. 

Two years earlier, he’d promised to do anything necessary to make the Yankees champions again. When he’d bought the team on Jan. 3, 1973, the Yankees were already nine years into a playoff drought that would extend to 12, they’d been lapped by the Mets (who outdrew the Yankees by as many as 2-to-1 from 1970-72), and there were constant rumors the franchise would be air-lifted either to New Jersey or New Orleans.