Richard Perry/The New York Times
From left, Jimmy Breslin; John Turturro, who played Billy Martin; Leonard Robinson (Mickey Rivers); and Erik Jensen (Thurman Munson).
By RICHARD SANDOMIR
The New York Times
Published: June 21, 2007
LITTLE FALLS, N.J., June 20 — Joe Grifasi was at the Yogi Berra Museum here Wednesday explaining his approach to portraying Berra in “The Bronx Is Burning,” the eight-part miniseries on ESPN that begins July 9.
“Never raise your voice,” said Grifasi, who found Yogi’s voice in its serenity and simplicity. “He never yells.”
Yogi is the Zen foil to Billy Martin (played by John Turturro) in the miniseries. “With Yogi, there aren’t many moving parts, the ones that are are important,” Grifasi said. “I just had to listen to John yell and when he was done, give him a look or say, ‘Are you through?’ ”
There is a reason why Berra’s ears are big.
“He listens a lot,” Grifasi said.
Moments later, Berra was asked what he thought of excerpts he had just seen of “The Bronx Is Burning,” which focuses largely on the fractious Martin-Reggie Jackson-George Steinbrenner psychodrama in 1977, but is also about the hunt for the Son of Sam serial killer, the mayoral race, which Ed Koch won, and the devastating blackout (and ensuing looting) that July.
John Turturro as Billy Martin. Turturro wore latex ears to approximate Martin’s.
“I’d like to know what Yogi thinks,” someone asked Berra.
“Right now?” he said, repurposing an old answer to being asked the time.
“See?” said Grifasi, as if to say that Yogi is best at playing Yogi.
Grifasi’s Berra is a small role, supporting the big three. Oliver Platt’s Steinbrenner is a broadly drawn villain and consummate seducer who tortures the fragile Martin, who either is the team’s savior or is easily replaceable. Jackson, as played by Daniel Sunjata, is oblivious to the effects that his ego has on his teammates. And Turturro’s Martin is full of anger, insecurities, agony and spirituality.
“It was a little haunting; you’re chasing a ghost,” Turturro said, sitting with Grifasi on a panel of actors, Yankee beat writers of the time and Jimmy Breslin, whose columns about the Son of Sam in The Daily News riveted readers during that summer of fear.
“There was something about Billy that people gravitated toward,” Turturro said. “He was such a raw, exposed person.”
Turturro wore jutting prosthetic ears to better resemble Martin and in the film he alternately looks haggard, desperate, feral and prepared to attack. He said he internalized Martin’s combativeness to the point that during a long night of filming in Connecticut, he challenged an assistant director to a fistfight.
“I said, ‘I’ll meet you in the parking lot,’ ” he said. There was no chance of Turturro, as Martin, slugging a marshmallow salesman; that notable Martin bar fight occurred two years after the time period shown in the miniseries.
The rocky relationship among Martin, Reggie Jackson and George Steinbrenner, played by Oliver Platt, left, is a main thread of the show. Right, Platt talking with former third baseman Graig Nettles, a consultant for the project. "Oliver's got George," Nettles said.
Phil Pepe, who covered the Yankees for The Daily News, first encountered Turturro in a trailer outside Dodd Stadium in Norwich, Conn.
“As I approached, he had his back to me, in his Yankee uniform,” Pepe said. “He was so Billy Martin. I got chills. His shoulders were slumped. His hands were in his back pockets. Just like Billy. He had the same way of speaking.”
One incident that ESPN recreates is the Sport magazine interview in which Jackson declared himself “the straw that stirs the drink.” Jackson spoke to the writer Robert Ward (who plays himself) in the spring; the story came out in May 1977 and galvanized the team’s antipathy toward him.
Maury Allen, the beat writer for The New York Post, said his initial response to Ward’s scoop was to say, “Eh, there go those magazine writers,” but as reaction, especially Thurman Munson’s, snowballed, he wondered why Jackson spoke to a freelancer he did not know. Steve Jacobson of Newsday said that Jackson had showcased his self-importance in many ways before, but that the article served as a “gross magnification of what he’d said to us.”
Jacobson, Allen and Pepe, played by actors in the miniseries, are the journalistic sounding boards of Martin and Steinbrenner.
Breslin, played by Michael Rispoli, is the critical journalist shown in the film. He received the crazed and disturbing letter from David Berkowitz, which Berkowitz signed “Son of Sam” and in which he revealed his fixation on the columnist.
Even today, Breslin said, if there was another serial killer who claimed to take homicidal instructions from a dog, he would send letters to Breslin.
Breslin knew his sports (he wrote a book about the hapless 1962 Mets), but on the panel he said that he did not pay much attention to the 1977 Yankees.
Daniel Sunjata as Reggie Jackson in ESPN’s miniseries “The Bronx Is Burning,” an account of the Yankees’ 1977 season.
“I didn’t know anything,” he said. “I heard at the end of the year that Reggie Jackson hit home runs. There was a lot going on.”
Yet in one of the episodes in the miniseries, ESPN shows Rispoli, as Breslin, typing out a column about Berkowitz while watching a Yankees-Red Sox game in which Jackson hit a home run.
Nonetheless, the real Breslin said: “I didn’t not pay attention out of not wanting to know my surroundings. But the Yankees didn’t shoot anybody.”
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