New York Yankees pitcher Eddie Lee Whitson sat quietly at the bar of the Cross Keys Inn outside Baltimore, smiling as he peeled the label from the longneck bottle of Budweiser in front of him. It was early in the evening of Saturday, Sept. 21, 1985, and nothing about the scene presaged what was to come. Six hours later, in the same room, during a brutal if sometimes comical 20-minute brawl, Whitson would beat up his manager, Billy Martin.

The 57-year-old Martin would end up with a cast on his broken right arm, the first time that the volatile, fast-punching Martin lost a fight with one of his players—or with almost anyone, for that matter. After four decades in the spotlight, and a hefty pugilistic record, it was also the last of Martin’s public fisticuffs.

But at the beginning of that long night, Whitson was at ease when I approached him at the Cross Keys Inn bar. I was in my first year as a traveling Yankee beat writer, but Whitson had always been easy to talk to, and besides, on this day there was gossip to dispense. The night before, in an episode that has since been overshadowed by the more momentous Whitson-Martin clash, Martin had nearly exchanged blows with a bridegroom celebrating his wedding night. That, not surprisingly, was the scuffle everyone was talking about the next day. It had occurred just a few feet from where Whitson was sitting. I had witnessed the short, mostly amusing skirmish but Whitson had not. I joined him for a beer and related the details of the bridegroom tussle. Despite his confrontational reputation, Billy Martin was almost always charming, engaging and sociable with strangers in bars. People would flock to him and Billy would befriend them, as he did with the newlyweds that Friday night. He bought them a bottle of champagne and danced with the bride. Eventually, the couple left the bar for their hotel room, but minutes later the groom, still in his tuxedo and weaving unsteadily, reappeared at Billy’s side.

TIME CAPSULE September 1985 SEPTEMBER 1 The wreck of the Titanic is located in the North Atlantic by a joint U.S.-French expedition using sonar. Universal History Archive/Getty Images

“Hey, Billy, we’ve got to talk,” he said loudly. “You told my wife she has a potbelly.”

While it was hard to believe that he had ever heard such an accusation before, especially from a bridegroom, Billy nevertheless seemed unmoved.

“I did not say she had a potbelly,” Billy said, flatly and without emotion. He pointed at another woman at the bar with her husband and added, “I said this woman had a fat ass.”

Now there were two men upset at Billy. Some minor shoving ensued. Players and coaches intervened. That is all there was to it, and in the long, rich history of the Yankees, the incident has been largely forgotten.

But at the time, Whitson, who day by day in 1985 had developed a hatred of Billy, was fascinated by what he had heard. He looked around the bar. “I’m having a beer now, then getting out of here before the real festivities start,” he said with a laugh. He did not keep his word.

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The seeds for the Whitson-Martin fight had been sown months earlier. Whitson despised the way Billy wanted to call every pitch and made each outing seem a do-or-die affair, and Billy thought Whitson lacked the stomach to handle the pressure of playing New York. But the flash point that weekend in Baltimore was Billy’s decision to scratch Whitson from his scheduled start on Friday, Sept. 20. The Yankees had lost seven consecutive games, but with the American League East title still in reach, Billy did not trust Whitson to end the losing streak. Whitson’s ERA over his previous four starts was 7.32. When Whitson got the news that he would not be pitching, he kicked his spikes across the floor of the visiting clubhouse at Memorial Stadium and flung his glove in his locker. His teammates ignored him.

Whitson, signed as a free agent from San Diego in the off­season, was an odd fit on the 1985 Yankees, a no-nonsense team led by Don Mattingly and three future Hall of Famers—Dave Winfield, Rickey Henderson and Phil Niekro. High-strung and unpredictable, Whitson had few close friends in the Yankees clubhouse, where a veteran team respected quiet, consistent efficiency to counteract the tension and instability of George Steinbrenner’s bombastic reign.

Raised in the mountains of eastern Tennessee, Whitson had started the season 1-6 and saved his worst outings for the mound at Yankee Stadium, where he was booed mercilessly. By September, the Yankees were trying to use Whitson only on the road, but now Billy had circumvented that plan as well. Whitson seethed but said nothing.

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On Saturday, Sept. 21, after the Yankees’ slump ended with an afternoon victory, Whitson eventually left the Cross Keys Inn for dinner in downtown Baltimore seven miles away. Almost the entire Yankees traveling party did the same. But by 11:45 p.m., everyone was back at the Cross Keys bar just off the lobby, largely because there were no other late-night options in the area. Billy was seated at the bar talking with Dale Berra, Yogi’s son, and Dale’s wife, Leigh. Whitson, who, like Billy, had been drinking most of the night, was in a booth behind Billy.

Next to Whitson, only a few feet away, was Albert Millus, an attorney from Binghamton, N.Y., who had tickets to the games in Baltimore.

“Whitson was agitated and talking loudly about Billy Martin,” Millus said in an interview years later. “A woman, I think Dale Berra’s wife, came over to Whitson and was trying to calm him. But Whitson kept saying things like, ‘That man won’t pitch me’ or ‘That S.O.B. won’t play me.’”