‘The Pine Tar Game,” a new book by Daily News columnist Filip Bondy from Scribner, details the historically wacky game between the Yankees and Kansas City Royals that took place at the Old Stadium on July 24, 1983. After George Brett’s ninth-inning, two-run homer the umpire crew famously heeded Billy Martin’s argument that Brett’s bat exceeded the 18-inch limit on pine tar and called him out, sparking baseball’s most famous tantrum.
Back in 1983, Bondy covered the event, and the legal machinations that followed. His book also explores what was then, and could become again, a heated rivalry between the small-market Royals and dynastic Yanks.