#brawls

The Yankees of the 1950s were as well-known for their high-octane partying as their feats on the field. One infamous incident happened on May 16, 1957.

To celebrate Billy Martin's 29th birthday, a group of six Yankees, including Mickey Mantle, Yogi Berra, Whitey Ford, and Hank Bauer, and their wives, went to the Copacabana. They had already been to two other clubs, and were pretty buzzed.

A bowling team from Washington Heights, carousing above their station in life (that is a JOKE, no nasty notes please) was also present—and similarly sloshed. The headliner that night was Sammy Davis, Jr. Shortly after the Yanks entered, the bowlers began to heckle Davis, hurling racial epithets. The ballplayers asked the bowlers to cool it, and matters quickly went downhill.

What exactly happened was a mystery for decades. At any rate, a fight ensued. One of the bowling team, Edwin Jones, a 42-year old delicatessen owner, claimed that the big and beefy Bauer had socked him. He did go to Roosevelt Hospital with a concussion, a fractured jaw and a broken nose.

"Whitey or Yogi grabbed me and said, 'Get out of here,'" Bauer said later. "So I did, and we go back to the hotel. It's 2 or 2:30 in the morning by then, and around 4:30 the phone rings, and a writer tells me, 'Some guy claims you hit him.' I was booked, fingerprinted and walked down the street with a detective, and it made me feel like a criminal."

"Nobody did nothin' to nobody" was how Yogi summed it all up. But the Yankees were fined and Jones brought a lawsuit against Bauer, which was later dismissed. And later that season, Martin was traded (the team's owner thought he was a bad influence on Mantle, who was clearly the future of the franchise), causing much bitterness and leading to his slide as a player.

Above: Mickey Mantle, Billy Martin, Hank Bauer, and Charlene Friede Bauer after a grand jury cleared Bauer of assault charges from the fight at the Copa. Photo: Harry Harris for the AP via the NY Times

It wasn't until three years ago that another version of events came to light. Joey Silvestri, a bouncer at the Copa, told the New York Times that "[t]here were no Yankees involved in the fight. Nobody threw a punch but me." He said he'd socked Jones twice, and the victim's head had hit a wall. "Hank Bauer and Billy Martin have always been maligned, when they're really the good guys. They were protecting Sammy Davis that night. If that happened today, they'd build a monument to them."

edgar the rabbit

Who do they call for help? Can they even manage to feel around for their phone in the dark after taking so many hits?

Or maybe they have no one to ask. They're forced to lay there until they're body lets them finally limp home.