Bronx Zoo ‘90: the season the New York Yankees hit a chaotic low

Championships, champagne and ticker-tape parades – that’s the story of New York Yankees baseball, right? Not if you were on the team in 1990.

During that season, the team’s combustible owner, George Steinbrenner, was banned from baseball after connecting with gambler Howard Spira to discredit one of his own players, Dave Winfield. Outfielder Mel Hall brought two cougar cubs into the clubhouse and had a relationship with an underage high school student. On the field, the team was so bad that pitcher Andy Hawkins threw a no-hitter – and still lost. The Yankees stumbled to a last-place finish in the American League East. Their lowlight reel from the season gets a second look in a new documentary on Peacock in the US – Bronx Zoo ‘90: Crime, Chaos and Baseball.

“There’s a little bit of human drama in a Goodfellas way,” says the film’s director, DJ Caruso. “I feel like this documentary, this docuseries, is for everyone. If you like true crime, you’re going to like this documentary. If you like sports, you’re going to love this documentary … I think there’s a really broad audience for this, and it’s not just a baseball documentary.”

If you pine for the late 1980s and early 90s, get ready for some nostalgic moments, from Pac-Man to Mike Tyson’s upset loss to Buster Douglas to pre-gentrification New York City. There’s even Nelson Mandela visiting Yankee Stadium and donning a Yankees cap, plus the era’s tabloid headlines in all their glory – “Boss Answered Call of the Vile,” “One Owner Away From a Championship.”

The idea to revisit that season came during the onset of the Covid pandemic in 2020. With the world in lockdown, and baseball on hiatus, New York Post sports columnist Joel Sherman got the OK to do a retrospective on the 1990 squad. Sherman was part of the story – back then, he was a second-year Yankees beat reporter for the Post. Now the series has been adapted for the screen, featuring interviews with many of the principals – including Spira and Hall, plus prosecutor Kim D’Avignon, who eventually helped send the latter to prison.

As Sherman notes in the third and final episode, abnormal became the new normal in 1990.

Even before the year began there were seismic shocks. Sherman turned on the TV while hosting Christmas Eve dinner with his future wife and mother-in-law and learned that longtime Yankees manager Billy Martin had died in a car accident that day. Martin had been rumored to be coming back for a sixth stint as skipper to replace the embattled Bucky Dent.

“I turned to [my family] – no cell phones then, no internet,” Sherman recalls. “I pointed to the land line and said: ‘In the next minute, that phone is going to ring and I’m going to have to disappear for the rest of the night.’ And 30 seconds later, the phone rang, that was my editor.”

Spring training under Dent got off to an inauspicious start. The Yankees had signed free agent pitcher Pascual Perez to a big contract, but he delayed joining the team in Florida. When he finally arrived from his home in the Dominican Republic, an outraged Steinbrenner made him pitch in a workout that night. The docuseries suggests that this hampered him for the upcoming season.

The Yankees had other talented players, including two-sport star Deion Sanders and mainstays Winfield and Don Mattingly. However, Sanders flopped, Donnie Baseball ended the year on the disabled list and Winfield’s contract proved a sore point with Steinbrenner – who, according to the docuseries, had overlooked a cost-of-living increase. As owner and star squabbled, Steinbrenner found a solution – Spira and the dirt he offered on Winfield and his charitable foundation.

Winfield ultimately left the Yankees via a trade to the Angels. So did Dent – who was fired during a game against the Boston Red Sox at Fenway Park. Fenway, ironically, was the scene of his greatest heroics for New York; as an unheralded player in 1978, he hit a go-ahead homer in a winner-take-all playoff game.

New manager Stump Merrill was left with a team burdened by injuries and underperforming players. There was a bright spot in rookie Kevin Maas; female fans showed their appreciation for his home runs in a way that wasn’t exactly G-rated. And one day Hall brought a pair of unexpected feline guests into the clubhouse and chained them to his locker, resulting in a stained carpet.

“I don’t think that would happen today,” Caruso says. “No one would have a pair of live cougars that were going to be walking around a locker room.”

Even after Winfield’s departure from the roster, he continued to haunt New York. Baseball commissioner Fay Vincent learned about Steinbrenner’s actions with Spira, and issued a lifetime ban for the Yankees owner – news that was greeted with a standing ovation by fans at Yankee Stadium (the ban was later rescinded).

The docuseries compares Steinbrenner’s persona with that of another brash New Yorker of his era, Donald Trump, suggesting that The Donald modelled himself after The Boss, including a penchant for firing people. This time, though, it was Steinbrenner getting a pink slip.

“They were an unimpressive lot on the field and it was unimpressive off the field as well,” Sherman says. “In 1990, that’s as low as the team could go.”

Early in the season, Hall pursued a relationship with high school student Chastity “Chaz” Easterly, whom he had first seen during a Yankees game. He won over Easterly – and her family – and soon he was inviting her to his apartment in Trump Tower. (She says on-camera that one day, while shopping on West 57th Street, she ran into Trump, who asked if she was OK and if she needed help leaving her relationship with Hall.) The dysfunction of the Yankees at the time is highlighted by the fact that a photo of the two appeared in the team’s yearbook that season, with Easterly wearing her prom dress.

The director interviewed Hall and Easterly for the docuseries. Hall speaks from a Texas prison, where he is now serving a 45-year sentence for raping a 12-year-old girl. Easterly’s testimony helped convict him; she has become a mother and voice for survivors of sexual assault.

“Chaz Easterly is a really remarkable woman,” Caruso says. “We earned each other’s trust … It’s not easy to talk about these things.”

He adds: “Mel repeated this behavior over and over and over again in Texas, and that’s why he was eventually arrested and caught … I admire [Easterly’s] courage, and I admire where she is in her life now, because she’s really turned something ugly into something really positive, and she’s out there working to make sure it doesn’t happen to other girls.”

As for the Yankees, Steinbrenner’s banishment ended up benefiting the team.

In came a new GM, Gene “Stick” Michael, who is credited with restoring a winning mentality to the club. Some newcomers helped – youngsters Mariano Rivera, draftees Andy Pettitte and Jorge Posada, and up-and-coming minor-leaguer Bernie Williams, who is interviewed in the documentary. All would play key roles in the Yankees’ winning four World Series from 1996 to 2000. By that time, Steinbrenner was the Yankees’ owner again, after a successful public relations campaign that included hosting Saturday Night Live and a cameo on Seinfeld. He died in 2010, a year after the Yankees’ most recent World Series title.

It’s been almost a decade and a half of near-misses since then. But at least no one is bringing big cats into the clubhouse any more.

“This is the lowest moment for the franchise,” Sherman says of that season 34 years ago, “and yet we know what comes next.”