And so it finally happened. Yesterday Billy Martin resigned as manager of the New York Yankees, leaving the defending World Champions in the midst of a five-game winning streak that finds them ten games behind the Red Sox. The Yankees have lost the best manager in baseball, a victim of the circus of egos and acrimony that has surrounded them since the beginning of last season. Throughout that period, Martin tried to rise above the storm, concentrating on getting the club together. It wasn't easy. Last year, the Yanks played aggressively mediocre ball until the beginning of August. Then they finally got hot, taking 25 out of 28 to sweep into first place and on to the Series victory, the fifth Yankee Series win since 1962.

But Martin was never very good at keeping quiet, either as a player or as a manager. He is, to put it mildly, an aggressive type, and he did not react well to the constant adversity the Yankees have faced over the last season and a half.

At the center of the ultimate confrontation lay three figures: Martin, principal owner George Steinbrenner, and slugger Reggie "Reggae" Jackson. Last week Martin suspended Reggae for five days, after he ignored a coach's sign and bunted with two strikes on him in the tenth inning of a game against the Royals. Reggae insisted he was just trying to help the club; Martin insisted he was just trying to help himself, at everyone else's expense.

As usual, the truth probably lay between the two extremes. Jackson and Martin have had it in for each other since the former signed his tremendous free-agent contract and came to New York last season. It all started long before the infamous Fenway Park incident in which the two went at each other in the dugout after Martin pulled Reggae, admittedly one of the worst gloves in right anyone has ever seen, for dogging it. Reggae certainly upset more than a few Yankees with his proclamations of greatness and heroism; Thurman Munson, the redoubtable catcher-grouch, was not the only one pissed off by Reggae's almost childish need for attention. (After all, there are no Thurman Bars.)

But Reggae did, eventually, fill his billing. He produced for the Yanks in a big way--hitting 32 homers last year, while driving in 110 runs, and batting more than 20 points above his career average of .267. And then there were the five Series homers--three in the last game, on consecutive pitches. Reggae had stolen the spotlight again, away from the man who deserved it: Martin. It was Martin, after all, who held the club together, protecting them from the blathering criticisms of the man who is the real culprit in all of this--George Steinbrenner.

Steinbrenner, money or no, is the worst thing to happen to the Yankees since Horace Clarke. He is a seemingly guileless man, someone who thinks that a lot of whip-out entitles him to say whatever he wants and do whatever he wants, no matter how it affects anyone around him--including, in this case, his own ballclub. At the same time that he insisted Martin was his manager, he constantly criticized both the club and the manager, yelling at players and at Martin and even insisting on his own lineups, anything to make Martin feel unwelcome.

This season just proved too much for Billy. The Yanks got off to an okay start, but a series of debilitating injuries to the pitchers put the team into another back-biting tailspin. Had the Red Sox not been so outrageously hot up until last week, the Yanks would still be in it; as it is, they are lucky to be only ten games behind (14 a week ago). The difference may well have been Steinbrenner's incomprehensible cheapness, after spending millions to get a championship club, in dealing with Mike Torrez. Steinbrenner would not give Torrez, winner of two Series games and 17 others last year, the extra half-million or so he wanted, so Torrez split for the Sox. If his 12-5 record were with the Yankees rather than the Sox this year, the story might be very different. As it is, all the Yankees have on the mound these days is Ron Guidry's fancy 14-1 record, and not much else.

No one can accuse Martin of mismanaging the club. Steinbrenner and new president Al Rosen have made several stupid trades, leaving Martin with an ever-shifting roster and not enough of what he needed: pitching. The constant hounding from players, and especially from Steinbrenner, made Martin a very unhappy man, and in the past few weeks his photos revelaed an appallingly haggard face. It was all too much for him.

Sunday was apparently the last straw. It is unclear what set Billy off, but after the Yanks' 3-1 win in Chicago, he attacked both Reggae and Steinbrenner. He told Reggae, on his first day back, to shut up. Then he said that Jackson and Steinbrenner deserved each other, calling Reggae a liar and Steinbrenner "a convict"--a reference to his boss's conviction a few years back for illegal contributions to Richard Nixon's wonderfully clean 1972 campaign. It's not nice to call your boss a convict, even if it's true. Martin knew what he was doing, though; there was a clause in his contract forbidding him to insult the owner in public, but Billy went ahead and did it anyway. He wanted out, and now he's got it.

There is a certain unsavory irony in all this. In the '50s, Martin was the Yankees' fiery second baseman, a hustling player who wanted nothing more than to stay with the Yankees, then in their absolute prime (the Yanks won six of eight World Series in that decade). He was even Casey Stengel's favorite. But then-owner George Weiss had it in for Martin, and when he became peripherally involved in a fight at the Copacabana nightclub with some other players in the summer of 1957, he found himself in Kansas City the next day. The incident broke his heart as a player, and although he lasted a few more years in the majors, he was never quite the same.

In 1969 Martin became the manager of the Minnesota Twins, guiding them to the Western Division title, but he was soon fired from that job. In 1972 he took Detroit to the playoffs, but he got fired from there, too. He had a reputation for ignoring his owners, for doing what he thought was best for his club. And no one could argue with the results. In 1974 he took a horrible Texas Rangers club from nowhere to second place in the A.L. West; finally, in 1975, he got what he had wanted all along, to be manager of the Yankees. Then came the pennants in 1976 and 1977, and then this year's disappointment.

Martin is and always has been a determined competitor, willing to do anything to win. But most of all, he has been a Yankee competitor. In evaluating his resignation yesterday, it is important to keep in mind how much he loved his job. With that in mind, it is clear that there must have been some mighty extenuating circumstances to make Martin quit the helm of the defending World Champs in the middle of a season, particularly after Steinbrenner had assured him of his job only three weeks before. Though the Yanks are way out now, anything can happen in six games, and it is not like Martin to quit. So Steinbrenner has finally killed the goose that laid the proverbial golden egg; his constant hounding, his ceaseless interference in what was an already difficult situation, his exaltation of dollars and his own ego, above everything else, are ruining the Yankees and have already ruined Billy Martin.

So Martin pulled the rip-cord yesterday. His health may have been the reason, or maybe he just couldn't take any more of Steinbrenner, a man who should be seeing his parole board, not running the Yankees. And so the Yankees have lost the man whom even personal enemies have called the best manager in baseball. And, assuredly, any last chances they have for overtaking the Red Sox.

I don't blame Billy Martin. I sympathize with him. He handled the toughest job in baseball with style for two grueling years, and brought home the bacon. But Martin felt the same pressure, to a much higher degree, that all real Yankee fans felt all along. I have been a Yankee fan since 1967, and I must admit that it was more fun to root for them when they were losers than it is now. The bitterness that surrounds everything they do--and the gleeful media reaction and pressure that fed on it and built it up--has made rooting for them an ordeal, even it they did win it all last year and come close the year before. Every triumph over the Steinbrenner-inspired mania was hardearned. No wonder so many of the players, led by Munson, want out. Who would want to play for a man as manipulative and unsavory as Steinbrenner?

Obviously, Billy Martin did not want to any longer, and so he is gone. I think he did the right thing for himself, if not for the Yanks. As for George, well, it is true that his dollars brought the Yankees back into contention. But now I would trade the great moments--Chambliss's homer to beat the Royals in '76, the fantastic ninth inning against the Royals to come form behind and move into the Series last year--for simple peace of mind. I wish now that Steinbrenner had bought the Cleveland Indians, as he had originally intended. I wish he had stocked, and then screwed up, somebody else's team. Winning under the circumstances the Yankees have had to endure is no fun, as anyone on the team will tell you. And baseball is supposed to be a game, supposed to be fun, even in the pros.

For Billy Martin, it wasn't fun anymore. It was a threat to his ego and to his health. And so he bailed out. Goodbye, Billy, and good luck. You gave it the best you had. But up against the megalomania of your owner, it just wasn't enough.