As portrayed by the author, former baseball player/manager Martin's life was a triangle of baseball, alcohol, and sex, each of which he embraced with a fervor and all of which ultimately consumed him. Martin (1928-1989) grew up poor in Berkeley, Calif. A high school drop-out, he tried out for the Oakland baseball team of the Pacific Coast League; the manager was Casey Stengel, who took Martin to New York when he became manager of the Yankees. There Martin played a key role on several championship teams. But a drunken fistfight--which seems to be Martin's favorite recreation--at a nightclub ended his Yankee career. Symptomatic of Martin's psyche were his many feuds with managers, players, wives, girlfriends, and owners, including his celebrated tiffs with George Steinbrenner, whom the author considers Martin's equal as a manipulator. In alternating chapters Golenbock shows how the lives of Martin and Steinbrenner paralleled each other, which, ironically, highlights Martin's achievements and magnifies Steinbrenner's ineptitude. This is an extremely thorough and comprehensive biography of one of baseball's most controversial figures.