Al Rosen first came to my attention when I spent a week with my family visiting relatives in Cleveland. Rosen was the star third baseman of the Indians, and I saw him play when my cousin Mort took me to a game.

I was a little older when I encountered Rosen in his post-playing baseball profession. He was president and general manager of the New York Yankees, the team I was covering for The New York Times.

Much to Rosen’s regret, he held those positions during what was probably the most tumultuous time any team has ever endured, the days of George and Billy and Reggie. But it was also during that time that Rosen demonstrated what was one of the great class acts of all time by a baseball executive.

In the face of a George Steinbrenner tirade, Rosen, the 1953 American League most valuable player, who died last Friday at the age of 91, stood up for a lower-level employee and saved his job.

Mickey Morabito, the Yankees’ media relations director, had gathered the Yankees’ beat writers for lunch with Billy Martin at Alex & Henry’s, a restaurant in the Bronx. Martin had resigned a few days earlier after uttering a remark about Steinbrenner and Reggie Jackson that would live in infamy:

“The two of them deserve each other. One’s a born liar; the other’s convicted.”

Martin made the remark to me and another reporter in July 1978 at O’Hare Airport in Chicago before the Yankees flew to Kansas City. Rosen and Morabito were not on the trip, but Steinbrenner ordered them to fly to Kansas City after he learned what the manager had said.

“I was supposed to take Billy up to Al’s room,” Morabito recalled in a telephone interview earlier this week. “I went to Billy’s room and he was pretty distraught. He was headed to the lobby to make his resignation statement.”

Martin never did see Rosen before he tearfully resigned. Rosen also didn’t know of Steinbrenner’s decision to announce four days later – on old-timers’ day – that Martin was coming back.

“When Billy was brought back,” Morabito related, “George said ‘I don’t want Billy to talk to the media.’ They were going to hide him for the winter. But there was no way we couldn’t expose him at some point.”

Morabito talked to Rosen about it – “I told Al we should do it” – then arranged lunch at Alex & Henry’s. “We had to let Billy talk to you guys at some point,” Morabito said.

Unfortunately for Morabito and the Yankees but not surprisingly, Martin was typically outrageous at lunch. Among other comments, he said Fred Stanley was a better player than Reggie Jackson.

“You guys all called George,” Morabito said, “and he was livid at me for doing this. He said ‘we’ll get the papers and see what’s in them.’”

In a bizarre twist, however, there was nothing in the newspapers about the Martin lunch because there were no newspapers. The New York papers went on strike that day.

That development did not appease the owner, who was prepared to toss Morabito out the door.

“Al stood up,” Morabito related, “and said, ‘George, leave him alone. I told him to do it.’ Al was one of the guys who would stand up to George. Al went to bat for me and protected me. He said, ‘George, it was my idea and I approved it.’ Then he called us both idiots.”

Rosen’s willingness and ability to deal with Steinbrenner did not mean he was immune from the owner’s famous harassment of his employees. Rosen was a talented and impressive executive, but that meant nothing to Steinbrenner.

There was, for example, the Rosens’ Caribbean vacation that Steinbrenner wrecked in the winter between the 1978 and ’79 seasons.

Steinbrenner somehow found the only telephone on the island, Rosen said, and kept calling him on it. The constant calls became such an irritant that they wrecked the vacation, and if he was going to have to be spending so much of his time on the phone he might as well abandon the vacation and go home and use his home phone.

There was another phone incident, this one during the 1978 winter meetings. Rumors were circulating that the San Francisco Giants were making a deal with the Minnesota Twins for Rod Carew.

Steinbrenner was furious that Rosen had let Carew get away, and Moss Klein of the Newark Star Ledger and I went to Rosen’s suite to ask him about it. While we were speaking to him, the phone rang. Rosen’s tone changed immediately, that is, it changed when he spoke, but he said little. He mostly listened.

As he listened, the voice on the other end became louder. The caller was yelling, and as the voice became louder, Rosen moved the phone farther and farther from his ear. We quickly realized it was Steinbrenner, and he was chewing out Rosen. We offered to leave, but Rosen motioned for us to stay.

The Yankees’ president eventually ended the conversation, telling Steinbrenner he would call him after George calmed down. Rosen then finished his conversation with us.

The Twins didn’t make the trade with the Giants; Carew vetoed it. But the Yankees still didn’t get him because he would not accept a trade to the team he called a zoo. Just before spring training the Twins traded the perennial .300 hitter to the California Angels.

After working for Steinbrenner for a year and a half, Rosen had had enough and left the Yankees during the All-Star break in 1979. He resigned less than two months after Steinbrenner ordered him to trade Dick Tidrow, who had been ineffective as a replacement for the Yankees’ injured closer, Rich (Goose) Gossage.

“I love George as a friend,” Rosen said. “I just can’t work for him.” Steinbrenner subsequently asked Rosen to return, offering him a lot of money, but he refused.

I asked my cousin the other day what Rosen meant to him, a lifelong Indians’ fan.

“He was the best third baseman we ever had,” Mort Klein said. “Of course we were proud he was Jewish. It is too bad he never bought the Cleveland team. He spent a lot of time here in Cleveland, was stock broker here for a while. “We have had, in my lifetime, great players, but I think he was one of the best.”

In December 1990, when he signed Dave Righetti for the Giants, Rosen did something that was remarkable for a general manager. He announced details of Righetti’s contract – 4 years and $10 million. When he was asked why he was disclosing the details, his reply both flattered and annoyed me.

“Murray Chass will have them anyway,” he said.

While he was complimenting me for being able to get contract details, which was still a rare journalistic achievement at the time, Rosen was eroding my relatively exclusive territory. I didn’t hold it against him, though. He was too good a guy.