by Joe Torre
“If you look at the group they put together that won four of five World Series, and if you're looking to put that group together again, well … It's like getting the best poker hand you can possibly get on the deal. That's how lucky you are to have it even once.”
It never happened again. Jeter never won another World Series with Torre. Over time, the Old Guard Yankees and their unselfish ferocity dwindled to almost nothing, and the Yankees became something else entirely, no longer a perfect fit for Jeter. The clubhouse filled with quirky individuals and multitudes of agendas, and none of the interlopers were more complex than Rodriguez, who began riding an uncomfortable shotgun to Jeter in the Yankees infield in 2004. By the next spring training, Rodriguez seemed so out of place in pinstripes that Torre was calling individual players into his office to implore them to find some way, any way, to help Rodriguez fit in. Sheffield, Giambi, Posada, Jeter … Torre tapped all of them to help with the maintenance of Rodriguez.
“My feeling is with every player,” Torre said, “you've got him on your team and you know what his ability is, so now my job is do whatever I can to get the most out of that ability. Every place he's been, he's been the voice of the team. He's used to more responsibility than he needed to take on with the Yankees. So in this case I remember calling in Sheff, Jeter, Giambi, Georgie, and just saying, ‘He's got to feel important. We need to do this, guys. He can give us a lot, and we just need to make him feel how much we rely on him and how important he is.’ “
Did Jeter get comfortable with performing that kind of mental maintenance with Rodriguez? “Not necessarily,” Torre said. “But he did understand.”
It was a long way from the culture Jeter knew as a younger player. He looks back on those championships and it is not so much the titles that he misses as much as it is the shared bond among people who all played the game the same way he did.
“I think everyone had the right mentality,” Jeter said. “The right frame of mind. Yeah, you have to be talented in order to win, but you have to have the right mindset. And that mindset is, do whatever it takes to win a game. It sounds simple, but we really didn't have anyone that cared more about putting up statistics, you know what I mean? I mean, if somebody had to hit a groundball to second base, they hit a groundball to second base. You don't get a stat for that. You actually get a negative stat for that. But that's how you win games.
“I never understood that part of baseball. You could have a guy at second base and no outs, all right? Guy hits a groundball to second base. That's good baseball, with nothing to show for it. The next guy hits a groundball to second base. Now he's an RBI machine. Then they say, ‘Well, this guy doesn't hit with runners in scoring position.’ He did exactly what he's supposed to do. And that's why this guy is an RBI guy? No. It depends on the situation.
“But you have some teams and some guys, they get a guy on second base with nobody out and they don't care about moving the guy over. If they get a hit that way, great, but they're trying to get a hit, as opposed to doing what they should be doing. And that's how you win.
“I think it was the character of the guys, but I think it was also that when we got used to winning, people understood that's what you have to do to win.”
In his first eight full seasons in the major leagues, 1996-2003, Jeter played on Yankees teams that won 64 percent of their games, won 16 of 20 postseason series, played in six World Series, won four world championships and came within three games of winning six titles in eight years. It was and remains the greatest dynasty in modern baseball—that is, since the expansion era began in 1961 and in spite of free agency that began in 1975. It was a special dynasty because its trademark was more so the character of the players than it was their talent. The lasting impression is how those Yankees played collectively not how they played individually. And when they were at their peak, at their optimum nexus of youth, know-how and fierce resolve, the Yankees were a thing of beauty that for one glorious year won more games than any collection of ballplayers ever assembled.
2
A Desperation to Win
This may best capture the absurdist nature of what it could be like working for George Steinbrenner at the height of his obsessive, unforgiving, hands-on reign as commander in chief of the Yankees: Torre's job was on the line less than one week into managing the 1998 Yankees, the team that would win more games than any team in baseball history. With Mariano Rivera on the disabled list, the Yankees lost their first three games, in Anaheim and in Oakland, by a combined score of 21-6. Steinbrenner called his rookie general manager, Brian Cashman, the young former assistant who had replaced Bob Watson and was on the trip, and sent him home from the West Coast as punishment. The newspapers were full of speculation about who might replace Torre, such as Davey Johnson.
When the Yankees finally won a game, in the fourth game of the season in extra innings against the Athletics, Torre asked the staff and players to sign the lineup card and he sent it overnight to Cashman at his home, where, like a teenager, he had been grounded by The Boss. “Congratulations,” Torre wrote. “The first of many.” Little did Torre know the “many” that year would be a record 125 victories, postseason included.
First, however, came more pain and a full-blown crisis. The Yankees lost again the next night, a Monday night in Seattle, by getting blown out by the Mariners, 8-0. Not only did Seattle starter Jamie Moyer dominate the Yankees by striking out 11, but he also bullied them, dusting Paul O'Neill with a pitch without any retribution from the Yankees. The Mariners, under manager Lou Piniella, made a habit of throwing at O'Neill, who had played for Piniella in Cincinnati. Piniella knew he could throw the emotional O'Neill off his game with a strategically placed pitch or two.
“It got to be ridiculous,” Torre said. “If Lou could have run him over at the hotel he would have done that. He knew what got Paulie's goat. That was about as obvious as it got, and it never went away.”
After five games, the 1998 Yankees were 1-4, in last place, already 3½ games out of first, outscored 36-15, at risk of losing their manager and letting teams like the Mariners kick sand in their faces. Torre was especially blue after the 8-0 defeat. Normally, he would grab a postgame dinner with Zimmer, his bench coach. That night he ate alone.
“It was an ugly game and I was down. Really down,” Torre said. “I didn't ask anybody to go with me. Zim said, ‘Do you want me to go?’ I said, ‘No.’ I just went and had some dinner and some wine, and just sat there by myself.”
The next day Torre called a team meeting, and before holding that meeting he reviewed his notes. On rare occasions, Torre held meetings immediately after a game. Those meetings usually were quick ones and allowed Torre to vent some anger. The full-blown ones required preparation. During games, if Torre saw something that needed to be addressed in a meeting, he would write notes to himself on the back of his lineup card. Whenever Zimmer would see Torre pull out the lineup card and flip it over, he would remark in a stage whisper, “Uh-oh.” He knew what was coming. Sometimes Torre would ask Zimmer what he should do about addressing the team and Zimmer always would reply, “Wait ‘til tomorrow. Wait ‘til tomorrow.” Torre took lots of notes during that 8-0 loss to Seattle. He decided this was a meeting that would wait until the next day.
“I was more down than angry at the time,” Torre said. “And I wasn't about to have a meeting when I was down. I'd rather be angry. After I take notes I don't even refer to them at the meeting, but when I write them down it helps me remember them.
“That day when I spoke to them, I basically told them how I felt and how bad they were and how pissed I was. I told them what I did the night before. I retraced my steps. I told them I went out alone, didn't want to be with anyone. That's how bothered I was by how we were playing. I pretty much went through everything with them. We were playing horseshit, and it was especially bad coming out of spring training with such a bad feeling.”
Said Cone, “It was one of his more forceful meetings. There was a lot of talk f
rom people who said nobody had gone 1-5 to start the season and came back to win a World Series. There was some talk about that. I remember Joe started it off and he wasn't happy.
“Torre was good. He always got his point across and then he'd go around the room and a few guys spoke. Straw said something, Raines spoke … Joe would say, Anybody else got something to say? Bernie?’ Bernie never had much to say. He'd go around the room and challenge guys to say something. He was real good at pointing out a veteran and asking, ‘What do you think?’ “
When Torre pointed to Cone, the veteran pitcher responded with an emotional speech. Cone started out by recognizing the potential impact of Steinbrenner's impatience. The Yankees knew what was at stake, even this early in the season. They knew the newspapers in New York were full of stories that Steinbrenner was thinking about getting rid of Torre.
“Guys, we've got to get going,” Cone said. “We've got to get it together as a team. And we've got to do it now or this whole thing could be dismantled because the owner will react.”
Like Torre, Cone was angered by what he saw the previous night. He watched Seattle designated hitter Edgar Martinez, batting in the eighth inning with an 4-0 lead, take a huge hack on a 3-and-0 pitch from reliever Mike Buddie—five innings after Moyer had dusted O'Neill with a pitch. Cone knew some position players were grumbling after the game that Pettitte, the Yankees starter, did not retaliate for Moyer's message pitch, a problem Cone calls “a brewing situation in the clubhouse between pitchers and hitters that can really cause divisiveness in the clubhouse—a hot button issue I've seen over the years.” Martinez's brash swing with the game already in hand was another insult.
“It's the old-school mentality we have to have,” Cone continued in front of his teammates. “You have to find something to hate about your opponent. Look across the way. These guys are real comfortable against us. Edgar is swinging from his heels on 3-and-0 when they're up by about 10 runs! Those guys are too comfortable. Our guys are getting knocked down.
“Listen, everybody knows Andy's a gamer, but the hitters need to know we're going to protect them. We've got to get the emotion going here. We've got to look across the way and find something in our opponent we don't like. That team took us out in the ‘95 playoffs. I hate this place, the Kingdome. I left half my arm on that mound! I left a vein out on that mound in ‘95, and it pisses me off to see these guys walk all over us and us have no pride being the Yankees!”
Cone looked at Tino Martinez, the former Mariner who played on that ‘95 Seattle team that knocked off the Yankees.
“No offense, Tino,” Cone said. “You're over here now, but I fucking hate those guys. I hate this place. If you want to find some motivation here, that's part of it. It's also Edgar swinging 3-and-0 trying to take us deep. They're sticking it in our face! And there's only one way to react to that.”
It was classic Cone: emotional, honest and inspirational. He held the attention of all of his teammates. Starting pitchers rarely hold so much sway over a baseball team. They play only about 33 times a year, once every five days or so. Their skills are far more narrow than the position players; they have no need to field, hit or run with any great skill. They spend the majority of their time watching, not playing. As such, they tend to keep to their own group, as if a language or cultural barrier set them apart from the everyday players. But Cone was one of those rare specialists who crossed all lines and commanded the attention and respect of everyone in the clubhouse. They knew he had put himself on the front lines of the 1994-95 strike, survived turbulent times with the Mets, won a World Series with Toronto as a hired gun. He also took a great chunk of media responsibility in the clubhouse, even on days he wasn't pitching, which many of the more reserved players considered grunt work, like trench-digging, they were only too happy to see him shoulder. The entire package Cone gave the Yankees was made all the more meaningful by his competitiveness. They saw that he competed with the emotional attitude and edge of an everyday player.
Said trainer Steve Donahue, “He used to yell at me. We'd be in Baltimore in August. Hot as hell. His face would be cherry red. I'd come up to him with an ammonia towel, and he'd scream at me, ‘I'll fucking let you know! Get the fuck away!’ And he'd keep screaming at me. Happened every day game.
“Then he'd come in after the game and say, ‘Sorry. Didn't mean to get on you.’ Whether it was union issues or any controversial stuff going on, he was like the governor. He would take care of all of the media. And he was always great talking to the young kids. He was a huge influence.”
While the championship Yankees looked to Jeter for his consistency and optimism, especially in the clutch, Cone was their fire and brimstone, the stuff that kept their furnace burning at peak capacity. He was a friend, a motivator, a mentor, a clubhouse policeman, a jokester … whatever he needed to be. No one on those championship Yankees teams occupied a more important dual role—on the field and in the clubhouse combined—than Cone, a truth made obvious when a worn-down Cone, his shoulder finally surrendering to all those pitches over all those years, was allowed to leave as a free agent after the 2000 season. The Yankees, despite replacing Cone with Mike Mussina, the top free agent pitcher then, would never win another World Series without Cone. On the day Cone left in 2000, Paul O'Neill, who would come back for one more year himself, said, “I said when I re-signed that I wanted to play out this run with this group of players. This shows that this run is coming to an end. The Yankees might keep on winning, but it'll be with a different group of players. In one sense, things continue because they brought in Mussina. But, in another sense, things are ending because Coney is gone.”
The Yankees would give Mussina Cone's old locker, the one at the end of a row, near a hallway, and the closest to Torre's office, which was just around the corner in that hallway. Even Mussina, who never played with Cone, but as if aware of a ghost appendage, understood how important Cone was to the Yankees and their championships.
“When Coney left and I came in, that changed things,” Mussina said, “because a lot of people really liked Coney. He had some great years, and he had some tough years, but everybody loved him. He just took the ball and said, ‘I don't care. Just give me the ball. I'll go win.’ Players respect that. Players respect other players’ approach. If the results are good or bad, if your approach to playing the game is the right way, players respect that. If your approach is wrong, I don't care how good a player you are, other players don't look at you the same way.”
Cone owned the total respect of his teammates, and so his words that night in Seattle resonated. The impact of the meeting was undeniable immediately. The Yankees suddenly were a different team. They were a historic team.
Chuck Knoblauch hit the first pitch of the game for a home run. Jeter doubled. O'Neill doubled. After a brief pause on a strikeout by Williams, Martinez singled. Darryl Strawberry hit a home run. After Tim Raines grounded out, Jorge Posada hit a home run. Eight batters into the game, the Yankees had five extra-base hits and a 6-0 lead. By the fourth inning it was 11-1, by the end it was 13-7 and by June the AL East effectively was over. The Yankees were that good.
They beat Seattle again after their breakout game to come home 3-4 on a two-game winning streak. Steinbrenner's dark mood suddenly changed. After letting Torre's job status linger for public doubt, Steinbrenner greeted Torre at the team's annual Welcome Home dinner with a smile. “Ah, you're my guy,” Steinbrenner told him. “You're my guy.”
Beginning with that meeting in Seattle, the Yankees went 64-16, becoming the only Yankees team in history to play .800 baseball over 80 games. It was beautiful baseball to watch. They bludgeoned teams and they carved up teams—whatever means was necessary— and they were relentless no matter their methodology. There was, however, one problem: it was their counterculture lefthander David Wells.
On the night of May 6 in Texas, the Yankees gave Wells a 9-0 lead in the third inning. Wells, though, began to pitch carelessly, especially when he thought teammates wer
e not making plays behind him. When he noticed relief pitchers warming up as he gave up hit after hit, Wells seemed to lose whatever little focus he had left. Wells gave up seven runs in a stretch of only eight batters before Torre pulled him from the game. The Yankees won the game, 15-13, but Torre was upset with Wells’ effort, and made sure to tell reporters so after the game, going so far as to chastise Wells for being out of shape.
“When Boomer read it in the newspapers, he was livid,” Cone said. “He was pissed at Joe. He was pissed at Mel. He was pissed at the world. He called me up and I told him, ‘You call Joe and have a meeting and air him out. Get this thing out.’ So he did. We both went to the ballpark early that day in Minnesota and Boomer went in and closed the door and he and Joe went at it pretty good, back and forth.”
Wells told Torre he was pissed to read the comments in the newspaper.
“You've got a problem with me? Call me in,” Wells said.
“You bring it on yourself,” Torre said. “If you want to be here you better start acting like it.”
Wells was also angry that Torre warmed up relief pitchers so quickly in a game, signaling a lack of confidence in Wells. Torre told Wells that he was pissed every time Wells threw his arms up in disdain if one of his fielders did not make a play behind him.
“I'll make you a deal,” Torre told him. “I won't do that, I won't get relievers warmed up. But I can't have you out there throwing your arms up like, ‘All these bad things. Why are they happening to me?’ That doesn't work. Everybody out here is playing their ass off. Look at your infielders. After you go like that…”—Torre threw up his arms in mock disgust—”what do you want them to do? Everybody out there is trying to help you win.”
