The Yankee Years

by Joe Torre

  “Guys, we're not going to work out tomorrow,” he told them. “The best thing we can do is hide out from the media for a day. It'll probably serve us better.”

  A few minutes later, after Torre had returned to his seat near the front of the plane, a woman tapped him on the shoulder. It was Nevalee O'Neill, Paul's wife.

  “Uh, Joe?” she said. “Do you mind if Paul goes in and hits tomorrow? He needs to hit.”

  Torre laughed. He changed his mind and offered the players an optional workout. The whole team showed up. Knoblauch held his news conference to admit his mistake.

  The next day, before Game 3, Torre held a meeting in the Jacobs Field visiting clubhouse with his team. He sensed the weight of the 114-win season was bearing down on his players. He knew the Indians were not intimidated by the Yankees, as were most teams. During the season, for instance, Cone had noticed “certain situations in the middle of games when we start to mount a rally, and you can see pitchers panic a little bit. All of a sudden, we've got a big crooked number on the board, four or five runs.” The Indians were not one of those teams to cave under to the Yankees’ might.

  “It was a tough matchup for us, especially tough against right -handed pitching, and the fact that they knocked us out the year before,” Cone said. “They thought they could beat us. They didn't care how many games we won. They thought they were better, even though our pitching was clearly better.”

  Torre did not like the vibe he was getting from his team.

  “Guys, you're uptight,” Torre told them. “You aren't having enough fun. You've got to get back to having fun.”

  When the meeting was over and as players went back to preparing for the game, O'Neill called Torre aside.

  “Ski-ip,” O'Neill said in his high-pitched Cincinnati twang.

  “Yeah, Paulie?”

  “Fun? It's not fun unless you win, Ski-ip.”

  It was no fun that night for the Yankees. Cleveland righthander Bartolo Colon kept the Yankees’ offense quiet and the Indians handily beat Pettitte, 6-1. Cleveland led the series, two games to one. The value of a 114-win regular season was in danger of becoming seriously diminished.

  “Yeah, there was pressure,” Cone said. “What we accomplished during the season would all go away if we lost. And in some ways, we were trying to validate ‘96, too. People pretty much viewed the Braves as better than us in ‘96 and we kind of stole one from them. Then we lost to Cleveland in ‘97, and then here's Cleveland going to knock us out again. So it was not only our record in ‘98 that was on the line, but the validation of ‘96, too. I don't know if a lot of guys felt that way. I did.”

  On the morning of Game 4, Torre went to the hotel coffee shop for breakfast. He thought the man with the shaved head busing tables and helping serve customers looked familiar. And he was: it was his Game 4 starting pitcher, Orlando Hernandez. “El Duque” had fled Cuba and his family on some sort of small craft—his raft version made for the most compelling and marketable one—to pursue his baseball career in the major leagues. He pitched with an outrageously high and limber leg kick and delighted in playing cat-and-mouse games with hitters. Raised in baseball-mad Cuba, where success in international tournaments can mean the difference betweeen a comfortable life or a strained one, Hernandez seemed oblivious to the drama of major league ball. The Yankees were so deep in starting pitching that they stashed him in Triple A, until, that is, Cone came to work one day with an odd bit of news for Torre: “My mother-in-law's Jack Russell terrier bit my finger. I can't pitch.” The Yankees called up Hernandez. He made 21 starts for the Yankees and they won 16 of them. Because of the Division Series sweep and the resetting of the rotation for the ALCS, Hernandez had not pitched in 14 days when his turn finally came up in Game 4.

  After breakfast, Torre got a message that Steinbrenner wanted to see him in his suite at the hotel. Torre walked into the suite and found Steinbrenner watching a college football game on television, a game between Ohio State and Illinois.

  “Well, what do you think?” Steinbrenner asked.

  Torre knew what he was after. This was another attempt by the perpetually uneasy Steinbrenner to have his calm manager assure him everything was going to be okay. So Torre decided to have some fun with him.

  “What I think,” Torre said, “is that Ohio State is going to win this game.”

  “No, no, no!” Steinbrenner barked. “I mean our team!”

  Torre suppressed a laugh.

  “I think we're in a good frame of mind,” Torre said, fulfilling his duty. “I know one thing: our starting pitcher won't be nervous. He's downstairs serving people in the coffee shop.”

  Said Torre, “I knew there was pressure. I talked to Bill Belichick, the Patriots coach, in 2007 about this. It's great being 15, 16, 17 and 0. But that means you have to win. It's enormous pressure, where you can't give the other team a chance no matter how bad or good they are. There was enormous pressure.”

  O'Neill hit a home run in the first inning, and even that small amount of support was all Hernandez needed. He was brilliant, throwing seven shutout innings in a 4-0 win. The series was tied, and the pressure eased on the 114-win Yankees. Wells, the Game 1 winner, started for the Yankees in Game 5. While Wells was warming in the bullpen, Indians fans, including children, made derisive comments to him about his late mother. Wells became so agitated and emotional about such hostility that he cut his session short after only about 25 pitches, half his normal warmup.

  “You wouldn't believe the stuff they were saying about my mother,” Wells told Torre in the dugout.

  The Yankees gave Wells a 3-0 lead in the first inning, but, seemingly distracted and out of sorts, he immediately gave two back, eliciting a trip to the mound from Posada.

  “You all right?” the catcher asked. “What's the problem?”

  Wells told Posada about what the fans did during his warmup.

  “Now you've got another reason,” Posada said, “to shove it up their ass.”

  Posada, who turned 27 that year, was emerging as the team's most vocal everyday player and yet another fierce competitor as he gained more playing time over Girardi. Torre called Posada “Jeter's alter ego,” because Posada and Jeter were such good friends and believed in the same unselfish baseball methodology and had no tolerance for anyone who thought otherwise. Unlike Jeter, however, Posada had no problem getting in the face of a teammate, including one time in 2002 when he and El Duque brawled in the trainer's room before a game. Posada and Hernandez, in fact, had a contentious, if odd relationship, almost like a vaudeville act, to get the best out of one another. One day they nearly came to blows in the dugout in Cleveland, and that same night Torre saw the two of them in a mall happily going off to dinner together.

  “Georgie always wants to be a leader,” Donahue said, “and sometimes he gets a little hot when he shouldn't. Georgie wants to win, and that's why he and Jeter are such good buddies.”

  Said Brian McNamee, the former Yankees strength trainer, “Luis Sojo and Posada would jump guys’ asses for little things, like showing up late for stretching or messing up on the bases. They would keep it on an even keel so they could rag on guys, but Jorge was the guy. Jorge had a temper on him but he was always right. Jeet was laid back. He's on time all the time, he gets his work in, he's quiet, he handles the media well, but Jeter is not going to jump on somebody's ass.”

  Said Torre, “Georgie would get very frustrated with pitchers. I know Randy Johnson frustrated the hell out of him, even to the point where I decided to have John Flaherty catch him. And then Randy and Flaherty, old laid-back Flaherty, almost came to blows in Seattle. But Randy would get under Georgie's skin. Georgie was sure how he wanted him to pitch, and Randy would fight him, and Georgie would try to talk him out of it. It got to the point where in 2006 I said to Randy, ‘Come postseason, Georgie is the catcher.’ And he said, ‘Why?’ I said, ‘He's my number one catcher.’ Randy was trying to sort of change my mind on that one for the postseason.”

 
Torre, of course, wasn't about to lose any confidence in Posada, especially in the postseason. Their relationship began poorly, when Posada in 1997 thought he deserved more than his 52 starts as Girardi's backup. But Torre soon came to trust Posada as much as any of his core players, especially in big spots and as someone he could use to deliver peer-to-peer messages to players.

  “The thing I sensed about Georgie, once I got to know him a little bit, was that he had a big heart,” Torre said. “He cared a great deal and he played well under pressure. We didn't always agree on his catching philosophy but I chalked that up to the fact that he just didn't do it his whole life. But under pressure, I trusted him as much as anybody, no matter the game situation.

  “He could deliver messages to players for me, too. Sometimes his timing wasn't as good as Jeter's was. But if I needed to get a message across to someone and I thought Georgie could do it, I would mention it to Georgie. Or if I wanted to get a message to Georgie, I'd go to Jeter—if I felt coming from me he might have taken it differently. Georgie and I got along great. I felt like he was a son to me.”

  Posada struck exactly the right chord with a distracted Wells in that meeting on the mound in the first inning of Game 5. Wells immediately refocused and pitched a gem after that, allowing only one more run while striking out 11. The Yankees won, 5-3.

  “David Wells was the key to the series,” Cone said. “People don't realize that. Robbie Alomar and Omar Vizquel, you made them turn around and bat righthanded with a lefty Plus, you neutralize Jim Thome. To me they were a different lineup against lefthanded pitching. Wells beat them twice.”

  The Yankees came home for Game 6 and the possible clincher. They walloped Cleveland starter Charles Nagy with two runs in the first, one in the second and three on a home run by Brosius in the third. It was 6-0 after three innings with Cone on the mound. What could go wrong? But Cone's fears about how the Indians attacked righthanded pitching were realized in the fifth inning. Cleveland loaded the bases on three consecutive singles. Then Cone walked in a run, prompting Torre to visit Cone with Manny Ramirez due up.

  “I'll get this guy,” Cone told him.

  Said Torre, “So I went back to the dugout, and he did get him. He struck out Manny. But then I left him in and Jim Thome hit a grand slam. Killed it.”

  “It put a scare in us,” Cone said. “We were up 6-1 and now it was 6-5. I hung a slider to Thome and bam, upper deck. It happened so quick. I threw two balls to the next guy. I was shaken up a bit. It was a pretty good scare.”

  Cone did get two fly-ball outs to end the inning without further trouble. Torre told him he was done for the game.

  “I should have taken you at your word,” Torre told Cone.

  “What do you mean?”

  “You said you'd get this guy. I should have taken you out after this guy.”

  The Yankees simply summoned more offense, scoring three times in the sixth, two on a triple by Jeter, to establish more breathing room. Mendoza gave them two scoreless innings in relief of Cone to get the game to Rivera, who closed out the 9-5 win with a nine-pitch ninth inning with his usual cleanliness.

  All that stood between the 1998 Yankees and their appointment with history was a World Series meeting with the San Diego Padres. The Padres put up a fight for a while, even carrying a 5-2 lead into the seventh inning of Game 1. But the Yankees asserted their greatness suddenly. Knoblauch tied the game with a three-run home run and Martinez put the Yankees ahead 9-5 with an upper-deck grand slam off lefthander Mark Langston, one pitch after Langston barely missed the strike zone with his 2-and-2 pitch. The Yankees won, 9-6. They administered one of their more routine beatings the next day, 9-3, removing all doubt from the game with a 7-0 lead after three innings.

  In Game 3, they returned to their comeback mode, wiping out a 3-0 Padres lead in the seventh inning to win, 5-4. Brosius, the World Series MVP, connected off San Diego closer Trevor Hoffman for a three-run homer in the eighth to put the Yankees ahead, but the methodology of the comeback was just as important as the final blow. The winning home run was set up by walks by O'Neill and Martinez.

  The walk, especially one littered with annoying foul balls, was the signature play of the championship Yankees teams. It wasn't exactly a sexy image, especially not when the country was going ga-ga over Mark McGwire, Sammy Sosa and the longball in 1998. But it was an effective one. The walk symbolized not only the unselfishness of the Yankees, but also the trust they harbored in one another. There was no need to chase pitches if you believed the teammate hitting behind you was going to get the job done. The 1998 Yankees led the league in walks, drawing a whopping 187 more free passes than they gave out. From 1996 through 1999, the Yankees posted on-base percentages of .360 or better every year, the first time they had done so in four straight years since Joe McCarthy's four consecutive world championship teams from 1936 through 1939.

  From a practical standpoint, the tactic of making opposing starters throw more pitches was made brilliant because of the weapon the Yankees possessed in Mariano Rivera. The Yankees strived not always to beat the opposing starter, though they did so on many occasions, but to wear him down. Once they drove the starting pitcher from a game because of a high pitch count, they reduced the game to a duel of bullpens, and Rivera gave them the edge over any team in baseball in such situations. The Yankees’ bullpen was 28-9 in 1998.

  “It was intimidating knowing he was at the end of the game,” said Beane, the Athletics’ general manager. “It gave you tremendous anxiety knowing that you had to beat the Yankees in seven innings, because with Rivera, you knew you couldn't beat them in nine. You knew going in, ‘We're going to get seven innings to get a lead, and that's it.’ It's Rivera after that.”

  Rivera, like Jeter, fit perfectly in the Yankees’ clubhouse culture, another superstar characterized by quiet humility and confidence who defined himself by how many games the team won, not his individual statistics. Rivera arrived in the majors in 1995 without advance billing, having survived Tommy John surgery in 1992, being left unprotected in the 1992 expansion draft (the Marlins and Rockies passed on him) and a near trade to the Tigers in 1995 for Wells that Gene Michael killed once he heard Rivera's velocity suddenly jumped to 96 mph. Trained as a starter, Rivera had a breakout series out of the bullpen in the 1995 Division Series, throwing 5⅓ scoreless innings. After his one-year apprenticeship under John Wetteland in 1996, Rivera became not only a reliable closer, but also a strategically unique one. Just as the game was further defining the closer into a super specialist limited to one inning, Rivera was Torre's ultimate weapon because he could begin closing games in the eighth inning. Rivera was brutally efficient, putting away hitters quickly because his cut fastball was so hard to hit and because he threw with such precision.

  From 1997 through 2008, Rivera racked up more postseason saves of six outs or more (12) than the rest of baseball combined (11). In that same period, Rivera obtained at least four outs in 79 percent of his postseason saves, more than triple the incidence of such heavy lifting by all other closers combined (25 percent).

  “I think what makes Mo special, first of all, is the size of his heart,” Torre said. “But second of all, he's made some adjustments. Like there were times he'd throw one cutter after another to Darrin Erstad of the Angels and it was foul ball, foul ball, foul ball. You wish he had someplace else to go to. One time he wound up throwing him a changeup, unrehearsed, and he hit a fly ball. But Mel helped him with his grips. The two-seamer was a part of it. The four-seamer was a part of it. He had the front-door cutter. Then he added the back-door cutter. All of a sudden he had different looks.

  “I think one of the best things about him was that even though he knew he had done something special, he never stopped trying to get better at what he was doing.”

  Rivera took care of closing the 1998 World Series, and of course, did so by going more than one inning. He entered Game 4 with a 3-0 lead and two Padres on base, but locked down the final four outs without a run scorin
g. The ‘98 Yankees did what they were supposed to do ever since they roared far in front of the field way back in April: they won the world championship. The relief was apparent on the face of Steinbrenner in the clubhouse, where his trademark blue blazer dripped with champagne in the middle of the celebration. The Boss was weeping openly.

  “This,” he said, “is as good as any team I've ever had, and as good as any team I've ever seen. There's never been anyone better.”

  That night in San Diego was the height of the Yankees’ dynasty under Torre. They won other championships, of course: as an under dog in 1996, as a clinically efficient follow-up act in 1999 and as a scrappy 87-win fighter in 2000. But it was never as good as it was in 1998, not with the near-perfect composition of the roster, the peak-age talent and the singular mindset of 25 grinders rolled into 125 victories. A desperation to win. That is what made them so historic.

  “There was such a cohesiveness about that team,” Torre said. “They really hung together. There really wasn't a lot of stuff for me to deal with. You'd go out and you'd see four guys at dinner together. Maybe three days later you'd see two of those guys with two others. They weren't always in the same clique. There were all interchangeable pieces, and that was pretty good.

  “But there really was no talk about me, and if somebody had a special day it didn't detract from the game or the goal. It was always about the team. They were not going to be denied when they got to a certain point, when they said, ‘We can win this game.’ They certainly were playing more on the balls of their feet than the other team.

  “When you get a chance to talk to players, you find out what's important. It's interesting. They were all leaders for different reasons. Bernie, I had to tell him he was a leader. He didn't know it. But he played every day and you relied on him. O'Neill never had to be reminded. That's the message that I tried to get across to my players, which I think is my strongest message: there's somebody else counting on you. It's one of your teammates. It's not what I want you to do.