Living on the Black

by John Feinstein

  Glavine talked about the season getting away, the day getting away, the balls that had found holes, the changeup to Willis that got away. He said he couldn’t really think of anything in terms of his pitch sequences that he would change. “It’s a bitter pill,” he said. “You start in February and work to get to this point. I thought we could win a World Series this year. I’ve had twenty years in the big leagues and nineteen of them have ended this way in one form or another.”

  Maybe, he said later, he would have rephrased that. “Obviously losing is losing, but some losses are worse than others. This one, the way we collapsed down the stretch, was as bad as it can possibly get.”

  He answered all the questions. He talked about not knowing what next year would hold for him. He left quickly when it was over, not even going back into the clubhouse. Standing next to Glavine’s empty locker, Billy Wagner talked about the boos. “Those people weren’t booing Tom Glavine,” he said. “They were booing the result.

  “Tom didn’t lose the pennant, all twenty-five of us did. We’re going to have to live with this a long time. When teams collapse in the future, they’ll be compared to the ’07 Mets — the way we were compared to the ’64 Phillies. That’s tough to take. Next year, if we’re leading in September, everyone’s going to bring this up. We’re going to have to take that because we didn’t hold up our end of the bargain. We embarrassed ourselves.”

  He glanced over at his friend’s now empty locker. “It wasn’t like he got rocked,” he said softly. “Ground ball here, bloop there. All part of baseball. I just hate to see it happen to him. Tom Glavine is the most stand-up, accountable teammate any of us will ever have.

  “Of all the guys in here, he’s the one you would want with the ball today. It just wasn’t meant to be — for any of us.”

  AS IT TURNED OUT, the Yankees’ season lasted eight days longer than the Mets’. They went to Cleveland for the Division Series against the Indians — a team they had gone 6–0 against during the regular season — and promptly dropped the first two games. Chien-Ming Wang was rocked in Game One, and, after Andy Pettitte pitched superbly in Game Two, the Indians tied the game at 1–1 in the eighth and won it 2–1 in eleven innings.

  There was controversy in that game because Jacobs Field was invaded by giant gnats in the eighth inning, and crew chief Bruce Froemming refused to delay the game because of them. The Indians tied the game in that inning en route to their win.

  Two days later, Ian O’Connor of the Bergen Record took a shot at reaching George Steinbrenner. Amid all the rumors about his health, Steinbrenner rarely spoke to the media anymore. Almost all of his comments were carefully crafted statements written by a publicist.

  But he took O’Connor’s call. He ranted about the gnats, saying among other things that Bruce Froemming “will never work any of our games again.” Froemming, naturally, worked the next night. What he said that mattered, though, had nothing to do with Froemming or gnats. He said that if the Yankees lost to the Indians, Joe Torre “would not be back” in 2008.

  Torre’s job status thus became the story for the rest of the series. Many of his players, including Mike Mussina, leaped to his defense, pointing out that his calm hand at the tiller was a major reason they were even in postseason.

  This was before Game Three of the series in Yankee Stadium. While he was defending Torre, Mussina was wondering who would start Game Four — if the Yankees survived Game Three. Torre had said he might start Wang, who had only thrown ninety-four pitches in the opening game. And because Wang is a sinker-ball pitcher, Torre thought it might not hurt him to pitch when he was a little tired.

  “I was almost certain after we lost the first two games that Joe was going to start Wang in Game Four,” Mussina said. “He’d been a different pitcher at home all year. What worried me though was that Wanger was really beat up by then. He was hurting, and he was tired. I wasn’t sure if pitching him on three days’ rest, even after a short start, was a great idea.”

  Standing in the outfield during batting practice before Game Three, Mussina asked Wang — speaking slowly as he always did — “Can you start tomorrow?” Wang understands English well, even though his speech is limited. Now, though, he looked confused.

  “No, Mike,” he said, pointing his finger at Mussina. “You pitch tomorrow.”

  Mussina shook his head. “No, that’s not what I am asking you. I’m asking you can you pitch tomorrow?”

  Wang again looked confused. In his mind, Mussina was pitching the next day, and he or Pettitte, more likely Pettitte, would pitch a Game Five if there was one.

  The Yankees rallied from a 3–0 deficit that night to force a Game Four. Mussina was standing in front of his locker before the media was let into the clubhouse when Torre stopped on his way to his office. “Wang’s going to start tomorrow,” he said.

  “I understand,” Mussina answered.

  “I did understand,” he said later. “He’d been our best pitcher all year. I might have made the argument that the Indians have more trouble with soft stuff than hard stuff, but it wasn’t my place to make it right then. It was Joe’s decision, and he thought this was the best thing for the team.”

  That did not turn out to be the case. After Wang had warmed up the next night, Mike Borzello told Mussina he had better be in the bullpen at the start of the game rather than in the second or third inning. “I don’t think he’s got much,” Borzello said.

  Mussina knew from his own experience that a pitcher can look terrible in the bullpen and pitch well once the game starts. He also knew that Borzello had a pretty keen eye. Mussina was in the bullpen in the first inning. The Indians scored twice to jump to a 2–0 lead.

  In the top of the second, Mussina was sitting in the bullpen watching the game through the center-field window, with Borzello on one side of him and Ramon Rodriguez, the other bullpen catcher, on the other. He knew Wang was on a short leash and that Philip Hughes, the other candidate for long relief, had pitched three and two-thirds innings the night before because Clemens had come out of the game hurt in the third inning.

  Franklin Gutierrez led off the second for the Indians with a line-drive single to right-center. Peering into the dugout, Mussina saw Ron Guidry reach for the phone. He jumped off the bench and began taking off his jacket. He was standing on one of the bullpen mounds with a ball in his hands when bullpen coach Joe Kerrigan hung up the phone. Kerrigan didn’t say anything because Mussina was already doing what the dugout had called to tell him to do.

  “It went fast after that,” Mussina said. “Casey Blake got a hit, and I started throwing breaking pitches because I was thinking, ‘Even if he gets out of this, he’s not going to last long.’ I knew I was going into the game soon.”

  It was even sooner than he thought. Wang hit Kelly Shoppach with a pitch to load the bases. Jorge Posada walked slowly to the mound. Mussina knew a stall when he saw one. Sure enough, a few seconds later, Torre popped out of the dugout.

  “I threw four more pitches as fast as I could,” Mussina said. “I think I threw fifteen, sixteen or so altogether, which is about twenty to twenty-five less than I’d normally throw. But they were waving me in. I couldn’t call time-out.”

  He walked in with the bases loaded, no one out, and the Yankees’ season about to go down the drain. The situation was not all that different than Game Seven in 2003, when Mussina had come in with no one out in the fourth inning, Red Sox on first and third, and Boston already leading 4–0.

  In 2003, he had gotten a strikeout and a double play to escape with no further damage. This time, he got a double-play ball from Grady Sizemore on a ground ball to second base. Gutierrez scored, and Blake moved to third, but Mussina now had a chance to get out of the inning with the score just 3–0. Paul Byrd, the Indians’ starter, didn’t really strike fear into Yankee hearts, and they had come from 3–0 down the previous night.

  But Asdrubal Cabrera singled up the middle to score Blake, and it was 4–0 before Mussina got Victor Martinez
to ground out to end the inning.

  “I was mad at myself for not holding it to three-nothing,” Mussina said. “Still, we had a chance until I gave up the two in the fourth.”

  The Yankees had scored a run to make it 4–1, when Shoppach led off the fourth with a double, Sizemore walked, and Cabrera moved them up with a sacrifice bunt. Mussina walked Travis Hafner to set up a double play, but Martinez blew up the plan with a two-run single that made it 6–1. Mussina settled down after that and ended up pitching four and two-thirds innings, giving up just those two runs.

  The Yankees managed three solo home runs in the late innings — Cano in the sixth, Rodriguez in the seventh, and Bobby Abreu in the ninth. Seeing his team score four runs made the two runs surrendered in the fourth inning that much more irksome to Mussina.

  “It’s an ‘if, if, if’ game,” he said. “Who knows what would have happened? I just would have felt better about it all if I’d held them at four or even three. Who knows what would have happened. The bottom line is we lost again in the first round.”

  Mussina sat in the clubhouse watching the final three innings of the season tick away. The feeling wasn’t all that different than it had been the previous two years when the Yankees had failed to get out of the first round of postseason. The difference was that he knew this would be Joe Torre’s last game as Yankees manager.

  “It had to be,” Mussina said. “After everything that had been said, after everything he had been put through, I knew he wasn’t going to be back. He didn’t deserve anything — anything — that they did to him. The front office just never understood what an amazing job he did handling everything and everyone for twelve years.”

  In an unfair twist, the last two outs were made by Rodriguez and Posada, both of whom had had sensational seasons. Rodriguez flied to right for the second out of the ninth and then Posada struck out. Final: Indians 6, Yankees 4. Mussina’s longest season was over — too soon.

  When the team assembled in the clubhouse before the media was allowed in, Torre thanked his players and told them how proud he was of everything they had accomplished and overcome. His voice was steady but filled with emotion. Mussina, not normally an emotional guy, felt distinct sadness realizing Torre was no longer going to be his manager.

  “Even when you thought Joe had gotten something wrong, like when he took me out of the rotation, he always seemed to be proven right,” he said. “I just felt the whole thing was wrong.”

  Most of the veterans lingered, unusual for a team that has just been eliminated. “I think everyone wanted to be sure they had a minute alone with Joe,” Mussina said.

  Mussina and Roger Clemens sat in Rob Cucuzza’s office, away from the eyes of the prying media, waiting for a chance to talk to Torre in private. Finally, Torre walked down the off-limits hallway toward his office. Mussina spotted him and walked out to talk to him.

  “There wasn’t much to say,” he said. “I just thanked him.”

  The two men started to shake hands, then hugged.

  Other than celebratory moments with champagne being splashed on people, it was one of very few hugs Mussina could remember being involved in during his baseball career. But he was glad it happened.

  THINGS HAPPENED SWIFTLY for the Yankees in the postseason: the Yankees “offered” Joe Torre an incentive-laden, one-year contract to return, which, to no one’s surprise, he turned down. The Los Angeles Dodgers hired him to manage soon after, a move that made Mike Mussina very happy.

  “I’m glad someone out there understood how good he is, and I’m glad he still wants to manage,” he said. “I think it’s great.”

  Joe Girardi was hired over Don Mattingly as Torre’s replacement. Mussina would have been happy with either one. “You never know how someone will be as a manager,” he said. “It will be different, no doubt about that, but I’ve always liked Joe. I like Don too. Either one would have been fine with me.”

  Dave Eiland, whom Mussina had worked with a little bit in September, was hired to replace Ron Guidry as pitching coach. Mussina was pleased with that move too. “I liked working with Dave in September,” he said. “I think he’ll be good. He’s only been retired a few years, so I think he’ll be able to relate to today’s players better than Gator did. I liked Gator — in spite of what happened when I was out of the rotation, I liked him. But it always felt a little awkward working with him. He hadn’t been around baseball at all after he retired, and I think that made coming back harder for him. I think this will be good.”

  The Yankees re-signed all their key free agents: Alex Rodriguez signed a ten-year contract worth $275 million, after a melodramatic negotiation that would have made the writers of a soap opera blush. Mariano Rivera and Jorge Posada also re-signed, meaning the Yankees would have the guts of their team back in 2008.

  The key, though, would be pitching. Even before the Mitchell Report, it was a given that Roger Clemens would not be back. Wang, Pettitte, Mussina, Hughes, and Ian Kennedy would be. The Yankees were talking about restoring Joba Chamberlain to the starting rotation. Mussina thought that was a mistake.

  “The key to being successful in postseason and when you play good teams are the middle innings,” he said. “All good teams have good starters and a good closer. Postseason games are different than the regular season. Starters have to work harder because they’re facing good hitters who are going to have good at bats. You have to have guys who can get outs in the sixth, seventh, and eighth innings.

  “When the Yankees won World Series, they had guys like Mo in ’96, who always pitched the seventh and eighth, and then people like Mike Stanton, Jeff Nelson, and Ramiro Mendoza, who got outs in those innings and got to Mo. Chamberlain can be that guy next year. Andy and I will probably be gone in another year and then you’re going to need him to start.”

  He smiled. “Clearly, they aren’t going to consult me on this.” Perhaps not, but Chamberlain did start the season in the bullpen.

  AS IT TURNED OUT, Tom Glavine flew back to Atlanta with his family right after the Mets’ season had ended.

  “Chris just said to me, ‘No way you’re staying here tonight,’ ” he said. “I don’t think she wanted me to see, read, or hear what was going to be said. She was probably right.”

  She was completely right. Glavine’s comments about not being devastated and having had other seasons end the way this one had generated a firestorm in New York. In fact, his postgame comments were the subject of more discussion than his performance during the game.

  Glavine first heard about what was going on when Jeff Wilpon called him at home on Tuesday. Wilpon knew that Glavine was scheduled to make his final appearance with Christopher Russo and Mike Francesa the next day, and he wanted Glavine to know that they and many others had been attacking him for his comments.

  “To be honest, I was surprised,” Glavine said. “I really couldn’t believe people would think I didn’t care. I mean, I’ve never been one to show a lot of emotion, but anyone who knows anything about me knows how much I care. I really felt as if it came down to the one word — devastated.”

  He said that to Francesa and Russo, who told him up front that they had been, to use Russo’s word, “killing” him for his comments. “They were honest about it,” Glavine said. “I appreciated that. Some guys will kill you and then act as if you’re their best friend on the air. They didn’t do that.”

  There was a lot of sentiment in New York that Glavine should not return there under any circumstances. Cooler heads looked at the two hundred innings, the fact that he was fifth in the league in quality starts, and had seventeen starts in which he allowed two runs or less.

  Glavine had four potential options for 2008. The least likely option was retiring. “There are days when I think I don’t want to go through all the work to get ready again,” he said. “And if playing again makes it tough for my family, I won’t play. But most of the time, I think I want to play again. I pitched well last year until the very end. There’s no doubt in my mind I ca
n do that again next year.”

  Option number three was Washington: Stan Kasten had called Glavine as soon as he had officially filed for free agency and, in “typical Stan” fashion, had said: “Look, I’d really like to see you sign with the Braves or the Mets so we can spend next year kicking your ass, but if that doesn’t work out give me a call.” Translation: The Nationals, with a very young pitching staff, would be interested in bringing Glavine in as an anchor and a mentor when they opened their new park in 2008.

  “If that was my only option, I would think about it,” Glavine said. “But realistically, that has the same logistical problems as New York, and it’s a new team for me and a team that probably won’t contend next year. I would have to ask myself, ‘Am I doing this for the money or because it might be fun?’ If I thought it was for the money, I wouldn’t do it.”

  Option number two was New York. The biggest issue, once again, was the travel. On a rainy night late in September, Chris, Peyton, and Mason had been on the runway getting ready to fly to New York, when a plane in front of them skid off the runway. No one was hurt, but the incident shook Glavine. Since his first day in New York, he had worried about the amount of time his family spent flying.

  “It isn’t as if I lie awake at night and worry about it all the time,” he said. “If I did that, I wouldn’t have stayed in New York for five years. But you do think about it. I don’t think I’d be human if I didn’t.”

  Glavine had talked with Jeff Wilpon before the end of the season about the possibility of a Roger Clemens–type schedule if he returned in 2008, meaning he might occasionally fly home to Atlanta between starts rather than having his family fly to him. “I would say Jeff was lukewarm about it at best,” he said. “I understood. I don’t blame him. I’m just thinking about ways I could do this and make it easier on my family.”