by Bill Madden
On his way out of the clubhouse, he stopped in front of general manager Brian Cashman, who had presided over four championships in five years and had just come within two outs of a fifth, and muttered, “You’ve had your chance. Now we’re gonna do it my way.”
THE CHANGES STEINBRENNER promised were not long in coming. The day after the World Series, Paul O’Neill and third baseman Scott Brosius announced their retirements. Rather than re-signing Tino Martinez, whose contract was up, the Yankees replaced him at first base with hulking,
defense-challenged free agent Jason Giambi, who would later confess to having used steroids when he won the 2000 American League Most Valuable Player award with the Oakland A’s. (Chuck Knoblauch, who also was not re-signed, would be revealed years later as having used steroids during his Yankee years.)
On December 20, 2001, two days after Steinbrenner completed the signing of Giambi to a seven-year, $120 million contract, Major League Baseball announced a monumental three-way transfer of club ownerships. Major League Baseball would buy the Montreal Expos from art dealer Jeffrey Loria, who in turn would buy the equally financially stressed Florida Marlins from commodities dealer John Henry, who then bought the Boston Red Sox from the estate of the late Jean Yawkey. Before purchasing the Marlins in 1999, Henry had been a limited partner in the Yankees for eight years, and Steinbrenner was particularly fond of him. So fond that when Henry sought to sell his points in the Yankees after purchasing the Marlins, the Boss refused, telling him: “Just hold on to them for now, John, because in a few years they’re going to be worth a lot more, and I want you to get all you can for them.”
Henry had been somewhat apprehensive about how his friendship with Steinbrenner would be affected now that he was taking ownership of the Yankees’ bitter rivals. But the day after his purchase of the Red Sox was completed—and after it had been announced that former San Diego Padres owner Tom Werner and former Padres and Baltimore Orioles chief exec Larry Lucchino would be joining Henry as partners—Steinbrenner called his friend to congratulate him.
“I’m delighted for you, John, getting out of that mess in south Florida,” Steinbrenner said, referring to Henry’s frustrated attempts to secure a new stadium for the Marlins. “Welcome back to the American League East! We’ll have some fun as rivals. But I gotta tell ya, I’m very concerned about you getting into bed with Werner and Lucchino. Those are two treacherous, phony backstabbers you’ve got there, John. You’re a pal, but I’m telling you, I’ve got no use for those two bastards.”
Henry was dumbstruck as he listened to Steinbrenner carry on about his two partners.
“George,” he finally said, “I really appreciate you calling me, but I have to say this is the strangest conversation I’ve ever had. I don’t think it’s appropriate that I should hear any more of this.”
After he had completed his all-out pursuit of Giambi, Steinbrenner made another three-year, $17 million over-market investment in oft-injured reliever Steve Karsay. Then on Christmas Eve 2001, Steinbrenner secretly met with his favorite overweight free spirit, David Wells, over lunch at Pete & Shorty’s Tavern in Clearwater, Florida, just across the causeway from Tampa. Steinbrenner still felt remorse for trading Wells to the Blue Jays for Roger Clemens in February ’99, and now the big left-hander, who was coming off back surgery, was a free agent again, albeit a tentative one. A few days earlier he’d made a handshake agreement with Arizona Diamondbacks general partner Jerry Colangelo for a one-year, $1 million deal (plus $4 million in incentives).
As the two munched on bite-size Shorty Burgers, Steinbrenner pulled out a piece of yellow legal paper and began scribbling some figures down.
“You don’t want to go to Arizona,” he said. “You need to be with me. This is what I think we can do.”
Looking at the figures—two years, $6.5 million guaranteed, with a full no-trade clause—Wells’s eyes widened.
“Wow, George, I can’t believe this!” he said. “Why didn’t you bring this up earlier? You could have wrapped me up at any time with this offer, but you waited until I had a handshake with Arizona. Good thing I didn’t sign anything, huh?”
It didn’t matter that Steinbrenner’s signing of Wells gave the Yankees six starting pitchers going into 2002. That would be a problem for Joe Torre and pitching coach Mel Stottlemyre to sort out. What did he care if they detested Wells?
His reunion with Wells notwithstanding, Steinbrenner was unable to get past the ’01 World Series loss and was in an unforgiving mood for most of that winter. Prior to spring training in Tampa, he’d prepared a memo to the staff in which he stated they would all be quartered in complimentary rooms at the Bay Harbor Hotel and could sign for all of their meals. For any meals outside, they were on their own. After sending it out, however, he called Cerrone from Tampa for his feedback.
“Are you okay with this?” he asked.
“Well, actually, no sir, I’m not,” Cerrone replied. “I mean, this is essentially a seven-week business trip and you’re telling us we have to eat all our meals in the hotel. And what about dry cleaning? There’s nothing about how we’re supposed to pay for that.”
After mulling Cerrone’s complaint for a few minutes, Steinbrenner called him back.
“You’re right,” Steinbrenner said. “I didn’t fully think this out. We’ll pick up the dry cleaning.”
A couple of months earlier, Yankees VP Arthur Richman had leaked a story to Newsday’s Ken Davidoff and the Bergen Record’s Bob Klapisch: Steinbrenner was planning to eliminate the Yankees employees’ dental benefits package. Although he was later quoted as saying “those things are a waste of money,” the flap this created in the media prompted Steinbrenner to back off, and the dental benefits were never canceled.
Though he would reward Steinbrenner with a 19-7 season in 2002, the signing would come back to embarrass the Boss the following spring, when Wells published a tell-all book. In it, he claimed he’d been “half-drunk” when he pitched his perfect game for the Yankees in 1998; was critical of teammates Roger Clemens and Mike Mussina; maintained that over 40 percent of the players in baseball were on steroids (which, in retrospect, may have been true); and generally made Steinbrenner look like an out-negotiated fool at their Christmas Eve meeting.
Steinbrenner was understandably livid about the book and summoned Torre, Cashman, Trost, assistant GM Jean Afterman and Cerrone to his Legends Field office, with Levine checking in via speakerphone from New York, to decide what to do with Wells. But according to Torre, in his Yankee Years memoir, the session quickly regressed into a war of words between him and Steinbrenner. It began with Steinbrenner asking Torre what he suggested they do with Wells, to which Torre replied, “What I would do if I were you is call him up here and tell him to shut the fuck up.” When Steinbrenner countered that Torre should be the one to say that to Wells, the manager shot back, “I’m not telling him anything. This has nothing to do with me.”
Finally, after much deliberation and more angry words between Torre and Steinbrenner, they decided to fine Wells $100,000 and have him issue a public apology for the book.
The Yankees won their fifth-straight American League East title in 2002, leading the division from June 28 on and finishing with 103 victories, a comfortable 10½ games ahead of the Red Sox—but the season was a total failure as far as Steinbrenner was concerned. They were evicted from the postseason by the California Angels in the best-of-five first-round Division Series, during which the Yankee starting pitchers were torched for 56 hits and 31 runs in four games. It was clear to Torre that, with so many new hired hands from other teams now in the mix—including Giambi, reliever Steve Karsay, third baseman Robin Ventura and outfielders Rondell White and Raul Mondesi—none of whom had ever won a world championship before, the battle-hardened, selfless mentality he’d fostered with the O’Neill/Tino/Brosius group had begun to erode.
Steinbrenner had gone to Tampa when the series switched to Anaheim after the first two games at Yankee Stadium and watched the carn
age of the final game (in which the Angels kayoed Wells on 10 hits and eight earned runs in just four innings) on TV. I called him two days later.
“If I had to get beat,” he said, “let it have been the team that was once owned by Gene Autry, one of the finest men I ever met. Otherwise, I’m embarrassed for us. Adversity can be your greatest teacher, success your shortest lesson.”
“Who said that?” I asked.
“I did.”
“Oh,” I said, “I thought that might have been another one from Hemingway.”
“No, but as long you brought up Hemingway, I’ll repeat his famous quote, because it’s still my favorite: ‘To be a good loser takes practice,’ and I don’t intend to practice.”
“That’s what you said last year. So can I assume you’re going to be making more changes?”
“I’ve always believed in the old adage that it’s better to trade a player one year too early than one year too late,” he replied. “That was Branch Rickey.”
“You seem to be taking this quite well,” I said.
“I am wounded, but I am not slain, and now I shall lay down and bleed awhile. Then I will rise and fight again.”
“Who said that?”
“Anon,” said Steinbrenner, “as in ‘Anonymous.’ ”
In a December 29 Q&A interview with the Daily News’s Wayne Coffey, Steinbrenner sounded more like the old, blustering Boss, taking his usual shots at his manager and coaching staff, but also singling out Larry Lucchino and even Derek Jeter for criticism.
A few days prior to the interview, Lucchino, the Red Sox CEO, responding to reports that the Sox had been outbid and outmaneuvered by the Yankees in their attempts to sign Cuban pitcher Jose Contreras (to whom Steinbrenner gave a four-year, $32 million contract), had famously labeled them “the Evil Empire.” This was Steinbrenner’s opportunity to retaliate by going public with the same ill feelings about Lucchino he’d expressed privately in his congratulatory phone call to John Henry.
“That’s bullshit,” he told Coffey. “That’s how a sick person thinks. I’ve learned this about Lucchino: He’s baseball’s foremost chameleon of all time. He changes colors depending on where he’s standing. . . . When he was in San Diego, he was a big man for small markets. Now he’s in Boston and he’s for the big markets. . . . He’s running the team behind John Henry’s back. I warned John it would happen, told him, ‘Just be careful.’ He talks out of both sides of his mouth. He has trouble talking out of the front of it.”
Off the record with Coffey, Steinbrenner was even more vehement about Lucchino. “He’s a two-faced, lying, duplicitous son-of-a-bitch,” he said. “I wanted to punch him out at the last owners’ meeting.”
What really caught everyone by surprise was Steinbrenner’s criticism of Derek Jeter. By now, Jeter was a virtual deity in New York, already acknowledged as right up there with Phil Rizzuto as the greatest shortstop in Yankees history, with four championship rings and a .317 average in seven seasons in the big leagues. Not only that, he’d just hit .500 (8 for 16 with two homers) in the losing Division Series to the Angels.
“As far as trying and being a warrior, I wouldn’t put anyone ahead of him,” Steinbrenner said. “But how much better would he be if he didn’t have all his other activities? . . . He makes enough money that he doesn’t need a lot of the commercials. . . . When I read in the paper that he’s out until 3 A.M. in New York City, going to a birthday party, I won’t lie. That doesn’t sit well with me. That was in violation of Joe’s curfew. That’s the focus I’m talking about.”
This evoked memories of Steinbrenner singling out the equally respected Jim Abbott for spending too much time doing charity work a few years earlier. If there was one pattern in Steinbrenner’s motivational style, it was to pick on the biggest star on the team, usually not long after they’d signed lucrative long-term contracts. He’d done it to Reggie Jackson, Dave Winfield, and Don Mattingly, and now he was doing it to Jeter. The year before, Steinbrenner had locked him up to age 36 with a 10-year, $189 million contract—the most money he’d ever given to a player.
Six weeks later, Steinbrenner’s snipe at Jeter turned into a full-blown controversy—fueled in no small part by a case of classic tabloid journalism by the Daily News. Upon leaving his first pre–spring training workout at the Yankees’ minor league complex in Tampa, Jeter was asked by the Daily News’ Roger Rubin if he was bothered by Steinbrenner’s remarks. “Not at all,” was the short and sweet reply—but that was more than enough for the News to make a back-page story with the banner headline PARTY ON. It was all a bunch of silly, “slow news day” nonsense, but Steinbrenner had once again succeeded in getting the Yankees all over the news in the dead of winter—and, at the same time, he had gotten under the skin of his best player.
“He’s the boss and he’s entitled to his opinion,” Jeter said on the first official day of ’03 spring training, when the controversy had continued to drag on for weeks. “But what he said has turned me into being this big party animal. He even made a reference to one birthday party. That’s been turned into that I’m like Dennis Rodman now.”
Only in the world of Steinbrenner’s Yankees could such a meaningless episode be turned into a multimillion-dollar TV commercial. Soon, representatives from the ad agency BBDO approached Jeter and Steinbrenner about doing a commercial for Visa. What resulted was a hilarious spot in which Steinbrenner, sitting at his desk in his blue blazer and white turtleneck, admonishes Jeter by asking, “How can you possibly afford to spend two nights dancing, two nights eating out and three nights just carousing with your friends?” Jeter’s reply is to calmly hold up his Visa credit card. The commercial ends by flashing to a conga line in a nightclub, in which Jeter is the leader and Steinbrenner the caboose.
Steinbrenner’s biggest news splash that winter was the celebrated signing of Japan’s premier slugger, Hideki Matsui, to a three-year, $21 million contract. Matsui, nicknamed “Godzilla” for his decade of dominance with the Yomiuri Giants, had won three Central League MVP awards. He was introduced at a massive press conference, televised worldwide, held in the grand ballroom of the Marriott Marquis Hotel, in Times Square, on January 14. More than 500 reporters were present at the press conference, a harbinger that Matsui’s presence on the team would add 50 to 100 Japanese journalists to the Yankees’ traveling media corps.
With Matsui hitting .287 with 106 RBI, Giambi clubbing 41 homers with 107 RBI, and four starting pitchers—Clemens, Pettitte, Wells and Mussina—each winning 15 or more games, the 2003 Yankees waltzed to their sixth-straight American League East title, then swept the Minnesota Twins in the best-of-five Division Series. The ALCS against the Red Sox was a hard-fought, draining set of seven games that the Yankees finally won on Aaron Boone’s 11th-inning walk-off homer at Yankee Stadium off Boston knuckleballer Tim Wakefield.
The 2003 World Series, against the unheralded Florida Marlins, was anticlimactic. After splitting the first two games in New York, the Yankees lost two out of three in Florida, came back to Yankee Stadium and went out with a whimper as Marlins right-hander Josh Beckett shut them out on five hits for the clincher. But as he strode briskly out of the Stadium after the game, attired in his customary blue blazer, gray slacks and white turtleneck, Steinbrenner seemed almost subdued and uncharacteristically restrained from offering criticism of his team or Torre. Rather than stopping to talk to reporters and offer a dissertation on the Series, he tersely answered questions on the fly as he made his way to his limo.
“Will there be many changes?”
“No comment.”
“Will Torre be back?”
“I’ve said many times, yes.”
“What about Brian Cashman?”
“I’m very satisfied with Joe.”
It was unclear whether he’d heard the question about Cashman, but the reporters all agreed Steinbrenner was lacking the usual venom after a Yankee loss, especially one of this magnitude. Unbeknownst to Yankees officials, between games four and five of t
he World Series in Miami, Steinbrenner had been stricken with a severe case of the flu onboard the private yacht he’d rented for his family in Biscayne Bay. According to family sources, he had to be helped into bed by his son Hal and his longtime bodyguard, John Sibayan. He apparently staged a quick recovery, however, as he made it back for game five, which he watched for the most part from the visiting-club suite at Dolphins Stadium with the other Yankees officials.
Three days after Christmas, Steinbrenner made the 45-minute trip from Tampa to Sarasota to attend the funeral of his longtime friend Otto Graham, the Hall of Fame quarterback for the 1950s Cleveland Browns. Steinbrenner had idolized Graham from his days as a young business and civic leader in Cleveland, and his passing was a grim reminder that Steinbrenner himself was now 73.
As he sat by himself in the Church of the Palms Presbyterian-USA, watching a slide show of Graham’s life, Steinbrenner began to feel a closeness in the air. God, it was hot, and it was getting harder and harder to breathe. When Graham’s daughter-in-law began to deliver her eulogy, everything suddenly began to go dark and fuzzy, and Steinbrenner lurched forward as if trying to grab hold of something, then toppled onto the floor. For a few moments he lay there, unconscious, his face ashen white, as mourners rushed to his aid, loosening his tie and screaming for a doctor. Paramedics arrived a few minutes later, by which time Steinbrenner had regained consciousness.
“I’m all right, dammit!” he groaned before they lifted him onto a stretcher, carried him out of the church and put him in the ambulance that would take him to nearby Sarasota Memorial Hospital. His stay there was brief. After undergoing a battery of tests and being kept overnight for observation, he was released the next day, and Dr. Andrew Boyer, his personal physician, who had rushed from Tampa to Sarasota to supervise his treatment, issued a statement, assuring one and all that Steinbrenner was okay.
