by Phil Pepe
Confirming Torre’s assessment that he’s special, Jeter led off with a single, his third hit of the game, and moved to second on a base on balls to Tim Raines. Jeter then scored when third baseman Dean Palmer threw Charlie Hayes’ bunt wildly past first baseman Will Clark. Game over! The Yankees had dodged a bullet with the 5–4 victory and the series shifted to Texas, tied at one game apiece.
In Game 3, the Yankees once again found themselves backed against a wall, down 2–1 going to the top of the ninth, and once again Jeter, moved up from the ninth batting position to lead off, started the inning with a single, his second hit of the game. He went to third on Raines’ single and scored the tying run on Bernie Williams’ sacrifice fly. Raines reached second when Fielder grounded out and the Rangers intentionally walked Martinez to face Mariano Duncan, who had been an important player all season both on the field and as an inspirational leader.
Thirty-three years old and in his 11th major league season, Duncan was used sparingly by Torre in deference to his age. But he produced mightily, with eight home runs and 56 RBI in 109 games, a team-leading .340 average, and the creation of the slogan that would become the Yankees’ rallying cry for the season. Duncan would arrive each day in the Yankees’ clubhouse and shout for all to hear, “We play today; we win today!”
Now in the top of the ninth, Duncan put his bat where his mouth was and singled home Raines to put the Yankees ahead 3–2. Wetteland worked a scoreless bottom of the ninth and the Yankees were up two games to one.
The Rangers started off swinging in Game 4, with two runs in the second and two more in the third, one of them on Gonzalez’s fifth home run of the series, for a 4–0 lead. Once again the Yankees were forced to come from behind. They began their comeback with a three-run rally in the fourth on four singles, two walks, a stolen base, and Jeter’s RBI on a fielder’s choice, tying it in the fifth on Bernie Williams’ home run.
After Kenny Rogers and Brian Boehringer were tagged for four runs and eight hits over the first three innings, David Weathers, Mariano Rivera, and John Wetteland combined to hold the Rangers to one hit, three walks, and no runs over the final six innings. The Yankees took the lead in the seventh on Fielder’s RBI single and Williams’ second home run of the game gave them an insurance run in the ninth for a 6–4 win that knocked out the Rangers and sent the Yankees to the American League Championship Series against Baltimore.
The pattern that had been established in the division series—the Yankees falling behind early, their starting pitchers keeping them close, the bullpen coming in to shut down the opposition, the Yanks’ bats heating up late in the game to overcome a deficit—continued in the League Championship Series.
Andy Pettitte started Game 1 and gave up single runs in the second, third, fourth, and sixth, leaving after seven innings with the Yanks behind 4–3. With one out in the bottom of the eighth, Jeter hit a line drive toward the right-field stands that was caught by a 12-year-old fan. The Orioles argued that right fielder Tony Tarasco would have caught the drive had the fan, Jeffrey Maier, not leaned his glove over the wall to catch the ball. Right-field umpire Richie Garcia decided Maier did not interfere with Tarasco and called it a home run, tying the score at 4–4.
Once more the Yankees’ bullpen of Nelson, Wetteland, and Rivera held the opponents scoreless over the final four innings, and the Yankees won 5–4 on another home run by Bernie Williams leading off the bottom of the 11th inning.
After the Orioles won Game 2 by a score of 5–3, the series moved to Baltimore, where the Yankees would sweep three games from the Orioles, 5–2, 8–4, and 6–4, and move on the World Series against the defending World Series–champion Atlanta Braves. The Braves were currently in the process of putting together a dynasty, having won five division titles and reaching the World Series for the fourth time in the last six years. The Braves were led by Chipper Jones (.309, 30 home runs, 110 RBI), Fred McGriff (.295, 28, 107), Ryan Klesko (.282, 34, 93), and Javier Lopez (.282, 23, 69). But it was their pitching staff, including John Smoltz (24–8), Tom Glavine (15–10), Greg Maddux (15–11), and Mark Wohlers (39 saves) that really drove them.
First, Smoltz and four relievers held the Yankees to four hits in a 12–1 rout in Game 1, powered by two home runs from 19-year-old Andruw Jones and one by McGriff. Then, Maddux and Wohlers combined on a 4–0, seven-hit shutout in Game 2. Just like that the Braves had taken the first two games in Yankee Stadium. And, with the next three games to be played in Atlanta, you couldn’t find anyone who gave the Yankees a snowball’s chance in Georgia in this World Series.
Well, there was one.
Visited in the manager’s office by a steaming and dejected George Steinbrenner after the second game, Joe Torre boldly predicted that the Yankees would win the World Series. Not only that, he said they would sweep the next four games.
Was this just false bravado? Was Torre merely whistling past the graveyard, putting on a brave front, making a preemptive strike against the man who controlled his professional fate and who had a penchant for replacing managers with very little provocation? Or did Torre have a premonition?
We’ll never know why Torre made such a bold prediction. What we do know is that Torre’s prediction was dead-on accurate.
Back in Atlanta’s Fulton County Stadium, David Cone out-pitched Tom Glavine in Game 3 and the Yankees won 5–2. Game 4, the following night, Wednesday, October 23, would follow the familiar pattern established in the previous playoff series, the Yankees falling behind early, their bullpen stifling the opponents’ bats, the Yanks rallying from behind. Game 4 would prove to be the turning point of the World Series.
Down 6–0, the Yankees scored three runs in the top of the sixth, the rally started (surprise!) with a single by Jeter. But the Braves still held a 6–3 lead in the eighth when the Yankees put two runners on. The Braves’ failure to succesfully turn what should have been a double play would be the huge break the Yankees needed, bringing Jim Leyritz to the plate. Leyritz had gone in to catch after Joe Girardi left for a pinch hitter and now here he was, the tying run, facing off against Mark Wohlers, the Braves’ lockdown closer and his 100 mph fastball.
The count went to 2–2 when Leyritz fouled off two blistering fastballs, which must have convinced Wohlers to abandon his 100 mph heater with his next offering and switch to his second- best pitch, a slider. Wohlers had to be thinking that Leyritz certainly was expecting another fastball and the slider would catch him off guard. Wohlers’ plan backfired. Leyritz jumped on the slider, drilling it over the left-field wall. The score was tied, but the Braves, for all practical purposes, were beaten.
While Yankees relievers Nelson, Rivera, Lloyd, and Wetteland were holding the Braves to three hits and no runs over the final five innings, the Yankees would finally break through with two runs in the 10th. The rally started with a two-out walk to Tim Raines, followed by an infield single by Jeter (again!).
The Yankees went up three games to two, completing a sweep of the three games in Atlanta when they won Game 5. This was the game in which Andy Pettitte first earned recognition as a big-game pitcher by outdueling Smoltz in a 1–0 victory.
Back at Yankee Stadium for Game 6, the Yankees scored three runs in the third on a double by Paul O’Neill, a triple by Joe Girardi, Jeter’s single and stolen base, and Bernie Williams’ RBI single. Jimmy Key and four relievers held the Braves to one run until the ninth, when Wetteland gave up singles to Terry Pendleton, Ryan Klesko, and Marquis Grissom for a run before getting Mark Lemke to pop to third baseman Charlie Hayes to nail down the Yankees’ first World Series championship since 1978.
For three members of the Core Four it would be the first of several rides through New York City’s Canyon of Heroes in lower Manhattan, and they had earned it with outstanding performances in the postseason.
Andy Pettitte was 1–0 in the League Championship Series and 1–1 in the World Series.
Mariano Rivera pitched 14�
�⁄³ innings in the postseason, won one game, lost none, and struck out 10.
Derek Jeter batted .412 in the Division Series with an RBI and two runs scored, .417 in the League Championship Series with a home run, an RBI, and five runs scored, and .250 in the World Series with an RBI and five runs scored.
Joe Torre had won his first World Series. Never again would he be called “Clueless Joe.”
11. Posada’s Time
While the careers of Mariano Rivera, Andy Pettitte, and Derek Jeter were flourishing, Jorge Posada’s had been at a standstill, his rise delayed by Joe Girardi and by his own inexperience.
On December 5, 1996, Jim Leyritz, who had hit the biggest home run of the 1996 World Series, a game-tying, three-run shot in Game 4, was traded to the Anaheim Angels. Leyritz had caught 55 games as backup to Girardi while hitting .264 with seven home runs and 40 RBI. It was apparent that Leyritz was being traded to clear the way for Posada to finally say “Goodbye Columbus” and farewell to the Columbus-New York-Columbus shuttle and take up secure residence in the Bronx as Girardi’s backup.
Still technically a rookie, Posada, on the strength of a .357 average, two home runs, and 11 RBI in spring training, was voted the James P. Dawson Award winner, named for the late New York Times baseball writer and Yankees correspondent, and presented annually since 1956 to the Yankees’ outstanding rookie player in camp. When the major league season opened, Posada was on the Yankees’ roster, the only rookie so rewarded.
Used mainly as Girardi’s backup and as part of a platoon, Posada appeared in 60 games, 52 as the starting catcher, batted .250, hit six home runs, and drove in 25 runs.
The 1997 Yankees, led on offense by three players who would hit more than 21 homers and reach triple digits in RBI (Tino Martinez 44, 141, Paul O’Neill 21, 117, Bernie Williams 21, 100), were essentially the same team that had won the World Series the previous year, Joe Torre’s first as manager. There was one notable exception.
Reliever John Wetteland, who had led the league with 43 saves in 1996, had gained free agency, and rather than pony up big dollars to keep him, the Yankees saw a chance to save money and, at the same time, reward one of their young lions. Convinced that Mariano Rivera was ready and able to step in and take over the closer’s role, they let Wetteland walk and sign a four-year, $23 million contract with the Texas Rangers.
On April 15, Major League Baseball staged Jackie Robinson Day in every ballpark, commemorating the 50th anniversary of the day Robinson broke baseball’s color barrier, while at the same time memorializing the 25th anniversary of his death. As part of the ceremonies, the commissioner’s office decreed that henceforth no player would wear Robinson’s No. 42. However, all those already wearing the number were granted a grandfather clause permitting them to wear the number for the remainder of their careers. That day there were 12 major league players who wore No. 42, including Rivera. In the 2012 season, he was the only one of the 12 still playing.
Rivera didn’t disappoint in his new role as closer. He won six games and saved 43, two fewer than league-leader Randy Myers of the Baltimore Orioles, and the exact number that Wetteland had saved for the Yankees the season before (in his first season with the Rangers, Wetteland would win seven games and save 31).
The Yankees’ 96 wins—while two more than the 1996 champs—were only enough for second place in the American League East, two games behind the Baltimore Orioles. New York’s record was good enough, however, to qualify them for the postseason as the American League wild-card team.
Paired against the AL Central–champion Cleveland Indians in the 1997 Division Series, the Yankees found themselves behind early when the Indians scored five runs in the first inning of Game 1 at Yankee Stadium. The Yankees rallied from behind, got home runs from O’Neill, Martinez, Derek Jeter, and Tim Raines, scored five runs in the sixth to take the lead, and won 8–6 with Rivera pitching an inning and a third for his first postseason save.
The Indians turned the tables in Game 2, watching the Yankees score three times in the first and then coming back for a 7–5 win to tie the series at one game each.
Game 3 in Cleveland was all New York. O’Neill, an Ohio native, hit another homer, and David Wells pitched a complete-game five-hitter for a 6–1 victory that put the Yankees up two games to one in the best-of-five series, one win away from advancing to the American League Championship Series and two chances to get it.
The Yankees jumped out to a 2–0 lead in the first inning of Game 4. The Indians got one run back in the second, but starter Dwight Gooden and a tag team of relievers—Graeme Lloyd, Jeff Nelson, and Mike Stanton—preserved the lead into the eighth when, with one out, Rivera came in for what would be a five-out save. He retired the first batter, Matt Williams, a right-handed hitter, on a fly ball to right fielder O’Neill. The next batter, Sandy Alomar Jr., took two pitches out of the strike zone and then teed off on Rivera’s cutter and, like Williams, drove it to right field. Unlike Williams, Alomar’s ball reached the fences and beyond to tie the score 2–2.
The Indians would push across a run in the ninth on Omar Vizquel’s RBI single and the series was tied, two games each, with the sudden-death fifth game to be played the following night in Cleveland.
The Indians jumped out to an early lead with a three-run third against Andy Pettitte, added a run in the fourth, and held on as the Yankees scored two in the fifth and one in the sixth, but left two runners on base in the eighth and one in the ninth, and were defeated 4–3.
Posada appeared in two games against the Indians, batting twice without a hit. But it was becoming apparent that barring a trade for a big name (always a possibility with the Yankees), Posada was being groomed to take over as the team’s No. 1 catcher. He was seven years younger than Girardi, had more power, and was a switch-hitter, which made him a left-handed threat in Yankee Stadium’s short right-field porch.
By 1998, Posada’s time had come. Some observers thought it was a year late, that Girardi held on to the starting job because he had a staunch and loyal ally in bench coach Don Zimmer, who campaigned strongly in Girardi’s behalf. But when Posada slammed three hits, including a home run, in the fourth game of the season and came back with two hits, including another home run, in the sixth game of the season, manager Joe Torre adjusted his plans.
No longer was Posada considered a defensive liability. He had earned Torre’s trust with his improvement behind the plate, and for the first time he got more calls as the starting catcher than Girardi 85–76. But it was the potential of his bat that made Posada a more attractive option than an aging and fading Girardi. Posada would prove to be a potent addition to a team that would win a franchise record 114 games and finish 22 games ahead of the second-place Boston Red Sox in the American League East. Although out-hit by Girardi .276 to .268, Posada had a huge edge in home runs (17 to 3) and RBI (63 to 31), and was rewarded with more playing time than Girardi in the postseason.
Many believe the 1998 Yankees to be the greatest of all Yankees teams. Certainly they belong in the conversation with the 1927, 1936, 1939, and 1961 Yankees.
Bernie Williams, American League batting champion at .339, was one of four Yankees in 1998 with a batting average of .300 or better. The others were Derek Jeter (.324), Paul O’Neill (.317), and Scott Brosius (.300), who came to the Yankees as the “player to be named later” in the deal that sent Kenny Rogers to Oakland, and whose lifetime batting average for seven seasons prior to coming to the Yankees was .248.
Four Yankees hit more than 20 home runs that season: Tino Martinez (28), Williams (26), and O’Neill and Darryl Strawberry (24). Jeter and Brosius each hit 19. Martinez (123) and O’Neill (116) each drove in more than 100 runs. Brosius knocked in 98. David Cone tied for the league lead in wins with 20. David Wells won 18 and Andy Pettitte 16. Three others had double figures in wins: Hideki Irabu (13), Orlando Hernandez (12), and Ramiro Mendoza (10). And Mariano Rivera, in his second year as Yankees’ clos
er, had 36 saves and an earned run average of 1.91.
Just as they had done during the regular season, the Yankees ran roughshod over their opponents in the postseason, sweeping three games from the Texas Rangers in the Division Series, taking four out of six from the Cleveland Indians in the American League Championship Series, and sweeping the San Diego Padres to win their second World Series in three years and the 24th in their history.
Posada would appear in only one game in the Division Series and go hitless in two at-bats, but in the ALCS he was in five of the six games, started three of them, and had two hits in 11 at-bats, including his first postseason home run in Game 1. He started the first two games of the World Series, was 3-for-9 in the Series and hit another home run, a two-run shot in Game 2. And for the first time, Posada felt he truly belonged as the Yankees took another ride through Manhattan’s Canyon of Heroes.
The 1999 season was a slight setback for Posada. His batting average dropped from .268 to .245, his home runs from 17 to 12, and his RBI from 63 to 57, but the Yankees won their third pennant and World Series in four years, and Posada looked forward to good times ahead.
Posada’s joy in playing for the winning side in the World Series for the second straight year and third time in four years was more than matched by the joy he realized a few weeks later with the birth of his first child, Jorge Posada Jr., on November 28. But that joy was tempered and fear set in just 10 days later when Jorge and Laura Posada were informed that young Jorge was born with craniosynostosis, a rare pediatric deformity of the skull that occurs in one out of every 2,000 births when the bones in the child’s skull fuse together before the brain has stopped growing.
