by Phil Pepe
Doctors told the Posadas that the condition could be corrected by multiple surgeries. The first surgery was an eight-hour procedure that Jorge Jr. underwent before his first birthday. There were eight more surgeries, and all the while Posada kept silent about his son’s medical problems. The fact that he was able to carve out a potential Hall of Fame career while dealing with such personal stress is a tribute to his courage and his grit.
Eventually, the Posadas went public with their son’s condition, which gave rise to the Miami-based Jorge Posada Foundation, an emotional and financial support group for families with a child afflicted with craniosynostosis.
Today, Jorge Posada Jr. is a normal teenager with no physical limitations.
In 1999, Posada pretty much took over the Yankees’ full-time catcher’s job, starting 98 games to Girardi’s 64. Offensively, it was no contest. Posada out-hit Girardi .245 to .239, hit 12 homers to Girardi’s two, and drove in 57 runs to Girardi’s 27.
The Yankees won 98 games, but were pushed in the AL East by the Boston Red Sox, finally finishing 4½ games ahead of their New England rivals. For the second straight year the Yankees met the Texas Rangers in the Division Series and for the second straight year the Yankees handed the Rangers a shellacking, sweeping the three-game series by scores of 8–0, 3–1, and 3–0.
While the Yankees were disposing of Texas in three games, the Red Sox were erasing the Cleveland Indians in five games, pitting the Yankees and Red Sox, the two archrivals, against each other in the ALCS. It took five games for the Yanks to get rid of the Sox. That set up a rematch of the 1996 World Series, the Yankees against the Atlanta Braves, who were eager to avenge their defeat of three years earlier. This time the Yankees made it quick, blitzing the Braves in a four-game sweep.
Posada and Girardi pretty much split time behind the plate for the Yankees in the 1999 postseason. Neither was particularly effective offensively. Girardi was a combined 4-for-21 for a .190 average, without a home run or a run batted in, and Posada was 4-for-22 for a .182 average, but did have a home run and three RBI.
A year later, Posada’s situation would change dramatically, and for the better. Girardi left the Yankees (he attained free agency and signed with the Chicago Cubs, his first big league club and his hometown team), leaving Posada to do the bulk of the catching for the Yankees, with only cameo appearances from Chris Turner and Jim Leyritz. Posada would play in 151 games, 142 of them behind the plate, and he would have a breakout season. His .287 average, 28 home runs, and 86 RBI earned him his first All-Star selection and his first Silver Slugger Award, which is presented to the leading hitter at every defensive position in each league.
Although their win total slipped to 87, the Yankees held off the charge of the Boston Red Sox to finish first in the AL East by 2½ games. They would then beat the Oakland Athletics three games to two in the Division Series, the Seattle Mariners four games to two in the League Championship Series, and their crosstown rivals, the New York Mets, four games to one to win their third straight World Series (and their fourth in five years). Derek Jeter hit a quinella by being voted the Most Valuable Player in both the 2000 All-Star Game and the World Series.
In the three-year period from 1998 to 2000, the Yankees would attain postseason success the likes of which had never been seen before and likely never will be seen again. And the Core Four were important contributors to this unprecedented run.
In that stretch, the Yankees played 41 games and won 33 of them, a winning percentage of .805, phenomenal considering the high drama, excruciating pressure, intensity, and scrutiny under which the games were played. At one stage, they won 12 straight of these high-pressure games, and from Game 3 in 1996 to Game 2 in 2000 the Yankees won a ridiculous 14 World Series games in a row.
Posada played in 31 of those 41 games, contributed 20 hits, scored 11 runs, hit three home runs, and drove in 12 runs.
Pettitte pitched in 11 games, won six, and lost one.
Rivera was in 28 of the 41 games, with a 2–0 record. He also saved 18, allowed three earned runs in 41¹⁄³ innings for an ERA of 0.65, struck out 30, walked only three, and had a scoreless streak of 33¹⁄³ innings ended in the 2000 ALCS.
Jeter played in every inning of every one of the 41 games. He had 50 hits in 162 at-bats, a .309 average, stole seven bases, scored 30 runs, hit five home runs, and drove in 16.
Bernie Williams
Often referred to as the fifth member of the Core Four, Bernie Williams signed with the Yankees as an amateur free agent out of San Juan, Puerto Rico, in 1985, and reached Yankee Stadium in 1991, four years before the arrival of Mariano Rivera, Andy Pettitte, Jorge Posada, and Derek Jeter. Except for the time Pettitte spent in Houston, the five would play together as teammates for the rest of Williams’ 16-year career, all with the Yankees, and win six pennants and four World Series championships.
For his career, Williams posted Hall of Fame numbers: a .297 batting average, 2,336 hits, 287 home runs, and 1,257 runs batted in. The latest in a long line of superstar Yankee center fielders, Williams is sixth on the Yankees all-time list in games played, fourth in at-bats, sixth in runs, fifth in hits, third in doubles, seventh in home runs, sixth in RBIs, and 16th in batting average. He was a five-time All-Star, as well as the 1998 American League–batting champion with a .339 average. Five times he drove in at least 100 runs and he reached double figures in home runs for 14 consecutive seasons.
Williams never officially announced his retirement from baseball, but since playing his last major league game he has forged a successful second career as an accomplished classical and jazz guitarist and composer. When the enormously popular Williams attended ceremonies before the final game at the old Yankee Stadium, he received an ovation that lasted one minute and 42 seconds.
12. Say It Ain’t So, Mo
All good things must end!
And so the Yankees’ magical mystery tour through the major league postseason had its conclusion on Sunday night, November 4, 2001, in Phoenix’s Bank One Ballpark. And it concluded in the most unusual, most unpredictable fashion, with Mariano Rivera, who had pitched in 51 postseason games without suffering a defeat and had rung up 23 consecutive postseason saves to that point, walking off the mound as a losing pitcher for the first (and to this date, only) time in 96 Division Series, League Championship Series, and World Series games.
The Yankees seemed headed inevitably for a fourth straight World Series championship after coming through, against all odds, a best-of-five League Division Series in which they lost the first two games at home. They then steamrolled the Seattle Mariners in five games in the best-of-seven American League Championship Series, and followed that up by scoring two improbable, sudden-death victories in the World Series against the Arizona Diamondbacks.
Few gave much for the Yankees’ chances against the A’s after Mark Mulder beat Roger Clemens 5–3 in Game 1 of the Division Series and Tim Hudson out-pitched Andy Pettitte 2–0 in Game 2. Not even the battle-tested, four-time World Series–champion never-say-die Yankees seemed capable of winning two games on the road and a sudden-death fifth game at home. And all this against an Oakland team rich in pitching and possessed of a potent offense that was headed by the Nos. 1, 3, and 5 hitters in their lineup: Johnny Damon, Jason Giambi, and Eric Chavez (all three of whom would eventually wear the Yankees pinstripes), who had combined for 308 runs, 79 home runs, and 283 RBI in the regular season.
Game 3 in Oakland changed everything. Mike Mussina was brilliant for seven innings in out-pitching Barry Zito, Mariano Rivera was his usual lockdown self for the final two innings, Jorge Posada belted a home run in the fifth inning, and Derek Jeter made a remarkable, spectacular, instinctive, game-saving, Series-saving play that would come to be known as “the Flip,” in a pulsating 1–0 victory that enabled the Yankees to live to see another day.
Game 4 was a blowout, a 9–2 laugher, shifting the scene for the fifth game to Yankee Stad
ium and the momentum to the Yankees. Now there were few who didn’t believe the Yankees would win the game and the Series and go on to capture the ALCS and the World Series.
Back home for Game 5, the Yanks sent Clemens to the mound against Mulder. Neither could get out of the fifth inning. When Clemens had a spate of wildness with one out in the fifth (a walk, a wild pitch, a hit batsman), he was replaced by Mike Stanton with the Yankees leading 4–2 and Clemens two outs away from qualifying for the victory. Mariano Rivera pitched two scoreless innings for his second save of the series. Jeter and Posada each batted .444 and had identical logs of eight hits in 18 at-bats.
The Yankees were moving on to the League Championship Series, where for the second straight year they would meet the Seattle Mariners, who were led to a record 116 victories by manager Lou Piniella, the former Yankee star player, manager, and general manager.
The series was no contest. The Yankees first did to the Mariners what the Athletics had done to the Yankees. They won the first two games on their opponent’s field, 4–2 behind Pettitte in Game 1, and 3–2 behind Mussina in Game 2, with Rivera collecting a save in each game.
In Yankee Stadium for Game 3, the Mariners broke out with a 15-hit attack for a 14–3 victory, but unlike the Athletics, the Yankees did not cave in. They won Game 4 by a score of 3–1, and blasted the Mariners 12–3 in Game 5. Rivera got the win in Game 4. Pettitte, who would be voted the Most Valuable Player of the ALCS, was the winner of Game 5. Rivera pitched the ninth inning of the blowout in a non-save situation, manager Joe Torre’s homage to his invincible closer by having him on the field when the Yankees clinched the 38th American League pennant in the team’s history.
In the World Series the Yankees met a new opponent, the expansion Arizona Diamondbacks, in only the fourth year of their existence. They would prove to be a formidable opponent with an offense led by Luis Gonzalez, who hit 57 home runs and drove in 142 runs during the season. In most years those numbers would have led the league, but in 2001 Barry Bonds hit 73 homers and Sammy Sosa hit 64, and Sosa’s 160 RBI was tops in the league.
The real strength of the 2001 Diamondbacks, however, was their starting pitching, bulwarked by the fearsome one-two punch of Curt Schilling (22–6) and Randy Johnson (21–6). Between them they had pitched 506¹⁄³ innings and struck out 665 batters.
The first two games of the World Series in Arizona were right off the DBacks’ drawing board. Schilling pitched seven overpowering innings in Game 1, allowed one run and three hits and struck out eight and Gonzalez hit a two-run home run in a four-run third in Arizona’s 9–1 win. Randy Johnson went the distance in the second game, allowing three hits, striking out 11, and out-pitching Pettitte in a 4–0 victory. So here were the Yankees in a familiar position, down two games to none, just as they were against Oakland in the Division Series. The difference was this was a best-of-seven series and the Yanks would be the home team for the next three games.
The pregame pageantry of Game 3 of the World Series on the night of October 30, 2001, stirred emotions like never before. The customary red, white, and blue bunting that decorated Yankee Stadium never had such meaning. Exactly seven weeks to the day earlier, terrorists had leveled both towers of the World Trade Center, some 10 miles away in lower Manhattan, killing thousands and throwing the city, and the nation, into a panic and mourning.
In an effort to ease the tension, President George W. Bush, a lifelong baseball fan and a former owner of the Texas Rangers, accepted Major League Baseball’s invitation to throw out the first pitch. Security in and around the stadium was tight, but the president would be vulnerable, standing alone and unprotected on the pitcher’s mound. He would not, by his own choosing, be wearing the bulletproof vest that had been provided for him. The president was a baseball purist and he reasoned that the vest would interfere with his goal to throw a perfect strike to Yankees’ backup catcher, Todd Greene.
To ensure his ability to make a good, strong pitch, the president arranged to take a few pregame warm-up, range-finding throws under the stands in the bowels of the Stadium. As he was taking his tosses, Derek Jeter walked by.
“Hey, Mr. President,” said the captain of the Yankees without saluting the commander in chief. “Are you going to throw from the mound or from the front of it?”
“What do you think?” Bush replied.
“Throw from the mound or else they’ll boo you,” said Jeter who started walking away. Suddenly he stopped, looked back, and said, “But don’t bounce it. They’ll boo you.”
The president didn’t bounce the throw. He fired a perfect strike and headed triumphantly toward home plate. As he walked to greet, and be greeted by, Todd Greene and the two managers, Bob Brenly and Joe Torre, the huge crowd began to chant spontaneously “USA…USA…USA…”
Perhaps moved by the pregame ceremony or motivated to match what Schilling and Johnson had done in the first two games, Roger Clemens, a man of enormous professional ego and pride and like President Bush a Texan, pitched brilliantly.
Posada had staked Clemens to a one-run lead with a home run in the bottom of the second, ending an 18-inning scoreless streak by the Yankees. The Diamondbacks tied the score in the fourth on Matt Williams’ sacrifice fly, but the Yankees regained the lead in the sixth on a single by Bernie Williams, a walk, and Scott Brosius’ RBI single. And that’s how it ended, a 2–1 victory for the Yankees.
At the top of his game, Clemens, who left after the seventh, allowed just the one run and three hits while striking out nine. Rivera came in for a six-out save and retired the Diamondbacks in order in the eighth and ninth, four of the outs by strikeout. The Yankees had broken through with a victory and the fun was just beginning. The Yankee Stadium crowd, and the national television audience, had seen nothing yet.
Events of the next two nights in Yankee Stadium produced such high drama and excruciating tension that many who watched began calling the 2001 World Series among the greatest ever played.
Game 4 was a spectacular, if nail-biting, pitchers’ duel between Schilling and Orlando “El Duque” Hernandez, a 1–1 tie after seven nerve-wracking innings.
The Diamondbacks pushed across two runs in the top of the eighth and turned the lead over to their Korean relief pitcher Byung-Hyun Kim, who had taken over as the team’s closer at midseason and racked up 19 saves to go with his five wins. When Kim breezed through the bottom of the eighth with consecutive strikeouts of Shane Spencer, Scott Brosius, and Alfonso Soriano, the euphoria in the stadium from the emotional and stirring pregame pageantry had turned to gloom.
In the bottom of the ninth, Jeter attempted to bunt his way on base. Reacting alertly, third baseman Matt Williams fielded the bunt and threw Jeter out at first. Paul O’Neill followed with a bloop single that gave a glimmer of hope to the hometown crowd, but their eager anticipation was dashed when Kim fanned Bernie Williams. That brought up Tino Martinez, the Yankees’ last hope, who had grounded out, struck out, and walked in three previous plate appearances and was hitless in nine at-bats in the Series.
Martinez attacked Kim’s first pitch and drove it into the autumn night, a majestic blast straightaway to center field, where it soared over the fence to tie the game at 3–3. Rivera retired the Diamondbacks in order in the top of the 10th and Kim disposed of Brosius and Soriano on fly balls in the bottom of the 10th to bring up Jeter, who had been in a 1-for-15 slide in the Series.
Kim jumped ahead 0–2 but couldn’t put away Jeter, who fouled off four pitches while running the count to 3–2. Jeter offered at Kim’s next pitch and with his trademark inside-out swing he sent a high drive toward the right-field corner, where right fielder Reggie Sanders could only watch as the ball sailed over his head and the wall and into the lower right-field seats.
The Yankees’ improbable 4–3 victory sent the crowd of 55,863 into a frenzy and tied the World Series at two games a piece on an at-bat that literally spanned a month. Jeter had stepped int
o the batter’s box on October 31, and the ball flew over the right-field fence at precisely 12:03 am on November 1. Derek Jeter had a new nickname.
“Mr. November!”
It was only the third time in 97 World Series and 500 World Series games that a team won a game after trailing by at least two runs in the bottom of ninth inning.
Remarkably, only 24 hours later, it happened again.
The same two-run deficit as the night before, the same bottom of the ninth with two outs and a runner on base, the same Diamondback pitcher on the mound.
Déjà vu all over again, as Yogi Berra would say.
Mike Mussina for the Yankees and Miguel Batista for the Diamondbacks were the starting pitchers who dueled through seven anxious innings in Game 5. Arizona pushed across two runs in the fifth on home runs by Steve Finley and Rod Barajas as Batista held the Yankees scoreless.
It remained 2–0 going into the bottom of the ninth, when once again Kim was brought in to protect a two-run lead. Posada started the inning with a double, but Spencer grounded out and Knoblauch struck out, and for the second straight night Kim and the Diamondbacks were one out away from victory.
This time the batter was Scott Brosius, who had grounded out and flied out twice in three at-bats in this game and was 3-for-16 in the Series. With the count 1–0 Brosius drove Kim’s pitch deep into the left-field seats to tie the score. Miraculously, the Yankees had done it again, and so had Byung-Hyan Kim.
They went to extra innings. Rivera pitched a scoreless 10th and 11th, then Sterling Hitchcock a perfect 12th. In the bottom of the 12th, Knoblauch singled, Brosius sacrificed, and Soriano singled to score Knoblauch with the winning run. The Yankees were going to Arizona up three games to two. They would have to win only one game of the two, but they would have to do it against Randy Johnson and Curt Schilling.
