Chumps to Champs

by Bill Pennington

  By the early nineties, there had been so many dreary baseball seasons inside the Kingdome that the Mariners were determined to leave Seattle. And the city was not begging the Mariners to stay, either. The city council twice rebuffed the Mariners’ request for a new, municipally owned outdoor ballpark. It wasn’t until Griffey came into his prime, along with Johnson, Alex Rodriguez and another future Hall of Famer, Edgar Martínez, that a new ballpark initiative gained steam.

  The Mariners’ unexpected, stirring drive to the 1995 playoffs had come along at just the right time as well, rallying the fan base. Eventually, there was sufficient municipal support to fund a new baseball stadium, and that year’s team was credited with saving major league baseball in Seattle. The Kingdome hosted its last game in 1999 and was demolished a year later.

  But none of that spared the Yankees in 1995. In fact, they were about to play what were considered the two most memorable baseball games in Kingdome history.

  The Yankees led the fourth game of the series 5–0 in the third inning, behind the first of Mattingly’s four hits and a two-run homer by O’Neill. But the Mariners clawed back to tie the score on a three-run homer by Edgar Martínez and two runs scored on sloppy Yankee fielding gaffes.

  The game was tied 6–6 in the eighth when Wetteland came in and promptly loaded the bases on a walk, an infield hit and a hit batsman. Martínez, who hit seven homers off the Yankees in the regular season, then rocketed a 2-2 Wetteland fastball over the center-field fence for a grand slam.

  Wetteland unhappily stomped off the mound again. He had pitched four and one-third innings in the series and given up eight hits, two walks and seven earned runs. His series ERA was 14.54.

  The 11–8 final score in Game 4 sent the series to a place that might have seemed inconceivable just a few days earlier when Jim Leyritz’s home run crashed into the Yankees’ bullpen.

  “Maybe this is the way it was supposed to be all along,” Mattingly said. “We’re pretty evenly matched.”

  Seattle manager Lou Piniella, a popular, valued cog in previous Yankees championship teams, sat in his office after the game smoking a cigarette. “We’ve already beaten the Yankees three times in a row here this year,” he said with a little cackle. “Shit, we’ve done it twice. I’m not saying we’ll do it again, but we have done it in the regular season.”

  Piniella was asked to compare the Game 5 starting pitchers: Cone and Andy Benes, who was 7-2 for Seattle after a midseason trade from San Diego.

  Piniella took a drag on his cigarette. “Let’s talk about the bullpens,” he said with a sly smile. “They’ve got their guys. I’m going to have the Big Unit in my bullpen.” The six-foot-ten Johnson, the tallest player in the major leagues, was given the nickname “the Big Unit” by teammate Tim Raines during his rookie year in 1988.

  The deciding fifth game, as expected, was taut, protracted and gripping. Behind Cone’s gritty pitching, a Paul O’Neill home run and a two-run double by Mattingly, the Yankees took a 4–2 lead into the bottom of the eighth.

  Griffey’s third homer off Cone in the series cut the Mariners’ deficit in half. Cone had thrown more than 125 pitches and was clearly laboring, but Showalter did not yet have anyone warming up in his bullpen.

  The reason was obvious. He no longer trusted Wetteland, the man whose job it was to rescue the Yankees in these situations. The reliever had been battered throughout the six-day series. The night before in Game 4, Showalter had surely seen enough of Wetteland when he pitched to just four batters and each of them scored.

  Showalter could probably have recited, in order, the results of the last six Mariners whom Wetteland faced in the series: home run, single, walk, single, hit batsman, home run. So Wetteland and his 14.54 ERA were probably not going to be stepping on the pitcher’s mound unless the game went 20 innings.

  But what were Showalter’s other bullpen choices?

  Steve Howe had pitched one inning in the series and given up four hits and two runs. Bob Wickman had pitched three innings and been knocked around for five hits. Sterling Hitchcock had pitched one and two-thirds innings and yielded two hits, two walks and two runs. No wonder Piniella had been cackling the night before.

  There was, of course, the quiet, self-assured Rivera, who had been effective in two previous outings. But at that point in his career, Rivera’s experience as a pitcher in the postseason was limited: four and two-thirds innings. Cone had pitched 50 innings in baseball’s postseason.

  Clearly, as Griffey’s eighth-inning home run underscored, Cone was exhausted and no longer had much life on his fastball. Cone was pitching almost entirely on guile. Showalter knew that, but sitting in the dugout, he made a gut-check decision. “I stuck with Cone based on experience and track record,” Showalter said twenty years later, sitting in his denlike office just inside the front door of his Dallas home. “David had a track record; Mariano did not.”

  Rivera would become the greatest relief pitcher in baseball history.

  “But at that moment, none of that is a given,” Showalter said. “Nor does it necessarily apply to that situation, that night.”

  Revisiting the subject, Showalter stood up behind his desk, silently paced around his home office for a minute and then plopped back down in a chair. He was transporting himself back inside the Kingdome on October 8, 1995. “It’s two entirely different things to sit there then and to sit here now,” he said. “You can’t travel back in time with the knowledge of the future. And if I had made a different decision, it’s not a given that things would have turned out differently.” Showalter looked away, gazing out a bay window into his front yard.

  Cone stayed in the game, and things went from bad to worse. With two outs, he loaded the bases on two walks and a single.

  In the Yankees’ bullpen, Glenn Sherlock, the team’s catching instructor who was Rivera’s first minor league manager in 1990, had placed his hand on the phone that was connected to the dugout. Sherlock was waiting to feel the vibration of the ringing phone, because it would be the only way he would know that Showalter was calling. The roars of the Kingdome crowd would make a ringing phone inaudible.

  “Certainly, that’s a call you can’t afford to miss,” Sherlock recalled in 2018.

  Asked to describe the mood in the bullpen, Sherlock answered: “Tense. I mean, yeah, real tense. Guys were literally on the edge of their seats. I don’t remember anything being said. I don’t think there was any conversation at all.”

  McDowell was one of ten Yankees pitchers or coaches in the bullpen, which was no more than three benches, a tub of Gatorade and a pitcher’s mound in foul territory near the right-field stands. “What I remember is that everybody was just silently rooting for the third out,” McDowell said. “You’re just like, ‘Come on, one out.’”

  Eventually, Sherlock felt the phone vibrate. Rivera was instructed to begin warming up. And only Rivera.

  In a private suite overlooking the field, George Steinbrenner was fuming. Not because he had any particular faith in Rivera. The owner had been peeved for most of the game by dozens of things transpiring on the field. He was joined in his suite by Gene Michael; Brian Cashman, the assistant general manager; the team’s chief operating officer, David Sussman; and Frank Dolson, a native New Yorker, Yankees fan and a friend of Steinbrenner’s who had recently retired as a sports columnist at the Philadelphia Inquirer.

  “That box with George was not a place you wanted to be,” Cashman said. “Watching a game with him was the worst. Everything was so negative. It was full of stress, tension and sweat. It was horrible.”

  Cashman called Dolson a sweetheart of a man but a rabid Yankees fan whose brand of rooting would stoke some of Steinbrenner’s worst tendencies. “All Frank was doing was making George even more mad,” Cashman said. “He’d be like, ‘Oh, what’s the manager doing? What kind of move is that? That player sucks.’ I wanted to choke Frank.”

  Sussman recalled how Steinbrenner was convinced that Piniella was managing circles around Show
alter, and that it was going to cost the Yankees the series. “George was continually berating Buck. He would say things like, ‘Our guy is completely outclassed,’” Sussman said. “Or he’d say, ‘It’s so obvious that Lou is a better manager than this kid.’ Or, ‘Our guy is just not up to the task; in a key game he’s getting his clock cleaned by a more experienced guy.’

  “Every move that was made or was not made, George was second-guessing his manager.”

  Sussman, who had worked for Steinbrenner since 1989, saw something deeper in Steinbrenner’s esteem for Piniella and censure for Showalter. “He had a real fondness for Lou, and there’s a psychological thread that runs through that,” Sussman said. “He was affectionate about his emotional, fiery managers, like Lou or Billy Martin. George’s kind of manager was someone who would throw bats out of the dugout or would kick dirt at umpires. George viewed that as standing up for his players or for the owner. He wanted a manager who was demonstrative. That wasn’t Buck, who was a very cerebral intellect. You couldn’t ask for a more dramatic contrast of styles, and in terms of styles, Buck was not a George guy.”

  With the bases loaded and the Yankees leading 4–3, Cone had thrown three balls and two strikes to pinch hitter Doug Strange, a switch-hitting middle infielder who was a lifetime .233 hitter.

  Again, Cone eschewed a fastball and tried a sinking forkball, hoping to induce a swing and a miss or a weak ground ball as the pitch dropped out of the strike zone.

  But Cone’s weary arm did not deliver the pitch with enough force. It started losing velocity too soon and bounced in the dirt in front of home plate. Strange did not swing; the game was tied.

  Cone had thrown 147 pitches by the time Showalter walked to the mound to replace him with Rivera, who needed just three pitches to end the inning. Seattle’s Mike Blowers took one fastball for a strike, fouled back another and watched the third pitch for a called strike on the outside corner.

  In the top of the ninth, the Yankees put two runners on with no outs. But the threat was squashed when Piniella did as he promised and summoned Randy Johnson, who retired Wade Boggs, Bernie Williams and Paul O’Neill on just eight pitches.

  Showalter called Sherlock again. Pettitte and Jack McDowell, who had pitched five and one-third innings two days earlier, began throwing in the bullpen.

  In the bottom of the ninth, Rivera gave up a leadoff single, and the runner was sacrificed to second base with Griffey in the on-deck circle. Again, Showalter had a choice. He decided to intentionally walk Griffey and lifted Rivera for McDowell.

  Throughout August and September, when McDowell had won seven of his nine starts, Showalter had repeatedly referred to the 1993 Cy Young Award winner as a “warrior” or a “seasoned warrior.”

  History, or hindsight, would certainly indicate that it might have been wise to let Rivera face more than a few batters. But that would also be overlooking Rivera’s final six relief appearances in the regular season—when he had an ERA of 4.50.

  Showalter said he relied on his available pitchers’ past body of work and made a judgment. “What if Mariano stays in and loses the game?” Showalter asked in 2017. “Does that change history? Is his career the same after that?”

  With two runners on base, McDowell faced Edgar Martínez, who was hitting .579 in the series. McDowell’s torn rib cage muscle had swelled to include a golf-ball-size bulge, but McDowell overpowered Martínez with two blazing pitches, then struck him out with an outside breaking ball. McDowell then got twenty-year-old Alex Rodriguez to end the inning with a ground ball to shortstop.

  “Adrenaline can mask a lot of discomfort, whether it’s your arm or your rib cage or whatever,” McDowell said.

  The game remained tied until the eleventh, when the Yankees took a 5–4 lead on a walk, a sacrifice and a single. The Yankees had finally gotten to a tiring Johnson. “I think everyone felt pretty good about our chances right then,” Bernie Williams recalled. “We bounced out of the dugout. Three outs and we win.”

  But like the tall and gangly Johnson, the six-foot-five, lanky McDowell was reaching his limit in the first relief appearance of his major league career.

  Joey Cora, a speedy, five-foot-seven, 150-pound switch-hitting middle infielder, was the inning’s leadoff batter. In the previous day’s game, while batting left-handed, Cora dragged a bunt between the pitcher’s mound and first base. Mattingly, the nine-time Gold Glove first baseman, fielded the ball and then blundered.

  Mattingly had many athletic gifts, but being fleet of foot was not one of them. So it was a mismatch when he tried to pivot and chase Cora, who was streaking down the first-base line. Cora eluded Mattingly. Worse for the Yankees, second baseman Randy Velarde was standing on first base and could have easily received the throw from Mattingly in time for the out.

  As Cora dug into the left-handed batter’s box, Willie Randolph was standing in the Yankees’ dugout screaming at Mattingly, who was just 70 feet away and playing several steps in front of first base. Randolph, a former All-Star second baseman who was in charge of the infield’s defensive positioning, wanted Mattingly to take a few more steps toward Cora. “I was yelling as loud as I could, but the crowd was too loud and Donnie never heard me,” Randolph said. “I hated that Kingdome.”

  Cora placed his bunt perfectly, and Mattingly once again grabbed it, wheeled to his left and made a diving attempt to tag Cora, who used every inch of the baseline to avoid the tag. Showalter was on the field an instant later, protesting that Cora had left the baseline. He made an impassioned, face-to-face plea with first-base umpire Dan Morrison, who shook his head side to side and shouted his response. Showalter turned his head so his left ear—his good ear since he was beaned in Oneonta ten years earlier—was inches from Morrison’s mouth.

  “The umpire had already made his call, and it wasn’t like there was instant replay back then,” Showalter said. “If I stayed out there any longer, all I would have done is distract my own pitcher.”

  Griffey, a lifetime .217 hitter against McDowell, was up next and slapped a ground ball to the right of second base, a ground ball that Yankees second baseman Pat Kelly was probably more used to fielding on grass, but the Kingdome’s artificial turf was old, worn and rock-hard. The ball bounced just past the diving Kelly into center field, and the Mariners had runners on first and third base with no outs.

  Martínez came to the plate and took a well-placed outside fastball for a strike. The next pitch was a split-finger fastball, and catcher Jim Leyritz put his mitt on the outside half of the plate as a target for McDowell. “We called the same pitch that I used to strike out Edgar two innings earlier—a split-finger fastball,” McDowell said in 2018. “But I was now going through their lineup a second time.”

  McDowell’s pitch looped and missed its target, hanging inside, about belt high to Martínez. “A horrible hanging split,” McDowell said.

  Martínez rapped the pitch down the left-field line.

  The game was tied as Yankees left fielder Gerald Williams chased down the ball near the outfield wall. Bernie Williams, who first teamed up with Gerald in a Yankees minor league outfield in 1987, sprinted over from center field. He stole a glance toward the infield where he saw that Griffey was almost at third base already.

  “Home! Home!” Williams shouted. “He’s going home!”

  Since he signed with the Yankees as a raw prospect out of the backwoods of Louisiana, Gerald Williams always had the best outfield arm in the Yankees organization. He fielded the ball cleanly and fired a bullet to shortstop Tony Fernández in short left field.

  The backup cutoff man behind Fernández was third baseman Randy Velarde, who had an especially strong arm, the best in the Yankees infield. Afterward, several Yankees coaches conceded they were rooting for Williams’s throw to float over Fernández so it could have ended up in Velarde’s hand.

  Fernández, who had an unconventional, almost sidearm throwing motion, inexplicably paused for just an instant as he turned toward home plate. His throw was no m
atch for the streaking Griffey, whose slide into home barely brushed aside the left foot of Leyritz.

  A millisecond later, the ball reached Leyritz, who gloved it and then sagged onto his hands and knees as he bowed his head toward the dirt in front of home plate. From Martínez’s swing to Griffey’s game-winning slide, 9.8 seconds had elapsed.

  Across the decades since, Buck Showalter has never purposely watched a videotape of the play that clinched the series for the Mariners and sent the Yankees into an off-season of tumultuous change. He has instead avoided it.

  A couple of times, while jogging on a treadmill at home and watching a baseball game or sports show on television, Showalter has seen the highlight clip of Martínez’s swing and Griffey’s sprint around the bases. He has always turned his head away from the screen before Griffey slides. “I’ve looked at the tape of the game to review the things I wanted to see and improve on,” he said. “But to watch what happened at the end? To dwell on it?”

  Standing in the quiet of his backyard in 2017, Showalter looked down at his feet. “No, I haven’t. It’s painful,” he said. “Painful.”

  Mattingly, in what would be the last few seconds of his career, watched Griffey circle the bases from the middle of the Kingdome diamond. “You see it happening, slowly at first and then faster and faster,” he said. “But you’re powerless to do anything about it.”

  Paul O’Neill’s view was from right field. “An awful memory,” O’Neill said in 2018. “It still makes me sick sometimes.”

  Randolph looked across the field at Piniella, his former teammate. “Lou had a wide, wide grin on his face,” he said. “But I wanted to start crying. Everybody on the bench was looking stunned. Did we just see that? Did that just happen? I closed my eyes and opened them up again, hoping it was just a bad dream.”