Pinstripe Empire (80 page)

It wasn’t easy for the team’s marketing people, led by Debbie Tymon. Trying to sell tickets to historic Yankee Stadium while dealing with reports of a failing ballpark made for a daunting assignment.

This was not a new campaign, but as concerns about security, lighting,
and the neighborhood mounted, it became more determined. Five years earlier, Governor Mario Cuomo had embraced the concept of a new Yankee Stadium to be built over the Long Island Railroad Yard on Manhattan’s west side, over Thirtieth to Thirty-third streets, a site later pushed by Mayor Michael Bloomberg for a Jets football stadium. The Yankees didn’t discourage the talk.

But for all the complaining, they couldn’t keep the fans out: The team on the field was extraordinary. The ’98 Yanks were something special, and 2,919,046 fans poured through the turnstiles despite all the publicity about the aging facility.

“There was a quality to that season that seemed to defy a century of how baseball games play out,” said Rick Cerrone, the team’s media relations director from 1996 to 2006. “If we were down, say 5–3 after six, somehow you knew that was a game you’d win. You knew the opponent wasn’t going to score any more off our bullpen, and you knew we’d surely get six runs.”

With an eight-game winning streak, the Yankees moved into first place on April 30 and remained there for the rest of the season, finishing 114–48, twenty-two games ahead of Boston and 62–19 at home. It was the most wins in team history, with the 1927 club having gone 110–44 for a slightly higher percentage. The league record was 111 by the ’54 Indians, done in 154 games. By August 1, the Yanks had lost only 27 times. As the year unfolded, the ’98 Yanks became part of the discussion as to which was the greatest team in franchise history: 1927, 1939, 1961, or this one.

The Yanks hit 207 homers, but despite a year of record-shattering outputs from others, no Yankee hit more than 28 (Tino Martinez). The power was spread out among ten Yankees reaching double figures. Strawberry hit 24 in just 295 at bats. O’Neill (116) and Martinez (123) were the only ones to top 100 RBI, but Williams had 97 and batted .339 to win the league’s batting title. Jeter hit .324 with 19 homers. Shane Spencer, a late-season recall, hit 10 homers in just 67 at-bats, three of them grand slams.

Mark McGwire’s and Sammy Sosa’s breaking of Maris’s single-season record, a moment that came to be seen as tainted following baseball’s steroid scandal, ended a seventy-eight-year hold on the homer record by a Yankee, going back to Ruth’s 1920 season. Despite the many huge homer seasons during this era, Maris continues to hold the American League record with his 61.

Another milestone came on September 20, the final home game of the season for the Orioles, when Cal Ripken voluntarily ended his playing
streak at 2,632. It seemed appropriate that the Yankees were the opposing team that day, and they stood at the top of their dugout steps and applauded Ripken as soon as it was realized that he was not in the lineup.

Rivera missed much of April with a strained groin muscle, but still saved 36 games. David Cone had his first 20-win season in a decade; Pettitte won 16, and even Irabu went 13–9. But the mainstay of the staff was David Wells, who led the league in winning percentage with an 18–4 record, including five shutouts, and who on Sunday, May 17, pitched a perfect game against Minnesota in Yankee Stadium. It was the Yankees’ first perfect game since Larsen’s World Series gem forty-two years before; interestingly, Wells actually attended the same high school in San Diego as did Larsen. And again it was an “imperfect” man achieving the feat.

Then there was Orlando Hernandez, also known as El Duque. Because of the mystery surrounding his background and perhaps his age (thirty-two?), he was somewhat of a Satchel Paige in a Yankee uniform, even throwing oddly as he lifted his left knee toward his chin before delivering an array of dazzling pitches. He was the half brother of Livan Hernandez of the Marlins.

According to reports, El Duque, kicked off the Cuban national team because they feared he would defect, had been spirited out of the island nation on a raft, or a ship, and was picked up by the U.S. Coast Guard on Anguilla Cay. Guided by a savvy scout, he took residence in Costa Rica, enabling him to avoid the draft and make himself a free agent.

The Yankees arranged for a visa and signed him to a four-year, $6.6 million contract. They sent him to Columbus, but he had to make an emergency start on June 3 against Tampa Bay. He went seven innings, allowing a run and five hits. He wasn’t going back to the minors. He instead went 12–4 with a 3.13 ERA, becoming an overnight sensation and a fan favorite throughout his sometimes mystifying Yankee career, which covered six seasons, producing a 61–40 record. He was one of the best postseason clutch pitchers they had, with a 9–3 record.

El Duque’s grit was immediately visible that fall. After sweeping Texas in three straight to win the Division Series, the Yankees faced Cleveland in the ALCS. The Indians had knocked them out the year before, and this time went up two games to one, with game four in Cleveland. The Yanks needed the win, and Hernandez delivered, hurling seven shutout innings in a 4–0 victory.

Following his win, the Yanks won their thirty-fourth pennant behind Wells, then Cone, with Rivera saving the final three games.

The Yanks took on San Diego in the World Series. In game one at Yankee Stadium, with the Yanks losing 5–2 in the seventh, Knoblauch (who had argued with an umpire during the ALCS against Cleveland while the ball sat on the ground and a run scored) hit a three-run homer and Martinez belted a grand slam. They would go on to sweep the Padres for their twenty-fourth world championship, with Brosius, who hit .471, earning Series MVP honors. By going 11–2 in the postseason, the Yankees were 125–50 overall for 1998, a spectacular showing.

COMING OFF A remarkable rookie season as general manager, Cashman had concerns about ’99. He was worried about a letdown, worried about a fat-cat syndrome, and wanted to head that off with an even better team. With Bernie Williams becoming a free agent, he had a big task ahead of him.

One course of action was to pursue free agent Albert Belle, the gifted but troublesome hitting machine who had experienced great seasons with Cleveland. Belle carried a bad reputation and could certainly be a counterweight to such a feel-good team as the Yankees had become, but the onetime Eagle Scout was certainly worth considering. Williams was being offered $90 million for seven years by the Red Sox. It seemed like the Yanks would lose Bernie and sign Belle.

But Belle had a change of heart after agreeing to a Yankee contract. He recognized that he would have trouble with the New York media, and as Cashman reminded him, “That’s part of the job here, it goes with the territory.” He reconsidered and signed with Baltimore.

Meanwhile, the thought of losing Williams weighed heavily on Steinbrenner, and in his heart Bernie did not want to leave either. All he wanted was to be paid his free-agent value.

The Yanks offered $87.5 million for seven years, and he took it. He would remain a Yankee for the rest of his career.

Then came an opportunity for the Yankees to get Roger Clemens from Toronto. Clemens had been a longtime Yankee foe, an intimidating pitcher who never hesitated to throw hard and inside, one who never backed down from a challenge. Owner of five Cy Young awards, five 20-win seasons, five strikeout titles, and 233 victories, he had never been with a World Series
winner. Cashman felt that was incentive enough to make him an even better pitcher in ’99.

The price was high: David Wells. But it would take Wells, along with pitcher Graeme Lloyd and infielder Homer Bush, to make this happen, and Cashman pulled the trigger.

Sports talk radio, especially WFAN, was never as lively as it was the day of the trade. Brokenhearted fans, many of whom despised Clemens going back to his Red Sox days, were in high gear. But this was one of the game’s elite performers, and this was what the Yankees did. It was a bold move no matter how one looked at it. And the fans were going to have to adjust to the sight of Clemens in pinstripes. The deal was made as spring training was opening.

Clemens would earn more than $45 million over the next five seasons with the Yankees, winning 77 games, including his 300th. And he proved to be a great teammate.

“Roger Clemens was a John Wayne type, an all-time hard worker,” said Cashman. “He was just a great guy to have on the team. He intermixed so well with the clubhouse guys, with the lowest players on the roster … He’d always be doing things like buying a suit for a rookie, picking up checks … And if a teammate was underperforming, he’d get on him, especially if he felt he was cutting corners. He always did more than he had to do; he was one of the best people that we ever had here.”

YOGI BERRA, NEWLY reconciled with Steinbrenner, came back on opening day in ’99. Joe DiMaggio had died on March 8, and Yogi was now considered the “greatest living Yankee.” He didn’t refuse the designation, but he would say, “I don’t know, you got Rizzuto, you got Ford …”

He was then honored with Yogi Berra Day on July 18. As part of the ceremonies, Don Larsen threw the ceremonial first pitch to Yogi, who borrowed Joe Girardi’s mitt for the moment.

Then, with Larsen and Yogi looking on and Girardi calling the pitches, David Cone went out and hurled a perfect game, just as Larsen had done forty-three years before—and just as another David—Wells—had done on another warm Sunday a year before. Two Sunday perfect games in two years by two Davids. This one was against the Montreal Expos, and had Cone falling to his knees in disbelief at the end.

(Making the game even more unusual was the presence of broadcaster
Bob Wolff, a press-box spectator. Bob had called the ’56 game on the radio.)

It was the peak moment of an outstanding career for Cone, but what followed was a decline with few high moments. He had only six more Yankee victories in him over the next season and a half.

As for Yogi, he would remain a fixture with the team, throwing out first pitches in postseason games, stealing the show on Old-Timers’ Day, and visiting spring training every year, where Ron Guidry served as his driver and meal companion, wearing a “Driving Mr. Yogi” cap.

DIMAGGIO HAD DIED of lung cancer at eighty-four. His attorney, Morris Engelberg, had taken control of everything in Joe’s life—and death—and kept the Yankees at arm’s length. Joe himself developed paranoia about all things baseball, even in regard to his former teammates. They knew better than to even ask him for an autograph. “They’re all making money off my back,” he told Engelberg.

A small family funeral was held in San Francisco with no Yankee presence. Steinbrenner went to see him in his Hollywood, Florida, hospital six days before he died. The Yankees held a memorial service for Joe some weeks later, with Paul Simon singing “Mrs. Robinson,” and its line “Where have you gone, Joe DiMaggio?” while standing with his guitar in center field.

Joe never really understood what the line meant. “I’m still here,” he would tell people. When they finally met one day, Simon explained, “It’s only about the syllables, Joe. I needed five syllables there.” (After the song came out, Simon threw out the 1969 opening-day first pitch. He and Art Garfunkel were Columbia recording artists, and CBS owned the record label.)

DiMaggio’s final appearance at Yankee Stadium was on the last weekend of the ’98 season, on a hastily arranged Joe DiMaggio Day, at which he received eight World Series rings to replace those stolen from a hotel room. His speech was, alas, lost to the ages when the microphone failed to work. It infuriated him, his mood not helped by the illness now engulfing him, complicated by a fever. Older fans remembered that he had been ill at the first DiMaggio Day, at the end of the ’49 season.

AS IN 1979, sadness was abundant in ’99, and not only with DiMaggio’s passing. Catfish Hunter died of ALS. The fathers of Brosius, Luis Sojo, and
O’Neill all died that year. Of Hunter, Steinbrenner said, “Catfish was the foundation on which our tradition here was built.”

True to Cashman’s fears, the ’99 season wasn’t living up to ’98. With 98 wins, it was a drop-off of sixteen, which would have been disastrous if the standard hadn’t been so high. In this case, it was good enough to win the division by four games.

The season began with a diagnosis of prostate cancer for Joe Torre, necessitating that Zimmer fill in as manager until his return. Zimmer was there for the last three weeks of spring training and was 21–15 as a fill-in during the regular season, until Joe returned on May 15, cancer-free.

Darryl Strawberry, a productive part of the ’98 Yanks, was diagnosed with colon cancer on October 1, 1998, leading to a winter of chemotherapy after it spread to a lymph node. Then, on April 3, he was found in possession of cocaine while soliciting sex from an undercover policewoman. Major League Baseball suspended him for 140 days, and he was sentenced to twenty-one months’ probation by the court in Tampa. He returned in time to qualify for the postseason, and homered twice in it, but his turbulent career was effectively over.

The ’99 Yanks set a club record with 3,292,736 paid admissions, their first time over the three-million threshold. Williams came through with a .342 season, while Jeter hit .349 with 219 hits (the most ever by a shortstop) and 102 RBI, reaching base safely in his first fifty-three games of the season. Chili Davis, at thirty-nine, became a big contributor with 19 homers, while El Duque led the staff with 17 wins and Rivera had a 1.83 ERA to go with 45 saves. Clemens, 14–10, disappointed in his first year.

The Division Series was another three-game sweep of Texas, with Williams driving in six runs and batting .364 and Clemens winning the deciding game 3–0 with a save from Mariano.

Then it was Boston in the LCS, opening in Yankee Stadium, where a tenth-inning walk-off homer by Bernie Williams got things started. The homer followed a pregame “pep talk” in which Yogi told a worried-looking Bernie, “Don’t worry … these guys have been trying to beat us for eighty years.”

Then they took game two behind Cone, who came through when many questioned the choice of the fading veteran for such a big game.