Pinstripe Empire (81 page)

After Pedro Martinez beat Clemens in game three in Fenway, Pettitte won game four and El Duque, the MVP of the series, won the pennant clincher for a trip to their thirty-sixth World Series.

The Series opponents were again the Braves, but this time it was an easy four-game sweep for the Yanks, giving them an 11–1 record for the postseason and twelve World Series wins in a row. Maddux, Kevin Millwood, Tom Glavine, and Smoltz all succumbed to the Yankees, with Rivera winning the MVP Award. The third game was the tightest, with Chad Curtis, known for his belly-flop throws from left, winning it with a walk-off homer.

With their twenty-fifth world championship, the Yankees were called the “team of the century.” The twenty-five titles were captured in seventy-nine seasons, and the final title of the twentieth century was a fitting cap to a remarkable run.

TWO MONTHS AFTER the Series, Steinbrenner offered the vacant team presidency to Randy Levine, who took command on January 1, 2000, becoming the first to hold the title since Gene McHale in 1986. Levine, a powerhouse attorney, had worked in the Giuliani administration and led MLB’s Player Relations Committee in reaching a settlement with the players after the 1994–95 strike.

During his time with the Yankees, he would greatly enhance the team’s international brand, forging relationships with the Chinese Baseball Association, with the parent company of the Tokyo Giants, and with the Chinese Taipei Baseball Association. Ultimately, he would also forge a business partnership with the Dallas Cowboys—Legends Hospitality—that would handle concessions in the new stadiums of the two teams.

FOR THOSE WHO FELT THE twentieth century ended not in 1999 but in 2000, the Yankees gave them one more win with a twenty-sixth world championship. They would be the first team since the 1972–74 Oakland A’s to win three straight.

Cashman made a terrific trade in 2000 that had much to do with the success. On June 29 he got David Justice from Cleveland for left fielder Ricky Ledee and pitchers Jake Westbrook and Zach Day.

Justice, once married to actress Halle Berry, had been with seven division winners in eight years between Atlanta and Cleveland (not counting the strike season). With the Yankees in 2000 he added another, playing 78 games and batting .305/20/60. Then he drove in 12 runs in the postseason.

The 2000 season was also when Jorge Posada took over as the team’s regular catcher, taking his place in the catching lineage of Dickey, Berra, Howard, and Munson. The Puerto Rican–born switch-hitter, of Cuban-Dominican parents, had an uncle, Leo, who played for Kansas City in the sixties, while his father, Jorge Sr., played in Cuba. Jorge Jr. was frequently Robin to Jeter’s Batman as the two became close friends, going back to 1992 at Greensboro. Posada was an All-Star five times in the 2000s. His 30 home runs in 2003 tied Berra for the most by a Yankee catcher, and he was third in MVP voting that year.

The 2000 Yanks won only 87 games, but it was enough to win the division by two and a half over Boston, despite winning just three of their last eighteen regular-season games. They went into the postseason with a
seven-game losing streak. Torre could do little but shrug his shoulders and continue to write out a lineup card made up largely of All-Stars.

This was the postseason of unforgiving travel: six coast-to-coast trips to get to the World Series. (For the writers who traveled separately and accumulated some twenty thousand frequent-flier miles, it was a mixed blessing.)

The fifth and deciding game of the ALDS against Oakland saw the Yanks score six times in the first inning and apparently lock it up. But Oakland battled back, knocked out Pettitte in the fourth, and tightened the game to 7–5. From that point on, Yankee relievers Mike Stanton, Jeff Nelson, El Duque, and Mariano shut the door, and the Yankees took a deep breath and moved on.

Middle relievers Stanton, Nelson, and Mendoza were often the unsung heroes of this period. Workhorses who pitched often and never closed games, they were the bridge to Rivera and rightfully earned their rings. Stanton, a left-hander, spent seven years with the Yanks and was 31–14 with a 3.77 ERA, and fourth all time in pitching appearances. Nelson had a dazzling breaking ball and gave the Yanks six seasons, in which he had 334 strikeouts in 311 innings. Mendoza, always there for an emergency start and either short or long relief, gave the Yanks seven seasons of dependable work, highlighted by a 10–2 record in 1998.

Taking on Seattle in the ALCS, the Yankees got past a first-game loss and went up 3–1 behind strong pitching from El Duque, Pettitte, and Clemens as the Mariners scored only three runs in the games. Clemens’s win in game four was a masterpiece: a complete-game, 5–0 victory in which he struck out 15, allowed only one hit, and walked two. Seattle’s only hit was a line drive off Martinez’s glove in the seventh by Al Martin. The complete game was a rarity for Clemens, who, despite being thought of as “old school,” completed only four of his 193 Yankee starts covering the regular and postseason.

The Mariners won the fifth game, but the Yankees won their thirty-seventh pennant in New York on October 17 with a 9–7 win behind Hernandez and Rivera. Justice hit a big three-run homer into the upper deck in the seventh, which was enough to hold off an eighth-inning homer by Alex Rodriguez, playing his final game as a Mariner before going the free-agent route to Texas.

The 2000 World Series would be the first Subway Series since 1956, when the Yankees beat Brooklyn. The Mets, a wild-card team, won the National League pennant, and although the teams were regularly facing each
other now in interleague play, which had begun in 1997, a Yankee-Met World Series was a treat for the city. (But not so for the nation; TV ratings were a record low.)

The Yanks won the opener 4–3 in twelve innings on a hit by reserve infielder Jose Vizcaino, and took game two 6–5 behind Clemens, who startled onlookers in the first inning by retrieving a shattered bat from Mike Piazza and hurling the jagged piece toward him as he ran to first on what was a foul ball. Earlier in the year, Piazza hit a grand slam off Clemens, then received a fastball to the helmet the next time they squared off. The bat-throwing incident, which cost Clemens a $50,000 fine, was bizarre and troubling,
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but it didn’t cost Roger his composure, as he allowed only two hits and no walks over eight innings in picking up the win. It was the Yankees’ fourteenth World Series victory in a row, a major league record.

The Mets broke that streak with a 4–2 win in game three despite a 12-strikeout performance from El Duque, the most ever by a Yankee in a World Series game. Going into the game, Hernandez had an 8–0 record and a 1.90 ERA in postseason play. Later, Rivera would break Whitey Ford’s “postseason” record for consecutive scoreless innings, running his total to 34
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. (Ford’s, of course, were all in World Series starts.)

Steinbrenner, disgusted by the run-down visitors’ clubhouse at Shea, hired a moving company after the third game and took all of the Yankees’ comfy leather clubhouse furniture from Yankee Stadium to Shea in time for game four. That’s where he chose to sit and watch the game on television—when a pipe burst during the game and began to flood the clubhouse. At the game’s conclusion—a 3–2 Yankee win fueled by a Jeter homer on the first pitch of the game—the players found Steinbrenner, deep in the rushing water, helping to bail the place out.

A critical moment in that game was Torre summoning David Cone from the bullpen with two outs in the fifth to face Piazza. Denny Neagle held a 3–2 lead, and the move cost him the victory, but Torre didn’t want Neagle facing the Mets’ best hitter. Zimmer put the notion in Torre’s head earlier by asking, “Who do you want to pitch to Piazza?” When Torre said, “Who would you use?” Zim responded, “Coney.”

Cone, the former ace of the Met staff, had gone 4–14 with a 6.91 ERA in
2000 and for all purposes seemed done. He even suffered a dislocated shoulder in September. But he had one more moment in him to cap his Yankee career, and he got Piazza to pop up to second to end the inning as Nelson, Stanton, and Rivera stopped the Mets the rest of the way. It was just one batter—his last as a Yankee—but it was a huge out and a great exit for a great competitor.

The Yanks wrapped up the Series 4–2 the next day despite a tough performance by the Mets’ Al Leiter, as they pushed two across in the ninth to break a 2–2 tie and then handed the ball to Rivera for his eighteenth straight postseason save. Jeter hit .409 in the Series with two homers and won the MVP, having earlier in the year won the All-Star Game MVP. It was the Yanks’ twenty-sixth world championship.

It would be their last for nine years.

IN 2001, THE Yanks signed free agent Mike Mussina, the ace of the Oriole staff, to a six-year, $88.5 million contract. A durable right-hander and frequent Gold Glove winner, “Moose” would become only the ninth player in history to win 100 games with two different franchises, including 17 in his first year as a Yankee.

The Yanks were forced to move Knoblauch to left field, his throwing problems at second having gotten the better of him. (He went home after six innings during a 1999 game after three throwing errors.) Although Knoblauch adjusted well to his new position, he didn’t hit with the kind of production the Yankees needed from an outfielder, and his career was quickly winding down. His second-base replacement, however, was Alfonso Soriano, a Dominican who had played ball for Hiroshima, Japan. His signing as a free agent had been contested by the Japanese Central League but approved by Commissioner Selig. Soriano stole 43 bases and hit 18 homers, but struck out a lot and hardly ever walked.

Tino Martinez led the Yanks with 34 homers and 113 RBI, Jeter hit .311, and Rivera saved 50 games, but Clemens was the year’s big story, going 20–3 at age thirty-eight with 213 strikeouts in 220 innings to win his sixth Cy Young Award. Now earning over $10 million a year, it was his sixth and last 20-win season.

The Yankees swept a pair of three-game series from Boston in September and won the division by thirteen and a half games. The highlight of those victories came on September 2, when Mussina retired the first
twenty-six Red Sox he faced at Fenway Park, outdueling David Cone, who had signed with Boston. Pinch hitter Carl Everett had a 1–2 count on him when he singled to left center to break up the perfect game. Mussina retired the next batter for a 1–0 one-hitter—one strike from perfection.

TUESDAY, SEPTEMBER 11, was a beautiful day in New York: sunshine, warm temperatures, and a night game against the White Sox scheduled.

That morning, America was attacked by terrorists using four hijacked commercial jets as suicide attack missiles, two of which were deliberately crashed into the World Trade Center in lower Manhattan. Among the many consequences of the attack was the stoppage of all sports in America.

Dave Szen, the team’s traveling secretary, walked alone to the upper deck to peer through an opening to view the towers on fire. They were a little less than ten miles away. And from that vantage point, he saw them fall.

Two thousand six hundred and six people died in the towers, and about eleven hundred of the bodies were never found. Three of the victims, all of whom worked for Cantor Fitzgerald, had Yankee connections: John Swaine was the son of the Yankees’ vice president of ticket operations, Frank Swaine, while Timothy and John Grazioso were sons of ticket seller Hank Grazioso.

The grandson of the late Marty Glickman, who had done pregame radio shows for the Yankees in the late fifties, also died in the attack.

Team president Randy Levine had been at a midtown meeting and was scheduled to fly to Milwaukee to represent the Yankees at an owners’ meeting. With planes grounded, that was obviously canceled. He called Steinbrenner, who was at his Manhattan residence, the Regency Hotel on Park Avenue, and met him there.

From 10:00 A.M. to midnight, they sat together at the Regency, watching television and occasionally calling Mayor Giuliani to see if there was anything they could do. Finally the mayor had an idea. He didn’t want the team to send anyone to Ground Zero, which was still in a state of confusion, but he suggested they send some players to St. Vincent’s Hospital, where rescue workers were being treated, to the Lexington Avenue Armory, where families were identifying the dead, and to the Javits Center, where rescue workers were being housed.

On September 15, the first day the players who remained in town worked
out at the stadium, PR man Cerrone organized O’Neill, Jeter, Posada, Rivera, Williams, Knoblauch, Cashman, Torre, and coaches Zimmer, Mazzilli, and Randolph to visit the three sites.

Williams encountered a grieving family at the armory, where many photos were hung showing the missing. Just weeks before, the armory had been the site of a big HBO party for the Billy Crystal film
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*, for which many Yankees were present. Introduced to a wife, looking desperately for her husband, he said, “I don’t know what to say; all I know is, I think you need a hug.” And that hug, widely reported, was part of the healing process that was to engulf New York as no event before had ever done.

Baseball shut down for six difficult days. The mayor spoke to Steinbrenner and Levine and asked them about doing a Prayer for America service at Yankee Stadium, which was set for September 23, when the team was on the road. It was a multi-denominational service filled with patriotism and sorrow as the city and the nation sought to find ways to recover. Home plate and the pitcher’s mound were adorned with flowers; Oprah Winfrey, Placido Domingo, Marc Anthony, and Bette Midler were among those who led the event.

George Steinbrenner donated $1 million to the Twin Towers Foundation, and the Yankees sent their infield tarp to be used as a covering near Ground Zero.

On September 18, the Yankees resumed play in Chicago. The flight was uneventful, and Yankee charter flights had long been ahead of the field in terms of attention to security. At the game, a fan held a banner that said, I LOVE NEW YORK AND EVEN THE YANKEES. The Yankees wore FDNY and NYPD caps instead of their NY caps, and fans shouted, “USA! USA!” Indeed, the nation’s sympathy for New York’s fallen even extended to rooting for the Yankees, a development that would become the theme of an HBO Sports documentary on the days after 9/11.