Pinstripe Empire (90 page)

“We’ve taken the steps to start to repair whatever got broke,” said Cashman. When Torre’s return for Old-Timers’ Day in 2011 produced a tremendous ovation, it appeared as though whatever went wrong had been righted.

The team wore a patch on the sleeve for Sheppard, another over the heart for Steinbrenner, and then when Ralph Houk died on July 21, they added a black armband. In October, Bill Shannon, an official scorer at Yankee Stadium for thirty-two years, also died, in a house fire in New Jersey.

The team did not stay in first place after Steinbrenner died, finishing second by a game to the surprising Tampa Bay Rays but earning the wildcard spot for the postseason. They faced the Twins again in the ALDS and again swept them in three games, as Sabathia, Pettitte, and Hughes all won their starts, with Mo saving two of them. But in the LCS against Texas, the pitching wasn’t there. The staff allowed 25 runs in 31
⅔
innings and the hitters batted only .201 as the Rangers went on to their first World Series appearance. The only high point was a four-home-run output from Cano, who had eight hits and batted .348.

Girardi would have to wear number 28 in 2011 as they tried again.

THE YEAR 2011 began with the Yankees failing to sign free agent pitcher Cliff Lee—a rare occasion when the franchise lost out on a player it coveted—and with a difficult signing of Jeter to a new contract, a negotiation that took some awkward turns. His ten-year, $189 contract had concluded, and no one, including Derek, saw him going to any team other than the Yankees. But he had come off a disappointing season, was getting old to play shortstop, and the negotiations turned more public than either side might have liked. In the end he signed a three-year contract with a fourth-year option, with the total value of $51 to $65 million, depending on the option.

In a rare display, Jeter said he was unhappy with the negotiations going as public as they had, acknowledging that he was never entertaining any thoughts of finishing his career anywhere but with the Yankees. Jeter, Rivera, and Posada would make 2011 their seventeenth season as major league teammates, something no trio had ever done before.

The Yanks also signed free agent Rafael Soriano as a setup man, going against Cashman’s desire to avoid losing a draft choice in the process, but as he acknowledged, he didn’t own the team and sometimes had to face being overruled.

Soriano wound up as the team’s seventh-inning pitcher when Chamberlain required surgery and David Robertson burst to prominence with a remarkable season. His 100 strikeouts in just 66
⅔
innings was the best strikeout-inning ratio in league history for anyone with 100 Ks. He had a 1.08 ERA, recording 14 bases-loaded strikeouts. The pitching staff was full of surprises in 2011, as Hughes fought a “dead arm” and ceded his spot in the rotation to veterans Bartolo Colon and Freddy Garcia, both of whom had seen better days. They won 20 games between them, while rookie Ivan Nova, a twenty-four-year-old Dominican right-hander, went 16–4, including 8–0 after a month in the minors during a roster squeeze. Sabathia won 19.

The season produced a first-place finish and the team’s fiftieth visit to postseason baseball, where they were upended in the ALDS when their bats slept in key situations against Detroit.

But it was a year of emotional statistical milestones, some of epic proportion.

There was, for instance, the day Cano, new catcher Russell Martin, and Granderson each hit grand-slam homers. Three in one game was unprecedented in major league history. Cano remained a sensational player both at bat and in the field, while Granderson led the league in runs (136) and RBI (119) while finishing second in homers (41).

Alex Rodriguez moved to within one grand slam of Gehrig’s record 23, but injuries limited him to 99 games and just 16 homers, his worst major league season to date. Brett Gardner tied for the league lead with 49 stolen bases.

Posada, in a frustrating final year of his contract, caught only one game and, serving as a DH, tumbled to .235 with just six hits off left-handers. But he had one last hurrah in him when he pinch-hit for hot-hitting rookie Jesus Montero on September 21 and delivered an emotional single to right for the RBI that clinched the division title for New York.

“I just had a feeling about it; he knows how to play in the big moment,” said Girardi.

His Yankee career ended with him sitting eighth on the team’s all-time home run list with 275.

Jeter looked lost at the plate for the first half of the year, struggling to
even hit fly balls. But after a brief stint on the DL, he returned on July 4 and hit .331 in the final three months, raising his average to .297 for the season. On July 9, he became the first Yankee to reach 3,000 hits, homering for the milestone hit (his first Yankee Stadium homer in a year). He went 5-for-5 that sunny Saturday afternoon, driving in the winning run for yet another highlight-reel day. The 3,000th hit was caught by Christian Lopez, a cellphone salesman in the left-field bleachers, who returned the ball to Jeter without seeking any cash reward. Lopez’s father, wearing a DiMaggio jersey, assisted with the catch.

During the year, Jeter also passed Mantle for most games played as a Yankee.

Two days before Posada’s division-winning hit, Mariano Rivera passed Trevor Hoffman for the most saves in history, recording his 602nd in the year in which he also became the first player to ever hurl 1,000 games for a single team.

The fans were hungry to see Rivera make history in their presence, and so when Swisher grounded into a double play to end the eighth (maintaining the save situation), the fans actually cheered. It was a funny moment, and even the players laughed at the reaction.

Rivera did what he’d been doing for fifteen years and closed the game with ease. His teammates rushed the field to embrace him, and Posada pushed him to the mound, where he stood alone, acknowledging the cheers of the loving fans. Finally he spread his arms wide, a gesture that recalled Roger Maris’s when he was pushed out of the dugout fifty summers earlier, one that seemed to say, “Okay? I’m feeling very embarrassed about this, may I go now?”

DAN CUNNINGHAM LIKED the moment before the game when he grabbed a hose and helped water down the infield, turning the light-brown dirt dark. It was a reflective time, very peaceful, before the Yankees took the field. There were moments when he’d be watering the infield and he’d think about Ruth, Gehrig, DiMaggio, Mantle …

It was hard to look up at that magnificent stadium, or the historic moments playing on the video board, and not be awed by what the park and the team represented—to the city, the fans, the sport, and to the nation’s culture. It was daunting.

Danny wasn’t familiar with Phil Schenck, who laid out Hilltop Park in
Washington Heights in 1903. The players came and went, but always there was the soil under their feet, the bases ninety feet apart, the pitching rubber sixty feet, six inches from home plate, and someone in charge of it all. At this time in history, it was Danny. And somewhere in the U.S., or in Latin America, or in the Far East, youngsters were running the bases, learning the game, falling in love with baseball.

Some would play on this very field one day. Or maybe, as the next century approached, at a new Yankee Stadium—built on the site of the original one, right across the street.

As Mel Allen would have put it, “How about that!”