The Captain: The Journey of Derek Jeter (39 page)

The Yankees’ season began to crumble in the hour before Game 5, when Jason Giambi nodded at a columnist talking to Torre behind the batting cage, silently asking for a word with his manager. Giambi would tell Torre he needed to be scratched from the lineup because his bum knee would not allow him to play first base.

One Yankee coach said he believed Giambi begged out because he could not make the throw from first to second, and because he was afraid David Wells’s pickoff move would put him in the embarrassing position of having to make that very throw.

Whatever. One inning deep into his start, and one day after he joked about his firm lack of commitment to fitness, Wells followed Giambi’s lead and pulled a
no más
with his bad back. The Marlins carried a 6–2 lead into the ninth and held on as a Yanks rally—featuring a pinch-hit homer from none other than Giambi—fell short.

Jeter contributed three hits, two runs, a walk, and an RBI to the lost cause, and given his own history of playing in pain, he was furious Giambi had begged out of the lineup on a night he was healthy enough to hit a home run.

Asked if players were upset with Giambi, one Yankee said, “It was more like rage, and Jeter was hotter than anyone. It was like, ‘Are you fuckin’ kidding me? It’s the World Series and you’re pulling yourself out because you’re afraid their guys like Juan Pierre and Luis Castillo will bunt all over the place?’ Jason actually made it worse for himself by hitting that home run. My first thought was about Derek, and how sitting would never even cross his mind. He’d go out there at 25 percent feeling he’d find some way to beat you.”

Game 6 in the Bronx was a damning indictment of the Yankee offense. The formula for victory was in place: Andy Pettitte went seven strong innings, Jeter made one of his signature jump plays in the hole, and Florida sent out a twenty-three-year-old pitcher going on three days’ rest for the first time.

And yet Josh Beckett dominated the Yankees in his complete-game performance. The Yanks managed five lousy hits, struck out nine times, and lost, 2–0. Yankee batters were terrible all year with runners in scoring position, and that proved to be their undoing against Florida, as they were 7 for 50 in the Series.

Three foundation players—Jeter, Pettitte, and Posada—made mistakes in the Game 6 field that allowed the two Florida runs. Posada missed a tag, Pettitte threw to the wrong base, and Jeter committed his first World Series error since 1996.

But this defeat was not about defense or pitching; it was about hitting. In the eighth inning, after Soriano opened with a single, Jeter brought the full house to life by battling Beckett to a full count. Everyone was waiting for Jeter to create some of that same old magic near the right-field wall; instead he ripped a pitch to center field. Once Juan Pierre settled under it, Torre and everyone else on the Yankee side knew it was not meant to be.

The hundredth World Series game played in Yankee Stadium ended with the Marlins in a dog pile, with their catcher, Pudge Rodriguez, firing his mask into the sky. “It makes you sick,” Jeter said of the fact that another team was celebrating a title in his ballpark. “How else can you feel?”

Marlins players, wives, and kids ended up on the field. The team owner, Jeffrey Loria, did an amateur-hour run around the bases, looking like some yahoo banker who had just won a fan contest.

Jeter sat at his locker in full uniform, hoping reporters would keep him there all night so he would not have to take off his jersey for the last time. Players were leaving the building, and Jeter was still sitting there trying to make sense of it all.

“They just played better than us,” he said. “There’s no sugarcoating it. They pitched better than us, they had more clutch hits. People need to stop saying it’s a big shock.”

The Yankees had been beaten by the smaller-market Marlins a year after they were beaten by the smaller-market Angels and two years after they were beaten by the smaller-market Diamondbacks. No, George Steinbrenner did not share the glee of the commissioner, Bud Selig, who embraced the virtues of league-wide parity championed by the late NFL commissioner Pete Rozelle.

Steinbrenner began hunting for scapegoats, and his hitting coach, Rick Down, was in his sights. Don Zimmer, bench coach, had already signed his walking papers by trashing Steinbrenner one last time on his way out of the Stadium, and by promising to never again work a day in the Boss’s employ. Mel Stottlemyre, pitching coach, said he was considering stepping down because he felt “personally abused” by Steinbrenner.

But Down wanted to return. As the hitting coach walked out of the Stadium the day after the Marlins’ conquest, Torre wrapped an arm around him, kissed him on the cheek, and said, “You’ve got nothing to worry about. I love your passion for the game.”

As Torre walked away, another Yankee coach, Lee Mazzilli, started laughing.

“What’s so funny?” Down asked.

“Do you know who that is?” Mazzilli responded.

“Yeah, that’s my manager.”

“No, that’s the Godfather, and that was your kiss of death.”

Sure enough, Brian Cashman phoned Down the next morning to tell him he had been fired. When Torre called to express his regrets, he explained to Down, “I couldn’t buy a new house, but I can rearrange the furniture.”

Suddenly Down was a frayed love seat moved out to the curb, ultimately replaced by Don Mattingly. But the Yankees were not only going to hire a new hitting coach.

They were going to hire a new infielder, too, one who would forever alter the franchise and every aspect of Derek Jeter’s baseball life.

Alex Rodriguez thought he had found an exit strategy in the Boston Red Sox, who were miles apart in contract negotiations with Nomar Garciaparra, scheduled to be a free agent at the end of the 2004 season.

A-Rod’s Texas Rangers had finished dead last in the American League West for three consecutive years, and the $252 million man wanted out. He was desperate to win. Desperate to get out of Arlington, Texas. Desperate to avoid finishing his career without a parade to call his own.

Boston had deals to send Manny Ramirez to Texas for Rodriguez and Garciaparra to the White Sox for Magglio Ordonez. The Red Sox needed to clear one hurdle—they wanted to lower the average annual value of A-Rod’s contract, and the Players Association was more inclined to allow random, unlimited steroid testing than it was to allow a megastar player to give back a pile of guaranteed cash.

A-Rod wanted to go to Boston, the Red Sox and Rangers wanted A-Rod to go to Boston, and Commissioner Bud Selig wanted one of his most marketable players to go to Boston, or any place other than Texas, where the reporting date for punters and kickers is bigger than the one for pitchers and catchers.

But the union and the Red Sox could not agree to agree on the amount of the contract reduction, leaving Garciaparra stuck with a franchise that did not want to pay him, and leaving A-Rod stuck with a market and a manager (Buck Showalter) he could not stand.

Until the Yankees’ home-run hero from the 2003 triumph over Boston, Aaron Boone, blew out his left knee in a pickup basketball game. Suddenly the Yankees needed a third baseman, and Drew Henson, the two-sport star at Michigan and $17 million bust with the Yanks, was busy escaping to the NFL. The remaining candidates included Enrique Wilson, Erick Almonte, Tyler Houston, and Miguel Cairo, and nobody was singing a Sinatra tune over them.

Brian Cashman ended up on the phone with his counterpart in Texas, John Hart, in an attempt to scoop up Boston’s fumble and, against all odds, lateral A-Rod over to third base. “I didn’t tell anyone about it,” Cashman said. “I didn’t even tell my owner I was working on that deal.”

His owner, George Steinbrenner, had collapsed in December while attending the memorial service for NFL great Otto Graham, and the Boss had retreated from public view. But Steinbrenner was still the principal owner, still the one in charge. He had personally signed Gary Sheffield to a $39 million deal (against the wishes of Cashman and team president Randy Levine) before his collapse, and even though he was speaking through statements released by his publicist, Howard Rubenstein, Steinbrenner remained active in a much less visible way, fully committed to the same old mission statement of winning it all.

Hart advised Cashman to seek permission from the commissioner’s office to talk directly to Rodriguez and his agent, Scott Boras. “I’m not talking to Boras,” Cashman said. “He will try to extract something from us. You guys have to tell Alex he’s got to waive his no-trade clause, and that he’s got to play third base. If you put the Yankees on the phone with Scott Boras, he’s going to smell leverage, and I don’t want to be in that position.”

Cashman hoped to keep the trade talks confidential, as the public nature of Boston’s negotiations with Texas helped prevent the Red Sox from landing A-Rod. “But Alex told a friend of his who’s a real estate tycoon in Miami,” Cashman said, “and that guy happened to be a friend of Randy Levine’s. So I got nailed there and was put in an uncomfortable position.

“Randy calls me and says, ‘Hey, I got a call from a buddy of mine in Miami who said we’re on the verge of getting Alex Rodriguez. Is that true?’ And I was like, ‘Oh, shit,’ because I hadn’t presented our side yet.”

The talks hit the papers, but there was no killing this trade. Cashman had the Rangers tell Rodriguez that there was zero chance the Yankees would unseat Jeter at short, that it was third base or nothing at all. Cashman and other club officials discussed whether it made any sense to move Jeter to third and arrived at a quick consensus that the incumbent had to stay put.

It did not matter that Rodriguez was the superior physical talent; Jeter was the captain and the soul of the team. The Yankees did not want to diminish him in any way.

And besides, Rodriguez would have agreed to become a catcher if it meant escaping his own Arlington cemetery and resurrecting his championship hopes in New York. So A-Rod willingly surrendered his cherished position—and any future claim as the greatest shortstop of all time—while Rangers owner Tom Hicks agreed to take Alfonso Soriano and to cover $67 million of the remaining $179 million of A-Rod’s deal.

Selig still had to approve the deal, and the commissioner was concerned that the move would leave the Yankees with a staggering talent and payroll advantage over the rest of creation. But Selig was no dummy. Send his biggest star to the brightest lights of Broadway? Yes, it was worth the sacrifice of competitive balance.

In a statement released on February 16, 2004, the commissioner warned that he would not let money deals of this magnitude become the norm. “However,” Selig said, “given the unique circumstances, including the size, length, and complexity of Mr. Rodriguez’s contract and the quality of the talent moving in both directions, I have decided to approve the transaction.”

Steinbrenner, the ultimate star collector, was ecstatic over the news. A-Rod would not just improve the Yankees’ chances of winning another title, at least theoretically, but he would be a brand-new TV star for Steinbrenner’s YES Network. If the Yankees were a sitcom, Rodriguez would be expected to have a
Seinfeld
-like impact on ratings and advertising revenue.

Steinbrenner merrily agreed to bid farewell to a $5.75 million player at third (the Yanks gave Boone only thirty days of termination pay, as he violated language in his contract forbidding him to play basketball), and to absorb the $112 million fee for A-Rod, who would be the fourth Yankee with a nine-figure contract (Jeter had signed for $189 million, Giambi for $120 million, and newcomer Kevin Brown for $105 million with the Dodgers).

Few cared anymore that David Wells was gone, that Andy Pettitte had signed with the Astros, and that Roger Clemens had emerged from his fifteen-minute retirement to do the same. The A-Rod trade represented another Christmas in February, as Torre had called the 1999 acquisition of Clemens. Everyone marveled over the new toy under the tree. Everyone except the captain of the team.

On a cold, sunny day, Cashman was driving southbound on I-95 between Darien and Stamford, Connecticut, when he called Jeter with the big news. The general manager knew the history of bad blood between the captain and Rodriguez. He knew Jeter would have preferred it if the Yankees had signed Chad Curtis out of retirement and traded for Ken Huckaby rather than deal for A-Rod, but in the end, Texas made an offer Cashman could not refuse.

The GM rarely called players about trades that did not involve them, but this was different, much different. Cashman did not want a member of the media to break the news to Jeter, and to ask the shortstop if he was concerned Rodriguez might take his job.

Cashman needed to assure Jeter up front that he would remain at short. So the GM got the captain on the phone and without pause told him, “I just want you to know we just acquired Alex Rodriguez.”

“Really?” Jeter said.

Really.

Cashman explained his reasoning, explained that Rodriguez understood there would never be any quarterback controversy at short. Jeter absorbed the information that was coming at him like a truck, paused for a moment of deliberation, and said, “This sounds pretty cool.”

Pretty cool. Under the circumstances, “pretty cool” was the best answer the Yankees could have hoped for.

To present a united front, Steinbrenner told Jeter he should appear at A-Rod’s Yankee Stadium press conference—the kind of press conference Jeter did not get for his $189 million deal—and appear Jeter did. Not only did he show up at the Stadium, but Jeter agreed to fly with Rodriguez from Tampa to New York.

On that flight, A-Rod told Jeter he was committed to third base for the long term. “I’m going to stick close to you,” Rodriguez told Jeter, “ask your advice on many issues. I need your support and mentorship.”

The peace-in-the-Middle-East-sized press conference in the Stadium Club was attended by three hundred reporters. Never had baseball seen anything like this. Joe Torre had become Chuck Daly at the Barcelona Olympics, coaching Jordan, Magic, and Bird. Or Magic and Bird, anyway, forming their own Dream Team on the left side of the infield.