An era ended Monday night when Joe Torre’s Yankees went down to
a hungry young Cleveland Indians club, making it the seventh year
in a row the Yankees failed to win the World Series.
Frankly, I’m not disappointed. The Torre Era, which began in
1996, tracked perfectly with New York’s revival under Rudy
Giuliani. But the last seven years have been a reprise. Instead of
rolling on to the next thing, New Yorkers — led by George
Steinbrenner — have desperately tried to maintain the status quo
by buying marquee players from other teams. It was only fitting
that the Yanks lost this time because 45-year-old Roger Clemens
couldn’t make it through the second inning and because the
late-season collapse of 40-year-old Mike Mussina left them without
a fourth game starter. Instead, Torre was forced to rush his best
pitcher, young Chien-Ming Wang, back into the fray on only three
days rest — always a death rattle for a team about to be
eliminated in the post-season.
There’s a lesson here for everyone — you can’t live forever on
past successes. At some point you have to start anew.
I’ve been a baseball fan all my life but I’ve never experienced
anything as transcendent as the rebirth of the Yankees in the
1990s. I was raising three boys in Brooklyn during the 1980s and we
suffered through the Mel Hall-Bob Geren-Danny Tartabull Era. In
those days you got excited if the Yanks won two games in a row. I
remember sitting in the Bond Buyer one afternoon around
1992 and saying to my younger colleagues, “You know, it’s really
strange trying to convince your children that the Yankees were once
a great team.”
Things got so bad that Sports Illustrated finally ran a
1993 cover story, “What Ever Happened to the Yankees?” It compared
the team to the Roman Empire, with its past glories and long
decline. Then toward the end it tried to be upbeat. “The team now
has a new center fielder, Roberto Kelly, who made the All-Star team
plus a few other players who look promising. Who knows? In a couple
of years they may be able to put something back together. After
all, Rome wasn’t built in a day.”
It didn’t take that long. As often happens, a sobriquet from
Sports Illustrated turned into a boomerang. (The magazine
was once famous for ruining players’ careers by putting them on the
cover.) Kelly didn’t work out but that winter Yanks traded him to
Cincinnati to make room for another promising rookie, Bernie
Williams. In exchange they got Paul O’Neill, a journeyman who
turned out to be a warrior. By July 1994 the Yankees were leading
the league until the season was ruined by a strike.
In 1995 the Yankees made the wild card — the first year this
was instituted — and played a rising Seattle Mariner team led by
Ken Griffey, Jr. and Randy Johnson. I took my kids to the first two
games at Yankee Stadium, the second a 13-inning affair won on a
home run by Leyritz at one o’clock in the morning. People
celebrated in the streets outside Yankee Stadium for another two
hours.
NEW YORKERS WERE BEGINNING to realize something extraordinary was
happening in their city. Giuliani had been elected mayor in 1993
and things were already transforming. For years people had been
afraid to come to Yankee Stadium because of the crime. Motorists
struggling through traffic to get back to New Jersey were accosted
by Bronx teenagers “selling” beer at $10 a can. Say good-bye to
your windows if you didn’t cooperate. The Yankees were sixth in the
league in attendance and Steinbrenner was talking about moving the
team to New Jersey. Then all at once the streets were becoming safe
and people filled the stadium every night.
After winning the first two in New York, however, the Yankees
went out to Seattle and disaster struck. The Mariners won the next
three. In the fifth and deciding game, manager Buck Showalter
squandered a lead by sticking with an exhausted David Cone and
letting him walk in the tying run. In the bullpen he had a young
phenom named Mariano Rivera but was afraid to bring him in. (It was
at this point I understood the genius of Casey Stengel, who was
always willing to throw in some unknown who came through for him.)
Twelve years later I still agonize over that game, but so does
everyone else. Yankee announcers John Sterling and Susan Walman
were just reminiscing about it the other night — “If Buck
Showalter had only known what he had in the bullpen!”
Showalter was gone the next spring — mainly because of his
tactical errors — and Steinbrenner brought in Joe Torre, whose
baseball savvy matched his ability to lead his players. Rivera was
back, Andy Pettitte had become the new ace, and the Yankees had a
promising rookie shortstop named Derek Jeter who proved to be one
of the greatest competitors of all time. They breezed through the
American League championship, only to face what everyone considered
the Team of the 1990s, the powerful Atlanta Braves.
Once again I was able to get my three boys into the Stadium.
Pettitte was bombed in the Saturday opener, but it rained Sunday
and I figured someone’s plans might get messed up for the make-up
on Monday. We went up to the Stadium looking for scalpers. Nothing
developed but around the second inning a young man walked up and
said, “See that usher taking tickets? He’s my uncle. Give me $200
and I’ll give you fake tickets. He’ll let you in.”
Sure enough, it worked. In a few minutes we were inside the
Stadium milling around with hundreds of others who had obviously
made it in on the same scam. The ushers knew something was up and
were checking everyone’s tickets. In desperation, I took the boys
to the upper deck, picked a row and climbed to the top. There in
the next-to-last row, as if by magic, were four empty seats.
The owners showed up in the fifth inning. They were from New
Jersey. When one of their party couldn’t make it, they had tried to
sell his ticket outside the Stadium — at face value! — and been
arrested for scalping by an undercover cop. They had spent the
first four innings at the police station. Like a true New Yorker, I
figured that was their tough luck and refused to give up the seats.
(New Yorkers think these things are deserved by people from New
Jersey.) Somehow we all squeezed in and watched the rest of the
game.
That was a different story. Greg Maddux was at his masterful
best that night and the Yankees looked pathetic. (In a recap I saw
later, batter after batter taps back to the pitcher.) Meanwhile the
Braves threatened in every inning. By the seventh we were happy the
score was only 5-0. Then something transcendent happened. The
Yankees had lost the first two games in their home park, they
seemed completely overmatched, yet the fans refused to accept it.
Around the seventh inning the entire stadium started imitating the
Braves’ famous tomahawk chant with an obscene variation: “F—- the
Braves! F—- the Braves!” As I sat there wondering what this must
sound like on national television, I was struck by what seemed like
a cosmic premonition. “I don’t think this series is over,” I
thought. “People in New York play by different rules.”
Sure enough, the Yankees rallied in Atlanta and swept the next
four games.
SO BEGAN THE Great Torre Era. Except for one slip-up in 1997
(Rivera giving up a playoff home run), the Yankees won three more
championships, setting a record for winning 13 World Series games
in a row. The 1998 team was arguably one of the best of all time.
The only thing anyone regrets is that the Mets somehow managed to
win one game of the 2000 World Series.
Then came September 11th and the Yankee efforts became even more
heroic. They struggled into the World Series of 2001 with a
weakened team (O’Neill had retired) and carried the Diamondbacks
into the ninth inning of the seventh game. (If only Torre hadn’t
had to use Rivera for two outs in the eighth!)
After that, however, it was all downhill. Somehow the Yankees
stopped developing their own players and started buying the
franchise players of other small-market teams. Jason Giambi from
Oakland, Alex Rodriguez from Texas, Bobby Abreu from the Phillies
— every year it was someone new. All winter the sportswriters and
talk-show call-ins would speculate on who we should buy next. It
was as if the whole City of New York could splurge on George
Steinbrenner’s money.
For me it all ended the night Jim Kaat, the Yankee’s announcer,
was admiring the talents of Shawn Green, then a rising start with
the Toronto Blue Jays. “You can’t help but ask yourself,” he said,
“wouldn’t this guy look good in a Yankee uniform?” It wasn’t
baseball anymore, it was shopping.
So it was nice to see it all come to an end Monday night. Once
again, the Yankees’ big names and overpaid free agents were beaten
by a hungry young team that could play fundamental baseball. It was
only fitting that Alex Rodriguez, after leaving runners on base for
the last three playoffs, should hit a meaningless solo homer in the
seventh inning. It will look good in the statistics, but the game
was long gone by then.
In five years, the Yankees will be probably trying to buy the
talents of C. C. Sabathia and Grady Sizemore. But by that time they
will have lost their fire and other young players will be
challenging them.
Somehow there’s a lesson for everyone else in all this. You
can’t live forever on past glory. At some point you have to forsake
the past and start anew. And don’t expect it to happen quickly.
After all, Rome wasn’t built in a day.
