by Ian O'Connor
Meanwhile, Jeffrey’s father was driving home from his software job in Manhattan and listening to John Sterling and Michael Kay call Game 1 as it tumbled into extra innings. Dick Maier was on the Palisades Interstate Parkway when he heard the announcers mention that a controversial Jeter homer had made it a 4–4 game in the eighth, that a young boy had reached over the wall to steal an out from Tony Tarasco’s glove.
When they identified the boy as little Jeff Maier from Old Tappan, Dick said, “I almost had a heart attack. I started going about twenty miles over the speed limit just to get home to see it.
“I mean, I’m the biggest Yankee fan you could meet. My idol is Mickey Mantle. And I’m hearing them say on the radio that my son might have helped the Yankees get to the World Series.”
Soon enough, Bernie Williams hit a towering eleventh-inning homer off Baltimore’s Randy Myers, whipping a crowd of 56,495 into a frenzy and leaving the Orioles to rail against the forces that conspired against them.
Johnson announced his protest was not based on Garcia’s ruling—the Orioles manager knew full well he could not protest a judgment call. He said he was protesting Game 1 because the Yankees promised him that outfield fans would be blocked from getting past the railing and down to the wall.
In fact, before the game Orioles and Yankees officials met with the umpiring crew and discussed the potential for fan interference. “That was specifically covered,” said Kevin Malone, Baltimore’s assistant general manager. “They had issues with it in the past, and we were assured they’d be on top of it. It was bizarre. We overemphasized it in the meeting, and then it happened anyway. You think if you focused on it you’d get it right, so that was overly aggravating.”
Tarasco claimed he had no doubt he would have caught Jeter’s shot had Maier not beaten him to the ball. “It was like a magic trick,” Tarasco said. “The ball just disappeared in midair. Merlin must be in the house, man. Abracadabra.”
After watching the replay, Garcia agreed fan interference should have been called but disputed Tarasco’s claim that he would have made the catch. The ump believed Jeter deserved a double and felt badly that he gave the rookie two extra bases instead.
The game had taken four hours and twenty-three minutes to play, so most of the Yankees were too tired and too frayed to embrace the notion that a twelve-year-old boy had just bailed them out. Asked about the replays of Maier’s obvious interference, Joe Torre said, “Anybody see the replay of Bernie’s home run? That wasn’t bad, either.”
For his part, Jeter said he simply saw Garcia signaling a home run and that he was not about to argue. “He should’ve jumped,” the shortstop said of Tarasco. Jeter would eventually concede he had gotten a little help from a little friend.
“Afterward you could see there was a little interference there,” he would say, “but I don’t care.”
None of baseball’s elders cared either. Baltimore’s protest was shot down, and Jeter had the first postseason homer of his career.
“And it was so huge for us because that ball was going to be caught,” Yankees reliever David Weathers said. “I don’t care what anyone says. We were in the bullpen, and we saw it. We saw Tarasco, who’s a very good outfielder, camp under it. We were all like, ‘Oh, man,’ and then the crowd went crazy. It changed the whole series.”
It changed Jeffrey Maier’s life. He had left home that afternoon a seventh-grade athlete unknown outside the boundaries of his sleepy town, and he returned to Old Tappan that night as one of the country’s most famous ballplayers.
When the Altmans pulled up to the Maier home, a stretch limo was already waiting in the driveway to take Jeffrey and his family to the Plaza Hotel in Manhattan so he could appear on Good Morning America. It made sense: the kid was America’s most wanted man.
The next morning, with the Maiers and Altmans gathered in the ABC studio, Bob Altman assumed the role of press agent as major news media outlets jockeyed for time with Jeffrey.
Altman made it clear the family wanted lunch, limo service, and free tickets to Game 2 to grant any outlet exclusivity. “The Daily News comes back and says, ‘OK, we’ll give you two stretch limos, lunch at the All-Star Café, and after the game we’ll get you into the dugout and clubhouse to get autographs from the players. We’ll get you seats in the front row, behind the dugout, but it’s got to be exclusive to the Daily News. You can’t talk to the New York Post.’”
Altman brought the offer to Dick Maier, who accepted the terms. Jeffrey bounced from Good Morning America to Live with Regis & Kathie Lee to the All-Star Café, with photographers shooting his every step. While all this was going on, Jeffrey’s grandparents were returning to their retirement community in Lake Worth, Florida. Dave and Anne Maier had no idea what had happened the previous night, so when they saw the neighbors out waiting for them, they thought a community resident had passed away.
The neighbors assured Jeffrey’s grandparents that the only thing dead was Baltimore’s protest.
Back at the Plaza suite, Altman called the Yankees PR office before heading to Game 2 in the Bronx. The team’s director of media relations, Rick Cerrone, told Altman, “This is not going to be Jeffrey Maier Day at Yankee Stadium.”
Dick Maier took the phone and informed Cerrone they already had their own tickets and would indeed be attending Game 2 as planned. Cerrone batted away one newspaper’s absurd request to get Maier together with Jeter so the shortstop could be photographed thanking the boy for his help.
The Maiers ended up right behind the Yankees’ dugout, also as planned, and the Orioles were furious that he was there. “We thought he got rewarded for being a criminal,” said Baltimore hitting coach Rick Down.
A certain rookie shortstop did not care. Jeter made eye contact with his favorite twelve-year-old fan and threw Jeffrey Maier his wristband. This time Maier made the catch. “That was really cool,” Jeffrey said.
The Yankees lost that Game 2 but regained control of the ALCS in Game 3 after Jeter’s two-out double off Mike Mussina in the eighth ignited a four-run rally that erased a 2–1 deficit. Bernie Williams singled home Jeter, advanced to third on Tino Martinez’s double, and then scored when Todd Zeile tried to abort a throw to second base and lost control of the ball.
Cecil Fielder dropped the hammer on Mussina with a two-run homer deep into the left-field stands, and Jimmy Key, a survivor of multiple surgeries on his left arm, had himself a masterful eight-inning, three-hit, 117-pitch victory.
Jeter had started crucial rallies in Games 2 and 3 of the Division Series triumph over Texas, and in Game 3 of this Baltimore series. So it came as no surprise that he set the tone in Game 4, leading off with a double before Williams’s home run two batters later made it 2–0. Darryl Strawberry would hit two homers, Paul O’Neill would hit one, and the battered Orioles would be practically out on their feet when they took the Game 5 field.
George Steinbrenner had returned to New York after the Yankees seized the 3–1 series lead and watched Game 5 at the Stadium. His general counsel, David Sussman, received a call from a high-ranking official in Mayor Rudy Giuliani’s administration who was interested in discussing logistics for a potential parade.
When Sussman brought word of the conversation to his employer, Steinbrenner nearly threw him out of his office. The Boss lived in mortal fear of jinxing imminent victory, even if it was clear Baltimore was giving him little reason to sweat.
In Game 5, the Yanks blasted Orioles starter Scott Erickson for six runs in the third inning and then spent the rest of the day hanging on. They were trying desperately to return the world’s most famous sports franchise to the World Series for the first time since 1981 and trying desperately to land Torre there for the first time ever.
The Orioles cut it to 6–4 in the ninth on Bonilla’s two-run, two-out shot, setting up an appropriate climax for the series. Cal Ripken Jr. stepped into the box against John Wetteland. He did not know it, but the Iron Man was batting for the final time as Baltimore’s starting shor
tstop.
Ripken said he had been secretly hoping for another crack at the Yankees, and here was his chance to extend the series, to get the tying run to the plate, to put the fear of God in Torre.
Jeter had outplayed and outhit Ripken, batting .417 for the ALCS. Ripken carried a .263 average into this last at-bat, with no homers and no RBI. And, of course, Ripken had unwittingly and irreparably harmed Baltimore’s chances of advancing to the World Series by signing Brian Altman’s ball three years back.
Ripken’s gracious gesture set in motion a series of events that put Jeffrey Maier in the right-field seats for Game 1. What if Altman had not put on his orange Ripken shirt that day? What if the Iron Man had not made the kid a fan for life by picking him out of a crowd?
What if it had not rained on October 8? What if Eric Saland had a lighter schedule on October 9, or a boss who would grant him permission to go to the delayed Game 1? What if the Altmans had decided to ask someone other than Maier to take Saland’s ticket? What if Dick Maier had not reminded Jeffrey to be ready when Jeter was at the plate and a power arm was on the mound?
“I think about this all the time,” Saland said. “If I’d gone to that game, I wouldn’t have run to the fence, and my son wasn’t fast enough to make it to the fence. If I go, none of this happens, and the world doesn’t get to know Jeffrey Maier.”
If Eric Saland had gone, and Jeffrey Maier had not, would the Orioles have won the series?
“Yes, we would have,” Malone said. “If we go back to Baltimore up 2–0, it puts all the pressure on the Yankees, and momentum is so big in sports. You play differently, you manage differently, you pitch differently, you hit differently, and you think differently when you’re down 2–0.
“I thought we had the better team, and we ended up with nothing to show for it.”
Nothing but Ripken at the plate, ready to put the ’96 Orioles to rest. This final out needed to be made before a champagne-soaked Torre could end up with half his Brooklyn neighborhood in his Camden Yards office. Before Torre’s sister, Marguerite, a nun and principal at the Nativity of the Blessed Virgin Mary School in Ozone Park, could admit she was praying for Baltimore’s demise.
Before the Torres could cry again over Rocco’s death. Before the manager’s other brother, Frank, could answer a reporter’s call in his hospital room at Columbia-Presbyterian, where he was waiting for a heart transplant, and declare, “My kid brother is finally in the World Series.”
Before the hate mail and a few death threats from pathetic fans and degenerate gamblers would find the Maiers in Old Tappan, compelling them to retreat from the media outlets and Hollywood agents still wanting a piece of their son.
Ripken had to close the series and an epic part of his career first, and he had to do it by hitting a ball at a kid who always looked up to him. Derek Jeter might have been a bigger fan of Barry Larkin’s, the shortstop he would have ultimately replaced had Cincinnati taken him with the fifth pick of the ’92 draft.
But Jeter had a tremendous respect for Ripken and his durability, and an undying appreciation for the fact that the six-foot-four Iron Man helped clear a path for the Jeters and Alex Rodriguezes by dispelling the notion that a major league shortstop needed to be a defensive-minded runt.
Only in this moment, with Ripken’s grounder bouncing hard to his right, Jeter was not thinking about any debt of gratitude he might have owed his elder. He was not thinking about the fact that Baltimore could have and should have drafted him, too, and then moved the declining Ripken to where he would start the ’97 season: third base.
No, Jeter was not thinking about the fourth pick of the ’92 draft, outfielder Jeffrey Hammonds, and the fact that Hammonds did not even play in the postseason. Jeter was thinking only of doing precisely what he did—field the ball in the hole and unleash a throw to first base that would reach Tino Martinez before Ripken touched the bag.
Martinez would dig the ball out of the dirt just before Ripken reached the base—fittingly enough—with a headfirst slide; it was the first time anyone could recall the Iron Man diving this way into first. Ripken’s last act as the Orioles’ everyday shortstop was defined by his willingness to sacrifice his body, and his desperation to be great.
Rich Garcia, of all umpires, was just as definitive in ruling Ripken out as he had been in ruling that Jeter’s Game 1 homer was legitimate. The rookie shortstop was the one going to the World Series, and the iconic shortstop who helped put Jeffrey Maier in the lineup was the one going home.
Derek Jeter was the leadoff man for a World Series lineup that had just been outscored 12–1 by the Atlanta Braves in Game 1 at Yankee Stadium, and he was the poor soul whose Mercury Mountaineer had just been stolen off a Manhattan street. Didn’t matter. The shortstop was having no trouble relaxing at his East 79th Street apartment.
His friend and former minor league teammate R. D. Long was staying with Jeter while rehabbing from shoulder surgery. The shortstop was watching the tape (“He usually watches playoff games,” Long said), watching how John Smoltz completely locked down the Yankees, watching how a nineteen-year-old from Curaçao, Andruw Jones, made the biggest rookie splash of all.
Long was struck by Jeter’s placid demeanor.
“The Yankees haven’t been in the World Series in a long time, and Derek Jeter’s turning into the Beatles,” he said. “This cat will literally be on the couch, we’ll be talking, and he’ll just fall asleep. He’s facing [Greg Maddux] tomorrow and he just falls asleep.
“I’m sitting there looking at the cat and saying, ‘You’ve got to be kidding me.’ If I was in the same boat, do you know what I’d have to do to go to sleep? Drink fifteen beers. Derek Jeter’s one of the very few I’ve watched do that night after night and go to sleep like a baby.”
That’s what struck the Yanks most about Jeter, the ice water coursing through his veins. His approach in October mirrored his approach in May. Jeter played the game with a smile and a wink, and he was forever making small talk with fans while waiting on deck.
Joe Girardi, the tightly wound catcher, a baseball player with a football mentality, marveled at how much fun Jeter would have while competing in high-stakes postseason games. “Gosh, I wish I could be like that,” Girardi told himself.
“It just blew me away how relaxed Derek was,” the catcher said.
So Jeter was relaxed for Game 2, even if the rest of his team was tighter than George Steinbrenner’s omnipresent turtleneck. This time the Yankee offense could not generate even one run off Atlanta’s starter; they allowed Maddux to go eight innings and to beat them by a 4–0 count.
In the process, a Maddux pitch hit Jeter on the left wrist, and for the balance of the World Series the shortstop would feel more pain and stiffness and have more trouble gripping the ball than he would ever let on.
This felt like a sequel to 1976, when Cincinnati’s Big Red Machine steamrolled the Yankees in four. Yes, the defending champion Braves were heavily favored to win this World Series, but nobody expected their pitchers to hold the Yanks to one run in the first eighteen innings. Steinbrenner was half furious, half terrified of suffering another humiliating sweep.
The owner stopped at Mariano Duncan’s locker. “Oh, you’re always a very positive guy,” Steinbrenner told the second baseman. “So now what’s going to happen?” Duncan assured the Boss the Yankees would at least win two of three in Atlanta and return the Series to the Bronx.
After Game 1, Torre had actually told the Boss the Yanks would lose to Maddux, win three straight in Atlanta, and return to the Bronx to win the title in Game 6. “He looked at me like I had two heads,” Torre said. Steinbrenner finally told his manager, “OK, go do it,” but the owner was hardly a blind believer in the plan.
Torre presented the same scenario to his players in the grim wake of Game 2. “He came in and said, ‘Hey, guys, Atlanta’s my town,’” David Weathers said. “Joe just said, ‘We’re going to go down there and take three from them and win Game 6 here.’”
&n
bsp; After landing in Atlanta, where he had been a player and manager, Torre had stronger words for his team. He knew his Yankees were doubting themselves, and he searched for another button or three to push.
“Joe said Atlanta had the champagne on ice already,” Tim Raines said. “He said, ‘We can do this. I know we can do it. You guys have played together all year, and now’s the time to do it.’
“He mentioned the first two games and said, ‘Those games are over. George Steinbrenner doesn’t think we can come back. . . . Let’s prove that motherfucker wrong.’”
For the sake of channeling an inner rage, Torre knew he was sending the right guy to the Game 3 mound. David Cone was there for Game 2 by accident—he was supposed to be on a flight to Atlanta, but a mechanical delay left him stuck on the runway and then parked at the gate. Cone did not have an easy time convincing the pilot to let him off the plane (“I don’t even think the guy knew who I was,” the pitcher said), but somehow, some way, he made it back to the Bronx.
He did not like what he saw or heard. Cone was told by a clubhouse attendant the Braves were talking trash and talking sweep, and the right-hander had not made it back from aneurysm surgery to get embarrassed on the sport’s biggest stage.
“It seemed to me they were having just a little too much fun at our expense,” Cone said. “People were treating us as a prop in the World Series. Everybody was looking at this Atlanta Braves team and trying to place them in history, and I was really angry about that.”
Two prominent Atlanta columnists, Mark Bradley and Terrence Moore of the Journal-Constitution, declared the balance of the World Series a mere formality, their Yankee obituaries cutting the visitors to the bone. “No longer is this team playing against the overmatched Yankees,” Bradley wrote. “The Braves are playing against history.”