by Marty Appel
Martinez was just the sort of player the Yankees needed. He would bring a big RBI bat to first base after Mattingly’s struggles. As successor to Mattingly, he had big shoes to fill, but he had talent, a winning personality, even what sounded like a New York accent, and the “right stuff” to just do his job, put up the numbers, and let his on-field play take care of any Mattingly comparisons.
He symbolized what Michael wanted in hitters: patience, the ability to run the count deep, a guy who got on base a lot. In his first year, he hit .292/25/117 and won over the fans.
The Yankees’ on-base percentage in 1991 was .316. By 1996 it was .360. Boggs had been the first player to demonstrate the patience that Michael liked. Now it was starting to pay off up and down the lineup. It would be the hallmark of Yankee teams to come. It wore down starting pitchers and got the Yankees into the middle-relief men on a daily basis, often rendering the closers useless.
Meanwhile, Wetteland remained a very effective closer for the Yanks, saving 43 games in 1996. But his setup man, Mariano Rivera, was to many the team’s MVP. Rivera preceded Wetteland 26 times in those 43 saves, pitching more than an inning in 20 of them. His stuff was dazzling; his fastball had pop, and his cutter was as tough on lefties as it was on righties. There was no need to go lefty-righty once he came in, keeping the rest of the bullpen—Nelson, Bob Wickman, and Australian Graeme Lloyd—effective earlier in the game. The formula worked well; the Yankee starters had only six complete games.
The Yanks re-signed David Cone as a free agent, and he was 4–1, 2.01 before going down with a frightening, career-threatening aneurysm. When he came back with his first start in September, he no-hit Oakland for seven innings before Torre took him out over pitch-count concerns. Pettitte was 21–8, while Kenny Rogers, the recovered Jimmy Key, and Doc Gooden won 35 between them. Ramiro Mendoza was an effective spot starter. Gooden, considered finished by some, hurled a no-hitter against Seattle on May 14, something he had never achieved with the Mets.
Additionally, second baseman Mariano (“We play today, we win today”) Duncan led the team with a .340 average (he and Rivera were the only two “Marianos” in baseball history), and veterans Tim Raines, Cecil Fielder, and Darryl Strawberry were big contributors, Fielder having been obtained for Sierra on July 31.
Third baseman Charlie Hayes, who platooned with Boggs, returned in an August 30 trade with Pittsburgh, just in time to be postseason eligible.
“He might have been the best third baseman in the league when we had him earlier, before losing him to Colorado in the expansion draft,” said Michael.
Strawberry and Gooden were Steinbrenner reclamation projects. He had Arthur Richman charged with looking after them. They were two of the most talented players of the eighties when they came up to the Mets, but alcohol and drugs killed their Cooperstown-bound careers. They still had something to prove, and something to give to the Yankees.
Another addition to the team was bench coach Don Zimmer, whom Torre did not personally know very well. Zim was a baseball lifer who started as a Brooklyn shortstop and then carved out a long managing and coaching career in the game, including two coaching stints with the Yanks in the eighties. He proved to be a great strength to Torre, quick to observe things on the field and to make suggestions without seeking publicity or credit. Chubby, bald, Popeye-like in appearance, “the Gerbil” was a favorite of the TV cameras. The team’s rookie shortstop, Derek Jeter, took a particular liking to Zimmer, rubbing his bald head for good luck.
Mel Stottlemyre and Chris Chambliss returned as pitching and batting coaches to provide a “Yankee pedigree” in the dugout.
JETER WAS NOT a sure thing to be the team’s shortstop in ’96. Clyde King, for one, thought he wasn’t ready. Gene Michael thought he was. So did coach Willie Randolph, who knew something about playing the infield at a young age. The Yanks toyed with making a deal with Seattle to get Felix Fermin, and considered dealing Bob Wickman or Mariano Rivera for him. Tony Fernandez broke his elbow in spring training, jeopardizing second base at the same time.
Everyone seemed to think Jeter’s time was coming, but not necessarily in ’96. But Michael prevailed, and he got the job. He homered off Dennis Martinez on opening day in Cleveland and made an over-the-shoulder catch. He was hitting .340 after fifteen games. He was ready.
Born in New Jersey but raised in Kalamazoo, Michigan, Jeter was a Yankee fan from summer vacations back in Jersey, where he’d watch the games on WPIX. The product of nurturing parents in an interracial marriage, he had an easy personality, good looks, and star quality. He was observed in Kalamazoo by scout Dick Groch and then scouting director Bill Livesy, who held their breaths at the 1992 amateur draft as four teams passed and the Yankees got him. “He wanted to be a Yankee,” said Groch. “That’s the thing he wanted.”
From the beginning, he mastered the art of avoiding controversy in remarks to the media. He seemed to have perfect instincts for the game. His trademark movements—raising his right arm for a brief “time!” before each pitch (that began in his second season), his quarterback-like rifle throws to first while airborne in short left field, his line drives to the opposite field, and his unselfish approach all contributed to what was going to be a Hall of Fame career.
As he matured, his place among the all-time great Yankees was evident. He was named captain in 2003. He emerged as the team’s spokesman at ceremonial events. His number-2 jersey would be worn by thousands of fans, many of them female (he was still a bachelor as 2012 arrived) and many of them youngsters. His image was perfect for the game, especially as steroid allegations stirred around other stars. And he, along with Torre, Williams, Martinez, Rivera, Pettitte, and Cone, began to confound traditional Yankee haters. These were hard guys to root against. It was a most unusual development for the franchise, and frustrating for those who had spent a lifetime finding the Yankees arrogant.
Jeter’s highlight reel would be filled with memorable Yankee moments, and if there was a commercial to be made featuring a baseball player, there was a pretty good chance that Jeter was in it. Jeter T-shirts and jerseys were the best selling in the game.
While not considered powerful enough to hit in the middle of the lineup, he nevertheless hit more than 200 career homers to make the all-time top ten among Yankees, and hit 20 postseason home runs (through 2011), which was third all-time among all players.
TORRE BECAME THE figure to watch as the Yankees went into the postseason. He was a steady yet emotional man who connected well with New Yorkers, and fans were rooting for him to get to his first-ever World Series. He had been a calming presence all season, putting himself between his players and the front office, keeping them out of public criticism, changing the culture of the organization.
After Williams homered three times as the Yanks beat Texas in the Division Series, the Yanks faced Baltimore in the ALCS. In game one, trailing 4–3 in the eighth, Jeter hit a fly ball toward the first row in right field. Oriole right fielder Tony Tarasco set up to catch it on the warning track and later said he felt he could make the play, but a twelve-year-old New Jersey boy, Jeffrey Maier, reached out and deflected it into the stands. Umpire Rich Garcia called it a home run and the game was tied. It gave the Yankees life, and in the last of the eleventh, Williams hit a walk-off homer to give the Yanks the win. (On seeing the replay, Garcia admitted to blowing the call.)
Baltimore won game two behind David Wells, but then the Yankees took three straight, with Pettitte taking the clincher 6–4. The Yanks were off to their first World Series since 1981.
THE BRAVES AT first looked just too good for New York, with John Smoltz and Greg Maddux both winning in New York to go up 2–0 as the Series headed for Atlanta. The Yanks won the third game 5–2 behind Cone, but in game four, they trailed 6–3 going to the eighth and it appeared they would fall behind 3–1 in games.
But in the eighth, Bobby Cox brought in Mark Wohlers. Hayes and Strawberry both singled, and Jim Leyritz belted a three-run homer to left, another huge h
it for the clutch Leyritz and a moment that gave definition to the impending era of Yankee baseball. If the bottom line was to win the Series, this was a bottom-line moment.
The Yankees won in the tenth inning and then won game five 1–0, Pettitte beating Smoltz, with Cecil Fielder driving in the only run. Now it was back to New York, and during the off day, Torre’s bother Frank, a former Milwaukee Brave, had a successful heart transplant. It heightened the emotion, not only for Torre but for the fans as well.
Game six featured a clutch triple by the hustling catcher Joe Girardi in the third inning as the Yanks scored three runs off Maddux. “When I got on third base, I almost started crying,” said Girardi later of his big hit. Girardi had emerged as both the team’s regular catcher and a mentor to young Jorge Posada.
Rivera shut down the Braves in the seventh and eighth, and then Wetteland did it in the ninth for his fourth save of the Series. Charlie Hayes, the August 30 pickup, caught the final out, and the Yankees won their twenty-third world championship and heralded in a new “feel-good” era that would last into the next century.
Torre was teary-eyed in finally winning it all. The team took a victory lap around the field, with Wade Boggs jumping on a police horse. Bob Watson celebrated being the first African-American general manager to win a World Series. The city rejoiced as Mayor Rudolph Giuliani, a die-hard, Brooklyn-born Yankee fan, hosted a City Hall reception following the team’s World Series ticker-tape parade.
To some, Torre would come to be considered the best manager in the franchise’s history, surpassing the work of Huggins, McCarthy, and Stengel. Unlike them, he had to beat thirteen, not seven opponents to win the pennant, and he had to get through three rounds of playoffs to win the world championship.
He had to reckon with multinational, multiracial players with huge guaranteed contracts. He had to deal with the second-guessing that went with the emergence of sports talk radio, to be followed by bloggers and the twenty-four-hour news cycle provided by cable television and the Internet. His postgame comments were shown live on TV. And he had that very demanding boss. Neither Huggins, McCarthy, nor Stengel ever experienced any of that.
The Yankee organization established itself as polished and efficient during this era. Marketing and promotional innovations were admired, even the ground crew’s dance performance of “YMCA” as they raked the field before the sixth inning (as suggested by Joe Molloy in 1996, after doing it with Tampa’s ground crew in spring training).
The field was better maintained and achieved a beautiful look under head groundskeeper Danny Cunningham, who succeeded Frankie Albohn in 1994. The removal of the on-deck and fungo hitting circles, the creative alternate mowing patterns, and the painting of the classic NY logo behind home plate, maintained by Dick Kunath and his family, made the field look spectacular. Part of the reason, as well, was the decreasing use of chewing tobacco by players, which used to badly soil the field.
The Yankees were proactive in banning smoking in the stands and tobacco advertising on billboards starting in 1995, years before such things were mandated by law. Then, in an effort to deal with unruly fans, beer sales were cut off after seven innings, and stopped entirely in the bleachers (but restored in the new stadium in 2009).
Bob Sheppard’s PA announcements still had their lordly dignity, but now the scoreboard helped make the game fun for younger fans: an animated subway race, various quizzes and games, and the playing of “Cotton Eye Joe” as a sing-along. Eddie Layton had a great sense of ballpark music, augmented by favorites direct from the pop charts.
Attendance went back over two million in 1996, and by 1999 cracked the three million mark. Just six years later, it hit an unthinkable four million. Ticket prices rose along with payroll, but not horribly, and well below Broadway prices. Box seats rose from $7.50 in 1980 to $12 in 1990 to $35 in 2000. The fans were being rewarded with great teams, and Yankee merchandise was worn all over. It was a very uplifting era in Yankee history, and it all began in 1996 when Torre, Zimmer, and Stottlemyre entered the dugout, when Jeter took over at short, when Rivera moved to the bullpen, when Tampa became the spring training home, and when “YMCA” began playing at the end of the fifth inning.
Universally, the game was undergoing changes. ESPN’s Baseball Tonight was a staple for the ardent fan, while the proliferation of online stats and Web sites put information on overload. When blogs and Tweets came along, some players kept “in touch” with their fans with what felt like personal communications. Baseball cards became more high-tech, annual record books faded into online versions, and people could follow games on handheld devices while on the go.
Women continued to attend in growing numbers. “While the success of the team played a big part in this ascent, a combination of other factors was also at play,” said women’s sports historian Ernestine Miller.
Women liked the game for their own enjoyment, but it was also relevant to them in their job, social, and family lives. A big change in traditional attitudes towards what women should and should not like was taking place.
The Yankee brand was expanding and part of the marketing effort was directed at women with the manufacturing of apparel in women’s sizes. Wearing T-shirts, caps, sweatshirts, and jackets with the Yankee logo not only showed support for the team, it was the ultimate fashion statement.
And of course in a society that was becoming increasingly obsessed with athletes, players like Jeter and later Alex Rodriguez attracted legions of adoring women who wanted to know details about their lives that had nothing to do with baseball.
Having won the World Series in ’96, and operating with a big payroll and a win-at-all-costs owner, the Yankees began to find themselves favored to win almost every year. And with the ability to acquire players in midseason to fill holes, especially free-agents-to-be with demands too high for their teams, their options became fertile with win-now players. The temptation to fix a problem area with an available veteran always made them part of the pennant picks.
The most interesting new face on the ’97 Yankees was their first Japanese player, pitcher Hideki Irabu (his father was American), a right-hander who had put up big strikeout totals in the Japanese Pacific League. As far back as the seventies, the Yankees had tried to create ties with Japan, forming a working relationship with the Nippon Ham Fighters, who installed one of their employees in the Yankee offices to learn the U.S. business style for baseball. Unfortunately, the bond never led to any player signings.
San Diego purchased the rights to Irabu. The signing led to the creation of a “posting system” to better govern the movement of players from Japan to the U.S. Ichiro Suzuki, who went to Seattle in 2001, was the first big star and the first position player affected by this.
Irabu, meanwhile, only wanted to pitch for the Yankees and would not sign with San Diego. Recognizing the futility of trying to persuade him, the Padres finally sent him to the Yankees with infielder Homer Bush for pitcher Rafael Medina, Ruben Rivera, and $3 million. The Yankees gave Irabu a $12.8 million contract for four years.
Dispensing with Ruben Rivera, a cousin of Mariano, was noteworthy in that the highly regarded outfielder, rated the Yankees’ top prospect by Baseball America from 1995 to 1997, was falling short of his promise. Rivera would bounce around without success before coming back to the Yanks in spring training of 2002, only to be caught stealing Jeter’s glove and bat from his locker to sell to a sports-memorabilia dealer. The lapse in judgment resulted in his immediate release.
Irabu was less than expected. He did not get along with the huge Japanese media contingent that was assigned to cover him. It wasn’t long before fans started suggesting the name meant “I rob you” in Japanese. Although he would twice be the American League Pitcher of the Month during his three seasons in New York, and although he had a 29–20 record with the Yanks, he was a disappointment. He was 5–4 in 1997 but had a 7.09 ERA. After four starts he went back to the minors, returning weeks later without improvement.
In spring
training of 1999, he failed to cover first base before Steinbrenner’s watchful eye and was labeled a “fat pus-y toad” by the Boss. He was pretty much finished in New York after that. He refused to travel to Anaheim to open the season, reporting instead for the season’s third game in Oakland. In 2011, long retired at forty-two, he hung himself in his Southern California home.
Also new to the starting rotation was big David Wells, a free agent from the Orioles. He won 16 and was tireless on the mound. A big Yankee fan who once wore a game-used Babe Ruth cap on the mound (he had purchased it from a dealer, but was told to remove it after an inning), “Boomer” would be a challenge for Torre, as his renegade lifestyle didn’t always conform to Joe’s designs. Four weeks after he signed, he broke his hand during an “altercation” following his mother’s funeral in San Diego. His mother, “Attitude Annie,” was a Hell’s Angel biker chick. The Yankees were his fifth team and he wound up pitching for nine altogether, but there was a lot to be said for his workhorse abilities and great control.
Martinez had the team’s big bat in ’97, belting 44 homers and driving in 141 runs. He even won the Home Run Derby at the All-Star break, beating Mark McGwire and Ken Griffey Jr. in the process. He was only the seventh different Yankee to reach 40 homers in a season.
With Wetteland off to Texas through free agency, the team turned over the closer’s job to Rivera, confident that his spectacular work as a setup man in ’96 would translate.
Still, there is something in the mind and heart of a closer that makes the assignment different, and Rivera had to prove himself. He gave up runs in three of his first seven appearances and had a 4.00 ERA. But he settled in and found his groove, becoming the Mariano Rivera that fans and opponents would come to revere over the next decade and a half: lights out. He finished that season with 43 saves and a 1.88 ERA, 68 strikeouts and 20 walks in 71⅔ innings. The stats seldom varied, year after year. He was the best closer to ever come along and he did it without the dramatic flamboyance associated with the position.