by Jane Heller
“That was A-Rod,” I whisper. “He was right behind you. He went to take a leak.”
“So?”
“You have to follow him in there.”
The rest you know.
At the hotel after dinner, we take a ride up in the elevator to the 18th-floor lounge. One tidbit John dropped is that the players like to go up there for a drink. We walk into the dimly lit room, and there are Jeter and Jorge sitting at a little cocktail table.
“I’m going over,” I tell Michael.
“And say what?”
“That I’m writing a book and would like to interview them.”
“They’ll tell you to call Jason Zillo.”
“Maybe,” I say. “And maybe not.”
I open my compact one last time to check for food between my teeth. I can’t smile at Jeter and have green things showing. Jorge would be a great catch, too, don’t get me wrong. But Jeter is the Captain.
I close the compact and glance up—only to find that both catches have vanished.
On Tuesday I meet Peter Abraham at 12:30 in the lobby of the Renaissance Hotel at the Rogers Centre. He is stocky with dark, close-cropped hair; a goatee; and a serious expression. He is not unfriendly, just businesslike. I am businesslike, too. I did not come to swap recipes or discuss my favorite chick flicks. I came to find out about the Yankees from someone who has the access I don’t.
Peter and I ride up in the elevator to the concierge lounge where he says it will be quiet. We sit at a table and I turn on my tape recorder—only to have a maintenance person start vacuuming the carpet.
Peter has already told me he needs to be at the ballpark by 2:30. I begin by asking him about his background.
“I’m from New Bedford, Massachusetts,” he says. “I got my start in journalism at the hometown paper. After covering UConn men’s basketball for the Norwich Bulletin, I went to work at the LoHud chain, which used to be called the Gannett Suburban Newspapers, and covered the Mets for a couple of years. I inherited the Yankees beat at the end of the ’05 season.”
“So you’re relatively new on the beat,” I say.
“Relatively. There’s a lot of turnover with baseball writers because it’s such a hard job. Guys get married and their wives don’t want them to be away for a hundred and fifty days a year.”
He is obviously single.
“Was it difficult to get to know people in the Yankees organization?”
“One advantage I had was that the previous beat writer from my paper wasn’t the most popular guy. The Yankees were happy I was replacing him.”
“Tell me about some Yankees.”
“Andy Phillips is one I root for. I hope he hits 1,000 home runs. His poor wife almost died and his mom almost died, and he never once wouldn’t talk to us.”
“Is that why you like some players? Because they talk to you?”
“How helpful they are to me is a factor. When I was covering the Mets, they were a bad team, and bad teams want to get out of the clubhouse after the game and go home. But Cliff Floyd never once said, ‘Sorry, fellas. Gotta go.’ Glavine was the same way. David Wright, too. Totally professional. The Red Sox aren’t like that at all.”
“Really?”
“Manny won’t talk to anybody. And Beckett swears at the writers all the time. He’s just a really mean guy.”
“Did you ever have a run-in with a player?”
“Al Leiter—when I was on one of my first road trips with the Mets. He hadn’t pitched well. I asked, ‘Do you think it was something with your stuff today?’ He said, ‘What do you mean by stuff?’ I said, ‘Your pitches, Al.’ He said, ‘What pitches?’ I said, ‘Al, you pitched the game. You tell me.’ He started giving it back to me, trying to intimidate me because I was a new writer. But I wasn’t afraid of Al Leiter. So I said, ‘You know what? I’ll go ask somebody else,’ and walked away. We had this contentious relationship for a while but ended up friendly. We both like Springsteen.”
“I’m guessing Mussina isn’t fun to interview.”
“No, I love Mussina. He’s really quite funny and smart.”
Smart, okay. But funny? “What about Jeter? He always gives the same pat answers. He must be tough to interview.”
“In a group session it’s impossible. He won’t say much more than ‘Bottom line: We want to win’ and all that clichéd stuff. You have to be around awhile to build up credibility.”
“What about A-Rod?”
“Alex tries too hard,” he says. “Someone must have told him that swearing would make him seem cool. So he went through this period where he couldn’t talk to us without swearing. It was weird. But then someone else must have told him to stop swearing because we wouldn’t print what he was saying.”
“That is weird.”
“Here’s the difference between Derek and Alex,” Peter goes on. “When I show up at the clubhouse, A-Rod is always there. He works out before every game. He works out after games, too. He’s the hardest-working guy on the team. Jeter is the next-to-last guy to show up in the clubhouse. He and Jorge come in together with their Starbucks coffees. They put on their basketball shorts and are ready to go.”
“Do you think A-Rod will opt out of his contract?”
“In spring training I was convinced he would leave. But now I think the finances are such that he’ll stay. The Yankees can offer him more than anybody else.”
“What about that remark he made after hitting his 500th homer? He said he was hoping for a ‘happy ending somewhere.’”
Peter rolls his eyes. “Alex likes to play the put-upon guy, like ‘Everything’s so hard for me.’ He tries to make himself a sympathetic figure. He wants everybody to like him.”
“Tell me about some of the other players.”
“Andy Pettitte is the sweetest, nicest guy. Wang is great but really shy. Roger is professional.”
“What about Mo?”
“He doesn’t realize how good he is. He’ll strike out the side and say, ‘No big deal. That’s what I do.’ He has the perfect closer mentality, never letting what happens carry over to the next day. He just turns the page.”
“Doesn’t sound like there are any really bad apples in this group.”
“Randy Johnson was a bad guy—just mean and nasty all the time. Now that he and Sheffield are gone, everybody gets along with everybody pretty much.”
“On your blog you wrote about how Edwar Ramirez cried after a bad outing. Do you really believe there’s no crying in baseball?”
“No crying on the Yankees. Look, Ramirez pitches 1 day in the majors and he has health insurance for the rest of his life. The players union is strong, with great pensions. Nothing to cry about. With the Yankees, it’s either you help us win or you get out. No sentimentality.”
“You actually like covering this team?”
He gets this beatific look on his face. “When they play at Yankee Stadium, I have a great seat—in the front row of the pressbox,two seats over from the middle of home plate. Every time I sit down I say, ‘How great is this? A baseball game at Yankee Stadium. A big crowd with a lot of people who really care.’ I love that.”
Back at the Park Hyatt I call Mike, the ticket broker, and ask if he can get us seats for the series in Cleveland this weekend.
“Sure,” he says, “but they won’t be good seats like the ones you have here in Toronto, eh?”
“Why is that, eh?”
“Because I have better connections here in Toronto. I’ll have to put you in the bleachers in Cleveland.”
I was hoping to be done with the up-up-up there seats. Still, I need to be at every game, so I take his bleacher seats and buy Tier tickets for next week’s series at Yankee Stadium against Baltimore and Detroit.
When we are finished, I check e-mail. There is one from my friend Kandy in Santa Barbara. She alerts me that the Zaca Fire has spread closer to where we live. I had forgotten all about it! She says residents in the area have been advised to be prepared in case of a mandatory
evacuation.
Suddenly, the issue of tickets, never mind the Yankees, is the last thingIam worrying about. I e-mail Dorothy, my friend and neighbor, and ask her what is happening. Is the house in danger? Is there a state of emergency? Should we come home right away? She writes back that the situation is serious and that everything depends on the direction of the winds. She says for us to wait another day before deciding what to do. She reminds me that she has a key to the house in case there is an evacuation and we are not back. She asks which possessions of ours she should grab and where she should look for them. She is not an alarmist, which alarms me all the more.
I fill Michael in. Naturally, he is as worried as I am.
“We could lose all your photographs and all my books,” I say.
“Everything we own.”
“But we’ve only just started our trip.”
“And you’ve got a contract to honor.”
“What do you think we should do?”
“Maybe give it another day, like Dorothy suggested.”
We sit together in silence, holding each other. We are connecting in a way we haven’t connected in months.
By 7:00 we are in our seats at the Rogers Centre. They are only five rows from the field, and the proximity to the players is thrilling. I can practically pluck Jorge’s eyebrows. The roof is closed because of the steady rain, and it’s like watching a game in a gymnasium. There are many Yankee fans in our section, although next to me is a Blue Jays fan and his 7-year-old son. I ask the father if he minds that there are so many fans rooting for the Yankees. He shrugs and says, “That’s just how it is,eh?”
Clemens is on the hill tonight. He is coming off his two-inning “performance,” so he should have plenty of gas in the tank. In the top of the third, A-Rod comes to the plate and the Jays’ pitcher, Josh Towers, hits him in the calf with a fastball. Having been thrown at last night, A-Rod has had enough. He takes a few steps toward Towers and says something along the lines of “You want a piece of me?” or maybe just “What the fuck?” Both benches empty, but no punches are thrown. Eventually, the inning resumes—for a second. Before Towers throws another pitch, he and Tony Pena get into it, and both benches empty again. It is fun to see which players are itching for a fight and which hang back. I have never seen Jeter clock anyone, for example, or even look menacing. Shelley Duncan, on the other hand, has a rookie’s lack of fear and puts himself right in the thick of things.
Clemens has a shutout going into the seventh—a two-hitter. But when Rios steps in to lead off the inning, the Rocket plunks him in the back. He has clearly and without remorse retaliated for A-Rod getting drilled and is tossed for it. As his teammates gather around him on the mound, he argues with the umpire before departing. I read his lips. He is telling the ump, “I know you have a job to do and I respect that, but I have a job to do, too.”
As I watch Clemens walk off the field, I feel this keen sense of admiration for him, and it floors me. I have never liked the man. I pegged him as an egotistical asshole. I thought he was a jerk for hitting Mike Piazza in the head. I thought his whole tough Texan act was bullshit. But he is suddenly and unexpectedly my hero. Even though he was pitching a shutout, he risked ejection and defended his teammate. He stood up to the Blue Jays and their fans. He used the pitch to Rios to say “Leave my guy alone.” If I were A-Rod, I would kiss him full on the mouth.
The rest of the game is anticlimactic, except for the major league debut of Joba Chamberlain. He was brought up today from Scranton, and Bruney was sent down. A big tall 21-year-old, he relieves in the eighth and fires fastballs at 96, 97, and98mph along with a few devastating sliders,stunning the Blue Jays. He is back for the ninth, reaches 100 mph on the radar gun, and records his second scoreless inning.
The Yankees win 9–2 for their fifth straight victory. I bet Boston fans are starting to look in their rearview mirrors.
I wake up on Wednesday and e-mail Dorothy to see if there is news about the fire. She responds right away, and the news is good. The winds cooperated last night and did not cause the fire to spread. She says that it’s still a threat, but the area that borders our houses will be secured soon. She thinks the crisis has been averted.
Michael and I are relieved, to put it mildly. We take an afternoon walk. Just down the street from the Park Hyatt is an imposing stone-and-brick residential complex. A shiny black Bentley pulls out of its motor court. In the driver’s seat is Frank Thomas.
“It’s the Big Hurt,” I whisper to Michael as the car stops for oncoming traffic.
He peers into the Bentley. “It is not.”
“You know I’m always right about this stuff.” And I am. I have this uncanny, rather bizarre ability to recognize famous and even marginally famous people, baseball players especially. Michael, on the other hand, recognizes no one. “Check out his license plate. It’s HRTTT.”
He looks at the plate and concedes it is Thomas.
“I should go talk to him,” I say. “I’ll interview him about playing the Yankees.”
“I bet he won’t stop for you.”
This time he is right. The Big Hurt practically runs me over, speeding away as I approach his car.
We go back to the Park Hyatt, where we split a club sandwich in the 18th floor lounge. We are the only two guests there. As we pay the check, I ask the waiter what it’s like having the Yankees stay at the hotel. He laughs and says, “No other team or sports star—not even Gretzky—has so much security. It’s like they’re really serious about keeping people away.”
“I’m one of those people,” I admit.
“So you camp outside and wait for them to come out?” he asks.
“I have a legitimate reason. I’m writing a book about them.”
“Sure you are, eh?”
It is a beautiful, clear night for the finale of this three-game series, so the roof at the Rogers Centre is open. Again, Mike has gotten us seats that are only five rows from the field. They are just past first base, not far from the visitors’ dugout.
A-Rod is sitting out this game with a sore calf, thanks to the pitch from Josh Towers, and Betemit is playing third. Wang is facing Halladay—no easy matchup.
In the first inning, it is obvious how this game will go. Halladay has great stuff and Wang is leaving his sinker up, allowing the Blue Jays to spray hits all over the turf. By the end of the sixth, it is 14–2 Toronto. The Yankees make an attempt at a comeback in the top of the seventh on homers by Matsui and Cano. But the final score is 15–4—a drubbing. Torre always says it is tougher to lose a close game than a blowout, but I don’t agree. Blowouts are humiliating.
Back at the hotel, I get an e-mail from George King of the New York Post. I had asked my friend Larry Brooks to put in a good word for me. George has been covering the Yankees the longest of all the beat writers, so I am thrilled he has agreed to an interview—until I read the rest of his e-mail. He suggests I meet him in the press box at 2:00 on Friday afternoon in Cleveland. I feel like a dork as I write back that I am not allowed in the press box.
I go to bed thinking that while Jason Zillo may only be doing his job by refusing me access, he is also thwarting me from doing mine.
Thursday is getaway day. At the Toronto airport, I grill the ticket agent at the Continental counter. We are on a commuter partner called ExpressJet Airlines, and I ask about the equipment.
“It’s an Embraer 135,” she tells me.
“How big is the plane?”
“It holds about 30 people. You’ll definitely feel the bumps.”
After a stop at the Currency Exchange to give back our Canadian money, it is on to Customs. The inspector is stern, as if he expects to nab our cache of stolen diamonds.
“What business have you been conducting in Canada?” he asks.
“I’m writing a book about the Yankees,and I came to watch them play the Blue Jays. I’m following them to every game.”
“No kidding.” His face lights up. “How long will it take to write the b
ook?”
“I’m not sure. I’m still in the research stage.”
“Will it be out soon? I’m a big reader. My wife is, too.”
“It’s up to my publisher when it’ll be out.” There is a line of people waiting behind us.
“Is Jeter still dating Miss Universe?”
“I’ll ask him the next time I see him.”
He winks at Michael.“You get to travel everywhere with her. Not bad for you, eh?”
Michael gives the guy his best game face.
As we board the flight I gasp. “This isn’t a plane. It’s a sedan.”
“Pretend it’s Steinbrenner’s private jet,” Michael suggests.
During takeoff the pilot tells us there is rain in Cleveland. Luckily Rhonda, our lone flight attendant, is selling screw-top chardonnay.
After we land, we wheel our bags outside to the airport taxi stand.
“Where to?” asks the attendant.
“The InterContinental Suites on Euclid Avenue, please,” I tell him.
“Oh, you’re going to the Cleveland Clinic?”
“That’s a hospital,” I say. “We’re going to a hotel.”
“Same place.” He whistles for the next cab to pull up.
“Something’s wrong,” I whisper to Michael as the driver is loading our suitcases into his trunk.
“Maybe Lisa got us a good rate at the Cleveland Clinic,” he jokes.
Neither of us is laughing when we get to the InterContinental. It is in the middle of nowhere, not even close to Jacobs Field, and it is, indeed, part of the Cleveland Clinic’s complex of buildings. Judging by the condition of the guests in the lobby, the hotel is sort of a halfway house for people who have had surgery or are about to.
I tell the front desk clerk I would like to cancel our reservation. She suggests we try the Marriott Key, and off we go. The Marriott is more expensive, but we grab a room. We are relieved to be free of people walking around with their IV poles.
After we unpack, I check e-mail. George King says he will come to the Marriott for lunch tomorrow, and I can interview him then. And Dorothy e-mails with even better news. The Zaca Fire has been contained on its southern border where it was threatening our houses, so we are in the clear. She says the air is full of soot and ash, but that is the worst of it. Oh, and she says our tomato plants are dead.