by Joe Torre
“Between Tino and Jeter and Girardi, O'Neill, Bernie and Bro-sius, it was just a commitment these guys had. They were good and they knew it and they worked at it. They worked at it. They were a bunch of grinders. In spite of the maintenance of Wells, it was a machine. Mariano settled into the closer's role and was great. It was all about once you get a taste of winning and know how it feels and how satisfying it is, it doesn't go away. When you have a year where you put numbers up, people go, ‘Okay’ But they pay attention to winners. They always pay attention to winners. That group felt a responsibility. You have to live up to yourself. There was a great deal inside those guys.”
The Yankees’ 1999 spring training camp was about to begin the next morning, February 18, when Joe Torre received a telephone call from general manager Brian Cashman. All was right in the Yankees’ world. They had returned 24 of the 25 players who won the previous World Series and a record 125 games. Only the veteran Tim Raines did not return, pushed out by way of free agency because of the rise of young outfielders Ricky Ledee and Shane Spencer. The Yankees were about to sell 3.2 million tickets that year, the first time the franchise topped three million and the upper limit of the attendance dream Steinbrenner envisioned when he signed Cone in 1995. But Cashman brought news of a bombshell that would alter the look and feel of the seemingly perfect Yankees.
“We just made the deal for Roger,” Cashman said.
The Yankees agreed to send pitcher David Wells, infielder Homer Bush and reliever Graeme Lloyd to the Toronto Blue Jays to obtain Roger Clemens, thus accommodating George Steinbrenner's long-standing wish to obtain his “warrior,” as well as Clemens’ desire to win himself a world championship ring. Steinbrenner had visited Clemens at his Houston area home after the 1996 season in an attempt to convince Clemens, then estranged from his Boston Red Sox as a free agent, to pitch in the Bronx. Steinbrenner even lifted weights in Clemens’ home gym during his recruiting visit. But Clemens took a four-year contract from Toronto instead. Two years into that deal, during which he earned the Cy Young Award each year, Clemens wanted out. Citing an agreement with Blue Jays president Paul Beeston upon his signing, Clemens demanded a trade based on his contention that Toronto was not spending enough money to build a contender around him. Clemens did not mention that at $10 million per year, his contract had become obsolete by those signed by Randy Johnson ($13.25 million per year) and Kevin Brown ($15 million per year).
Clemens was owed $16.1 million over the remaining two years of his contract. When Toronto attempted to trade Clemens to his hometown Houston Astros, Houston general manager Gerry Hun-sicker ended the talks and excoriated Clemens publicly when Clemens asked for $27.4 million as a one-year sweetener to his existing contract. By February, with no other recourse to get out of Toronto, Clemens was ready to sign off on a deal to join the Yankees.
“The trade happened real quickly,” Torre said. “There was really not a lot of conversation. Obviously, before he signed with Toronto we were trying to get him then. Back then I heard he didn't want to come to New York. Maybe it was the whole Boston thing, that he wanted to get away from all the craziness.”
The Yankees held off on announcing the trade until the next morning so they first could inform Wells in person that he was traded. Wells was 39-14 for the Yankees over his two seasons with the team, including 5-0 in the postseason. He had thrown a perfect game in 1998 and established himself as a fan favorite, his lack of conditioning being excused, even weirdly appreciated, as long as he kept coming up big in the big games. If New York loved Wells, Wells loved New York right back, especially into the late hours of the night. As David Cone said upon hearing about the trade, “There are going to be a lot of bars going out of business in New York.”
When Wells reported for the first day of the Yankees’ 1999 spring training camp, he immediately was told that Torre wanted to see him. He broke the news to him that he was traded. Wells quickly left the complex in tears. “I'm a little emotional right now,” he told reporters. “Give me a couple days. It's a little tough right now.”
In Clemens, then 36, the Yankees were getting the best pitcher in baseball. Clemens had won the pitching triple crown in the previous two seasons, leading the American League in wins, ERA and strikeouts each year. The only problem Torre saw about getting Clemens was that the Yankees could not stand him. Clemens had a reputation for headhunting, using brushback pitches as attempts to intimidate batters.
“Before I had Roger on my team he was someone you loved to hate,” Torre said. “He loved to intimidate. But the thing you always admired about him was the fact that he always seemed to get that guy out when he needed to. With a man on third base and less than two outs, or guys in scoring position, I don't remember a pitcher who did a better job of getting that guy out when he needed that big out.”
On the first day Clemens threw live batting practice to his new teammates, Derek Jeter and Chuck Knoblauch donned catcher's gear before stepping into the cage, an acknowledgment of Clemens’ intimidation tactics, but done in the humorous vein of new teammates forced by circumstance to get along. The Yankees looked like a juggernaut again. If Torre's biggest worry was making sure his players welcomed the best pitcher in baseball into their fraternity, the season figured to be a breeze. But, in fact, Torre had something much more serious to worry about that spring. He was scared that he might have cancer. Torre underwent his annual physical with his personal physician in New York during the previous winter. Everything checked out okay except for a PSA level that was slightly elevated. His physician informed him that several factors could temporarily cause a higher reading and that he shouldn't be alarmed, but he also should pay attention to the PSA reading when he took his annual spring training physical conducted by the Yankees. The Yankees had added PSA tests to the physicals only after outfielder Darryl Strawberry was diagnosed with colon cancer the previous year. When Torre took the spring training physical, the PSA level was still elevated. Now there was some concern among the doctors. They ordered another test to see if an infection was causing the spike in his PSA level, but that possibility was quickly ruled out. In early March doctors told Torre that they would have to do a biopsy to determine if he had prostate cancer.
Age was something that never played a part in my day-to-day operation until I realized I was getting close to 60 years old,” Torre said. “I was getting ready to turn 59 that year and for the first time I thought, ‘Shit. I'm getting old.’
“So then they ran the biopsy test and they were going to get back to me with the results. When you go through something like that, you expect the worst. Because if you expect the best and you get the worst, you're going to free fall.”
The Yankees were playing a spring training game in Kissimmee, Florida, against the Astros on the day Torre expected to hear the results of the biopsy. He left the game early and began driving back to Tampa at about the time he expected the call. Only later, however, would he learn that his cell phone was not receiving a signal as he drove on the highway. It was only when he stopped in Tampa to purchase a CD for his daughter that his phone rang. But it was not the doctors. It was Steinbrenner.
“Don't worry, Joe,” Steinbrenner said. “You'll come through this fine and be all right.”
Torre was stunned—and hurt. How did Steinbrenner know?
Torre hadn't even heard from the doctors yet and here was Stein-brenner breaking the news to him that he had cancer.
“George called me and led me to believe that he knew the results, which pissed me off,” Torre said. “So I stopped trusting, not so much George, but the people around him from that point. I heard from the doctors a little bit after the call from George. I then went back and told my wife what the diagnosis was. She was sort of in denial. It was a scary time.”
How do you break the news to your team that you have cancer? The Yankees had split-squad games the next day meaning half the team would be playing at home and the other half would be playing on the road. Logistically it was difficult to
pull everyone together. So Torre called Clemens and David Cone and told them he would like them to tell the players at the home game about his illness. Then he called Joe Girardi and asked him to perform the same duty on the road. He also called Don Zimmer, his bench coach, and asked him to manage the team while he was recovering from surgery. It didn't take long for the Yankees to miss the way Torre calmly handled every crisis—often blunting them before they could blow up into a major issue—especially when it came to his expert lion-taming skills with Steinbrenner.
“I made the mistake of putting Zimmer in charge of the team,” Torre said. “Emotionally, it was a ton for him. He was a mess. What I should have done was probably put Mel Stottlemyre in charge, and it might have been a little easier for everybody—to have Zim sit next to Mel, but have Mel answer for it with the media and George.
“At the end of that spring training is when George called Hideki Irabu ‘a fat toad.’ And then the team went out to Los Angeles to play an exhibition game and Zim wanted to start Ramiro Mendoza but George wanted to start Irabu. I called up Zim in LA. and said, ‘Zim, just let it go. When George said something you just say, “He's The Boss, blah, blah, blah,” and do what you want to do. Just don't challenge it with George.’ So when Zim just said, ‘Okay goodbye’ and hung up, I knew he had no chance. He was going to challenge George. And it turned into a wildfire. So it started right there with Zim and George going at it.”
Torre, meanwhile, underwent surgery March 19. Dr. William Catalona performed the two-and-a-half-hour procedure at Barnes-Jewish Hospital in St. Louis. Catalona assured Torre that the operation was successful and that he would be working again soon. It was a message that Torre wanted to deliver to his players personally.
“When I came back after my surgery I met the players and explained what was going on,” Torre said. “I just wanted to keep them aware of it. It's the same way with any issues. If anything was whispered around the team, I'd always meet with them and be as honest as I can. If there was someone new around the team, for instance, I might say, ‘I can't trust this security guy. I'm not telling you what to do. I'm just making you aware of what I'm aware of I'd like to think that honesty came through in the trust factor you need to have with your players.”
Torre returned to manage the Yankees on May 18, almost two months to the day from his surgery, and just in time for a game in Boston against Pedro Martinez and the Red Sox. When Torre brought the lineup card to home plate before the game, the Fenway Park crowd rose and cheered for two minutes and the scoreboard passed along greetings of “Welcome Back.”
“Sitting in the dugout after you know you've had cancer,” Torre said, “you're thinking, ‘This is a game we're playing, and how important is this?’ I just didn't know if that same intense feeling was going to come back. And then when we got to Toronto on the next road trip I remember Bernie Williams was hitting with the bases loaded and I was willing to sell my soul for a hit. And Bernie hit a grand slam. And that's when I knew I was all the way back. The bubbles were back.
“Every once in a while you have to step back and put things in perspective and where they belong. But the minute you start to minimize the importance of winning you're cheating everybody. You're cheating the players you're trying to lead. You're cheating the owners who are paying you.
“The cancer never really goes away. Cancer is there every day of your life. When I was diagnosed that spring, I said in jest, ‘Now I know why all those balls were dropping in for us.’ I never thought, ‘Why me?’ Instead, I thought, ‘Why shouldn't it be me?’ Why should it be that all things that happen to me are good things? Should this happen to somebody else who was struggling? So I never complained, ‘Why me?’ I've been very blessed.”
The 1999 Yankees were not quite the machine that was the 1998 Yankees, but they were a reasonable facsimile—except for Clemens falling short of replacing Wells’ excellence. They held first place for 131 days, including all of them after June 9. On July 18, two months into Torre being back on the job, and 14 months since Wells threw his perfect game, all about the Yankees was perfect again. It was a Sunday afternoon in which the Yankees honored Yogi Berra before an interleague game against the Montreal Expos. Don Larsen, the author of the only perfect game in World Series history, was there to throw the ceremonial first pitch to Berra, a nod to their collaboration in the 1956 perfecto. Larsen and Berra watched the game from Steinbrenner's suite-level box. They saw history repeat itself.
Cone, the Yankees’ starting pitcher, dominated the heavily right handed Expos, none of whom had faced him before, with fast-balls and sliders that disappeared from their swing plane. After only five innings, the thought occurred to Cone that he might have a shot at throwing a perfect game. The Expos kept going down with amazing ease; Cone would throw only 20 balls to 27 batters. After almost every inning on the 98-degree day, Cone would return to the clubhouse to change one of the cutoff undershirts he wore beneath his jersey. By the time he retreated to the clubhouse in the eighth inning, the perfect game still intact, he noticed there was nobody in there. Nobody wanted to break the tradition of not talking to a pitcher when he has a no-hitter or perfect game in progress.
“It was a ghost town,” Cone said. “Even the clubhouse attendants were gone.”
Cone kept the perfect game going through the eighth, though to do so it took a backhand grab of a grounder and surprisingly true throw from the unpredictable Knoblauch at second base. Now Cone was only three outs away from baseball immortality. He walked back to the clubhouse. Again, the place was deserted. He changed undershirts again, then walked into the bathroom, stopping at one of the sinks in front of the large mirror. Alone, he looked at himself in the mirror and spoke aloud.
“What do we have to do to get this done?” he said. “This is the last chance you're ever going to have to do something like this.”
He bent down, ran cold water from the faucet into his cupped hands and splashed the water over his face. He stared at himself in the mirror again.
“Holy shit,” he said. “How am I going to do this?”
For a moment he was caught in a very awkward place between doubt and desire, trying to beat back one while encouraging the other in a battle inside his head.
Don't blow it, he thought to himself.
And then he shook his head.
No, don't think that way! That's negative.
But doubt crawled back.
Don't blow it.
No. No negative thoughts. Get it done!
But don't blow it.
Finally, he stopped the internal doubt for good. Still staring into the mirror, he thought to himself, Screw the psychobabble! Go out there and get it done!
Cone was 36 years old, a survivor of a scary aneurysm three years earlier, and well aware of his pitching mortality. He could not know it at the time, but this would be the last complete game he would ever throw, the last shutout, too. In fact, Cone would make 131 starts in his six seasons with the Yankees, and this would be his only shutout.
“I went out there for the ninth and—boom, boom, boom— struck out the first guy on three pitches,” Cone said. “Then I got a humpback liner to left, which Ricky Ledee kind of lost in the seats or sun or whatever.”
Ledee, though, caught the ball, however ungracefully. Cone needed one more out. The batter was Orlando Cabrera, a 24-year-old shortstop. Cabrera swung and missed at the first pitch and took the second one for a ball. On the next pitch, a slider, the 88th pitch of the game for Cone, Cabrera lifted a pop-up into foul ground near third base. Cone looked up and couldn't find the ball.
“I remember the sun was setting on that side of Yankee Stadium,” Cone said. “As I looked up I got blinded by the sun, so I pointed, thinking Brosius might lose it in the sun. I just remember pointing at it, and Brosius was already camped under it at that point. I never saw the ball.”
Brosius squeezed the pop-up in his glove. Cone was perfect. He dropped to his knees and reached for his head, in a sweet combination of dis
belief and relief.
Torre always believed championships began with starting pitching and 1999 was no different, even with Clemens underperforming. Torre's rotation was remarkably durable and reliable once again. Cone, Clemens, El Duque, Pettitte and Irabu made 152 of the teams’ 162 starts, posting a 68-36 record. Steinbrenner, though, considered Pettitte a drag on the staff and wanted him gone, especially after Pettitte could not get out of the fourth inning of a game against the White Sox on July 28, 10 days after Cone's perfect game and three days before the trade deadline. Pettitte was 7-8 with a 5.65 ERA at that point. Steinbrenner had a deal in place to ship Pettitte to the Phillies.
While the Yankees were in Boston just hours away from the deadline, Steinbrenner conducted a conference call with Cashman, Torre and Stottlemyre. Steinbrenner said he was ready to trade Pet-titte.
“I can't believe you would even consider doing it!” Stottlemyre said.
Torre and Cashman also spoke out against trading Pettitte. Finally Steinbrenner gave in. He called off the deal.
“You better be right,” he said to the three of them, “or you know what's going to happen.”
Over the next 4½ years, or until Steinbrenner let Pettitte walk as a free agent, Pettitte went 75-35 for Steinbrenner's Yankees, a .682 winning percentage. Over the rest of that 1999 season, Pettitte was 7-3 with a 3.46 ERA before tacking on a 2-0 postseason. Pettitte never truly engendered confidence from Steinbrenner, possibly because he carried himself with a sensitivity that belied his competitiveness.
Torre remembers one of the first big games Pettitte pitched for him, on September 18, 1996, against Baltimore. It was the first game of a huge three-game series at Yankee Stadium against the second-place Orioles, whom the Yankees led by three games with 13 games to play. Pettitte, 24, was pitching against veteran Baltimore righthander Scott Erickson. Torre walked into the trainer's room before the game and happened to find Pettitte there.