by Joe Torre
“Sometimes I may get a message from Cash: ‘George wants to talk to you.’ I'd call him and there would be something he wanted to get on me about. Usually I'd beat him to the punch. I'd call him. I'd say, ‘We're struggling.’ He'd give you the huff and puff, but nothing that other managers didn't put up with. George always wanted to make me feel uncomfortable because he wanted that control over you.
“The one phone call I got from George that I'll never forget was when he criticized me for not using Mariano in a tie game in extra innings. I told him, ‘I'm not going to have him go out there and pitch two, maybe three innings. I can't do that. This is only one game.’ He said, ‘Oh, yeah?’ That's what he'd say to me. I said, ‘Yeah. Right, wrong or indifferent, I'm not going to do it.’ But then we got waxed two straight games against the Mets and then on a Sunday morning he called me up to tell me to keep my chin up. That's the way George was. When you were suffering, he'd come and help you. Otherwise, he'd be this tyrant who would second-guess a lot of stuff that you did or didn't do.”
Torre did his best not to allow Steinbrenner to make him feel uncomfortable, a tactic that frustrated Steinbrenner because it undermined the control he sought. Unlike most of Steinbrenner's managers, who played by The Boss's rules and felt beholden to him for the job, Torre came to the Yankees as a complete outsider to the franchise who had been fired three times and wasn't sure if he ever was going to get a fourth chance. He was playing with house money. He did not manage under a fear of his losing his job, thus depriving Steinbrenner of one of his main weapons. Another manager might have demoted Mendoza, for instance, and simply covered for Steinbrenner with a handy organizational lie. Not Torre. On top of that kind of disarmament, Torre received high critical praise from the media and opponents for his management of the team, another annoyance to Steinbrenner and another threat to the control The Boss wanted over his manager.
“He was resentful of the credit I got,” Torre said, “and I addressed it with him. The thing that bothered me is I was getting this credit so he would try to find little things to tweak me with, just to get my attention. I'd tell him, ‘Not a day goes by where somebody credits me that I don't mention your name. They don't always write that, but I can't help that. Just understand that.’ He always denied that. He'd say, ‘No, I don't care about that.’ I knew better.”
Steinbrenner especially was on edge in that 2000 World Series, ankle-deep in water and chest-deep in the pressure of maintaining the Yankees’ status as New York's premier team. The Yankees simply could not afford to lose to the Mets, of all teams, especially at a time when Steinbrenner was planning the launch of his regional sports network. The Mets were a confident team hardened by the pressures of New York and, unlike the 1998 Padres and 1999 Braves, were not about to roll over to the mighty Yankees and their home-field advantage. “Yankee Stadium? I don't give a hoot about it,” Mets reliever Turk Wendell said on the eve of the series. “We've played there before. It won't be a surprise.” Wendell, who grew up a fan of the Red Sox, added, “The Yankees have tortured us for years and years, and beating them would be sweet for me.”
The 2000 Yankees, however, were no longer so mighty. They represented another incremental decline in the dynasty from that 1998 pinnacle. Knoblauch, 31; Martinez, 32; Brosius, 33; O'Neill, 37; and Cone, 37—all had down years as they began to show some age-related attrition. Denny Neagle, a midseason acquisition to the rotation, was a bust, a precursor to the many times the Yankees would get burned by bringing a National League pitcher over to the American League. The Yankees finished sixth in the league in runs and sixth in ERA. They were good, but nothing special. The Yankees won only 87 games, fewer than eight teams in baseball, including the Cleveland Indians, who didn't even make the playoffs.
The Yankees held a nine-game lead with 18 games to play and still had to sweat out a first-place finish over Boston, losing all but 2½ games of that lead. They finished the season in a 3-15 tailspin in which they lost games by scores of 11-1, 15-4, 16-3, 15-4, 11-1, 11-3 and 9-1.
“I have no clue what happened in September,” Torre said. “The second inning we're down six-nothing every day. I had a meeting before a game in Baltimore when I said, ‘Guys, you want the champagne before the game? Because we keep holding on to this champagne, waiting to clinch. Might as well drink it early’ I was just trying to do something to relax them.
“But then all of a sudden you get to the postseason and the pressure is off. All of a sudden that 15 out of 18 doesn't count anymore, so the pressure's off. You don't have to worry about losing the lead.”
Though the 2000 Yankees seemed vulnerable based on their regular season production, their postseason know-how served them well. They survived a five-game series against Oakland in the Division Series, winning Game 5 on the road with Andy Pettitte starting, Orlando Hernandez, Mike Stanton and Jeff Nelson in the middle and Mariano Rivera at the end—all of them postseason stalwarts. The Athletics started journeyman Gil Heredia and found themselves down 6-0 before they took their first at-bat.
“It was our first time in the playoffs in eight years,” said Billy Beane, the Oakland general manager. “We had a young, highly emotional bunch. We won the first game, we had a good team, we carried the adrenaline for a game or two, but when we played Game 5, it was almost as if the Yankees said, ‘Enough is enough. We've played with the mouse long enough. It's time to get it over with.’ “
The Yankees then dismissed Seattle in six games in the American League Championship Series, losing only in the two games started by Neagle. Clemens helped turn the series with the greatest game of his postseason career, a one-hit shutout with 15 strikeouts and 138 pitches to win Game 5, 5-0, a game in which he announced his nasty intentions by buzzing Alex Rodriguez with a pitch early in the game. “That game was incredible,” Torre said. “I remember him knocking Alex back, and Alex looking like, ‘What are you doing?’ And that was it.”
The Yankees advanced to a Subway Series against the Mets, though by evidence of the advance billing, the World Series itself seemed relegated to only a backdrop to the hyperpublicized personal war between Roger Clemens and Mike Piazza. Clemens had started against the Mets that year on July 8 at Yankee Stadium. Piazza had worn out Clemens in his career. In 12 at-bats, Piazza had raked Clemens for seven hits, including three home runs, and nine runs batted in. McNamee, Clemens’ since-estranged trainer who used to help Clemens warm up in the bullpen before games, said he told Clemens just before the game, “Listen, you've got to cut that shit out. I mean, the guy … you've got to end that shit.” McNamee said Clemens responded, “Don't worry.”
Piazza was the leadoff batter of the second inning of a scoreless game. Clemens obtained a called strike on the first pitch. His next pitch, a fastball, sailed toward Piazza's head. Piazza threw his hand up and ducked his head slightly at the last moment, but the baseball drilled him right on the front of his helmet. Piazza immediately fell limp to the ground in the manner of someone who had been shot. The Mets believed Clemens had thrown at Piazza intentionally. Piazza had to be removed from the game. While Piazza was being examined in the Mets’ clubhouse, Clemens called there to talk to him, to see how he was feeling. There was some confusion about what happened next: whether Piazza was unable to take the call at that moment or whether he flat out refused to take the call. All Clemens knew was that his attempt to talk to Piazza was rebuffed.
“The worst I've seen him upset was when he hit Piazza,” McNamee said. “He said, ‘Mac, he won't pick up the phone. What should I do?’ I said, ‘Fuck ‘im.’ He goes, ‘No, man. He won't pick up the phone. I've got to do something.’ I said, ‘Listen, I know Franco. You want me to go, I'll go get Franco.’ “
Mets reliever John Franco and McNamee both had attended St. John's.
“So I went over to the clubhouse and I grabbed Franco,” McNamee said. “I'm talking to John right outside the clubhouse and I'm going, ‘Yeah, John. Roger just feels bad. He's in the locker room and he wants to speak with Mike.’ And he
goes, ‘He's in there. He's a pussy. Fuck ‘im. He's in the trainer's room.’
“And I went back and I told Roger that. And that's when Roger went on the offensive, saying, ‘Who gets hit and has a press conference?’ “
Said Torre, “Piazza wouldn't take the call in the clubhouse, but that's understandable. I mean, we all thought Roger was that same person when he pitched against us and didn't know him. I mean, I hated him as an opponent for the shit that he did.
“I remember it was right before the All-Star break, and the All-Star Game was in Atlanta and Bob Gibson was there. He told me, ‘The guy never moved. He just sort of stayed there.’ I said, ‘Yeah, because the last thing he thought was that he was going to get hit in the head. Just wait ‘til I step in, dig in, and throw the ball over here where I like it so I can knock the shit out of it.’
“Roger didn't throw at him. I mean, I'm not saying he didn't try to push him back off the plate. I'm not saying he didn't do that, but he certainly didn't have any intention of hitting him.”
It was made-for-tabloids stuff. It was a bitter feud between two superstar players, Yankees versus Mets, New York versus New York. Clemens, finally earning his keep with the Yankees after a transitional year in 1999, played the role of the bad guy.
“The whole Piazza thing in 2000 kind of dominated that year for him and everything surrounding it,” Cone said. “Steve Phillips, the Mets general manager, really escalated things. He was very angry and very aggressive in his postgame comments. He shut down the weight room the next day when we went to Shea Stadium. Yankee players weren't allowed in the Mets’ weight room the next day. He just kept it going. He said, ‘Keep the players away from each other.’ There was too much animosity. He escalated things. I thought that was a little out of line for a GM. That could have been handled by the players and managers. He unnecessarily escalated the situation, but he was upset.”
For the World Series, speculation was rampant about what would happen when Clemens and Piazza met again. Sports channels and news channels played endless loops of the July beaning. Would Clemens hit Piazza again? Would the Yankees pitch Clem ens at Shea Stadium, where, under National League rules, he would take his turn at bat and be subject to getting hit himself as a retaliatory act by the Mets?
“We didn't need for that to happen,” said Torre, who slotted Clemens in Game 2 for the safety of pitching at Yankee Stadium. “Roger told me, ‘Whatever you'd like me to do.’ I think Mel got to me and said that he'd rather not pitch at Shea, but he'd never admit that to me. Mel was remarkable. He'd get a sense for everything, or pitchers would talk to him before they'd talk to me, which is understandable.”
Mel Stottlemyre, Torre's trusted pitching coach, was undergoing aggressive treatment for a bone marrow cancer known as multiple myeloma. At great risk of infections, he could not perform the duties of the pitching coach that year, but he continued to serve Torre as an adviser. Steinbrenner invited him to Yankee Stadium for the first two games of the World Series. They would watch the games together from Torre's office, the two of them eating cheeseburgers.
The Yankees, as they always seemed to do in October, somehow won Game 1, even though they left 15 runners on base and were losing, 3-2, with one out in the ninth inning with nobody on base against Mets closer Armando Benitez. The Mets’ lead should have had a cushion to it, but the Yankees prospered from a baserunning gaffe by Timo Perez in the sixth inning. With two outs, Perez might have scored from first base on a double off the wall by Todd Zeile, except for Perez falling into a jog when he assumed the ball was going to clear the wall for a home run. Derek Jeter, with yet another of his exquisitely timed comic-book heroics, made Perez pay for the mistake with a perfect relay throw to the plate for the final out of the inning.
Still, the Mets had the Yankees down to their final two outs with the bases clear when Benitez pitched to O'Neill. What happened next was the quintessential championship Yankees at-bat: a 10-pitch walk. “It set the tone for the series,” Torre said. “It was just a dare: ‘You can't get me out.’ It was the loudest walk you've ever experienced.”
O'Neill fell behind Benitez, one ball and two strikes. One hundred four times during the regular season Benitez had put hitters in a 1-and-2 snare, and only 19 times did they ever escape from that snare to reach base, leaving a lowly 18 percent chance of reaching base. O'Neill fought his way out of the predicament with the Yankees’ trademark persistence forged from that desperation to win from 1998. He fouled off two pitches, let two more go for balls, fouled off two more, and finally watched the tenth pitch sail out of the strike zone for ball four.
The rest of the rally carried the same familiar earmarks of Yankees ingenuity: two opposite-field singles, one by pinch-hitter Luis Polonia and another by Luis Vizcaino, and a sacrifice fly by Chuck Knoblauch and the game was tied. Watching the Yankees rally like that over and over was like watching an old woman knit: knit one, pearl one, knit one, pearl one … the repetition of executing simple tasks created something big. The Yankees would win in the 12th inning by stitching together a walk and three hits, the last of them an opposite-field single by Vizcaino off Wendell.
Game 2 brought the main event, the wrestlemania matchup of Clemens versus Piazza. Torre was sick of the hype, even angry about it. The feeling in Yankee Stadium that night was a rabid one, three months of hostility brought to a boil, fired by the incessant media fascination with the two stars. Torre spoke briefly to his team before the game.
“Let's not get caught up in the emotion of what they're trying to make this about,” Torre said. “We still have baseball to play, a team to beat.”
By then Torre had come to like and trust Clemens, who in his second year with the Yankees had become more a part of the team. There was less hiding around the back rooms of the basement of Yankee Stadium.
“He was easy for me,” Torre said. “I have my rules about the national anthem and stretching. I'd get them sometimes and sometimes I wouldn't notice. All of a sudden Roger would come out to the field and say, ‘Skip, I just put three hundred on your desk.’ Because I don't look for everybody when they come out for the national anthem. I don't think there was anything phony about Roger. He was who he was. And he was a good teammate.”
Clemens treated every one of his starts as if preparing for Armageddon, none with more emotion than Game 2 of the 2000 World Series. He had not pitched for seven days since dominating the Mariners with that one-hitter, the bulk of those days consumed by media reports of another showdown with Piazza. He also was worried about his mother, who would be sitting in the wheelchair section of Yankee Stadium, with an oxygen tank to counter the effects of emphysema. She was there when Clemens pitched the 1999 World Series clincher, but had to leave after five innings because she grew so nervous and anxious that her breathing became more difficult. Clemens was also emotional about seeing the ill Stottlemyre in the clubhouse before the game.
There was so much to think about even before throwing a pitch. Clemens lost himself in his usual pregame preparation, which typically began with cranking the whirlpool to its hottest possible temperature. “He'd come out looking like a lobster,” trainer Steve Donahue said. Donahue than would rub hot liniment all over Clemens’ body, “from his ankles to his wrists,” Donahue said. Then Donahue would rub the hottest possible liniment on his testicles. “He'd start snorting like a bull,” the trainer said. “That's when he was ready to pitch.”
Said Donahue, “Roger was a warrior and a fighter. His intensity was not the same as David Cone's. You didn't even talk to Coney when the game started. Roger could talk about fishing, hunting, umpires.
“Between innings, almost every inning, was like a prizefight with Roger. It was like he was coming back to his corner in between rounds. He'd come in and you'd have to have your surgical gloves on, ready to go. He might say, ‘Give me the red hot on the back.’ Or, ‘Give me some grease on my elbow.’ You really had to pay attention when he had two outs, because the first thing that would come off were the
shirts. He had all dry shirts lined up. Then we'd have two or three grades of hot stuff lined up. He'd get the medium on the back and the next-to-hottest on the elbow and he'd get all greased up and then you'd have to put talcum on him so he could put his shirt on over the grease and then he'd go back out there for the fight.”
Clemens went out for his usual bullpen warmup. Mike Borzello would catch him at the start. McNamee would observe, always checking some cranky body part—back, hamstring, groin—that needed extra observation. Posada would arrive in time to catch the last 20 pitches, with McNamee assuming stances as a lefthanded and righthanded batter. “Whew! How many times did he almost smoke my ass!” McNamee said. Clemens would finish by working through pitch sequences on two virtual batters. Then he would wipe the sweat from his brow, rub it on the Babe Ruth monument in Monument Park for good luck, and get down to the business of intimidating grown men with the flight path and velocity of a thrown baseball.
It was 8:05 p.m. when Clemens threw his first pitch. He would say later that night, “I don't remember ever being more ready for a start, but I also knew I had to control it somehow.”
He was positively ferocious from the start, blowing pitches past the Mets with the heat and force of an acetylene torch. Timo Perez, the first batter, struck out on a 97-mph fastball. Edgardo Alfonzo whiffed on a ridiculously fast 94-mph splitter. Piazza was next. The crowd was nearly barbaric in its frenzy. Clemens clearly was more amped than his usual warrior-like self.
“I was anxious all day,” he said after the game, at 2 a.m. in the Yankees’ parking lot, still edgy. “I really had a hard time with it. I felt like I couldn't go up and in, which I normally would do on him, because what if I did? What if one got away? With all the talk it really wore me down. I kept telling myself, ‘You've got to get a hold of your emotions.’ Everything was building up to it. It was so hard to get a hold of my emotions.”