by Joe Torre
Mussina's relief work grew in stature as the game unfolded. The Yankees finally broke through against Martinez when Jason Giambi whacked his first pitch of the fifth inning for a home run. Meanwhile, Mussina tacked on two more shutout innings. He had thrown 33 pitches and kept the Yankees within range of Pedro when Torre decided to take him out after the sixth inning, turning to lefthanded reliever Felix Heredia to face Damon and Todd Walker, two lefthanded hitters due up for Boston.
Told he was done for the night, Mussina turned to Torre in the dugout and said,”I thought you weren't going to bring me in in the middle of an inning.”
Said Torre kiddingly, because he was unaware of what Stottle-myre had told him, “Well, I guess we lied to you.”
Then Torre turned serious. He drew closer to his pitcher and told him, “All I can tell you is you pitched the game of your life here. If anybody ever questions how you handle pressure, you answered that right here. Don't you ever forget that.”
“Thanks,” Mussina said.
“Oh, and one more thing,” Torre said. “Maybe when we come back next spring we'll take a look at you out of the bullpen.”
“No, no. No, thanks,” Mussina said.
Torre, of course, was kidding, but Mussina's clutch relief work had allowed some levity and hope in a game the Yankees still trailed by three against a determined, if somewhat weary, Martinez. The lack of sleep, the anxiety about the cauldron of New York, the three weeks of crossing times zones … all of it sapped a bit of energy from Martinez. Even though he cruised through the sixth inning, Martinez came off the field, sat next to assistant trainer Chris Correnti and offered something revealing: “Chris,” he said, “I'm a little fatigued.”
In the seventh, Martinez locked down the first two outs without apparent difficulty. But then Giambi hammered his second home run of the game to cut the lead to 4-2. Now Martinez only needed to dispatch Enrique Wilson to end the inning. Wilson normally would be the last guy you would want taking an at-bat when you were down to the last seven outs of your playoff life. Quite simply, Enrique Wilson was one of the worst hitters ever to play for the New York Yankees. He appeared in 264 games for the Yankees and batted .216. Only four men in the history of the franchise ever hit worse with that much time in pinstripes: Bill Robinson (.206, 1967–69), Jim Mason (.208, 1974–76), Lute Boone (.210, 1913– 16) and Steve Balboni (.214, 1981–90). Moreover, Wilson was neither especially fleet nor adept in the field. His value essentially came down to one specific and unexplainable skill: he could hit Pedro Martinez. Wilson was a career .500 hitter against Martinez, with 10 hits in 20 at-bats, including a freakish 7-for-8 performance that year alone. Torre started Wilson at third base on those numbers alone, though his regular starting third baseman had given him no reason why he should stay in the lineup. Aaron Boone, looking overmatched, was hitting .125 in the ALCS, with two hits in 16 at-bats. Naturally, Martinez could not get Wilson out. Wilson reached base with an infield single. Garcia, whom Martinez had treated as his plastic duck decoy for Game 3 target practice, smacked the next pitch for a single.
Martinez had so cruised through most of the game that he had thrown only 11 pitches out of the stretch position before Garcia's hit. But now that the Yankees had the tying runs on base and Soriano at bat, Martinez had to tap whatever reserve tank of energy he possessed. Soriano fought Martinez through a grueling six-pitch at-bat. On the last pitch, Soriano swung and missed for strike three. It was Pedro's 100th pitch of the game. As Martinez walked off the mound he gave thanks to God by pointing to the sky. Red Sox Nation recognized the body language. It was Pedro's usual coda to a full night's work, his signature signoff. It was the look of a man who was done, who had delivered his team with 100 pitches to a 4-2 lead and within six outs of the World Series. Martinez's teammates recognized the look. As Martinez walked into the third-base end of the Boston dugout, shortstop Nomar Garciaparra threw his arms around Martinez in a hug, a gesture of appreciation for the game he pitched. At the other end of the dugout, nearest to home plate, Boston pitching coach Dave Wallace pulled his pitching log notebook and a pencil from his pocket and ran a line through Martinez's name. Pedro, to the coach's best assumpton, was done. Underneath Martinez's scratched-out name Wallace wrote “Embree.” Alan Embree, a lefthanded pitcher, would start the eighth inning to match up against Nick Johnson, a lefthanded hitter and the first Yankee due up in the inning. Wallace and Correnti congratulated Martinez on his effort, a job well done.
“After the seventh,” Martinez said, “Chris and Wallace told me that was pretty much it. They were going to talk to Grady.”
At that moment, Martinez figured he was done for the night. Such a moment is all it takes to trigger the shutdown of a pitcher's competitive systems. Rebooting is never quick and easy.
“Your energy level drops,” Martinez said of that mental shutdown. “As soon as you think you're out, even for 30 seconds, you get tired and out of focus.”
Martinez, slipping on his warmup jacket, was getting ready to leave the dugout for the clubhouse. Suddenly Little approached him.
“I need you for one more [inning],” the manager said. “Can you give me one more?”
Martinez was stunned. First of all, he had already assumed that he was done. And second of all, how was he supposed to answer the question? Was he even permitted, in the unwritten macho code of the game, to refuse the manager's request and say he wanted to come out of a Game 7?
“I didn't know what to say,” Martinez said later. “Do I come out after the sixth or seventh? If anything happens, everyone will say, ‘Pedro wanted to come out.’
“I wasn't hurt. I was tired, yes. I never expressed anything about coming out. The only way I would say that is if I was physically hurt. The only way.”
So Martinez told Little he would try to give him another inning. Little must have sensed the fatigue and the hesitation in Martinez, because he decided on a backup plan.
“I'll tell you what, Petey,” Little told him.”Why don't you try to start the eighth. I might even send you out there just to warm up.”
Embree would be throwing in the bullpen. He would be summoned at any sign of distress, even if it occurred as Martinez threw his warmup pitches.
“Help is on the way,” Little told Martinez.
David Ortiz provided another kind of assistance when he popped a home run off David Wells in the top of the eighth inning, extending Martinez's lead to 5-2. Torre had used Heredia to face two lefthanded hitters and Jeff Nelson to face two righthanded hitters when he had called on Wells to neutralize Ortiz. It didn't work. Now Torre had used five pitchers, including Clemens, Mussina and Wells, who among them had won 709 games in the major leagues, and still found himself down three runs to Martinez with six outs left. Martinez marched out to the mound for the last of the eighth inning believing he would be removed as soon as the Yankees put anybody on base.
“At that point, I thought I was batter-by-batter,” he said.
As Martinez threw his warmup pitches, Embree threw in the bullpen, ready to go. Righthanded relievers Mike Timlin and Scott Williamson were available, too. The three relievers had dominated New York throughout the series, allowing only one run in 11⅓innings and just five hits in 36 at-bats. Little would later tell club officials that as well as they had pitched, he did not trust them to keep their nerves under control in such a pressurized spot. He trusted no one more than Martinez, even a fatigued Martinez. Indeed, Little trusted Martinez so much that even though Martinez himself thought his place in the game was a batter-by-batter proposition, Little intended for him to pitch the entire inning, even if runners reached base.
“It's the way we've always done it,” Little said. “Ninety percent of the time when we send Pedro back out there he completes the inning. He gets out of his own jams. I can hardly remember the times I had to go get him. I'd rather have a tired Pedro Martinez out there than anybody else. He's my best.”
Until Game 5 of the AL Division Series against Oakland, Little had r
emoved Martinez only seven times mid-inning in his 60 starts for the manager—four of those seven hooks came against the Yankees—and only once after the seventh inning. But in a subtle bit of foreshadowing, Martinez had been unable to get through the eighth inning of that clinching game in Oakland. Little pulled a weary Martinez after two hits in that inning, and then used four relievers to secure the final six outs to make possible the New York– Boston steel-cage match.
Ten days later, Little faced the same predicament, only this time with a World Series berth on the line: a fatigued Martinez starting the eighth inning with a rested, reliable bullpen behind him. He would play this one differently than he had the game in Oakland, and it would cost him his job.
Martinez started that eighth inning well enough, getting Nick Johnson on a pop fly to shortstop. But Johnson had extended Martinez through another seven pitches in that at-bat. The last of those pitches was clocked at 93 miles per hour. The speed sounded impressive enough, but Martinez knew it was an inadequate gauge of how he was feeling.
“Even when I'm fatigued, I can still throw hard,” Martinez said. “My arm speed may be there, but location is where I suffer and that's because my arm angle drops. I throw three-quarters, yes, but it's three-quarters steady. If I start to get tired, my arm drops a little more and that causes the ball to stay flat over the plate. My velocity doesn't change, but I can't spot the ball as well when I'm tired. That's what happened.”
Five outs away. The Red Sox were just five outs away from going to the World Series and from smashing their inferior status to the hated Yankees. Of course, the Boston paradox at the time, typically referred to as the Curse of the Bambino, is that each out brings the club as close to infamy as it does fulfillment. Each step offers the horror of a trapdoor.
“As Game 7 was going on the drama kept building,” Burkett said.”You have people on our team thinking,’I don't want to be the one to make the mistake.’ You know, the Bill Buckner thing. I'm sure it entered people's minds.”
After getting Johnson, Martinez jumped ahead of Derek Jeter with two fastballs for strikes. If Babe Ruth, and his 1918 trade from Boston to the Yankees, is the root of all things evil for the Red Sox franchise, Jeter is the talisman of the Yankees’ modern dynasty. So many of the team's signature moments and improbable rallies featured Jeter:
He started the 12th inning rally, and scored the winning run, in Game 2 of the 1996 AL Division Series against Texas, the pivotal win that saved the Yankees from going down two games to none in the best-of-five series and was the springboard victory to their dynasty.
He hit the disputed home run (the Jeffrey Maier home run, courtesy of fan interference) to rescue the Yankees in Game 1 of the 1996 AL Championship Series, just when they were five outs away from losing to Baltimore.
With the Yankees down 6-0 in the sixth inning of 1996 World Series Game 4—the Braves seemed a lock to extend their series lead to three games to one— Jeter started the epic comeback with a single.
After the Yankees lost Game 3 of the 2000 World Series to the Mets, Jeter restored equilibrium to the series by ripping the first pitch of Game 4 for a home run off Bobby Jones.
With the Yankees facing elimination in Oakland, he saved Game 3 of the 2001 AL Division Series by appearing from seemingly nowhere to fetch an errant relay throw and improvising a flip throw to the plate to cut down the would-be tying run.
He hit a walkoff home run in the tenth inning to win Game 4 of the 2001 World Series against Arizona.
Jeter was still only 29 years old, but already owned several lifetimes worth of huge postseason moments. He had grown so comfortable in big spots, especially at Yankee Stadium, where the Yankees sometimes seemed to be paranormally good, and every break seemed to go their way, that he would tell first-year Yankee third baseman Aaron Boone, “Don't worry. The ghosts will come out eventually.”
Against Martinez in Game 7, Jeter would provide yet another signature moment. Boston catcher Jason Varitek called for another fastball at 0-and-2, wanting this one so far out of the strike zone that he practically was standing when he gave a target for Martinez. Pedro did throw to the spot, very much up and very much away, but Jeter swatted at it anyway, lining it hard into right field. Trot Nixon, the Boston right fielder, took a poor path to the ball, running more shallow to his right than the hard-hit ball required. By the time Nixon corrected his mistake it was too late. The ball sailed over his head and bounced off the padded blue wall as Jeter dashed into second with a double.
The hit was largely forgotten amid the madness that was still to come, but it was one of those subtleties of execution that can drive baseball men mad. Yankees fans saw the clutch hitting of Jeter, while inside the Red Sox dugout they saw the possible second out of the eighth inning squandered by an outfielder's path to the baseball. In the immediate aftermath of the game, one of the Red Sox would grab a reporter and ask,”Tell me, was Jeter's ball catchable?” Told that it was, crestfallen, he sighed, “I thought so.”
Martinez, who figured he would be done as soon as a runner reached based, glanced toward his dugout, but no one came. Bernie Williams, a switch-hitter who hit 24 points worse against left-handed pitchers that year, was due to bat next with Hideki Matsui, a lefthanded hitter, behind him. Fox analyst Tim McCarver said on air at that time,”You get the feeling [Embree] will be the pitcher for Matsui one way or the other.”
Once again Martinez brought the hitter to the brink of expiration with another two-strike count, this time 2-and-2 to Williams. And once again, Martinez could not finish the job. He threw a 95-mph fastball that caught too much of the plate. Williams pounded it for a hard single that sent Jeter dashing home to cut the deficit to 5-3.
As expected, with the lefthanded Embree ready to face the lefthanded Matsui, Little left the dugout and walked to the mound. But then something very much unexpected happened: Little walked back to the dugout without Martinez. Writers in the press box howled, “What is he doing?” Said McCarver on the air, “This is the most blatant situation for a second guess in this series, whether to bring Embree in to pitch to Matsui or not. If you're not going to bring him in against Matsui, when are you going to make that move?”
Martinez had thrown 115 pitches. He was fatigued. He had taken the mound in the eighth inning thinking one runner might bring about his removal, and here two of them had reached base by hitting the ball hard and he was still in the game. Once again Little had put much of the decision-making process in the hands of a proud pitcher who did not want to say no.
“Can you pitch to Matsui?” Little had asked Martinez on the mound.
“Yeah, of course,” Martinez had replied.”Let me try to get him.”
Little's question regarding Matsui left Martinez thinking this would be the last batter he would face.
“He didn't ask me about anybody else,” Martinez said. “Just Matsui.”
For a third consecutive batter, Martinez obtained two strikes, this time with another 0-and-2 count after Matsui looked at a fastball and curveball. And for a third consecutive batter, Martinez could not execute a pitch to finish off the at-bat. Varitek called for a fastball up and in.
“We've probably thrown Matsui 80 pitches up and in,” Martinez said, “and he's never hit that pitch.”
Again Martinez missed slightly with his location. The pitch wasn't far enough inside. Matsui blasted a line drive down the line that bounced into the stands for a ground rule double. Martinez had given up only two extra-base hits all year on 0-and-2 counts. Now he had done so twice in a span of three batters with the American League pennant only five outs away.
The Yankees had runners at second and third. Now Martinez thought for certain he was out of the game. Little had asked him only about Matsui, and Martinez had failed to retire him. He had thrown 118 pitches and no longer had the strength to finish off hitters. But Little didn't move from the dugout. The howls from the press box grew louder. The next batter was Posada. One more duel among the archenemies.
“I
was actually shocked I stayed out there that long,” Martinez said of the eighth inning. “But I'm paid to do that. I belong to Boston. If they want to blow my arm out, it's their responsibility. I'm not going to go to the manager and say, ‘Take me out of the game.’ I'm not going to blame Grady for leaving me out there.”
By now, Yankees closer Mariano Rivera was throwing in the bullpen. The crowd, with a shark's intuition for the vulnerability of its prey, was gleefully frenetic. Once again, Martinez forged a two-strike count. He missed with a cut fastball before throwing three straight curveballs, getting a called strike on the first, missing with the second and getting a swinging strike with the third. Varitek called for a fastball at 2-and-2. And for the fourth consecutive time, the Yankees jumped on a two-strike fastball for a hit. Posada did not hit it well—the 95-mph pitch jammed him—but he did hit it fortuitously. His little pop fly plopped onto the grass in shallow center field.
Williams scored, with Matsui following him home with the tying run. None of the Red Sox, as if stunned by what was happening, bothered to cover second base, so Posada easily chugged into the bag for a double. A tremendous wall of sound rose up, the kind of roar that comes not just from the throat but also from the soul. Down three runs to Pedro Martinez and down to their final five outs, the Yankees had tied the game with four straight two-strike hits.
“That,” Posada said, “was the loudest I have ever heard Yankee Stadium.”
Suddenly, Rivera ran off the bullpen mound. The Yankees’ bullpen was a two-tiered arrangement. The throwing area is at field level, behind the left-center-field wall, and above that, up a short flight of stairs, is a sort of staging area, with a small dugout and bathroom. Without a word of explanation, Rivera climbed the steps, ran into the bathroom, closed the door behind him and, with the joyous music and noise shaking the concrete walls of the stadium, starting crying.