by Joe Torre
Karstens, with his third major league win, and what would be his only victory of the season, saved Torre's job, pitching the Yankees to an improbable 3-1 win. The Yankees, though, reverted to form in the series finale, losing, 7-4. They had won one game in the previous 10 days.
Now it was time for Steinbrenner to weigh in, or at least the carefully managed version of Steinbrenner, rather than just the surreptitious whispers of “the voices he is listening to.” Steinbrenner's publicity people had stopped allowing him to speak extemporaneously to the press, whether in person or on the telephone. He rarely made public appearances. It was a public relations risk to have Steinbrenner be heard or seen, if only because it would spark more debate about his health and the succession of power. The Boss would communicate with the media only through well-vetted statements released through the publicity firm, while officials from that firm or the Yankees front office continued to paint a picture of a robust Steinbrenner who, if you listened to them, was practically swimming the English Channel each morning and towing tractor trailers with his teeth in the afternoons. Truth was, when Torre would place calls to Steinbrenner, he no longer could get him at his office at Legends Field until four or five o'clock in the afternoon. Steinbrenner wasn't coming to his office until then.
“The season is still very young,” the Steinbrenner statement said, “but up to now the results are clearly not acceptable to me or to Yankee fans. However, Brian Cashman, our general manager, Joe Torre, our manager, and our players all believe that they will turn this around quickly.
“I believe in them. I am here to support them in any way to help them accomplish this turnaround. It is time to put excuses and talk away. It is time to see if people are ready to step up and accept their responsibilities. It is time for all of them to show me and the fans what they are made of.
“Let's get going. Let's go out and win and bring a world championship back to New York. That's what I want.”
It sounded like somebody doing his version of Steinbrenner, like one of those Hemingway writing contests for amateur authors, because, well, in times like this Steinbrenner would be expected to say something, wouldn't he? It included the typical veiled threats (Cashman and Torre having been the only ones named, were thus considered to have been placed on notice that any blame would fall to them) and the football halftime speech platitudes Steinbrenner believed could make baseball players play better. But it lacked the authentic from-the-gut fire and brimstone that made Steinbrenner such a fierce leader. Still, the statement was enough to fan more speculation that Torre's job was on the line.
“Every game we lost was a reference to getting fired,”Torre said. “It was like it was imminent. That's the way people were talking. As much as you try not to read the paper, you have all your friends and relatives reading the paper. And you can't shut yourself off.
“It was just wearing me out having to answer all those questions. And I'd go in the clubhouse and I'd have players say to me, ‘You all right? You all right?’ Because of what was going on. And I hated that.
“You want everything nice. Win or lose, you want a clubhouse that's ready to compete, rather than having to sort of put stuff away first. And I was there 12 years. So there's a certain amount of respect that the players—even if they don't want you there as manager— that they feel they've got to show. It was just an uncomfortable time for me. The best part for me was the game. I didn't have to answer anything. I could just do what I knew how to do.”
The games were not all that soothing for Torre. The Yankees had played only 23 games to the point when Steinbrenner issued his missive. They were 9-14 and had used nine different pitchers to start those 23 games. Five of those pitchers were rookies, and four of those had never before pitched in the big leagues, making the Yankees the first team since 1900 to use that many first-time pitchers that early in a season.
Cashman was trying to help, but the assistance he provided only served to underscore a subtle philosophical gap that was opening between him and Torre. Cashman would hand Torre lineup suggestions, almost always basing them on statistics such as on-base percentage. “Do what you want with it,” Cashman said. In one lineup he suggested having Bobby Abreu bat leadoff and Jason Giambi bat second. Both were elite run producers, but Cashman's idea was to stack high on-base percentage hitters at the top of the lineup, whether or not they were traditional middle-of-the-order sluggers.
Torre generally disregarded the specific lineup ideas. Torre liked some numbers as a tool, not as a philosophy. He liked to know, for instance, how hitters and pitchers did over the long haul against righties and lefties. So Torre would politely thank Cashman for the suggestions and add a reminder for the general manager.
“Brian,” Torre would say, “the numbers are good. But don't you ever forget the heartbeat.”
Cashman did make one suggestion that Torre felt obligated to address immediately.
“Why don't you pitch Mike Myers against righthanded hitters?” Cashman said. “He's been getting groundballs from righthanders. If you have a big spot where you need a double play against a right-handed hitter, why don't you bring in Myers?”
Myers was a lefthanded pitcher whose sole purpose in his baseball life was to get out lefthanded hitters. He threw with a funky, slingshot sidearm delivery designed specifically to create difficulty for lefthanded hitters by increasing the angle from the release point of his throwing motion to home plate. The ball seemed to come sideways at lefthanded hitters. The delivery, though, granted righthanders a long look at the ball.
Over his career righthanders pounded Myers for a .300 batting average, but lefties hit only .219 against him. The 2007 season was an anomaly for Myers, one in which lefties actually hit better against him (.295) than did righthanders (.259). Cashman was putting his faith in the small sample of numbers early in the 2007 season, numbers compiled largely in low-leverage situations, not the late innings of close ballgames.
“Brian, the only time we're letting him pitch to righthanded hitters is when we have wiggle room,” Torre said.”You have to look at the situations. He's not pitching to righthanded hitters with the game on the line.”
The Yankees were a mess. Steinbrenner really did have reason to be worried. His team was in full-blown turmoil, and it was not just because of the injuries.
Damon, the leadoff hitter who once injected the Yankees with a goofy kind of energy, had become a drag on the team with his leg injuries and lackluster attitude. Once Damon made the decision to return to the Yankees after spring training, he still needed to get his legs in shape, but he was too far behind schedule for that to happen in time for the start of the season. Sure enough, on Opening Day no less, Damon was drifting back on a fly ball by Elijah Dukes of the Tampa Bay Devil Rays, a fly ball that would be a home run, when he felt a grabbing sensation in his calf.
“I actually felt ready to go,” Damon said, “and then Opening Day, in 30-degree weather—why we play in New York then and not in Tampa I don't know—on Elijah Dukes’ home run I felt my calf go. I was like, You've got to be shittin’ me. I kept playing through it. I couldn't get to balls. The team was losing because I couldn't get to balls. It was brutal. I kept trying to do something, but my legs wouldn't let me.”
For two months Damon would brood over the condition of his legs, never getting the spark back in his desire to play baseball. There were days when he said he could not play and days he played when he did not seem enthused to be doing so. Back and forth it would go: Is he in the lineup or not? Does he want to play or not? Teammates grew frustrated. It didn't help, either, that Damon moped most of the time around the clubhouse. There was no more of that pregame joking in the clubhouse and the dugout.
Damon presented Torre with a multifaceted problem. There was the problem of putting together a lineup with the day-to-day nature of Damon's leg problems. There was the problem of Damon's lack of production when he was in the lineup. And there was the problem of Damon's teammates, especially the old-guard Yankees, angry a
bout Damon's lack of commitment. Torre spoke privately with Damon from time to time, and came away thinking Damon was in the same place he was when he walked away from the team in spring training: he was still waffling on whether or not he wanted to play baseball—not exactly the kind of guy a sinking team needs as its leadoff hitter and would-be catalyst.
In one of their private meetings, Torre told Damon, “The kind of player you've been your whole life is the player who goes out there and fully commits himself. You're not that kind of person now. It's easy to see that.”
Damon agreed with Torre.
“I'm not sure I want to do this,” Damon told him.
Damon's teammates grew so frustrated with him that several spoke to Torre out of concern that he was hurting the team. One of them visited Torre one day in the manager's office and was near tears talking about Damon.
“Let's get rid of him,” the player said. “Guys can't stand him.”
Torre told him,”I understand the way you feel, and I am disappointed, too, and all of that stuff, but we've got to find a way to make it work instead of just walking away from it. We just have to. And you're going to have to help me find a way to get this thing straightened out.
“The easiest thing in the world—I mean, not that you could actually do it—is just get rid of him. You can't do that. We can't do that. So let's figure out a way to make this thing work.
“Listen, we've always had somebody here from time to time that we had to deal with, somebody we weren't crazy about. But we're doing badly right now, so that's why it may feel different. The bottom line is he's a part of this team. And as long as he is a part of the team it's up to all of us to find a way to make this work. Let's just do whatever we can to help him and move on.”
Damon continued to frustrate his teammates. Damon was hitting .229 with one home run when the Yankees, stumbling badly at 9-14, and fresh off having had Steinbrenner put them on notice, went to Texas for a three-game series against the Rangers. Torre decided a meeting was in order, a meeting in which it was just as important for the players to talk as it was for Torre to talk. The Yankees assembled in the trainers’ room of the visiting clubhouse of the Ballpark in Arlington.
“To get through something like this, you need each other,”Torre told them.”I don't care what you think of each other, whether you like the guy next to you or whether you don't, but you need each other. We only have one thing that we're trying to accomplish and you can't do it alone.
“When you go up there to the plate or you go out to that mound, you have to know that guys have your back. If you don't do the job, you have to understand that somebody else will do it for you.
“You can't control the result all the time. You just have to be prepared every day and play your ass off. And … it has to be important to you.”
Much of the old guard spoke. Jeter spoke. Pettitte spoke. Rivera spoke. They spoke about getting everybody on the same page, fully invested with some urgency. They spoke about the importance of relying on each other. Nobody mentioned Damon by name. Then, to Torre's surprise, Damon got up to speak. He basically repeated the same message, straight from the “This is what we need to do” speech archive. He concluded by saying,”I wish I could have helped you. I was hurt. Now I need to help.”
The words had no effect on his teammates. Damon may have meant well, but he was in no position, they thought, to be rallying the troops when he was the one most in need of being rallied. Torre was surprised to hear Damon speak.
Damon did improve his game slightly after that, but it was still subjected to fits and starts that vexed Torre. On May 15, with the Yankees in Chicago to play the White Sox, Torre knew he had to speak with Damon yet again. A storm was coming. Heavy, ominous clouds gathered over U.S. Cellular Field as the Yankees conducted an optional early hitting workout.
“We were fine in Texas and even at home after that,” Torre said at the time, “but we're missing that spark. We're just missing that put-away attitude. We're playing well enough but we're not getting the job done. And I've got two guys who are trying to decide whether they want to play or not.”
The spark they missed most was the one Damon was supposed to provide. Giambi, too, was a problem. His foot, like Damon's legs, was a daily issue that seemed to drag down his resolve. As if on cue, the clouds over U.S. Cellular Field opened up with a deluge, sending the Yankees scurrying for cover in the clubhouse. Torre found Damon and Giambi there and told each of them he wanted to see them in the weight training room.
“There's one thing I need to know from you guys,”Torre said to them. “I need to know if you guys are ready to play. Because we're at a point where we really need to win games, and you guys are very important to us. But you're only really important to us if your heart's in it. So let me know: Do you want to play baseball or not?”
Damon and Giambi both said the right things. They would give Torre whatever they had.
“In the past,” Giambi said,”he's asked us a ton to play hurt, and Johnny and I would play to the extent that we probably shouldn't have been out there. But we would do anything for Joe. I think Joe was trying to get across the point of,’If you guys are really that beat up, just be honest with us, because we're losing and if it's not there let me know, instead of, “Yeah, we're fine, Joe.”‘ He was looking to mix and match players to win.
“I told him, ‘I'm beat up. I'm giving you everything I've got. If you don't think it's enough, then go with somebody else. But I'm giving you everything I've got.’ It was to the point where I blew out. I tore my foot in half I don't think much longer after that.”
Meanwhile, Torre had to find a way to get Abreu untracked as well. His suspicion with Abreu was perhaps that he was trying too hard.
“He's a good soldier,” Torre said at the time.”He's just putting a lot of pressure on himself because he feels like he's letting everybody down. He's not the best physical specimen in the world, but he's a good hitter. He's physically fine, but right now he's fighting himself more than anything.”
A few days earlier, Torre had met with Abreu and bench coach Don Mattingly to try to pull Abreu out of his funk.
“I'm fine,” Abreu told them.
“No you're not,” Torre shot back. “You're not fine. I know what you want and I know that you work at it and go after it. But let's try to figure out what's going on here.”
Said Torre, “I just wanted to make sure that the possibility of being a free agent wasn't a part of it, and I think he convinced me that it wasn't. The responsibility of letting people down was more of an imposing thing than anything else.”
Meanwhile, hitting coach Kevin Long was also trying to get Abreu untracked. Long decided he needed to go back to the fundamentals of his swing, so he pulled out a batting tee. Abreu told Long something that completely surprised the hitting coach: Abreu had never before worked with a tee.
“You'll try anything to get a guy going,” Long said,”but basically when a guy's in a slump you're working on his head. He's stepping in the bucket now, but even when he's hot he'll do that. It's how he hits. But he lost all confidence on his ability to hit and we're working on getting some confidence back.”
Abreu was 33 years old. Damon was 33. Giambi was 37. Mussina, who was on the disabled list, was 38. Eight of the 12 most-used regular players that season and three of the four most-used starting pitchers that season were 33 or older. Maybe, just maybe, these Yankees just had too many miles on them. Torre was asked about that possibility as he sat in the U.S. Cellular Field dugout in Chicago.
“No, I don't think so,” he said. “They may be worn down but I don't feel they're old. I think it's more of a case of how hard it is to put up with things on a regular basis. Last year we certainly had our share of problems and Melky Cabrera came up and gave us a shot of energy, no question. Two years ago it was Robinson Cano and Wang. Grinding every day in New York, especially when you have to answer for it every day, sometimes I think it wears people down. I don't think it's age.”
> The Yankees were rained out that night in Chicago, forcing a doubleheader the next day. Damon managed one hit in five at-bats while striking out a career-tying three times in a 5-3 loss to Chicago. Torre started the 22-year-old Cabrera in center field in the second game instead of Damon. Cabrera hit a home run in an 8-1 New York victory. So Torre put Cabrera in the lineup the next day, too, keeping Damon on the bench. Cabrera went hitless and the Yankees lost, 4-1.
Damon showed some life in his legs and bat after that benching, spraying nine hits over his next six games. Not coincidentally, the Yankees played better, too. They did lose two out of three to the Mets at Shea Stadium, but Torre liked the way the Yankees played. They were showing real energy for the first time, having better at-bats, posting rallies when they were behind instead of giving in to deficits. Indeed, when the Yankees hosted Boston after the series at Shea, Torre called a team meeting to let his team know it finally was acquiring a grinder's personality.
“Congratulations, guys,” he told them. “You've got that personality now. You can fight. Now that you see you have it, you're stuck with it. Let's go.”
The manager wanted his players to know, after they had proved they could play with such vigor, that he would expect this personality as a rule, not an exception.
Torre scanned the room, routinely making eye contact with players as he talked as a way to fully engage them in the message and to read their body language to see if they were buying into it. Just as Torre happening to lock on to the gaze of Damon, he said, “No matter what you might have going on at home or off the field, the time you spend here has to continue to be focused on giving everything you have to the team.”
Torre had not meant to catch Damon's eyes at that moment, but he immediately considered the eye contact to be a happy stroke of synchronicity. The truth was that the message applied as much to the hobbled, confused Yankees center fielder as anybody in the room.