The Yankee Years

by Joe Torre

  The gamble to pitch Wang twice in four games blew up on Torre and Cashman. Mussina, who had wanted the ball and who had described Wang as worn down heading into that start, pitched decently in relief, allowing two runs over 4⅔ innings.

  “They stayed off pitches that other teams swing at,” Torre said about how the Indians battered Wang. “I think he maybe tried too hard, tried to do too much.”

  Said Bowa, “You could have the greatest manager in the world, but if your ace gets rocked in two playoff games and it's best out of five, you're in trouble. You're in deep shit. That's what happened. Now, I still say that if we win that one game, the Joba game with the bugs, we beat them.”

  The Yankees had an early chance to recover from Wang's miserable start. They put runners at first and second with one out in the first inning, whereupon Alex Rodriguez whiffed on three pitches from soft-tossing journeyman pitcher Paul Byrd. Rodriguez did hit a home run later—with nobody on base in the seventh inning and the Yankees losing 6-2.

  The Yankees batted .228 in the series. They did hit seven home runs, but six of them came with nobody on base. Abreu, Jeter, Giambi and Rodriguez, four of the nine highest-paid players in the game, batted a combined .238. Rodriguez was, again, particularly dreadful, especially in the big spots, failing to drive in a single run but for his cosmetic solo home run in Game 4.

  The team with the $61 million payroll dominated the team with the $190 million payroll. The team with 13 past and future All-Stars crushed the team with 26 past and future All-Stars. Was it a fluke, another casualty of the randomness of a short series? No. It was an affirmation that the rest of baseball, fortified by increased revenues and smarter business practices, had chipped away at the competitive advantage the Yankees had enjoyed because of resources alone, and the Indians were at the front of that wave.

  Cleveland, for instance, cut the gap on the Yankees with their attention to detail on medical and health issues. In 2007, the Indians lost only 324 player days to the disabled list—the fewest in the league and second fewest in baseball—while paying a total of just $4.3 million to players who were physically unable to play. Over the previous three seasons, the Indians ranked number one in baseball in fewest days lost to the disabled list. They were the best at keeping their players on the field, a huge factor for lower-payroll teams who could not afford the depth to withstand injuries.

  The Yankees, meanwhile, were abysmal when it came to age and injuries. They flushed away $22.22 million on players who couldn't play, or almost 12 percent of their bloated payroll. They lost 1,081 player days to the disabled list, more than three times as many down days as had the Indians. Over the previous three seasons, the Yankees ranked 23rd in baseball in days lost to the disabled list, a trend that would continue in 2008.

  The 2007 Division Series was the continuation of a downward spiral for the Yankees. The more they tried to recapture the magic of the dynasty, the more money they spent on acquiring players from outside the organization, most of whom did not bring a winning pedigree. And the more they focused on patching holes with veterans from winter to winter, the more they lost sight of the importance of a farm system. And the more they needed those veterans, particularly when it came to pitching, the fewer good options were available, as the rest of baseball, armed with new revenues and new intelligence to help evaluate player value, held on to their prime assets rather than lose them to big spenders such as the Yankees.

  That new paradigm was particularly evident in October when the Yankees no longer had any power pitchers in their prime to match up against the better teams in the league. In their dynasty the Yankees could match up their number four starter, be it a young Andy Pettitte or Orlando Hernandez or David Cone or Roger Clemens, against an opponent's number one starter and still feel good about the matchup. No matter how their rotation fell, the Yankees never were disadvantaged. But in their downward spiral the Yankees kept sending to the mound broken-down pitchers or pitchers who could not throw the ball past hitters with any consistency.

  In Torre's final 17 postseason games, his starters were 2-8 with a 6.36 ERA while averaging only 4⅔ innings and three strikeouts per start. In the last six games in which the Yankees faced playoff elimination, Torre's starting pitchers were a broken-down Kevin Brown, seven-game-winner Shawn Chacon, a broken-down Mike Mussina, a broken-down Jaret Wright, a broken-down Roger Clemens and sinkerball specialist Chien-Ming Wang on short rest.

  The demise of the Yankees was a thick stew of multiple ingredients, but the main one, the one that gave it its most distinctive flavor, was the inability to develop or acquire starting pitchers with prime stuff that could make hitters swing and miss. Strikeouts are a quick and easy barometer of the quality of a pitcher's stuff. The most damning statistic to quickly explain what happened to the Yankees is that in the seven years after the Yankees last won the World Series, their starting pitchers, without exception, were worse every year at striking out batters than they had been the year before (while generally throwing fewer and fewer innings, shifting more of the workload to the bullpen). Every year without fail they suffered through a diminution of pure stuff. They were a franchise leaking oil. Here is the steady plummet in their starting pitchers’ strikeouts:

  “You need that dominant number one starter,” Jason Giambi said.”That's what you need, especially in a short series. You need to change the tide. Quick. Because if you're down, even 0-2, if you have that big guy to come back and win that big one, now it's up for grabs.

  “You need guys who can strike guys out. You need big punch-outs. You're not going to play those 9-8 games anymore in the postseason. You need to win 3-2, 2-1, and be able to match up against the other team's big guys. You need big outs, big punch-outs. Guy on second base, two outs. You can't have the ball put in play, where it's putting pressure on you every inning. You need to get out of that inning sometimes without having to make a play.

  “And really, in that regard, we had a role reversal with the Red Sox. Until they got Schilling to go with Pedro, we could beat them. Then once they got that extra power guy, that's what kind of turned the table for them. Then they went and got Beckett. That's where they turned the tide on us.”

  From 2001 through 2007, the best young strikeout pitchers never reached the free agent market to become available to the Yankees, such as Mark Prior, Kerry Wood, Johan Santana, Jake Peavy, Carlos Zambrano, CC Sabathia and Brandon Webb. The swap of Ted Lilly, a gutsy strikeout pitcher if not an ace, for Jeff Weaver, a sinkerballer with questionable makeup, was a critical mistake. And when the Yankees did acquire a hard thrower in his prime, Javier Vazquez, they somehow saw the worst of him and punted him after just one year.

  What made their search for a power pitcher all the more desperate was that their draft and player development system went bankrupt when it came to homegrown pitchers. In the 13 drafts in between taking Andy Pettitte in 1990 and Phil Hughes in 2004, the Yankees drafted 397 pitchers. Not one of them made a significant contribution to the Yankees’ rotation. Not one. No sleeper pick came through. No top pick panned out. No middle-round pick developed that one pitch or made that key adjustment to be a good starting pitcher for the Yankees. The odds were staggering that the Yankees could not hit on somebody, even by dumb luck, but that's what happened. With more resources to plow into scouting and development than every other franchise, the Yankees went 0-for-397 over more than a decade of pitching bankruptcy.

  With each year the Yankees spiraled further downward from their last World Series championship, the more frustration and distrust bubbled from within the organization, with the manager taking the brunt of it. And while all of this was happening, the team's most dynamic asset, George Steinbrenner, was fading into a sad personal twilight, physically unable to provide leadership when the franchise most needed it. “Lead, Follow or Get the Hell Out of the Way” read the sign that for three decades sat on his desk at Yankee Stadium. The charismatic man could no longer lead or follow, so he was consigned to getting the hell out of the way
, which created an enormous void and, at best, uncertainty in the power structure of the team.

  With their advantage in resources, the Yankees would be virtually unbeatable if they ran a clean, efficient and self-sustaining organization. When other teams smelled chaos there, however, they knew they had a chance. The Yankees had rivals and enemies throughout baseball, but their greatest threat came from within.

  “We're counting on there being dysfunction in other places that have greater resources,” said Shapiro, the Indians’ general manager. “And is that going to make the difference? No. But it's a hundred different little things that together hopefully will.”

  By Game 4 of the American League Division Series, the Indians had turned “a hundred different little things” into an advantage over the Yankees. They had the better team, and it was there for all to see on that weirdly warm night atYankee Stadium. With one out in the top of the eighth inning, only six outs left in his tenure as Yankees manager, Joe Torre walked to the mound to make his last pitching change, removing Jose Veras and bringing in Mariano Rivera for the last time. As Torre walked off the mound toward the dugout, something spontaneous and touching happened. The crowd started chanting his name in the way that had become the official Yankee Stadium salute, the way the fans chanted for Paul O'Neill at the end of World Series Game 5, knowing how it would be O'Neill's last game at The Stadium. Joe Tor-re! Joe Tor-re! Joe Tor-re!

  In the back row of the press box, a Yankees official, one of the voices who had Steinbrenner's ear, heard the outpouring of support for Torre from Yankees fans, and, with a stunned look, could muster only two words: “Holy shit.” This was not good for the voices. They didn't like the fact that Torre was liked.

  It was 11:38 p.m. when the end came. Jorge Posada swung and missed at a pitch from Cleveland closer Joe Borowski for the final out of a 6-4 Yankees loss. It was the last pitch of the last postseason game ever played at Yankee Stadium.

  Borzello, the bullpen catcher who had been there through the entire Torre Era, took that long walk from the bullpen, across that great big outfield, across the infield and toward the Yankees dugout on the first base side. He made sure he looked up and gazed around the cathedral one last time.

  “I knew this was it,” Borzello said. “I knew Joe wasn't coming back. And then I saw Paul O'Neill, who was standing there by the dugout, working for the YES network, and he goes, ‘Tough series, Borzy.’ I looked at him and I realized how much things had changed. And I almost wanted to cry.”

  As the Yankees trudged into the clubhouse, Torre called them together one last time under his command. He spoke briefly, with little emotion, and never addressed his own situation.

  “Guys, sometimes you can try your best, give it everything that you can, and it's just not supposed to happen,” Torre said. “We just weren't good enough. I'm proud of what you did. You dug yourselves out of a hole and learned what it takes to be a team.”

  Torre made his way through the catacombs to the interview room for one last news conference. Of course, he was asked what he thought would happen to him next.

  “This has been a great 12 years,” he said. “Whatever the hell happens from here on out, I mean, I'll look back on these 12 years with great, great pleasure, based on the fact that I'm a kid who had never been to the World Series, other than watching my brother play in the ‘50s, and paying for tickets otherwise. To have been in six World Series and going to postseason, I can tell you one thing, it never gets old. It never gets old. It's exciting. The 12 years just felt like they were 10 minutes long, to be honest with you.”

  The news conference was being broadcast on the stadium monitors. Torre's coaching staff was gathered in his office, standing there in front of the television, listening to the manager say his goodbyes. They knew he was gone.

  When he left the news conference he returned to the clubhouse, where players were speaking in whispers, trading hugs and handshakes. The room had the pall of a funeral. Cashman walked into Torre's office. They had been together for 12 years, but they were strangers in that room. Cashman couldn't find the right words. It was as if they were standing on the same train platform, and Cashman knew Torre was on the next train out of town but that he was staying.

  “He looked uncomfortable,”Torre said. “He didn't know what to say. He later admitted to me that he was uncomfortable. I don't even know what he said.”

  One by one, most of the players stopped by to say thanks or goodbye to Torre. Pettitte … Clemens … Jeter … Mussina. … Chamberlain … Chamberlain was crying when he came in to say goodbye to Torre.

  Asked if he assumed Torre would not be back, Mussina said, “Oh, yes. Those of us that are older, we knew they weren't treating him very well. I talked to him. It was only about 15 seconds. Everybody was talking to him, especially the guys that had been with him for a long time.” Ever the optimist, Jeter thought his manager still was coming back in 2008.

  Rodriguez never did come by to see his manager. (He would be named the Most Valuable Player one month later, prompting a congratulatory message from Torre. Rodriguez never called him back.) Rodriguez was one of the last players to emerge from the back rooms of the clubhouse to make himself available to the media. He was already showered and dressed when he stood at his locker and answered questions without any emotion.

  “At the end of the day my job is to help the team win a championship,” Rodriguez said. “I have failed at that. Whatever blame you want to put on me is fair.”

  Rodriguez had the contractual right to opt out of his contract. The Yankees had declared very publicly on more than one occasion that should he elect to tear up his contract and seek a new one through free agency, they would not so much as negotiate with him. One Yankees official said no less than an hour after the Game 4 loss that they figured it would take $300 million to get Rodriguez signed to a new deal, and they already had developed a backup plan: trade for pitcher Johan Santana of the Twins. The Yankees could take half of the money it would have taken to keep A-Rod and give it to Santana, the lefthanded ace, who at 28 years old and as a three-time strikeout champion who had whiffed more than one batter per inning over the length of his career, was exactly the kind of pitcher the Yankees had needed for years. Rodriguez left Yankee Stadium that night not knowing if he would wear the Yankees uniform ever again.

  Torre was much more certain. He showered, dressed and left his office and the clubhouse believing this would be the final time he would do so as manager of the New York Yankees. He did not look back.

  16

  The End

  Do you want me to manage?” Joe Torre began the meeting with that simple question. They were sitting in the Legends Field office of George Steinbren-ner. There was a time, and as recently as only 24 months earlier, when Torre could look The Boss in the eye and propose that question and he would get an answer that would let him know exactly where he stood. But Steinbrenner wasn't The Boss anymore;he was the aging patriarch of a seven-man tribunal. His family members and front office lieutenants went through the exercise of playing to tradition and formality, anyway. Steinbrenner sat at his desk and the others sat at the table that ran lengthwise away from his desk. There was Torre, of course, and Steinbrenner's two sons, Hank and Hal, his son-in-law, Felix Lopez, team president Randy Levine, chief operating officer Lonn Trost, and general manager Brian Cash-man, who sat behind Torre's right shoulder.

  On October 18, 2007, ten days after the Yankees lost the Division Series to Cleveland, ten days of public waiting for Steinbren-ner to follow through on his Game 3 warning that Torre would not be back in the wake of defeat, the question Torre proposed was now the domain of the seven other people in the room. Steinbren-ner sat slumped in his chair with dark glasses covering most of his face. Occasionally he would take them off, put them back on, take them off, put them back on … He contributed virtually nothing to the meeting except for occasionally simply repeating the last sentence of what someone in the room had just said.

  The strange, sad el
ement to the setting was that the men were surrounded by old reminders of Steinbrenner's vitality and iron will to win. Steinbrenner always had envisioned himself as a cross between a Hemingway character and a military leader, a man's man who gave no quarter, who boasted of bringing a football mentality to baseball, and the room reflected his pride in such obstinence. On a table behind him there was a picture of him as a halfback on the 1951 Williams College football team, reaching for a pass while a defensive back from Ball State elbows him in the back. Steinbren-ner liked to tell people that he did not catch the ball, that the Ball State defensive back “knocked me flat on my ass.” The man, he wanted you to know, could take a hit.

  There was a picture of the horse Comanche. Why Comanche? Steinbrenner liked the idea that the horse was the only survivor of Custer's last stand. He admired survivors. There was also a picture of General George S. Patton, given to him by a member of Patton's staff. It was not your typical military portrait. Patton is seen pissing into the Rhine. There was a picture of his grandfather, George M. Steinbrennner the first, who married a girl from Germany and who started the Kinsman Shipping line of freighters, which carried ore and grain over the Great Lakes.

  Of course, there were the aphorisms with which Steinbrenner literally liked to surround himself. Some of them were captured in frames and some of them were kept under the glass top of his desk.

  “The measure of a man is the way he bears up under misfortune. Plutarch.”

  “And do not go where the path may lead. Go instead where there is no path and leave a trail. Ralph Waldo Emerson.”

  “You can't lead the cavalry if you can't sit in the saddle.”

  “The speed of the leader determines the rate of the pack.”

  And his favorite:

  “I am wounded but I am not slain. I shall lay me down and rest a while and then I will rise and fight again. Anonymous.”