Legends: The Best Players, Games, and Teams in Baseball

by Howard Bryant

  The funny thing was, for all of the winning, the Yankees in 1998 weren’t even the biggest story in baseball. That title belonged to Mark McGwire and Sammy Sosa, who seemed to be hitting home runs every day, chasing the single-season home run record of 61, set by Roger Maris in 1961. While McGwire and Sosa captivated the nation, the Yankees, almost quietly, just kept winning.

  At the All-Star break, the Yankees were easily in first place in the American League East, with an eleven-game lead over the Red Sox. A month later, the lead was twenty games. They went into Kansas City and Tim Raines, Tino Martinez, and Bernie Williams all hit home runs. The Yankees won 7–1, and their record was a staggering 91–30.

  This type of winning, it should be noted, almost never happens in baseball. The reason is the game itself—how difficult it is for an entire team to be consistently good. Unlike the star of a basketball or football team, the best pitcher on a baseball team doesn’t pitch every day. It’s difficult for any one player to take over an entire game, day after day, the way a LeBron James or a rifle-armed quarterback like Peyton Manning can.

  They won their one hundredth game of the season on September 4, the fastest team ever to win a hundred games in baseball history. By the time the season ended, the Yankees were 114–48, the most wins in American League history, breaking Cleveland’s 1954 record and second only to the 1906 Chicago Cubs, who won 116 games. It was a summer of winning.

  When the playoffs began, however, the Yankees were tense. Brian Cashman, the Yankees’ general manager, was so nervous he thought he would go crazy. Everything thus far had worked: Bernie Williams had won the batting title, hitting .339. Jeter hit .324, scored 127 runs, and stole 30 bases. Cone won 20 games. Rivera proved he could stand the pressure of being the closer. His 1.91 ERA was so small you needed a microscope to see it. El Duque was a fantastic surprise, so good and so fearless he even stared down and beat the great Pedro Martinez, who was the best pitcher in baseball at the time, in a classic Red Sox–Yankees duel at Yankee Stadium.

  Everything was great—and that made Cashman feel even worse, because now they had to win the World Series. Anything less and that amazing season—all those wins—would be forgotten in a giant wave of disappointment.

  Cashman was so anxious about the Yankees’ situation that it brought up an interesting question: Is it worse to have a terrible season with no chance of winning, or to have one of the greatest seasons of all time, win all summer long, and then not win the championship?

  It wasn’t just Cashman who had such thoughts. Jeter would say that failing to win the championship made a season a failure. Sure, the Yankees had won all summer, but another team could get hot. Or his team could get cold at the worst possible time. One opposing pitcher, like Martinez if they played the Red Sox, could have the game of his life. What if the ball went through Knoblauch’s legs in the ninth inning of a tie game? What if the umpires made a bad call that cost them a game? What if Jeter got hurt or if Mariano wasn’t perfect when he needed to be?

  Cashman was nervous, but it wasn’t like he didn’t have a reason to be. There were other great teams who had mashed everybody in the regular season, then lost in the playoffs and ended up forgotten over time. The 1954 Cleveland Indians had won 111 games but were swept in the World Series by Willie Mays and the Giants. The 109-win Baltimore Orioles lost the World Series in five games to the “Miracle” Mets in 1969, one of the great upsets of all time. The 1953 Brooklyn Dodgers had Jackie Robinson, won 105 games, but lost to the Yankees in the World Series. The 1946 Red Sox had Ted Williams, won 104 games, but lost the World Series to the St. Louis Cardinals.

  And the team that won the most games of all time, those 1906 Chicago Cubs from so long ago? What happened to them? They won 116 games and lost the World Series to the Chicago White Sox.

  It happened. Would it also happen to the Yankees?

  At first, it didn’t seem so. In the first round of the playoffs, the Yankees blitzed through Texas in three straight games and then met the dreaded Cleveland Indians in the American League Championship Series—the rematch they’d waited for all year. The Yankees crushed the Indians in the first game of the American League Championship Series—and then, in Game 2, the unthinkable happened . . .

  Tied 1–1 in the twelfth inning with a man on first, Tino Martinez fielded a bunt by Travis Fryman and turned to throw to first. Fryman, running to first, was in the way. Martinez’s throw hit Fryman in the back and rolled away. The Yankees thought Fryman should have been called out for interfering with Martinez’s throw—but he wasn’t. Meanwhile, Enrique Wilson, who had been on first, kept running and running while the Yankees were complaining and complaining. By the time Knoblauch finally picked up the ball, Cleveland had already scored the go-ahead run. They would score twice more and win 4–1 to tie the series. Then the Indians went to Cleveland and won again in Game 3. All of a sudden, the Indians needed just two more wins to end the Yankees’ season for the second straight year—and had the next two games at home to do it. All of the Yankees’ fears were coming true: the bad call, the unlucky bounce, now put them behind two games to one to a team that did not fear them.

  The whole season now sat on the shoulders of Orlando Hernandez, a pitcher who hadn’t even been with the team when the season started. The pressure was enormous, and El Duque responded by hanging out with the waiters and waitresses at the restaurant in the Yankees’ hotel in Cleveland, just to speak Spanish because it reminded him of being home. The rest of the Yankees wondered if Hernandez knew how big a game he was pitching. In the United States, pitchers don’t even talk to their own teammates much on the day they pitch, and here this guy was, doing dishes at the hotel!

  When the game started, the fiery O’Neill homered in the first inning to give the Yankees an early lead. In the bottom of the inning, with two outs, Jim Thome, the Cleveland slugger whose arms and legs looked as large as tree trunks, hit a ball so hard it appeared it would wind up in the Atlantic Ocean. O’Neill stood and watched the ball sail toward him, on its way out of the stadium. It was a sure home run, Thome thought, and he continued what he expected to be a home run trot—when suddenly . . . suddenly . . . the wind caught the ball and began to bring it back into the stadium . . . and into O’Neill’s glove for the final out of the inning. To this day, Thome still doesn’t know how that ball he hit wasn’t a home run!

  That one play seemed to change the tide.

  For the rest of the game, El Duque shut down Cleveland. The Yankees won the game 4–0. When it was over, Torre said it was the hard life lessons that Hernandez had endured—facing prison if he did not tell on his friends, facing death in the ocean all those nights on a little raft escaping Cuba—that allowed him not to be scared or worried about pitching in such a big game. “When you’ve been through what he’s been through,” Torre said, “this is just a baseball game.”

  The Yankees wouldn’t lose again for the rest of the season. After having their revenge against the Indians, they went on to destroy the San Diego Padres in four straight games to win the World Series.

  As time would pass, scandal eroded much of that magical 1998 season. Instead of remembering the great McGwire and the joyous Sosa, both would have their names linked to steroids and cheating rather than record breaking. The great home run chase that made so many people fall in love with baseball again turned out to be a moment fans would remember with regret and shame.

  One aspect of that season did endure, however, and it was the historic performance of the New York Yankees. When the year finally ended, the team had played 175 games and won 125 of them, including the most important game—the last one. No team has won as much since and none may again for a very, very long time. If ever.

  The 1998 New York Yankees

  TOP TEN LIST

  Mariano Rivera saved three out of the four wins in the Yankees’ World Series sweep of the Padres. He would go on to become arguably the greatest relief pitcher of all tim
e. Here are the all-time leaders in saves:

  Mariano Rivera, 652

  Trevor Hoffman, 601

  Lee Smith, 478

  John Franco, 424

  Billy Wagner, 422

  Dennis Eckersley, 390

  Jeff Reardon, 367

  Joe Nathan, 365

  Troy Percival, 358

  Randy Myers, 347

  Goliath Falls

  THE 1960 WORLD SERIES

  The 1960 World Series between the New York Yankees and Pittsburgh Pirates was supposed to be over before it started. Between 1947 and 1959, the Yankees appeared in the World Series ten out of thirteen years, and seven times they emerged as champions. They had the big names like Mickey Mantle, the power-hitting outfielder who could hit from both sides of the plate; the renowned slugger Roger Maris; the great catcher-turned-outfielder Yogi Berra; and the unflappable pitcher Whitey Ford, the winningest pitcher in World Series history. Ford, Berra, and Mantle would wind up in the Baseball Hall of Fame. Maris would break Babe Ruth’s hallowed 1927 record of 60 home runs the following year, which would be another year the Yankees won the World Series (for good measure, they won it again in 1962). The Yankees had been in the World Series so many times it felt as though they had invented it.

  The Yankees dominated the American League with such force that it sometimes felt like they were the only team around. In the twenty-five years from 1936 to 1960, only two other American League teams besides the Yankees had won the World Series. One was the 1945 Detroit Tigers, the other the 1948 Cleveland Indians.

  What chance, then, could the Pirates have against such an unbeatable machine? The Pirates hadn’t won the World Series since 1925, and hadn’t even been in the World Series since 1927, when Babe Ruth and (guess who?) the rest of the Yankees destroyed them in four straight games. During those thirty-three years away from the spotlight, with only eight teams in the National League, the Pirates had finished in fourth place or worse twenty-five times. Not good.

  So what happened in the 1960 World Series? The Yankees dominated in almost every statistical category. In three of their wins, they outscored Pittsburgh by a combined total of 38–3. Whitey Ford pitched two shutouts. The Yankees hit 10 homers and scored 55 runs in all, averaging nearly eight runs a game. They hit .338 as a team and Bobby Richardson, the Yankees’ second baseman, was named the MVP of the series.

  But who won?

  The Pirates, that’s who, and for fifty years since, people have been scratching their heads wondering how such a miraculous thing could have ever occurred.

  It was the craziest of World Series. The Pirates hit only .256, yet they found a way to make every hit count. Despite getting blown out by scores of 16–3, 10–0, and 12–0 in games they lost, they won the low-scoring games and they won when it mattered most.

  This series would go down in history for the stunning, bizarre, incredible way they won the seventh and deciding game in Pittsburgh at Forbes Field.

  After two innings, in the winner-takes-all finale, the Pirates led 4–0. This game would definitely not be a blowout—at least not for the Yankees. Soon the good citizens of Pittsburgh would be dancing in the streets, right?

  Wrong.

  The Yankees began their comeback with one run in the fifth inning, and then in the sixth, after a single and a walk, Mickey Mantle hit a run-scoring single. Right after Mantle, Yogi Berra came to the plate with two men on base and launched a long home run, giving the Yankees a 5–4 lead. In the eighth, an RBI single by Johnny Blanchard and an RBI double by Clete Boyer gave the Yankees two more runs and a 7–4 lead.

  With six outs left in their season, the Pirates were down 7–4 against the most powerful team in baseball. Somehow, the Yankees had done it again, down 4–0 only to score seven unanswered runs and now take the lead. It was over, right?

  Wrong.

  In the bottom of the eighth, the Pirates scored five runs, one of which came with two outs on a run-scoring single by 25-year old rising star Roberto Clemente, and three more on a two-out, three-run home run by little-known catcher Hal Smith. Pittsburgh had come back, and now the Pirates led 9–7 going into the top of the ninth.

  The Pirates were just three outs away from the championship! Now Pirate fans could feel confident, right?

  Wrong.

  Sure enough, Mantle and Berra came through again, both driving in runs to tie the game at 9–9!

  For the bottom of the ninth, the Yankees’ legendary manager Casey Stengel called on Ralph Terry to pitch. Bill Mazeroski, the eighth hitter in the Pirates’ order, had gone 1 for 3 and scored a run. After hitting a homer in Game 1, which the Pirates had won, he stood in the batter’s box in a crazy game with the whole season on the line and a chance to win it all with one swing of the bat.

  Terry threw him a fastball with the first pitch. Mazeroski watched it go by for a ball. He stepped out of the box, took a deep breath, and stepped in again. The next pitch was a slider. Mazeroski swung and connected.

  The ball headed high and sharply to left field, where Berra tracked it. Berra ran back and back and stopped at the ivy-covered fence. There was no more room and nothing to do but watch as the ball cleared the wall for a home run.

  The Pirates, who had been outscored, outslugged, and beaten by the mighty Yankees so badly in three games, were now world champions. Mazeroski skipped around the bases with a huge smile on his face as fans ran onto the field, wanting to touch the hero as he rounded the bases for home. His teammates waited for him at home plate.

  It was arguably the greatest moment in Pittsburgh sports history. For the first time, a World Series had ended on a home run, and to this day, Mazeroski’s homer remains one of the most famous moments in baseball’s long and fantastic history. The Yankees had hit ten home runs in the series, the Pirates only four. Yet it was Pittsburgh who hit the one that the baseball world would always remember, the one Bill Mazeroski would never forget.

  The 1960 World Series

  TOP TEN LIST

  Bill Mazeroski’s home run in 1960 is still the only one to end the World Series in Game 7, but it wasn’t the last of many spectacular fantastic finishes to the World Series. Here are ten more . . .

  1993, Game 6, bottom of the ninth: Toronto’s Joe Carter hits a game-winning three-run homer off Mitch Williams to give the Blue Jays the World Series over Philadelphia.

  1926, Game 7, bottom of the ninth: Trailing 3–2 to St. Louis, Babe Ruth is thrown out trying to steal second and the Yankees lose the World Series.

  2001, Game 7, bottom of the ninth: Luis Gonzalez of Arizona hits a broken-bat single over the head of Derek Jeter and the Diamondbacks beat the Yankees for their first-ever championship.

  1955, Game 7: Johnny Podres shuts out the Yankees, 2–0. The Brooklyn Dodgers win their one and only title.

  1946, Game 7, bottom of the eighth: In a 3–3 game, the Cardinals’ Enos Slaughter races home all the way from first on a double to beat the Red Sox.

  1991, Game 7: Twins’ Jack Morris pitches a complete-game ten-inning 1–0 win vs. Braves.

  1953, Game 6: Yankees’ Billy Martin singles in the bottom of the ninth to beat the Dodgers and win the championship.

  1997, Game 7: Florida’s Edgar Renteria singles in the bottom of the eleventh to beat Cleveland. The Marlins win their first World Series title.

  1962, Game 7: Bobby Richardson snares Willie McCovey’s game-ending line drive and the Yankees beat San Francisco.

  1924, Game 7: Earl McNeely doubles to left in the bottom of the twelfth against the New York Giants to give the Washington Senators their only World Series championship.

  Something to Prove

  ROBERTO CLEMENTE’S QUEST

  In the 1950s and 1960s, baseball was a very crowded place. As already noted, the Yankees owned the better part of both decades, appearing in the World Series thirteen times in those twenty years, winning eight
championships. New York baseball in general dominated the 1950s, as a New York team—the Yankees, Dodgers, or Giants—appeared in the World Series every year between 1949 and 1958.

  The game finally went transcontinental. The Giants and Dodgers left New York in 1958, moving from Harlem and Brooklyn to San Francisco and Los Angeles, respectively, and for the first time since the late 1800s, baseball relocated and expanded to new cities: The Houston Colt .45s (now the Astros), Los Angeles Angels, Kansas City Royals, and Montreal Expos, among others, were born.

  The level of superstar talent in the game was as full as a Thanksgiving Day table.

  The 1951 World Series featured two rookies—Willie Mays and Mickey Mantle—who would dominate the next two decades as the most dynamic players in their league, as well as two timeless veterans, Joe DiMaggio and Yogi Berra. Jackie Robinson was not just a superstar but an inspirational symbol for fans everywhere. Roy Campanella wasn’t just the best catcher in the National League for years—he was a three-time Most Valuable Player. In 1954, the great Hank Aaron arrived, and even he couldn’t match Stan Musial as the best hitter in the National League. The end of the 1950s saw a power-hitting shortstop, Ernie Banks of the Cubs, win the NL MVP Award twice in a row—in 1958 and 1959. In the American League, Ted Williams, the last man to hit .400, was still the leader of the Red Sox, and the best hitter in the game.

  The 1960s were just as loaded with stars. Before the change was made to increase the size of the strike zone, Roger Maris and Mickey Mantle chased Babe Ruth’s single-season home run record, and a young outfielder named Frank Robinson would become the only player to win the MVP Award as a member of both the American and the National Leagues. After the change to the strike zone, great pitching seemed to dominate the game and the mound belonged to two of the all-time best: Bob Gibson and Sandy Koufax.