Back at Yankee Stadium, Duque outduels Tim Hudson, and I get the last six outs without giving up a hit, and the 4–2 victory in Game 3 puts us a game away from the ALCS. I would’ve bet money that, after losing Game 1, Roger would lock the A’s up in Game 4; and if I had, I would’ve lost it. Roger gets spanked around, giving up a three-run homer in the first to a Panamanian DH, Olmedo Saenz, and the A’s go on to an 11–1 rout, and we all go back to Oakland, where we blow out to a six-run lead in the first and then hold on, as I get Eric Chavez on a pop-up to put us up against Piniella and his Mariners in the ALCS.
The Mariners are the club that I came of age against five years earlier, of course, establishing myself for the first time as a pitcher who was capable of dominating. Once you have that breakthrough, it changes not only how other teams perceive you but how you perceive yourself. I always knew I could be effective, but when I walk off the mound after striking out Mike Blowers with the season on the line, I can’t say that it isn’t a powerful affirmation.
On our way to a triumph in six games, the ALCS against the Mariners produces one of the truly great pitching performances that I have ever seen, delivered by Roger Clemens in Game 4, when he throws a one-hitter and strikes out fifteen. The hit—a double by Al Martin—doesn’t come until the seventh inning. Roger then responds by striking out Alex Rodriguez, Edgar Martinez, and Mike Cameron. He doesn’t just overpower the Mariners; he dices them up with his location, and competes the hardest when he needs it most. Clemens’s heroics give us a three-games-to-one lead, before we close it out in Game 6, when David Justice, the series MVP, rips a massive homer to power a six-run seventh that gives us a 9–4 lead. It’s 9–5 when I come on to close in the eighth, and I give up two more runs to make it 9–7. In the ninth, I get two outs on five pitches before Alex Rodriguez gets on with an infield hit. This isn’t good.
Because the next hitter is Edgar Martinez, Mo-killer.
I fire strike one and then come at him again, trying to stay in so he can’t smack the ball the other way, something he is very good at. The cutter comes in at him and breaks hard, breaks late. Edgar swings but hits it weakly, a grounder to short. Derek scoops it up and throws over to Tino.
What do you know?
I actually got Edgar Martinez out.
An instant later, Jorge is rushing to hug me, and Derek races in and rams me with a boyish body check.
Edgar Martinez can’t hit you, Derek says.
The crowd chants, “We want the Mets.” They will get the Mets, and so will we, in the first Subway Series since 1956.
10
New York, New York
THE DEPTH AND INTENSITY of the intra-city rivalry between fans of the Yankees and the Mets is still new to me. It’s not as if I’ve grown up with it, after all. Half the fishermen on our boat are not wearing Met hats and the other half are not wearing Yankee hats, and none of us spend our days debating who is better, Keith Hernandez or Don Mattingly.
But it doesn’t take me long to find out that this is going to be a very different World Series than the previous three. Nothing changes with the goal—win four games—and nothing changes with my get-in-and-get-out approach. I’m not someone who is going to get caught up in the hysteria and Super Bowl–style craziness.
But:
To be in a Series that requires no flights (a good thing) and lets me sleep in my own bed and wake up with my family every day (an even better thing), and that is being covered by about ten million reporters and is drawing out every second of old Yankee–Dodger film clips ever recorded, well, it’s just not the same. I feel that, too.
Despite our dismal playing down the stretch, we show signs of getting back to winning baseball in the first two rounds of the playoffs. You may get us down. You may knock us around. You may think we’re on our way out. But you better know we are going to fight back and keep on fighting for as long as it takes.
And beyond that, you better know we are not ever going to get complacent and think that there’s no doubt we’re going to win because we’re the New York Yankees. All the credit must go to Mr. T and his staff for that. They have created this culture of deep belief in ourselves, but no arrogance. That is such a fine line you can’t even see it, but we walk it. You know how many times I’ve gone out to the mound thinking, This guy has no shot, because I am Mariano Rivera?
Never.
The guy with the bat in his hand is a professional. He is a big league hitter, whether his name is Mike Piazza or Bubba Trammell or Benny Agbayani. He is trying just as hard to get a hit as I am trying to get him out. I respect that. I respect every competitor, from Edgar Martinez to the guy who has never hit a fair ball off of me.
The Series begins at Yankee Stadium, with the Mets sending out someone else I respect—Al Leiter. He is a winner and a battler, a world champion for the Marlins in 1997 who pitched six gritty innings in a Game 7. Leiter and Andy match zeroes through five innings, and then Timo Perez, a fleet outfielder whose energy and pop have been a big piece of the Mets’ run late in the year, singles up the middle.
I am still in the clubhouse, watching on TV, having just gotten a rubdown from Geno. I am about ready to head to the bullpen when, with two outs, Todd Zeile crushes a line drive to deep left. It looks as if it’s going out, but the ball hits the top of the wall, missing going over by the width of a fishhook.
It drops on the warning track. David Justice, our left fielder, picks it up and hits the cutoff man, Derek, who takes the throw near the left-field line, spins, and, off the wrong foot, crossing into foul territory, fires a one-hop strike to Jorge, who blocks the plate and slaps the tag on Perez.
You see that, Geno? I say. What a relay! What a play! I shout out loud. All right!
It’s just a perfect throw by Derek, all the more so because he is off balance and on the move. It is a terrible play by Perez, who is so sure the ball is gone that he is running half speed as he rounds second. If he’s running even three-quarter speed, he scores standing up.
In the bottom of the inning, Justice hits a two-run double and we have just nine outs to get, but the Mets don’t stay down, taking a 3–2 lead on a two-run single by pinch hitter Trammell and, with Jeff Nelson on in relief of Andy, a well-placed roller down the third-base line by Edgardo Alfonzo.
Out in the pen now, I wait for the phone to ring. The message is always the same:
Get Mo going.
It rings a moment later. Tony Cloninger, the bullpen coach at the time, answers.
Mo, Tony says.
That is all I need to hear. I start warming up with my weighted three-pound ball, windmilling my arm around as I bend at the waist. Then I follow my usual routine with bullpen catcher Mike Borzello. I start with three easy tosses to Mike as he stands behind the plate, then motion for him to get down, and throw a half dozen or so pitches to the glove side, another half dozen to the other side, then come back to the glove side. In fifteen to eighteen pitches, I am loose, and then I just watch the game.
I enter in the top of the ninth. Jay Payton, leading off, flies out to deep right center, and then I nick Todd Pratt and give up a double to Kurt Abbott and have myself in a bit of a mess. Perez steps up. I need either a strikeout or a grounder right to somebody, with the infield in. On a 1–2 pitch, I come inside hard with the cutter and Perez taps it to second for the second out. Then I get Alfonzo, a very tough hitter, swinging.
Now it’s our last chance to tie or win the game, against the Mets closer, Armando Benitez, and he’s looking for three outs. Jorge fights him through seven pitches before hitting a long fly to center. Paulie steps in and tries to change recent history. He is thirty-seven years old, has a bad hip, and has been slumping, but if there’s one guy who is going to battle to the end to get something going, it’s Paulie. Benitez jumps ahead, 1–2. A massive man with a massive fastball, Benitez keeps pumping in high-ninety heaters, and Paulie just keeps getting a piece, fighting them off with short, defensive swings. After two fouls, Benitez misses for 2–2, and misses aga
in to run the count to 3–2. Now the pressure is even. Paulie spoils another strike, and another, and the crowd is starting to roar and Benitez is getting exasperated.
On the tenth pitch of the at-bat, Benitez fires and misses outside and Paulie throws away the bat and takes his hard-won walk. It’s as good an at-bat as I’ve ever seen. The Stadium is rocking. Pinch-hitting for Brosius, Luis Polonia hits a single to right, and Jose Vizcaino goes the other way, knocking a single to left, but too shallow for Paulie to score. Knoblauch hits a fly ball to left, a sacrifice fly that sends O’Neill home to tie the game.
I strike out Piazza and Zeile and get Robin Ventura to fly out to take care of the tenth, and then Mike Stanton throws two strong innings and Game 1 moves into the bottom of the twelfth. It’s approaching one in the morning, and the game is more than four and a half hours old.
This is just the kind of game we find a way to grind out and win, I think.
I pick my spots when I decide to be vocal in the dugout. I usually only do it in the biggest moments, the most important games. Games such as this.
Now’s the time, I say, walking up and down the dugout. Let’s win this right now.
With one out, Tino singles and Jorge doubles off Mets reliever Turk Wendell. The Mets walk Paulie to load the bases and get a force at the plate. Luis Sojo pops up, and now it’s Vizcaino’s turn. He already has two hits, another of Mr. T’s hunches that works brilliantly. (Mr. T likes Jose’s career numbers against Leiter and gives him the start, even though Sojo has been playing second almost every game.)
On Wendell’s first pitch, Vizcaino swings and serves a line drive into left. Here comes Tino, and there goes Vizcaino, leaping his way around first. It is 1:04 on a Sunday morning. We pour onto the field and mob Viz. It’s a game that we win on a relay throw, a ten-pitch walk, and three hits from a Dominican journeyman on his seventh team.
He fits right in. He knows how to win.
It’s the bottom of the first inning, about nineteen hours after Viz’s game-winner, and I am in a hot tub in the Yankees trainer’s room. There is no TV in there, but I know that Mike Piazza is the third man up against Roger, and it is the most anticipated heavyweight showdown since Ali and Frazier, if you believe the media buzz. I don’t believe it much of the time, but I am curious to see what happens. When we played the Mets in early June, Piazza hit a grand slam against Clemens. When we played the Mets in early July, Clemens hit Piazza in the head with a fastball. I can’t say what Clemens’s intentions are. I never talk to him about it, though I do know Piazza has had a lot of success against him. Only Clemens and the Lord know what was in his mind the day he beaned Mike Piazza. I never hit anybody in the head in my whole career, and I never would. Not intentionally. You can talk all you want about keeping hitters honest and instilling fear that could ultimately help you win, but you never do something that endangers somebody’s well-being, or their livelihood or even their life. Good ol’ country hardball? To me, it’s more like good ol’ country cowardice, throwing a baseball at 98 miles per hour at somebody’s head. This man with the bat is somebody’s son. He is probably somebody’s husband and somebody’s father. You can’t deny that or ignore that. I compete as hard as anybody, but you do it within the confines of fair play, and headhunting is not fair play.
By the time I am out of the tub, I find out I missed all the excitement, so I immediately catch a replay: Clemens quickly gets two strikes on Piazza. He throws a ball and then comes inside with a fastball, and as Piazza swings, his bat splinters, the barrel bouncing right out to the mound. Unaware the ball is foul, Piazza starts running toward first, and Clemens picks up the bat barrel and flings it sidearm, and hard, toward Piazza on the first-base line. The bat skims along the ground and kicks up, and its jagged edge misses Piazza by a foot or two.
What’s your problem? Piazza says as he takes a step toward the mound. I have no idea what’s going on, or why Roger would do that, but it’s mind-boggling to me that you could be so emotionally wound up that you snap that way. Roger is an insanely intense competitor. I never ask him about what’s going through his mind then, mostly because everybody else is doing it for me.
Mike Hampton, the Mets starter, is wild early, helping us score two in the first, before Brosius leads off the second with a shot into the seats in left. Before we tack on three more runs later, I run into George Steinbrenner in the clubhouse. I’m over thirty years old, but he has always called me Kid, and isn’t stopping now.
I call him Mr. George.
Kid, you want a hot dog? I’ll get you a hot dog.
No thanks, Mr. George. I’m good.
You sure?
I’m sure, thanks.
Hey, Kid, we going to win this Series? What do you think?
We are going to win, and I am so sure I will make you a bet, Mr. George. If I am right and we win, you’ll fly my wife and kids and me to Panama on your private jet. If I am wrong, I will take you out to dinner at the restaurant of your choice.
You got a bet, Kid, Mr. George says.
Mr. George disappears and I head for the bullpen. Roger pitches eight shutout innings and leaves with a 6–0 lead. The game seems about as safe as it can be, until it isn’t. Nelson gives up a two-run homer to Piazza and a single. Then I come in and Clay Bellinger, our left-field defensive replacement, saves my tail by going back to the left-field fence and making a superb, poised catch of a long Todd Zeile drive. Agbayani singles, but then I get Lenny Harris on a fielder’s choice and have two strikes left to close it out, and two guys on, when Payton, the Mets center fielder, takes an outside cutter the other way and hits it into the seats in right.
Suddenly, the score is 6–5, and the growing panic in the Stadium is palpable. Kurt Abbott steps up. He doubled off me in Game 1. Here’s what I am thinking:
This game needs to end now.
I hate messy innings, and this has turned into a big mess. I get ahead, 0–2, and fire the next cutter just where I want it, on the inner half and up. Abbott takes, and Charlie Reliford, the home plate umpire, rings him up. Abbott has a brief fit as Jorge comes out to shake my hand. Fifty-six thousand fans start to breathe again. I face 309 more hitters in my postseason career, and never give up another home run after Payton’s.
After a travel day to allow us to go over the Triborough Bridge into Queens, the Mets, losers of two agonizing one-run games, return home to Shea Stadium, their bowl by the bay with the LaGuardia Airport traffic overhead. I’m surprised at how many Yankee fans have found their way into Shea, but it doesn’t stop the Mets from knocking El Duque around in Game 3 and taking a 4–2 victory behind Rick Reed, even though Duque strikes out six Mets in the first two innings, and twelve overall.
We’re not getting a lot of production from our leadoff guys (they are 0 for 12 in the three games), so Mr. T decides to move Derek up to the top spot for Game 4. Bobby Jones is the Mets starter, and on his first pitch of the game, Derek drives it over the left-center-field wall at Shea Stadium. It’s a single run that feels like ten, for the way it fires us up and coldcocks the Mets. It is Derek Jeter at his best, providing just what we need, when we need it. Jones steadies himself after giving up two more runs, and when Piazza buries a Denny Neagle pitch for a two-run homer, the Mets are within a run at 3–2. Piazza comes up again in the fifth with two out and nobody on. Neagle is one out away from completing the five innings you need to get the win. Mr. T comes and gets him, and brings in David Cone, and Neagle is so incensed that he won’t even look at Mr. T. Cone is thirty-seven, an ace turned forgotten man, coming off the worst year of his tremendous career, a yearlong struggle that ended with a 4–14 record and 6.91 ERA. He hasn’t thrown a single pitch in this World Series.
It’s another Mr. T hunch… that David can find a way to get Piazza. David gets ahead, 1–2, and comes right at Piazza with a sharp slider. Piazza swings and pops up to second.
In the clubhouse with Geno, I can only marvel at our manager’s instincts yet again.
Both bullpens pitch flaw
lessly and now it’s on me in the eighth and ninth. Paulie makes a fine grab of a sinking liner by Alfonzo to lead off the eighth, and then I get Piazza to ground out, before Zeile singles. I get out of it by popping up Ventura, and record two quick outs in the ninth, too.
Next up is Matt Franco, who had a game-winning hit against me the year before. On the first pitch, a strike, Jorge and I can tell Franco is waiting for the cutter in on the hands, edging farther from the plate to give him more room to turn on it.
Jorge catches my attention and points to his eyes, as if to say:
You see that?
I do see it. I nod. I buzz a fastball on the outside corner, and Franco never moves. Strike two. I know he’s sitting on the cutter in. Jorge knows it, too. I buzz another fastball on the outside corner. Franco never moves again.
Game over.
In four games, we have fifteen runs, and the Mets have fourteen. Every game pivots on one or two plays, or one or two pitches. I like the way the pivots have been going, and now it’s time to finish things up in Game 5, Leiter vs. Andy, a rematch of Game 1.
Bernie, in an 0-for-16 slump in the Series, rips a homer to start the second, and after the Mets answer with two runs in the bottom of the inning, Derek takes two tight fastballs from Leiter and then pounds his second homer in two games. It’s 2–2, and Andy and Leiter are competing their left arms off, matching zeroes and guts. Mike Stanton comes on for a 1-2-3 eighth, and Leiter comes back out for the ninth and gets two quick strikeouts.
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