He tells me he wants to limit me to one inning whenever possible, and be judicious when it’s my turn to pitch.
Whenever you call, I will be ready, I say.
Whether it’s the new manager or my new catcher, Jose Molina (Jorge misses much of the season with an injury, so the Yankees go out and get a Molina brother), I begin the year as if I’m about to turn twenty-nine, not thirty-nine. Two months into the season, I have twenty-six strikeouts, two walks, an ERA of 0.38, and fifteen saves. We go on a seven-game winning streak after that, and I get my nineteenth save by striking out the side against the Padres. It would feel a whole lot better if we weren’t just five games over .500 (50–45) when the All-Star Game arrives at the old Yankee Stadium for the final time.
It’s my ninth All-Star Game, and the most special to me of all—baseball’s best gathering to say farewell to a shrine. The most powerful part of the experience for me is seeing George Steinbrenner back at the Stadium. He hasn’t been around all year. We keep hearing about his failing health and his diminished faculties, so it is great to see him in person.
And you can’t mistake how much it means to him to be here. In the pregame ceremony, riding in from the outfield in a golf cart, Mr. George is weeping as he rolls along toward the pitcher’s mound. He hands baseballs to four Yankee Hall of Famers—Whitey Ford, Yogi Berra, Goose Gossage, and Reggie Jackson. They embrace him—and then throw the balls to their designated catchers: Whitey to Derek; Yogi to Joe Girardi; Reggie to Alex; Goose to me.
I’m not even sure when I first officially met Mr. George, but I am positive I was already in the big leagues. If he was around spring training when I was younger, I watched him from afar, but mostly I just went about my work and tried not to get noticed.
Mr. George is surrounded by his family at the All-Star Game, and he looks overcome through almost all of the festivities. It’s sad to see a man who has always been such a commanding (and demanding) presence, such a forceful leader, with his vitality gone. I want to thank him for giving me a chance, and giving me the honor of wearing the uniform of the New York Yankees, but I am not sure what to say or do—whether to approach him and risk an awkward moment if he doesn’t know who I am. I decide it’s best to let him enjoy his family and the farewell to the Stadium, a place he has helped make one of the legendary venues in all of sports.
It is one of the last times I ever see Mr. George Steinbrenner.
We come flying out of the box to start the second half, winning eight in a row. Joba, now a starter, pitches a 1–0 masterpiece in Fenway on a Friday night in late July, and after I finish it by striking out Mike Lowell and J. D. Drew, we are just three games out of first—the closest we’ve been since the first week of May.
And then we slide right back to mediocrity again. We lose four of five games and give up forty-four runs in the process, not the sort of pitching that is going to take you places. We lose Wang in June to a freakish ankle injury when he’s running for home in a blowout victory over the Astros in Houston (sadly, he has never been the same pitcher since), and we have only one starter—Mussina—with an ERA under 4.00. Plus, we’re no better than an average offensive team this year, and that’s not a good combination.
The Red Sox come to town in late August, and it’s a series we really need to win, if not sweep. We do neither. Andy gets roughed up in the opener, a 7–3 defeat, and in the next game we send out Sidney Ponson, and soon a Red Sox rout is on, and so is the Dustin Pedroia Show.
He gets three hits, scores four runs, and drives in four on a grand slam off of David Robertson. He runs and dives all over the place, is covered with dirt from beginning to end, and plays with such passion you’d think it was the last ball game he’d ever get to play.
Until he comes back the next day, and the day after, and plays the same way.
There are a lot of players I admire, and Dustin Pedroia is right at the top of the list. Nobody plays harder, gives more, wants to win more. He comes at you hard for twenty-seven outs, every time. It’s a special thing to see, a little guy like that who is willing to do whatever it takes. I’ve seen many top-notch second basemen in my years in the big leagues. Roberto Alomar was a staggering talent who made the game look easy, who could beat you with his glove, his legs, or his bat. Robinson Cano has a beautiful stroke and is as good in the field as almost anybody. Before he started having his throwing problems, Chuck Knoblauch was another guy who could take over a game with his speed and grit. But if I have to win one game, I’d have a hard time taking anybody over Dustin Pedroia as my second baseman.
Just over three weeks later, our season is effectively over, and so is our postseason streak of thirteen years. The Rays are the AL East champions, the Red Sox are the wild-card winner, and the Yankees are out of luck, six games behind at 89–73. Like Derek and Jorge, I’ve been to the playoffs every year of my career, but the simple truth is that we don’t deserve to go this year. I finish with one of the best statistical years of my career (39 saves in 40 chances, 1.40 ERA, 77 strikeouts, and 6 walks), but all of that and 45 cents will get me on the bus to Chorrera.
Our final piece of business in the 2008 season is to say goodbye to Yankee Stadium. After 85 years and 26 world championships, the final game is played on Sunday, September 21. The Orioles are in town. The gates open seven hours early so fans can walk around and have a proper farewell. From the time I leave home for the Bronx that day, emotions flood me like water over the bow.
I think about the first time I stood on the mound in the postseason—top of the twelfth inning in the 1995 ALDS against the Mariners, striking out Jay Buhner to begin three and a third innings of relief, before Jim Leyritz belted his homer in the bottom of the fifteenth.
I remember celebrating the Series sweep of the Braves four years later with Jorge and Tino and everybody, and I remember kneeling in prayer in the dirt as Aaron Boone rounded the bases four years after that.
These moments, of course, are merely a small, personal sample, a few special memories of a Panamanian boy who was going to be a mechanic. What about all the other historic moments, and all the iconic players, from Ruth to Gehrig to DiMaggio to Berra to Mantle and now to Jeter? What about their feats and memories, and their glories?
Derek says the aura and the tradition are just going to move across the street, but are they? Can the spirit and soul of this Stadium ever really be recaptured? I don’t know—still don’t.
Yankee Stadium is not just a home office for triumph. It is a place where I grow up as a pitcher, and as a man, a place with special, spiritual retreats deep within it. There is the trainer’s room, where I spend all those middle innings for all those years with Geno, an athlete and a healer, a young man and an older man bonding over balm and shared values and a mutual belief in the importance of thoroughness and hard work.
There is the tunnel beneath the left-field stands, where I make the walk to the bullpen, turning left out of the clubhouse and following the corridor around, behind home plate, and continuing down toward the left-field foul pole, where I turn right and wind through Monument Park toward the pen.
There is the bullpen bench, which is where I watch the game, taking in the verdant splendor of the field before me, sharing the time with my bullpen soul mates. I love that bench, and how I mark the nightly rhythms of my job there, playful and silly at first, then turning more introspective almost by the batter—until I am transformed into someone else entirely, into a man whose whole world is centered on getting people out and securing a victory.
I love that bench. I love it so much that the Yankees were kind enough to let me take it home when the old Stadium closed for good.
And then there is the bullpen mound, where I go to work after I get the call, going through my precise warm-up routine and waiting for the doors to open, and making my solitary run toward the mound.
I cherish this place and I want to honor this place. I want to be the last man to stand on that mound. I want to throw the last pitch, and get the last out.
Julia’s father homered in the first game ever played in the Stadium, and the homers continue. In the bottom of the third, Johnny Damon rips a three-run blast that gives the Yankees an early lead. Andy does his best to protect the lead, but the Orioles tie it up in the top of the fourth, before Jose Molina, who has had two homers all season, hits his third into the netting in left center, giving us a 5–3 lead.
In the trainer’s room, Geno finishes up his rubdown.
Thanks, Geno, I say.
Just doing my job, he says. And I know you’ll do yours.
Thank you, and God bless you, I say.
Andy gives way to Jose Veras in the sixth. I make my way down the left-field corridor beneath the stands. I don’t want to leave this place. I don’t want this to be the last time.
Nostalgia doesn’t hit me very often.
It is hitting me now like a freight train.
Now, for the last time, I am in the pen that has been my baseball home for fourteen years.
Joba (back in the bullpen now) pitches a strong inning and two-thirds and we tack on two more runs. The phone rings in the pen in the eighth. Mike Harkey answers.
Mo, you got the ninth, Harkey says.
Derek grounds out to third to end the bottom of the eighth, and it’s time. The blue doors open, and “Enter Sandman” starts up and I make my last run across the outfield in the old Yankee Stadium. The crowd is standing and cheering. It is surreal.
I get to the mound and pick up the ball. I need for this to be business as usual; I need to focus on these three outs, even if it is not business as usual at all.
The first Orioles batter is Jay Payton. He hit a three-run homer off of me in the ninth inning of Game 2 of the Subway Series eight years before, down the right-field line. You do not forget things like that.
I get Payton on a weak grounder to short, which is ably handled by Derek. I get ahead on the next batter, 0–2, come with a hard cutter inside, and he bounces it to second. Two outs. One to go. But before I even get on the rubber to throw another pitch, I see Wilson Betemit running from the first-base dugout toward shortstop. Joe wants Derek to leave the old place in a fitting way, with one last massive ovation.
And that is exactly what happens.
Derek Jeter, the last Yankee icon in a fabled Stadium, runs to the dugout and is summoned again to do a curtain call.
The next Orioles hitter is Brian Roberts. He has always been a tough out for me. On a 2–1 pitch, he hits a grounder to Cody Ransom at first. I break off the mound, but Cody takes it himself for the final out. He tucks the ball in my glove and shakes my hand. The Yankees didn’t win enough games this year, but we won this one, the last game ever played at 161st Street and River Avenue.
And for that I am very grateful.
I know exactly what I am going to do with this ball. I am going to give it to George Steinbrenner. He is the one who deserves to have it.
18
New Digs and Old Feelings
YOU DON’T WANT TO make hasty judgments, but the early returns on the new Yankee Stadium are pretty unmistakable. Home runs are flying out of the place, and from a design standpoint, the new park—for all of its grandeur and luxury and state-of-the-art amenities—is a much more open place: It doesn’t hold noise, or home-team fervor, anywhere near the way the old place did. It’s not that we worry about such things as players, but when you are used to having a full-throated full house connected with every pitch, it’s a little hard when people either aren’t in their seats or have no idea what a hit-and-run is.
The old Stadium was our tenth man—a loud and frenzied cauldron of pinstripe passion, with a lot of lifers in the stands. Maybe I’m wrong, but it’s hard to see that the new place can ever quite duplicate that.
Some things are completely unaffected by new construction, though, and one of them is Derek Jeter’s swing. He’s had that hands-inside-the-ball magic going for fifteen years, and here it is on display across the street for the first time, in the eighth inning of our second game, with the score tied at five against the Indians. On a 3–1 pitch, Derek swats it to right, flings his bat away as if it were spring-loaded, and is off and running until the ball clears the fence.
Now it’s on me. After a long fly to center, I give up two singles, and Grady Sizemore steps in. He fouls off a couple of cutters in, and on 1–2, Jose Molina sets up outside for the backdoor cutter. Sizemore swings through it. Mark DeRosa comes up. The count goes full and the runners are on the move. I throw the cutter away, hoping to nick the outside corner upstairs. As I wind and deliver, it’s right where I want it. Jose barely has to move. DeRosa thinks it is breaking outside and takes it, but it is right there. Umpire Phil Cuzzi rings him up, DeRosa has a fit, and I have my first save in Yankee Stadium III.
The Yankees have dug deep to have a shiny new team for the new ballpark, spending tens of millions to bring in CC Sabathia, A. J. Burnett, and Mark Teixeira, but it doesn’t stop us from getting off to another sluggish start, including a forgettable weekend in Fenway in late April. We get swept, and the most painful loss comes Friday night. I strike out Ortiz and Pedroia and am one out from saving a 4–2 victory for Joba when I leave a 1–0 cutter over the heart of the plate to Jason Bay, who hits it to straightaway center, halfway to Boston Harbor. It’s another muffed save against a team that has gotten to me more than any other by far. I think about it and we talk about it and we look at film, and still I cannot pinpoint one thing the Red Sox are doing against me that others don’t. It’s not as if they are standing in a different place in the box, or altering their swings. I think it comes down to familiarity. They see me more times than any other team, so they have a much keener sense of how and when my ball moves.
I wish I had some epiphany about what the Red Sox are doing so I can attack them differently, but I don’t. I just have to pitch better against them—or maybe change my pattern so it’s not at all predictable.
We wind up losing in eleven on a Kevin Youkilis walkoff, and lose Saturday when Burnett can’t hold a six-run lead. In the Sox triumph on Sunday, Jacoby Ellsbury has a straight steal of home off Andy, who actually picks two guys off of first in the game but gets caught by Ellsbury as he pitches from the windup.
A couple of weeks later, I give up back-to-back homers to Carl Crawford and Evan Longoria of the Rays, the first time I’ve ever done that in my career. I’ve already given up more homers than I did all of the previous year. I am not where I want to be velocity-wise; that much I know. I am coming off minor shoulder surgery in October and know that my arm is going to get stronger and that it’s just a question of building it back up. I have less margin for error than I did when I was throwing 96 or 97 miles per hour all the time, so I also know that regaining my command is critical.
My struggles, of course, bring a fresh round of panic that I am finished. It is almost comical. I love playing in New York, but it’s also the home office of overreaction. People are always searching for trends where none exist.
With the exception of our results against the Red Sox—we lose eight straight to them to start the season—I see something in this club that I haven’t seen in a long time. We are fighting to the end, game in and game out. Teams always say they do that, but not that many really do.
Example? Early in June at the Stadium, I have a brutal outing against the Rays, giving up three hits and three earned runs in two-thirds of an inning in a really bad loss.
The next day? We score
three times in the bottom of the eighth and I pitch a clean ninth, and we win to move into first place. It’s the twentieth come-from-behind victory for us and the season is barely two months old. And then we keep the comeback theme going to start a Subway Series with the Mets, thanks to the all-out hustle of Mark Teixeira.
We are trailing, 8–7, down to our last out, after I give up an RBI double to David Wright in the eighth. Derek, who singled, is on second, and Teixeira, who was intentionally walked, is on first. Alex is at the plate. Frankie Rodriguez, the Mets closer, fires and gets Alex to pop up a fastball to second base. Alex slams the bat down, because he had a fastball to hit and missed it. The pop floats into short right behind second baseman Luis Castillo. It is way up there. Castillo settles under it and the Mets are about to take the opener, and then somehow the ball glances off Castillo’s glove. Derek is running hard, of course, and right behind him, Teixeira is running all out, busting it from the time Alex swings the bat. He makes it all the way home and we win that game, not just on an error you might see once every five years but on the hustle of a star player who doesn’t assume anything… who goes hard until the game is over.
That’s what winners do.
Three games out of first, with a 51–37 record at the All-Star break, we take off on our best roll of the season. We win eighteen of our first twenty-three games after the break, sweep the Red Sox four games at the Stadium, and blow right past them into first place.
The last of those games is a microcosm of our season. Down 2–1 going into the bottom of the eighth, Damon and Teixeira blast back-to-back homers, and Jorge follows with a two-run single. I close it out by getting Ellsbury to ground out to Teixeira. I go seven weeks and 21 appearances without giving up a run, and by the time we pull off another four-game sweep, this time of the Rays, in early September, we are 41 games over .500 (91–50) with a nine-game lead. I am pretty darn sure this is not going to be another year when we have a division series meltdown.
The Closer Page 20