Chumps to Champs

by Bill Pennington

  Buck Showalter did not need to be convinced. He had been watching and dissecting videotape of Jeter since 1992, which was Showalter’s first season as Yankees manager and the year Jeter was drafted.

  Showalter, in fact, had saved the tapes. The collection went all the way back to Jeter’s senior year in high school. At his home in Dallas during the winter of 2017, Showalter quickly summoned the Jeter high school tape on his office laptop. He watched the skinny kid in high-top shoes chase down ground balls behind second base at Kalamazoo Central High School and then toggled on his laptop to another tape of Jeter, at Columbus in 1994.

  “Do you see that?” Showalter asked, his eyes wide. “You know what he has in both tapes?”

  Showalter answered his own question. “He has a grace,” he said. “There’s a grace to his game that goes with the obvious flow of athleticism.”

  As manager of the Orioles, Showalter routinely shows the tape to young, developing scouts in the Baltimore organization. “People think someone like Derek Jeter must have been an obvious first-round pick,” he said. “And I show them this tape, where Derek is only 165 pounds and is bouncing all over the infield—he’s all arms and legs. And I ask these young guys: Would you have projected this kid to be a major league All-Star over and over?”

  But when analyzed properly, Showalter emphatically believes Jeter’s high school tape has all the answers. “You have to perceive the tempo and rhythm to Derek’s game,” he said. “A common attribute of quality major league players is that they have a great internal clock. Those players know when to hurry and when to slow down, which is a really important thing to know.

  “In our instructional league every winter, we had a lot of Latin shortstops who tended to rush every ground ball. I was trying to figure out how to slow them down, and one day I was flipping through the TV channels and I ended up watching a water polo game for a few minutes. And they had a shot clock at the top of the goal net.

  “So, long story short, I got one of those clocks and put it behind first base. The average major leaguer runs to first base between 4.2 and 4.4 seconds. So I set the clock for 4.35 seconds and started hitting ground balls to the shortstops. And they’re charging the ball and gunning it over at like 3.1 seconds. I’d stop the clock and say, ‘Look how much more time you have. What are you rushing for? Learn to sense how much time you have.’

  “But here’s the thing about Derek. He came with that clock. He had it in high school. And that’s very unusual. That was the thing about evaluating him. He had that ‘it’ factor. What is ‘it’? Well, it is hard to define. But Derek had it.”

  The former Yankees second baseman Willie Randolph had left the team’s front office to become Showalter’s third-base coach in 1994. A six-time All-Star, he was also a fielding instructor during spring training that year, when Jeter was in the big league camp. “I worked with all the infielders and Derek was still a little raw, but had a certain swagger,” Randolph said. “You could see he wasn’t scared. Don Mattingly had that. There are certain players that are comfortable in their skin around veterans.

  “Derek knew he belonged. The moment was not too big. It was in his posture. Yeah, he played the rookie role respectfully, but he wasn’t intimidated. I remember saying to myself, ‘This kid’s gonna be all right.’ So I wasn’t real surprised when I heard he might be joining us later in the year.”

  There was less certainty about the future of Rivera.

  In 1994, Rivera had also made the jump from Class A Tampa to AA Albany and then to the Columbus Clippers. It was a climb that was a little more common for a pitcher, and since Rivera was twenty-four years old, the Yankees were under pressure to more quickly figure out whether he was going to be a major league contributor.

  Rivera, still a starter, was dominant in Tampa and Albany, with a combined 6-0 record in those two stops, an ERA under 3.00 and a WHIP (walks and hits per inning) below 1.1, which is stellar.

  But when Rivera got to Columbus, he seemed overmatched. He had a 4-2 record in six starts but gave up 20 earned runs, 34 hits and 10 walks in 31 innings pitched. His ERA was 5.81, and he was still throwing his fastball at about 91 miles an hour—pedestrian for a Class AAA pitcher without a superior breaking ball that kept hitters off-balance.

  “Mariano could be impressive, and he was an ice man on the mound,” Merrill said. “Terrific poise, great control, and he threw so effortlessly. But you had to ask yourself: Is that going to be enough?

  “The biggest leap in professional sports is from AAA ball to the major leagues. There is nothing like it in any other sport. There are guys who will light it up—just crush it—at the AAA level for two or three years straight. And yet, when you send them to the majors, they get their ass handed to them. It happens all the time. So it’s hard to tell sometimes.

  “At that point, we weren’t sure what would happen when Mariano made the leap. But he was only in Columbus for a little while in ’94. It was a small sample. You wanted to see more the next year.”

  If Rivera made it to 1995 as a Yankee.

  Rivera was a frequently mentioned name in trade talks in 1994, and for a year thereafter. And unlike Jeter, Michael did not immediately take Rivera off the table during trade negotiations. “We were trying to be patient with him, but you know you can’t keep them all,” he said. “You’re going to have to give up some prospects. And at the time, there’s no question Mariano was not projected as high as other minor league pitchers we had. That’s just a fact.

  “But I held off with dealing Mariano.”

  As for Andy Pettitte, he continued to impress despite being overlooked in favor of the other top left-handed pitching prospect, Sterling Hitchcock, who in 1994 was pitching in the Bronx for a third successive season (with some success).

  Pettitte, then twenty-two years old, began 1994 in Albany, where he won seven of his 11 starts with a sparkling 2.71 ERA. He was promoted to Columbus and became the Clippers’ best starter, winning another seven games with a 2.98 ERA and a WHIP of 1.262.

  “That year, I felt I showed at Columbus that I was ready for the big leagues,” Pettitte said when asked to recall his 1994 season two decades later. “I think I expected a call-up later that year. In retrospect, I probably needed another off-season of development, of weight training and conditioning. But I was pretty pleased with my growth as a pitcher.”

  Pettitte’s fastball still was no more than 91 miles an hour, but his breaking pitches had become sharper and more reliable. “Andy had total command of a game even at that age,” said Brian Cashman. “He was very assured on the mound. He was six-foot-five and getting pretty muscular. He just stared down hitters. The will to succeed was evident.”

  And still, Pettitte had not overcome the comparisons to Hitchcock, who had compiled a 4-1 record in 23 games as a starter and reliever for Showalter’s Yankees in 1994. But Hitchcock was more erratic and walked a lot of batters, which elevated his pitch count and got him into long innings.

  The Pettitte-Hitchcock debate raged on in countless front-office meetings, especially since most everyone felt one of the two would eventually be traded. But which one?

  Merrill was often asked his opinion, since he had managed both in the minors. “The thing is, neither Pettitte or Hitchcock were flamethrowers,” he said. “And baseball people always say the most important pitch is the fastball. And it is. But only if that fastball is well located. Speed is not the only factor. So, to me, Pettitte had better command. And that mattered.

  “Which one would I have traded? It wouldn’t have been Pettitte. The secret to good major league pitching is screwing up the hitter’s timing. And that’s what Pettitte was able to do.

  “But you had to see him over and over to appreciate all his attributes. He had intense concentration, the ability to locate the baseball, and he could change speeds. And he hated to get beat—his dark eyes would narrow like he was going to explode. It was almost scary.

  “Looking back, in 1994 I didn’t know he was going to be as good
as he was, and anybody who says they did is probably misremembering—or full of shit. But Andy did have a look. And the look was a mix of ‘Don’t count me out’ and ‘Don’t mess with me.’”

  22

  The Best Laid Plans Ruined

  IN THEIR FIRST matchup after the 1994 All-Star Game, the Yankees swept four games against the Seattle Mariners, whose young, promising hitters were easily manhandled by the Yankees’ wily, veteran pitching staff.

  The Yankees did get another look at Seattle’s newly improved six-foot-ten left-handed pitcher, Randy Johnson. In seven major league seasons, Johnson had always thrown about 100 miles an hour, in an era when no one threw that hard. But he had also led the league in walks three times. In 1994, Johnson had learned to get his breaking ball over, and his walks were down.

  The Yankees still found a way to beat him this time, peppering Johnson for eight runs in barely more than six innings. But Johnson made an impression, one that lingered. “If Randy keeps fine-tuning that breaking ball, he’s going to become a nightmare,” Mattingly said.

  In the meantime, for the Yankees, the dreamlike 1994 season continued. They won 10 of 11 games on a sojourn through Seattle, Anaheim and Oakland, a grueling excursion that usually tests and grates on East Coast–based teams. But the Yankees treated their West Coast swing like a blissful retreat, scoring 90 runs, smacking 19 home runs and batting .315 on the trip. The Yankees record was 60-36, the best in baseball, and they had been in first place for 78 consecutive days.

  “The plan was working perfectly,” Willie Randolph, the third-base coach, recalled years later. “Stick had said the goal in ’94 was to have a mature professionalism in the clubhouse and on the field. As he said, ‘Guys more in line with how Mattingly played the game.’ And you could really see that. We now had players who were grinders. Guys who would work an at-bat and take a pitch. They were playing unselfish, team-based ball.

  “All teams have their own style—a certain way they play. But Stick and Buck and the other leaders of the team knew they wanted high on-base-percentage guys, and you hadn’t heard too much of that before ’93 or ’94. They did a great job of going out and finding guys who fit into that philosophy.

  “And as guys saw the results, they understood what was going on and really bought into the plan. I keep saying it was the Yankee Way like it’s some kind of magic formula, but we did have a certain approach that was a little bit different than other clubs. We were able to grind, to beat people up and to wear people out. We got into other teams’ bullpens and won a lot of games. It was all working.”

  No other American League team was seriously threatening the Yankees’ incandescence. The top team in the AL West, the Texas Rangers, were five games under .500. Baltimore trailed the Yankees by six games in the AL East. The Chicago White Sox were on top of the AL Central, but they had been plagued by inconsistencies. The White Sox had just one feared hitter in their lineup, the future Hall of Famer Frank Thomas. The pitching staff was suspect, with a team ERA over 4.00.

  The startling Yankees were the class of the league. “We just had every part of our act together—I don’t know if I’d ever been on a team that hummed along like that,” Jimmy Key said many years later. And remember, in his career, Key was on two World Series winning teams and four other playoff teams.

  “The ’94 team had a potent combination of talent,” Key continued. “There was timely hitting, versatile starting staff and a very good bullpen. We had tough guys and we had a couple of young rising stars like Bernie Williams who mixed in well with the older vets like Boggs, Mattingly and Stanley. Paul O’Neill was really finding his groove. The coaching staff had a lot of experience—Randolph, Clete Boyer and young guys like Butterfield and Glenn Sherlock.

  “And Buck? Buck was a mastermind, up until the wee hours plotting for each game.”

  In the middle of the Yankees’ West Coast swing in 1994, the New York Times beat writer Jack Curry published an absorbing account that took the reader into the complex baseball strategies and tactics that Showalter pondered every day. The piece covered a single game against the Oakland Athletics and their gifted manager, Tony La Russa, who was regarded as baseball’s resident genius—and with whom Showalter had tangled in a near brawl on the field during the 1992 season, Showalter’s rookie year as manager.

  Curry, a future Yankees broadcaster, wasn’t in the dugout with Showalter, but he met with Showalter at length before or after the game, going over the manager’s scouting, scheming and in-game machinations.

  An early revelation in the story has Showalter studying videotape of Oakland’s starting pitcher Todd Van Poppel the night before the game. Showalter noticed a pattern to how and when Van Poppel threw a fastball. On the mound and staring at the catcher’s signals, Van Poppel usually nodded his head once, then shook his head once, then nodded affirmatively again.

  Showalter surmised that Van Poppel was saying yes to the call of a fastball, no to a specific location and yes to the next location.

  Over and over, Van Poppel repeated the sequence, almost always unhappy with the first location when his catcher called for the fastball. Showalter also noticed that Van Poppel started nearly every batter off with a fastball.

  The next day, Showalter communicated his intel to the Yankees hitters—if they saw the yes-no-yes sequence, expect a fastball. Van Poppel did go through that progression on the mound in the first inning of the game while pitching to Bernie Williams, who crushed a Van Poppel fastball for a deep drive that was caught at the center-field wall.

  In the third inning, Van Poppel did it again, and Yankees designated hitter Danny Tartabull jumped on the fastball to slam a three-run homer to give the Yankees a 3–1 lead.

  An inning earlier, Showalter’s advance prep might have saved the Yankees a run. Watching video of the previous Yankees-Athletics game, he saw that Oakland base runners attempted to steal second base after Yankees pitchers threw to first base twice.

  When starter Sterling Hitchcock walked Oakland’s Scott Brosius, Showalter instructed Hitchcock to throw to first base three times. On the third throw over, Brosius had already begun his break for second, but Mattingly relayed the throw and Brosius was tagged out at second base. It turned out to be a big out when Hitchcock walked two more batters in the inning.

  By the fourth inning, the Yankees led 5–2 and had Williams at first base and Tartabull on third. Showalter noticed that Oakland middle infielders were playing deep and not doing something customary when there’s a runner on first base. Normally, the shortstop would hold his glove in front of his face to exchange a covert signal that indicated who would cover second base on a steal.

  But if they weren’t bothering to signal, Showalter knew the infielders were instead planning to play so deep that neither would cover second base. With a Yankee runner on third base, La Russa might also have decided not to risk a Yankee double steal.

  La Russa’s motivation didn’t matter to Showalter; all that mattered was his suspicion that the Yankees were being given a free base. Williams broke from first on the next pitch and cruised into second base standing up, since no Athletics infielder moved from his position and there was no throw from the catcher.

  A single promptly extended the Yankees lead by two more runs. They romped to an easy victory.

  Three days later, on July 28, the 31 players on the players’ union executive board voted unanimously to go on strike if the terms of a new collective bargaining agreement could not be reached with the owners by August 12.

  The players’ decision cast an ominous cloud on all future games, because everyone knew the talks between representatives of the owners and players had been at a stalemate for months. There weren’t even any new negotiating meetings scheduled before August 12.

  The chief issue remained a per-team cap on player salaries, a system already adopted by the NBA and the NFL.

  The players felt a strike was the only bargaining leverage they had against the owners, who could wait for the existing labor agre
ement to expire at the end of 1994 and then unilaterally impose new work rules, including a salary cap.

  By striking in August, the players imperiled the 1994 postseason, which, not insignificantly, put in jeopardy the $140 million to $170 million in revenue those postseason games would make for baseball’s owners. But collectively, players would lose more—as much as $180 million in unpaid salary. The players, however, had a large strike fund to reimburse the rank and file.

  Thirteen years earlier, there had been similar labor strife in the middle of a season, and the issue then had also been a salary cap that the owners wanted to impose. In 1981, a fifty-day strike interrupted the season, and when it was settled (without a salary cap), the postseason was held, albeit with an extra playoff round to account for first-half division champions and second-half division winners.

  With good reason, the players in 1994 may have expected an outcome comparable to 1981. But that would prove to be a serious miscalculation.

  Unlike 1981, when the owners had only a meager amount of strike insurance, baseball’s ownership in 1994 came to the bargaining table well prepared financially. Intent on a long fight for a salary cap, the owners had for years been funding a plentiful strike insurance policy.

  In 1981, the labor impasse ended when the owners ran out of strike insurance. In 1994, when it came to contingency plans, the sides were more evenly matched.

  In the Yankees’ clubhouse the day the strike date was set, the mood was unusually glum. “I’ve lived through a bunch of these strikes and lockouts,” Mattingly said. “But this one feels different. It feels worse.”

  The team was tense and tempers flared in that night’s game as pitcher Jim Abbott, normally poised on the field, jawed at the home plate umpire over balls and strikes. Shortstop Randy Velarde slammed his glove to the infield dirt after an error. Paul O’Neill, who never needed an excuse to throw a tantrum, went hitless and stormed into the clubhouse, where he destroyed a wooden chair with his bat.