The Yankee Years Part 4

Torre underwent his annual physical with his personal physician in New York during the previous winter. Everything checked out okay except for a PSA level that was slightly elevated. His physician informed him that several factors could temporarily cause a higher reading and that he shouldn't be alarmed, but he also should pay attention to the PSA reading when he took his annual spring training physical conducted by the Yankees. The Yankees had added PSA tests to the physicals only after outfielder Darryl Strawberry was diagnosed with colon cancer the previous year. When Torre took the spring training physical, the PSA level was still elevated. Now there was some concern among the doctors. They ordered another test to see if an infection was causing the spike in his PSA level, but that possibility was quickly ruled out. In early March doctors told Torre that they would have to do a biopsy to determine if he had prostate cancer.

"Age was something that never played a part in my day-to-day operation until I realized I was getting close to 60 years old," Torre said. "I was getting ready to turn 59 that year and for the first time I thought, 's.h.i.+t. I'm getting old.'

"So then they ran the biopsy test and they were going to get back to me with the results. When you go through something like that, you expect the worst. Because if you expect the best and you get the worst, you're going to free fall."

The Yankees were playing a spring training game in Kissimmee, Florida, against the Astros on the day Torre expected to hear the results of the biopsy. He left the game early and began driving back to Tampa at about the time he expected the call. Only later, however, would he learn that his cell phone was not receiving a signal as he drove on the highway. It was only when he stopped in Tampa to purchase a CD for his daughter that his phone rang. But it was not the doctors. It was Steinbrenner.

"Don't worry, Joe," Steinbrenner said. "You'll come through this fine and be all right."

Torre was stunned-and hurt. How did Steinbrenner know? Torre hadn't even heard from the doctors yet and here was Steinbrenner breaking the news to him that he had cancer.

"George called me and led me to believe that he knew the results, which p.i.s.sed me off," Torre said. "So I stopped trusting, not so much George, but the people around him from that point. I heard from the doctors a little bit after the call from George. I then went back and told my wife what the diagnosis was. She was sort of in denial. It was a scary time."

How do you break the news to your team that you have cancer? The Yankees had split-squad games the next day, meaning half the team would be playing at home and the other half would be playing on the road. Logistically, it was difficult to pull everyone together. So Torre called Clemens and David Cone and told them he would like them to tell the players at the home game about his illness. Then he called Joe Girardi and asked him to perform the same duty on the road. He also called Don Zimmer, his bench coach, and asked him to manage the team while he was recovering from surgery. It didn't take long for the Yankees to miss the way Torre calmly handled every crisis-often blunting them before they could blow up into a major issue-especially when it came to his expert lion-taming skills with Steinbrenner.

"I made the mistake of putting Zimmer in charge of the team," Torre said. "Emotionally, it was a ton for him. He was a mess. What I should have done was probably put Mel Stottlemyre in charge, and it might have been a little easier for everybody-to have Zim sit next to Mel, but have Mel answer for it with the media and George.

"At the end of that spring training is when George called Hideki Irabu 'a fat toad.' And then the team went out to Los Angeles to play an exhibition game and Zim wanted to start Ramiro Mendoza but George wanted to start Irabu. I called up Zim in L. A. and said, 'Zim, just let it go. When George said something you just say, "He's The Boss, blah, blah, blah," and do what you want to do. Just don't challenge it with George.' So when Zim just said, 'Okay, goodbye' and hung up, I knew he had no chance. He was going to challenge George. And it turned into a wildfire. So it started right there with Zim and George going at it."

Torre, meanwhile, underwent surgery March 19. Dr. William Catalona performed the two-and-a-half-hour procedure at Barnes-Jewish Hospital in St. Louis. Catalona a.s.sured Torre that the operation was successful and that he would be working again soon. It was a message that Torre wanted to deliver to his players personally.

"When I came back after my surgery I met the players and explained what was going on," Torre said. "I just wanted to keep them aware of it. It's the same way with any issues. If anything was whispered around the team, I'd always meet with them and be as honest as I can. If there was someone new around the team, for instance, I might say, 'I can't trust this security guy. I'm not telling you what to do. I'm just making you aware of what I'm aware of.' I'd like to think that honesty came through in the trust factor you need to have with your players."

Torre returned to manage the Yankees on May 18, almost two months to the day from his surgery, and just in time for a game in Boston against Pedro Martinez and the Red Sox. When Torre brought the lineup card to home plate before the game, the Fenway Park crowd rose and cheered for two minutes and the scoreboard pa.s.sed along greetings of "Welcome Back."

"Sitting in the dugout after you know you've had cancer," Torre said, "you're thinking, 'This is a game we're playing, and how important is this?' I just didn't know if that same intense feeling was going to come back. And then when we got to Toronto on the next road trip I remember Bernie Williams was. .h.i.tting with the bases loaded and I was willing to sell my soul for a hit. And Bernie hit a grand slam. And that's when I knew I was all the way back. The bubbles were back.

"Every once in a while you have to step back and put things in perspective and where they belong. But the minute you start to minimize the importance of winning you're cheating everybody. You're cheating the players you're trying to lead. You're cheating the owners who are paying you.

"The cancer never really goes away. Cancer is there every day of your life. When I was diagnosed that spring, I said in jest, 'Now I know why all those b.a.l.l.s were dropping in for us.' I never thought, 'Why me?' Instead, I thought, 'Why shouldn't it be me?' Why should it be that all things that happen to me are good things? Should this happen to somebody else who was struggling? So I never complained, 'Why me?' I've been very blessed."

The 1999 Yankees were not quite the machine that was the 1998 Yankees, but they were a reasonable facsimile-except for Clemens falling short of replacing Wells' excellence. They held first place for 131 days, including all of them after June 9. On July 18, two months into Torre being back on the job, and 14 months since Wells threw his perfect game, all about the Yankees was perfect again. It was a Sunday afternoon in which the Yankees honored Yogi Berra before an interleague game against the Montreal Expos. Don La.r.s.en, the author of the only perfect game in World Series history, was there to throw the ceremonial first pitch to Berra, a nod to their collaboration in the 1956 perfecto. La.r.s.en and Berra watched the game from Steinbrenner's suite-level box. They saw history repeat itself.

Cone, the Yankees' starting pitcher, dominated the heavily right handed Expos, none of whom had faced him before, with fastb.a.l.l.s and sliders that disappeared from their swing plane. After only five innings, the thought occurred to Cone that he might have a shot at throwing a perfect game. The Expos kept going down with amazing ease; Cone would throw only 20 b.a.l.l.s to 27 batters. After almost every inning on the 98-degree day, Cone would return to the clubhouse to change one of the cutoff unders.h.i.+rts he wore beneath his jersey. By the time he retreated to the clubhouse in the eighth inning, the perfect game still intact, he noticed there was n.o.body in there. n.o.body wanted to break the tradition of not talking to a pitcher when he has a no-hitter or perfect game in progress.

"It was a ghost town," Cone said. "Even the clubhouse attendants were gone."

Cone kept the perfect game going through the eighth, though to do so it took a backhand grab of a grounder and surprisingly true throw from the unpredictable k.n.o.blauch at second base. Now Cone was only three outs away from baseball immortality. He walked back to the clubhouse. Again, the place was deserted. He changed unders.h.i.+rts again, then walked into the bathroom, stopping at one of the sinks in front of the large mirror. Alone, he looked at himself in the mirror and spoke aloud.

"What do we have to do to get this done?" he said. "This is the last chance you're ever going to have to do something like this."

He bent down, ran cold water from the faucet into his cupped hands and splashed the water over his face. He stared at himself in the mirror again.

"Holy s.h.i.+t," he said. "How am I going to do this?"

For a moment he was caught in a very awkward place between doubt and desire, trying to beat back one while encouraging the other in a battle inside his head.

Don't blow it, he thought to himself. he thought to himself.

And then he shook his head.

No, don't think that way! That's negative.

But doubt crawled back.

Don't blow it.

No. No negative thoughts. Get it done!

But don't blow it.

Finally, he stopped the internal doubt for good. Still staring into the mirror, he thought to himself, Screw the psychobabble! Go out there and get it done! Screw the psychobabble! Go out there and get it done!

Cone was 36 years old, a survivor of a scary aneurysm three years earlier, and well aware of his pitching mortality. He could not know it at the time, but this would be the last complete game he would ever throw, the last shutout, too. In fact, Cone would make 131 starts in his six seasons with the Yankees, and this would be his only shutout.

"I went out there for the ninth and-boom, boom, boom-struck out the first guy on three pitches," Cone said. "Then I got a humpback liner to left, which Ricky Ledee kind of lost in the seats or sun or whatever."

Ledee, though, caught the ball, however ungracefully. Cone needed one more out. The batter was Orlando Cabrera, a 24-year-old shortstop. Cabrera swung and missed at the first pitch and took the second one for a ball. On the next pitch, a slider, the 88th pitch of the game for Cone, Cabrera lifted a pop-up into foul ground near third base. Cone looked up and couldn't find the ball.

"I remember the sun was setting on that side of Yankee Stadium," Cone said. "As I looked up I got blinded by the sun, so I pointed, thinking Brosius might lose it in the sun. I just remember pointing at it, and Brosius was already camped under it at that point. I never saw the ball."

Brosius squeezed the pop-up in his glove. Cone was perfect. He dropped to his knees and reached for his head, in a sweet combination of disbelief and relief.

Torre always believed champions.h.i.+ps began with starting pitching and 1999 was no different, even with Clemens underperforming. Torre's rotation was remarkably durable and reliable once again. Cone, Clemens, El Duque, Pett.i.tte and Irabu made 152 of the teams' 162 starts, posting a 68-36 record. Steinbrenner, though, considered Pett.i.tte a drag on the staff and wanted him gone, especially after Pett.i.tte could not get out of the fourth inning of a game against the White Sox on July 28, 10 days after Cone's perfect game and three days before the trade deadline. Pett.i.tte was 7-8 with a 5.65 ERA at that point. Steinbrenner had a deal in place to s.h.i.+p Pett.i.tte to the Phillies.

While the Yankees were in Boston just hours away from the deadline, Steinbrenner conducted a conference call with Cashman, Torre and Stottlemyre. Steinbrenner said he was ready to trade Pett.i.tte.

"I can't believe you would even consider doing it!" Stottlemyre said.

Torre and Cashman also spoke out against trading Pett.i.tte. Finally, Steinbrenner gave in. He called off the deal.

"You better be right," he said to the three of them, "or you know what's going to happen."

Over the next 4 years, or until Steinbrenner let Pett.i.tte walk as a free agent, Pett.i.tte went 75-35 for Steinbrenner's Yankees, a .682 winning percentage. Over the rest of that 1999 season, Pett.i.tte was 7-3 with a 3.46 ERA before tacking on a 2-0 postseason. Pett.i.tte never truly engendered confidence from Steinbrenner, possibly because he carried himself with a sensitivity that belied his compet.i.tiveness.

Torre remembers one of the first big games Pett.i.tte pitched for him, on September 18, 1996, against Baltimore. It was the first game of a huge three-game series at Yankee Stadium against the second-place Orioles, whom the Yankees led by three games with 13 games to play. Pett.i.tte, 24, was pitching against veteran Baltimore righthander Scott Erickson. Torre walked into the trainer's room before the game and happened to find Pett.i.tte there.

"He looked scared to death," Torre said. "He was just sitting there, staring."

Torre learned to interpret such a look from Pett.i.tte as intense focus. Pett.i.tte pitched magnificently against Baltimore, allowing the league's top home-run-hitting team just two runs over 8[image]innings. Pett.i.tte did leave trailing, 2-1, but the Yankees rallied to tie the game in the ninth and win it in the 10th, 3-2.

"One thing I learned about Andy," Torre said, "is he thought you weren't allowed to be nervous. Jeter, as far as handling the pressure, is the best I've ever seen. But Andy, in spite of getting excited, managed to handle it the right way. The game never sped up for him.

"He's so honest, which is so refres.h.i.+ng, because not too many people own up to their shortcomings. He does. Whether it's a particular at-bat or pitch, he'll tell you. Andy is very honest.

"In fact, I remember when I talked to him about the possibility of coming back to the Yankees after he pitched those years in Houston. He said, 'I thought I had everything where I wanted it: coming home, being with family . . . I just didn't have fun playing. There was no fire. Just the thought of going back to New York has gotten me excited.' Probably the worst word in sports is being 'comfortable.' There's something about comfort that doesn't seem to fit with what you need to do. Andy missed New York. Andy was great. I think he taught Roger how to pitch in New York. And Roger taught Andy how to be stronger. Back then Andy was a little soft physically, but not mentally, that's for sure."

The trade for Clemens, meanwhile, did not turn out the way the Yankees expected. Clemens missed three weeks early in the season with a leg problem, and when he did pitch he looked nothing like the best pitcher in baseball as he had been in Toronto. He was 8-4 with an unseemly 4.98 ERA through the middle of July. He struck out 10 batters in a game only once. He looked far too ordinary.

"Roger struggled early on," Cone said. "He was getting booed at Yankee Stadium. Roger was always kind of aloof. He was kind of shy and insecure. People don't realize that about him. A lot of superstars are like that, surprisingly so. Roger was like that. He struggled to fit in. He struggled with New York. He was not pitching too well and in fact had trouble just hanging out. He would be disappearing before games. He was always hiding in the weight room or on the couch in the traveling secretary's office. Just kind of hiding out a lot. During the game he wasn't on the bench very much. He got better as he started to pitch better and got used to the guys."

One day in August, while the Yankees were in Seattle, Clemens asked Torre if he could use his office to call his mother. Torre said of course. A while later Torre stepped into the office to retrieve something and heard Clemens tell his mom, "I'm still just trying to fit in and be one of the guys."

When Clemens was done with the call Torre told him he wanted to speak to him.

" 'Fit in' my a.s.s," Torre told him. "You be who you are. Be Roger Clemens."

"I know," Clemens said. "That's what my mom is always telling me."

"Listen," Torre said, "you're allowed to be selfish. We traded for you because we wanted the guy who was pitching in Toronto, not somebody different. Not somebody who is just trying to fit in. You're just trying to sort of blend in here and that's not what we want. That's not what we traded for. You're too tentative."

Clemens agreed with Torre's a.s.sessment and vowed to be more a.s.sertive, though the Yankees still didn't see the dominating version of Clemens. He pitched only marginally better over his final 11 starts, going 5-6 with a 4.34 ERA.

"The thing with Roger that I found was you loved him," Torre said. "There are all the bells and whistles that you get with Roger but his heart was always in the right place. He was a good teammate, and that sort of surprised me, because before he got to us he had this reputation about being able to go home and not be around the team. And I told him. 'You can't do that,' and it was never a problem.

"He was a cheerleader in between starts. And he reminded me of Bob Gibson when he did start. We wouldn't be scoring for Gibby and he'd go, 'You guys . . . you've got to be s.h.i.+ttin' me.' And he'd go inside the clubhouse. Roger would do that. He was very outgoing, and yet it wasn't an act. If it was, he had himself convinced of that.

"He also had tremendous belief in himself and his pitching. If you don't believe that pitch is going to go exactly where you want it, then it's not going to go there. Roger believed every pitch was going where he wanted it to go."

Clemens did not come close to replacing Wells' production with the 1999 Yankees. He finished 14-10 with a 4.60 ERA, the worst ERA of his 24-year career. The Yankees still won the AL East with 98 wins, four more than second-place Boston. On the final weekend of the season, Torre sat down with Stottlemyre to map out their pitching plans for the playoffs when Torre decided to include Clemens in the discussion. Clemens, by reputation, was a protypical Game 1 starter, but in reality he had not been that kind of pitcher for the Yankees all year. Orlando "El Duque" Hernandez had led the staff that season with 17 wins. Torre decided he wanted Clemens to recognize that reality himself.

"Roger, who do you think should start Game 1?" Torre asked him.

"Duque," Clemens said.

Torre was a bit relieved to know he would not have to convince Clemens otherwise.

"What I like to do is see if people evaluate the same way I do," Torre said. "I figured, 'As much as he thinks of himself, let's see what he said.' "

If Clemens had said he deserved the ball for Game 1, Torre said, "we would have talked him out of it. We would have explained why that's not true. I always liked to believe that you could always try to make sense to people. I always try to make these guys understand there is another perspective other than theirs."

Clemens was Torre's number three starter, behind Hernandez and Andy Pett.i.tte. The Yankees blew through the Texas Rangers in the Division Series again, allowing only one run in the three-game sweep. Torre used the same order of pitchers in the American League Champions.h.i.+p Series against Boston, an arrangement that left Clemens returning to Fenway Park to pitch against Pedro Martinez in Game 3. The game was promoted in the manner of a heavyweight fight, a bout between Clemens, the expatriate Red Sox star, and Martinez, his replacement in Boston as the best pitcher in baseball and the soul of the franchise. The crowd arrived with the meanness and edginess of a mob. Indeed, before the day was done packs of fans would climb over themselves trying to claw down a canvas mural hung in one of the concourses in celebration of Clemens' two 20-strikeout games with Boston.

Clemens, a sh.e.l.l of himself all season, failed miserably amid the hostility. Torre removed him only one batter into the third inning with the score 4-0. Clemens walked off the mound and down the dugout steps gingerly, having something of a ready-made excuse because of some back stiffness. Clemens was charged with five runs in what became a 13-1 Boston victory, its only one of the ALCS. In the middle innings, with Clemens long gone and Martinez cutting apart the Yankees lineup, the crowd mocked Clemens by chanting, "Where is Roger?"

Part of what made Clemens great as a pitcher was his inflated sense of self, the same trait that prompted Torre to check with Clemens before aligning his postseason rotation. There is almost no concession in the man. He enjoyed not just being Roger Clemens, but also playing the role of Roger Clemens.

"He is needy, and he's got his own world he lives in. As far as competing, they're different people. Roger's always going to go out there and have that positive att.i.tude. That's the way he has to think."

Said Brian McNamee, Clemens' former personal trainer, and the one who told baseball special investigator George Mitch.e.l.l in 2007 that he injected Clemens with steroids, "The worst day was the day after Roger lost a game. Because he would blame everybody on the field. It was the umpire, it was the fielders, it was Jeter can't go to his left, it was the outfielders playing back too deep . . . it was always something. The ball. The ball's too slick. Oh, Posada? All the time. It was just a nightmare."

Torre never knew Clemens to look for excuses. He understood that Clemens' knack for ignoring reality at the cost of preserving his grand sense of self would not play well in the wake of his debacle in ALCS Game 3 in front of the Boston mob. Blaming his third-inning knockout on a stiff back, for instance, would invite his critics to diminish him further. Torre was concerned about what Clemens might say to reporters after the game.

As Torre took Clemens out of the game, he told him on the mound, "Just do yourself a favor. When they come in and talk to you, just tell them you were horses.h.i.+t. Because I know you're hurting. You know you're hurting. But that won't play well."

After the game, first the reporters asked Torre if Clemens, by evidence of the pained look he gave leaving the mound, was diminished by an injury.

Said Torre, "I think the score was making him grimace."

Then the reporters approached Clemens. Would he blame the results on his back? Was the ball too slick? This time, thanks to Torre's intervention, he actually revealed some concession.

"I think the thing for me tonight was location," Clemens said. "I didn't have good command, I fell behind and they made me pay for it."

Pett.i.tte, the man Steinbrenner wanted gone, immediately righted the Yankees in Game 4. With little room for error, he brought the ball and a 3-2 lead directly to Mariano Rivera. Pett.i.tte allowed the Red Sox only two runs in 7[image]innings. The Yankees broke open the close game with six runs in the ninth to win, 9-2. After the game Steinbrenner visited Torre in the tiny visiting manager's office at Fenway Park. Torre was happy for Pett.i.tte, and he was also happy for Joe Girardi, the selfless catcher who had been Torre's first recommended acquisition when he was hired in 1995. Problem was, Steinbrenner knew Girardi was one of Torre's soldiers and he would criticize Girardi often.

"Did you see how well Andy pitched?" Torre said to Steinbrenner. "And he couldn't have done it without Girardi!"

Torre started breaking down. Tears were coming down his cheeks. Steinbrenner didn't know what the h.e.l.l was going on.

Said Torre, "I was on hormones for my radiation treatment, and I was emotional. I remember George had been trying to dump Girardi from just about day one."

The next morning Steinbrenner called up Torre at the team's hotel.

"Do you want to have lunch?" Steinbrenner asked.

"No, Ali's here," Torre said.

"Well, bring Ali."

"No. We just want to be by ourselves here. I'm going to go work out and then we're going out to eat."

And then Torre hung up the phone.

Torre took the hotel elevator down to the floor with the fitness center. When the doors opened and he stepped out, he saw Steinbrenner standing there.

"You all right?" Steinbrenner asked.

"Yeah, I'm all right," Torre said. "Just emotional, that's all."

Said Torre, "That was the fun part about George. His bark was worse than his bite. He cared a lot."

That night Hernandez followed Pett.i.tte's gem with one of his own: he allowed one run on five hits over seven innings. The Yankees clinched the pennant so easily, 6-1, that Torre did not even have to use Rivera.

As with San Diego the previous season, the Yankees stormed through their National League opponent in the World Series, even if it was a Braves team with a renowned rotation of Greg Maddux, Tom Glavine, John Smoltz and Kevin Millwood. The Yankees out-pitched the famous Braves' staff, permitting Atlanta nine runs in a four-game sweep. Maddux held a 1-0 lead in the eighth inning of Game 1 and Glavine held a 5-2 lead in the seventh inning of Game 3 and yet the Yankees came back against both pitching greats.

With a three games to none lead, the Yankees could comfortably give the ball to their new number four starter, Clemens, who had fallen in line behind Hernandez, Pett.i.tte and Cone. That morning, Torre received a phone call with sad news: O'Neill's father had pa.s.sed away at about 3 a.m. Charles O'Neill was 79 and had been suffering from heart disease. Torre immediately called Paul. O'Neill's wife, Nevalee, answered the phone.

"Paul's not home," she said. "Oh, Joe, I don't know how we're going to get him to the ballpark. But we've got to find a way to get him there. That's where he needs to be."

O'Neill did make it to Yankee Stadium for Game 4, and batted third in the lineup. He went 0-for-3, but his teammates picked him up by jumping on Smoltz in the third inning with another of those quintessential Yankee rallies: one walk, two infield singles and two opposite field singles. They added up to three runs.

The Yankees would win 299 regular season games and three consecutive world champions.h.i.+ps from 1998 to 2000 without ranking among the top three home-run-hitting teams in the league and with no player hitting more than 30 home runs. Every other team in baseball over those three years had someone hit more than 30 homers at least twice. twice. Viewed another way, there were 113 times a player hit more than 30 homers in those three seasons-none of them were Yankees. Viewed another way, there were 113 times a player hit more than 30 homers in those three seasons-none of them were Yankees.

Buoyed by the 3-0 lead, Clemens brought the champions.h.i.+p home from there. He pitched well two outs into the eighth inning, allowing the Braves only one run in the 4-1 clinching victory. The Yankees had their second straight world champions.h.i.+p and their third in four years, and Clemens at last had his first. The Yankees streamed out to the mound after Rivera retired Keith Lockhart on a fly ball to Chad Curtis in left field. Across the crush of players, O'Neill found Torre and walked over to his manager. He threw his arms around Torre and hugged him, sobbing uncontrollably on his shoulder.

Clemens enjoyed the party as much as anyone. He was so excited by the t.i.tle that he arranged for his teammates to receive a second world champions.h.i.+p ring, this one he commissioned out of platinum. This is why he had asked Beeston to get him out of Toronto, to jump aboard the Yankees' champions.h.i.+p train while it was still rolling. Including the postseason, the Yankees won 109 games in 1999. It wasn't the record of 125 wins from 1998, but it was staggering nonetheless, especially when you consider their postseason dominance. The 1999 Yankees were 11-1 in the postseason, allowing only 31 runs in those 12 games and coming within one start by Clemens at Fenway Park from running the table without a loss. The champions.h.i.+p did fill a void in Clemens' prolific career.

"Roger was what he was coming out of high school," Torre said. "In a lot of ways, he's like Alex: they didn't let the advance notices down. Coming out of high school and college people expected big things and he delivered right away. He's a guy that doesn't know negative. Doesn't know failure. He paints a different picture of failure than a lot of people.