The Yankee Years Part 2

"I think the other guys on the team look at him and they see he's not a vocal leader, but what what he does and the way he competes is what inspires guys. It's the way he carries himself, too. He doesn't say stupid things. He just wants to blend in and play. He wants everything to go smoothly. It's really a credit to his parents." he does and the way he competes is what inspires guys. It's the way he carries himself, too. He doesn't say stupid things. He just wants to blend in and play. He wants everything to go smoothly. It's really a credit to his parents."

Said Torre, "He didn't care where the h.e.l.l he hit in the lineup, he didn't have an issue with anything. He'd say, 'Whatever you want to do.' That one series he played, against Boston in 2004, he had a broken bone in that hand. They gave him a shot for pain, and he made them stop giving him the painkiller because he couldn't get a feel for things with his hand. He just played on.

"Even in 2007, in the playoffs, his body was beat up. As a manager, you think once the postseason comes around something is going to change, especially with him because he's been so good in the postseason. But that's when I said, 'He's trying, but he can't get it done.' He was frustrated, extremely frustrated. I think his body just wasn't able to keep the promises. The thing is, I can ask him right now if anything was hurting and he still wouldn't tell me, even if it was two years ago."

Another rare time when Torre saw Jeter frustrated was in April of 2004, when Jeter endured an 0-for-32 slump, the longest hitless streak by a Yankee in 27 years. It happened to be his first month playing with Alex Rodriguez, who had an 0-for-16 slide himself that month.

"There were people saying the slump was because Alex was there," Torre said. "You knew that wasn't the case, not if you were in the clubhouse and you knew the personalities. Of course, Alex came to me and said, 'I'm trying to help him.' I said, 'Good. That's important.' "

During the hitless streak Jeter fouled off a bunt attempt with a runner on second base and two outs, a concession to the slump rather than trying to drive in the runner. After the inning, Torre went up to Jeter and asked him, "What the h.e.l.l are you doing?"

"Mr. T," Jeter said while laughing at himself, "I need a hit."

Said Torre, "He knew it was bad baseball. That streak got to him. But he wasn't about to be the kind of guy who was going to give in and take a day off. I presented it to him several times and he wanted no part of that. He could have been 0-for-100 and he was not going to give in and take a day off."

If there was any downside to Jeter, it was his range at shortstop, which statistical a.n.a.lysts annually derided as among the worst in baseball. When Jeter arrived in the big leagues, he had a habit of reaching for b.a.l.l.s to his left with two hands, which effectively reduced his reach. Jeter worked to improve his technique, but according to the number crunchers who charted batted b.a.l.l.s, he never conquered his difficulty ranging to his left. Part of the problem was that he often played through leg injuries without making it known publicly. If limited range was Jeter's Achilles' heel, Torre was more than willing to live with it because of everything else Jeter gave the Yankees. After all, the Yankees did win four World Series and six pennants with Jeter manning the shortstop position. Torre still wanted the ball hit to Jeter with the game on the line, as great a cut-to-the-chase test of a shortstop's value as anything.

"There were times he'd play more up the middle than you'd want him," Torre said. "You'd move him, but then he'd keep creeping and you'd move him back. Then he'd make that play in the hole, the one with the jump throw, and there was n.o.body who could make a play like that. You knew his limitations as a shortstop, but when you looked at the whole package, it worked.

"I used to kid him about playing center field. He never wanted to move. What you love about him is that he doesn't make excuses, he doesn't s...o...b..at, he doesn't do any of that stuff. He just goes out and plays."

Fate brought Jeter to the right team, and it wasn't so much because it was the Yankees, the franchise he dreamed of playing for as a kid, as much as it was because of the band of brothers in those pinstriped uniforms. The way Jeter played baseball was the way all of them played baseball, and for their unselfishness they were blessed with four World Series t.i.tles. It was the only kind of baseball Jeter knew growing up and it was the only kind of baseball he knew as a major leaguer, until the Yankees began to change around him. It was foreign to him to see teammates concern themselves with individual statistics or to actually find comfort in the convenience of some sort of ailment as a means of taking off a day here or a week there. It became apparent to Jeter in 2002 that the gang he loved, the kind of baseball he loved, was gone. The Yankees lost the Division Series that year to the Anaheim Angels, and they did so without Paul O'Neill, Scott Brosius, Tino Martinez, Chuck k.n.o.blauch, all of whom retired or were allowed to move on to other clubs. Jeter, uncharacteristically, bared his emotional wounds after the last game of the series, telling reporters who inquired about his surprise with the Yankees getting knocked out, "It's a different team."

Said Jeter, "It was was a different team." a different team."

Torre knew it, too.

"It was just not an unselfish team," Torre said. "We were all spoiled. Derek, too. Derek comes up to the major leagues and all of a sudden you win four World Series in five years. When you look at the guys who were no longer there: O'Neill, Tino, Brosius, k.n.o.blauch . . . You try to figure out why in 2002 that ferociousness wasn't there, the refuse-to-be-denied stuff. It wasn't there. The team wasn't tough enough.

"When you're in a clubhouse with people and you play alongside them, you know when you walk out on the field the other team is going to be in for a fight. You have to have that feeling. It's about trust. That guy on the mound might not get the batter out, but the game is not going to speed up for him. He knows how to channel his emotions. What changed was a number of players out there are trying to do the job to their own satisfaction, instead of getting the job done. A lot of those players are more concerned about what it looks like as opposed to getting dirty and just getting it done. Those other teams, they were ferocious."

Said pitcher Mike Mussina, who arrived in 2001, "I always thought the personality of the team fed off of Joe Torre. And Joe was never too emotional either way, up or down. He trusted his players and trusted them to be ready. One player may leave, but another player comes in. He's certainly capable of doing the same job the other guy did. The only question is, it's New York City. Can they do it in this atmosphere versus the atmosphere they were already doing it in?

"If you look at the group they put together that won four of five World Series, and if you're looking to put that group together again, well . . . It's like getting the best poker hand you can possibly get on the deal. That's how lucky you are to have it even once."

It never happened again. Jeter never won another World Series with Torre. Over time, the Old Guard Yankees and their unselfish ferocity dwindled to almost nothing, and the Yankees became something else entirely, no longer a perfect fit for Jeter. The clubhouse filled with quirky individuals and mult.i.tudes of agendas, and none of the interlopers were more complex than Rodriguez, who began riding an uncomfortable shotgun to Jeter in the Yankees infield in 2004. By the next spring training, Rodriguez seemed so out of place in pinstripes that Torre was calling individual players into his office to implore them to find some way, any way, to help Rodriguez fit in. Sheffield, Giambi, Posada, Jeter . . . Torre tapped all of them to help with the maintenance of Rodriguez.

"My feeling is with every player," Torre said, "you've got him on your team and you know what his ability is, so now my job is do whatever I can to get the most out of that ability. Every place he's been, he's been the voice of the team. He's used to more responsibility than he needed to take on with the Yankees. So in this case I remember calling in Sheff, Jeter, Giambi, Georgie, and just saying, 'He's got to feel important. We need to do this, guys. He can give us a lot, and we just need to make him feel how much we rely on him and how important he is.' "

Did Jeter get comfortable with performing that kind of mental maintenance with Rodriguez? "Not necessarily," Torre said. "But he did understand."

It was a long way from the culture Jeter knew as a younger player. He looks back on those champions.h.i.+ps and it is not so much the t.i.tles that he misses as much as it is the shared bond among people who all played the game the same way he did.

"I think everyone had the right mentality," Jeter said. "The right frame of mind. Yeah, you have to be talented in order to win, but you have to have the right mindset. And that mindset is, do whatever whatever it takes to win a game. It sounds simple, but we really didn't have anyone that cared more about putting up statistics, you know what I mean? I mean, if somebody had to hit a groundball to second base, they hit a groundball to second base. You don't get a stat for that. You actually get a negative stat for that. But that's how you win games. it takes to win a game. It sounds simple, but we really didn't have anyone that cared more about putting up statistics, you know what I mean? I mean, if somebody had to hit a groundball to second base, they hit a groundball to second base. You don't get a stat for that. You actually get a negative stat for that. But that's how you win games.

"I never understood that part of baseball. You could have a guy at second base and no outs, all right? Guy hits a groundball to second base. That's good baseball, with nothing to show for it. The next guy hits a groundball to second base. Now he's an RBI machine. Then they say, 'Well, this guy doesn't hit with runners in scoring position.' He did exactly what he's supposed to do. And that's why this guy is an RBI guy? No. It depends on the situation.

"But you have some teams and some guys, they get a guy on second base with n.o.body out and they don't care about moving the guy over. If they get a hit that way, great, but they're trying to get a hit, as opposed to doing what they should be doing. And that's how you win.

"I think it was the character of the guys, but I think it was also that when we got used to winning, people understood that's what you have to do to win."

In his first eight full seasons in the major leagues, 19962003, Jeter played on Yankees teams that won 64 percent of their games, won 16 of 20 postseason series, played in six World Series, won four world champions.h.i.+ps and came within three games of winning six t.i.tles in eight years. It was and remains the greatest dynasty in modern baseball-that is, since the expansion era began in 1961 and in spite of free agency that began in 1975. It was a special dynasty because its trademark was more so the character of the players than it was their talent. The lasting impression is how those Yankees played collectively, not how they played individually. And when they were at their peak, at their optimum nexus of youth, know-how and fierce resolve, the Yankees were a thing of beauty that for one glorious year won more games than any collection of ballplayers ever a.s.sembled.

A Desperation to Win

This may best capture the absurdist nature of what it could be like working for George Steinbrenner at the height of his obsessive, unforgiving, hands-on reign as commander in chief of the Yankees: Torre's job was on the line less than one week into managing the 1998 Yankees, the team that would win more games than any team in baseball history. With Mariano Rivera on the disabled list, the Yankees lost their first three games, in Anaheim and in Oakland, by a combined score of 21-6. Steinbrenner called his rookie general manager, Brian Cashman, the young former a.s.sistant who had replaced Bob Watson and was on the trip, and sent him home from the West Coast as punishment. The newspapers were full of speculation about who might replace Torre, such as Davey Johnson.

When the Yankees finally won a game, in the fourth game of the season in extra innings against the Athletics, Torre asked the staff and players to sign the lineup card and he sent it overnight to Cashman at his home, where, like a teenager, he had been grounded by The Boss. "Congratulations," Torre wrote. "The first of many." Little did Torre know the "many" that year would be a record 125 victories, postseason included.

First, however, came more pain and a full-blown crisis. The Yankees lost again the next night, a Monday night in Seattle, by getting blown out by the Mariners, 8-0. Not only did Seattle starter Jamie Moyer dominate the Yankees by striking out 11, but he also bullied them, dusting Paul O'Neill with a pitch without any retribution from the Yankees. The Mariners, under manager Lou Piniella, made a habit of throwing at O'Neill, who had played for Piniella in Cincinnati. Piniella knew he could throw the emotional O'Neill off his game with a strategically placed pitch or two.

"It got to be ridiculous," Torre said. "If Lou could have run him over at the hotel he would have done that. He knew what got Paulie's goat. That was about as obvious as it got, and it never went away."

After five games, the 1998 Yankees were 1-4, in last place, already 3 games out of first, outscored 36-15, at risk of losing their manager and letting teams like the Mariners kick sand in their faces. Torre was especially blue after the 8-0 defeat. Normally, he would grab a postgame dinner with Zimmer, his bench coach. That night he ate alone.

"It was an ugly game and I was down. Really down," Torre said. "I didn't ask anybody to go with me. Zim said, 'Do you want me to go?' I said, 'No.' I just went and had some dinner and some wine, and just sat there by myself."

The next day Torre called a team meeting, and before holding that meeting he reviewed his notes. On rare occasions, Torre held meetings immediately after a game. Those meetings usually were quick ones and allowed Torre to vent some anger. The full-blown ones required preparation. During games, if Torre saw something that needed to be addressed in a meeting, he would write notes to himself on the back of his lineup card. Whenever Zimmer would see Torre pull out the lineup card and flip it over, he would remark in a stage whisper, "Uh-oh." He knew what was coming. Sometimes Torre would ask Zimmer what he should do about addressing the team and Zimmer always would reply, "Wait 'til tomorrow. Wait 'til tomorrow." Torre took lots of notes during that 8-0 loss to Seattle. He decided this was a meeting that would wait until the next day.

"I was more down than angry at the time," Torre said. "And I wasn't about to have a meeting when I was down. I'd rather be angry. After I take notes I don't even refer to them at the meeting, but when I write them down it helps me remember them.

"That day when I spoke to them, I basically told them how I felt and how bad they were and how p.i.s.sed I was. I told them what I did the night before. I retraced my steps. I told them I went out alone, didn't want to be with anyone. That's how bothered I was by how we were playing. I pretty much went through everything with them. We were playing horses.h.i.+t, and it was especially bad coming out of spring training with such a bad feeling."

Said Cone, "It was one of his more forceful meetings. There was a lot of talk from people who said n.o.body had gone 1-5 to start the season and came back to win a World Series. There was some talk about that. I remember Joe started it off and he wasn't happy.

"Torre was good. He always got his point across and then he'd go around the room and a few guys spoke. Straw said something, Raines spoke . . . Joe would say, 'Anybody else got something to say? Bernie?' Bernie never had much to say. He'd go around the room and challenge guys to say something. He was real good at pointing out a veteran and asking, 'What do you think?' "

When Torre pointed to Cone, the veteran pitcher responded with an emotional speech. Cone started out by recognizing the potential impact of Steinbrenner's impatience. The Yankees knew what was at stake, even this early in the season. They knew the newspapers in New York were full of stories that Steinbrenner was thinking about getting rid of Torre.

"Guys, we've got to get going," Cone said. "We've got to get it together as a team. And we've got to do it now or this whole thing could be dismantled because the owner will react."

Like Torre, Cone was angered by what he saw the previous night. He watched Seattle designated hitter Edgar Martinez, batting in the eighth inning with an 4-0 lead, take a huge hack on a 3-and-0 pitch from reliever Mike Buddie-five innings after Moyer had dusted O'Neill with a pitch. Cone knew some position players were grumbling after the game that Pett.i.tte, the Yankees starter, did not retaliate for Moyer's message pitch, a problem Cone calls "a brewing situation in the clubhouse between pitchers and hitters that can really cause divisiveness in the clubhouse-a hot b.u.t.ton issue I've seen over the years." Martinez's brash swing with the game already in hand was another insult.

"It's the old-school mentality we have to have," Cone continued in front of his teammates. "You have to find something to hate about your opponent. Look across the way. These guys are real comfortable against us. Edgar is swinging from his heels on 3-and-0 when they're up by about 10 runs! Those guys are too comfortable. Our guys are getting knocked down.

"Listen, everybody knows Andy's a gamer, but the hitters need to know we're going to protect them. We've got to get the emotion going here. We've got to look across the way and find something in our opponent we don't like. That team took us out in the '95 playoffs. I hate this place, the Kingdome. I left half my arm on that mound! I left a vein out on that mound in '95, and it p.i.s.ses me off to see these guys walk all over us and us have no pride being the Yankees!"

Cone looked at Tino Martinez, the former Mariner who played on that '95 Seattle team that knocked off the Yankees.

"No offense, Tino," Cone said. "You're over here now, but I f.u.c.king hate those guys. I hate this place. If you want to find some motivation here, that's part of it. It's also Edgar swinging 3-and-0 trying to take us deep. They're sticking it in our face! And there's only one way to react to that."

It was cla.s.sic Cone: emotional, honest and inspirational. He held the attention of all of his teammates. Starting pitchers rarely hold so much sway over a baseball team. They play only about 33 times a year, once every five days or so. Their skills are far more narrow than the position players; they have no need to field, hit or run with any great skill. They spend the majority of their time watching, not playing. As such, they tend to keep to their own group, as if a language or cultural barrier set them apart from the everyday players. But Cone was one of those rare specialists who crossed all lines and commanded the attention and respect of everyone in the clubhouse. They knew he had put himself on the front lines of the 199495 strike, survived turbulent times with the Mets, won a World Series with Toronto as a hired gun. He also took a great chunk of media responsibility in the clubhouse, even on days he wasn't pitching, which many of the more reserved players considered grunt work, like trench-digging, they were only too happy to see him shoulder. The entire package Cone gave the Yankees was made all the more meaningful by his compet.i.tiveness. They saw that he competed with the emotional att.i.tude and edge of an everyday player.

Said trainer Steve Donahue, "He used to yell at me. We'd be in Baltimore in August. Hot as h.e.l.l. His face would be cherry red. I'd come up to him with an ammonia towel, and he'd scream at me, 'I'll f.u.c.king let you know! Get the f.u.c.k away!' And he'd keep screaming at me. Happened every day game.

"Then he'd come in after the game and say, 'Sorry. Didn't mean to get on you.' Whether it was union issues or any controversial stuff going on, he was like the governor. He would take care of all of the media. And he was always great talking to the young kids. He was a huge influence."

While the champions.h.i.+p Yankees looked to Jeter for his consistency and optimism, especially in the clutch, Cone was their fire and brimstone, the stuff that kept their furnace burning at peak capacity. He was a friend, a motivator, a mentor, a clubhouse policeman, a jokester . . . whatever he needed to be. No one on those champions.h.i.+p Yankees teams occupied a more important dual role-on the field and in the clubhouse combined-than Cone, a truth made obvious when a worn-down Cone, his shoulder finally surrendering to all those pitches over all those years, was allowed to leave as a free agent after the 2000 season. The Yankees, despite replacing Cone with Mike Mussina, the top free agent pitcher then, would never win another World Series without Cone. On the day Cone left in 2000, Paul O'Neill, who would come back for one more year himself, said, "I said when I re-signed that I wanted to play out this run with this group of players. This shows that this run is coming to an end. The Yankees might keep on winning, but it'll be with a different group of players. In one sense, things continue because they brought in Mussina. But, in another sense, things are ending because Coney is gone."

The Yankees would give Mussina Cone's old locker, the one at the end of a row, near a hallway, and the closest to Torre's office, which was just around the corner in that hallway. Even Mussina, who never played with Cone, but as if aware of a ghost appendage, understood how important Cone was to the Yankees and their champions.h.i.+ps.

"When Coney left and I came in, that changed things," Mussina said, "because a lot of people really liked Coney. He had some great years, and he had some tough years, but everybody loved him. He just took the ball and said, 'I don't care. Just give me the ball. I'll go win.' Players respect that. Players respect other players' approach. If the results are good or bad, if your approach to playing the game is the right way, players respect that. If your approach is wrong, I don't care how good a player you are, other players don't look at you the same way."

Cone owned the total respect of his teammates, and so his words that night in Seattle resonated. The impact of the meeting was undeniable immediately. The Yankees suddenly were a different team. They were a historic team.

Chuck k.n.o.blauch hit the first pitch of the game for a home run. Jeter doubled. O'Neill doubled. After a brief pause on a strikeout by Williams, Martinez singled. Darryl Strawberry hit a home run. After Tim Raines grounded out, Jorge Posada hit a home run. Eight batters into the game, the Yankees had five extra-base hits and a 6-0 lead. By the fourth inning it was 11-1, by the end it was 13-7 and by June the AL East effectively was over. The Yankees were that good.

They beat Seattle again after their breakout game to come home 3-4 on a two-game winning streak. Steinbrenner's dark mood suddenly changed. After letting Torre's job status linger for public doubt, Steinbrenner greeted Torre at the team's annual Welcome Home dinner with a smile. "Ah, you're my guy," Steinbrenner told him. "You're my guy."

Beginning with that meeting in Seattle, the Yankees went 64-16, becoming the only Yankees team in history to play .800 baseball over 80 games. It was beautiful baseball to watch. They bludgeoned teams and they carved up teams-whatever means was necessary-and they were relentless no matter their methodology. There was, however, one problem: it was their counterculture lefthander David Wells.

On the night of May 6 in Texas, the Yankees gave Wells a 9-0 lead in the third inning. Wells, though, began to pitch carelessly, especially when he thought teammates were not making plays behind him. When he noticed relief pitchers warming up as he gave up hit after hit, Wells seemed to lose whatever little focus he had left. Wells gave up seven runs in a stretch of only eight batters before Torre pulled him from the game. The Yankees won the game, 15-13, but Torre was upset with Wells' effort, and made sure to tell reporters so after the game, going so far as to chastise Wells for being out of shape.

"When Boomer read it in the newspapers, he was livid," Cone said. "He was p.i.s.sed at Joe. He was p.i.s.sed at Mel. He was p.i.s.sed at the world. He called me up and I told him, 'You call Joe and have a meeting and air him out. Get this thing out.' So he did. We both went to the ballpark early that day in Minnesota and Boomer went in and closed the door and he and Joe went at it pretty good, back and forth."

Wells told Torre he was p.i.s.sed to read the comments in the newspaper.

"You've got a problem with me? Call me in," Wells said.

"You bring it on yourself," Torre said. "If you want to be here you better start acting like it."

Wells was also angry that Torre warmed up relief pitchers so quickly in a game, signaling a lack of confidence in Wells. Torre told Wells that he was p.i.s.sed every time Wells threw his arms up in disdain if one of his fielders did not make a play behind him.

"I'll make you a deal," Torre told him. "I won't do that, I won't get relievers warmed up. But I can't have you out there throwing your arms up like, 'All these bad things. Why are they happening to me?' That doesn't work. Everybody out here is playing their a.s.s off. Look at your infielders. After you go like that . . ."-Torre threw up his arms in mock disgust-"what do you want them to do? Everybody out there is trying to help you win."

The meeting ended in, at best, a cold truce. Both men were still angry. Cone saw Torre after the meeting finally ended.

"I told him to go talk to you, Joe," Cone said. "Better that way than what was going on."

"I know, I know," Torre said.

"Did you get it straightened out?"

Torre didn't give an answer. He just stared at Cone, the anger still evident.

"I'm working on him, Joe. I'm working on him," Cone said.

Wells' ERA stood at an unsightly 5.77 after that game in Texas. But after the meeting in Minnesota, he was a changed pitcher. The next time he took the ball he beat the Royals, 3-2, a game in which Torre gave him so much rope that Wells threw 136 pitches over eight innings. His start after that was simply perfect. Wells threw 120 pitches in a perfect game at Yankee Stadium against the Minnesota Twins, one of only 17 perfect games in history. He did not walk a batter and struck out 11 in the 4-0 win. Wells went from essentially quitting on the mound to throwing a perfect game with only one start in between. It was a 12-day snapshot that fairly captured the entire career of Wells, who could be as exasperating as he could be great.

"Wells would exert more energy to find a way not to be on the field for pregame practice than it would have taken to be out there," Torre said. "You have rules and the only way rules are effective is if everybody has to live by them. We had rules that you had to be on the field for however long it was, an hour of batting practice. I said, 'If you have to leave the field, you have to get permission from a coach or me.'

"I try to a.n.a.lyze it, try to be in somebody else's skin, but n.o.body needs that much work in the trainer's room that it can't wait 20 minutes. I think it could be a throwback to needing the attention. Whether it was positive or negative, he needed the attention. I think that was more a part of it.

"He can be an engaging personality, and then there are times as a manager where you could hate his guts. He'd go out there and I'd watch his body language, and I'd watch Jeff Weaver and I'd watch Sidney Ponson, those are two guys who gravitated toward him, and I saw the same things. 'Woe is me.' It drove you nuts.

"The players addressed that with him, too. Jeter or O'Neill said something. It was never any big deal. I told him everybody was trying to help him win and said, 'It's not fair to them.' He admitted it. But I think about his growing up without a male influence. Even though it doesn't stop you from being p.i.s.sed at him, you try to understand it.

"But he could pitch. pitch. My favorite story was calling him in and telling him how much he weighed and saying, 'There's no way you can pitch effectively at that weight.' Of course, now he's going to go out there and pitch a gem because now he's going to prove it to me. He had an arm like Warren Spahn, blessed with a rubber arm. He could pitch any time for as long as you want him. There were other issues-back, gout, whatever-but there were never any arm problems." My favorite story was calling him in and telling him how much he weighed and saying, 'There's no way you can pitch effectively at that weight.' Of course, now he's going to go out there and pitch a gem because now he's going to prove it to me. He had an arm like Warren Spahn, blessed with a rubber arm. He could pitch any time for as long as you want him. There were other issues-back, gout, whatever-but there were never any arm problems."

After the blowout meeting with Torre in Minnesota, and including the postseason, Wells went 19-3 with a 2.91 ERA. The Yankees went 23-4 when he took the ball in that turnaround. Wells led the league in winning percentage, shutouts, strikeout-to-walk ratio, and fewest baserunners per inning.

"He needed somebody to push him, he really did," Cone said. "Once he got it going after that perfect game, he really changed. He was lights out for the rest of the year. It was a Cy Young type year. He did need to be pushed. I don't know if you can trace it back to his childhood and not having a father around or what, but after that meeting he was really good. Since he was pitching so well Joe and Mel eased up on him. I stayed on him. I told Joe and Mel, 'Hey, I'm on him. We're with him. We're building him up. We're going to stay on him.'

"That was the beauty of Torre. He knew he had guys in that clubhouse who could police themselves and he allowed it to happen. He allowed us to do that. So when he did call a meeting, which was rarely, it was effective. He always knew we were on top of it. That particular clubhouse, we were on top of everything."

By any measurement, the 1998 Yankees were the pinnacle of the dynasty. They led the league in runs (though no one hit more than 28 home runs), pitching and defensive efficiency (a measurement of how well a team turns batted b.a.l.l.s into outs). The starting rotation-Cone, Wells, Pett.i.tte, Orlando Hernandez and Hideki Irabu-combined for a 79-35 record. Mariano Rivera, with Mike Stanton, Graeme Lloyd and Jeff Nelson providing the setup relief, was 3-0 with a 1.91 ERA and 36 saves.

So deep was the lineup that Williams led the team in batting, O'Neill led in total bases, Martinez led in home runs, Jeter led in hits and k.n.o.blauch led in walks. Scott Brosius, who hit .203 the previous season for Oakland, batted .300 and drove in 98 runs-while making all but three of his starts out of the eighth or ninth spots in the batting order. Posada and Joe Girardi helped give the Yankees 88 RBI out of the catching position. Five players combined to give them 74 RBI out of the left-field position: Chad Curtis, Strawberry, Raines, Ricky Ledee and Shane Spencer. Homer Bush was a pinch-running specialist who also happened to hit .380. The roster was so deep and productive that the players Torre brought off the bench produced a better on-base percentage (.370) than those who started (.364) that season.

"I give a lot of credit to Raines and Strawberry," Cone said. "They provided veteran leaders.h.i.+p. They were real leaders, especially when we threw our secondary lineup out there with Straw, Raines and Homer Bush. We were almost better on those days. I think that set the tone. The depth of that roster really stands out for me. I was never on a team that was that deep. From one through 25, I don't think there was ever a better team."

Billy Beane, the general manager of the Oakland A's, watched in awe as the Yankees beat his club eight times in 11 games, outscoring Oakland 81-48.

"I've been in the game 30 years," Beane said. "That 1998 team was one of the greatest teams in the history of the game. The greatest teams I ever saw were the 1998 Yankees and the '75-'76 Reds. They had everything you'd a want a baseball team to have. To win one game against them was a big deal. I remember we had one game against them that was rained out, so we had to play a four-game series in three days. We didn't have a particularly great pitching staff. Well, the first game of the doubleheader, poor Mike Oquist was pitching. We knew we had three more games to play, so we had to leave him out there, otherwise we would have wound up throwing an infielder in the second game. We literally ran out of pitching in a four-game series.

"They wore you out. They pounded you. The impact they would have on your pitching staff when you were done playing them would carry over for another week. And one thing about getting beat by the Yankees: they did it with cla.s.s. It was as if they beat you in rented tuxedos."

The roster was a near-perfect construct, of youth in the everyday positions, experience and wisdom off the bench, power and speed, lefthanded and righthanded pitching . . . the Yankees lacked nothing. They added to that talent with an insatiable desire to win. During the 1998 season Cone put his finger precisely on what made the Yankees great when he observed, "There is a desperation desperation to win." to win."

Martinez, for instance, was habitually hard on himself. The slightest slump, even a hitless game, would prompt the first baseman to grow angry with himself. Torre would have to call him into his office.

"Let me ask you a question," Torre told Martinez one time. "I know you don't want to hear this, but you're sitting here in this clubhouse and you're thinking you're letting everybody down. If Derek Jeter went 0-for-8, would you feel like he was letting you down?"

"No," Martinez said.

"Well, that's the way we feel about you."

The Yankees took it personally on those rare occasions when they did lose. n.o.body took failure harder than O'Neill, the guy people in the front office had warned Torre back in 1996 was a bit "selfish." That reputation came about because of the regularity with which O'Neill would trash watercoolers, slam his bat to the ground or fail to run hard when he was mad at himself for hitting a routine pop-up or grounder.

"Paul O'Neill was just that guy who threw himself in there all the time," Torre said, "who never thought, What do I do if this doesn't work out? And he was a great soldier. Not selfish and not self-conscious. He didn't care what it looked like. He didn't care how ugly the swings were. His job was to get on base.

"His selfishness, if you want to call it that, came from the fact that he wanted to get a hit every time up. He didn't have a selfish bone in his body. He wanted to win above everything else. There was never an excuse in this guy. "

One time when O'Neill hit a routine grounder and, out of frustration, he failed to run hard, the fielder bobbled the ball. O'Neill still was thrown out at first. His lack of hustle prevented him from reaching base safely, and he knew it. After the game, O'Neill walked into Torre's office and threw a one-hundred-dollar bill on the manager's desk.

"You're not going to solve this thing by clearing your conscience," Torre told him. "You keep that hundred."

Said Torre, "What you had to understand was that he needed to win. he needed to win."

Said Donahue, "When we lost a game, I don't care if it was in April or May, he'd come in the clubhouse and from halfway across the room he'd be firing bats into his locker. We'd be back in the trainer's room, hear the noise and know right away, 'Oh, s.h.i.+t. We lost.' He'd be so p.i.s.sed. No pitcher was ever any good, either. When that guy they made the movie about, the science teacher for Tampa Bay, Jim Morris, got him out, O'Neill went crazy. 'Who are they going to bring in next to get me out? A gym teacher? A plumber?'

"He'd always say, 'That's it. I'm done. I can't hit.' And Zim would sit there and go, 'Hey, I got a buddy in Cincinnati who can get you a bricklayer's job . . .'