The Yankee Years Part 9

The Yankees answered back, nicking Schilling for the tying run in the seventh on singles by Jeter, O'Neill (on what would be his final plate appearance as a Yankee) and Martinez. Clemens struck out Schilling to start the bottom of the inning, but when he yielded a single to leadoff hitter Tony Womack on his 114th pitch, Torre removed him. Mike Stanton pitched out of the inning to preserve the tie, but now Torre had a decision to make with Stanton's spot in the batting order due up third in the eighth inning.

"Who's going to come in and pitch the eighth inning?" Zimmer asked him.

"Mendoza," Torre said.

"You can't bring in Mendoza," Zimmer said. "You've got to bring Mo in."

"We're on the road," Torre said. "Who the f.u.c.k am I going to save this game with?"

"I know. But you'll kick yourself in the a.s.s if you never get Mariano in the game."

"But what the h.e.l.l am I going to do? Who am I going to trust with a lead?"

"So, what about Mariano now?"

"Yeah, sure-if Sori hits a home run here. It'll solve the whole problem."

Torre barely had finished getting the words out of his mouth when Soriano golfed a pitch from Schilling over the wall in left-center field to give the Yankees a 2-1 lead. Now, with a lead, the decision was obvious: it would be Rivera, the ultimate weapon, for the last six outs.

Rivera was devastating in the eighth inning against the heart of the Arizona order. Steve Finley did manage a groundball single, but Rivera fanned the other three hitters, Luis Gonzalez, Matt Williams and Bautista. He threw only 14 pitches in the inning.

The Yankees went quietly in the ninth against none other than Randy Johnson, who came out of the bullpen in the eighth inning the night after throwing 104 pitches in his Game 6 victory.

So it came down to this: Mariano Rivera on the mound with a one-run lead against the bottom of the Arizona lineup. Steinbrenner was standing in front of the bathroom mirror, combing his hair, preparing to soon accept the Commissioner's Trophy for a fourth straight year. Meanwhile, unbeknownst to Steinbrenner, Fox technicians slipped through a side door of the clubhouse and began hanging lights and cable to prepare for the postgame celebration. A Yankees security official, carefully, so as not to tip off Steinbrenner, whispered to them to try to shoo them away.

"You know, you can't be in here," the official said.

"We've got to set up," one of them said. "It's the ninth inning."

"But you can't be in here! The Boss will go nuts."

Well, this one did look like a lock for the Yankees, even with the television crew defying Steinbrenner's superst.i.tion. These were the forces in the Yankees' favor: *Rivera was undefeated in 51 career postseason games.*Rivera successfully had converted 23 consecutive postseason save opportunities.*The Yankees were 155-1 (.994) in franchise history when leading a postseason game after eight innings.*The Yankees were 45-0 under Torre when leading a postseason game after eight innings.*The Yankees' bullpen was undefeated in 52 consecutive postseason games (10-0).*The Yankees were undefeated under Torre in postseason games decided by one run (10-0).*The Yankees were 11-0 in postseason series since 1998.

What happened next was as stunning as the paranormal events of Halloween night and its follow-up at Yankee Stadium. There were no home runs this time. The Diamondbacks, borrowing from the Yankees' Champions.h.i.+p Baseball 101 textbook, formed the equivalent of an emergency bucket brigade-employing eight players in a span of 14 pitches to hit, bunt and run their way to one of the greatest endings to one of the greatest games of all time.

The endgame began when Mark Grace, choking up on his bat as a defense against Rivera's great cutter, fought off Rivera's signature pitch for a single to center field. David Dellucci pinch ran for Grace. The next batter, Damian Miller, dropped a bunt near the left side of the mound. Rivera, a slick, athletic fielder, pounced on it, wheeled and threw hard to Derek Jeter covering second base in an attempt to get the force-out.

Rivera made his great career with the cutter, a pitch that bores toward the hands of a lefthanded batter, away from a righthanded batter. But a fielder trying to quickly make a play on a bunt has no time to worry about grip. Amid the randomness of reaching into his glove and pulling out the baseball as it came to rest in the leather, Rivera incidentally came up with a grip that approximated a two-seam fastball, a pitch that has the exact opposite movement of his cutter, a left-to-right action. Rivera's throw began tailing, tailing, tailing away from Jeter's glove hand. Jeter began to position himself and stretch for it.

But something wasn't quite right.

As the Yankees took the field for the bottom of the ninth inning, Jeter had moved noticeably slower and stiffer. Maybe this was a perfectly awful time to be paying the price for his nonstop hustle. Jeter had ended the regular season on a hitting tear, and carried it into the Division Series against Oakland. Over 15 games he batted .375, including .444 against the Athletics in the playoffs. He was playing some of the best baseball of his life at the peak age of 27. And then, in the eighth inning of Game 5 of that series, Terrence Long of the Athletics lifted a foul pop fly toward the seats near the left-field line at Yankee Stadium. The Yankees were leading, 5-3, and were five outs away from advancing to the ALCS, but Oakland had one runner on base against Rivera. Jeter hauled after the pop-fly, knowing he was nearing the stands. Just as he caught the ball, Jeter smashed into the padded concrete wall with his hip and flipped into the stands, landing hard.

The Yankees won the game, but Jeter, just like that, suddenly stopped hitting. He was 2-for-17 against the Mariners and then 4-for-27 against the Diamondbacks, making him a .136 hitter after falling hard into the stands. If he was hurt, Jeter, of course, told no one, not even Torre. But as Rivera's two-seam throw to second base tailed away from him, Jeter was unable to stretch enough to catch it while keeping one foot on the base. The throw flew wide of his glove. It was an error on Rivera, and now the Diamondbacks had runners on first and second with no outs rather than having a runner on first base with one out-one play that essentially tripled Arizona's run expectancy from 0.54 runs to 1.51, according to 2007 run-expectancy models.

"He couldn't extend to get that throw," Torre said.

Even in an interview seven years later, Jeter was not about to make even the slightest concession to any injury limitation.

He was asked if he was hurt in Game 7.

"I was all right."

Told it looked like he was dragging his legs going out to the field, he replied, "I was all right."

Pushed, he said, "You know what? You get to a point, especially that late in the season, everybody's got something wrong with him."

He was reminded he had banged into the stands to get a pop-up versus Oakland.

"I was all right."

It's not an excuse if it was an injury, but Jeter still insisted.

"I was all right."

He paused.

"No, I was all right. I don't remember. It was a long time ago."

If he was healthy, would he have caught the throw from Mo? Got a glove on it?

"No. Mo threw a two-seamer . . . Maybe . . . No, I don't think. Nuh-uh. Even if I caught it we wouldn't have got him. I think it was Dellucci. We probably wouldn't have got him."

When Jeter was 24 years old and after the Yankees won the 1998 World Series, George Steinbrenner gave a book to him as a present: Patton on Leaders.h.i.+p: Strategic Lessons for Corporate Warfare. Patton on Leaders.h.i.+p: Strategic Lessons for Corporate Warfare. Steinbrenner inscribed it, "To Derek. Read and study. He was a great leader just as you are and will be a great leader. Hopefully of the men in pinstripes." When it came to physical ailments, Jeter lived a philosophy that was Pattonesque. For it was Patton who said, "If you are going to win any battle, you have to do one thing. You have to make the mind run the body. Never let the body tell the mind what to do. The body is never tired if the mind is not tired." Steinbrenner inscribed it, "To Derek. Read and study. He was a great leader just as you are and will be a great leader. Hopefully of the men in pinstripes." When it came to physical ailments, Jeter lived a philosophy that was Pattonesque. For it was Patton who said, "If you are going to win any battle, you have to do one thing. You have to make the mind run the body. Never let the body tell the mind what to do. The body is never tired if the mind is not tired."

Jeter was all right.

Just after Dellucci slid into second, putting the tying run in scoring position, Steinbrenner walked around a corner of the Yankees' clubhouse and was stunned by what he saw: television crews setting up for the trophy presentation!

"Get out of here!" he shouted. "You're jinxing me! Get out of here!" And he quickly shooed them out a door and into a hallway.

The Yankees were in trouble now: no outs, two on and another bunt play in order. Torre walked out to the mound, where he and the infielders converged around Rivera.

"Get an out," Torre told them. "I'm not worried about second and third with Mariano. Just get an out."

A pinch hitter, Jay Bell, bunted the next pitch. Rivera fielded quickly and fired a strike to Brosius at third base for the force-out. Brosius let himself relax as soon as he caught the ball for the out, never bothering to consider a throw across the infield to try to also get Bell at first base.

"I don't know if I planted the seed with Brosius when I said, 'Get an out,' " Torre said. "The guy at first base, he's out easily. What a surprise that was, because he caught the ball and he sort of just walked in, and the guy was like two-thirds of the way to first base. All he had to do was throw it. And we had a double play. But he was so good instinctively, and it was right there in front of him. It wasn't like he had to turn. He just never threw the ball. The game may have wound up with the same result. Who knows? But it would have been a little tougher for them because they would have had two outs."

Another pinch runner, Midre c.u.mmings, replaced Miller as the lead runner at second base. The next batter, Tony Womack, turned hard on a 2-and-2 pitch, sending it into right field for a double. c.u.mmings sped home with the tying run. Bell, carrying the winning run, stopped at third base on the double. Rivera hit the next batter, Craig Counsell. Now the bases were loaded, there was one out, and Luis Gonzalez was the hitter. Torre had a choice to make: play the infield back to try for a double play, or play the infield in to try to cut down at the plate the potential winning run of the seventh game of the World Series.

"I had no choice," Torre said. "At that point you play the infield up. If someone hits a groundball off Mo it's going to be an 87-hopper somewhere. You're not going to get a double play. And I hate to think of watching the winning run cross the plate while we're trying to get a double play, I don't care how slow the runner is."

Since Rivera became the Yankees' closer in 1997, hitters had taken 33 plate appearances against him with the bases loaded. In those situations they batted just .071, with just two hits, four sacrifice flies, one walk and just one double play.

Gonzalez had struck out and grounded out meekly against Rivera in the World Series, employing his usual wide-open stance in which his right pinkie and ring finger rest on the k.n.o.b of the bat. This time, employing the Diamondbacks' default defense mechanism against Rivera's cutter, Gonzalez choked up two inches on the bat.

"It was the first time I choked up all year," he would say later. "I told myself, Whatever you do, just try to put the ball in play somewhere."

Gonzalez fouled off one pitch. The next pitch was a cla.s.sic Rivera cutter, boring toward Gonzalez's hands. He swung. The bat cracked deeply just below the trademark upon contact. The baseball floated toward the left of Jeter and over his head. He was powerless to do anything about it, though he lunged in vain as the ball seemed not so much to fall but to parachute to a soft landing where the infield dirt meets the outfield gra.s.s. Bell bounded home happily with the winning run.

It was over. The World Series was over, sure. But the champions.h.i.+p Yankees as everyone had known them, as they knew themselves, ceased to exist, too. From 1998 through 2001, seven players took almost 15,000 at-bats for the Yankees, representing 67 percent of the team's total at-bats on four straight pennant-winning teams: Posada, Martinez, k.n.o.blauch, Jeter, Brosius, Williams and, O'Neill, or as they were known familiarly inside the walls of their clubhouse, Sado, Tino, k.n.o.bby, Jeet, Bro, Bernie and Paulie. The Old Guard. Each year the Yankees could d.i.c.ker with left field and the designated hitter spots, but the Yankees essentially were a set team for four years-and Martinez, Jeter, Williams and O'Neill even traced their Yankee roots to at least the 1996 champions.h.i.+p, too. The Yankees were a remarkably tight group and a remarkably durable group. But as they took off their uniforms after the Game 7 defeat, they knew it would never be the same again. The contracts of Martinez, k.n.o.blauch, Brosius and O'Neill were all expiring. O'Neill had made known his intention to retire.

"I came into the clubhouse," Torre said, "and George was there. He was, like we all were, stunned. I don't think we had any conversation. It was tough after the game because you knew you were saying goodbye to a lot of players. I had a meeting, and then I went over and hugged them all. You weren't going to have k.n.o.blauch back, you weren't going to have O'Neill back, Tino, Brosius-he was another one. Like O'Neill, he went right home, too."

Steinbrenner didn't want to linger. He left quickly to congratulate Diamondbacks owner Jerry Colangelo. On his way there he ran into Johnson and Schilling in a hallway. The two pitchers had accounted for all four of Arizona's wins and 59 percent of its outs in the series. They were dripping with champagne. Steinbrenner congratulated them. After shaking hands with Colangelo, Steinbrenner didn't know what to do with himself, except he did not want to go back to the Yankees clubhouse. So he walked to one of the Yankees' family buses and sat by himself. It was much too soon after the game for anyone else to be there, and when family members finally did begin to make their way out of the ballpark, some would peek into the first bus, see a brooding Steinbrenner, and decide to keep walking to the second bus. It was a difficult loss for Steinbrenner to accept.

"What do you say?" Torre said. "We had Mariano on the mound with a lead in the ninth inning. Of course, you get the question, 'Do you play the infield back?' Sure-and watch the winning run cross the plate on a soft-hit ball to shortstop. I didn't lose any sleep over it other than the result. There was really nothing. Now, did I do everything right? I don't know. But I know one thing: I wouldn't have done anything different."

Rivera stood in front of his locker and answered wave after wave of questions. He was neither angry nor sad. He was matter-of- fact about it all. In other words, even upon blowing the seventh game of the World Series, he was the same old Mariano.

"I made the pitches I wanted to make and they hit them," Rivera said. "That's baseball. I did everything I wanted to do. They beat me. They can say they beat me."

No one better represented what was being lost than O'Neill. He took off his uniform for the last time and changed into a black s.h.i.+rt and gray pants. He was 38 years old and maybe as willing as ever, but his body was betraying him, as happened in the first inning when he tried to stretch a double into a triple. His legs could not carry him quickly enough. O'Neill's on-base percentage had declined for five consecutive seasons since 1996. The 2001 season was his worst in pinstripes. It was time to go, he decided.

"Paul O'Neill was a great example of what we were about," Torre said. "He knew, 'I've got to find a way to do this.' And that's the kind of att.i.tude you have to have. Watch Jeter do it. Bernie Williams would do it, even without being an instinctive player. I wish I could explain it better than that. It's just something when you're around guys every day, it's that secure feeling you have to go out there and you're going to let them play.

"There's a certain amount of keeping track and keeping a little grip on certain things, so somebody doesn't go off half-c.o.c.ked or somebody doesn't lose their direction, but aside from that you trust these guys to play the game. I can honestly say that when the game's over that you just go home. If it wasn't good enough, it wasn't good enough. You knew they were out there giving it everything they had."

For O'Neill, there were no more watercoolers to topple, no more batting helmets to slam, no more bats to heave across the clubhouse toward his locker and no more pitchers who weren't good enough to get him out but somehow did. He was at peace that night, maybe not with the result of Game 7, but that he had given baseball the best effort that he could. After packing his bag he smiled softly as he caught the eye of Nick Johnson, a 23-year-old first baseman who had made his major league debut that August.

"Did you learn anything?" he asked Johnson. "It's yours now. You've got to keep it going."

Baseball Catches Up

Less than 48 hours after one of the most exciting and emotional World Series ever staged, including that historic Game 7 in 2001, and before the Diamondbacks even had time to stage a victory parade, Major League Baseball owners celebrated the occasion by voting at a meeting in Rosemont, Illinois, to put two teams out of business, beginning with the 2002 season. After watching the Yankees play in four straight World Series with three and even four times as much revenue as ten other franchises, they decided the economics of the game were so out of whack that the bottom of the baseball food chain simply needed to be eliminated. Such teams, they decided, were beyond hope. "There are certain markets where baseball cannot succeed," commissioner Bud Selig said that day. "Remarkably, there was strong sentiment to contract four four teams." teams."

The Montreal Expos were one obvious choice for obliteration. They were being owned and operated by the other 29 franchises, a ward of the baseball state. They averaged only 7,643 fans a game and generated a major-league-low $34 million in revenue. The Minnesota Twins, fresh off an 85-win season in which their attendance jumped 70 percent to 1.7 million, were considered the other team most likely to be excised, if only because their owner, Carl Pohlad, seemed to be a willing accomplice. Florida and Tampa Bay, while seemingly weaker franchises, also were mentioned, though stadium leases and threats of lawsuits made their elimination more problematic.

Not coincidentally, the contraction vote occurred at a time when the owners were trying to reach an agreement with the players a.s.sociation on a new collective bargaining agreement. "No, this is not a negotiating ploy," Selig said. "It's absolutely not that."

If nothing else, the contraction vote put two options in front of the players: either the weaker teams get more money from the richer teams, or they, and the jobs that go with them, get whacked. The Yankees were becoming too good for baseball's own good. Their success at generating gobs of money was blowing up the ideal that baseball afforded all teams a somewhat equal chance of winning. The Yankees generated $242 million in revenue in 2001, more than the Expos, Twins, Marlins and Royals combined. Their payroll had more than doubled since 1996, to $112 million. While other teams saw their narrow windows of building a champions.h.i.+p team close because of the cost of free agency, the Yankees kept the core of their team together because they never lost a player they wanted to keep.

The best such example of the power of their largesse occurred when Bernie Williams nearly signed with the Boston Red Sox after the 1998 season. During that season the Yankees had offered Williams $37.5 million over five years. After the season, their offer was up to $60 million for five years. As a free agent, though, Williams fell into the arms of the Red Sox, who lavished him with a $91.5 million offer over seven years.

The Yankees, meanwhile, turned their attention to White Sox slugger Albert Belle, whose temper and volatile behavior might sorely have tested the winning camaraderie of a team coming off 125 wins. Torre played golf with Belle in Arizona on a recruiting visit, and came away thinking the Yankees had such a strongly established clubhouse culture that not even Belle could screw it up.

"I asked him, 'What do you require?' " Torre said. "He said, 'I just require that you hit me fourth in the lineup.' I in essence said okay because it wasn't a big deal and I knew over time practicality would bear out that you may have to hit fifth or something on occasion. But that's all he said to me: just playing every day and hitting fourth. He was very easy to talk to. The thing I judged about Albert Belle was he played 160 games a year. How bad can it be? I didn't worry about the clubhouse. You know you usually can hook on to something where you say, 'Well, let's figure it out.' "

The Yankees offered Belle the money they offered Williams: $60 million for five years. Belle came back and asked that the deal be restructured for $52 million over four years. Steinbrenner signed off on it. Belle was about to become a Yankee with one simple "yes." But with the deal in place, Belle changed his mind because of second thoughts about playing under the scrutiny of New York. He ran to the comfort of the Baltimore Orioles and their last-ditch $65 million offer. Suddenly the Yankees were about to lose Belle to the Orioles and Williams to the Red Sox. What to do? They quickly came up with another $27.5 million for Williams, or $50 million more than what they had offered Williams during the season. Stein-brenner closed the deal himself at $87.5 million over seven years.

The Yankees had the money to get their way, and it was just as true in 2001 when they needed to replace Tino Martinez, Scott Brosius, Chuck k.n.o.blauch and Paul O'Neill-a first baseman, a third baseman and two corner outfielders. Among the free agents that winter was Barry Bonds, fresh off his record 73 home runs with the San Francisco Giants, but with a reputation for an ego even more outsized than his increasingly enormous body. "I had no interest," Torre said. "His name may have been thrown around, but there was never any serious talk about him. The one I was interested in was Johnny Damon."

The prize attraction for the Yankees, however, was Damon's Oakland teammate, Jason Giambi. Giambi was a devastating all-fields. .h.i.tter who won the 2000 Most Valuable Player Award, was the MVP runner-up in 2001, and improved his batting average in every one of his major league seasons: .256, .291, .293, .295, .315, .333, .342. Giambi, who was drafted as a skinny infielder who was projected to hit about 15 home runs a year, grew into a monster of a hitter who slammed 47 doubles and 38 home runs in 2001. If there was a downside to Giambi it was that he was about to turn 31 years old and seemed to be growing larger and increasingly less mobile, with an impending future as a designated hitter written all over him.

Cashman and Steinbrenner asked Torre what he thought about the Yankees' signing Giambi. Torre told them he was against the idea. Torre told them he preferred to bring Martinez back for one year while grooming Nick Johnson to take over as his replacement at first base and to spend the big money on an outfielder such as Damon.

"I liked Giambi," Torre said. "In Oakland he hit the ball the other way, got as many walks as he got . . . he was great. I just thought at the time you had Tino and you had Nick Johnson. I just felt Giambi would sort of hamstring us. Even though he was a first baseman, he wasn't part of what we prided ourselves on: playing well defensively. He ties your hands. The biggest problem we had was a lack of flexibility. Once you have a guy who is basically a DH, you eliminate a lot of flexibility and the ability to utilize more players.

"They wanted Jason. George really liked the big boppers. I was outvoted, which was fine."

Steinbrenner asked for everyone's opinion in writing. Torre knew that when players did not perform well for the Yankees, Steinbrenner liked to blame him and Cashman, telling one of them, "He's your your guy! You wanted him!" In 2003, for instance, Torre would suggest that the Yankees sign 37-year-old Todd Zeile for their bench. Zeile could play third base, first base, pinch hit and even provide some insurance as an emergency catcher. "I knew he could handle pressure and I just thought he'd be a good addition for us," Torre said. The Yankees did sign Zeile and he was awful. He batted .210 before the Yankees released him in August. guy! You wanted him!" In 2003, for instance, Torre would suggest that the Yankees sign 37-year-old Todd Zeile for their bench. Zeile could play third base, first base, pinch hit and even provide some insurance as an emergency catcher. "I knew he could handle pressure and I just thought he'd be a good addition for us," Torre said. The Yankees did sign Zeile and he was awful. He batted .210 before the Yankees released him in August.

"Whenever you lose a couple of games George would look to punish you by getting rid of a person," Torre said. "He did it with Billy Martin and Art Fowler, Billy's pitching coach. That year it was 'Zeile, Zeile, Zeile.' That's all I heard. It was like he was the reason we were losing. He wasn't even playing. I remember telling George one day at one of those luncheons at Malio's in Tampa, 'I recommended Todd Zeile. I thought he'd be good. I still think, batting average aside, that he's a good extra guy on this club. It's not like he runs errands for me. I didn't want him to get coffee for me. I got him here to try to make us better.' "

When it came to Giambi, Torre wanted to avoid Steinbrenner laying his buyer's remorse on him. He was happy to have his objections on the record, Torre wrote down and handed to Steinbrenner that his idea was to stick with Tino for one more year while grooming Johnson, rather than signing Giambi. Sure enough, two years into the deal, as Giambi's batting average plummeted almost one hundred points from where it had been in Oakland, and especially in the third year, as Giambi's steroid-jacked body began falling apart, Steinbrenner wanted to blame Torre for the signing of Giambi.

"Cashman stood up for me," Torre said. "He told him, 'No, no. He didn't want him.' Because he was blaming me for Giambi. He kept blaming people for s.h.i.+t that didn't work."

The Yankees signed Giambi to a seven-year contract worth $120 million. One day, while Torre was in Hawaii, Cashman called and said the signing came with one condition on which Giambi had insisted.

"In order to get him we've got to take his trainer, Bobby Alejo," Cashman said.

"Why do you do this to me, Cash?" Torre said half-jokingly. "That makes my job tougher. How can I tell the other guys on the team they can't bring in their guy if he gets to bring in his guy?"

Said Torre, "Obviously he needed somebody to push him, his father or somebody."

It made for a whole different dynamic in the Yankees' clubhouse. The team famously packed with grinders, all-around players and self-starters had just paid $120 million for a slugging DH in training who needed his personal trainer with him at all times. The Yankees put Alejo on the payroll essentially to be Giambi's personal a.s.sistant. The days of Paul O'Neill and the low-maintenance grit he represented were officially over.

"We were in the dugout during a rain delay once," Torre said. "Jason was at one end, toward the first base side. Alejo comes out of the runway and said to him, 'Go ahead. Run.' From one end of the dugout to the other he yells. There's no shame here? You need to be self-motivated here. You don't need somebody to push you. He had to tell him everything. Jason relied on that. You knew it was going to be the start of something different.

"Jason was a good guy, a good, huggable bear. He can get along with anybody as far as I'm concerned, a team concept guy who knew individual numbers didn't amount to a whole lot. He was a gamer. The pressure of the game didn't bother him, even if he didn't always work hard enough. In spring training I would remind him, 'To be a regular player you've got to take your regular complement of groundb.a.l.l.s.' And then I'd have to remind him two or three times during the year."

As the Yankees were wrapping up the Giambi negotiations, Giambi lobbied the Yankees to sign his buddy Damon to play left field. The Yankees decided they had a better idea; they signed Ron-dell White for $10 million over two years, leaving Damon to sign four days later with the Red Sox for $31 million over four years.

"Giambi tried to talk them into signing me," Damon said. "Rondell beat me to the punch. I heard there was one person who didn't want me there." Damon declined to identify the person with the Yankees who did not want him.

White was 29 years old and coming off a .309 season with the Cubs, but he was a major injury risk. White averaged only 109 games per year over the previous four seasons in what should have been the prime of his career. When the New York press asked him about his expectations for the 2002 season, White replied, "To stay on the field." It was an answer that hardly rang with inspiration.

Cashman admitted at the time, "Is there a risk a.s.sociated with Rondell? Certainly. Maybe a little higher than some players. But given the choices on the market, he's a better risk than some others."

Both Giambi and White, as the Mitch.e.l.l Report would uncover, also happened to be symbolic of how performance-enhancing drugs were changing the game and the difficulty in how durability could be evaluated by baseball front offices. According to the Mitch.e.l.l Report, White bought human growth hormone and the steroid Deca-Durabolin starting in 2000 from former Mets clubhouse attendant Kirk Radomski. The report said, "Radomski recalled teaching White 'a lot about steroids and HGH' and 'walking him through the HGH injections for two hours on the phone one night.' "

What kind of player were the Yankees getting in Rondell White? As a young player with the Expos he once stole 25 bases in 30 tries. But as he broke down more he ran less and, according to what Radomski told Mitch.e.l.l, turned to drugs to "stay on the field." Or were the drugs contributing to the muscle problems that kept him off the field? Were the Yankees getting a player in his peak years or a steroid-addled injury risk?

As it turned out, White was finished as a top-flight everyday player. The White-over-Damon decision turned out to be spectacularly awful for the Yankees. White played in 126 games for the Yankees in 2002 and batted .240 with a .288 on-base percentage. He was so bad that only two Yankees outfielders were ever worse at getting on base while playing that many games in one season: Andy Kosco in 1968 and Wid Conroy way back in 1907. The Yankees dumped White on the Padres after just one year of watching him make out after out.

The Yankees had been such a set team in their champions.h.i.+p years that all they required was tinkering around the edges. But when they faced the challenge of making major alterations after their core broke up after the 2001 season, the results were mixed, with the mistakes leading to more mistakes. This is what they came up with: Giambi replaced Martinez; Robin Ventura, who was turning 35 years old and who was acquired in a trade with the Dodgers, replaced Brosius; White replaced k.n.o.blauch and a platoon of Shane Spencer and John Vander Wal replaced O'Neill. They also added setup reliever Steve Karsay, another known injury risk, who, after giving them one good year, was paid $17 million to pitch 12[image]innings over the next three years.

The missteps continued during the season. When the right-field platoon revealed itself to be a bust, the Yankees traded for the famously overpaid and undermotivated Raul Mondesi. They also traded Ted Lilly, a 26-year-old lefthander with a 3.40 ERA, to get Jeff Weaver, a soon-to-be-26-year-old righthander with a fragile personality who had been durable on the mound but only a little better than average with Detroit.

"I thought trading Ted Lilly in essence for Weaver was terrific, and I was wrong," Torre said. "I remember telling Jeter about the chance to get Weaver and he was excited, because he didn't like facing Weaver. Again, I think that's another situation where New York played a part in not being able to realize your ability."