The Yankee Years Part 19

"I was getting paid to do a pre- and postgame show for the YES network," Torre said. "And they took the fact that they paid me as an opening to tell somebody what to ask me and try to ask tough questions-which I don't know what a tough question is when someone is talking about the game. I mean, they ask you a question about the game, you answer the question. You knew she was uncomfortable asking certain questions, about why'd you bring him in or why'd you do this. It just didn't match up.

"And then they admitted it. 'Well, you're getting paid.' They felt they had the right to do that, which is crazy in my mind. So after the season was over I said, 'Forget it. We're not going to do it anymore. I don't want your money. I'll answer any question you want, but let's not put a dialogue together designed to put me in a bad light.'

"It was so obvious that it was all about trying to make me look bad. And I don't know what question was so tough, anyway. If I brought in a pitcher and he got his a.s.s kicked, what's so secretive about that? Everybody saw what happened. I made a decision and it didn't work. It's not like I said, 'I have to make a decision. Let me flip a coin. Okay, I'll bring this guy in.' "

Torre went home and tried to decompress from a draining season. For a few days he spoke to no one in the organization and no one in the media. He didn't know whether he wanted to manage the Yankees anymore, in great part because he didn't know if they wanted him. After Torre had done enough brooding around the house, his wife, Ali, said to him, "Why don't you go down and talk to George?"

"You're right," Torre said.

He had not called Steinbrenner virtually all year, nor had he discussed his relationship with Steinbrenner with the media, and it was time to break the cold war and see if George really did want him back.

"I disconnected," Torre said. "I hadn't talked to him. It was all secondhand smoke I was getting, which was the worst."

To keep the trip as quiet as possible, Torre chartered a private plane to Tampa. Steve Swindal, the team's managing partner, asked Torre if he minded if Randy Levine flew down with him. "No, not at all," Torre said.

Levine met Torre at the airport. The flight was delayed.

"Maintenance problem," Torre told Levine. "The ejection seat for you needed to get fixed."

They chuckled at the gallows humor. Levine told Torre on the plane ride to Tampa, "We want you back," so Torre's mood was brightened a bit by the time he walked into the meeting. Torre and Levine joined Steinbrenner and Swindal. They met in Steinbrenner's office at Legends Field, with Steinbrenner seated at his desk like the captain at the helm. Torre took a seat to Steinbrenner's left.

"The only reason I'm down here," Torre said, "is I want to see if you want me to be the manager."

Torre wasn't sure what reaction he would get from Steinbrenner to that opening. He had decided well before the meeting that "if there was any hemming or hawing, or if they didn't want me, I would have said, 'Let's figure a way out of this.' "

Steinbrenner did not hesitate.

"Yes, I want you to manage," he said.

Torre was relieved.

"I can't work for someone if the only reason they're keeping me on is they're paying me," Torre said. "I want to be comfortable knowing when I do things, they're on my side, that they're pulling for me to do something right."

The rest of the meeting was quick and easy. Torre did say that the disconnect between Yankees officials in New York and Tampa needed to be resolved; Steinbrenner agreed. Torre also promised to call Steinbrenner every ten days or so. "I'll make sure we stay connected," he told him.

There was one loose end that required immediate attention, and, though Torre did not know it at the time, it would contribute to a rift in his professional relationship with Brian Cashman and, by extension, to the beginning of his end as Yankees manager. The Yankees needed a replacement for Stottlemyre as the pitching coach. Torre mentioned that his choice would be Ron Guidry, the former Yankees pitcher who had served as a spring training instructor.

"I knew he hadn't done it before," Torre said. "But he handled stress well. He did a lot of work in spring training."

Guidry was nothing close to the kind of coach Cashman wanted, and Cashman's power in the organization was growing immensely. As the Yankees played poorly during the first half of the 2005 season-after the 11-19 start, they were still a .500 team as late as July 1-Steinbrenner rode Cashman mercilessly.

"This is on you and Joe!" Steinbrenner would warn Cashman.

It was an old, favorite tactic of Steinbrenner. He loved to make people individually responsible for the outcomes of others. It was designated scapegoating, and what Steinbrenner loved about it was that it kept those placed under his warning perpetually uncomfortable. He hated his employees to be comfortable. He wanted his people to be on edge constantly.

The criticism bothered Cashman only because Steinbrenner made him accountable for decisions for which he had little input, or even argued against. Steinbrenner also loved the divide-and-conquer strategem to keep his employees on edge. He loved pitting his lieutenants in Tampa against his soldiers in New York, for instance. The baseball operations people in Tampa might acquire somebody Cashman didn't fully endorse, such as outfielder Gary Sheffield or infielder Tony Womack, but it would always be Cashman whom Steinbrenner would hold accountable. Finally, during the early dark days of that 2005 season, Cashman decided he had had enough of the scoldings.

"If this is really my team," he told Steinbrenner, "and I'm the only one fixing it, I'll fix it for the final time. That's it. At the end of the season I'm done. I've been telling you the storm clouds are coming."

Indeed, Cashman told Steinbrenner as his contract ran out after the season that he intended to leave because of the disorganization in the baseball operations hierarchy. Cashman wrote a "chain of command philosophy" memo to Steinbrenner, outlining exactly what the Yankees needed: clearly defined job descriptions and responsibilities for the baseball operations personnel, with the general manager holding top authority. Steinbrenner said he would inst.i.tute those changes if Cashman agreed to return. Cashman decided to stay, now fully empowered to run the baseball operations and to keep the Tampa lieutenants in check.

While fixing the 2005 Yankees, Cashman introduced some youth. He promoted pitcher Chien-Ming w.a.n.g, who at the age of 25 gave the Yankees an 8-5 rccord, and second baseman Robinson Cano, who hit .297 at the age of 22. Cashman saw what was happening around baseball. His contemporaries and friends, such as Theo Epstein in Boston, Billy Beane in Oakland and Mark Shapiro in Cleveland, were using cutting-edge evaluation tools and processes to put together efficient rosters from top to bottom. Cashman wanted to join the information revolution, but he knew he couldn't join in if old-time baseball men in Tampa such as Billy Connors, Steinbrenner's trusted "pitching guru," could undo his carefully crafted plans with just one whisper in The Boss's ear about some broken-down veteran he liked. His new contract removed that problem.

The choice of the next pitching coach would immediately test Cashman's authority and philosophy. Cashman liked people with experience and he liked people with strong organizational skills with an understanding of statistical a.n.a.lysis, neither of which described Guidry. Cashman's idea of the modern pitching coach was someone such as Joe Kerrigan, the former Boston and Philadelphia pitching coach whom he hired in 2005 to be his special a.s.sistant. Kerrigan pored over scouting reports, computer printouts and videos to find any edge for the Yankees.

The Yankees, with Steinbrenner influencing Cashman, first tried to hire Leo Mazzone, who had plenty of experience and a proven track record with the Atlanta Braves, but who deployed an old-school philosophy. The Yankees were so close to a deal with Mazzone that when Torre called him one day, Mazzone said, "All right, I'll be with you. I'm looking forward to working with you."

"Good," said Torre, who knew Mazzone from when he managed the Braves.

The next day Mazzone signed with the Orioles, to work close to his hometown and with Baltimore manager Sam Perlozzo, a friend since childhood. Cashman then called up Torre.

"George wants to hire Guidry," Cashman said.

"That's fine with me," Torre said.

"George wants to talk to you about it."

Torre called Steinbrenner, who asked him, "What do you think of Guidry?'

"I trust him," Torre said. "It's going to take some time. He hasn't done it on an everyday basis. But he's very thorough, from the spring experiences I had with him."

Steinbrenner liked Guidry and he always liked taking care of former Yankee greats. Cashman was a more difficult sell.

Said Torre, "Cash didn't want any part of it because Guidry had no experience. He likes people with experience. I understand that. I was sort of in a tough spot, because I know I had mentioned Guidry in pa.s.sing when I had that meeting with George. I know Cash went to George about Guidry's inexperience, because I know Billy didn't like Guidry. George, I think, hired him because he remembered me saying it."

Torre had an idea to try to keep both Steinbrenner and Cashman happy.

"Cash," he said, "I know you're uncomfortable with this. So why don't you, with Guidry's lack of experience, bring Kerrigan on as the bullpen coach? Kerrigan will be right there to help Guidry with the administrative stuff."

Cashman signed off on the idea, though Torre knew Cashman still wasn't comfortable with an old-school guy like Guidry running his pitching staff. Guidry was one of the greatest lefthanded pitchers in Yankee history, an ace under manager Billy Martin on championship teams. He worked hard, got along with everyone, but looked at pitching development from a different perspective than Cashman. Guidry relied not so much on computers as he did personal experience, which he liked to share with his pitchers. He remembered, for instance, once in 1977 when he walked into the clubhouse during a game in the third inning and saw Hall of Famer Catfish Hunter, the starting pitcher in that game, sipping a beer.

"Cat, what are you doing?" Guidry asked.

"Gator, on a hot day like today I always drink a small beer while I'm pitching," Hunter said. "It helps me. I don't like Gatorade. Water bloats me. I come in and have a beer. Just during day games, not night games. It works for me."

Guidry figured if it worked for Hunter it could work for him.

One day in 1978, on a hot Sat.u.r.day afternoon, Guidry, who was pitching that day, sipped a beer in the clubhouse in the third inning. All of a sudden, Martin was standing in the doorway.

"What the h.e.l.l are you doing?" the manager asked.

"I'm 11 and 0," Guidry replied. "What more do you want?"

Martin immediately calmed down.

"Go ahead," Martin said. "Take your time."

Said Guidry, "Every day game from that point on, when I'd come in after the third inning, Billy would go, 'Are you going to the lounge?' I'd say, 'Yeah.' And he'd say, 'I'll be right back.' I look back on everything we went through. Sometimes I think that's why we played so well. Because it was so much fun."

Cashman, though, was the kind of general manager who put his faith not in such folktales, but in cold, hard facts, such as pitch counts and statistical a.n.a.lysis, the kind of stuff at which Kerrigan excelled.

"The thing about Cash," Torre said, "was any time you talked to him about him being a numbers guy, he really had very little patience about it. He kept denying it. And he got very defensive about it."

When the 2006 Yankees spring training camp began, it was obvious that this was now Cashman's team. The first clues were the video cameras set up on tripods behind the home plates in the large bullpen area of the Legends Field complex. "We knew something was up in spring training when Cashman ordered every side session pitch filmed," said Borzello.

Torre also noticed that more and more people from the front office were trolling the clubhouse and coaches' dressing room. Cashman had surrounded himself with up-and-coming a.s.sistants who were raised more on statistical a.n.a.lysis than heavy, old-school scouting beliefs. They were young, smart and diligent, and were comfortable, even jazzed up, about discussing such things as players' VORPs-the acronym stat for something called value over replacement player-and in-house PlayStation tournaments.

They brought a new perspective to talent evaluation that, of course, no more solved the eternal mysteries of baseball than the old-school scouting methods had. Midway through 2007, for instance, Cashman and his number crunchers zeroed in on trading for Wilson Betemit, a switch-hitting infielder with the Los Angeles Dodgers. The word excitedly circulating around the hallways of Yankee Stadium was that the Yankees had found "the next David Ortiz"-not that Betemit fit Ortiz's profile as a slugger, but that his numbers suggested he was an undervalued gem who was on the cusp of a huge breakout, like the one Ortiz had for Boston in 2003. The Yankees were dead wrong. Betemit, plagued by extremely poor plate discipline and conditioning issues, was dreadful, posting on-base percentages of .278 and .289 with the Yankees over that season and the next. On the other hand, the new Yankee philosophy hit on such minor-league free agent pitching finds as Brian Bruney, Jose Veras, Darrell Rasner and Edwar Ramirez. Inst.i.tuting the new groupthink in 2006, however, was not without internal strain.

"It got to the point where I was starting not to trust people," Torre said of the 2006 spring training camp. "There were so many other people Cash wanted in the mix. I got very suspicious. There were guys in the clubhouse and in the coaches' room that weren't there before, like they were checking out what was going on. Cash would say, 'We haven't counted this guy's pitches!' There was always some information being sent back to Cash that helped him know everything that was going on rather than trusting what the baseball people were doing. And, of course, he was questioning Guidry. In spring training it looked like Cash was doing undercover work to check up on Guidry all the time."

A cultural clash was developing. Cashman, newly empowered, at last had the chance to run the team his way, and his way included a strong desire to hop aboard the information revolution. Torre saw numbers not as a guiding philosophy, but as one tool in a manager's toolbox, particularly when it came to culling information from batter-pitcher histories.

"Cash, once he was in charge, wanted to be as practical as possible," Torre said. "He put his trust in people he hired, like Billy Eppler. Billy was fine. I'd talk to him at batting practice behind the cage. I remember one time we were talking about Kyle Farnsworth. I was suspect about his ability to sustain any consistency. The thing Eppler came up with was, 'I think it's a good signing because of the money.' That's fine, but I'm trying to win games and put somebody in the setup position who's going to be consistent."

Torre and Cashman had been together for 11 years, the previous nine as the most successful managergeneral manager combination in the game. They had been through so much and, despite the difference in ages, had nurtured a deeply shared respect and a special kinship. If nothing else, both of them understand as well as anybody on the planet the joys and difficulties of working for George Steinbrenner, and that alone had the bonding powers of a six-month deployment on a nuclear submarine. But the 2006 spring training camp opened a professional, philosophical gap between them that would never entirely close. One day during that camp Torre met with Cashman in the manager's office.

"Cash, you've changed," Torre said.

"I have not," Cashman said.

"I accused him of looking for reasons to criticize Guidry," Torre said. "He had all his staff members around. He relied a lot less on opinions. He wanted doc.u.mentation. That was more important."

After that, the two of them coolly kept their distance from one another for a few days.

"We had a falling-out in spring training," Torre said. "I basically challenged him. Then I apologized a few days later, because I really like Cash. I asked other people, 'Is this just me or has he changed?' It was his watch and he wanted to do it his way. I understand that. I would have liked to have him trust me. I was always a very loyal subject to him."

Torre had another key meeting with Cashman during the season in the general manager's office. "Cash, listen," Torre said. "I don't know how long we're going to be together. But do yourself a favor: never forget there is a heartbeat in this game."

After the 2006 season, the philosophical gap would become a chasm over what to do about one of the most important and beloved players in Yankees history. Torre's t.i.tanium-strong belief in the power of trust, the backbone of his entire managerial philosophy, would reach a critical showdown with Cashman's new-age practicality, the guiding principle of his newfound empowerment. Smack in the middle was one of the last vestiges of the championship years, an ever-graceful reminder of when trust and teamwork still mattered. At stake was the career and legacy of Bernie Williams.

Broken Trust

Bernie Williams watched what would be the last game of his 16-year career from the bench, never making an appearance in an 8-3 clinching loss in Game 4 of the 2006 American League Division Series against the Detroit Tigers. The autopsy on the 2006 Yankees looked a lot like the postmortems of the previous two seasons. The Yankees fielded a spectacular lineup-they scored 930 runs, the most in baseball-but they could not hit in the clutch come October, particularly Alex Rodriguez. The pitching was again old, pedestrian-they were sixth in the league in ERA-and not nearly deep enough. With their season on the line in that Game 4, the Yankees gave the ball in that must-win situation to Jaret Wright, who would never win another big league game. Wright did not get out of the fourth inning, leaving the Yankees in a 4-0 hole from which they could not escape.

The Yankees went meekly in their second straight first-round exit since the Red Sox shifted the balance of power in that 2004 ALCS, though only after they stood halfway toward dismissing Detroit. The Yankees won Game 1 and held a 3-1 lead in the fifth inning of Game 2 with Mike Mussina on the mound at home. Mussina gave up single runs in the fifth, sixth and seventh and the game's greatest offense scored nothing more the rest of the game as the Yankees lost, 4-3. Detroit outscored the Yankees 17-3 over the last 23 innings of the series to send them home to yet another winter of anger and chaos.

The 2006 Yankees somehow managed not to get out of the first round despite employing the bats of Jeter, Rodriguez, Johnny Damon, Bobby Abreu, Gary Sheffield, Hideki Matsui, Jason Giambi, Jorge Posada and Robinson Cano, one of the deepest a.s.semblages of premier hitters on one team. Or did they lose precisely because of that plethora? Torre, working around injuries and egos, struggled to find the combination of players that would click.

Damon, signed as a free agent when Boston showed lukewarm interest in keeping him, gave the lineup energy and surprising power. He hit a career-high 24 home runs. Cashman added Abreu in a deft midseason trade with Philadelphia after outfielders Sheffield and Matsui both went down with injuries that cost them most of the season. Williams picked up time at all three outfield positions, as did Melky Cabrera, and at designated hitter. Jason Giambi missed 23 games with his usual a.s.sortment of physical calamities, and split time between first base and designated hitter when he was in the lineup. Problem was, the Yankees entered October far from being a set team. Of those seven aforementioned hitters, two of them would be out of the lineup on any given day.

_In late September, as Sheffield, who missed four months after undergoing wrist surgery, was getting ready to rejoin the team, Torre called the slugger into his office. The manager wanted to talk to Sheffield about the possibility of playing first base when he returned.

"Now that we have Abreu . . ." Torre said.

Sheffield stopped him.

"I already ordered my first baseman's mitt," Sheffield said.

"Perfect. I know you can do it."

Said Torre, "He was a team player. He finished a couple of games at third base for me, when we had to take guys out and move people around. He was willing to do anything. He'd even catch. 'I'll do anything,' he told me. He came in one day and brought in a VHS tape of when he caught in Little League. He was a great teammate. He was just inconsistent with his moods."

Torre did try Sheffield at first base in the last week of the season. Torre wasn't sure that Giambi, who had his own wrist problem, could play the position.

"He looked fine," Torre said of Sheffield as a first baseman. "And then once we started the playoffs all of a sudden he regressed defensively. He started catching the ball awkwardly. And offensively, he didn't have enough time to get sharp. We forced it, but it's tough not to force it because of what you know he can bring to the table. But he wasn't the same guy. If he was the same offensive force, I would never have taken him out of a game for anybody. But at the time, I was looking for a little shot in the arm."

In Game 3 in Detroit, against lefthander Kenny Rogers, the two players Torre chose not to start were Sheffield and Cabrera. Torre started Giambi at first base and Williams at designated hitter, batting eighth. Williams was a .353 hitter against Rogers in 34 career at-bats. Sheffield was 1-for-8 in the series and batting .222 since he returned to the team September 22. Torre sought out Sheffield in the clubhouse before posting the lineup.

"I'm changing the lineup," Torre said. "I want to put Bernie in the lineup."

"Okay," Sheffield said.

A few minutes later, after Torre had walked down the hall to his office, Rodriguez poked his head into the manager's office.

"Can I talk to you?" said Rodriguez, who had batted sixth in Games 1 and 2 with almost no success and now was. .h.i.tting fourth in Game 3.

"Sure."

"You know, when you left after talking to Gary, he started throwing stuff all over the place."

"Well, I can't help that. I I told him. I didn't send anybody in to tell him. told him. I didn't send anybody in to tell him. I I told him. If he wanted to have an issue with me he could have had an issue." told him. If he wanted to have an issue with me he could have had an issue."

"Don't worry. I'll handle it."

"Okay, thank you."

Said Torre, "That's more of Alex wanting to be the leader, to be Jeter, basically."

The Yankees were blown out, 6-0, as Rogers outpitched a familiarly ineffective Randy Johnson, who gave up five runs in less than six innings, swelling his postseason ERA as a Yankee to 6.92. Rogers shut down the Yankees on five hits two outs into the eighth inning before relievers Joel Zumaya and Todd Jones gave them nothing more. Giambi and Williams went a combined 0-for-7. Rodriguez went 0-for-3 and was. .h.i.t by a pitch, slipping deeper and deeper into a funk of near hitting-paralysis proportions. Rodriguez was 1-for-11 through the first three games of the series, was. .h.i.tless in his previous 10 at-bats with four strikeouts, had batted with 10 runners on base and driven in none of them, and, as if unable to pull the trigger, had looked at 12 called strikes.

Another day brought another game of lineup roulette. Other than Jeter and Posada, Torre had n.o.body in this once formidable lineup who was swinging the bat well. This time, against righthander Jeremy Bonderman in Game 4, Williams and Giambi were the odd men out, with Sheffield back at cleanup as the first baseman, and Cabrera hitting ninth as the designated hitter. The headline news to the lineup, however, was that Rodriguez was batting eighth. Torre did not tell Rodriguez about it before the lineup was posted in the clubhouse.

"At that point we were on our heels and I was just trying to get some energy," Torre said. "So I did it and I just posted it. And then the writers asked me in the pregame press conference about hitting him eighth. I said, 'You know it's sad that you guys didn't ask me this question, which would have been the better question: Why isn't Giambi playing against the righthander?' n.o.body asked me that question. It was all about Alex.

"But Alex wasn't swinging worth a s.h.i.t, and it was all about trying to put more energy people above him. It wasn't trying to purposefully p.i.s.s him off. But knowing Alex, no matter what explanation I gave him, it was just going to be the eighth hole. I didn't know what I could tell him to appease him and still tell him the truth."

Rodriguez did not seek out Torre to ask about the lineup.

"No," Torre said. "That night he came to me on the tarmac, after we landed in New York, and he gave me a hug. That was it."

Rodriguez went 0-for-3 again. For the series, he batted .071, batted with 11 runners on base and drove in none of them, drew no walks, had no extra-base hits, and saw more than four pitches only twice in 15 plate appearances.