The Yankee Years Part 23

Damon and Giambi both said the right things. They would give Torre whatever they had.

"In the past," Giambi said, "he's asked us a ton to play hurt, and Johnny and I would play to the extent that we probably shouldn't have been out there. But we would do anything for Joe. I think Joe was trying to get across the point of, 'If you guys are really that beat up, just be honest with us, because we're losing and if it's not there let me know, instead of, "Yeah, we're fine, Joe."' He was looking to mix and match players to win.

"I told him, 'I'm beat up. I'm giving you everything I've got. If you don't think it's enough, then go with somebody else. But I'm giving you everything I've got.' It was to the point where I blew out. I tore my foot in half I don't think much longer after that."

Meanwhile, Torre had to find a way to get Abreu untracked as well. His suspicion with Abreu was perhaps that he was trying too hard.

"He's a good soldier," Torre said at the time. "He's just putting a lot of pressure on himself because he feels like he's letting everybody down. He's not the best physical specimen in the world, but he's a good hitter. He's physically fine, but right now he's fighting himself more than anything."

A few days earlier, Torre had met with Abreu and bench coach Don Mattingly to try to pull Abreu out of his funk.

"I'm fine," Abreu told them.

"No you're not," Torre shot back. "You're not fine. I know what you want and I know that you work at it and go after it. But let's try to figure out what's going on here."

Said Torre, "I just wanted to make sure that the possibility of being a free agent wasn't a part of it, and I think he convinced me that it wasn't. The responsibility of letting people down was more of an imposing thing than anything else."

Meanwhile, hitting coach Kevin Long was also trying to get Abreu untracked. Long decided he needed to go back to the fundamentals of his swing, so he pulled out a batting tee. Abreu told Long something that completely surprised the hitting coach: Abreu had never before worked with a tee.

"You'll try anything to get a guy going," Long said, "but basically when a guy's in a slump you're working on his head. He's stepping in the bucket now, but even when he's hot he'll do that. It's how he hits. But he lost all confidence on his ability to hit and we're working on getting some confidence back."

Abreu was 33 years old. Damon was 33. Giambi was 37. Mussina, who was on the disabled list, was 38. Eight of the 12 most-used regular players that season and three of the four most-used starting pitchers that season were 33 or older. Maybe, just maybe, these Yankees just had too many miles on them. Torre was asked about that possibility as he sat in the U. S. Cellular Field dugout in Chicago.

"No, I don't think so," he said. "They may be worn down but I don't feel they're old. I think it's more of a case of how hard it is to put up with things on a regular basis. Last year we certainly had our share of problems and Melky Cabrera came up and gave us a shot of energy, no question. Two years ago it was Robinson Cano and w.a.n.g. Grinding every day in New York, especially when you have to answer for it every day, sometimes I think it wears people down. I don't think it's age."

The Yankees were rained out that night in Chicago, forcing a doubleheader the next day. Damon managed one hit in five at-bats while striking out a career-tying three times in a 5-3 loss to Chicago. Torre started the 22-year-old Cabrera in center field in the second game instead of Damon. Cabrera hit a home run in an 8-1 New York victory. So Torre put Cabrera in the lineup the next day, too, keeping Damon on the bench. Cabrera went hitless and the Yankees lost, 4-1.

Damon showed some life in his legs and bat after that benching, spraying nine hits over his next six games. Not coincidentally, the Yankees played better, too. They did lose two out of three to the Mets at Shea Stadium, but Torre liked the way the Yankees played. They were showing real energy for the first time, having better at-bats, posting rallies when they were behind instead of giving in to deficits. Indeed, when the Yankees hosted Boston after the series at Shea, Torre called a team meeting to let his team know it finally was acquiring a grinder's personality.

"Congratulations, guys," he told them. "You've got that personality now. You can fight. Now that you see you have it, you're stuck with it. Let's go."

The manager wanted his players to know, after they had proved they could play with such vigor, that he would expect this personality as a rule, not an exception.

Torre scanned the room, routinely making eye contact with players as he talked as a way to fully engage them in the message and to read their body language to see if they were buying into it. Just as Torre happening to lock on to the gaze of Damon, he said, "No matter what you might have going on at home or off the field, the time you spend here has to continue to be focused on giving everything you have to the team."

Torre had not meant to catch Damon's eyes at that moment, but he immediately considered the eye contact to be a happy stroke of synchronicity. The truth was that the message applied as much to the hobbled, confused Yankees center fielder as anybody in the room.

Meanwhile, behind the press releases, the real Steinbrenner, not the propped-up one issuing statements through a PR firm, wasn't showing the old fire and brimstone to Torre, either. Before the middle game of the series against the Mets, Cashman was in Torre's office when the general manager's cell phone rang. It was Steinbrenner. The call was a mistake. Steinbrenner had just spoken with Cashman a while earlier, but he had redialed by mistake. Torre saw it as an opportunity and asked to speak to The Boss. Torre liked calling Steinbrenner every couple of weeks or so, just to keep the communication going, tell him how much he appreciated his support, but the conversations were becoming increasingly shorter and generic. Torre and Steinbrenner would be on the phone only for about 30 seconds. This was another one of them.

"You're my guy," Steinbrenner told Torre. "Keep your chin up."

"Thanks, George," Torre said. "We're doing our best to make you proud."

That was about it. Meanwhile, during these rough days, Cashman was throwing himself in front of Torre as a human shield, trying to hold off the fire of Steinbrenner and, more accurately, Steinbrenner's lieutenants who had strongly considered firing Torre after the previous season and again in April and in May.

"Joe's not the problem," Cashman would tell Steinbrenner. "If you need to fire anybody, fire me, not Joe."

The Yankees took two out of three from Boston. They had something to build on. But nothing good was sustainable in those first 50 games, and the inconsistency was reflected mostly in Damon. Every time Damon's game began to percolate just so, he suddenly would appear brittle and disengaged again. May 25 was one of those frequent bad days for Damon. Before the game, while closing in on 2,000 hits, Damon sounded oddly subdued about the possibility of playing long enough to have a shot at 3,000 hits.

"It's not out of the question," he said, "but right now I don't know if this is what I want to be doing when I'm 37, 38, 39-playing baseball. I don't know about that."

In the game that night, against the Los Angeles Angels, Damon virtually embarra.s.sed himself with his play. He went hitless in three at-bats, dropped a sinking line drive, could not run down two fly b.a.l.l.s that should have been outs, and finally asked Torre to take him out of the game. Several of his teammates took notice when Damon asked out and were not happy about it. Here the Yankees had dug themselves a two-month hole to start the season, leaving them with little margin for error, and Damon was pulling himself from the game.

"Just a bad day at the office," Damon told reporters after the game. "I don't know what happened. The last few days I felt like the Fountain of Youth was injected in me. And then this happens."

Damon was asked if he was better off going on the disabled list than continuing to play like that.

"I don't know," he said. "I'll let them decide what's best for the team."

On paper, the Yankees looked formidable. With 45-year-old Roger Clemens signing on to make another comeback, their roster included one of the greatest starting pitchers of all time (Clemens), the greatest relief pitcher of all time (Rivera), one of the greatest infielders of all time (Rodriguez) and one of the greatest offensive shortstops of all time (Jeter). They had five of the nine highest paid players in baseball (Giambi, Rodriguez, Jeter, Clemens and Abreu) and the highest paid manager in the game.

In reality, the Yankees were a wreck. Damon was hurt and at times disinterested to the point of angering his teammates. Giambi was hurt. Abreu had no confidence. Igawa was taking remedial pitching lessons. Pavano was hurt. Somebody named Tyler Clippard and somebody named Matt DeSalvo made up 40 percent of the rotation. So-called voices in Tampa were putting Torre's job on the line on almost a series-by-series basis. Steinbrenner wasn't showing up for work until late in the afternoon while an unpredictable scramble ensued to see how the enormous power vacuum would be filled.

The Yankees were 21-29, off to the fifth-worst start in the history of the franchise, to put them 14 games behind the first-place Red Sox and 8 games out of the wild card spot-with seven seven teams in front of them. Only three teams had ever been that far out of the wild card that deep into the season and still made it to the postseason. It was as if Torre ran an automobile repair shop and the lot was overrun with beaters and clunkers that needed his daily attention, oil leaking and transmissions dropping everywhere. teams in front of them. Only three teams had ever been that far out of the wild card that deep into the season and still made it to the postseason. It was as if Torre ran an automobile repair shop and the lot was overrun with beaters and clunkers that needed his daily attention, oil leaking and transmissions dropping everywhere.

Where do you begin to save the season and save your job? Torre began in Toronto. He began with one more meeting. He began with the kick-a.s.s meeting to end all kick-a.s.s meetings.

The Last Race

Another city. Another day. Another crisis. Another meeting. This is how the first one-third of the schedule went by for the 2007 Yankees.

They were in Toronto to finish May, their second straight horrible month. For weeks Torre had tried to prompt his team into playing with urgency, with an understanding and a trust for one another, but the results did not come. Worse, in the preceding days his coaches began to alert him that some players were actually becoming less focused, not more so, amid the heap of losses that piled up. Guys were showing up late for stretching, maybe skipping some extra pregame work . . . cutting some corners at a time when the Yankees needed to take nothing for granted.

"I think they took a lot of things for granted because the Yankees won before and they thought things would happen automatically, just kick in," Bowa said. "Just some little things that were happening . . . I don't know, they weren't New York Yankeestyle things.

"They're little things, like being late for stretching, but then they keep adding up. And the guys who were late were not just utility players. I mean, they were guys that were star players.

"You know, when you start losing games, you see a lot of s.h.i.t happening and guys say, 'Why bother?' That's how the game has changed. Because when I used to play, when you were losing, that's when you did everything by the book. When you're losing and not playing up to your capabilities you want to be as quiet as possible and toe the line, whatever the manager wants. It's when you're winning that you might try to pull some s.h.i.t. Now, it's in fact the other way around."

There was something about this team that concerned Torre. Maybe it was unfair to compare it to his championship teams, but that was the frame of reference with which he worked. In a room filled with grinders such as Paul O'Neill, Tino Martinez and Scott Brosius the lapses in concentration and effort over the long season never lingered. Those teams responded quickly to the inevitable lags in energy or focus.

"Those teams, all they needed was a little poke, a little reminder, and they responded," Torre said.

This was a very different team. Most of the players in the room had never won anything. Many didn't know how how to win. There was a noticeable lack of effort, to do what it took to win. to win. There was a noticeable lack of effort, to do what it took to win.

"Yeah. You could just sense that," Mussina said. "You could just feel that everyone was getting used to losing. People were getting used to just playing, and win or lose it didn't matter."

This team didn't need just a poke or a nudge. This one needed a kick in the a.s.s. Several kicks.

The Yankees took extra hitting at 2:30 p.m. in Toronto, which is their custom upon their first trip of the season into a ballpark. A short time after it ended, Torre called a team meeting to be held in the visiting clubhouse of the Rogers Centre.

"My angry meeting," Torre said. "That was the first time in my years with the Yankees where I felt there weren't enough guys who really gave a s.h.i.t. I had that meeting and I was just angry.

"We were just terrible at the time. We played badly and it didn't look like it bothered them."

Torre lit into his players for how they were playing, but he did so in a calm, measured voice.

"Let's stop this s.h.i.t right now," he said.

From now on, he said, the Yankees would start taking infield practice, the kind of old-school pregame work that had long disappeared as a staple of the game. Guys would be fined if they were even a minute late for stretching. Everyone would have to be all in, heart and soul. He talked about responsibility and focus.

"And," he warned them, "it's too late to keep saying it's early."

The change would have to come immediately.

And then Bowa spoke.

"Guys, you're playing for the best manager you could possibly play for," Bowa told the players. "He never rips you. He sticks up for you whether you're right or wrong. He gives you the benefit of the doubt on anything. He tells you the night before whether you're playing or resting the next day. I think you're f.u.c.king taking advantage of this guy.

"You go somewhere else? You're not going to see a manager like this. This is a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity for your career. Don't f.u.c.king abuse it. Don't f.u.c.king take it for granted because this is a manager that comes along every 25, 30 years. You guys, you have no idea how f.u.c.king good you have it playing for this guy."

The players were taken aback by the in-your-face intensity of both Torre and Bowa in the meeting. Maybe that kind of anger is what they had come to expect from the spring-loaded Bowa. But Torre? Many of them had never seen him so angry. It made an impression.

"There was real emotion," Mussina said. "I think that got everybody's attention. There was really a feeling we got from Joe and the staff that there was real concern. Maybe not anguish, but just real . . . emotion. Almost like, 'If you're going to get this turned around you better start real soon.' Like it was getting too late. I think everybody picked up on the emotion."

When Torre, Bowa and the rest of the staff left the room, the players remained. They decided to reinforce the message with their own meeting. Pett.i.tte spoke. Jeter spoke.

"There are times when you can be too comfortable," Jeter said. "And that's not always a good thing. I think sometimes people think if they play for this organization, if they play for this team, it's just going to automatically win. You know what I mean? I'm not saying anybody in particular. Sometimes that can be the mindset and you get caught up in that. 'Ahh, if we don't win today we'll just get 'em tomorrow. You know, we're the Yankees. We'll be in the playoffs. Winning just happens.'

"But the meeting was a wakeup call for us. I've said a lot of things over the years. People always a.s.sume I don't. People always a.s.sume. They make that a.s.sumption. 'Jeter's not vocal.' Let me ask you a hypothetical situation. Say I pulled Mo over. First of all, I'm not going to do it with a camera on me. I think people that do that probably know the camera is on them. Say I pull Mo aside, and say I just yell at Mo all day long. For an hour. Is he going to tell you? He's not going to tell you. I'm not going to tell you. But then I always hear, 'Well, he's not vocal.' Yeah. Okay. I talk to everybody. But I don't do it when there is a camera around."

Jeter's words caught the attention of the players.

"You know, it's one thing to hear something from the manager and staff," Mussina said, "and it's another thing to hear it player-to-player. Not that the manager doesn't have an impact, but it's like hearing from your parents as opposed to hearing it from your peers. It has a very different impact.

"Basically, what was said was to make sure each guy was doing absolutely everything he could to be prepared and to play to the best of his ability. When you win it's because you pay attention to all the details and do all the work. You take nothing for granted. But it's real easy to get used to losing. You fall behind in the beginning of a game and it's like, 'Okay, another loss. We'll go get 'em tomorrow.' It's easy to give in to that feeling and to get used to losing. That's what the players were concerned about. To make sure we weren't falling into that mindset by making sure we did everything we could to be a winning team. No individuals were called out, but there's a way to deliver a message to people without having to call them out."

Said Jason Giambi, "Joe just wanted us to play harder. No matter how good your team is, every once in a while you have to put people in check. I think he did that. We kind of sorted it out and talked. The biggest thing, too, is everybody started to come back from their injuries, and I think that's what got the ball rolling, too."

Meetings, even players-only meetings, tend be fairly routine, full of plat.i.tudes and posturing, not unlike a political convention. But these meetings were different. There was an edge to what people were saying. Players were openly questioning the att.i.tudes of other players, if not by name.

"Guys were saying stuff to other guys that maybe they didn't want to hear," Borzello said, "and they didn't want Joe there to stop it because Joe would have, that's how heated it got. Guys were questioning who wanted to play and who didn't, injuries that some people didn't feel were real, stuff like that."

The two meetings lasted nearly an hour. The Yankees missed virtually their entire batting practice. They had been challenged by Torre, scolded by Bowa and put on notice by Pett.i.tte and Jeter. This either was going to be the turning point to their season or verification that this group of Yankees just didn't give a d.a.m.n.

"I started thinking about myself," Mussina said. "I got to the point where some of the players were speaking where I wasn't listening. I mean, I knew guys were getting fired up, and I knew basically they were telling us that we were abusing all the privileges we were given. The trust of us doing what we had to do to be ready to play-and to go out and play the game the way we were capable of playing-was being lost. That trust was being lost.

"What each player should do is they should be looking at themselves saying, 'Am I involved in this? Am I one of these people?'

"But some guys sit there and they don't even listen to it. They don't think anybody is ever talking about them. But I was actually at that point where I was just sitting there thinking, Is this me? Whether I was or I wasn't . . . I mean, I had been hurt for half the time up to that point anyway, and then I was on the DL with a hamstring thing for half of the period before this meeting. But I still wondered if I was doing all that I could or should be doing. And the meeting made a difference, ultimately."

_There was just one problem with the timing of the meeting: the Yankees were starting rookie Matt DeSalvo on the mound that night. DeSalvo was a decent enough pitcher, and actually contributed a couple of good games, but he essentially was an unproven placeholder for Roger Clemens, or, more accurately given all the injuries, a placeholder for a placeholder for a placeholder for Clemens. He was not the kind of proven pitcher you want to consolidate a kick-a.s.s meeting about getting the season turned around immediately. DeSalvo was gone before the fifth inning ended. The Yankees lost, 7-2.

At least the Yankees had Pett.i.tte, a member of their old guard, and one of their few reliable pitchers they were starting those days, taking the ball in the next game. Turns out, that was a problem, too.

"Tightest I've ever seen this team," Torre said. "They played like they felt they had to win the game because Andy was pitching. And it showed."

The Yankees lost again, 3-2, dropping their record to 21-29 after 50 games. Then a funny thing happened after the game: the bus ride back to the hotel turned into a comedy club on wheels. Guys were laughing and joking, not because they didn't care that they lost, but because they were just . . . well, just goofy. The tension had broken, like a cloudburst in a heat wave. The Yankees knew they had played a good, clean game, coming back from two one-run deficits, with Pett.i.tte pitching into the eighth inning, before losing on a sacrifice fly in that inning. It was as if they fully understood Torre's mantra about how you can't always control the result but you can control your effort. The Yankees had given a focused effort with urgency. They had lost the game, but they had found themselves. They were the Yankees again, and they seemed to know that on the bus ride back to the hotel. The next day they demolished the Blue Jays, 10-5. They were on their way.

"I just felt like they got it," Bowa said. "You hear Joe use that word urgency. urgency. 'You need a sense of urgency.' I really felt that after that airing out and then the guys talking, there was that sense of urgency every time they took the field. I really felt it. You could see how the players responded. The way they took batting practice. The way they focused in meetings when we're going over pitchers. I just felt like they were more attentive. And they knew we had a long road to get to the playoffs because of where we were." 'You need a sense of urgency.' I really felt that after that airing out and then the guys talking, there was that sense of urgency every time they took the field. I really felt it. You could see how the players responded. The way they took batting practice. The way they focused in meetings when we're going over pitchers. I just felt like they were more attentive. And they knew we had a long road to get to the playoffs because of where we were."

The Yankees, of course, couldn't get out of Toronto and on track without Rodriguez managing to create a controversy. Running toward third base on what was a routine pop-up to third baseman Howie Clark, Rodriguez yelled something at Clark in an attempt to distract him. It worked. Clark dropped the ball, extending the inning. The Blue Jays were enraged. Like most observers, they regarded it as a play that, while possibly within the rules, smacked of a bush league maneuver. Mussina, Rodriguez's teammate, even referred to it as "unsportsmanlike." Torre told reporters that Rodriguez probably wished he had not done it, especially considering the ill will it stirred. Torre's response to the writers' questions came out like this in the next day's tabloids: "Torre to A-Rod: Shut Up."

"Alex took a hit in that thing," Torre said, "and my feeling was, and I mentioned it to him, that if he was the one under the pop-up and somebody did it to him, and he let it drop, he would be the one criticized. It is true.

"I told the media he would probably think twice about doing it again. And that's when they put in the paper that I told him to shut up. I never did that. I told him, 'You're getting this reaction, Alex. What are you going to do? You're trying to win a game.'

"He was excited. He was swinging the bat really well. He went by the guy at third base. You know he does s.h.i.t all the time during the game when he's going good. I didn't think it was a bush play. He plays hard. Maybe it was unnecessary, but you certainly didn't expect the guy to miss the ball. I thought they overreacted. And I thought it was horses.h.i.t the way they reacted. They waited until they got back to their ballpark to get even. They come into Yankee Stadium and . . . nothing. Nothing happens. Then they come back home, and they threw a ball behind him. And that's when Rocket got thrown out of the game. He's pitching a h.e.l.l of a game, then he gets thrown out protecting Alex, and we had to scratch by our a.s.s to win the game. Roger was floating along really well. Of course, when he was ejected he told me he thought that was his last inning, anyway. I said, 'You could have waited for two outs.' He did it to the leadoff guy. But Roger was a lot like Alex in a lot of ways. Kind of in their own world."

_On the day of the last game in Toronto, Torre decided to check in with Steinbrenner. He liked calling him after losses. It was a way to help calm Steinbrenner's anxieties.

"I'm excited about the young pitching," Torre told him. "With all the money this organization has spent over the years, it's good to see the young pitching. This is huge. You've got young pitching with substance to it. It's great. It's going to save you a lot of money, George."

"Yeah, buddy. Good luck," Steinbrenner said. He wasn't much of a conversationalist anymore. The Yankees were traveling to Boston to play the Red Sox the next day, which Torre mentioned to Steinbrenner.

"We've got the Red Sox next and we'll get 'em," Torre said.

"Yeah, you've got to beat those guys," Steinbrenner said. "You get 'em."

And just like that the conversation was over.

"He would sort of echo, or mimic what you were saying," Torre said. "And that would be the extent of the conversation. I talked to him and he would get me off the phone in 30 seconds. That was it. He really wouldn't be in touch with what was happening."

Torre, in fact, would make sure he would jog Steinbrenner's memory. For instance, a little more than a week later, after Torre won his 2,000th career game as manager, he called Steinbrenner to thank him for the gift the Yankees gave him in recognition of the milestone, a sterling plate. Torre made sure to name the specific gift because he wasn't sure if Steinbrenner would recall it or not.

"Oh, okay. You deserve it," Steinbrenner said.

If Steinbrenner wasn't the conversationalist he was once, the divide-and-conquer leadership philosophy he engrained in the Yankee organization still ran strong. As the Yankees arrived in Boston, word reached Torre that somebody on the staff was going to be fired, probably bullpen coach Joe Kerrigan, if the Yankees lost the series there. The "voices" in Tampa needed some blood spilled to send a message that the losing would not be tolerated, or even to send a message to Torre that his job security was growing thinner by the day.

Kerrigan was a Cashman hire and ally, and a rather odd, iconoclastic personality. He kept copious charts and statistics, ran half the pregame pitchers' meetings with pitching coach Ron Guidry, broke down miles of videotapes to try to decode the habits of opposing hitters, and believed that immutable truths about the game could be found in his numbers. Cashman, of course, liked that a.n.a.lytical side of him. Kerrigan's people skills, however, were not his strong suit. He had confrontations with players in just about every stop of his baseball life, including Philadelphia, Boston and the Yankees, where he had angry, ugly exchanges with Carl Pavano and Jason Giambi. Pavano wanted to fight Kerrigan when they had a shouting match at the hotel bar in Boston. The confrontation with Giambi happened in a restaurant bar.

"I called him in, in Texas," Torre said of Kerrigan, "and told him, 'First of all, you shouldn't be sitting with players out at night. And secondly, if you can't control your emotions, then you can't go out yourself.' Then he just stopped coming to dinners. I would invite him to join me and others on the staff to dinners, and he just stopped coming."

Torre liked Kerrigan's work ethic and saw him as a good complement to Guidry, who was the old-school-style pitching coach. But Torre wasn't sure he could trust Kerrigan. He knew Kerrigan was connected to the front office by way of Cashman, and word reached Torre that Kerrigan was having private conversations with Cashman about the team and Torre. One staff member even said Cashman had telephoned Kerrigan during a game. Torre wanted to find out if the rumors were true, if Cashman had a pipeline behind his back to Torre's own staff, so he confronted Cashman about it.

"I remember asking Cash point-blank if he has conversations with Kerrigan," Torre said, "and he said, 'No.' "

A short time later, one of Torre's staff members told him that he and a couple of other staff members were riding in a car with Kerrigan when Kerrigan's cell phone rang. "Hi, Cash," Kerrigan said into the phone, and the two of them proceeded to chat at length. Torre felt wounded, not so much because he thought Kerrigan might be keeping a secret pipeline to the general manager, but more because Cashman had denied such an arrangement to Torre.

In bad times, Kerrigan turned out to be expendable. He didn't have the Yankee pedigree that Guidry and Mattingly did, and his confrontations with Pavano and Giambi had caused concern about his abrasiveness anyway. The Yankees split the first two games in Boston. Kerrigan was going to be fired if they lost the series finale. At that moment, an unlikely ally stepped in and fought for Kerrigan to keep his job: Torre. The manager called Cashman.

"You can't fire him," Torre said. "We're going horses.h.i.t. I would fire him at the end of the year, but this is not the time to do it. Because then it's going to look like he's the cause of our problems, and that's not right."