The Yankee Years Part 26

Said Torre, "At that point I knew I wasn't coming back, even if we won."

_All things considered, Torre did a fairly good job concealing his hurt and disappointment. The urgency of the Yankees' plight demanded his attention. It was up to Roger Clemens to save the franchise and the manager. Clemens was 45 years old, had not pitched in 20 days and, with his body betraying him, was staring at the possibility that this finally could be the last game he pitched in the big leagues-especially considering at that moment the two tons of dirt on him sitting on the desk of baseball's independent steroids investigator, George Mitch.e.l.l. Even if the Yankees somehow managed to survive that game, the decision by Torre and Cashman to have w.a.n.g pitch two of the first four games looked far more suspect now that the Indians had hammered w.a.n.g in Game 1.

As the Yankees took batting practice before Game 3, Mussina walked over to w.a.n.g in the Yankee Stadium outfield.

"Can you pitch tomorrow?" Mussina asked him.

"No, you you pitch tomorrow," w.a.n.g said. pitch tomorrow," w.a.n.g said.

"I didn't ask you that," Mussina said. "I said can can you pitch tomorrow." you pitch tomorrow."

"Uh, yeah, I'm okay," w.a.n.g said.

Said Mussina, "He really didn't give me an answer. He was just kind of confused about the question. And then, 15 minutes later, they told him that he was going to pitch the next day. On three days of rest. I knew he was getting worn down. It was a long year. He had thrown a lot of innings. I knew he was worn down.

"The point is I know Joe would have been scrutinized to death if he had pitched me in Game 4 and I got beat. I still think I would have given us the best chance to win that day because I was rested. w.a.n.g wasn't. w.a.n.g had been beat up. I had had success against the Indians and it was a home game. Whether that would have made a difference or not in that game, I don't know. Just personally, I felt good about facing them."

To even get to a Game 4 the Yankees needed to survive a start from Clemens, who was a physical wreck, with hamstring and elbow woes, but who basically called his own shots. There was a game September 3 against Seattle, for instance, when Torre thought Clemens might consider not making the start because of his elbow trouble. Torre had Mussina standing by as an emergency starter. He left it up to Clemens.

"Roger insisted he could pitch," Torre said. "I must have asked him 10 times. I said, 'You know, you don't have to pitch this game.' And I know he's bulls.h.i.tting me because he's bulls.h.i.tting himself. He has this meeting with himself and he convinces himself that he can do this. He wills himself. So in getting that same point across to me, I'm still looking at this from the more rational side, so I'm still a little skeptical.

"It's like David Cone. You go to David Cone and ask him, 'Can you get this guy out?' And he goes, 'Yeah, I'll get him out.' He may have to pull a gun to do it, but whichever way he has to do it, he'll get him out. It gets to a point with certain guys, guys you've been around and trust, you know when they make that commitment they're going to do it. It may not be pretty, but they're going to get it done. So with Roger, you want to give him the responsibility, but you're sitting there thinking, I don't know why I let him do this. Then again, if I didn't let him do it, I'd be sitting there thinking, I wonder if he could have done it? It's one of those things where you second-guess yourself but you know there was no other way to do it."

In that September 3 game, Clemens lasted only four innings before the elbow pain forced him out. He gave up five runs and the Yankees lost to the Mariners, 7-1. Now Torre was rolling the dice on a creaky Clemens again, only this time with their season and the manager's job riding on it.

"There was no hesitation," Torre said.

Clemens never made it out of the third inning against the Indians. He needed to throw 59 pitches just to get seven outs. His hamstring fairly groaned in protestation when he tried to field a soft groundball near the mound in the second inning. His body was giving out. After that episode he told Torre, "Skip, I'll give you a signal if I can't do it."

Of course, a failing Clemens, still too proud, never gave the signal. He was laboring obviously when, already down 2-0, he walked the leadoff batter of the third inning. Torre told catcher Jorge Posada to talk to Clemens.

"Let me get this guy," Clemens said, referring to the next batter, Victor Martinez. Somehow, Clemens struck out Martinez. But Posada looked into the dugout at Torre and shook his head, signaling that Clemens was done. It was the last batter Clemens would ever face. Torre removed Clemens, replacing him with Phil Hughes, who would allow the third run to score. Clemens walked off for the final time, limping. He walked down the dugout steps gingerly, needing to hold a handrail to steady himself. His great career was over.

"It was pretty obvious he had to come out," Torre said. "You could tell just by watching him that he couldn't get the ball to do what he wanted it to do. He wasn't locating it. He always talks when he comes into the dugout, and he was talking that night about not being able to get the ball to behave the way it's supposed to.

"When you look back you say, 'Well, it was his age. What are you going to do?' The body just doesn't heal as quickly as you would want it to or used to. But no second thoughts. When you get to the postseason a lot of it is emotions. It sort of overrides ability a lot of times."

Down 3-0, the Yankees rallied to win the game, 8-4. Hughes pitched 3[image] innings of shutout ball. The offense awoke. Still, the front office wasn't happy about Torre using Chamberlain for two innings. The Yankees were leading 5-3 heading into their at-bat in the sixth inning when Chamberlain began throwing with the instructions that he would pitch the seventh to protect the two-run lead. The Yankees tacked on three runs in their at-bat. Chamberlain was already warming by then, so the best course of action was to get him in the game, rather than sit him down and risk having to get him up again if Cleveland threatened. Chamberlain cruised through the seventh inning in order on 16 pitches. innings of shutout ball. The offense awoke. Still, the front office wasn't happy about Torre using Chamberlain for two innings. The Yankees were leading 5-3 heading into their at-bat in the sixth inning when Chamberlain began throwing with the instructions that he would pitch the seventh to protect the two-run lead. The Yankees tacked on three runs in their at-bat. Chamberlain was already warming by then, so the best course of action was to get him in the game, rather than sit him down and risk having to get him up again if Cleveland threatened. Chamberlain cruised through the seventh inning in order on 16 pitches.

Now Torre had a choice: Did he pull Chamberlain to keep him strong for Game 4? If he did that, then he would have given the eighth inning of a must-win game to Kyle Farnsworth. And if Farnsworth wobbled even just a bit, Torre would have to send Rivera into the game in the eighth inning, which would limit his availability for Game 4. Torre was not prepared to take that kind of gamble, not with Farnsworth, especially not in an elimination game.

"I was trying to do whatever I could to stay away from Mariano to have him for two innings the next day," Torre said. "Chamberlain got through the seventh with the low pitch count. Now my choice is to go with someone else in the eighth, but if I don't get a clean inning, then I've got to get Mariano up, which was the one thing I was trying to avoid. I guess I never really had enough trust in everybody else down there to think that getting three outs in that spot is so simple."

Chamberlain stumbled in the eighth. He gave up a run while needing 22 pitches to get through it. Rivera breezed through the ninth inning in order, needing only 10 pitches. Torre's plan had worked. He won the game and got to a Game 4 with his best pitcher, Rivera, fresh and available for two innings. Chamberlain, freed from the "Joba Rules," still could come back with one inning. If the Yankees could win the first six innings of Game 4, Torre felt Chamberlain and Rivera, barring another biblical-like plague, could get the final nine outs to bring the Yankees to a Game 5, when each would be refreshed by a day of rest from an off day after Game 4. Some members of the front office, though, saw that Chamberlain had thrown 38 pitches in an 8-4 game and shook their heads.

Once again, after the game, Torre was forced to talk about his job status.

"The only thing I try to do," Torre said at his press conference, "is allow my players to roll the dice out there and play, because every time we go to postseason there's nothing that's going to satisfy anybody unless you win the World Series. And that's very difficult. Those are very difficult situations for the players to play under. I understand the requirements here, but the players are human beings, and it's not machinery here. Even though they get paid a lot of money, it's still blood that runs through their veins. And my job is to try to get them to be the players they are by, you know, allowing them to understand that the best effort you can give is all you can do."

His words seemed for the consumption of Cashman, Steinbrenner and Steinbrenner's cabinet as much as for the a.s.sembled media in front of him. It had been another long day in a long sea-son: the shocking Steinbrenner win-or-be-gone mandate, which was more proof his bosses no longer trusted him, the focus on his job security, the sight of Clemens hobbling off the mound for what this time really did look like the end to his career . . . to the very end, even victory exacted a toll.

It was the 1,249th win with the Yankees for Torre, including postseason play, over 12 seasons. It would be the last.

_The last game of the Torre Era began with a wish, a sort of last request, which seemed fitting because Torre delivered it in the maze of narrow hallways in the bas.e.m.e.nt of Yankee Stadium, which at times like these had the feel of catacombs winding darkly toward the gallows. Torre was walking to his usual pregame news conference before Game 4 with Phyllis Merhige, senior vice president of club relations for Major League Baseball.

"I hope we win the World Series this year," Torre told her, "so I can tell them they can shove this job up their a.s.s."

There was no hiding the hurt. Three years of growing distrust from his employers had culminated with Steinbrenner taking a shot at him out of the blue, and with his team down to its last breath, no less. Torre didn't know O'Connor was telling people he had kept dialing Steinbrenner on his own accord in search of a story. "It sounded like somebody set it up," Torre said, referencing people close to Steinbrenner, "especially knowing where George was at that time with his health. People couldn't get to George all year. It looked like it had other fingerprints on it. Of course, I was probably gun-shy at that point, anyway.

"I said what I said before Game 4 because I didn't want to come back with that whole att.i.tude of distrust in place. It was all stuff that seemed contrived. I can't stand living like that, where people are looking for ways to trick you. If you don't want somebody around, just tell them."

The end held little drama. It was 87 degrees when the game began, the hottest October 3 in the recorded history of New York. w.a.n.g, pitching on short rest, was even worse than he was in Game 1. The first batter hit a home run. The third batter singled and the fifth batter singled, accounting for a 2-0 Cleveland lead. In the second inning, the leadoff batter singled and so did the next batter. w.a.n.g hit the next batter with a pitch. Torre had seen enough. w.a.n.g had faced nine batters and retired only three of them. He left the bases loaded for Mike Mussina, who allowed two of those runners to score before pitching out of the inning. w.a.n.g, already tagged for a playoff-record-tying eight earned runs in Game 1, became only the 10th starting pitcher in postseason history to lose an elimination game while failing to get more than three outs.

The gamble to pitch w.a.n.g twice in four games blew up on Torre and Cashman. Mussina, who had wanted the ball and who had described w.a.n.g as worn down heading into that start, pitched decently in relief, allowing two runs over 4[image]innings.

"They stayed off pitches that other teams swing at," Torre said about how the Indians battered w.a.n.g. "I think he maybe tried too hard, tried to do too much."

Said Bowa, "You could have the greatest manager in the world, but if your ace gets rocked in two playoff games and it's best out of five, you're in trouble. You're in deep s.h.i.t. That's what happened. Now, I still say that if we win that one game, the Joba game with the bugs, we beat them."

The Yankees had an early chance to recover from w.a.n.g's miserable start. They put runners at first and second with one out in the first inning, whereupon Alex Rodriguez whiffed on three pitches from soft-tossing journeyman pitcher Paul Byrd. Rodriguez did hit a home run later-with n.o.body on base in the seventh inning and the Yankees losing 6-2.

The Yankees batted .228 in the series. They did hit seven home runs, but six of them came with n.o.body on base. Abreu, Jeter, Giambi and Rodriguez, four of the nine highest-paid players in the game, batted a combined .238. Rodriguez was, again, particularly dreadful, especially in the big spots, failing to drive in a single run but for his cosmetic solo home run in Game 4.

The team with the $61 million payroll dominated the team with the $190 million payroll. The team with 13 past and future All-Stars crushed the team with 26 past and future All-Stars. Was it a fluke, another casualty of the randomness of a short series? No. It was an affirmation that the rest of baseball, fortified by increased revenues and smarter business practices, had chipped away at the compet.i.tive advantage the Yankees had enjoyed because of resources alone, and the Indians were at the front of that wave.

Cleveland, for instance, cut the gap on the Yankees with their attention to detail on medical and health issues. In 2007, the Indians lost only 324 player days to the disabled list-the fewest in the league and second fewest in baseball-while paying a total of just $4.3 million to players who were physically unable to play. Over the previous three seasons, the Indians ranked number one in baseball in fewest days lost to the disabled list. They were the best at keeping their players on the field, a huge factor for lower-payroll teams who could not afford the depth to withstand injuries.

The Yankees, meanwhile, were abysmal when it came to age and injuries. They flushed away $22.22 million on players who couldn't play, or almost 12 percent of their bloated payroll. They lost 1,081 player days to the disabled list, more than three times as many down days as had the Indians. Over the previous three seasons, the Yankees ranked 23rd in baseball in days lost to the disabled list, a trend that would continue in 2008.

The 2007 Division Series was the continuation of a downward spiral for the Yankees. The more they tried to recapture the magic of the dynasty, the more money they spent on acquiring players from outside the organization, most of whom did not bring a winning pedigree. And the more they focused on patching holes with veterans from winter to winter, the more they lost sight of the importance of a farm system. And the more they needed those veterans, particularly when it came to pitching, the fewer good options were available, as the rest of baseball, armed with new revenues and new intelligence to help evaluate player value, held on to their prime a.s.sets rather than lose them to big spenders such as the Yankees.

That new paradigm was particularly evident in October when the Yankees no longer had any power pitchers in their prime to match up against the better teams in the league. In their dynasty the Yankees could match up their number four starter, be it a young Andy Pett.i.tte or Orlando Hernandez or David Cone or Roger Clemens, against an opponent's number one starter and still feel good about the matchup. No matter how their rotation fell, the Yankees never were disadvantaged. But in their downward spiral the Yankees kept sending to the mound broken-down pitchers or pitchers who could not throw the ball past hitters with any consistency.

In Torre's final 17 postseason games, his starters were 2-8 with a 6.36 ERA while averaging only 4[image]innings and three strikeouts per start. In the last six games in which the Yankees faced playoff elimination, Torre's starting pitchers were a broken-down Kevin Brown, seven-game-winner Shawn Chacon, a broken-down Mike Mussina, a broken-down Jaret Wright, a broken-down Roger Clemens and sinkerball specialist Chien-Ming w.a.n.g on short rest.

The demise of the Yankees was a thick stew of multiple ingredients, but the main one, the one that gave it its most distinctive flavor, was the inability to develop or acquire starting pitchers with prime stuff that could make hitters swing and miss. Strikeouts are a quick and easy barometer of the quality of a pitcher's stuff. The most d.a.m.ning statistic to quickly explain what happened to the Yankees is that in the seven years after the Yankees last won the World Series, their starting pitchers, without exception, were worse every year at striking out batters than they had been the year before (while generally throwing fewer and fewer innings, shifting more of the workload to the bullpen). Every year without fail they suffered through a diminution of pure stuff. They were a franchise leaking oil. Here is the steady plummet in their starting pitchers' strikeouts: [image]

"You need that dominant number one starter," Jason Giambi said. "That's what you need, especially in a short series. You need to change the tide. Quick. Because if you're down, even 0-2, if you have that big guy to come back and win that big one, now it's up for grabs.

"You need guys who can strike guys out. You need big punch-outs. You're not going to play those 9-8 games anymore in the postseason. You need to win 3-2, 2-1, and be able to match up against the other team's big guys. You need big outs, big punch-outs. Guy on second base, two outs. You can't have the ball put in play, where it's putting pressure on you every inning. You need to get out of that inning sometimes without having to make a play.

"And really, in that regard, we had a role reversal with the Red Sox. Until they got Schilling to go with Pedro, we could beat them. Then once they got that extra power guy, that's what kind of turned the table for them. Then they went and got Beckett. That's where they turned the tide on us."

From 2001 through 2007, the best young strikeout pitchers never reached the free agent market to become available to the Yankees, such as Mark Prior, Kerry Wood, Johan Santana, Jake Peavy, Carlos Zambrano, CC Sabathia and Brandon Webb. The swap of Ted Lilly, a gutsy strikeout pitcher if not an ace, for Jeff Weaver, a sinkerballer with questionable makeup, was a critical mistake. And when the Yankees did acquire a hard thrower in his prime, Javier Vazquez, they somehow saw the worst of him and punted him after just one year.

What made their search for a power pitcher all the more desperate was that their draft and player development system went bankrupt when it came to homegrown pitchers. In the 13 drafts in between taking Andy Pett.i.tte in 1990 and Phil Hughes in 2004, the Yankees drafted 397 pitchers. Not one of them made a significant contribution to the Yankees' rotation. Not one. No sleeper pick came through. No top pick panned out. No middle-round pick developed that one pitch or made that key adjustment to be a good starting pitcher for the Yankees. The odds were staggering that the Yankees could not hit on somebody, somebody, even by dumb luck, but that's what happened. With more resources to plow into scouting and development than every other franchise, the Yankees went 0-for-397 over more than a decade of pitching bankruptcy. even by dumb luck, but that's what happened. With more resources to plow into scouting and development than every other franchise, the Yankees went 0-for-397 over more than a decade of pitching bankruptcy.

With each year the Yankees spiraled further downward from their last World Series championship, the more frustration and distrust bubbled from within the organization, with the manager taking the brunt of it. And while all of this was happening, the team's most dynamic a.s.set, George Steinbrenner, was fading into a sad personal twilight, physically unable to provide leadership when the franchise most needed it. "Lead, Follow or Get the h.e.l.l Out of the Way" read the sign that for three decades sat on his desk at Yankee Stadium. The charismatic man could no longer lead or follow, so he was consigned to getting the h.e.l.l out of the way, which created an enormous void and, at best, uncertainty in the power structure of the team.

With their advantage in resources, the Yankees would be virtually unbeatable if they ran a clean, efficient and self-sustaining organization. When other teams smelled chaos there, however, they knew they had a chance. The Yankees had rivals and enemies throughout baseball, but their greatest threat came from within.

"We're counting on there being dysfunction in other places that have greater resources," said Shapiro, the Indians' general manager. "And is that going to make the difference? No. But it's a hundred different little things that together hopefully will."

_By Game 4 of the American League Division Series, the Indians had turned "a hundred different little things" into an advantage over the Yankees. They had the better team, and it was there for all to see on that weirdly warm night at Yankee Stadium. With one out in the top of the eighth inning, only six outs left in his tenure as Yankees manager, Joe Torre walked to the mound to make his last pitching change, removing Jose Veras and bringing in Mariano Rivera for the last time. As Torre walked off the mound toward the dugout, something spontaneous and touching happened. The crowd started chanting his name in the way that had become the official Yankee Stadium salute, the way the fans chanted for Paul O'Neill at the end of World Series Game 5, knowing how it would be O'Neill's last game at The Stadium. Joe Tor-re! Joe Tor-re! Joe Tor-re! Joe Tor-re! Joe Tor-re! Joe Tor-re!

In the back row of the press box, a Yankees official, one of the voices who had Steinbrenner's ear, heard the outpouring of support for Torre from Yankees fans, and, with a stunned look, could muster only two words: "Holy s.h.i.t." This was not good for the voices. They didn't like the fact that Torre was liked.

It was 11:38 p.m. when the end came. Jorge Posada swung and missed at a pitch from Cleveland closer Joe Borowski for the final out of a 6-4 Yankees loss. It was the last pitch of the last postseason game ever played at Yankee Stadium.

Borzello, the bullpen catcher who had been there through the entire Torre Era, took that long walk from the bullpen, across that great big outfield, across the infield and toward the Yankees dugout on the first base side. He made sure he looked up and gazed around the cathedral one last time.

"I knew this was it," Borzello said. "I knew Joe wasn't coming back. And then I saw Paul O'Neill, who was standing there by the dugout, working for the YES network, and he goes, 'Tough series, Borzy.' I looked at him and I realized how much things had changed. And I almost wanted to cry."

As the Yankees trudged into the clubhouse, Torre called them together one last time under his command. He spoke briefly, with little emotion, and never addressed his own situation.

"Guys, sometimes you can try your best, give it everything that you can, and it's just not supposed to happen," Torre said. "We just weren't good enough. I'm proud of what you did. You dug yourselves out of a hole and learned what it takes to be a team."

Torre made his way through the catacombs to the interview room for one last news conference. Of course, he was asked what he thought would happen to him next.

"This has been a great 12 years," he said. "Whatever the h.e.l.l happens from here on out, I mean, I'll look back on these 12 years with great, great pleasure, based on the fact that I'm a kid who had never been to the World Series, other than watching my brother play in the '50s, and paying for tickets otherwise. To have been in six World Series and going to postseason, I can tell you one thing, it never gets old. It never gets old. It's exciting. The 12 years just felt like they were 10 minutes long, to be honest with you."

The news conference was being broadcast on the stadium monitors. Torre's coaching staff was gathered in his office, standing there in front of the television, listening to the manager say his goodbyes. They knew he was gone.

When he left the news conference he returned to the clubhouse, where players were speaking in whispers, trading hugs and handshakes. The room had the pall of a funeral. Cashman walked into Torre's office. They had been together for 12 years, but they were strangers in that room. Cashman couldn't find the right words. It was as if they were standing on the same train platform, and Cashman knew Torre was on the next train out of town but that he was staying.

"He looked uncomfortable," Torre said. "He didn't know what to say. He later admitted to me that he was uncomfortable. I don't even know what he said."

One by one, most of the players stopped by to say thanks or goodbye to Torre. Pett.i.tte . . . Clemens . . . Jeter . . . Mussina. . . . Chamberlain . . . Chamberlain was crying when he came in to say goodbye to Torre.

Asked if he a.s.sumed Torre would not be back, Mussina said, "Oh, yes. Those of us that are older, we knew they weren't treating him very well. I talked to him. It was only about 15 seconds. Everybody was talking to him, especially the guys that had been with him for a long time." Ever the optimist, Jeter thought his manager still was coming back in 2008.

Rodriguez never did come by to see his manager. (He would be named the Most Valuable Player one month later, prompting a congratulatory message from Torre. Rodriguez never called him back.) Rodriguez was one of the last players to emerge from the back rooms of the clubhouse to make himself available to the media. He was already showered and dressed when he stood at his locker and answered questions without any emotion.

"At the end of the day my job is to help the team win a championship," Rodriguez said. "I have failed at that. Whatever blame you want to put on me is fair."

Rodriguez had the contractual right to opt out of his contract. The Yankees had declared very publicly on more than one occasion that should he elect to tear up his contract and seek a new one through free agency, they would not so much as negotiate with him. One Yankees official said no less than an hour after the Game 4 loss that they figured it would take $300 million to get Rodriguez signed to a new deal, and they already had developed a backup plan: trade for pitcher Johan Santana of the Twins. The Yankees could take half half of the money it would have taken to keep A-Rod and give it to Santana, the lefthanded ace, who at 28 years old and as a three-time strikeout champion who had whiffed more than one batter per inning over the length of his career, was exactly the kind of pitcher the Yankees had needed for years. Rodriguez left Yankee Stadium that night not knowing if he would wear the Yankees uniform ever again. of the money it would have taken to keep A-Rod and give it to Santana, the lefthanded ace, who at 28 years old and as a three-time strikeout champion who had whiffed more than one batter per inning over the length of his career, was exactly the kind of pitcher the Yankees had needed for years. Rodriguez left Yankee Stadium that night not knowing if he would wear the Yankees uniform ever again.

Torre was much more certain. He showered, dressed and left his office and the clubhouse believing this would be the final time he would do so as manager of the New York Yankees. He did not look back.

The End

Do you want me to manage?"

Joe Torre began the meeting with that simple question. They were sitting in the Legends Field office of George Steinbrenner. There was a time, and as recently as only 24 months earlier, when Torre could look The Boss in the eye and propose that question and he would get an answer that would let him know exactly where he stood. But Steinbrenner wasn't The Boss anymore; he was the aging patriarch of a seven-man tribunal. His family members and front office lieutenants went through the exercise of playing to tradition and formality, anyway. Steinbrenner sat at his desk and the others sat at the table that ran lengthwise away from his desk. There was Torre, of course, and Steinbrenner's two sons, Hank and Hal, his son-in-law, Felix Lopez, team president Randy Levine, chief operating officer Lonn Trost, and general manager Brian Cashman, who sat behind Torre's right shoulder.

On October 18, 2007, ten days after the Yankees lost the Division Series to Cleveland, ten days of public waiting for Steinbrenner to follow through on his Game 3 warning that Torre would not be back in the wake of defeat, the question Torre proposed was now the domain of the seven other people in the room. Steinbrenner sat slumped in his chair with dark gla.s.ses covering most of his face. Occasionally he would take them off, put them back on, take them off, put them back on . . . He contributed virtually nothing to the meeting except for occasionally simply repeating the last sentence of what someone in the room had just said.

The strange, sad element to the setting was that the men were surrounded by old reminders of Steinbrenner's vitality and iron will to win. Steinbrenner always had envisioned himself as a cross between a Hemingway character and a military leader, a man's man who gave no quarter, who boasted of bringing a football mentality to baseball, and the room reflected his pride in such obstinence. On a table behind him there was a picture of him as a halfback on the 1951 Williams College football team, reaching for a pa.s.s while a defensive back from Ball State elbows him in the back. Steinbrenner liked to tell people that he did not catch the ball, that the Ball State defensive back "knocked me flat on my a.s.s." The man, he wanted you to know, could take a hit.

There was a picture of the horse Comanche. Why Comanche? Steinbrenner liked the idea that the horse was the only survivor of Custer's last stand. He admired survivors. There was also a picture of General George S. Patton, given to him by a member of Patton's staff. It was not your typical military portrait. Patton is seen p.i.s.sing into the Rhine. There was a picture of his grandfather, George M. Steinbrennner the first, who married a girl from Germany and who started the Kinsman Shipping line of freighters, which carried ore and grain over the Great Lakes.

Of course, there were the aphorisms with which Steinbrenner literally liked to surround himself. Some of them were captured in frames and some of them were kept under the gla.s.s top of his desk.

"The measure of a man is the way he bears up under misfortune. Plutarch."

"And do not go where the path may lead. Go instead where there is no path and leave a trail. Ralph Waldo Emerson."

"You can't lead the cavalry if you can't sit in the saddle."

"The speed of the leader determines the rate of the pack."

And his favorite: "I am wounded but I am not slain. I shall lay me down and rest a while and then I will rise and fight again. Anonymous."

Times were different now. For Steinbrenner, it was time to rest, not time to fight. This was his office, but it was not his meeting. It was not his decision alone, anymore.

The meeting was Torre's idea. Hank, Hal, Felix, Levine, Trost and Cashman had kicked around the idea of what to do about Torre for the better part of a week. Do they offer him another contract and, if so, for how long and for how much money? Do they even want him back at all? While they deliberated, Torre told Cashman he wanted to meet with the group face-to-face. It wasn't much different from how he managed: you look somebody in the eye and rely on direct honesty, rather than leaks and secondhand information. The six Yankee lieutenants thought it was a good idea. By then they had decided that they would offer Torre nothing more than one guaranteed year.

The day before the meeting, as the two sides finalized arrangements for the meeting, Cashman broke the news to Torre that he probably would not do any better than a one-year offer.

"They only want to give you one year," Cashman told him over the phone.

"What about a second year?" Torre asked.

"I don't think they're going to offer you that."

"Cash, I have an idea. What about a two-year contract? It doesn't even really matter what the money is. Two years, and if I get fired in the first year, the second year is guaranteed. But if I get fired after the first year, I don't get the full amount of the second year, just a buyout. The money doesn't matter. I mean, as long as it's not just something ridiculous. It's not about the money. It's the second year."

Torre had just gone through the toughest year of his career, what with the leaks, the sniping, the constant talk about getting fired, and the feeling that people within his own organization were rooting against him. He was worn-out by all of that. There was no way he was going to go through another season like that. And there was one scenario that would have set the table for exactly that kind of season all over again: working under a one-year contract. That scenario would stamp him a lame duck all over again, with the leaks and sniping and managerial death watch starting up again upon the first three-game losing streak in April.

All Torre wanted was to manage one more season in relative calm, and the second year on a contract would help provide that kind of stability. The second year was nothing but an insurance policy. He planned to retire after that one season, anyway.

"I couldn't do it on a one-year deal," Torre said. "I couldn't go through what was the worst year of my professional life all over again. I couldn't put my family through it again. I couldn't put my coaches through that again. All I wanted was one year where n.o.body is questioning me about how you're going to lose your job."

_On October 18, Torre, Cashman and Trost boarded a private jet in Westchester, New York, for the flight to Tampa. He had told his coaches that he wasn't sure what was going to happen.

"I knew at the time I thought it was going to be 60/40 that he wouldn't come back," third-base coach Larry Bowa said. "You know, Joe kept everything pretty quiet. He said, 'I'll get in touch with you guys.' Selfishly, I wanted him to come back because I loved coaching there, but he had to do what he had to do. Coming back on a one-year deal would not be fair to him or the players, because he would have been gone quickly. No question.

"For a guy with what he's done for the city and that team, that's the one thing I thought was very unfair. I don't think he was treated the right way. I mean, I think Joe earned the right to go out on his own, and he should have earned the right to open that new stadium. At least they should have said, 'Okay, this year we'll give you, and for the new stadium you have an option if you want to stay or not, or go upstairs and be an adviser.' I really thought that was going to happen because of what Joe meant to the city, the players that played there and to the organization. And it didn't happen like that. It turned out to be an ugly ending."

On the plane ride to Tampa, Cashman repeated his warning to Torre about the length of the contract, again choosing a p.r.o.noun carefully as if to distance himself from what was about to go down.

"I don't think they're going to go to more than one year," Cashman said. "What are you going to do then?"

"I don't know," Torre said. "I don't know what I'm going to do. I'm just going to go in there."