The Closer (10 page)

An inning later, I close it up with two quick outs on Jim Thome and Brian Giles, then strike out Enrique Wilson to put us one game away from the World Series.

David Cone, a twenty-game winner, starts well in Game 6, and Scott Brosius clobbers a three-run homer and we jump to a 6–0 lead. A party atmosphere is building in the Stadium, but Thome hits a grand slam and the Indians get within one, and it’s only because Mendoza, the guy who won’t play catch with me, gives us three brilliant innings of relief, and Derek hits a two-run triple, that we add some breathing room.

I come in for the ninth with an 8–5 lead. Nine pitches later, I grab Omar Vizquel’s comebacker and toss to Tino and we’re heading back to the Series. The guys mob me, and the joy I feel is deep. I am not big on redemption. It’s not as if I go out there consciously thinking I have to make up for the Alomar home run. All I want to do is throw good pitches and get outs.

I am convinced that being fully committed to the moment, without any worries about the past or projections into the future, is the best attribute a closer can have. You wonder why the shelf life of so many short relievers is, well, so short? Why guys can be unhittable for a year or two and then disappear? It’s because it takes a ton of concentration, and self-belief, to stay in the moment this way and not let the highs and lows mess with your psyche. The Lord has given me a strong arm but an even stronger mind. It is the key to everything, allowing me to not succumb to doubt or weakness when I fail. Twelve months After Alomar, I pitch in four of the five games against the Indians, and give up no hits in five and two-thirds innings. I strike out five. I have an ERA of 0.00. In nine innings across two playoff series, I have given up one single.

I am ready for the San Diego Padres, and the World Series, and ready for an interesting family subplot, too. My cousin and former
teammate Ruben Rivera is now a Padre. Ruben is four years younger than me, a strong, fast, power-hitting center fielder, a player with the sort of physique and skills that make scouts feel faint. A Panamanian Mickey Mantle? More than a few baseball people think he has that kind of ability. In 1995, he is not just one of the hottest Yankee prospects in years; he is one of the top prospects in all of baseball. He makes some nice contributions with his bat and glove when the Yankees call him up in 1996, a year after me, and then it all begins to unravel.

You can be an All-Star for a long time. You have that in you, I used to tell Ruben. You just need to focus more and decide if this is what you really want.

It is what I want, Ruben would reply. I work hard.

I know you work hard, but there’s more to it than that. You also have to take care of yourself. You have to make good decisions. You have to realize you are only going to get one chance at this.

Ruben is one of those young guys who just seem to be a little too taken with the fame and the adulation that come with being a gifted big league player. He parties a little too much, stays out too late, never quite shows the patience he needs to let his talent take hold. He wants to be a star yesterday. He wants to swing at every pitch, whether it’s a strike or not. He wants it all, now, and when it doesn’t happen on his timetable, he gets frustrated. As the years pass, the frustration only grows. Ruben would wind up moving ten times in his big league career (he signed with the Yankees three different times). He hit 23 homers and stole 18 bases as a full-time player for the Padres in 1999. He also batted just .195 and struck out 143 times. I always wanted him to find a stable situation in the big leagues so that he could relax and let his gifts shine, but the stability never really happened for him until he got to Mexico, where he has played for the last seven years and, at the age of forty, is still one of the league’s top sluggers.

I want all the best for Ruben as the Series starts, but only after we win four games.

David Wells gets the ball to start a third straight postseason series for us, but this time is outpitched by Padres ace Kevin Brown, who takes a 5–2 lead into the bottom of the seventh. When Brown gives up a hit and a walk to start the eighth, Bruce Bochy, the Padres’ manager, calls for reliever Donne Wall, who immediately gives up a three-run homer to Chuck Knoblauch. Soon Wall leaves and Mark Langston arrives, and before the inning is over, Tino hits a grand slam and we have a seven-run inning. This is how it has gone all year. Production comes from everywhere. We have a No. 9 hitter, Scott Brosius, with 19 homers and 98 RBIs. We have Jorge Posada, a switch-hitting catcher in his first full year, hitting 17 homers and knocking in 63 runs, also at the bottom of the order. We have no 30–home run guys, but we do have eight guys who hit 17 or more, and five guys who drive in over 80 runs. The balance is incredible.

I come on in the eighth and get a four-out save, and the Padres’ problems deepen when we score seven more times in the first three innings of Game 2. With our Cuban rookie, Orlando Hernandez, on the mound, that is a massive deficit to overcome, and we’re halfway home after a 9–3 victory.

Our confidence is so unshakeable at this point that even when Sterling Hitchcock, the former Yankee, shuts us down through six and takes a 3–0 lead into the seventh, I sit on a bullpen bench and think:

We have them just where we want them.

All season we’ve fought back. All season we’ve had different guys come through in the biggest moments. So I am not surprised when Brosius, who’s been crushing the ball the whole Series, belts a homer to lead off the seventh, or when Shane Spencer follows with a double. Hitchcock is done, we creep one run closer, and,
one inning later, Brosius steps in against Trevor Hoffman, one of the best closers in the business, and sends another ball over the wall, this time with two men on.

Now we’re up, 5–3, and after a few hairy moments, I finish off a 5–4 victory by striking out Andy Sheets with the tying run at third. With a sweep one victory away, Andy outpitches Brown and throws seven and one-third superb innings, leaving with a 3–0 lead and two guys on. Jeff Nelson comes in and strikes out Vaughn, and then Mr. T calls for me. I run in from the pen, and am not thinking about dogpiles or Champagne showers or anything else. I am thinking:

Get an out.

Ken Caminiti singles to load the bases, and who should come up but Jim Leyritz. He seems to be following us around. Leyritz can crush anybody’s fastball if it’s not well located. On a 1–2 pitch, I throw a cutter, a little up and away. Leyritz swings. It is not the contact he is looking for, his short fly to center an easy play for Bernie, who grabs it with a basket catch.

My cousin leads off the ninth, and singles up the middle in the only at-bat he ever has against me, but he is not on first long. Carlos Hernandez, the catcher, hits into a 6-4-3 double play, and now I am looking in at Mark Sweeney, a left-handed pinch hitter. I pump in two fastballs, and then come with a cutter away that he bounces to Brosius, who throws across to Tino, and now the dogpile is
all
I am thinking of. Joe Girardi arrives first and hugs me as I raise my arms straight overhead, thanking the Lord. Soon I am engulfed by Brosius, World Series MVP, and everybody else. My postseason ends with six saves and 13.1 scoreless innings. It is the first time in my life I’ve gotten the last out of a season. It’s a feeling I could get used to.

T
HIS IS NO MIDSUMMER
night’s dream. It is real. The Holy Spirit is speaking to me. Not in a regular voice, as if Clara were talking to me in the kitchen. But it is definitely the Holy Spirit.

It’s a hot Friday night at Yankee Stadium in July of 1999, the Atlanta Braves are in town, and it is a strange game from the start. The pitching matchup is Greg Maddux vs. El Duque. Who would ever guess Maddux would give up nine hits and five runs, and Duque would give up eight hits and six runs—and they’d both be gone before the game was half over?

Derek, in the middle of the best year of his life, hits his fifteenth homer and knocks three hits, raising his average to .377. Ramiro Mendoza is sensational in relief and gets us to the ninth with three-plus innings of scoreless ball. I run in from the bullpen, accompanied by the guitar riffs of Metallica’s “Enter Sandman,” the new entrance song the Yankees have picked for me. I have no advance notice about it and honestly don’t pay the song much mind. Ever since we played the San Diego Padres in the ’98 World Series and the Yankees noticed how San Diego fans got all fired up by Trevor Hoffman’s entrance song, “Hell’s Bells,” by AC/DC, they have been trying to find the right introduction for me. (I might’ve gone with “Onward Christian Soldiers,” but I don’t think that would’ve flown.) For a while they try Guns N’ Roses’ “Welcome to
the Jungle,” which the fans seem to like. Then one day a Stadium operations worker named Mike Luzzi cues up “Sandman,” and the fans go berserk. So the search is over. I am not consulted and don’t need to be. If the fans like it, let’s go with it.

I am done with my warm-ups, and am standing on the back of the mound, head bowed, ball in my right hand, about to say my customary prayer:

Lord, please keep me safe. Keep my teammates safe, and everybody safe. I pray that You will protect me and give me the strength I need. Amen.

I am concentrating deeply and can feel my heart opening up. Suddenly I feel the overpowering presence of the Holy Spirit. My English isn’t good enough to describe what this feels like. Neither is my Spanish. You just have this supercharged sense of the Spirit in your heart, pouring into your soul.

I am the One who has put you here, the Spirit says.

I stop. I turn around and look up at the fifty thousand people surrounding me. I know what I just heard, and know that I am the only one who heard it. The tone of the voice is joyful, but it is also admonishing. I am at a point in the season and in my career at which I feel very much in charge of what I am doing on the mound. I don’t express this outwardly, but I am so full of confidence and vigor that it’s as if I am the one calling all the shots. In this moment, the Lord has apparently decided that I’ve gotten a bit too big for my closer’s britches, and that I need to be reminded that He is the one who is all-powerful, not me.

As I stand on the Yankee Stadium mound before all these people, I am flooded with emotions. I am chastened and humbled, profoundly shaken by this sudden spiritual wake-up call.

I am sorry that I have gotten carried away with my own sense of importance. I am sorrier still that I have ventured off on my own, to a degree, instead of seeking the Lord’s will. The Lord has indeed
put me here. Without Him I am nothing. The only reason I am here, and able to do what I do, is because He gives me strength.

It is time to pitch now.

Oh boy,
I am thinking.
I really don’t know how this is going to go.

I am going to do my best, but in this instant I probably have as much doubt about my ability to focus on the task at hand as I ever have in my professional career. Maybe this is part of the lesson that the Lord wants to teach me—I don’t know.

I get Bret Boone on a fly ball to right, and for a moment I think that maybe I can steady myself after all.

The thought does not last for long.

I bounce a pitch badly to Chipper Jones, then walk him on another ball way out of the strike zone. On my first pitch to Brian Jordan, he rips a hit-and-run single to right field. After I fall behind Ryan Klesko, Mel comes out to visit to get me to relax and throw the strikes that I almost always throw. I nod. I act as if everything is okay.

It is not okay.

Klesko laces a single. That blows the save. Two batters later, Andruw Jones takes me over the wall in left center. That blows the game.

It is about as bad an outing as I’ve ever had as a closer.

I don’t say a word about what happened to any of my teammates, but I know I have learned an important lesson. I am a human being, and human beings get complacent. We lose our way sometimes. The Lord decides that this hot summer night is the time to help me find my way again.

Is it a coincidence the way the rest of the season goes? That I give up one run for the rest of the year? That I finish the season with streaks of thirty and two-thirds scoreless innings and twenty-two consecutive saves? I have no idea. All I can tell you is that I
spend the next three months in a zone of profound humility and as much concentration and confidence as I’ve ever had in my life.

We win sixteen fewer games than we did the year before, but our record of 98–64 is still the best in the league, putting us in the division series against the Rangers for the third time in four years. The Rangers are a very good club, but, let’s face it, there is a part of them that seems to wilt like a flower in the Texas heat at the very sight of us. We sweep three straight games again, and for the second straight year, their loaded lineup manages a single run against us in the three games. I strike out Rafael Palmeiro and Tom Goodwin and pop up Todd Zeile to save Game 2, and throw two more scoreless innings to finish the series and put us into the ALCS against the Red Sox—the matchup everybody seems to want.

Ever since he arrives on his boat from Cuba, El Duque keeps proving what a big-game pitcher he is, and here he is again, going eight strong innings in Game 1, which is tied at three when I come on to start the ninth. I get six outs and allow one hit in two innings, taking it into the bottom of the tenth, when Bernie Williams socks a Rod Beck pitch over the fence a few minutes after midnight.

It’s a rousing way to start, and we don’t let up. Chuck Knoblauch has an RBI double and Paul O’Neill an RBI single late in Game 2, then Ramiro strands the bases loaded with two immense outs in the eighth, before I get the save in a wobbly ninth, striking out Damon Buford with Nomar Garciaparra, the tying run, on third.

We head to Boston with a 2–0 lead, and though the Red Sox emphatically get one back with a 13–1 victory in which Pedro Martinez is brilliant and Roger Clemens, longtime Sox ace turned Public Enemy No. 1, has the worst postseason start of his life, the slippage stops there. Andy is dominant in Game 3, and Ricky Ledee hits a grand slam off Beck in the ninth inning, and we win, 9–2—and before you can bake a batch of beans, we are dancing
on the Fenway infield after Duque rides again to lift us to a 6–1 victory in Game 5.

It puts us up against the Braves in another World Series, and wouldn’t you know it, the Game 1 matchup is El Duque and Greg Maddux, the same guys who were on the mound when the Holy Spirit visited me in the Bronx three months earlier. I do not hear voices this time. I just marvel at the contrast between these pitchers, and how they go about their craft. Here you have Duque, with his spring-loaded leg kick and gyrations, and arm angles he seems to invent as he goes, throwing all kinds of nasty stuff. There you have Maddux, as steady as a metronome, commanding the ball with flawless, brutally efficient mechanics. Unlike in the regular-season game, they are both in peak form, and eventually it is a 1–1 game in the eighth. It stays tight until Paul O’Neill comes up that inning.

This World Series isn’t especially dramatic—another four-game sweep—and is without epic games and highlight-film moments. People remember how I break three of Ryan Klesko’s bats in one trip to the plate in the final moments of the Series, and how Chipper Jones is laughing about it in the dugout. For me, though, this is a World Series that is all about Paul O’Neill.

Paulie got to the Yankees in 1993, and the team immediately started winning. In fact, the Yankees haven’t had a losing season since his arrival. It would be silly to say that the turnaround was all about him, but it would be even sillier to say that it was a complete coincidence.

The first time I meet Paulie is in spring training. Right away you notice not just his strength and size (a broad-shouldered and muscular six foot four) but his intensity and serious sense of purpose. He never says much, and he never hot dogs about anything. He does his work and wants to win. He’s a guy who once hit .359, and yet he just wants to be one of the guys in the lineup.

I admire that about him from the beginning. You learn early on in the big leagues that some guys play to the cameras, and some guys wish the cameras weren’t there at all. Paulie is in the latter group. He loathes talking about himself, even after he goes 4 for 4 or saves the game with a nice catch. He also doesn’t like getting attention after he heaves a helmet over a called strike, or batters one more watercooler into extinction. Paulie is unbelievably hard on himself, a perfectionist to the core. Early in 1999, we have a game at home against the Angels, and Paulie goes 1 for 5 and strikes out three times. The last time, he’s caught looking by Troy Percival with a guy on in the bottom of the ninth, the tying run at the plate. When umpire Greg Kosc punches him out, Paulie heads back to the dugout, and the next thing you know there’s an airborne watercooler on its way to the field. His temper can definitely cloud his judgment; once, he swings at a pitch and is so disgusted with the contact that he flings the bat away in a rage. The ball goes over the right-field wall. We give him a good going-over for that one.

You can always count on this guy, though. Paulie has a long-running feud with Lou Piniella, the Mariners’ manager, dating to their years together in Cincinnati. Lou loves to get into Paulie’s head and publicly calls him a baby for whining every time somebody pitches him inside. Maybe this is all gamesmanship; I don’t know, because I never get into that stuff. There isn’t one time in all my years of pitching when I either work an umpire or beef about a call so I might get the next one, or try to intimidate a hitter by telling him he better get ready to move his feet.

It’s not just that I think it’s unsportsmanlike; it’s just not the way I want to do business. I have a ball in my hand, and I believe I have all I need to get the hitter out without any of the extracurricular stuff.

In any case, all it does is make Paulie even more determined. He hit three homers in five games in the 1995 division series against the Mariners, and hits .417 with a couple more homers in
the ALCS in 2001, the year Piniella’s Mariners won a record 116 games.

That’s what I love about this guy; he is always there when the team needs him most. In June of 1999, we have a nasty little beanball game against the Indians. Wil Cordero homers off Clemens and later gets hit by our reliever Jason Grimsley. Not long after, Derek gets drilled by the Indians’ reliever Steve Reed. Derek isn’t even done glaring at Reed before Paulie rips a Reed pitch over the wall in right to lock the game away.

Nice job of taking justice into your own hands, I say to Paulie afterward.

He smiles.

It’s the best way to get even with a pitcher, he says.

Paulie is there with the glove, too, never more than in Game 5 of the 1996 World Series, as Wetteland tries to protect Andy’s 1–0 lead in the bottom of the ninth. The Braves have runners at first and third and pinch hitter Luis Polonia at the plate, and after six foul balls, Polonia drives a ball to deep right center.

I am sure that this ball is in the gap and that the game is over, the Braves taking a 3–2 lead. But Paulie runs and runs and chases it down near the warning track—never mind that he has a bad hamstring. His catch saves the game, and very possibly the World Series. Again, in 1998, with two on in the first inning of Game 2 against the Padres, he makes a leaping grab at the wall to rob Wally Joyner and sets us on our way.

Three years later, back in the Series again, it is not an easy time for the Yankees. A season that begins with Mr. T taking a leave of absence to get cancer treatment continues with the death of Scott Brosius’s father and then Luis Sojo’s father. Luis misses the first two games of the Series after his father passes.

Paul’s father, Charles O’Neill, is home in Ohio fighting a serious heart condition. I know it weighs on Paulie all year, and even
more so in the postseason, when his father’s condition worsens. I get so much comfort when I see him out there in right field—a man who you know is going to give all he has to help you get an out—that I wish somehow that I could comfort him.

Paulie’s father dies in the early hours of the morning before Game 4 against the Braves in 1999. When Mr. T posts the lineup and I see O’Neill in the usual No. 3 hole, between Derek and Bernie, I am not surprised at all. I look at Paulie as he sits at his locker in the back of the clubhouse before the game, wondering what this loss must feel like for him. I want to pray with him and console him, but now is not the time. That comes five hours later, after I break Klesko’s bats and get Keith Lockhart to fly out to left to finish off the sweep.

As the guys all converge on me in the center of the Stadium diamond, Paulie is the last one to arrive, the joy and grief and everything seeming to hit him all at once as he hugs Mr. T and begins to cry. He leaves the field in tears and walks into the dugout. As Mr. T said, Paulie is going through the highest of highs and the lowest of lows, all on the same day. Nothing prepares you for that. In the clubhouse chaos, with the Champagne spraying everywhere, I walk over to Paulie at his locker.

I am so sorry about your father, I say. I don’t know why the Lord wanted him to come home today, but I am sure he’s very proud of you.

Thank you, Mo, he says. He was watching, guarantee you that, and he’s happier than anybody that we did it.

I face forty-three batters in three postseason series that year, and none of them scores. The last run I gave up was almost three months and forty innings ago, on a double by Tampa Bay catcher John Flaherty. I finish the season with more saves (45) than hits allowed (43). I am named World Series MVP, and back in Puerto
Caimito and all over Panama, family and friends are telling me I’m the talk of the Canal Zone, and everywhere else. Fame is fine, but it is not what I seek. What I seek is the light and love of the Lord, for as He reminded me on that hot July night on the pitcher’s mound in the Bronx, He is the one who has put me here.