The Closer (11 page)

There is nothing like a ticker-tape parade in New York City. You ride through that canyon of skyscrapers, with millions of pieces of confetti swirling and almost as many fans cheering, and the outpouring is a humbling spectacle. All this love, all this adulation—it’s remarkable to bask in it, and to share in people’s happiness. Maybe my most enduring memory of that 1999 celebration comes at the City Hall ceremony. Mr. T has the microphone and summons Jorge Posada to join him.

Tell them what we say at the end of our meetings, Jorgie, Mr. T says.

Grind it out! Jorgie hollers as he turns his fist, smiling as he does.

There isn’t a better grinder-outer on those championship teams than Jorgie Posada, let me tell you that. Nobody works harder, either. A second baseman when he was drafted, Jorgie spends countless hours, over the years, refining his footwork, his pitch-blocking, his throwing mechanics—and it all pays off in 2000, when Joe Girardi is gone and Jorgie gets more of the workload than ever. He puts up an All-Star season, hitting 28 homers with 86 runs batted in and a .287 average; with his 107 walks, he posts the highest on-base percentage (.417) on the club. He strikes out more than anybody, too (151 times), but I cut him slack on that because he is such a total gamer.

Jorgie is emotional and unyielding at times, with a will as thick as his catcher’s physique. You want him on your side, for sure. We’re in St. Petersburg at the start of July 2000 to play the Rays, and we are in a tailspin, having lost 4 of 5 and 7 of 9, our record
just two games over .500 (38–36). Duque is pitching well, but he and the Rays are barking at each other after Randy Winn steps out just as Duque is about to throw a pitch. Jorge calms Duque down—an ironic scene, because often Jorge would motivate Duque by riling him up (something like putting quarters into a jukebox)—and later Tino clears the bases with a three-run double. In the bottom of the seventh, the Rays’ Bobby Smith goes down on strikes against Jeff Nelson, and as Jorgie pops out to fire the ball to Brosius, Smith bumps him slightly with the barrel of his bat.

Jorge jabs the ball into Smith’s side and then they’re at it, bodies tumbling, Smith’s helmet flying, revealing the best blond Afro this side of Randy Levine. Jorge and Smith are both ejected (and later suspended), and even though I never ask Jorgie if he had an ulterior motive by getting into it with Smith, he knows how to rouse the troops. The game means so much that Mr. T has me come in to close even though we have a five-run lead. We win seven of our next eight and climb back into first place, staying there the rest of the year.

When you go through such long seasons with guys, ups and downs are inevitable, and more than anybody else on the team I feel for Chuck Knoblauch. I think people forget what a huge factor he proved to be in our championship runs in 1998 and 1999. For almost a decade he’s been one of the top leadoff men in baseball. He hit .341 and .333 in back-to-back years with the Twins, and the year before we traded for him, he hit .291 with ten triples and sixty-two steals—the kind of player whose speed and energy can change a whole game. He also won a Gold Glove as the league’s top defensive second baseman, which is why it’s so hard to see him suffering the way he is with his throwing. Chuck, simply put, has the yips—the term baseball people use for players who suddenly, inexplicably, lose the ability to execute a simple skill they’ve demonstrated mastery of their entire career. It can be a pitcher who loses the
strike zone and never relocates it, a catcher who can’t throw the ball back to the pitcher, a pitcher who can’t throw to first, or, in Chuck’s case, a second baseman who can’t make a twenty-five-foot throw to the first baseman right next door. Chuck is fine when he has to make a diving play, then scramble to his feet and throw. The yips come when he has time to think about it. I’ve never been on a team with a player who has had the yips until now, and it’s just horrific to watch. To see a guy who is a phenomenal athlete and competitor get invaded by these demons, and have a runaway mind grind him into mulch—it’s so sad. And probably the worst part—beyond even the embarrassment and humiliation—is the way it sucks every bit of fun out of playing the game.

Chuck had one error in his Gold Glove year, thirteen the following year, and twenty-six the year after that. His problems seem to be on the wane as the season begins, but then they flare up again in a 12–3 loss to the White Sox at Yankee Stadium. Chuck makes errors on two routine throws to Tino, missing badly, and then, on a perfect double-play ball, gets the shovel feed from Derek and throws the ball about twenty feet up the line from where Tino is stretching toward him. The fans boo him unmercifully. At the end of the inning, he runs into the dugout, talks to Mr. T, and in an instant he is not only gone from the dugout; he is gone from the Stadium.

When a teammate is going through something like this, not just a slump or rough patch but a psychological disorder, you don’t know what to say or do. You feel helpless. You just try to stay positive and let him know you are there.

Chuck toughs it out, and it sure looks as if he is getting better toward the end of the year, but by then our issues go way beyond the yips. When Roger defeats the Blue Jays and I get my 34th save on September 13, we are 25 games over .500 (84–59). At which point we sink faster than my father’s rusty old anchor.

We lose eight of our next nine, and fifteen of our last eighteen. In one three-game stretch, we give up thirty-five runs. In our last seven games—all losses—we are outscored, 68–15. That’s hard for an expansion team to do, never mind a two-time defending World Series champion.

So we limp into the division series against the Oakland A’s, and have a question to answer: Are we the club that has won twenty-two of its last twenty-five postseason games, and captured three of the last four World Series?

Or are we the club that hasn’t pitched, fielded, or hit in the clutch for more than two weeks?

When Roger gives up four runs in six innings and we lose Game 1 in Oakland, I can’t deny the obvious: We are up against it in a way we haven’t been since 1997. We either show up and play hard for nine innings in Game 2 or we’re just not made of the same championship fiber we once were. Could it be that the Mets, who are on their way to the National League pennant, are going to be the New York team that gets a parade this fall?

Not many managers have better instincts than Mr. T, so when he makes lineup changes for the second game, I don’t think of it as panic; I think of it as a smart manager playing a strong hunch. Against the Padres in 1998, Mr. T had a feeling about Ricky Ledee, who was rarely used during the season, and Ledee wound up getting six hits in three games. He had a feeling that Ramiro Mendoza should be the long man in the postseason, and it worked spectacularly. Knoblauch, now a designated hitter (DH) because of his throwing issues, sits down; Glenallen Hill takes over. Paulie, struggling with a bad hip, moves down in the order, and Jorge moves up to the second spot, right behind Derek. Hill and Luis Sojo, our second baseman now, deliver big hits, and Jorgie is on base three times. Andy pitches brilliantly, taking a shutout through seven and two-thirds, and then Mr. T calls for me, and I get four groundouts
to complete a 4–0 victory, even the series, and remind us what it feels like to win.

Back at Yankee Stadium, Duque outduels Tim Hudson, and I get the last six outs without giving up a hit, and the 4–2 victory in Game 3 puts us a game away from the ALCS. I would’ve bet money that, after losing Game 1, Roger would lock the A’s up in Game 4; and if I had, I would’ve lost it. Roger gets spanked around, giving up a three-run homer in the first to a Panamanian DH, Olmedo Saenz, and the A’s go on to an 11–1 rout, and we all go back to Oakland, where we blow out to a six-run lead in the first and then hold on, as I get Eric Chavez on a pop-up to put us up against Piniella and his Mariners in the ALCS.

The Mariners are the club that I came of age against five years earlier, of course, establishing myself for the first time as a pitcher who was capable of dominating. Once you have that breakthrough, it changes not only how other teams perceive you but how you perceive yourself. I always knew I could be effective, but when I walk off the mound after striking out Mike Blowers with the season on the line, I can’t say that it isn’t a powerful affirmation.

On our way to a triumph in six games, the ALCS against the Mariners produces one of the truly great pitching performances that I have ever seen, delivered by Roger Clemens in Game 4, when he throws a one-hitter and strikes out fifteen. The hit—a double by Al Martin—doesn’t come until the seventh inning. Roger then responds by striking out Alex Rodriguez, Edgar Martinez, and Mike Cameron. He doesn’t just overpower the Mariners; he dices them up with his location, and competes the hardest when he needs it most. Clemens’s heroics give us a three-games-to-one lead, before we close it out in Game 6, when David Justice, the series MVP, rips a massive homer to power a six-run seventh that gives us a 9–4 lead. It’s 9–5 when I come on to close in the eighth, and I give up two more runs to make it 9–7. In the ninth, I get two outs
on five pitches before Alex Rodriguez gets on with an infield hit. This isn’t good.

Because the next hitter is Edgar Martinez, Mo-killer.

I fire strike one and then come at him again, trying to stay in so he can’t smack the ball the other way, something he is very good at. The cutter comes in at him and breaks hard, breaks late. Edgar swings but hits it weakly, a grounder to short. Derek scoops it up and throws over to Tino.

What do you know?

I actually got Edgar Martinez out.

An instant later, Jorge is rushing to hug me, and Derek races in and rams me with a boyish body check.

Edgar Martinez can’t hit you, Derek says.

The crowd chants, “We want the Mets.” They will get the Mets, and so will we, in the first Subway Series since 1956.

T
HE DEPTH AND INTENSITY
of the intra-city rivalry between fans of the Yankees and the Mets is still new to me. It’s not as if I’ve grown up with it, after all. Half the fishermen on our boat are not wearing Met hats and the other half are not wearing Yankee hats, and none of us spend our days debating who is better, Keith Hernandez or Don Mattingly.

But it doesn’t take me long to find out that this is going to be a very different World Series than the previous three. Nothing changes with the goal—win four games—and nothing changes with my get-in-and-get-out approach. I’m not someone who is going to get caught up in the hysteria and Super Bowl–style craziness.

But:

To be in a Series that requires no flights (a good thing) and lets me sleep in my own bed and wake up with my family every day (an even better thing), and that is being covered by about ten million reporters and is drawing out every second of old Yankee–Dodger film clips ever recorded, well, it’s just not the same. I feel that, too.

Despite our dismal playing down the stretch, we show signs of getting back to winning baseball in the first two rounds of the playoffs. You may get us down. You may knock us around. You may think we’re on our way out. But you better know we are going to fight back and keep on fighting for as long as it takes.

And beyond that, you better know we are not ever going to get complacent and think that there’s no doubt we’re going to win because we’re the New York Yankees. All the credit must go to Mr. T and his staff for that. They have created this culture of deep belief in ourselves, but no arrogance. That is such a fine line you can’t even see it, but we walk it. You know how many times I’ve gone out to the mound thinking,
This guy has no shot, because I am Mariano Rivera
?

Never.

The guy with the bat in his hand is a professional. He is a big league hitter, whether his name is Mike Piazza or Bubba Trammell or Benny Agbayani. He is trying just as hard to get a hit as I am trying to get him out. I respect that. I respect every competitor, from Edgar Martinez to the guy who has never hit a fair ball off of me.

The Series begins at Yankee Stadium, with the Mets sending out someone else I respect—Al Leiter. He is a winner and a battler, a world champion for the Marlins in 1997 who pitched six gritty innings in a Game 7. Leiter and Andy match zeroes through five innings, and then Timo Perez, a fleet outfielder whose energy and pop have been a big piece of the Mets’ run late in the year, singles up the middle.

I am still in the clubhouse, watching on TV, having just gotten a rubdown from Geno. I am about ready to head to the bullpen when, with two outs, Todd Zeile crushes a line drive to deep left. It looks as if it’s going out, but the ball hits the top of the wall, missing going over by the width of a fishhook.

It drops on the warning track. David Justice, our left fielder, picks it up and hits the cutoff man, Derek, who takes the throw near the left-field line, spins, and, off the wrong foot, crossing into foul territory, fires a one-hop strike to Jorge, who blocks the plate and slaps the tag on Perez.

You see that, Geno? I say. What a relay! What a play! I shout out loud. All right!

It’s just a perfect throw by Derek, all the more so because he is off balance and on the move. It is a terrible play by Perez, who is so sure the ball is gone that he is running half speed as he rounds second. If he’s running even three-quarter speed, he scores standing up.

In the bottom of the inning, Justice hits a two-run double and we have just nine outs to get, but the Mets don’t stay down, taking a 3–2 lead on a two-run single by pinch hitter Trammell and, with Jeff Nelson on in relief of Andy, a well-placed roller down the third-base line by Edgardo Alfonzo.

Out in the pen now, I wait for the phone to ring. The message is always the same:

Get Mo going.

It rings a moment later. Tony Cloninger, the bullpen coach at the time, answers.

Mo, Tony says.

That is all I need to hear. I start warming up with my weighted three-pound ball, windmilling my arm around as I bend at the waist. Then I follow my usual routine with bullpen catcher Mike Borzello. I start with three easy tosses to Mike as he stands behind the plate, then motion for him to get down, and throw a half dozen or so pitches to the glove side, another half dozen to the other side, then come back to the glove side. In fifteen to eighteen pitches, I am loose, and then I just watch the game.

I enter in the top of the ninth. Jay Payton, leading off, flies out to deep right center, and then I nick Todd Pratt and give up a double to Kurt Abbott and have myself in a bit of a mess. Perez steps up. I need either a strikeout or a grounder right to somebody, with the infield in. On a 1–2 pitch, I come inside hard with the cutter and Perez taps it to second for the second out. Then I get Alfonzo, a very tough hitter, swinging.

Now it’s our last chance to tie or win the game, against the Mets closer, Armando Benitez, and he’s looking for three outs. Jorge fights him through seven pitches before hitting a long fly to center. Paulie steps in and tries to change recent history. He is thirty-seven years old, has a bad hip, and has been slumping, but if there’s one guy who is going to battle to the end to get something going, it’s Paulie. Benitez jumps ahead, 1–2. A massive man with a massive fastball, Benitez keeps pumping in high-ninety heaters, and Paulie just keeps getting a piece, fighting them off with short, defensive swings. After two fouls, Benitez misses for 2–2, and misses again to run the count to 3–2. Now the pressure is even. Paulie spoils another strike, and another, and the crowd is starting to roar and Benitez is getting exasperated.

On the tenth pitch of the at-bat, Benitez fires and misses outside and Paulie throws away the bat and takes his hard-won walk. It’s as good an at-bat as I’ve ever seen. The Stadium is rocking. Pinch-hitting for Brosius, Luis Polonia hits a single to right, and Jose Vizcaino goes the other way, knocking a single to left, but too shallow for Paulie to score. Knoblauch hits a fly ball to left, a sacrifice fly that sends O’Neill home to tie the game.

I strike out Piazza and Zeile and get Robin Ventura to fly out to take care of the tenth, and then Mike Stanton throws two strong innings and Game 1 moves into the bottom of the twelfth. It’s approaching one in the morning, and the game is more than four and a half hours old.

This is just the kind of game we find a way to grind out and win,
I think.

I pick my spots when I decide to be vocal in the dugout. I usually only do it in the biggest moments, the most important games. Games such as this.

Now’s the time, I say, walking up and down the dugout. Let’s win this right now.

With one out, Tino singles and Jorge doubles off Mets reliever Turk Wendell. The Mets walk Paulie to load the bases and get a force at the plate. Luis Sojo pops up, and now it’s Vizcaino’s turn. He already has two hits, another of Mr. T’s hunches that works brilliantly. (Mr. T likes Jose’s career numbers against Leiter and gives him the start, even though Sojo has been playing second almost every game.)

On Wendell’s first pitch, Vizcaino swings and serves a line drive into left. Here comes Tino, and there goes Vizcaino, leaping his way around first. It is 1:04 on a Sunday morning. We pour onto the field and mob Viz. It’s a game that we win on a relay throw, a ten-pitch walk, and three hits from a Dominican journeyman on his seventh team.

He fits right in. He knows how to win.

It’s the bottom of the first inning, about nineteen hours after Viz’s game-winner, and I am in a hot tub in the Yankees trainer’s room. There is no TV in there, but I know that Mike Piazza is the third man up against Roger, and it is the most anticipated heavyweight showdown since Ali and Frazier, if you believe the media buzz. I don’t believe it much of the time, but I
am
curious to see what happens. When we played the Mets in early June, Piazza hit a grand slam against Clemens. When we played the Mets in early July, Clemens hit Piazza in the head with a fastball. I can’t say what Clemens’s intentions are. I never talk to him about it, though I do know Piazza has had a lot of success against him. Only Clemens and the Lord know what was in his mind the day he beaned Mike Piazza. I never hit anybody in the head in my whole career, and I never would. Not intentionally. You can talk all you want about keeping hitters honest and instilling fear that could ultimately help you win, but you never do something that endangers somebody’s well-being, or their livelihood or even their life. Good ol’ country hardball? To me, it’s more like good ol’ country cowardice, throwing a baseball at 98 miles per hour at somebody’s head. This man with
the bat is somebody’s son. He is probably somebody’s husband and somebody’s father. You can’t deny that or ignore that. I compete as hard as anybody, but you do it within the confines of fair play, and headhunting is not fair play.

By the time I am out of the tub, I find out I missed all the excitement, so I immediately catch a replay: Clemens quickly gets two strikes on Piazza. He throws a ball and then comes inside with a fastball, and as Piazza swings, his bat splinters, the barrel bouncing right out to the mound. Unaware the ball is foul, Piazza starts running toward first, and Clemens picks up the bat barrel and flings it sidearm, and hard, toward Piazza on the first-base line. The bat skims along the ground and kicks up, and its jagged edge misses Piazza by a foot or two.

What’s your problem? Piazza says as he takes a step toward the mound. I have no idea what’s going on, or why Roger would do that, but it’s mind-boggling to me that you could be so emotionally wound up that you snap that way. Roger is an insanely intense competitor. I never ask him about what’s going through his mind then, mostly because everybody else is doing it for me.

Mike Hampton, the Mets starter, is wild early, helping us score two in the first, before Brosius leads off the second with a shot into the seats in left. Before we tack on three more runs later, I run into George Steinbrenner in the clubhouse. I’m over thirty years old, but he has always called me Kid, and isn’t stopping now.

I call him Mr. George.

Kid, you want a hot dog? I’ll get you a hot dog.

No thanks, Mr. George. I’m good.

You sure?

I’m sure, thanks.

Hey, Kid, we going to win this Series? What do you think?

We are going to win, and I am so sure I will make you a bet, Mr. George. If I am right and we win, you’ll fly my wife and kids and
me to Panama on your private jet. If I am wrong, I will take you out to dinner at the restaurant of your choice.

You got a bet, Kid, Mr. George says.

Mr. George disappears and I head for the bullpen. Roger pitches eight shutout innings and leaves with a 6–0 lead. The game seems about as safe as it can be, until it isn’t. Nelson gives up a two-run homer to Piazza and a single. Then I come in and Clay Bellinger, our left-field defensive replacement, saves my tail by going back to the left-field fence and making a superb, poised catch of a long Todd Zeile drive. Agbayani singles, but then I get Lenny Harris on a fielder’s choice and have two strikes left to close it out, and two guys on, when Payton, the Mets center fielder, takes an outside cutter the other way and hits it into the seats in right.

Suddenly, the score is 6–5, and the growing panic in the Stadium is palpable. Kurt Abbott steps up. He doubled off me in Game 1. Here’s what I am thinking:

This game needs to end now.

I hate messy innings, and this has turned into a big mess. I get ahead, 0–2, and fire the next cutter just where I want it, on the inner half and up. Abbott takes, and Charlie Reliford, the home plate umpire, rings him up. Abbott has a brief fit as Jorge comes out to shake my hand. Fifty-six thousand fans start to breathe again. I face 309 more hitters in my postseason career, and never give up another home run after Payton’s.

After a travel day to allow us to go over the Triborough Bridge into Queens, the Mets, losers of two agonizing one-run games, return home to Shea Stadium, their bowl by the bay with the LaGuardia Airport traffic overhead. I’m surprised at how many Yankee fans have found their way into Shea, but it doesn’t stop the Mets from knocking El Duque around in Game 3 and taking a 4–2 victory behind Rick Reed, even though Duque strikes out six Mets in the first two innings, and twelve overall.

We’re not getting a lot of production from our leadoff guys (they are 0 for 12 in the three games), so Mr. T decides to move Derek up to the top spot for Game 4. Bobby Jones is the Mets starter, and on his first pitch of the game, Derek drives it over the left-center-field wall at Shea Stadium. It’s a single run that feels like ten, for the way it fires us up and coldcocks the Mets. It is Derek Jeter at his best, providing just what we need, when we need it. Jones steadies himself after giving up two more runs, and when Piazza buries a Denny Neagle pitch for a two-run homer, the Mets are within a run at 3–2. Piazza comes up again in the fifth with two out and nobody on. Neagle is one out away from completing the five innings you need to get the win. Mr. T comes and gets him, and brings in David Cone, and Neagle is so incensed that he won’t even look at Mr. T. Cone is thirty-seven, an ace turned forgotten man, coming off the worst year of his tremendous career, a yearlong struggle that ended with a 4–14 record and 6.91 ERA. He hasn’t thrown a single pitch in this World Series.

It’s another Mr. T hunch… that David can find a way to get Piazza. David gets ahead, 1–2, and comes right at Piazza with a sharp slider. Piazza swings and pops up to second.

In the clubhouse with Geno, I can only marvel at our manager’s instincts yet again.

Both bullpens pitch flawlessly and now it’s on me in the eighth and ninth. Paulie makes a fine grab of a sinking liner by Alfonzo to lead off the eighth, and then I get Piazza to ground out, before Zeile singles. I get out of it by popping up Ventura, and record two quick outs in the ninth, too.

Next up is Matt Franco, who had a game-winning hit against me the year before. On the first pitch, a strike, Jorge and I can tell Franco is waiting for the cutter in on the hands, edging farther from the plate to give him more room to turn on it.