The Closer (17 page)

N
UMBERS MEAN VERY LITTLE
to me. Much as I’d like to blame it on Mrs. Tejada, my old math teacher, I can’t. It is just the way I am. I play a sport that is infatuated with records and milestones, that churns out enough numerical nuggets to fill a barge. Me, I don’t keep track of such things, and never have. I would be a terrible guy to have as your fantasy advisor. You know when I know about a milestone? When somebody tells me about it.

In early June 2006, I have a five-pitch, three-out save in Fenway (no, they didn’t cheer), which was No. 391 for my career, moving me past Dennis Eckersley into fourth place on the all-time list.

About six weeks later, I throw two scoreless innings at Yankee Stadium against the White Sox for save No. 400. On September 15, 2008, also against the White Sox at home, I retire A. J. Pierzynski on a tapper in front of the plate, saving a game for Phil Coke—and, with save No. 479, passing Lee Smith for second on the all-time list.

If Jason Zillo, the Yankees’ director of media relations, doesn’t clue me in, or a reporter doesn’t ask me about it, it slips right by. It’s different when I pass Trevor Hoffman’s 601 saves, because it’s a big topic all over the media, but otherwise, just open the bullpen door, cue up “Sandman,” and tell me where I stand in the history department later.

What these milestones mean to me could not be simpler: I am doing my job—and we are winning a lot of ball games.

I hear stories over the years about closers—some big-name closers—who refuse to go into the game if it is not a save situation.

Sorry, Skip, I can’t get loose, they might say.

Or:

I don’t think I can give you anything today.

In other words,
If it’s not helping my bottom line, I am not taking the ball.

Their rationale, I guess, is that they get paid based on saves, so why would they want to take on duties that are not going to get them paid?

If I were a pitching coach or manager and I had someone with that attitude, I’d try to get rid of the guy faster than Brett Gardner can get to first. Why have somebody on the team who doesn’t care about the team? If you are that concerned with yourself and your money, maybe you should go play tennis or golf.

Early in September 2007, we are in a pennant and wild-card race and we have an eight-run lead against the Mariners—not a save opportunity—and Mr. T brings me in to get the final three outs. In the final moments of our collapse and the Game 7 defeat to the Red Sox in the 2004 ALCS, Mr. T calls for me to get the final out of a 10–3 game that is one of the sorriest nights in all of Yankee history.

You know what I am thinking?

My manager wants me to pitch, I pitch. That’s it.

I can’t imagine not taking the ball, ever.

So,
my numbers? Unless you are talking about my team’s numbers or Numbers, the book in the Old Testament (
The Lord bless you and keep you; the Lord make His face shine upon you and be gracious to you; the Lord turn His face toward you and give you peace
), I will leave them to others, and let them be.

From start to finish in 2006, we put up numbers as a team to make your calculator smoke. We score 930 runs for the season, 60 more than the next closest team. We hit .285 as a team and clobber 210 home runs, and with a lineup that includes names such as Rodriguez, Jeter, Sheffield, Damon, Abreu, Cano, Williams, Giambi, Matsui, and Posada, it’s a wonder we don’t score ten runs a game.

We finish with 97 victories and end the regular season at home before the usual 50,000 fans (we set an American League record by drawing 4.25 million fans), and with a new manager, Bernie Williams. Bernie is playing what turns out to be his final regular-season game with the Yankees, and with the division safely clinched, Mr. T continues his tradition of letting a player manage the final game if nothing is at stake. This year, he decides it is Bernie’s turn.

For a reticent musician, Bernie is a managerial maestro. Derek is battling the Twins’ Joe Mauer for the batting title, and when Derek singles in the first, he is only half a point behind. But Mauer winds up getting two hits, and when it’s clear Derek can’t catch him, Bernie sends a minor league call-up, Andy Cannizaro, No. 63, out to replace Derek in the top of the ninth. Derek points to his chest, as if to say,
Me?
and leaves to a huge ovation. Later, in the ninth, Bernie pinch-hits himself for DH Miguel Cairo and doubles to right center. The first-base coach, Tony Pena, makes sure to retrieve the ball—it turns out to be Bernie’s 2,336th and final hit—and tosses it into the dugout, where Jorge grabs it, looks at Bernie on second, and pretends to heave the ball into the stands.

Bernie blows the game by bringing in Kyle Farnsworth, who gives up a two-run homer in the ninth to Adam Lind of the Blue Jays, and then, in his postgame press conference, conducted in Mr. T’s chair, Bernie announces that George Steinbrenner has fired him.

It’s all good fun, and we are upbeat going into the division series against the Tigers, who lose 31 of their last 50 games but still find a
way to climb from 71 victories to 95 in one year. We seem to have stabilized after a crazy year of turnover, even by Yankee standards. We endure so many injuries, every day seems to bring three new guys through the clubhouse door. In the pitching ranks alone, we use twenty-five different guys. It’s hard to keep track of their names. I want to be a good teammate to everybody, but often guys are not around long enough for me to do much more than shake hands with them.

(
Excuse me, are you Colter Bean or T. J. Beam?
)

Pitching has always been the core of our championship teams, so I am not completely sold on the idea that we can just bludgeon teams out of our way with the bats. But plenty of people do think that, including Al Kaline, the Tigers’ Hall of Fame outfielder, a man who played against Mickey Mantle and the great Yankee teams of the 1950s and early ’60s and goes on record as saying that this Yankee lineup is deeper and better. The big-bat formula works fine to begin the series, as Derek hits a homer over the center-field fence and goes 5 for 5. Giambi homers, Bobby Abreu has four RBIs, and we bang out fourteen hits. I save an 8–4 decision for Chien-Ming Wang, and when Damon clocks a three-run blast off of Justin Verlander early in Game 2, Mussina has a 3–1 lead and I am thinking we are in a very good place.

But the Tigers have the best pitching staff in the majors, and if the old cliché that good pitching stops good hitting seemed like a joke in Game 1, nobody is laughing now. We go 1 for 8 with men in scoring position, and one of the biggest culprits is Alex, who strikes out three times, once with the bases loaded. Alex is already upset that he’s batting sixth instead of cleanup, and I can’t say I understand Mr. T’s thinking there. Alex hit 35 homers and drove in 121 runs batting cleanup, and even though that’s a down year for him and he hasn’t hit at all in the postseason the last two years, do you just bump him from his spot? He was in a great groove going into
the playoffs. It’s not my decision, obviously. I don’t know whether Mr. T is looking to take the pressure off Alex or using the demotion to motivate him. Alex is a staggering talent, but sometimes he gets in his own way and makes things much harder for himself than they need to be.

Don’t worry about it, I tell him. You can’t change the lineup. Just go out and hit the way you can and everything will take care of itself. You don’t have to prove anything to anybody. Just play your game.

Alex is a very proud man, though. Appearances are important to him. Being a cleanup hitter is important to him. He hasn’t hit this low in a lineup since his first full year with the Mariners ten years earlier. It weighs on him, I’m certain, and I want to be sure his head is where it needs to be. I talk to Alex a lot—especially when stuff is going on around him (which is often).

Relax, Alex. Not trying to do too much is the best gift you can give yourself, I tell him.

Alex is back in the cleanup spot in Game 3 in Detroit, but it doesn’t change anything. Kenny Rogers, a member of our ’96 championship team, hasn’t beaten a Yankee team in a dozen years, but he might as well be Sandy Koufax on this night. He gives up only five hits and strikes out eight and pitches into the eighth, Randy Johnson gets smacked around, and we lose, 6–0.

What is it with these division series? Why do we seem to be in a fight for our playoff lives every year? I haven’t pitched since the first game of the series, and that is not part of our game plan. But I am forever optimistic. All we have to do is win a game. That’s it. We win Saturday, and then we have a deciding Game 5 at home, with our best starter, Wang, on the hill. We put up one good at-bat, then another. We throw one good pitch, then another. We keep battling. That is the championship recipe. You fully embrace each moment, and winning all the little battles allows you to win the greater one.

The Tigers do these things superbly, and the Yankees? Not so much. With our season on the line and with Alex now hitting in the eight hole, we are as flat as a boat deck. Alex now looks so completely lost I don’t blame Mr. T for batting him there at all. I might have just sat him down. Our team is on the brink, and we have to put players out there who can help us win. As great as he is, Alex doesn’t look as if he can help us win right now. Jeremy Bonderman, the Tigers’ hard-throwing starter, pitches a perfect game through five. Our starter, Jaret Wright, gets reached for two homers to fall behind, 3–0, in the second, then gives up an unearned run in the fourth after Alex makes an error. The lead grows to 8–0, and we only get to 8–3 because Jorge, who hits .500 for the series, hits a two-run homer with two outs in the ninth off of reliever Jamie Walker.

The Yankee highlights are otherwise nonexistent. Alex goes 0 for 3 and finishes the series with an average of .071 (1 for 14) and no RBIs, and he is far from alone. Sheffield hits .083, and, as a team, we get two hits in our last twenty-one at-bats with runners in scoring position. For years we win with top-notch pitching and a lockdown bullpen, and one clutch hit after another. We don’t have stars all over the field; we just have guys who grind, and win.

Even I can keep track of the numbers in this series. I throw twelve pitches and complete one inning.

The idleness is crushing.

Spring may bring renewal, but as I report to Tampa in 2007 it also brings sadness. Bernie Williams is not in camp, and he won’t be in camp. He wants to return to the Yankees to fulfill a part-time role similar to what he did very well in 2006, for very little money. The Yankees are not interested. They tell Bernie he can come to camp, but only as a minor league invitee, not with a major league deal. It’s
contractual semantics, but to Bernie, a four-time world champion who has been a Yankee since 1991, it is a major affront.

They want him to see if he can play his way onto the team, after hitting 22 postseason home runs and those 80 playoff RBIs—and after everything else he has contributed? Bernie says no thanks, and that’s it. There’s no goodbye, no Bernie Williams Day, just a beloved Yankee sent on his way. It’s not my job to tell the Yankees how to run their business. Brian Cashman and those around him make decisions that they believe are in the best interests of the team. I just don’t think that this is the right way to treat Bernie, and I don’t think it’s the right baseball decision for the team. I am going to miss the guitar. I am going to miss No. 51 even more.

It’s what makes the return of No. 46, Andy Pettitte, so impeccably timed.

Andy left as a free agent after the 2003 loss to the Marlins in the World Series, signing with his hometown Houston Astros. Now, four years later, he’s back, and just the sight of him walking in the door brings joy to my heart. Andy isn’t just a man who leaves it all out there every time he pitches; he’s as good a teammate as you could ever find, a devout Christian who is totally forthright and fully accountable, and he shows it at a difficult time, after his name comes up in the Mitchell Report on the use of performance-enhancing drugs in baseball. Most guys in similar circumstances either go silent, swear on the Bible that they are clean, or release some generic apology through their agent. Andy faces it straight on and admits that he took human growth hormone. It takes a ton of courage to do that, and it makes me respect him even more.

Andy brings the same courage with him out to the mound. He is a man who proves over and over again that you can’t scout heart. The 594th pick in the 1990 June free-agent draft, taken in the 22nd round, Andy is a chubby kid out of Deer Park High School in
Texas who is projected to do basically nothing. He doesn’t blow people away with his arm or his athleticism. But he winds up winning 256 games in the big leagues and nineteen more in the postseason, pitching some of the biggest games in recent Yankee playoff history.

He is a guy you want on your team, for sure.

It’s no fault of Andy’s, because he pitches superbly, but when he falls to the Blue Jays in late May, we are in an unimaginable spot: last place. Our record is 21–29. We’ve already had ten different starting pitchers, and all sorts of guys are not playing to their level. We are so far behind the Red Sox—fourteen and a half games—that we’re in danger of getting lapped.

We head into Toronto, where a new round of mayhem unfolds, all of it focused, as usual, on Alex Rodriguez. He is photographed with a woman who is not his wife, and it’s plastered on the cover of a tabloid newspaper. I know none of the particulars. I just know media hysteria ensues. In the same weekend we have a 7–5 lead on the Blue Jays in the ninth inning when Jorge hits a pop fly to third. The Jays’ Howie Clark camps under it. Alex is running with two out, and as he passes Clark he shouts, Ha! A startled Clark backs off the ball, thinking the shortstop had called for it, and it drops. We score three more runs and win, 10–5. Later, Blue Jays manager John Gibbons rips Alex for what he considers a bush-league play. Other Blue Jays chime in, too.

There is no doubt that Alex has a knack for drawing attention to himself, and for making his life a whole lot harder than it needs to be.