IT’S WHY WE WATCH
There is never any kind of timetable when there is a rising like this, the kind this season has been for the Yankees and their fans, a season built this way around Aaron (All Rise) Judge. There wasn’t back in 1996, when another Indians team won more games than anybody else in the American League, when the Yankees’ division series against the Rangers was almost in the kind of 0-2 hole that the Yankees were just in against the ’17 Indians.
They were a surprise, Torre’s Yankees were in ’96, the same as this Yankee team has been a surprise, as it brings a baseball season back to Yankee Stadium on Monday night, the latest there has been baseball there since the American League Championship Series five years ago against the Tigers.
They are behind again now, the Yankees are, against the Astros, because of a magnificent game of baseball in Houston on Saturday, one that ended with Jose Altuve running all the way home from first on Carlos Correa’s double in the bottom of the 9th, after Justin Verlander had pitched an ALCS game for the ages. But some of the best October stories for the Yankees have begun with them digging themselves out of a hole.
The Yankees fell behind 0-1 against the Rangers in October of ’96 and were behind 4-1 in Game 2 before they came all the way back and finally won in the 12th. Then came the Jeffrey Maier game against the Orioles in the ALCS, and finally the night in old Fulton County Stadium against the Braves, another team that was supposed to be better in October of 1996, when the Yankees were about to fall behind three games to one in the World Series before Jim Leyritz hit one off Mark Wohlers and everything changed, and somebody else’s year became a Yankee year.
That was the beginning of the modern Yankees, and last Yankee dynasty. And this week especially Yankee fans I know wanted to talk about where they sat in October of ’96, all the way to Game 6 and the last out of the World Series ending up in old Charlie Hayes’ glove after Joe Girardi, the Yankee catcher that night, had somehow hit a rousing triple up the gap and past Marquis Grissom.
“I was so high up that night,” a friend of mine from television was saying the other day, talking about that time when the Yankees began to matter again. “But I was there.”
It is part of the beauty of sports, not just baseball. There was a night a few years ago when Jack Nicklaus was talking about people who meet him and want to talk about all the championships that he won in golf, the way we’re talking today about other championships the Yankees have won.
“They want to tell you where they were,” Jack said.
Now it is happening with the Yankee fans, now that their team is where it is, no matter what happens this week at the new Stadium against the Astros, who are supposed to be better the way the Indians were supposed to be better. Yankee fans are here, is where they are. There is a generation of fans who will remember where they were for Judge’s catch off Frankie Lindor in Game 3 against the Indians, and where they were sitting when Greg Bird’s home run in a 1-0 win went into the seats. Sports is still at its best when it surprises us this way. And a team keeps playing after it was supposed to go home. “Glad we’re here,” Brian Cashman told me the other day. “Hope we have more gas in the tank.” It doesn’t happen without a trade he made in July with the White Sox. Not everyone in Cashman’s own operation believed the Yankees had a real chance to do anything this year. But he did. He could see the Red Sox were vulnerable, whether the Yankees ultimately caught them or not. It didn’t mean he thought the Yankees could be better than the Indians or Astros in a short series. But if there is one thing that Brian Cashman, smart guy, had learned over his time as Yankee general manager, starting in the 2001 World Series, was what an extraordinary crapshoot October baseball can be, how fragile these short series can be; how things can happen, and that means crazy and magical things sometimes. So he gave up hardly anything important to get David Robertson, the Yankees MVP across the first two weeks of this baseball October. Cash got another big bullpen arm, Tommy Kahnle’s. Added the kind of veteran presence and clubhouse presence in Todd Frazier, a Jersey kid, the Yankees have always valued at this time of year. He has been like a Brosius with more pop, in this home run season in baseball. You cannot minimize how much Frazier, who had spent his career in Cincinnati and Chicago, has honored this kind of chance, at this stage in his career, to make this kind of run.
Jose Altuve should win the MVP in the American League. Aaron Judge still might. He had this spectacularly fun and watchable season, even with all the strikeouts against the Indians. Led the league in homers. Got to 50. Led the league in walks and strikeouts. Made you stop everything to watch the way you did when Reggie was the home run swing around which October dreams were built, in the midst of another Yankee rising, in the late 70s. But none of this unfolds the way it does if Cashman doesn’t make that trade, if he doesn’t general manage the season his team was playing and not the next one, or the one after that.
One more time: Robertson, Kahnle, Frazier were not brought here from the south side of Chicago so the Yankees could play a wild card game. Or win one. As bright as the future looks for the Yankees, because of all the young guys in the pipeline, there are never any guarantees in sports. The wisdom on that one comes from another famous baseball general manager in New York, Frank Cashen, who once said that you only get so many chances to win. “Agree,” Cashman said. The Yankees won themselves at least another week of season against the Indians. Won Yankee fans more baseball this week on 161st. So much good news for Yankee fans, whatever kind of seat they’ve had in the house over the last couple of weeks. The best news, for now, is a game against the Astros, Monday night, first pitch a little after 8. Only timetable that matters for Yankee fans.