The Register Citizen (Torrington, CT)
Bobby V and the Joe Torre Story
This was one year before the attacks of 9/11 and 43 years after Jackie Robinson played in the first racially integrated Subway Series. This was October 2000, and New York was abuzz.
“You get up in the morning and want to drop some dry cleaning off,” Joe Torre said. “They’re talking about the World Series. You go to the grocery store. They’re talking about the World Series. Every time you turned your head it was World Series.”
“That was our dream,” Bobby Valentine said. “It was our dream when I played for Joe for the Mets in the late 70s. And here I am years later handing the lineup card to Joe in a World Series at Yankee Stadium.”
Valentine said his heart was beating out of his chest
“Both our hearts were,”
Torre said.
“It was the craziest time and most wonderful time of our life,” Valentine said.
The former Mets and Yankees managers joined Harold Reynolds and Bob Costas for a virtual event on Thursday night to revisit the 20th anniversary of the Subway Series and raise funds for Sacred Heart’s new Jackie Robinson Foundation Scholarship. There’s also a silent auction running until Nov. 14. They’re calling it “SHU and 42.” And it’s a terrific thing.
“To create scholarships to attend Sacred Heart for those in need to get what they need,” said Valentine, SHU’s executive director of athletics.
Those 2000 Yankees lost 15 of their last 18 regular season games, backed in to the AL East title with a modest 87 wins and Torre grew so tired of carting the bottled champagne around he told his players, “Maybe you guys should drink this stuff before the game to relax a little.”
They beat the A’s. They beat the Mariners.
“You look up, you’re playing the Mets,” Torre said. “You say, ‘Oh, my God.’ I work for George Steinbrenner. You better beat them.”
Torre grew up a Giants fan in Brooklyn. Willie Mays was his idol. He was at Yankee Stadium the October day in 1956 when Don Larsen threw the only perfect game in World Series history. Joe Torre knows New York and baseball. Joe Torre is New York baseball.
So there he was late in spring training in 1996, his first year on the Yankees job, watching Steinbrenner coming down to wish him good luck before an exhibition game with the Mets. This was before interleague play. Torre, half-kiddingly, asked George if he’d rather beat the Mets or their first regular season opponent, the Indians, 2-of-3.
“Don’t ask me that question,” Steinbrenner said.
“Fred Wilpon felt exactly the same way,” Valentine said.
Everything was on the line. Each game was close. Only three runs would separate the teams over five games.
Game 1 went 12 innings, but it might not have if Timo Perez hadn’t made a baserunning mistake. Todd Zeile hit a ball off the top of the left field wall in the sixth.
“Timo was running hard into second and thought it was a home run,” Valentine said. “As did everyone in the stadium, except for David Justice the left fielder and Derek Jeter the shortstop.”
“Todd swears it went out,” Torre said.
The relay nailed Perez at the plate.
“A game changer,” Valentine said. “Maybe a series changer … that and the Paul O’Neill at-bat.”
With the Mets up 3-2 heading in the bottom of the ninth, Valentine brought in Armando Benitez to face Paul O’Neill.
“It was an at-bat that defined competition,” Valentine said.
“Paul didn’t care what it looked like. He took some ugly swings, but he was going to fight his way against a guy throwing 100 mph.”
O’Neill walked on 10 pitches.
Luis Polonia singled. Jose Vizcaino, who had four hits in Game 1, singled to force extra innings. He singled to the opposite field to score Tino Martinez to win it in the 12th.
All hell broke loose in Game 2. Roger Clemens had hit Mike Piazza in the head with a pitch the weekend before the All-Star break and here he was in the first at-bat with an inside fastball that sawed Piazza’s bat into pieces.
The ball went foul. Clemens picked up the barrel of the bat that landed between the mound and first base line and threw it in Piazza’s direction. Jaws dropped. Benches emptied. Clemens threw it at Piazza on purpose. Or he’s nuts. Either way he could have maimed Piazza.
“The commissioner had come into our clubhouses and said this is New York vs. New York, the world is watching,” Valentine said. “Then Mike’s first at-bat, it was so bizarre. Everyone was like, ‘ What was that?’ ”
Standing in the dugout, Torre saw the bat coming toward him.
“From my angle and my feeling, it was like, ‘ Get this thing out of here,’ ” Torre said. “Mel Stottlemyre (pitching coach, who had undergone cancer treatment) was sitting in my office with George Steinbrenner. After that half inning, Clemens went up and Mel told me he had tears in his eyes and said, ‘I didn’t throw it (at Piazza on purpose),’ basically making a case for himself. Mel said he was overly emotional.
“It looked terrible. I tried to respond to questions from the media. They weren’t buying what I was selling. To this day, I still feel he was throwing the bat off the field.”
Torre’s rationale is Clemens wouldn’t have purposely put himself in a position to get suspended from the World Series. Valentine said Piazza owned Clemens, because he couldn’t get his fastball in on Piazza.
“He finally made his pitch, broke the bat in half and that was the result,” Valentine said. “An amazing event within the event. Lenny Harris, our tough guy, wanted to go out on the field. He thought, hey, it’s time to go and duke this out. I’m like, ‘Oh, my God!’ ”
Clemens was brilliant in eight innings. Yet a 6-0 blowout turned into a 6-5 nailbiter. Two nights later, they went to Flushing. The Mets won Game 3. Steinbrenner didn’t like anything about Shea Stadium. He brought Yankees furniture to replace what he deemed was cheap stuff with Mets logos.
“If the Mets had tried to bring their furniture into Yankee Stadium,” Valentine said, “there would have been a Congressional edict not to allow it. George would have been standing there with an armed guard.”
Down 2-1, Valentine was convinced his team was back in the series. Enter Derek Jeter. Momentum changes in a short series, Torre calculated. He moved Jeter to lead off to maximize his at-bats.
“We’re ready to start the game,” Torre said. “He came by me. I was sitting quietly on the bench. He looks at me and says, ‘I got this, Mr. T.’ Just like that.”
First pitch of the game from Bobby Jones. Home run.
“It wasn’t like a grand slam in the ninth,” Valentine said. “One pitch. One run. But it was really air out of the balloon.”
Piazza did hit a two-run homer off Denny Neagle to cut it to 3-2 and Torre turned to his bench coach Don Zimmer and said, “I can’t have Neagle pitch to Piazza again.” Two out, nobody on in the fifth, he brought in David Cone to face Piazza.
“I asked Denny for the ball,” Torre said. “I don’t think he has talked to me since.”
This would be the only batter Cone faced in the series. He was 4-14 in 2000.
“But he still had the heart as big as this room,” Torre said.
And an array of deliveries and pitches. Piazza popped out on an 84 mph fastball. The Yankees took a 3-1 series lead.
Game 5. Tied at 2 entering the ninth. Al Leiter’s pitch count was heading toward 140.
“His next start was in five months,” Valentine said. “He’d be well rested. The eighth inning, he went through the middle of their order like a hot knife through butter. Al was going to have the ball come hell or high water.”
The Mets ace opened the ninth striking out Martinez and O’Neill, but Jorge Posada walked, Scott Brosius singled and Luis Sojo followed with a ground ball single to center. Jay Payton’s throw hit Posada sliding into home and that allowed Brosius to score.
“Weak little hits,” Valentine said.
“We lucked out with the extra run,” Torre said.
Before the ninth, Torre saw Jeter go to the mound and say something to Mariano Rivera. Torre said he never asked Jeter what it was, “but I’m guaranteeing you it was, don’t get to Piazza.”
Sure enough, with two outs and a runner on third, it got to Piazza. He skied a ball deep to center.
“When he hit the ball, I screamed, ‘No!’ ” Torre said. “When Mike Piazza hits a ball in the air, it doesn’t come down. He can hit it out of Yellowstone.”
“I always stay in the same part of the dugout so you have the same perspective,” Valentine said. “I was in that spot when Mike hit that famous home run after 9/11. He hit it in the same area of the ballpark. The sound. The swing. The trajectory. My way of calculating velocity off the bat was all the same. But somehow this ball ….”
Was caught by Bernie Williams near the edge of the warning track. Bernie dropped to his knee. The Yankees had their fourth world title in five years.
“Joe will tell you off camera that the rings he has mean a lot more than the one the world champion is going to get this year,” Valentine said. “They played a 60-game season! We’ll just call it the COVID season and give credit where credit is due, but it’s definitely not an equal season.”
Will we see another Subway Series in an equal season?
“With Steve Cohen (from Greenwich) coming in,” Valentine said, “I believe he’s going to do everything he can to match the Yankees every day.”