Late on the night of Oct. 21, 1998, in the charming port city of San Diego, you could feel the relief and exhaustion. Primarily the exhaustion.
I’m pretty sure those senses dominated those Yankees after they validated their record-setting regular season by steamrolling the overmatched Padres to win their 24th World Series title. I know for certain that’s what I experienced as my first full year as a baseball beat writer arrived at its historic conclusion.
Yeah, I started this baseball-reporting gig, working for The Record, in New Jersey’s Bergen County, on quite the memorable note, the equivalent of your first visit to a movie set just happening to be “Star Wars.” With a 114-48 regular-season record, setting a new American League record for wins, and an 11-2 run through the playoffs, these guys put together an all-time campaign, one replete with characters, chemistry and consistency. They operated like a machine, any crisis quickly dissipating in the wake of an instant solution.
With the Yankees taking this weekend in The Bronx to celebrate the 20th anniversary of that incredible group, here are some treasured recollections from a guy fortunate enough to be on site for nearly all of the magical moments and to witness these folks up close and behind the scenes:
● Knobby. It sounds crazy now, yet just as Giancarlo Stanton received massive “New high-profile Yankee in spring training” coverage this year, or Masahiro Tanaka in 2014, or CC Sabathia and Mark Teixeira in 2009, Chuck Knoblauch was that guy in 1998. The Yankees acquired him from the Twins just days after Brian Cashman replaced Bob Watson as the team’s general manager, and at the time, the second baseman was arguably on a Hall of Fame track.
It ended ugly for Knoblauch, his throwing yips forcing a shift from second base to left field and, in 2007, the Mitchell Report revealing his engagement with illegal performance-enhancing drugs as a Yankee — and precisely one Hall of Fame vote when he appeared on the 2008 ballot. In ’98, though, he still seemed a redeemable acquisition even as he underperformed offensively and the yips first emerged, briefly. He accounted for his brain cramp in Game 2 of the AL Championship Series, when he let the winning run score while he argued with umpire John Shulock, after a night’s contemplation, and he delivered the game-tying, three-run homer off the Padres’ Donne Wall in the seventh inning.
I still recall standing and chatting with Knoblauch that February at Tampa International Airport — back in the days when you could greet people at the gate as they deplaned — and waiting for our respective wives, who were on the same flight from New York. He carried a serenity with him then that unfortunately didn’t stick.
● Out West forever. If you’re old enough, you remember when every Yankees trip out West took a week and a half, going through Anaheim, Oakland and Seattle in some order. The Yankees opened ’98 by going through four cities out West. It lasted 12 days and felt about 10 times as long.
A scheduled two-day visit to the Padres March 28-29 at Jack Murphy Stadium produced about a half-game of action, thanks to rain. A scrimmage with San Diego State on March 30 went awry when Mariano Rivera injured his groin; he wound up on the disabled list after pitching in one regular-season game. Rain delayed opening night in Anaheim on April 1 by 56 minutes, and then postponed an April 3 contest in Oakland. Because of weather woes and an 0-3 start, the Yankees didn’t register their first win, on April 5 at the A’s, until they had been in the Pacific Time Zone for over a week.
When the Mariners pummeled the Yankees the next night, 8-0 at the Kingdome, it sure seemed like this 1-4 team could unravel, with manager Joe Torre paying the price. In a silent postgame clubhouse, a forthright Andy Pettitte admitted to a few reporters that teammates had challenged him for not retaliating after Jamie Moyer drilled Paul O’Neill. A team meeting before the April 7 game, with O’Neill himself speaking, cleared that air, as the Yankees scored six first-inning runs, won the next two in Seattle and the next eight overall.
● Torre. He thrived at the peak of his powers, with a team of mostly self-starting veterans and mature youngsters a perfect fit. He and David Cone were so patient and entertaining with the media that they lifted a great deal of the burden for everyone else. And he enjoyed his greatest success with his greatest challenge, David Wells, blending public criticism with private love to produce the big lefty’s finest season, including the May 17 perfect game against the Twins at Yankee Stadium.
His de facto tranquility made Torre’s death stare all the more effective; you knew you had really screwed up if you turned his eyes from sleepy to steely. Torre’s final public death stare of this magical season occurred on the night of Sept. 16 at Tropicana Field, after a sloppy, 7-0 loss to the expansion Devil Rays. Torre ripped into his guys, and they responded by finishing out 21-4, all the way to the Canyon of Heroes.
● The brawls. The most famous one occurred on May 19, against the Orioles at the Stadium, with Armando Benitez’s drilling of Tino Martinez (following a Bernie Williams homer) setting in motion a free-for-all that lasted nearly 10 minutes. The other bench-clearing skirmish from ’98, though, carried longer-term consequences.
On Sept. 11 at the Stadium, Toronto’s Roger Clemens, a longtime Yankees nemesis, nailed Scott Brosius in the back in the bottom of the fourth inning, immediately after the Yankees tied the game at 3-3. Hideki Irabu, of all people, responded not only by hitting Shannon Stewart to start the top of the fifth, but by charging the plate, reversing the standard step of the hitter charging the mound.
This incident and others lurked in the minds of Yankees players when Clemens joined them the next season; when he threw live batting practice to his new teammates for the first time in 1999 spring training, Knoblauch and Derek Jeter wore full catcher’s gear, a tactic that alleviated the tension.
● Jeter. Oh, right, him! He wasn’t The Captain yet, nor Mr. November. He hadn’t even been chosen for an All-Star Game prior to ’98. Still, he already scored a high Q rating thanks to his pinstripes, his looks and his October 1996 success, and that rating skyrocketed when word broke that spring that he was dating Mariah Carey.
Boy oh boy, did Jeter hate any discussion concerning his private life, even as Carey appeared at some games, and the couple broke up that June. While ’98 marked a professional breakout year for him, his first Most Valuable Player-caliber season, it also arguably marked the end of his innocence. From there would come many more famous significant others, and too many chapters of his bromance with Alex Rodriguez to document, and myriad other matters that threatened his veneer of positivity.
● The comebacks. They trailed the Phillies, 7-2, after 7 ¹/₂ innings, and scored three runs in the eighth and ninth each to win, 9-8, in 11. They trailed the A’s, 5-1, after eight in Game 2 of an Aug. 4 doubleheader, and pinch-hitter Darryl Strawberry’s grand slam tied the game and set in motion a nine-run ninth for a 10-5 victory.
And of course there was Game 1 of the World Series, when Martinez followed Knoblauch’s three-run blast with a grand slam for a seven-run seventh. With confident guys like Jeter, Strawberry, Tim Raines and plenty more, they never seemed to get fazed by a deficit.
● Straw. On Sept. 28, as the Yankees prepared for their AL Division Series opener with the Rangers the next night, Strawberry left the team’s workout early to get examined by a doctor. He admitted holding some concern about constant stomach pain; Yankees head athletic trainer Gene Monahan pointedly downplayed those concerns in an interview with a few reporters. On Oct. 1, everyone learned that Strawberry had colon cancer. At The Ballpark in Arlington, the Yankees gathered en masse to wish Strawberry well, with veteran Raines appointed as the spokesman during a very emotional moment.
Strawberry had been a near-perfect teammate in ’98, displaying wisdom that ebbed and flowed in the ensuing years. It probably helped that he shared his designated hitter/left-field time with contemporaries like Raines, whose sense of humor helped put out any and all fires, and Chili Davis, who missed most of the regular season with a right leg injury, then replaced the ill Strawberry in October and came up with some big hits, particularly in the ALCS.
● October. There really existed only one bona fide moment of tension: ALCS Game 4, when Orlando Hernandez, who hadn’t pitched for 14 days, made his postseason debut with the Yankees trailing two games to one. El Duque had of course clocked plenty of big games in his native Cuba, and when George Steinbrenner found the right-hander in the Jacobs Field visiting clubhouse after the Yankees’ Game 3 loss, The Boss tried to give his rookie a pep talk.
El Duque listened briefly, then proclaimed, “Mañana, no problema.” He backed up his words with seven shutout innings, as the Yankees didn’t lose another game until 1999.
● The Boss. He must have faced an existential crisis at times that season: How does the perfectionist cope with perfection? Steinbrenner faced so little over which to complain. He deserved credit, though, for honoring his freshman GM Cashman, who didn’t want to trade for the Mariners’ Randy Johnson at the July 31 deadline. Sure, Cashman received the standard “This is on you if this backfires” threat, but he wouldn’t be The Boss without that fire and fury.
Within 24 hours of the championship, Steinbrenner was angrily barking orders as the Yankees traveled from San Diego back home. Torre urged his boss to enjoy this triumph, to let up temporarily. Alas, it just wasn’t in Steinbrenner’s DNA. Two more titles in two years somehow increased the tension between Torre and Steinbrenner.