Mission 27, page 4
During introductions Willie Randolph dirtied his uniform pants in response to a dare from David Wells, sliding into second base. The loudest ovations were heard as Bernie Williams returned to center field, crossing his heart and raising both hands to the sky. It had been two years since the Yankees not-so-gently nudged the switch-hitter into retirement, declining to offer anything more than an invitation to spring training. “It was hard for me because I missed the game,” Williams said. “I was always trying to keep track of how the guys were doing. The Yankees were always in my heart.”
The 1922 American League pennant had flown on the stadium’s first day of service and now it was unveiled on the last day and unfurled across the batter’s eye. Outlined in red and proclaiming in blue text upon yellowed white, it read, “NEW YORK YANKEES LEAGUE CHAMPIONS 1922.”
The clock rolled back to Opening Day 1923 with fill-ins representing the lineup that had notched a 4–1 victory against the Red Sox. Eddie Fastook, the team’s director of security, normally spent his days guarding VIPs and brokering deals with fans who caught milestone home-run balls. On this day, Fastook was asked to stand in right field as Babe Ruth. There was one condition: the burly ex-cop had to shave his mustache.
The children of Roger Maris, Elston Howard, and Thurman Munson took their fathers’ positions across the diamond. Mickey Mantle’s son, Danny, tipped his cap in center field, bearing a remarkable resemblance to No. 7. Bobby Murcer had lost his battle with brain cancer that July, and there were few dry eyes as his widow, Kay, walked to center field wearing her husband’s No. 1.
The cheers grew as Berra emerged from the dugout. The former catcher trotted a few steps before walking the rest of the way. He joked about digging up home plate, saying that it would make a great souvenir. Berra’s perfect batterymate from the 1956 World Series, Don Larsen, couldn’t wait that long. Assisted by Whitey Ford in full view of the ceremonies, Larsen bent at the waist and grabbed handfuls of mound soil.
A ceremonial first pitch was delivered by Ruth’s 92-year-old daughter, Julia Ruth Stevens, who bounced her toss to Posada. “I am very sad that Yankee Stadium is not going to be in existence any longer,” she said. “I wish it could have remained as a New York landmark, but I guess, like all things, it has come to its final days and it has to go. But I’ll always have the memories of my father hitting those home runs out into the bleachers. And I have a lot of his pictures and I’ll just remember those and the glory days of the Old Yankee Stadium. And I hope the New Yankee Stadium brings good luck to the Yankees.” A dying Ruth had stood near home plate and told fans in his 1948 farewell address: “I am proud I hit the first home run in Yankee Stadium. God knows who will hit the last one.”
After Baltimore got to Pettitte for a couple of quick runs, Damon believed he had etched his name into history with a three-run, third-inning homer off Baltimore starter Chris Waters. Those honors went instead to Jose Molina. The light-hitting, defensive-minded catcher pounced on a fourth-inning offering from Waters, placing a two-run homer atop the netting that covered Monument Park in left-center field. It was Molina’s third homer of the season and the most memorable of the 39 he’d hit over a 15-year career. “I wasn’t a guy that hit that many homers,” Molina said. “To have the last one there, I think a lot about it. It was special for me. I don’t know if it was for other people. I think other people thought that other guys that played there for many, many years should’ve had it, but you know how [unpredictable] homers are. To me, it has a really special place in my heart.”
Pettitte went into the books as the stadium’s final winning pitcher—part of an effort that included his 2,000th career strikeout. It was the conclusion of Pettitte’s second season back in pinstripes after a three-year detour with the Houston Astros, who operated closer to his Deer Park, Texas, home.
Harboring some uncertainty about his baseball future, Pettitte said that the game felt like as much of a must-win as any he had pitched. He normally requested solitude while preparing for a start, but on that night, Pettitte flicked on all of the television screens in the weight room. He did not want to miss a millisecond of the festivities. “The old stadium was just so special,” Pettitte said. “There was something about leaving that old, grimy, dirty place—so much magic had been there, magical moments, stuff like that. But then we would make trips over to the [new] ballpark as it was being built. I remember going over there with Lonn Trost a couple times and him showing us around, and it was like, ‘Man, this is pretty special, too.’ The biggest thing was trying to bring a championship back to New York and being part of that again. As we all were getting older, it seemed like the dynasty was going to be over, and the run was kind of over. We always were trying to get back to that championship-caliber team and bring a championship back to the city and to the organization.”
The clock read 11:41 pm as Rivera ended 85 years of history, throwing the stadium’s final pitch, a cut fastball that Baltimore second baseman Brian Roberts chopped to the right side of the infield. First baseman Cody Ransom gloved the ball and stepped on first base, securing the Yankees’ 4,133rd victory on those grounds. “I probably wasn’t as mad as I might be normally against Rivera in the ninth inning with the game on the line,” Roberts said. “I didn’t want to make the last out. I figured I’d either make the last out or get the last hit or something. I couldn’t go wrong. But Mariano is pretty good at getting outs.”
A utility infielder from Mesa, Arizona, who batted .213 over 11 seasons with eight organizations, Ransom didn’t want to release the ball, but it was the correct choice to pass it to Rivera. The closer promised to relay it to Steinbrenner, who was watching the game on television from his Tampa Florida, home. “Closing the stadium was big,” Rivera said. “All the championships, all the majestic events, and everything came to end. We still had a team that had a chance to compete and get back into the winning era again.”
The stadium’s all-time hits leader with 1,274, Jeter was fittingly the final Yankees player to bat. He went hitless but delivered the evening’s capper with his rousing speech. Though he had swiftly agreed when Zillo asked him to speak, Jeter wasn’t sure what to say. When Jeter was removed from the game with two outs in the ninth inning, he absorbed a standing ovation, a curtain call, and then organized his thoughts. “When I came out in the ninth inning, I said, ‘I’ve got to think of something quick,’” Jeter said. “I knew I wanted to acknowledge the fans. I was scared to death. When I was younger, I used to get really, really nervous when I had to do an oral report in front of 25 people. I guess I’ve come a long way.”
A decade later, those who were on the infield remain impressed by how Jeter held no script yet struck all the right notes in an address that lasted just under two minutes. “I thought it was one of the greatest speeches of all time. I really do,” Girardi said. “I sit back and listen to that and think, ‘Man, is that really good.’”
“That’s Derek. I don’t think he’s a pen-and-paper person,” Chamberlain said. “To touch on every topic that made sense to all of us, that made sense to all of the fans, that made sense to all of the baseball world, that’s just Derek and what he does. I don’t think there was a better fitting person to close that stadium at the time than Derek.”
Rivera had memorably kissed the pitching rubber after Aaron Boone’s pennant-winning home run toppled the Red Sox in 2003. Now he pecked at the clay of the mound with his cleats, filling a plastic storage container with whatever came loose. “I remember everybody running like crazy to grab cups and fill those cups with as much dirt as they possibly could, particularly Mariano,” said Dana Cavalea, the team’s strength and conditioning coach. “I don’t know if he had a side deal where he was selling dirt with Steiner [Sports] or what, but I remember him taking more dirt than anybody else.”
Radio broadcaster Suzyn Waldman was conducting interviews in front of the home dugout when someone offered her a small plastic bag. She accepted, using it to retrieve dirt from the front of home plate. Cashman pointed her in the direction of a group of authenticators from Major League Baseball, who were overseeing the festivities while they doled out hologram stickers. “[Cashman] says, ‘If you want to go over there, they’ll put a seal on it for you, so you’ll know that it’s real,’” Waldman said. “I said, ‘I know it’s real, I’m doing it myself!’ I was there with my little hands putting dirt in a little bag. I still have it. I didn’t need it to be certified because I did it myself. I’m not selling it. That’s for me.”
Rivera wanted one more souvenir, requesting that a photographer capture the remaining cornerstones of the Yankees’ most recent dynasty. The group that would come to be known as the “Core Four” gathered shoulder-to-shoulder on the mound with Rivera flanked by Jeter, Pettitte, and Posada. “That’s why we wanted to have that picture, so we always remember that moment,” Rivera said, “like Mickey and Joe and Whitey and Yogi. That’s what we represent in this era. Like Joe DiMaggio said, ‘I thank the good Lord for making me a Yankee.’ And that’s the way it is.”
Shortly after the final game, Munson’s locker and the carpet underneath it were painstakingly extricated from the home clubhouse and reinstalled as the centerpiece of a museum at the new stadium. Munson’s locker had never before been available for public view and for a generation of fans, who vividly recall where they were on the afternoon of August 2, 1979, it would be arguably the most emotional site in the new building. “Our carpenters disassembled the locker in one day and they immediately reinstalled it in the museum,” said Brian Richards, the museum’s curator. “They wanted to ensure that nothing would get lost or damaged over time. The room was still under construction at that time, but the locker was installed right away. After the carpenters finished installing it, they called me and said, ‘This is kind of nicked up. Do you want us to repaint it?’ I said, ‘No, no, no! Leave it just the way it is.’”
Other items were salvaged for public sale, and the Yankees and Steiner Sports cut an $11.5 million check to the City of New York, acquiring the rights to strip the stadium’s guts. Reggie Jackson was among the first in line to purchase items, including his old locker, a section of the black seating area, and the 10-foot-tall electric blue letters that spelled out “YANKEE STADIUM” after the 1974–75 renovation. Curious employees never knew what else they might find. “The top floor of the stadium had rooms that were almost like a haunted house,” said assistant general manager Jean Afterman. “They had these incredibly archaic popcorn vending machines with ornate iron work from before World War II. They looked like somebody had pushed them into a room and walked away.”
Everything was up for grabs. About 40,000 of the 56,000 seats were sold with a pair listed at $1,499 and single seats at $749. A freeze-dried chunk of grass measuring a few square inches fetched $80. Other items included signage, ticket booths, turnstiles, and even furniture. (A two-drawer file cabinet from the office of team president Randy Levine was still available on Steiner’s web site nearly a decade later for $500.) “I have my name plate from my locker,” Posada said. “I have the chair somewhere in the house. I wanted to take my locker, but they made it really tough to negotiate that. Steiner took everything.”
The future was calling. Tishman Speyer and the project team boasted that they were able to beat the scheduled completion date by a month with a total project cost of $1.5 billion (excluding land and financing). On a rainy November afternoon, former Bombers—Scott Brosius, Jeff Nelson, Paul O’Neill, and Cone—were called upon to help 60 local students transport home plate, the pitching rubber, and dirt from the old stadium to the new one. Standing in the area that would become the home dugout, Cone remarked, “This new Yankee Stadium has got a lot to live up to.”
The inhabitants of Monument Park were among the final treasures to travel across 161st Street. Ruth’s monument was the most difficult to pry loose. With reporters and photographers looking on, a muddied yellow forklift labored for more than a half hour, trying to unearth the Great Bambino. He’d sat on those grounds since 1949 and was only dislodged by the renovation that relocated the monuments from center field. “It seemed like the Babe didn’t want to leave,” said Anthony Vespa, part of a five-man crew from the Bronx-based Port Morris Tile and Marble Company, who helped secure Ruth’s monument in plywood, foam packaging, and shrink wrap.
Most employees moved to the new stadium on January 23, 2009, packing their possessions into orange plastic crates and carrying them through the loading dock entrance of the old stadium to a waiting truck. The monuments, plaques, and retired numbers were placed into storage and delivered in time for the Yankees to receive the keys from the construction outfits on February 17, 2009. “Seeing people come across the street with that excitement, it was awesome,” Behar said. “For some of our special artifacts, our staff put white gloves on and walked the World Series trophies across the street. It was pretty special to watch.”
The added glitz was impressive, but the most important hallmark of Yankee Stadium is winning baseball. The franchise still laid claim to the most titles in the sport, but those 26 had been secured across the street. The Philadelphia Phillies were now the defending champs, having defeated Tampa Bay in a five-game, rain-prolonged Fall Classic. It was time to write history in the new place.
3. A Change Is Gonna Come
The final turnstile had spun as Brian Cashman walked to his office in the soon-to-be-vacated stadium, and an autumn chill whipped through the thousands of faded blue seats in the grandstand. He’d often said that the Yankees were out of his hands when the postseason arrived; there were no trades or roster moves to make, leaving him to nervously munch popcorn or prank employees while the next nine innings played out.
As Cashman rode the elevator, pulled open a glass door, and passed the two World Series trophies that rested at the entrance of the executive offices, he experienced an even more uncomfortable sensation. The Yankees hadn’t been playoff observers for a non-strike season since 1993, and Cashman despised turning on the television to check scores. October baseball belonged in the Bronx, and to make that happen again, he had work to do.
Having risen from a 1986 summer internship to assume the general manager’s chair at age 30 prior to the 1998 season—just in time to oversee the winningest club in franchise history—Cashman’s shine dulled with the Yankees’ two first-round eliminations prior to the playoff miss in ’08. A meaty packet of newspaper clippings thudded on each employee’s desk shortly after dawn, and when Cashman flipped through, he saw that he was taking fire from the press. One columnist blamed him for a farm system that ranked among the worst in the sport.
That criticism had some validity; Cashman acknowledged that changes needed to be made in the way that the team scouted and drafted players, which was part of the reason why they had no obvious pipeline to supplement an aging roster. Big-money free agents such as Carl Pavano and Kei Igawa had been colossal busts, while a ballyhooed trade for Randy Johnson resulted in an open-palm shove to a CBS cameraman along East 60th Street and a couple of postseason disasters.
Cashman believed that the faulty process that led to those decisions was correctable and that the Yankees were in better condition than when he arrived. For one thing the baseball operations department was less splintered than it had been during George Steinbrenner’s heyday, when the New York contingent spent a good portion of each day wondering who was whispering into The Boss’ ear down in Tampa, Florida.
Before pressing pen to paper on his most recent extension in 2005, Cashman had insisted upon receiving assurances that the turf war would end, and everyone in the department would report to him. It may not have resulted in playoff success, but at least there was less energy wasted dousing fires with The Boss and his cronies. Now it was time to negotiate again, and Cashman did not appreciate the insinuation that he had been unsuccessful at his job. The New York Daily News, in particular, had columnists on staff who seemed to be out for blood, and Cashman grumbled that he wanted to make them pay.
He called upon a favorite saying attributed to Reggie Jackson, who said, “As long as you have a bat in your hands, you can change the story.” Cashman hadn’t faced a fastball since his days as a scrappy infielder at Catholic University in Washington, D.C., but this job had placed him in confrontations more intense than any batter-pitcher showdown. As he accepted a three-year extension from the Steinbrenner family, Cashman made it clear that he was returning to complete what he viewed as unfinished business. “If I left, I wasn’t going to like the story that was going to be written because it wasn’t going to be an accurate depiction of my time here,” Cashman said. “I’ve given my heart and my soul to this franchise, and they’ve given their heart and their soul back to me. I’d be nothing without what the Steinbrenners have done for this person at this table right now. But at the same time, I’m not going to let an inaccurate story stick, and the only way for me to change that is to change the story. So I’m staying to change the story.”
To do so, the roster would need to look different. Jason Giambi’s seven-year, $120 million contract had expired, and Mike Mussina decided to retire after an 18-year career that would result in his 2019 Hall of Fame induction. Bobby Abreu, a midseason acquisition in 2006, was headed for free agency, as was Andy Pettitte. Pavano and Ivan Rodriguez didn’t figure into future plans.
There were pressing issues off the field, too. Joe Torre’s exit after 2007 had set the Yankees upon the course Cashman desired; Torre’s Godfather-like reputation had given him so much power and popularity that he was considered as influential as anybody in the organization. Yet, Torre’s hold on the clubhouse had waned in his final seasons, when some privately groused that unless you were one of “Joe’s guys” it was difficult to grab Torre’s attention. “The only players he actually had a connection to were the ones he won rings with,” a Yankees insider observed. “Anybody else that came in, they were like, ‘This is him? This is Joe Torre?’ I couldn’t tell you how many ones I remember that said, ‘I was all excited to play for this guy and then when I got here this fucking guy doesn’t talk to me.’ Unless you were Bernie or Mo or Jeter or Pettitte, it was as if he looked right past you.”
