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Look back at: Divisional Playoffs |
League Championship
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Thursday, October 26
Torre steers Yankees' ship with ultimate of skill
By Jayson Stark
ESPN.com
NEW YORK -- It was a moment that separated the New York Yankees from all those other teams that show up on your screen in October.
And it was a moment that separated Joe Torre from all those other managers who manage the biggest games of their lives as if they were playing the Padres in May.
No other manager on the globe yanks his starting pitcher in the fifth inning of a World Series game -- with the lead. But Joe Torre did Wednesday.
Denny Neagle had just retired Edgardo Alfonzo on a routine fly to right. There were two outs in the fifth and no Mets on base. Neagle's team led by a run. He was one out away from qualifying for the first World Series win of his career.
So even though Mike Piazza was on deck, Neagle was nonchalantly rubbing up the baseball in the center of the diamond -- when he saw his manager coming.
Denny Neagle promptly did a double-take that looked like something out of the Cosmo Kramer Double-take Handbook. But who could blame him?
"I saw that look in his eye," Torre would say later, after a 3-2 Game 4 win over the Mets that moved his Big Pinstriped Machine to within one win of baseball's first threepeat since 1974. "He was shocked. But it's something that if I hadn't done it and I'd thought about doing it and something bad happened, I never would have been able to forgive myself."
So even though he hurt his starting pitcher's feelings, even though he went against The Book, even though he shocked everyone in the park except himself, Joe Torre did what great managers do.
He managed for the moment. He managed to win this game this way -- whatever way it took.
He waved for a pitcher who had thrown exactly one inning in the entire postseason. He waved for David Cone to come into the most pivotal game of the World Series and face the most menacing slugger still playing baseball, Mr. Mike Piazza.
"I was surprised," Cone admitted afterward. "But this is a World Series. Joe manages to win. Every out is a commodity."
In the end, all David Cone would get is that one out. A pop-up of the mighty Piazza to second base. But there was something about that one out that opened a window so all of us could gaze inside at the interior of the Big Pinstriped Machine.
Just because they have won the World Series two years in a row and three times in four years, just because they still led this Series by a game, it didn't mean the Yankees couldn't play Game 4 with their own special passion.
They didn't just win this game. They attacked this game.
With a Derek Jeter home run on the first pitch of the game, the baseball disappearing into the night even as the commemorative flash bulbs were still popping all over Shea Stadium.
With runners moving in every possible situation.
With Mariano Rivera coming up to bat in a bunt situation -- and swinging away.
With Luis Sojo stealing the first base of this World Series for either team.
With the bullpen door flying open whenever Torre felt the time was right.
That was the Yankees on this night -- approaching this game as if they trailed the Series, two games to one, instead of the other way around.
Where does the experience of playing 64 postseason games since 1995 show up most? Right there. In their approach to the games that matter most.
"What we try to do is come out and win every night," said Tino Martinez. "We don't want to give the other team any momentum whatsoever. One win here and there can swing the momentum in the whole Series. So we try to come out and keep from getting into that kind of situation."
And that explains everything.
What was Jeter doing, taking a home-run hack at Bobby Jones' first pitch of the evening?
"We're playing at Shea Stadium," Jeter said. "There's a few Yankees fans here, but you want to take their crowd out of the game."
And why were the Yankees able to advance runners with routine groundball outs in four different innings, just by putting their baserunners in constant motion?
"You know, Joe managed in the National League, too," Sojo said. "He figured we've got to be aggressive with Bobby Jones. You don't take anything for granted at times like this. We knew Mike (Piazza) had problems this year throwing people out. So we tried to take it to them whenever we could."
And who ever would have figured that Sojo, of all people, would roar into second base for the Series' first stolen base in the seventh inning -- just to give Bernie Williams a chance to knock in an insurance run?
"The whole world never expected I would steal that bag," laughed Sojo, who swiped a whopping two bases all season. "Two outs. Why not try it? But I was so sore after I got up. That was my first stolen base in two months."
And it didn't even lead to anything. But that wasn't the point. The Yankees didn't score in the final six innings. But they never stopped driving around this track as if they had no brake pedal.
Contrast that approach with the way the Mets played it in the third inning, when they played the infield back with Jeter on third, no outs, Sojo at the plate and the Yankees already ahead 2-0.
"This is the World Series," Sojo said. "I don't think you can ever give up a run. Even Todd Zeile and Ventura were playing back. So I said, 'OK, I'll try and hit a ground ball to second base to get the run in.' And I did."
You concede a run in the third inning in the regular season. But you don't concede a run in the fourth game of the World Series -- not when you're down two runs, not when you're in danger of being one loss away from going home.
So how ironic is it that the one run the Mets conceded turned out to be the one run that beat them? It was just a simple decision. But it's not a decision you would see the Yankees making this time of year.
That comes from experience. And it comes from their manager.
"When you're managing during the season," Torre said, "you're doing things to help you in the long run. When you get into a short series, you're doing things today -- and for today.
"You have to do what you think is right to get an out, to get an inning, to get a hit. You definitely manage differently. Don Zimmer taught me that my first year, in '96, especially in dealing with pitchers."
Even as far back as '96, Torre twice gonged Kenny Rogers out of postseason starts in which he held an early lead, just because "I didn't like what I was seeing." He did the same to Neagle in Game 5 of the ALCS in Seattle.
But never has he chosen a more dramatic setting to hook his starter than he did in this game.
Piazza already had mashed one home run off Neagle two innings earlier. He'd barely missed another homer in the first inning, when his upper-deck shuttle launch curled just foul. So Torre wasn't going to take a chance on one more swing like that -- no matter what The Book may have dictated.
And two hours later, when he'd had time to let it all sink in, even Neagle understood that.
"I was a little shocked at first," he said. "But that's what happens when you haven't been here that long and he hasn't seen what you can do in that situation. I'm sure the thing that was freshest in his mind was Piazza hitting the two-run home run. So he did what he thought was the right thing to do. And that's fine. This isn't about me winning. It's about us winning, as a team."
And that's what they did. That's what they do. That's what they always do this time of year. They're the Yankees.
"That's why they're in the World Series," Piazza said. "That's why they've won two in a row. Obviously, they've really elevated their game."
They've elevated in the field. They've elevated on the mound. They've elevated in their brains. And they've elevated in the manager's office.
That's that's what separates the New York Yankees from all those teams that are watching them now from their living rooms. And that's what separates them from the latest team they're about to send home for the winter.
Jayson Stark is senior writer at ESPN.com.
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