The Closer (12 page)

Jorge catches my attention and points to his eyes, as if to say:

You see that?

I do see it. I nod. I buzz a fastball on the outside corner, and Franco never moves. Strike two. I know he’s sitting on the cutter in. Jorge knows it, too. I buzz another fastball on the outside corner. Franco never moves again.

Game over.

In four games, we have fifteen runs, and the Mets have fourteen. Every game pivots on one or two plays, or one or two pitches. I like the way the pivots have been going, and now it’s time to finish things up in Game 5, Leiter vs. Andy, a rematch of Game 1.

Bernie, in an 0-for-16 slump in the Series, rips a homer to start the second, and after the Mets answer with two runs in the bottom of the inning, Derek takes two tight fastballs from Leiter and then pounds his second homer in two games. It’s 2–2, and Andy and Leiter are competing their left arms off, matching zeroes and guts. Mike Stanton comes on for a 1-2-3 eighth, and Leiter comes back out for the ninth and gets two quick strikeouts.

With Leiter nearing one hundred forty pitches, Jorge, the guy with the best eye on the team, keeps fighting pitches off, battling the way Paulie did in the ninth inning of Game 1. After a nine-pitch drama, Jorge walks. Brosius drills a single to left. Luis Sojo, a huge factor the whole Series, swings at the first pitch and hits about a ten-hopper through the middle. Jorgie barely beats Payton’s throw, and when he slides, the ball careens away and Brosius scores, too.

We’re up 4–2 now, three outs away. As I throw my warm-up pitches, I am thinking about making the first pitch I throw as good as it can be.

The pinch hitter is Darryl Hamilton. He takes strike one, fouls off strike two, and swings through a high cutter for strike three.

Next up is Agbayani, the left fielder. I try to work him away but miss my spots and walk him on four straight. Bad thing to do, putting the tying run at the plate, but it’s done. I let it go. I shift all my
focus to Alfonzo, get ahead, 1–2, and fire a cutter away. He lofts a ball to right that Paulie catches easily.

It is now down to Mike Piazza, one of the most dangerous hitters in baseball. Derek and Sojo trot in to the mound for a quick visit. Sojo stands back a bit. Derek does the talking.

You want to be careful here. You know what he can do. Move the ball around and go after him hard, Derek says.

He slaps me on the leg with his glove and returns to short. I blow on my right hand. I look in at Jorge’s glove, alone in that tube again. I am not overthinking this. I am going to throw the best pitch I can.

I am going to keep it simple.

Piazza has tremendous opposite-field power. I want to stay in on him. My first pitch is a cutter, in. Strike one. Jorge sets up inside again, calling for the ball a little higher. I come set and deliver, a cutter not quite as in as I want, a few inches out over the plate. Piazza takes a rip and hits the ball pretty well, a fly to center. I turn and watch Bernie’s body language as he is easing back, completely in control. A few steps in front of the track, he makes the catch, and at exactly midnight on October 27, 2000, Bernie goes down on a knee, bowing his head in momentary prayer. Now both my arms are in the air and I am jumping up and down, up and down, until Tino arrives for a hug, until the whole team pours onto the field, and the tension and high-stakes stress of big-time competition evaporate faster than a puddle in the Panamanian sun, and the joy is everywhere you look, flowing long before the Champagne is.

The day after the Series is over, I get a phone call from Mr. George’s assistant.

Good morning, she says. Mr. Steinbrenner asked me to call. Are you ready to make the arrangements for your trip to Panama?

I
T’S THE BOTTOM OF
the eighth in Baltimore and the tying run is at the plate, an iron man in the twentieth and last season of a legendary career. We are a month into the 2001 season. It’s a hot night, my favorite weather to pitch in. Cal Ripken Jr. and the Orioles are down, 7–5. I am ahead in the count, 1–2, just a few pitches into my outing but feeling very strong. I check the runner at second, Delino DeShields, and bring a hard cutter, 93 miles per hour, in on Cal. It looks as if it might hit him, or at least graze his No. 8 uniform. He leans back to get out of the way, just as the pitch makes a left turn, veering sharply toward the inside corner.

Charlie Reliford, the home plate umpire, yanks up his right arm. Cal drops his bat and walks away, shaking his head. I walk off the Camden Yards mound, registering no emotion, though I know it’s one of those nights when the cutter is breaking like a Wiffle ball, when the ball feels almost perfect as it comes out of my hand.

You got no chance when it moves that much, Derek tells a reporter later.

We spend most of the season dominating the American League East, and when we take three straight against the Red Sox at Yankee Stadium in early September, our lead is up to thirteen games. The series is scheduled to conclude on a Monday night, with Roger Clemens trying to extend his record to 20–1 against his old team.
A huge crowd and a postseason atmosphere are expected, but a drenching rain makes the field unplayable and the game is rained out.

The date is September 10.

By morning the rain has gone, leaving behind a hint of autumn chill and a spectacularly blue sky. It’s a school day, so I am up early with the boys. I am brushing my teeth when my mother-in-law, who is staying with us, calls for us and sounds alarmed.

Clara! Pili! Come quick! Look at what’s on TV!

I hustle downstairs into the kitchen and listen to a bizarre report about a plane flying into the World Trade Center. It’s a few minutes past 8:45. Information is scarce. One of the towers is on fire, smoke billowing out of the top. I wonder how this could’ve happened, and if the workers in the building will be able to get out. Then a second plane hits the other tower and now things become much clearer.

This is a terrorist attack.

More tragic reports follow, about the plane that hit the Pentagon and Flight 93 crashing in the Pennsylvania countryside. The images are too horrific to comprehend, the evil behind the attack even more so. I pray for the victims and their families. I pray for all of us, for the country. The city grieves and we grieve along with it. All ball games are canceled for a week.

I stay close to home and watch the horrific cleanup process unfold. I pray constantly, and just want to stay near Clara and the boys. When the games resume we have to fly to Chicago, but because it’s the Yankee charter, it’s not any more traumatic a flight for me than usual. It’s the same plane we always take, transporting us to the next game. (When I fly commercially to Panama after the season, that’s when I am a total mess.)

We pick up the season on September 18 in Comiskey Park, winning, 11–3, then return for our first game in New York since the attacks. Roger visits a New York firehouse in the afternoon and
starts the game at night. It’s a powerful night of tribute and memorials to the victims and the first responders. The Stadium almost feels as if it’s a church; the whole night seems more like a vigil than our 150th game of the season. Tampa beats us, 4–0, but with the Red Sox loss we clinch the AL East title for the fifth time in six years. The corks remain in the Champagne bottles. We are the New York Yankees. Our city is hurting in a big way, and so are we. It is no time to celebrate.

Even though we win 95 games in 2001, we aren’t close to being the premier team in the American League. The Seattle Mariners are even better than we were in 1998, finishing with a record of 116–46, a feat so ridiculous that the Oakland A’s win 102 games—and wind up fourteen games out of first.

We might be three-time defending World Series champions, but we are only the third-best team in our league. If anybody doubts that, they are not paying attention. We draw Oakland in the division series. In Game 1, at Yankee Stadium, Mark Mulder outpitches Roger, and the A’s get two homers from Terrence Long and one from Jason Giambi and win, 5–3. Tim Hudson shuts us down in Game 2, and the A’s win, 2–0, to go up 2–0. Now we fly west, one defeat away from 2002, our season riding on the right arm of Mike Mussina. The A’s have won seventeen straight games at home. Barry Zito, a twenty-two-year-old left-hander, is aiming to make it eighteen. The game is scoreless through four. With one out in the fifth, Jorge drives a 1–0 pitch over the wall in left to give us a 1–0 lead. I watch in wonder as my friend circles the bases.

I have no idea how he can possibly be playing at the level he is—or how he’s even able to focus on baseball at all.

Jorge’s two-year-old son, Jorge IV, has a serious medical condition called craniosynostosis, in which the pieces of an infant’s skull
fuse prematurely, with potentially devastating consequences for brain and neurological development. The condition gets more acute almost by the day. Little Jorge has eight hours of surgery on September 10, and two more hours of surgery a few weeks later. It seems as if this baby is being operated on constantly, and somehow Jorge is able to perform as well as he ever has on the field, putting together a tremendous season, an All-Star season, hitting .277 with 22 home runs and 95 runs batted in and doing a great job handling the pitching staff on top of it.

You are as strong mentally as anybody I know, I tell him. I am praying for little Jorge, and praying that one day he’ll look at you and know how lucky he is to have you as a father.

Meanwhile, Mussina keeps the zeroes going and sets down Johnny Damon, Miguel Tejada, and Jason Giambi in the sixth. He gets two quick outs, retiring Jermaine Dye and Eric Chavez, in the bottom of the seventh. Jeremy Giambi singles to right and it brings up Terrence Long, who drills a 2–2 pitch inside the first-base line, past a diving Tino. The ball caroms into the right-field corner. Shane Spencer retrieves it and comes up throwing, but misses both cutoff men, Alfonso Soriano and Tino. It is all happening right before my eyes, since the visiting bullpen is wedged along the first-base line, all of us crammed onto a bench that looks as if it were lifted from a bus station. Giambi rounds third and looks as if he will score easily to tie the game. Spencer’s throw bounds toward home, along the first-base line, in no-man’s-land.

That’s when I see Derek running this way, across the infield, toward us.

Toward the first-base line.

Where is he going?
I think.
This play has nothing to do with him.

Derek keeps sprinting toward the line. Closing in on the ball.

Now I know what he’s doing.

He is almost at the line now, maybe fifteen or twenty feet from home plate. Still running hard, he bends down and scoops up the rolling ball. He shovels it backhand toward Jorge.

Giambi is coming in standing up. I have no idea why.

Jorge gets the flip and makes a swipe tag on Giambi, an instant before he touches home.

Jeremy Giambi is out. Our 1–0 lead is intact. Derek Jeter pumps his fist. Mussina pumps his fist. I feel like running out of the bullpen and pumping my fist. Half the dugout, it seems, is charging out on the field, a spontaneous burst of emotion for a player who never stops thinking or hustling.

It is the greatest instinctive play I have ever seen.

With six outs to get, I come on in the bottom of the eighth and get through it with no major difficulty, and then have to face the heart of the order in the ninth, starting with Jason Giambi, the American League’s reigning MVP, and Jeremy’s big—and I mean very big—brother. Giambi bounces a 1–0 pitch to second for one out, and after a Jermaine Dye double, I strike out Eric Chavez and up steps Jeremy, the man who doesn’t slide. On a 1–1 pitch, another Giambi grounds to second, and we are still alive.

In Game 4, we get heroic pitching and hitting from Duque and Bernie, who has three hits and five RBIs, and after a 9–2 victory, we fly three thousand miles back to New York to play Game 5 the next day, a Monday. Before a single pitch is thrown, I’m struck by how different the city feels than it did before September 11. It’s hard to describe. It just feels as if everything is heightened—more vivid; more urgent, somehow; infused with an attitude that seems to be saying:

We’ve got this day and we are going for it.

There’s always emotion and energy pulsing through the Stadium.

But now it seems packed with even more meaning, as if our mission is not only to win one more World Series, but to do it for the city.

Neither Roger nor Mark Mulder has his best stuff, and we take a 5–3 lead through six on a Derek sacrifice fly and a David Justice homer. After Ramiro hurls a 1-2-3 seventh it’s on me to get the last six outs. Jason Giambi singles off me to start the eighth, and then I get Eric Chavez on a fielder’s choice, bringing up Terrence Long, who pops up a 1–1 pitch toward the seats behind third, and now here comes Derek again, racing behind the bag and leaning over the railing and then making a phenomenal catch even as he goes head over heels into the seats. Somehow he holds on to the ball, and then I get Ron Gant on a groundout to third to finish the eighth.

In the ninth, Olmedo Saenz bounces out to second, and then I strike out Greg Myers, the Oakland catcher, on three pitches. Pinch hitter Eric Byrnes steps in, and the Stadium crowd is on its feet as Byrnes crouches into a slightly open stance. The count goes to 2–2. Jorge sets up inside. I fire a fastball and Byrnes swings through it, and without even thinking about it, I jump up and do a complete 360. I have no idea where that comes from; I don’t remember ever doing it before, and I never did it again. Jorge pumps his fist and jumps up and runs out to shake my hand, wrapping an arm around me, touching my neck. Mr. T escorts New York mayor Rudolph Giuliani, who has done so much to help the city heal after the attacks, onto the field. It’s a night super-saturated with emotion: We’ve come back to win three straight against a great team, somehow embodying the city’s resilient spirit. Now it is on to face the mighty Mariners, who have their own anxious moments, falling behind the Indians, two games to one, before pulling it out.

The first two games are in Seattle, and we are ready. We know how good the Mariners are, and we respect what they have done this season, but we are as confident as ever that we can get by them.

Andy is our Game 1 guy, and he answers another big-game start with another big-time effort, giving up only three hits and a run
and striking out seven. All night he is throwing his curveball exactly where he wants to. Knoblauch’s single gets us going in the second, and when Jorge pounds a ball from Mariners starter Aaron Sele off the wall in right in the top of the fourth, he hustles all the way and challenges Ichiro’s rocket launcher of an arm. Ichiro’s throw is outstanding, but Jorge somehow gets under the tag. Paulie drills a two-run homer off Sele, and Andy protects a 3–1 lead right through the eighth.

In the ninth, Alfonso Soriano drives a ball off reliever Jose Paniagua he is sure is going out. He raises his bat and stands at the plate to admire his hit. The ball hits the wall, and Sori winds up at first, and Mr. T is furious. Sori is a gifted young hitter, but he may not know yet that admiring home runs, not running, taking a page out of Mannyball, is not how we do things. As if to atone for his lapse, he steals second and then scores on a David Justice single and pushes the lead to 4–1.

I come on for the ninth, and with one out, Ichiro, a guy who handles the bat as if it is a magic wand, drops a double down the left-field line. He isn’t just the league batting champion (.350), a guy who had 242 hits, he is on his way to being the American League MVP, a brilliant all-around player. I am an out away from closing it after getting Stan Javier on a comebacker, but as I field the ball, I tweak my ankle, which has been bothering me on and off for a month or more. On my first pitch to Bret Boone, I throw a wild pitch that allows Ichiro to go to third. On my third pitch, I throw another one wild, and Ichiro scores. I do not throw another wild pitch in the postseason for the rest of my career, but that does me no good now. Boone walks, and it’s obvious my mechanics are off. I have walked just four batters since the All-Star break, and now I get to face Edgar as the potential tying run.

I get ahead with a strike and then throw a cutter away and
Edgar goes for it, hitting a grounder to first. Tino digs it out and I run to cover, and Game 1 is ours.

Mussina, who was so sensational in the flip-play game against Oakland, isn’t quite as sharp in Game 2 but competes hard from start to finish. He gets an early 3–0 lead thanks to a Brosius two-run double, but the Mariners are doing what our hitters do: They are making Moose work. In the bottom of the second, Dan Wilson fouls off seven straight pitches before singling, one batter after Javier works a nine-pitch at-bat for a walk. Moose gets out of it, but Javier drives a two-run homer in the fourth and now it’s a one-run game. Moose grinds through six, finishing by striking out Edgar and Cameron and popping up John Olerud. For me as a pitcher, I don’t think there’s anything better than seeing a guy compete so hard and get such good results—even when his stuff is not quite what he wants it to be.

Ramiro takes over in the seventh, and with a man on and two out, Mr. T makes a brave call, ordering Ramiro to walk Ichiro. You are not supposed to put the potential winning run on base—ever—but Ichiro is just too dangerous to worry about what the book says. Mark McLemore taps out to second, so the strategy works just the way Mr. T hoped it would.

I enter with one out in the eighth and Edgar on first. I get Olerud on a force-out and strike out Cameron, and then throw a fastball by David Bell to finish the ninth, and we fly back east, halfway to the World Series.

Duque doesn’t have it and the bullpen gets rocked in Game 3, and the Mariners win, 14–3. The visiting team has now won all three games. If we can stop the trend, we can avoid a return trip to Safeco Field. We’ve got Roger, who struck out fifteen Mariners the last time they saw him in the playoffs, and they’ve got Paul Abbott, who won seventeen games during the season but had a disastrous
start against the Indians in the division series and can be all over the place with his control.