The Closer (15 page)

Who ever heard of getting no-hit by six pitchers?

But by the time October arrives, I have a much better feeling about things. We take the Twins out in four games in the division series, and I retire all twelve batters I face. Now it is time for the Yankees and the Red Sox, best-of-seven for the American League pennant. The Red Sox, who have played us tough all year, are convinced that this is the year they finally bring the mighty Yankees down, and they go out and take Game 1, behind Tim Wakefield and the home run bats of David Ortiz, Manny Ramirez, and Todd Walker. Andy gets us even in Game 2, pitching into the seventh, before giving way to Jose Contreras (subject of a hot Yankee–Red Sox bidding war in the off-season) and me in a 6–2 triumph, sending us up to Fenway for a Game 3 matchup of Roger Clemens and Pedro Martinez. It is supposed to be Roger’s last game in Fenway,
and even as he warms up, there’s this buzz in the park you’d feel at a heavyweight prizefight.

Manny Ramirez hits a two-run single to give Pedro a lead in the bottom of the first, but in the third Derek drives a hanging curveball onto Lansdowne Street, clear over the Green Monster, and we’re rallying again in the fourth when Hideki Matsui, playing in his first Yankee–Red Sox postseason series, rifles a double to right.

Karim Garcia, our right fielder, steps in. He already has an RBI single off of Pedro. Pedro’s first pitch is a fastball behind Garcia’s head, hitting him in the upper back. Garcia is furious; he glares at Pedro and curses him out. Pedro curses right back. Our bench is up. So is the Red Sox bench. One play later, on a 6-4-3 double-play ball, Garcia overruns second and takes out Walker, the Sox second baseman. It’s a dirty play, and Walker is rightfully steamed. Now Garcia is jawing at Pedro as he heads off, both benches are up on the steps, and nobody is giving Pedro more of an earful than Jorge.

They don’t like each other, and in the playoffs, the emotions burn even hotter. Pedro stares and points at Jorge, and then points to his head, twice. I am watching on the clubhouse TV screen and am angry and disgusted at Pedro’s antics. He’s too good a pitcher to act like such a punk. First he headhunts Garcia, and now he inflames things even more by supposedly threatening to drill Jorge in the head.

If somebody rubs two sticks together this whole place could explode,
I think.

The sticks get rubbed a few minutes later, in the bottom of the fourth. Roger throws a high fastball, slightly inside, to Manny Ramirez. The pitch isn’t close to hitting him, but Manny brandishes his bat and starts hollering and walking out toward Roger, and now the benches empty. While everybody else heads for the mound, Don Zimmer, our rotund, seventy-two-year-old bench coach, takes off for the Sox dugout—Pedro Martinez is standing
in front of it. Pedro sees Zimmer coming at him like a round little bull. Zimmer raises his left arm and Pedro steps back as if he were a matador, shoving Zimmer to the ground. Zim’s hat falls off and he suffers a little cut, and everybody is gathering around him to make sure he’s okay.

How much lower can Pedro go?
I wonder.

Zim is totally wrong to bull-rush Pedro, but you can’t throw an old man on the ground. You find a better way, that’s all. The drama continues, and it boils over once more when a fight breaks out in our bullpen. It involves a Fenway groundskeeper, Jeff Nelson, and Garcia, who hops the fence to get in on it.

I don’t let this mayhem get into my head at all. I am calm and I am positive, even though I haven’t done well against the Red Sox this year; I’ve blown two saves and they have sixteen hits against me in just over ten innings. I can’t tell you why, but I can tell you that as much as I love the intimacy of Fenway, the mound is one of my least favorite in the league. Maybe it’s because the clay is on the soft side, so by the time I get out there, often after two hundred fifty or so pitches have been thrown, it is pretty roughed up and doesn’t have the hard landing spots I prefer. But none of that matters. You compete where you have to compete. The mound is soft?

Deal with it, Mo.

I run in from the pen and start warming up with Jorge. We have been together for nine years now, and he isn’t just a close friend, he’s a soul mate, a guy I am in total sync with. He knows what I like, how I think, that I want to keep things simple. He knows I will never shake my head if I want to change a pitch or a location. All I will do is keep on looking in. If I keep looking in, then he knows I want to throw something else.

But who is kidding whom? I throw the cutter about 90 percent of the time. For most pitchers, a catcher puts down one finger for a fastball, two for a curve, three for a slider, and so on. With me, one
is a cutter, and two is a two-seam fastball. If there is a runner on second base, four is a cutter and two is a two-seamer. If Jorge waggles his fingers as he puts them down, it means he wants it up in the zone.

That’s the sum total of our signs.

Jorge puts down one finger almost exclusively at the end of Game 3. I face six Red Sox hitters and retire them all, requiring just nineteen pitches. We win, 4–3, and take a 2–1 lead in the series, but this is Red Sox–Yankees. I have a feeling this is going the distance, and that is exactly what happens. We win Games 2, 3, and 5. The Red Sox win games 1, 4, and 6.

Game 7 is at the Stadium, Pedro vs. Roger, Part II.

Pedro is much sharper than he was in Game 3, and has much the better of it. Roger gets knocked around for three runs in the third, and then gives up a leadoff homer to Kevin Millar in the fourth. A walk and a single follow, and Mr. T has seen enough, calling for Mussina, who has never thrown a pitch of relief in his career. He strikes out Jason Varitek on three pitches, and then gets Johnny Damon to hit into a 6-6-3 double play. Mussina has already lost two games in the series and given up five home runs; these are the most important outs he’s gotten as a Yankee, and he doesn’t stop there. He strikes out David Ortiz with two men on an inning later, and as I lie on the training table and get rubbed down by Geno, I am full of admiration for what he’s doing.

He’s getting every single out he has to have,
I think.

In all, Mussina throws three scoreless innings, and now our bats finally wake up. Giambi belts Pedro’s first pitch of the fifth inning, a changeup away, over the center-field fence, making it 4–1. It is only our third hit of the night. Two innings later, Matsui grounds out sharply to second and Jorge hits a sinking liner that Damon catches in right center, but I can see we’re starting to get on Pedro’s pitches more. Giambi comes up again and this time gets
a fastball away, and he is all over it, ripping it over the wall in straightaway center, just over the leaping Damon’s glove. Now it’s 4–2, and when Enrique Wilson (who is in the lineup because he hits Pedro really well) gets an infield single and Garcia ropes a line single to right, there’s more positive energy in the Stadium than there has been all night.

Then Pedro strikes out Sori for the fourth time, and the energy drains right back out of the place. Pedro points his finger to the sky, his trademark sign-off, and gets a hug from Nomar Garciaparra in the dugout, and we all figure he’s done. Pedro assumes he’s done, too, until his manager, Grady Little, puts a question to him:

Can you give me one more inning?

Pedro says okay. He feels as if he has no option, even though he clearly thought his night was over. Ortiz homers off of Wells, another emergency reliever, to make it 5–2, and we have six outs left.

Sure enough, there is Pedro back out for the eighth. With one out, Derek hits an 0–2 pitch to right that Trot Nixon doesn’t get a good read on, the ball bouncing just over his glove for a double. Bernie drives a single to center to score Derek, and then Matsui drills a ground-rule double to right. Still, Little leaves his ace in, and though Pedro gets Jorge to hit a flare to center, it falls and the game is tied. The Stadium erupts. Pedro exits. On the bullpen mound, the frenzy and noise are overwhelming, and so are my emotions.

I put down my glove, leave the bullpen mound, and run up a small flight of stairs, where there is a bench and a bathroom. I go into the bathroom, close the door, and start to cry. The moment is just too much to take in. We are down three to Pedro Martinez with five outs to go and now the game is tied. I don’t know what else to do, so I thank the Lord for answering my prayers.

I let the tears come for a minute or two, wipe them away, and then finish my warm-up.

The Sox bullpen does the job and I come in for the top of the ninth, and end it by getting Todd Walker on a little looper to second with a man on second. When it leaves his bat, I crouch down, afraid for a second it might be another soft hit with terrible consequences. But Sori jumps to make the catch, and I jump on the mound with him. Mike Timlin sets us down in order in the ninth, and with two outs in the tenth, Ortiz takes me the other way with a double off the wall. I bite my hand on the mound afterward, upset that I didn’t come in on him with the cutter instead of going away, but I get out of it by popping up Kevin Millar.

After Tim Wakefield and his knuckleball put us away in order in the bottom of the tenth, I have my own 1-2-3 inning, with two strikeouts. It’s my first three-inning outing in seven years. When I get to the dugout, Mel comes up to me.

Great job, Mo, he says.

I can give you another, I say.

Mel doesn’t want me going out there again, I’m sure. But there is no way I am coming out of the game. If I need to pitch a fourth inning, I am going to do it. A fifth inning? I will throw that, too. The season is just about over. I have a long time to rest. I don’t just
want
to stay in the game. I have to. I feel that it is my duty. I am going to push Mr. T and Mel as hard as I have to. I am not going to let anybody else take the ball.

Aaron Boone leads off the bottom of the eleventh. He is hitting .125 for the series. Wakefield’s first pitch is a knuckler that comes in about waist-high, on the inner half. Boone turns on it, and the minute he does, we know. Everybody in the Stadium knows—you can tell by the roar. The ball lands a dozen or more rows deep. We are going back to the World Series. The whole team pours out of the dugout to greet Aaron at home, but I have a different destination.

I am running to the pitcher’s mound. I need to be on the
pitcher’s mound. I get there just as Aaron rounds second and heads to third. I am on my hands and knees, kissing the rubber, saying a prayer to the Lord, crying in the dirt.

Thank You, Lord, for giving me the strength and courage to pull through. Thank You for the joy of this moment,
I say.
Thank You for all of Your grace and mercy.

Lee Mazzilli, our first-base coach, follows me to the mound and puts his arms around me as I weep. All around me guys are hugging and jumping around. I just keep praying and weeping. I am not sure what the depth of these emotions is about. Is it because I had left the field in such hurt after the last Game 7, two years before? I don’t know. It doesn’t matter. When I get to my feet, I share a hug with Aaron and then a long embrace with Mr. T.

I am named MVP of the American League Championship Series, but there is no real MVP. The trophy should be divided twenty-five ways. That is not a throwaway line. It’s the truth. We never stop battling. We are a band of brothers. We stick together and believe together. I could’ve stayed in that dirt all night.

I
N THE FIRST INNING
of Game 3 of the World Series against the Florida Marlins, Josh Beckett, a twenty-three-year-old kid with a wicked fastball and a curveball to match, strikes out Derek Jeter on three pitches. Jeter spends the next three hours and eight innings doing more than anybody else on the team to make sure we win the game. As I watch him do this, I realize it has been ten years since we were teammates in Greensboro, the year he made fifty-six errors and I knew—
I knew
—he was going to be a great, great ballplayer.

What I saw then, in 1993, is the same thing I see now: a man with an insatiable desire to be the best, and to win.

You think about Derek’s résumé of big moments, and it’s staggering. The double that started the rally against Pedro in Game 3. The flip play. The home run in the tenth inning of Game 4 to beat the Diamondbacks in 2001. The leadoff homer in Game 4 against the Mets in 2000. The hit that started the big rally in Game 4 against the Braves, the one that culminated with Jim Leyritz’s home run.

And now it is on display in Game 3 against Beckett and the Marlins, in a Series that is supposed to be about as competitive as a Globetrotters–Washington Generals game—a mismatch in star power, payroll, tradition, and pretty much everything else. We split the first two games in New York and know beating Beckett tonight
can alter the course of the whole Series. So after that initial strikeout, here is what happens:

Jeter doubles to left and scores in the fourth inning. He singles to center to lead off the sixth inning. He doubles to right and scores the go-ahead run in the eighth inning.

Beckett pitches seven and a third and strikes out ten and gives up just three hits and two runs. All three hits, and both runs, come from Derek Jeter, a man who never stops competing and embodies the ethos of the Joe Torre Yankees: He gives his personal all but always wants it to be about the team.

I am warming up in the visitors’ bullpen, getting ready to come on for Mussina, who is superb all night. Minutes after Derek’s third hit and second run knocks Beckett out of the game, I am on the mound, throwing six pitches to retire Pudge Rodriguez, Miguel Cabrera, and Derrek Lee. We explode for four more runs on an Aaron Boone solo homer and Bernie’s three-run homer, and then close it out in the bottom of the ninth.

We’ve beaten the Marlins’ best pitcher and have Roger Clemens going in Game 4, and David Wells in Game 5. Nobody is taking anything for granted, but I like how we’re situated, and when pinch hitter Ruben Sierra laces a two-out, two-run triple down the right-field line in the ninth inning to tie Game 4 at 3–3, it just seems familiar, like another Yankee workday in October.

It’s a hit straight out of 1996 or 1998 or 2000,
I think.

And from that point on, very little else goes right for the Yankees in the 2003 World Series. We are the ones who become the Washington Generals. As much as it stings to think about, the truth is undeniable: We are not the same team we used to be. It’s not even close. The Marlins are fast and aggressive and play with spunk, but, I am sorry, those teams of ours that won four World Series in five years would’ve hammered them. They would’ve found a way, and willed their way through
as a team.
Because those were
guys who cared more about winning than anything else. And it’s just not like that anymore.

We leave the bases loaded in the top of the eleventh, and then watch as Alex Gonzalez, the Marlins shortstop, hits a game-winning homer off of Jeff Weaver to lead off the bottom of the twelfth. It’s a highlight straight out of the Aaron Boone playbook, only now we are on the receiving end.

So the Series is tied at two games apiece, and then Game 5 unspools faster than a runaway fishing line. During infield practice, Giambi tells Mr. T he’s not sure he can play first base because of a bad knee, and then Wells has to leave after an inning with a bad back. We get one hit in eight at-bats with runners in scoring position. It adds up to a 6–4 defeat. We go back to Yankee Stadium, where Andy pitches really well and Josh Beckett is even better, spinning a five-hit shutout and striking out nine, doing it on three days’ rest. We whimper off to clear out our lockers, to another off-season that doesn’t include a parade.

Anything short of a championship tends to result in big changes for George Steinbrenner’s Yankees, and 2004 brings about the biggest change you can have: the acquisition of Alex Rodriguez, the American League MVP, a man widely considered the best player in baseball. Alfonso Soriano goes to the Texas Rangers in the deal, and Alex, deferring to Derek, goes to third base from his natural position of shortstop. It’s Alex’s third team in four seasons, and I’m thrilled we have him, but as I look ahead to my own 2004 season, the final year of my contract with the Yankees, I have an overwhelming desire to not go anywhere. I do not want to chase the biggest contract I can, and I do not want to wear another uniform. Maybe this makes me an agent’s worst nightmare, because I have no interest in playing the free-agent game, posturing about all my options and leaking stories about how I might be on my way someplace else.

Maybe it costs me money, too. I extend my contract for two years in 2004, a year before it’s up, and a few years later, the Phillies offer me a contract for four years and $64 million, almost $20 million more than what the Yankees offer. Do you know how long I consider that? For about half the time it takes you to read this page. The reason is very simple:

I have never played the game for money. I like money as much as the next person, and am fortunate to be able to provide well for my family, but it has never been my motivation for playing. I always felt that if I played the game the right way, if I worked hard and tried to be a good teammate and honor the game, the money aspect of it would take care of itself, and that is exactly what has happened. There hasn’t been one time in my career when I looked at what somebody else was earning and felt shortchanged. Why would I do that? Why concern myself with other people’s business?

It would do me not one iota of good. It would make me restless and unhappy, tying my contentment to the size of my bank account. The Lord has given me much more richness through His wisdom, as it is written in Hebrews 13:5:

Keep your life free from love of money, and be content with what you have, for He has said, “I will never leave you nor forsake you.”

Contentedness for me comes from the Lord, and is available to me wherever I am, at any time, whether I am surrounded by fancy walls or no walls. I don’t need anything but the love of the people who matter to me. It’s how I choose to look at life.

Not that I need it, but as we head into another postseason in 2004 I get a powerful reminder of how little money really matters. It’s minutes after we beat the Twins in the Metrodome to take the American League Division Series in four games; I have just put the Twins away in a ten-pitch bottom of the eleventh.

We file into the clubhouse to begin with the Champagne-spraying.
It never gets old; it feels new to me every time. Mr. T puts a hand on my shoulder and asks me to come into his office. Derek and Mel and a few of the other coaches are there.

Mo, something happened, Mr. T says. His eyes begin to well up. He is struggling to find words.

I’m very sorry, Mo. I think Clara should be the one to tell you.

I have no idea what is going on.

They bring Clara down to the clubhouse. She is crying, too. I find out later she doesn’t want anyone to tell me anything until after the game. She suffers with grief the whole night, getting comforted by other Yankee wives.

There has been an accident at our house in Puerto Caimito, Clara says. Victor and Leo were at the pool and they were electrocuted. Neither of them survived.

I can’t believe what I am hearing. Victor is Clara’s cousin and someone very close to us. I’ve known him my whole life. Leo is his fourteen-year-old son. As I try to take this in, all I can do is embrace my wife and weep with her in Mr. T’s office. Soon I learn all the horrible specifics. Clara and I built the house several years earlier, a place for us to stay when we go back. Victor takes care of the yard and the pool. He and Leo are working there and it’s a very hot day, and Leo decides he’s going to cool off, so he jumps in the pool. There is an electric fence nearby that we use so our dogs don’t get away. One of the cables for the fence accidentally got into the pool, electrifying the water. Leo gets shocked into unconsciousness, and dies from drowning. When Victor sees his boy in the water, he jumps in to rescue him, and the same thing happens to him.

Clara and I fly back to New York with the team and catch a flight the next day for Panama. I go to the funeral home to see the bodies of Victor and Leo. I want to see them. It may sound gruesome, but I need to see them, to say goodbye to them and express the depth of my sadness, and pray for them. It is a small room in
the basement of a building in Panama City. They bring out the bodies, which are being prepared for burial. It is one of the saddest moments of my whole life, to see the lifeless bodies of a cousin who is like a brother, and his young son.

I begin to pray over the bodies.

Dear Lord, I know that Victor and Leo are in Your eternal kingdom now, and know that they are in perfect peace. Please bless them and keep them and help their family through the terrible grief they are experiencing. Please give all of us the strength we need in this hour, and help us to find comfort knowing that through Jesus Christ there is eternal life. Amen.

The funeral is held at Church of God of Prophecy in Puerto Caimito on Tuesday morning, October 12, a two-hour service attended by hundreds of people. Rev. Alexis Reyes talks about how fame and money do not matter in this world. It is our love of Jesus Christ that matters. We go to the cemetery nearby and release balloons into the sky. I leave Panama City at about 2:30 p.m. on a private plane provided by the Yankees, and I land in Teterboro Airport in New Jersey a little after 7:00 p.m. The Yankees arrange for my documentation to be handled quickly so I can get on my way. They have a blue Cadillac waiting for me and we drive through north Jersey, across the George Washington Bridge and down the Major Deegan to the Stadium. It’s the second inning when I arrive. I’ve spent a good part of the day crying and am emotionally exhausted, but it’s good to be back at work and to immerse myself in game preparation, mental and physical. I want to compete. I want to get in this ball game and help my team win.

That would be the best healing agent of all.

I head right for the clubhouse. Geno is there, waiting for me. We share a long hug. It feels so good to see Geno’s kind face. We talk as I get rubbed down and go through my routine. In the bottom of the fifth inning I arrive in the bullpen, with the Yankees
leading, 6–0. Every guy out there comes up and hugs me. The fans in the bleachers spot me and a “Mariano” chant begins. It is exactly where I need to be. The guys give me a quick update on the game—Matsui has four RBIs, including a three-run double that helped chase Curt Schilling after three innings—and soon the lead goes to 8–0. I sit down and watch the artistry of Mussina, who has a perfect game into the seventh, before the Red Sox suddenly throw up five runs, making this a game that I will almost certainly pitch in. When Tom Gordon gives up a two-run triple to Ortiz with two outs in the eighth, the lead is down to one and the phone rings, and it’s time.

The hitter is Kevin Millar. I fall behind, 2–1, and then bring a cutter that Millar rips at but pops to short. Bernie’s two-run double in the bottom of the inning gives us a three-run cushion, and with two guys on, I get Bill Mueller to bounce into a 1-6-3 double play, a rousing finish to a wrenching day.

Nobody needs to remind us that this Red Sox team has a bunch of guys with pit-bull makeup, guys who are gamers, even after they go down two games to none one night later, when we win, 3–1, behind Jon Lieber, who outpitches Pedro. I get another four-out save, striking out Damon, Ortiz, and Millar, and off we go to Boston, but Red Sox hopes that the sight of the Green Monster and the Pesky Pole will change their fortunes get buried beneath an avalanche of Yankee home runs, over the Monster and other walls, too. Matsui hits two of them and goes five for six with five RBIs. Alex Rodriguez has another, drives in three and scores five. Gary Sheffield also homers and has four hits, and Bernie has four hits, too. It is a nightlong BP session and a 19–8 triumph for us, and with Duque matched against Derek Lowe in Game 4, it doesn’t even look as if it will be a fair fight.

We hold to a 4–3 lead through seven innings of Game 4. The bullpen phone rings.

Mo, you got the eighth, Rich Monteleone says. As I stand up and start getting loose, a drunken fan begins to holler at me. I ignore him, but he continues. It is impossible not to hear him. He is right in my ear.

Is he really doing this?
I think.
Is this where we are now?

The drunken fan decides it would be fun to taunt me about my cousin and his son. He is going on about it, one sick and twisted insult after another. I can’t even write what he says, it is so ugly. I wouldn’t even want it in my book. I put all my attention on Mike Borzello’s target. I am not going to let a drunken fool take me away from my task at hand. More than angry, I am sad. Sad that a human being could stoop so low, sad that this man is so full of poison, and so miserable in his own life, that he would bring up the deaths of two people I love, one of them a child.

It is a new low.

I enter the game with us leading, 4–3, in the bottom of the eighth. Manny singles, but I strike out Ortiz and get through the heart of the Sox order with no drama. In the ninth, the leadoff batter is Millar. He has had success against me, so I am extra careful, especially after he smokes a foul line drive early in the at-bat. My 3–1 pitch is high and Millar walks, and is immediately replaced by Dave Roberts, who is in the game to steal a base. I know it. Jorge knows it. The whole park knows it. Roberts stole thirty-eight bases in forty-one tries this year, and his lead is big. I throw over to first, fairly easily. Then I throw over again, and then a third time. He just beats the tag of our first baseman, Tony Clark.