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By sweeping the Braves, the Yankees proved again there'sno team better. Here's how they've accomplishedwhat they've accomplished and why it should worry you.
You follow baseball, so you already know these New York numbers. Two straight World Series sweeps. Three world championships in the last four years. Victories in 12 straight World Series games. The beat goes on. And on and on and on. The numbers are overwhelming. "Insane," says first baseman Tino Martinez.
You follow baseball, so you already know these Yankees are the game's first legitimate dynasty since the Oakland A's won three straight world titles from 1972 to 1974. You follow baseball, so you've already been touched by the mystic memory of the Yankee past floating forward through the fogs of time to the here and now. From the lore of Murderers' Row in the late 1920s through the late 1930s, and from the late '40s and early '50s into the '60s, when the Yankees were invincible, unbeatable. When they had that Yankee aura, that air of intimidation. When they expected--and were expected--to win, and nearly always did. Like now.
You follow baseball, so you ought to be alarmed by these late-'90s Yankees, too. They ought to concern you, because the last thing baseball needs now is another dynasty. The last thing the game needs as it begins a new millennium is further proof that it is the plaything only of the richest, and even more evidence that the distance between the cream teams at the top and the cheesy clubs at the bottom is too great to be traveled in an upwardly mobile direction.
In the biggest of markets, among the highest of payrolls, these Yankees are so good at what they do, so coldly efficient at winning, so much better than most of the other teams, that they are in danger of becoming uninteresting to the casual fan, the bread and butter of the game's economic future. The one-sided outcomes of their last two World Series appearances, both four-game sweeps, and their blustering run through the first two rounds of the playoffs in both seasons, are at least partly responsible for rock-bottom ratings on television--the lowest ever for the Yankees' sweep in 1998 against San Diego and the second-lowest last week against Atlanta.
"They ought to be in a higher league somewhere," says Braves pitcher John Smoltz, who lost Game 4 to the Yankees despite an 11-strikeout showing last Wednesday.
The intrigue of the competition in this season's World Series had such a feeble grip on fans that Jim Gray's ill-timed NBC interview with Pete Rose two Sundays ago generated at least as much water-cooler talk over the course of the Series as the games did. So even as you follow baseball and marvel at the magnificent work the Yankees do on the field, you ought to be worried about the long-term effects of that good work away from it.
The Yankees already were the Team of the Century before last week. They didn't need their 25th world championship to validate that. To be known as the Team of the Decade, though, they needed to beat the Braves, because Atlanta, a rich team in its own right, also had a valid claim to that unofficial title as the 1999 World Series began. When New York flicked away the Braves in four straight, as if they were an ant on a Central Park picnic blanket, the Yankees and their nearly $86 million in player payroll plopped their fannies onto the throne of baseball in the 1990s. To many, that's as it should be, because so much of the mother's milk that nourished baseball's grand traditions this century came from the Bronx.
"All you have to do," says Chili Davis, the 39-year-old designated hitter who has let the Yankees magic wash over him the last two years and in the last two World Series victories, "is walk out in front of Yankee Stadium and look at those pennants. I don't think you see any one of them that says 'Division Champions' or 'American League Champions.' You see 'Twenty-four World Championships.' I've been to other stadiums, and they've got banners hanging around that say 'Wild-card Champions' and 'Division Champions' or whatever. But here, they don't even hang those banners up. I think they're in the batting cage or somewhere like that."
It's true that baseball the way the Yankees play it right now is a beautiful thing to watch to anyone willing to pay enough objective attention. The way they played it in the World Series, says Smoltz, was "absolutely perfect. I cannot think of one mistake they made. I really can't." They may be the most efficient team ever, at least when it comes to making the most of every moment over the course of nine innings (or, in the case of Game 3, 10 innings). Whenever Atlanta failed to execute, the Yankees capitalized. Whenever the Braves tried to bust a move, New York had the consummate counter.
"Just to show you how powerful and deep they really are," says Padres general manager Kevin Towers, whose team was swept away by the Yankees in last year's World Series, "they go out and trade David Wells and Homer Bush and Graeme Lloyd in the spring to get a five-time Cy Young winner, and the guy is only their fourth starter in the World Series. Hey, we're talking about Roger Clemens here, and he's pitching in the fourth spot in the rotation."
New York won with "small ball," the National League style Joe Torre practiced with the Braves, Mets and Cardinals in his earlier managerial incarnations. Not until the third inning of Game 2 did the Yankees get their first World Series extra-base hit. But New York won with the long ball, too. In Game 3, five of its six runs came on home runs--two by Chad Curtis and one each by Chuck Knoblauch and Martinez.
Mostly, New York won by mastering more of baseball's infinite elements than any team we've seen recently. The Yankees can steal, hit, throw, catch, sacrifice, hit and run, go to their bench, relieve, defend bunts, go deep, close games out, move runners, work pitchers and flat-out think their way through any situation the game offers up to them. Other teams, the Braves included, do many of those things exceedingly well, but no team does as many of them as New York does. The Yankees simply disassemble the opposition.
In the four Series games, New York committed a single error, David Cone's botched throw to first in Game 2. But the Braves didn't turn it into anything, meaning they had to earn every one of the scant nine runs allowed by Yankees pitchers. Atlanta made four errors, giving up at least one unearned run in each of the first three games. The Yankees pick, pick, pick at a team. It's death by acupuncture.
This is baseball. When the third inning finally ends in Game 4 last Wednesday night, Smoltz stalks off the mound to the third-base dugout and plops his 6-3 frame next to his pitching coach, Leo Mazzone. The third, the endless third, has been a 34-pitch bad dream for Smoltz and the Braves. They've meat-handled the ball around the infield and allowed five runners on base. The Yankees have scored three times, and the way Clemens is throwing, those three runs look taller than the World Trade Center.
Smoltz slams down his glove, then turns to Mazzone and hisses, "Damn! These guys don't swing at anything off the plate."
Which doesn't come as a big surprise to Mazzone, who has watched the Yankees eyeball the strike zone with precision to the nth power against Atlanta's three other World Series starters, too. The hot box of frustration that Smoltz is in at this moment is exactly where Greg Maddux, Kevin Millwood and Tom Glavine did hard time in the first three games.
"There are a lot of things that go into being patient," Mazzone says about the Yankees. "You throw them a pitch that's up here, high, and they don't swing. Or, when you do make a good pitch to them, they're able to fight it off and not put it in play right away. Then they make you throw another pitch. You know, of all the teams we've played in the postseason over the last nine or 10 years, the Yankees' lineup in '96 (a World Series loss for Atlanta) and the '93 Phillies (an NLCS loss) presented the most problems for our pitching staff because of their patience. And these guys are the same."
Atlanta's hitters, however, aren't the same--not even close. Not the same as the Yankees, anyway. Nobody is. The Braves aren't the free-est swingers in the game, but next to the Yankees, they swing in this World Series like voters in a fixed election: early and often. Down 3-0 after that ruinous third inning of Game 4, the suddenly eager Braves can't wait to take their hacks at Clemens. In the top of the fourth, Bret Boone, on a 1-2 pitch, swings and misses at a pitch so low it eats dirt. Chipper Jones' mighty cut at Clemens' first pitch results in a timid grounder back to the mound. Brian Jordan draws a walk, but only after fouling off four two-strike pitches, several of which are out of the zone. And Ryan Klesko waves at the only three offerings he sees from Clemens, grounding out to Martinez on the third try.
That, in the end, is the most significant difference between these World Series teams. In sweeping the Series, the Yankees pitch marginally better than Atlanta does and play defense significantly better than Atlanta does, and those two advantages go a long way toward keeping the championship in the Bronx. But the thing the Yankees do better than the Braves by leaps and bounds, the thing that ratchets up the pressure on Atlanta from the moment Chuck Knoblauch takes Maddux's first pitch for a ball to lead off Game 1, is wring every last ounce of value out of each plate appearance.
For Smoltz, the boiling point in the third inning of Game 4 is reached against Yankees catcher Jorge Posada, who keeps the Louisville Slugger on his shoulder as the second, third and fifth pitches he sees nip at the corners but never sneak into the zone. With two runs already in, Yankees still on first and third and a full count on Posada, Smoltz can no longer afford to be coy. His sixth pitch has to be over the plate, and Posada fouls it back. His seventh, also over the plate by necessity, is lined to right for a base hit and the third run.
Smoltz says: "I felt like I did not make a single bad pitch. I made a lot of pitches that they're supposed to swing at, and they didn't. The third inning was the most grueling inning I've ever pitched in my career, with the sense that I should've been out of it. But I didn't know if the third out was ever going to come. And that's as good a game as I can pitch. They just do not commit themselves early. There's maybe only one hitter in their lineup who just tries to do one thing every time up, and even Darryl (Strawberry) lined a single to the opposite field off me. And, shoot, that's what you're hoping he does."
This is business. The Yankees have six players who can file for free agency, and two more who have team options for next year. Other than David Cone (a free agent) and Paul O'Neill (team option), the players in that mix aren't the backbone of the team. They include middle reliever Allen Watson, setup man Mike Stanton, part-time catcher Joe Girardi, reserve second baseman Luis Sojo, utility man Jim Leyritz and lefthanded DH Strawberry (team option).
Owner George Steinbrenner loves Cone. The Boss probably will give him a chance to stay, even if it means Steinbrenner fails again to keep a lid on a player payroll already higher than any other in baseball. O'Neill's club option makes it easy to give him a final season as one of the most underrated hitters in Yankees history.
If those others don't seem to represent particularly significant decisions for the team's management, then you didn't pay enough mind to the way the Yankees won 98 regular-season games and cruised through an 11-1 postseason. From roster spots 1 through 25, every Yankee played a critical role at some point. Curtis started only one World Series game but hit two home runs in it. Middle reliever Jason Grimsley wasn't even on the team's active roster for the division round or the ALCS, so his 21/3 innings in Game 3 marked his first live action since October 2, a space of 24 days. Yet he held the Braves scoreless.
Outside of the addition of Clemens, that's the biggest difference between last year's and this year's world champions. We saw more of the Yankees' bench this season. Curtis, for instance, didn't see the light of day in the '98 World Series against San Diego. Now, he joins Jim Leyritz and Bucky Dent as October heroes forever to Yankees fans. So to tinker even a touch with 1999's chemistry may be dangerous.
But this is Steinbrenner. These are the Yankees. If the little moves are made, they'll only be a prelude to bigger ones. Some of the best and brightest in baseball (Alex Rodriguez, Ken Griffey Jr., Manny Ramirez, Juan Gonzalez, Chipper Jones) could be available on the free-agent market this time next year, and consequently the trade market before then. The Yankees will be in the middle of many of those transactions. Even between now and next April, they'll be in the mix for players such as Toronto's Shawn Green and Montreal's Rondell White.
They'll get stronger. They'll get better.
"They just have so many resources," says one general manager. "And it's not just at the big-league level. You can't beat 'em at the minor-league level, either. Now, you can't even beat 'em to any of the good international players. If there's a top guy from Panama or the Dominican, it used to be you had a shot at him. Now, the word on the street is that George has told his people that they're going to get their guy--or else. No matter what it takes.
"The thing is, they spend a lot of money, but they spend it right. They haven't made a lot of mistakes. They haven't had many busts, especially at the big-league level."
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