Part 16 (1/2)

”I'll tell you exactly what I said,” Torre told him. ”If it's short term, I want you. If it's long term, I want him, because he's younger. But I've always respected you. As the opposing manager you scare me when you get to the plate. So if I feel that way, then I want you on my side. I'm telling you exactly what the conversation was. Whether you choose to believe it or not is up to you.”

”Okay,” Sheffield said. ”I'm committed.”

Sheffield instantly became a different player. That same night he whacked four hits, including a home run, and drove in six runs. The outburst started a 17-game stretch in which Sheffield hit .406 with seven home runs and 24 RBIs. It was cla.s.sic Sheffield. His mood and his production could turn in an instant.

”It happened that night,” Torre said. ”It was like he turned it on. And he told me, 'Don't worry. I'll deal with everything.' Because if you notice, he never charges the mound or anything like that. He takes it out on you on the field. But that night in Baltimore, all of a sudden he started becoming a player and a ferocious. .h.i.tter and a gamer. He played hurt, did all that stuff.”

Sheffield was the fulcrum of a punis.h.i.+ng offense that led the league in home runs and walks and finished second-to the Red Sox-in runs. By the end of the season Torre had stacked the top of his lineup with a devastating run of All-Star hitters: in order, Jeter, Rodriguez, Sheffield, Matsui and Posada. Giambi sometimes cracked the lineup, though he was a sh.e.l.l of himself, having missed half the season largely due to a benign pituitary tumor.

The Red Sox, however, could match the Yankees' thunder, and then some. They outscored the Yankees by 53 runs over the course of the season. Their biggest advantage, though, came from pitching. Boston's staff was the third best in the American League. New York's staff ranked sixth.

For a second straight year, the Red Sox and Yankees were on a collision course to meet in the American League Champions.h.i.+p Series. The Yankees dismissed the Twins in the Division Series in four games. The Red Sox flicked aside the Angels even more handily, taking three straight from them. The New YorkBoston rivalry was the epicenter of October baseball yet again, just as it had in 2003, although this time it would be as much about the previous November and December as anything else. The Yankees would try to beat Boston without a single lefthander in their rotation, or anyone in their rotation with pure strikeout stuff against a power-packed lineup. The Red Sox were fortified by Schilling, one of the best big-game pitchers in baseball, who was the grand prize for having outflanked the Yankees in November. Schilling had been everything the Red Sox had hoped, winning 21 games for them and fronting a remarkably strong and durable rotation. Schilling, Martinez, Lowe, Wakefield and Arroyo did not miss a turn, taking all but five of Boston's 162 starts.

The Yankees once commanded postseason series because they were so deep in starting pitching. By the 2004 ALCS, those days were over. The Red Sox had flipped the table on the Yankees. They had the superior pitching. The rivalry was about to take a turn of legendary proportions.

End of the Curse

The YankeesRed Sox rivalry may have been the best thing to happen to baseball, but both managers came to loathe it.

Each time the Yankees and Red Sox would play one another, even in April-h.e.l.l, even in spring training- spring training-there was an Armageddon quality to the proceedings. Baseball never was designed to be like this, not until October, anyway. The sport took great pride in the sheer volume of the season; ”a marathon,” as the players proudly liked to call it. But every game between the Yankees and Red Sox brought an NFL-like urgency to every game, every inning, every pitch. It ran counter to everything Joe Torre and Terry Francona tried to impress upon their clubs, knowing the wisdom of keeping their team on an even emotional footing. After just about every time the Yankees and Red Sox were done with one of these series, either Torre would call Francona or Francona would call Torre.

”Are you sick of this yet?” Torre would say.

”I'm glad it's over,” Francona would say.

”You and me both, pal,” Torre would reply. ”See you in about six weeks.”

Torre and Francona shared not only a unique vantage point to the rivalry, but an honest friends.h.i.+p. Torre had played with Francona's father, former big leaguer t.i.to Francona, and had recommended Francona for his first managing job with the Phillies to Philadelphia general manager Lee Thomas.

”I played with Terry's dad so I felt a closeness to him for that reason,” Torre said. ”I can still think of him as a kid. And I remember recommending him to Lee Thomas. Terry knew baseball, he was cerebral, and he wasn't showy. He was just a basic, good baseball person.”

Torre and Francona believed that the whole YankeesRed Sox dynamic had grown so big and so emotional that the managers dreaded it.

”It would wear you out,” Torre said. ”We had a common bond, because we both would feel the same way. We're both going through the same pressures. There really is no favorite. There's no one team that's clearly better than the other. It's like MichiganOhio State. It's doesn't matter how good your teams are. You're supposed to win. Each side.

”It's the media coverage that can wear you out. It's one game on the schedule and I know it's Boston. I know it's a team in your division. But I think the rivalry got out of hand as far as magnifying every single thing that went on in the game. It's absolutely exhausting. And you know what's interesting? The game is tense, but the game is even tenser only because you know you're going to have to explain the outcome in every small detail. The game itself, though, is great. It's everything else that wears you out.”

From the time John Henry bought the Red Sox in 2002, when Boston began to make the commitment to look the Yankees in the eye and be a worthy rival, to the start of the 2004 American League Champions.h.i.+p Series, when the Red Sox could best measure that progress, the Yankees and Red Sox had played 64 times, including the t.i.tanic 2003 ALCS. Each team had won exactly 32 of those 64 games.

Both teams had made significant in-season alterations to their clubs to get to the ALCS. For the Yankees, it meant dumping the object of the intense and expensive international bidding war they had engaged in with the Red Sox less than two years earlier: righthanded pitcher Jose Contreras. The big man who was supposed to be an ace for the Yankees struggled with his command and the subtleties of pitching, such as pitching out of the stretch and holding runners. He also had a particularly harmful and unforgiveable flaw with the Yankees: he could not pitch against the Red Sox. Contreras was 0-4 with a 16.44 ERA against Boston.

”He showed sparks of great pitching here and there,” Torre said, ”but he had a phobia against Boston and Boston just whipped his a.s.s. He was tipping his pitches against them. They were in his head. They waxed him. They just waxed him.

”His stuff was good, but he had a lot of issues that I felt had to do with pitching in New York. I had gotten to the point where I said, 'He just can't help it.' He just didn't seem comfortable in New York.”

On July 31, 2004, the day of the trading deadline, the Yankees were on their way toward beating the Orioles, 6-4, at Yankee Stadium when Brian Cashman called Torre.

”We can get Esteban Loaiza for Contreras,” Cashman said.

Torre quickly checked with pitching coach Mel Stottlemyre before getting back on the phone with his general manager.

”Do it,” Torre replied.

Loaiza was something of an enigma himself, and as a player with free agent rights after the season, only a rental return on the investment in Contreras. Loaiza was 9-5 for the White Sox but with a pudgy 4.86 ERA. The Yankees were his fifth team in seven years. He was 32 years old. Loaiza had won 21 games the previous season, but it was the only year in his life he won more than 11 games. In short, Loaiza was nothing more than a spot starter. The Red Sox once had bought up all the rooms in a hotel to try to keep Contreras away from the Yankees, but now here was the celebrated El t.i.tan de Bronze ingloriously being dumped for a rotation filler. And the Yankees didn't think twice about it. Neither did Contreras. Though he held a no-trade clause, he waived it without asking anything in return.

”At that time we were just looking for someone who could go out there and pitch,” Torre said. ”We could score runs. Our plan with our pitching was, 'Let's just try to stay in the game,' but even that didn't work sometimes.

”I didn't realize it when I first got to New York, but after having been there a little bit I understood that playing in New York was unlike playing in any other place. People either really embraced it, or they just really had a problem with it. I think Kenny Rogers had a problem with it. David Justice did well with it. Roger Clemens, after a bit, did all right with it. Randy Johnson, no way. I have to put Contreras in the group that had trouble with it.”

The Red Sox made an even bigger, more stunning move on that same trading deadline day. Epstein organized an elaborate trade web of four teams involving seven players in order to dump an erstwhile star of his own, shortstop Nomar Garciaparra. The Red Sox obtained shortstop Orlando Cabrera from the Expos and first baseman Doug Mientkiewicz from the Twins as part of the exchanges. That trade brought more dividends for Boston than the Contreras deal did for New York.

”We had a fatal flaw,” Epstein said. ”Our defense was terrible.”

Under Epstein and Henry, the Red Sox not only embraced statistical a.n.a.lysis but also developed propriety formulas to measure performance. When they ran the numbers on Garciaparra's defense that season, they were astonished at what came out. He was, by a long shot, the worst defensive shortstop in the history of their database. The Red Sox did not rely solely on the numbers. The numbers were backed up by the observations of Red Sox scouts who occasionally checked in on their own team.

”Whether because of age or injury, he just wasn't getting to b.a.l.l.s he normally did,” Epstein said. ”The pitching was really taking a hit, especially a groundball guy like Derek Lowe, in ways that you can't always see. We knew that teams that win the World Series typically have pretty rangy shortstops. Really, it was our whole infield defense that needed to be addressed.”

The other element pus.h.i.+ng Boston toward dealing Garciaparra was that he no longer seemed to be a perfect fit in a clubhouse that had become a band of crazy extroverts, who would become famously self-described as ”idiots.” Garciaparra was more the quiet, brooding sort, especially ever since spring training of 2003, when the Red Sox offered him what he considered to be a below-market contract extension.

”He was understandably upset,” Epstein said. ”He became isolated.”

When Epstein put Garciaparra on the trade market, only one team, the Cubs, showed any interest at first. They offered to send Boston 24-year-old outfielder David Kelton, but they also wanted to swap pitcher Matt Clement for Lowe. Epstein said no thanks, and furiously went back to work. He eventually pulled enough strings to wind up with Cabrera and Mientkiewicz, two players renowned for their defense.

”Two minutes before the deadline I thought it was dead,” Epstein said. ”I must have made four dozen calls in the last half hour. It ended up happening right at the deadline. We thought it was the right deal. We knew Cabrera was good offensively but was underperforming. What we knew about his personality convinced us he would have no problem being put on the big stage with everyone watching. It was just what we needed. And we thought our first-base defense had been equally shaky.

”We got two guys. .h.i.tting about .230 at the time, but we thought it was what we needed. We had power, we had a really good pitching staff, but defense was killing us. These guys were exceptional defenders. It helped. Our starting pitching got on a huge roll. Starting in mid-August, they went 30-13.”

If the Red Sox had outmaneuvered the Yankees the previous November, they had done so again in August. After the deadline deals, the Red Sox were the best team in baseball over the remainder of the regular season (42-18), 5 games better than the Yankees (36-23).

”Over that year, for sure, I thought they were a better ballclub than us,” Torre said. ”But the games in the postseason have nothing to do with the season. At that point in time, you throw everything out the window. We certainly were conditioned enough to know that there was n.o.body on the field that could beat us. I mean, they got our attention and I'm sure we got their attention.”

Boston's sweep of the Angels in the Division Series allowed the Red Sox to align their rotation to have Schilling and Martinez open the first two games of the ALCS at Yankee Stadium. It sounded great for Boston. Schilling, however, was a diminished pitcher. He had hurt himself while pitching in the Division Series, tearing a tendon sheath in his right ankle. A wholly ineffective Schilling was gone after three innings in Game 1, having buried his team in a 6-0 hole.

One out into the seventh inning, the Yankees led 8-0 and Mike Mussina was throwing a perfect game. The Red Sox suddenly showed their might, and before the Yankees could get five more outs it was 8-7 and Boston had the tying run at third base and Kevin Millar batting. Torre brought in Mariano Rivera and that was the end of Boston scoring. He retired Millar on a pop-up and the Yankees wound up winning, 10-7.

The Yankees also won Game 2, though they did so in far different form, with Lieber besting Martinez in a cla.s.sic pitcher's duel, 3-1. Once again, Torre gave the ball to Rivera with a runner on third and one out in the eighth inning, and the great closer locked down another victory.

There would be no need for Rivera in Game 3. The Yankees won, 19-8, with a prodigious show of hitting in a game that had been tied after three innings, 6-6. The Yankees were rolling, up three games to none, a lead no team in the history of baseball ever had lost.

All was not perfect, though. Yankees starter Kevin Brown, who was supposed to be the ace of the staff, and who had battled back problems most of the year, had pitched horribly and did not look right. In only two innings, Brown gave up four runs on five hits and two walks before Torre sent Vazquez to replace him to start the third inning. (Vazquez, too, was hammered, yielding four runs on seven hits and two walks in 4[image]innings.) It was only the latest episode to explain why Brown engendered no confidence from his teammates. Brown had a famously rotten temper and a surly disposition, attributes that did not serve him well at a time in his career when he could no longer throw as hard as he once did and didn't have the wherewithal to concede to his age and battered body in order to make adjustments.

Brown had missed seven weeks over the summer because of a strained lower back and also because of an intestinal parasite. On September 3, pitching against Baltimore, Brown was staked to a 1-0 lead when he gave up a run in the second inning, yielded another in the third, tweaked his knee while covering first base in the fifth, and was struck on the right forearm by a run-scoring hit in the sixth that stretched the Orioles' lead to 3-1. It was all too much for him and his short fuse to bear. After getting out of the inning, Brown stormed off the field and straight up the runway leading to the clubhouse. Stottlemyre, knowing Brown's low boiling point, and concerned about the shot the pitcher took off his arm, decided he should walk back to the clubhouse to check on the righthander. He found Brown standing in the narrow hallway outside of Torre's office, seething.

”Are you okay, physically?” Stottlemyre asked him.

”What's it look like?” Brown snapped back.