Tag: 1996

Man at the Top

(Story originally appeared in the September 2016 edition of Yankees Magazine)

Pretty simple one here — Joe Torre talking about the 1996 World Series champs, the moment when he turned from “Clueless Joe” into the guy who would be induced into the Baseball Hall of Fame.

This Q&A was part of our season-long retrospective on the ’96 world champs, so I had a lot of room to play with, and Torre was generous with his time. I had to massage my way into his confidence at the beginning — the first couple of minutes, he really didn’t want to dive too deep into any of my questions. But as time passed, he began to open up, and it definitely got emotional toward the end. There was so much on his mind during that World Series, with his brother in the hospital (another brother had passed away earlier that year), and he had such a total love for and devotion to the players on that team.

Anyway, there’s not too much fresh ground turned over in this one, but I think it ended up being a pretty good conversation. Hope you’ll read it.

http://m.mlb.com/news/article/199114972/joe-torre-recalls-1996-and-yankees-dynasty/

Triple Fantasy

As part of the Yankees’ 20th anniversary celebration of the 1996 World Series champs, I spoke with Joe Girardi, who hit a crucial, unforgettable triple in Game 6.

Girardi is always great to deal with, especially because my stories don’t focus too much on the day-to-day grind of the season. For the stories that I write, with wider focus, he’s easy to talk with, he’s intelligent, and he always seems to at least try to give real thought to his answers.

For this Q&A, we chatted in the stands after batting practice during the last full week of spring training. At the beginning, it seemed like he was just giving me the time that he had to, but midway through, the deeper we got into the conversation, it became clear how much these memories mean to him. Think it turned out to be a good talk, but one that took a little while to get going.

Hope you enjoy.