Tag: world series

Ain’t Life Grand


(This story originally appeared in the Spring 2018 issue of Yankees Magazine.)

Just like we did for the 1996 team in 2016 and the 1977 team in 2017, we decided to run a year-long series of Q&A features with members of the 1998 Yankees for the entire 2018 season. We got things started pretty hot with Tino Martinez, whose unforgettable grand slam in Game 1 of the World Series set the Yankees on a course for a sweep over the San Diego Padres, a rout befitting one of the greatest teams in baseball history.

I caught Tino during an event in Florida, where he was speaking to students attending one of the Steinbrenner family’s annual holiday concerts, then reading “A Visit From St. Nicholas” (better known as  “Twas The Night Before Christmas …”) while accompanied by a symphony orchestra. We chatted in his green room before the performance, and it was easy to tell how much Martinez enjoyed getting to look back at such an incredible career highlight. It’s mostly well-known at this point that up to that point, even through the wild 1996 run, Martinez had struggled in the postseason, even getting benched when the ’96 World Series moved to the NL park so that Joe Torre could keep his regular DH, Cecil Fielder, in the lineup.

The World Series grand slam, besides being one of those moments that literally every baseball fan has dreamed of in his or her backyard, is shown on the video board at Yankee Stadium enough that I can pretty much close my eyes and recall the entire at-bat. The key pitch, obviously, was the 2-2 offering, somehow called a ball (there’s no way it wasn’t a strike, sorry Tino). I had fun going back and forth with him about it, allowing him to maintain that it was a ball. Whatever. Baseball players are funny.

Anyhow, I can’t say that this broke all that much new ground, but it was fun to talk about an iconic moment in baseball history, part of a run by a team that is rightly celebrated among the sport’s elite. Hope you’ll enjoy.

https://www.mlb.com/yankees/news/tino-martinez-recalls-yankees-dynasty/c-267270982?tid=163658034

The Showman

(This story originally appeared in the Oct. 2017 edition of Yankees Magazine).

This one didn’t have much of a shelf-life. But I still really liked the story, and I enjoyed the process of reporting it.

Over the course of the 2017 season, I noticed that Joe Girardi’s YES Network television show was becoming surprisingly ambitious and interesting. What had once been just a camera on him in the manager’s office, recounting a week that anyone watching already knew all about, had turned into a series of trips around different cities with the show’s co-host, YES Network field reporter Meredith Marakovits. In Seattle, they went to the Starbucks Roastery. They made pizza in Chicago and visited his old dorm at Northwestern.

The trips showed a different side of the Yankees’ manager. Often chided for his reliance on on his binder, or his less-than-comfortable manner in front of the microphone (although I’d argue that over the second half of his Yankees tenure, he’d improved in both facets dramatically), Girardi was playful and engaging throughout the television broadcasts. He seemed, despite the artifice that the cameras necessitated, somewhat … real?

So I got them to allow me to tag along for a trip to the Dallas Cowboys’ sparkly practice facility north of Dallas. It was a quick trip — a night in Texas, total of about 20 hours. But it was great to see the whole shoot, to see how the show came together, to watch him engage with the Cowboys personnel (including head coach Jason Garrett). It was also, I have to say, a lot of fun to get to take the tour (even if it felt like a betrayal of my Giants roots).

I always got along well with Girardi. I think he’s a good man, with a good heart. I’ll never forget the times I got to watch him interact with young kids away from cameras, or the way he wore the shirts for different charities during every pregame presser for a few seasons. It was a remarkably kind gesture, and totally selfless. I doubt that he thought much about me either way, but I really got the sense of Girardi’s decency.

He also, it should be said, had a ton of success in New York, from the World Series championship in 2009, to the awesome performance by his 2017 group, that would end up a game shy of the World Series.

So, to put it mildly, there were a host of reasons I felt bad to see him let go once the team was eliminated, not the least of them being the fact that it made my feature about him in that month’s magazine look somewhat silly. But oh well. I still enjoyed the process, enjoyed the story, and enjoyed my four years working with Girardi.

https://www.mlb.com/yankees/news/yankees-manager-joe-girardi-show/c-258700434

Wait For It

(Story originally appeared in the March 2017 edition of Yankees Magazine.)

When Tim Raines goes into Cooperstown next month, it will be — fittingly — as a member of the Montreal Expos (RIP). But he did play three seasons in New York, including the 1996 and ’98 world championship years. So in early January, just before the voting results were announced, I headed to Arizona to spend some time with a guy we were all very confident would be getting the good news. Thankfully, it turned out that we guessed correctly.

I loved getting to know Tim over the parts of two days that we spent together. He’s hilarious, and easy to laugh. He was perfectly willing to talk about the mistakes he made in his career and his life, and he did it all with the good cheer and confidence of a person who long ago came to terms with the entirety of his experiences.

I settled on my theme for the piece fairly quickly — he ran so fast in his career, but then he had to wait so long to get the reward he deserved. In my head, I was really just talking about the Hall of Fame and the World Series rings. But as we talked, a bunch of other examples of having to wait out unfair or upsetting circumstances. It all made for a pretty easy story to write, and I think I was able to do with it what I initially sought to. Enjoy.

http://m.mlb.com/news/article/215870536/tim-raines-yankees-hall-of-fame-cooperstown/

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.