THE true Team of the Century finished the 1900s in familiar style – dynasty mixed with misery.
They again stand alone at the foreground of their sport while the background music is a dirge.
In a season speckled by the deaths of legends Joe DiMaggio and Catfish Hunter, the cancer of Joe Torre and the passing of three players’ fathers in the last seven weeks, including Paul O’Neill’s shortly after World Series Game 3, the Yankees nevertheless found a way to overcome tragedy with triumph.
They will go up The Canyon of Heroes again with tears of both joy and sorrow. What was lost off the field could not keep these Yankees from once more winning on it. They completed a sweep of the Braves last night with a 4-1 victory in Game 4, marking this as yet another era in a Yankee century.
The 95th World Series began with a concocted concept that the Braves and Yankees were playing for the Team of the Decade. So in a backward piece of logic, the Team for All Time is now the Team of the ’90s, as well.
The Yankees beat the Braves in 1996 and swept San Diego last year and Atlanta this season, and now have a nearly implausible 25 titles since 1923.
These Yankees met all the great criteria from their own Yankee past. They became the first team to sweep consecutive World Series since the 1938-39 Yankees. They have won 12 consecutive World Series games dating to 1996, matching the record of the 1927, 1928 and 1932 Yankees. They are 22-3 over the last two postseasons, the kind of playoff dominance that cannot be found anywhere.
They are legends of the fall.
The Yankees clinched last night in their style. Their hitting was patient, their fielding flawless, their bearing unflappable and their starting pitcher brilliant. There was something right that the pitcher was Clemens, whose arrival in spring training was supposed to assure the Yanks another title.
But Clemens had an inconsistent season that hardly befit his place on the All-Century Team that was announced Sunday.
Finally, though, he looked just right on the real All-Century Team, the Yankees. Not the overpowering Rocket, Clemens was as effective as any time this year by getting Atlanta to hit ground ball after ground ball. He held the Braves to four hits over 72/3 innings and finally earned the World Series ring that had escaped him previously in his brilliant career.
He ultimately needed to come to the home office of World Series championships to feel the glory. But also to better understand the tragedy.
O’Neill lost his father, Charles, about three hours after Game 3. Luis Sojo lost his dad, Ambrosio, just before the Series opened and Scott Brosius his father, Maury, last month. Chuck Knoblauch’s father, Ray, is slowly losing a battle with Alzheimer’s disease and Andy Pettitte’s father, Tom, has been fighting heart disease the past few years.
All of this has swamped a Yankee season that began in spring training with DiMaggio’s death and Joe Torre’s revelation of prostate cancer. Darryl Strawberry, fighting back from colon cancer, was arrested for drug possession and soliciting a prostitute.
During the season, Hunter died of the disease named for Lou Gehrig, whose early demise began the off-the-field misery that has ensnared the Yankees this century as much as all of their championships. Thurman Munson died flying his own plane. Billy Martin and Mickey Mantle led Runyon-esque lives and died too soon because of it.
“This organization has been excitement and sadness at the same time,” said Torre, who won his first World Series title in 1996, a year in which his brother, Rocco, died and his other brother, Frank, needed a heart transplant during the postseason. “There is no middle ground here. You try to preach the even keel, and we don’t have that here. But the Yankees survive, even when some people in their family don’t.”
The Yankees go on. O’Neill came to work yesterday, deciding it was better to seek distraction and comfort in the game his father taught him. Sojo had returned to the team after missing two World Series games, remembering the joy his father had knowing his son was going for a third World Series ring. Brosius was at third base last night, a World Series star again.
They all wore the No. 5 on their left sleeve for DiMaggio, above a black band for Hunter.
“There is so much symbolism here this year, the last year of the century, that it is almost eerie,” David Cone said. “Catfish reminds us of Gehrig, which brings it full circle. We do not have enough black arm bands to put on our uniforms already.”
Cone, the bard of this team, said “the game is the haven.” And so the players sought haven in the comforts of a game. The game the Yankees have defined this century.
They stared down tragedy to gain triumph. Rather than victims, they are victors. They have players made of extraordinarily tough stuff. Which makes them perfect to be New Yorkers and Yankees.
Cone and Orlando Hernandez would pitch the same game in a war-torn theater as in Yankee Stadium during the postseason. They seem almost impervious to tension. Derek Jeter swaggers when he sits, emitting a sense of calm and calculation that has him ready to be one of the greatest Yankees of them all. O’Neill brings fiery energy, Tino Martinez simmering pride, Bernie Williams quiet resilience.
Brosius and Joe Girardi ooze professionalism and Chili Davis and Strawberry wisdom. Mariano Rivera just may be better at his job than anyone else in sport.
This band of professionals is conducted by Torre in such a way as to feel that their championships are inevitable. They are focused and together. They have both grace and grace under pressure.
It is their century and they summed it up one final time. Cheers and tears. Every home game, each Yankee sees a sign hanging in the runway from the clubhouse to the dugout quoting DiMaggio saying, “I want to thank the Good Lord for making me a Yankee.”
In the 1900s, members of this team have been the luckiest men on the face of the earth, though they have had to choke back a century of both rapture and remorse to do so.