LEGEND OF THE FALL
It was late last Friday night, after Game 3 of the American League Championship Series, and Bernie Williams had finished his daily workout: He followed a game-breaking hit with 15 minutes of abdominal exercises, diligently done on the clubhouse floor while many of his New York Yankees teammates scarfed down beer and small mountains of spaghetti and meatballs. After Williams's work was done this night—in the eighth inning against the Baltimore Orioles, he had driven in the tying run and daringly scored the go-ahead run in what turned out to be the pivotal frame of the series—he tried to describe what it is like to play at such a heightened level in such a showcase. With his usual eloquence, he talked about an awareness of surroundings "on the field level only. You don't even see the fans." It is, Williams decided, as riveting as the moments before childbirth. "It's like the father waiting for his wife to deliver," said Williams, who has three children. "You are hoping all goes well. You get to a point that you are so focused, nothing else matters."
Expectant? The Yankees can relate. Since signing Williams on his 17th birthday, 11 years ago, New York has waited anxiously for his arrival as an elite player. He had been known for being too soft and for playing his ubiquitous Fender Stratocaster guitar better than centerfield. As recently as last season Williams remained so unpolished that Gene Michael, the Yankees' general manager at the time, feared that owner George Steinbrenner would ship him to the San Francisco Giants, who were offering the undistinguished Darren Lewis in return. Just a few weeks ago New York manager Joe Torre had to scold Williams for what he politely called Williams's "bad body language" during a two-month slump.
The wait is over. So dazzling was Williams in lifting the Yankees past the Orioles in five games and into the World Series that you can consider the Championship Series to have been his birth announcement. A star is born. "No one should have to use the word potential again with Bernie," said Baltimore hitting coach Rick Down, who spent the previous three seasons in the same role with New York, before Game 4. "He's done it. He used to let his first two at bats affect his last two at bats. Not anymore. He's in control. Nothing flusters him now. He used to get off to slow starts, have bad Aprils or whatever. Now I think you'll see a consistent player in control from Day One of the season."
Said Orioles manager Davey Johnson after the series, "I don't know how you can get him out." Neither did the Baltimore pitchers. They didn't retire Williams in more than two consecutive plate appearances. He batted .474, slugged .947 and, after being put out his first two at bats in the series, reached base 14 times in 22 plate appearances. Including the Division Series against the Texas Rangers this year and the Seattle Mariners last season, Williams has hit .455 with seven home runs and 16 RBIs in his 14 postseason games. "It's an exciting time," he said after Game 4. "The intensity and focus I've had is incredible. There's time for nothing but thinking baseball all day. Well, that and the guitar."
Having a red-hot switch-hitter in the middle of its lineup makes New York a formidable opponent for either the St. Louis Cardinals or the Atlanta Braves in the World Series. What's more, the Yankees have home field advantage, a suffocating bullpen and a knack for clutch hitting, all of which give them an edge in close games. "We feel like the only way we can lose is if our starting pitching gets blown out," says first baseman Tino Martinez. "And with our pitching staff, that rarely happens."
Baltimore may have been the greatest home run hitting club in history during the regular season, but it had precious few other ways to get runners home against New York. It advanced an extra base on a hit only four times in the series and did not steal a base. Only once did the Orioles knock in a run with a hit other than a home run, of which they had nine. Against the Yankees, who allowed fewer homers than any other team in the American League during the season, they were 4-14 overall this year, 0-9 at home and 0-13 when New York started a lefthander. "We were kind of one-dimensional," Johnson said after Baltimore was eliminated 6-4 on Sunday. "If a guy makes a mistake, we'll whack it. But when you face good pitching, there aren't many mistakes. And if there are mistakes, they're usually not made with people on base."
In the series against the Yankees, the third through sixth hitters in the Orioles' lineup—Roberto Alomar, Rafael Palmeiro, Bobby Bonilla and Cal Ripken—batted .188 in 80 at bats with seven RBIs, or one more than Williams had. Bonilla was 0 for 19 before hitting a home run in the last inning of the last game with Baltimore down by four runs.
While New York had the current and past Mr. Octobers in its dugout (Williams and Yankees special adviser Reggie Jackson, who made sure to be in camera range in the final innings of the clincher), the Orioles had an overmatched Bonilla. He's a .190 hitter in the 22 postseason games he has played, and in Game 2 against the Yankees he joined John Kruk as the only players to whiff four times in a nine-inning League Championship Series game.
Baltimore carried a lead into the eighth inning in each of the first three games and lost two of them. It was ahead 4-3 in the eighth of the opener when New York's 22-year-old rookie shortstop, Derek Jeter, lofted a fly ball that sent rightfielder Tony Tarasco, not to mention Jeff Maier, to the wall. Jeff, 12, from Old Tappan, N.J., is symbolic of the kind of audience baseball is trying to recapture. The game, after all, began at the kid-friendly time of 4:08 p.m. While baseball was reaching out to youngsters like Jeff, he returned the favor. Just as Tarasco camped under the fly, Jeff, seated in the first row of Section 31 at Yankee Stadium, stuck his glove over the wall and into fair territory, hoping to grab a souvenir. The ball bounced off his mitt and into the stands. "It was a pretty high hit," he said. "I'm not used to seeing a ball hit that high in Little League."
Rightfield umpire Rich Garcia somehow did not see Jeff interfere with the ball, which, given the likelihood that Tarasco would have caught it, should have been ruled an out. Instead Garcia called it a home run. "His mistake was watching the outfielder instead of the ball," Johnson said. None of the other five umpires admitted to having seen the kid touch the ball, either. "I saw it from the dugout," fumed Johnson. "I always say one play doesn't beat you. But that's as close as you get." Instead of being four outs from a win, the Orioles were tied. They were beaten three innings later when Williams blasted a hanging slider from Randy Myers into the leftfield stands.
After he saw replays following the game, Garcia admitted that he blew the call. Two days later, however, embattled American League president Gene Budig denied Baltimore's protest. Meanwhile, the marquee outside the Old Tappan Fire Department read: YANKEE GREATS. MANTLE. MARIS. MUNSON. MAIER.
The only person as popular as Jeff around New York was Garcia, who received a loud ovation upon his introduction for Game 2. Garcia obliged his fans by signing autographs between innings of the game. "Unbelievable," said one Orioles player.
"We don't condone it," said Marty Springstead, the league's supervisor of umpires. "We allowed him to do it in Baltimore the next game just to kind of balance it out."
The Orioles, however, got even. They won the second game 5-3 behind lefthander David Wells, and when the series moved south for Game 3, Mike Mussina gave Baltimore another strong start. He had a four-hitter and a 2-1 lead with two outs and nobody on base in the eighth inning. Just seven pitches later the Yankees led 5-2. The Orioles would never again lead in the series.
The rally began with a double by Jeter, that other troublemaking kid, who hit .417 in the series. Williams sent him home with a single. Then Martinez moved Williams to third with a double. Upon catching the throw from the outfield, Orioles third baseman Todd Zeile bluffed a throw to second base. When Zeile tried to stop his throwing motion, the ball flew out of his hand and onto the infield dirt. Williams dashed home with the tie-breaking run. Rattled by the bizarre play, Mussina hung a pitch to the next batter, Cecil Fielder, who launched it into the leftfield seats. "I think it was the turning point," Alomar said of the inning. "Their inspiration went up, and our inspiration went down."
The Yankees buried Baltimore thereafter with seven home runs over the final two games, including three by Darryl Strawberry. "If I had done this 10 years ago," Strawberry said after smashing two dingers in New York's 8-4 win in Game 4, "it would have been wild. I would have been out drinking all night, had a good time. Now my celebration is going home to be with my family. I'm going to hug my kids. That's the best celebration of all."
Strawberry, a recovering drug and alcohol abuser, reformed his career by way of the Betty Ford Center, the Puerto Rican winter league and the Northern League. He is just one of several reasons that few other clubs have cherished a league championship as much as these Yankees have. Torre, for instance, waited 4,272 games as a player and manager to get to the World Series, the most by anyone in history. "It has been tough watching the Series," said Torre. "Mostly, I turned it off. It's like watching someone else eat a hot-fudge sundae. And that's not fun."
Williams, too, is a survivor. He and catcher Jim Leyritz are the only active Yankees who have spent more than four seasons with New York. Says Williams, "This feels great. You've got to have a heart of stone not to feel positive about playing this well this time of year."
At 7:20 p.m. on Sunday the Yankees secured their first league title in 15 years—their longest drought since winning the first of their 34 pennants in 1921—when Jeter threw out Ripken on a grounder. Strawberry raced from the dugout to the infield to join the celebration. Later, he would wear, not drink, the champagne.
Torre stayed in the dugout and wept. He thought about his family, including his older brothers, Rocco, who died of a heart attack this summer, and Frank, who's been in a New York City hospital since August, awaiting a heart transplant. Williams, with "a whole mix of emotions running through my mind," began running toward the infield. Then, suddenly, he stopped and dropped to one knee and bowed his head in centerfield at Camden Yards. "I gave thanks to the Lord," he said.
More than an hour later, still half in uniform, Williams surveyed a clubhouse littered with empty champagne bottles and beer cans and admitted there still was work to be done. The abdominal exercises. He had not forgotten them. "I'll do them when I get home," he said. "This is no time to be slacking off."