Best Yankee Era of All Time
Current Bronx bombers are dynasty of dynasties

Oct. 26, 2000

By Bob Herzog

His T-shirt soaked with champagne, his hair matted with the same liquid shampoo he uses
every October, Yankees manager Joe Torre had an intoxicating thought. “We can put our
dedication and resolve up against any team that’s ever played the game of baseball. We may
not have the best players, but we have the best team.”

THE BEST TEAM, indeed. The Yankees of 1996-2000 are exactly that. “This core group of players … Winning four out of five in this day and age … With layer after layer of postseason play …” Forgive Torre if his sentences are incomplete. The accomplishments of his team are whole. We are witnesses to history. We have watchedthe best of the best. The dynasty of dynasties. Not the powerhouses of Babe Ruth and Lou Gehrig. Not the juggernauts of Joe DiMaggio and Bill Dickey. Not the steamrolling teams of Mickey Mantle, Yogi Berra and Whitey Ford. 

This is the greatest Yankees era of them all. From Derek Jeter to Paul O’Neill to Bernie Williams to Orlando (El Duque) Hernandez to Mariano Rivera. This is the team that, in the words of this year’s World Series MVP, the stylish Jeter, “has 25 MVPs.” He ticked off the latest cast of stars, big and small: Jose Vizcaino (winning hit in Game 1); O’Neill (two huge triples after none in regular season), Mike Stanton (Game 1 and Game 5 winner, no runs allowed), Luis Sojo (winning hit in Game 5), Rivera (l8 straight postseason saves, including the clincher). 

This isn’t one of those “25 players, 25 cabs” kind of teams. It’s 25 players sharing one ride to one destination. Somewhere along the way, everyone contributes. Everyone. David Cone comes off the junk heap to face one batter — mighty Mike Piazza — and retires him on a weak pop fly. 
Sojo is a late-season, late-game replacement. He gets the winning hit in the finale Bernie Williams goes hitless for four games, but the team wins three of them anyway. When they need him in Game 5, he responds with a home run. Tino Martinez and O’Neill struggle big-time in September, but come up big in the Series.

And, as always, there is Jeter, with four rings and 1,000 hits at age 26. And Rivera, a 
pitching machine in October. Plug him in and watch him throw strikes and break bats with 
uncanny efficiency. “He has been the most important player in the postseason for this  team,” marveled Steve Hirdt, the vice president of Elias Sports Bureau, baseball’s official  record-keepers and statisticians, and a knowledgeable historian of the sport. “This is, first and foremost, a pitching team. For the core of Torre’s five-year run, he could count on a well-pitched game four out of every five times out. The regular players are steady. It’s the opposite of the old days, when the regular players dominated and the pitchers were steady.”  To defeat the Mets in the first Subway Series in New York since 1956, the Yankees got a well-pitched game in 
five out of five outings. Sure, the Mets did what no other team has been able to do — defeat El Duque. But he struck out 12 in a heroic effort. Andy Pettitte was exquisite in a pair of no-decisions. Roger Clemens was scintillating in his Game 2 victory. The Holy Trinity of the bullpen — Jeff Nelson, Stanton and Rivera — only allowed runs in one inning. That was a five-run ninth in Game 2, which began with the Yankees holding a 6-0 lead. 

For four out of the last five years, the Yankees have essentially made it a seven-inning game. If they can get to their bullpen, it’s over. There is just enough speed, just enough power, just enough defense for the perfect accompaniment to the marvelous pitching. It’s not a team of Hall of Famers. But it has won its last nine playoff series. That is astonishing. “I don’t think the Yankees of 1949-53 could’ve gotten to the World Series every year if they had the extra rounds,” said long-time New York baseball writer and World Series official scorer 
Red Foley.  

Until the Mets beat El Duque in Game 3, the Yankeeshad won 14 straight World Series game. That’s a major-league record on the order of Joe DiMaggio’s 56-game hitting streak. Unimaginable. Unbreakable. “I won’t see that duplicated in my lifetime,” Hirdt said.

In winning the last three world championships, the Yankees have gone 11-2, 11-1, 11-5 in the postseason. That’s a 33-8 record in the most excruciating of pressure situations. That would be enough victories to win eight World Series titles in an earlier era, when winning the pennant meant an instant ticket to the Fall Classic and winning that meant surviving just one best-of-seven series,
not three. There are three times as many opportunities to slip up in the modern age.
 
Which is why Fox TV anchorman and acknowledged baseball historian Keith Olbermann believes winning four of  five titles today is a greater achievement than the Yankees winning four straight from 1936-39 or five straight from  1949-53. “Without question,” Olbermann said. “There is a risk of elimination that teams didn’t face in the old days.” 

And despite the relative ease with which the Yankees handled the Braves (twice), the Padres and the Mets, they had to beat the premier pitchers in baseball along the way. Greg Maddux, Tom Glavine, John Smoltz, Kevin Brown, Al Leiter, Mike Hampton. “Their efficiency is amazing to
watch,” Olbermann said.  

Especially at the ends of games. If a stud like Jeter or Williams can’t untie a knotted contest, an understudy like Vizcaino or Sojo can. And once the Yankees get a lead, they go to Mo. Game over. Case closed. Closers didn’t exist during the 1936-39 reign, and the 1949-53 team relied 
more on the longevity of its starters as was the norm for that age. But it’s hard to imagine any team in baseball history feeling more comfortable with a lead entering the eighth or ninth inning than Torre’s Yankees do when Rivera gets the call. “We have a guy by the name of Mariano Rivera to close the door!” a joyous Jeter said late Thursday night in a crowded interview room on the basement level of Shea Stadium.

Rivera is the exclamation point. The Yankees have made the statement. 
Four championships in five years says it all.


© 2001 MSNBC All Rights Reserved
Bob Herzog writes regularly for MSNBC.com and covers baseball, the NFL and college basketball for Newsday.