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Monday, June 26, 2006
Legacies trade places in one classic fall
The Atlanta Journal-Constitution
Mark Bradley
New York — Nine years and eight months ago, two teams gathered in the cathedral of baseball for a World Series that would change both of them forever. The Braves could have — OK, should have — stamped themselves as an assemblage for the ages. Instead they lost a lead and a Series and were never quite the same again.
We know all about Game 4 — about the wasted 6-0 lead; about the slider Mark Wohlers threw to that rat Jim Leyritz; about Steve Avery walking Wade Boggs with the bases loaded. That was the point of departure for both franchises, but no discussion of any of the games the Yankees won in that Series can be complete without recalling the two games they lost.
The Braves were the reigning champions. They arrived at Yankee Stadium after storming from 3-1 down to beat St. Louis in the NLCS, outscoring the Cardinals 32-1 over the final three games. Then they won Games 1 and 2 here by the aggregate score of 16-1. Said Chipper Jones: “About the best five-game stretch I’ve seen a Braves team play. ….It was utter domination.”
When the proceedings moved to Atlanta, the question wasn’t whether the Yankees could win the Series but whether they could take a game. “We knew how good the Braves were,” said Joe Torre, who Monday recalled the 19-year-old Andruw Jones smacking two Game 1 homers off Andy Pettitte as “pretty awesome.”
“We never really think negatively,” said Mariano Rivera, who came to prominence that postseason as a setup man for John Wetteland. “But we had a meeting [after the Braves won Game 1 by 11 runs] and Joe said, ‘Take it game by game and just enjoy yourselves.’”
Two games down and seemingly bound to become the forgotten losers as the dynastic Braves sent out Atlanta-Fulton County Stadium on the highest possible note, the Yankees and Torre did a tiny but massive thing. Facing Tom Glavine, Tim Raines led off Game 3 with a walk, and then Torre had his No. 2 hitter — a certain Derek Jeter — sacrifice him over. The Bronx Bombers, bunting? “I just wanted to take a lead,” Torre would say later, and that attention to detail was something the rampaging Braves couldn’t match.
“We played little games,” said Rivera, remembering that World Series, “and we won huge games. We played the game the way you’re supposed to play it.”
“Probably the best decision I made in that World Series,” said Torre, who’d both played for and managed the Braves, “was scheduling David Cone to pitch the first game down there. I knew how intimidating that park could be. And then, when it was 6-0 in Game 4, we got the first three runs back [off Denny Neagle]. That gave us hope we could do something.”
The Yankees would go on to win four Series in five years, which definitely constitutes doing something. The Braves haven’t won a World Series game since. Talking to his son years later, Larry Wayne Jones Sr. said, “Jim Leyritz stole the Team of the ’90s [designation] from the Braves.” The son wouldn’t argue the point then or now. “I still think we had a pretty good run,” Chipper Jones said, “but they had the world championships to back it up.”
The teams gathered again Monday in the big ballpark by the Lexington Avenue subway line, neither side being what it was. The Braves are 16 games out of first place, and the profligate-but-infirm Yankees might well miss the playoffs for the first time since 1993. (Even in their weakened state, the Yankees toyed with the Braves, Jason Giambi driving in five runs before Tim Hudson could record his sixth out.)
Any time these teams play, the mind flashes back to 1996, and the mind, as it tends to do, goes wandering and wondering. Would the Yankees have grown into a colossus had they lost meekly in ‘96? Would a frosted George Steinbrenner have fired Torre and dumped Jeter for a bigger name? Wouldn’t the last nine years and eight months have felt a lot different if Wohlers had stuck with his fastball?
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