Producers' Pick | Jack Curry: The 1998 Yankees

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Options selected by customer availability and eligibility may vary. Into right center field, Grissom will not get there off the wall, off the bat of O'Neill. Trying for two, safe with a double. Paul O'Neill may be hurt. And Bernie Williams, who has a hit tonight, only two in this division series. Into left center field. Giles is there. And there it is. The Indians beat the Yankees.

The Guardians, excuse me. Yeah, the Indians beat the Yankees. And Jack Curry has an idea for a buck because he sensed that the 1998 Yankees after the 97 disappointed fell short of a championship. They had the makings of what he believes in his book was a great team.

And boy were they. Some say the best ever. Jack Curry in studio. He's an analyst on the Yes Network. You see him all the time. Multiple New York Times bestseller.

His brand new book is now out. The 1998 Yankees, the inside story of the greatest baseball team ever. Jack, why was it important for you to start on the last out for the Indians? Brian, I've covered a lot of losing clubhouses and that clubhouse resonated with me how morose and how miserable that Yankee team was in 97. I think they felt 20 in 96 after winning in 96.

I think they thought the magic carpet ride was going to continue. And when Cleveland knocks them out walking around that clubhouse and just seeing how miserable these guys were. When I wrote this book about 98, I knew we had to start in 97 because before the glory of 98, there was some suffering in 97 that motivated those guys, right?

So the team starts laying the foundation and they got off to a strong start. Give us an idea first of the rotation. That year, their rotation went 79 and 35. You've got David Wells, who pitched the perfect game that year. David Cone, who won 20 games.

Boomer won 18, by the way. You have Andy Pettitte, as steady as any postseason pitcher in history. Hideki Irabu is your fifth starter. He got off to a really strong start, was actually the American League pitcher of the month in May. And then the wildcard that I'm leaving out is El Duque comes over from Cuba. The Yankees sign him to a deal. He only gets his first start because David Cone's mother's dog bit him on the finger and the Yankees needed an emergency starter.

And then El Duque says, I'm never going to leave and wins the biggest game of the year for them in the postseason. So he was considered a great pitcher. We just don't know how old he was, right? When he signed with the Yankees, there had been a baseball card floating around from an earlier tournament that said he was either 28 or 32. And Brian Cashman, the Yankees general manager, had a funny line. He said, if he signs with us, he's 28.

If he signs with anybody else, he's 32. Right. So he comes out the right players at the right time.

Of course, the language. On a side note, so I was doing all sports at Fox at the time in 98. And they said, Brian, go cover the go Trevor the the lottery. It was the lottery over in New Jersey. So they were picking it.

I guess it was a big deal because a few years ago it was a big deal ever since Patrick Ewing was picked. So I was heading over and they said, change course, go to Yankee Stadium. I go, I don't have a pass.

They go, we'll get you a pass. So I walked over and I got the temporary pass and I watched David Wells lock it out. And someone said to me, don't ever get rid of it because at some point he's going to retire and don't ask him now. But he'll sign it. Sure enough, I think it was last year. I think he was in. He came in and signed the pass. He signed it for you. And it's been a while for a no hitter for the Yankees, right?

Yes. I mean, the only other perfect game was Don Larson in the 1956 World Series. It was more than no hitter. It was perfect.

It was perfect game. And also, Brian, the story that leads up to that. He went out drinking the night before. He's very open about this. He said, I shouldn't go out.

I shouldn't go out. He ends up going out drinking. He runs into Jimmy Fallon, stays out till 530 in the morning, drives to Yankee Stadium. Again, he's fortunate and everybody else is fortunate that he made it there. And then feeling lousy pitches a perfect game.

Allows you to concentrate and just focus. Didn't Babe Ruth have stories like that in the past, too? That would be perfect because Wells is a big memorabilia collector, has a Babe Ruth baseball and I'm sure other artifacts from Babe Ruth. So you start the book saying the greatest team ever. And it's always subjective, even though baseball is the closest to being able to judge generation to generation.

Big parks, small parks, big, you know, I guess a light ball, a heavy ball. But looking at this team, you gave us the rotation. Give me the lineup now.

Lineup was ferocious. Knoblock, Jeter, Paul O'Neill, Bernie Williams, Tino Martinez, Jorge Posada. You had Darryl Strawberry and Tim Raines both in left field and or DH. You had Scott Broches hitting eighth or ninth in the lineup and driving in 100 runs. This bench, Brian, featured Strawberry, Raines and Chilly Davis. Just absolute beasts on the bench.

Characters, too. And guys who had won before, who brought character to the clubhouse. And I think they were on a mission from early in the season, not just to beat teams, but to pummel teams. Jeter actually told me that for the book.

He said, we wanted to pummel you into submission. Why that team? And I know 96 is the first time they emerge. 95, they get close. Mattingly retires.

They get Tino Martinez. 96, they win it all. They're famously coming back from two down. Were they down 0-2 and then Wade Boggs hopping on the horse?

Got it. But 97, they're real good. Not good enough. And 98, now having the benefit of foresight of knowing what they had the Yankees in 2000, 2001, 2003. What was it about the mix of that team? Because the core kind of stayed the same.

The core kind of stayed the same. They do win in 99 and 2000. But the point I tried to make in this book, Brian, was I want to pick the best team ever so it's one season. That team was about accountability, responsibility, talent, focus, and ferocity. All in their primes, it seems.

All in their prime, except for some of the guys we just mentioned who were veteran bench players. Tino Martinez, and you've been in baseball clubhouses. Tino Martinez told me something that resonated with me. He said that whole season, he never saw one guy lounging on the couch reading a magazine or reading a newspaper. Today it would be they'd be on their phone. But he said everybody was working. O'Neal was taking extra swings. Cohen was talking to El Duque about the grip on his changeup. Mariano was talking to some of the relievers about their roles for that night. And I think they pushed each other. And Brian, you know the way any athlete acts. Once you start to have success, your confidence just goes through the roof. And I think that Yankee team recognized early on, nobody should touch them.

They should win and win big. So we know Torrey's style. He's not new. Excellent player. Got in the Hall of Fame as a manager. Actually went to Cooperstown two weeks ago for the first time.

So I have all that stuff in my head still. How'd you enjoy it? It was fantastic.

It was fantastic. I can't imagine a better Hall of Fame. I haven't been to Canton yet. But I love that it's in Cooperstown.

I know people are against it. I like that they revitalized that small little town. But looking at that team, how did Joe Torrey manage that team? Did he change his style at all? The two words I always use to describe Torrey are soothing and stoic. And I think what he did that year, Brian, is he laid the groundwork for the success this team had in the first week of the season. They go one and four and he doesn't like the way that they're playing. Before the sixth game of the season, he has a meeting where for Joe Torrey it was pretty angry. Keep in mind Steinbrenner is still there. Steinbrenner is still there. So if you're one and four as a manager, there's always going to be ink spilled in the newspapers. He fired Yogi after eight games.

He fired Yogi at six and ten in 1985. So the smart thing Torrey also did in that meeting was he invited the players to speak. And David Cohen stood up and said, you've got to find a reason to hate your opponent. We should hate Seattle. They knock Paul O'Neill on his butt every time we play them.

Edgar Martinez was swinging at 3-0 pitches the other night. We've got to go out there and beat these guys. Knoblauch leads off that game with a home run. They win. They win 22 of their next 24.

They win 64 of their next 80. There are sometimes people who want to poo-poo team meetings. I think that meeting by Joe Torrey is one of the greatest meetings in baseball history. How did you find out about it? Word trickled out as the year evolved and people were talking about it. Do you remember it in 98? I remember it later in the season.

Where were you? I was a national beat writer then, so I wasn't the beat writer who was there on a day-to-day basis. But when you're a national baseball writer, Brian, the biggest story that year, well, second biggest.

Sosa and Maguire was number one, but the 98 Yankees were such a huge story that I was around them all the time. So I want you to, I'm going to go back a little. This is how David Wells' perfect game sounded, cut 34. The O on, swung on.

He's going to get it. Popped up to right field. O'Neill near the line.

He makes the catch. David Wells. David Wells has pitched a perfect game. 27 up, 27 down. Baseball immortality for David Wells and the Yankees win.

The Yankees win. So people were obviously pumped up. So didn't before the game David Cone tell Wells, stay away from Joe Torrey, he's not going to let you pitch? Cone? Did you smell like alcohol?

Right. Cone thought that Wells smelled so much of alcohol, he told them to go hide in the back. So Wells went and, quote, hid in the massage room where the Yankees would get massages from this therapist. And basically went in through his bullpen, felt like he didn't have anything. He says he threw two balls into the stands. But then he went out on the mound and the first pitch out of his hand felt good. And he started to get a little steady.

He started to get some traction underneath himself. So imagine this, Brian, all the people who went to that game that day, the promotion was a beanie baby. Remember, back in the day, those beanie babies were wanted items.

They never knew they were also going to get a perfect game to go along with their beanie baby. You know what's interesting? You know, sometimes when you play at any level, when you have a slight fever or you're fighting something, it helps you focus.

Because you don't feel, you shut off exterior things because you're like, yeah, I feel good. Let me just focus on this game. In a way, being hungover might have helped him because he's like, oh, I hope I survive. Just lets him focus on one thing to pitch. It's amazing in a team you describe as so disciplined that they would tolerate David Wells partying like that. David Wells and Joe Torre did not get along. And I detail this in the book how David Cone is an unsung hero on that team because he intervened, saw that Wells and Torre didn't get along and said to Torre, I'll take him.

I'll handle him. Brian, they did something that very few professional athletes are allowed to do. And I think they just did it under the radar. They would stay away from the team on the road. If the Yankees went to Cleveland, Detroit, Boston, wherever they went, Cone and Wells would stay at a different hotel because Cone recognized it would help Wells get away from the madness of the team hotel. And it would also allow Wells to feel like a little bit of a rebel.

But a little bit. A lot of responsibility for Cone. Let's say he goes, yeah, I'm going out tonight.

Jesus, you're going out tonight? Cone went with them. Oh, he went with them. Cone went with them and it worked.

Moderation. If you look at from the time Wells' perfect game until the end of the year, David Cone and David Wells were statistically two of the best pitchers in the American League. They finished third and fourth in the Cy Young Award.

I want people at home to hear El Duque, Orlando Hernandez, his brother, LaVon Hernandez, who has made some news before that. Did he establish himself with the Marlins? He won the World Series MVP with the Marlins.

I covered that World Series. I should know that. And then I heard his brother's better.

I'm like, his brother's better? And he was. Listen to this.

Cut 36. Arriba, El Duque. And there is a look at Orlando Hernandez. And as they were playing the national anthem, Kenny, I wondered what is going through his mind from the journey that he has taken from that boat in his escape from Cuba.

What an experience. What happened back to the man, going to be an easy inning here in the seventh. One, two, three for El Duque.

Nothing across for the Devil Ridge. Listen to the ovation. So they're happy to have him. He had a sense it was something happening. So for you personally, you live the Yankees, you work for the Yankees now. This was a team you had to go back and study. What was that enjoyable thing?

Did you find a bunch of players that wanted to talk to you, a manager that was going to be cooperative, couldn't talk to Steinbrenner, obviously. But what was it like going back? Willing subjects? I loved it, Brian. For me, this was right in my wheelhouse. And when my editor, Shawn Desmond of Hachette Books, Grand Central Publishing, said, do you want to do this book?

I said, absolutely. Oh, he came up to you with the idea? It was his idea after the Conan O'Neill books that I did. It's the 25th anniversary. Publishers love anniversaries. And people were very receptive. I was able to contact virtually every player. Tory gave me a lot of time. Cashman gave me a lot of time. Jeter, who isn't always the easiest guy to track down, gave me a lot of time.

But did he give you anything? Jeter never gives you anything. Jeter's quotes in this book, if you read them, to me they were Jeter opening up more. Because Jeter would never have said in 98 we wanted to pummel teams. Jeter calls them the greatest team ever. He would never have said that in 98. So I think we got a freer, more liberated version of Jeter. When did Knoblauch start with the Yips at second? That started post 98.

So I don't include that in this book. But he did have the defensive gaffe in Game 2 of the ALCS where in a bunt play the ball squirted free. And he did not chase the ball.

Here's how it sounded. Cut 38. The Yankees are going to contend that Fryman was in the baseline or out of the baseline and got in the way of the throw. But that was a very poor play to let that ball roll down there while you wait for an umpire to make a decision. You have to go after the ball.

You can't let the ball roll 10 feet down the right field line and no one go pick it up. Joe Morgan would know, second base. Hall of Fame second baseman right on it.

Game 2 ALCS. Bob Costas, Hall of Fame announcer right on it. What was interesting about that, Brian, is after the game Knoblauch was somewhat defiant and was saying that was obstruction, that was interference. That's what I was trying to alert the umpire to. Whereas every little leaguer knows you have to go chase the ball. And the umpire was a little bit more defiant. And that's what I was trying to alert the umpire to. And no one had a conversation with him on the flight to Cleveland and said, listen, this is going to hover over you until you just own it.

Do a press conference, just own it. 25 years later when I talked to Knoblauch about this, he admitted that that night was hell for him and that he was worried about being the next Bill Buckner. And the Yankees lose game 3 as well. I remember the San Diego Padres World Series, it was just a route for the Yankees. I remember Cohen sitting in the dugout by himself watching everybody party.

I'm wondering why. Is he leaving? I don't know if he, because at this point in his career he was almost done, right? He pitched until 2001, but yeah, 1998 was a 20-win season for him. So that was a banner year.

Yeah, it depends. I never got to that point where I had a choice of how to celebrate championships. Jack Curry's here, his book is now out. The 1998 Yankees, back with a little bit more right after this. This is truly, you can say it now, one of the greatest teams in baseball. This team, this team, I've never seen anything like it. They just never quit. It didn't make, they seemed to be able to overcome everything. It was an emotional team, Joe did a great job, he and the players deserve all the credit.

I don't, I've never heard that. That's George Steinbrenner, the toughest man you'll ever play for, never satisfied. Jack Curry here, his book, the 1998 Yankees, the inside story of the greatest baseball team ever.

Talk about that. He was incredibly emotional in the clubhouse, Brian. The way I described it in the book was 90% emotions, 10% the sting of the champagne was causing him to cry.

But I think it all flooded forward. When I think of that clubhouse scene, Brian, it was a mixture of celebration and absolute relief. Because you can't win 114 games and then lose the World Series because you're forgotten.

So if you want to validate your regular season, you'd better win the World Series and the Yankees. They rampaged through the World Series after that one hiccup in Cleveland. But this, he was satisfied, wasn't he? I mean, can you imagine George Steinbrenner satisfied? He was thrilled.

In that moment he was absolutely thrilled. They wanted him more than George Steinbrenner. George always did, and George always wanted to be around the team in the postseason. He was a very heavy presence around the team in the postseason. I remember him when they lost in Cleveland, sitting in the trainer's room after game three.

Cleveland of all teams. Right, and his home, his area where he grew up. He was one of the Indians.

Yes. And he just looked sad. And he said, we'll see what we're made of tomorrow. He went and gave El Duque a little pep talk, and El Duque said, mañana, no problema.

El Duque was just ready to go. I got it. I got us. Lastly, this team misses Steinbrenner. There's almost a team with as much talent as they are. They don't seem, they seem, according to critics, content with being okay or not winning at all.

Do you feel that's inadequate? Brian Cashman was the general manager his first year in 98. He's still the general manager now. In his 25 seasons as general manager, they've made the postseason 22 times.

So there's a lot of success there. What's hanging over them right now, Brian, is they haven't won a title since 09. And that's felt by the fan base. That's felt in the Yankee offices. They look at 2017 when the Astros, everyone now knows, were cheating. And that's something the Yankees wish they had back. But, yeah, Steinbrenner's mandate was to win.

So when you don't win, you haven't fulfilled his mandate. Come on, Hal. And everyone, pick up this book, even if you're not a Yankee fan, you'll love it.

It's called Perfection, the 1998 Yankees. Jack Curry, thank you. Thanks, Brian. The Fearless and Proud podcast series looks at acts of bravery and strength by women. And in the first season, we'll look at women who played important roles in the Civil War. In episode three, we'll be looking at two intriguing women of the war. First, Cuban-born Loretta Janeta Velazquez, who was sent to the United States for an education by her well-to-do Spanish family. We then move on to the legendary Harriet Tubman. We'll discuss her time as a nurse, soldier, and spy for the Union Army. And talk about the Combee River Raid, a turning point in the war. Listen ad-free on Fox News podcasts via Apple Podcasts, and Prime members can listen to this show ad-free on Amazon Music.