When the Dodgers and the Yankees were last in the playoffs simultaneously, my view of baseball was much different than it is today. The year was 1996. I was 26, had hair down to my collar, and worked as the Associate Art Director at Wolff New Media, where we published topical guides to the Internet that were obsolete by the time they hit the street. Instant doorstops.
I had moved to New York City only a year and a half earlier and had not yet been seduced by the temptations of the pinstripes. The Dodgers had unwaveringly been my team from the time I’d begun following baseball in 1977. But that summer, Tommy Lasorda, the only Dodger manager I had ever known, had stepped down. The venerable, voluble, volatile skipper of 20+ seasons had suffered a heart attack in late June and was replaced on an interim basis by Bill Russell, who had been a member of the Longest Running Infield (with Steve Garvey, Davey Lopes, and Ron Cey) that had anchored Lasorda’s inaugural pennant-winning teams.
The Dodgers, who had won the NL West the previous season, had been in first place when Lasorda suffered his attack, and under Russell they continued to hold the lead. It was an interesting, likeable team whose nucleus featured five consecutive Rookies of the Year at various spots: Eric Karros (1992) at first base, Mike Piazza (’93) at catcher, Raul Mondesi (’94) in right, Hideo Nomo (’95) as one of the team’s United Nations blend of starters, and Todd Hollandsworth (soon to win the ’96 award) in left. Karros and Piazza combined for 70 homers and 216 RBI, and Mondesi added power and speed as well. Nomo (Japan) joined Ramon Martinez and Pedro Astacio (Dominican Republic), Ismael Valdez (Mexico) and Tom Candiotti (America) in the rotation. Todd Worrell was the closer.
With four games to play, the Dodgers led the Padres by three games in the loss column and two-and-a-half overall. But on the eve of a three-game series with the Pods, they lost their game-in-hand to the Giants. They lost the first two games to San Diego, bringing the NL West title down to a final showdown on Sunday.
Ace Ramon Martinez, Pedro’s older brother, was slated to start for the Dodgers, and it was assumed that Joey Hamilton, the Padres #2, would come back on three days’ rest. My brother, who had moved to New York City a year after I did, hunkered down with me to watch the game. We were jazzed. Except…
Except that the year before, a new-fangled concept had been introduced into the world of postseason baseball, the Wild Card. As a result of their 90-win seasons, both teams were guaranteed a playoff spot regardless of the game’s outcome. What should have been a dramatic climax to the season quickly turned anticlimactic. The Pods started #4 Bob Tewksbury instead of Hamilton. The Dodgers went ahead with Martinez, but pulled him after one scoreless inning in favor of their #4, Astacio.
It was a strange new world.
• • •
The game ended up scoreless through nine innings, with both teams managing only four hits. The Padres prevailed in eleven frames, scoring two runs off of rookie Chan Ho Park on a double by Gwynn. Chris Gwynn, that is — Tony’s useless brother, who had spent seven of the first nine years of his career in Dodger blue, reminding us that baseball genes weren’t necessarily hereditary. Oh, brother.
By losing the game and the division, the Dodgers deprived themselves of home field advantage in the first round against the 88-win St. Louis Cardinals. Instead, they faced the defending World Champions, the Atlanta Braves, who had won 96 games. They opened by losing two tight ones in L.A. (the home field advantage at that point was simply to have the final three games in the superior team’s ballpark). Martinez and John Smoltz allowed one run apiece, and the game went into extra innings. In the tenth, Antonio Osuna yielded a solo homer to Javy Lopez, and they lost 2-1. Oops.
In the second game, the Dodgers scraped two unearned runs off of Greg Maddux by virtue of errors by Ryan Klesko and Marquis Grissom. Klesko atoned by homering off of Ismael Valdes, but the Dodgers took a 2-1 lead into the seventh. Alas, Fred McGriff and Jermaine Dye each hit solo shots off of Ish to take the lead, and the Dodgers never countered. The team was eliminated two days later when Nomo was bombed for five runs in 3.2 innings while they could manage only two off of Tom Glavine and company. Thus they had been swept in back-to-back postseasons, still having not won a playoff game since the 1988 World Series clincher.
• • •
In the New York market, with the Yankees having made the postseason for the second consecutive year after a thirteen-season drought, I didn’t see more than the occasional highlight (or lowlight) from the Dodgers series. It didn’t help that I wasn’t all that interested in the Yanks either, catching only glimpses here and there of their wins in the Divisional Series over the Texas Rangers.
But I had followed the team in print for most of the season. With all-time blowhard Dallas Green managing the Mets and polluting the local sports pages with his tabloid-ready toxic spew, I was drawn to the contrastingly calm professionalism of new Yankee manager Joe Torre. Unlike the dozens of predecessors who had ended up with their heads on George Steinbrenner’s chopping block in short order, Torre seemed able to tame the megalomaniacal Yankee owner.
The nucleus of the team contained none of the vocal malcontents, free-agent flops, or rap-sheet regulars which crowded the Yankee roster in the ’80s and early ’90s — Steve Howe, Mel Hall, Luis Polonia, Danny Tartabull, et al. But I was particularly drawn to the plight of David Cone, the hired-gun starter who had come to the team via midseason trade the year before and had been hung out to dry — 147 pitches, his last a ball to Doug Strange which forced in the tying run — by then-manager Buck Showalter in the deciding game of the ’95 Divisional Series against the Mariners.
Cone had gone on to miss four months of the ’96 season due to an aneurysm in his pitching arm. I still had no great affection for him at this point in his career, but his seven innings of no-hit ball in his post-aneurysm comeback on September 2 — and his willingness to call it a day at that point — exemplified these new Yankees: they had perspective, a rarity in New York sports.
The Yankees went on to beat the Baltimore Orioles in the ALCS, thanks in part to 12-year-old fan Jeffrey Maier ensuring that a Derek Jeter fly ball became a home run. In the World Series, they would be matched up with the Braves, the defending champs and self-proclaimed “America’s Team” with their obnoxious chanting and their tomahawk chop and their ownership by Ted Turner, whose Time Warner Cable had just raised my monthly bill. Faced with the cognitive dissonance of actively rooting for the Yankees, the team I had hated all of my life, for the first time, I was a pushover. “Fuck the Braves,” I muttered to myself, and watched a thrilling World Series from a decidedly different vantage point.
• • •
As the years went by, I settled into my New York digs and became more seduced by easy pleasures of rooting for the pinstripes. At the same time, the once-reassuring continuity of the Dodgers had crumbled. Not only was Lasorda gone, but in 1998, Peter O’Malley had sold the team to the Fox Group. Soon after, they traded Piazza and descended into an unpalatable mediocrity that was difficult and painful to follow from 3,000 miles away.
I drifted away from the Dodgers, but not too far away. Always keeping one eye on the team, getting my hopes up if they were close when September rolled around, I knew that if nothing else I would still be spending October watching and cheering — and even attending — the Yankees postseason. Under manager Jim Tracy, who took over in 2001, they kept things interesting thanks to the Wild Card, but they couldn’t make it back to playoffs. Until this year.
Earlier this season, the Yanks and Dodgers met in a regular-season ballgame for the first time. I reveled in the matchup, writing no fewer than four pieces about the two teams, their intertwined history, and my own personal stake in it. I had no trouble determining my allegiances that weekend; as I titled three of my articles, I was “Wearing My Dodger Blues.” Blood really is thicker than water.
And so that’s the attitude I’m taking into this year’s postseason. On the American League front, I am certainly rooting for the Yankees against the Twins, a rematch of last year’s series. I like this Yankee team and have followed it on a year-round basis. But it’s a deeply flawed squad, built on the faulty premise that star ballplayers remain healthy and productive forever. They could roll through the playoffs on memory like they’ve seemed to in 2001 and 2003, or they could be easy meat like they were in 2002. I won’t be much surprised either way, nor will I be quite as invested as I have been in years past.
The Yanks are uncharacteristically weak in the pitching department and will require smoke and mirrors to string together four effective starts from Mike Mussina, Jon Lieber, Orlando Hernandez, Javier Vazquez, and/or Kevin Brown. All of those pitcher have been shaky and banged up at one time or another, and with the exception of Moose and Lieber, none of them is in a very good groove right now. The bullpen is even worse off; besides Mariano Rivera and Tom Gordon — admittedly, two difference-makers — there’s the shaky Paul Quantrill, who looks cooked, and the implausible Tanyon “Boom Boom” Sturtze, who has put together a string of six scoreless outings totalling 12 innings (three hits, four walks, 14 Ks) and brought his lofty ERA down to 5.47.
The lineup is a strong one, featuring the by-now-familiar big bats at the top: Derek Jeter, Alex Rodriguez, Gary Sheffield, Hideki Matsui, and Jorge Posada. Bernie Williams isn’t what he used to be, but he’s shown enough heroics lately — including a homer to clinch the AL East — that he’s a plus right now. Jason Giambi, in all likelihood, won’t make the playoff roster, leaving Tony Clark and John Olerud to play first base.
The Twins have the pitching edge, thanks in part to Cy Young favorite Johan Santana and Brad Radke. They allowed 4.41 runs per game, the fewest in the AL (the Yanks allowed 4.99). Their offense can’t touch the Yankees — they scored only 4.81 per game, well below the Yanks’ 5.54. But as they say, good pitching will beat good hitting, and I won’t be surprised at all if they advance.
But while I’ll follow the Yanks, my heart is with the Dodgers as they face the Cardinals. They’re heavy underdogs against the team that won 105 games and demolished opponents thanks to a triumverate of MVP-caliber sluggers in Albert Pujols, Scott Rolen, and Jim Edmonds, not to mention late-season pickup Larry Walker. The Cards scored 5.28 runs per game, best in the NL, and they allowed 4.06, also tops in the league. The Dodgers, by comparison, put up 4.7 runs per game and allowed 4.22.
Neither team has dominant starting pitching. The Dodger staff has been held together by duct tape, chewing gum, and sheer chutzpah down the stretch. The Cardinals are missing top starter Chris Carpenter, who’s suffering from a nerve irritation in his pitching arm similar to Dodger pickup Brad Penny, who’s done for the year. They’ll open with Woody Williams, a 38-year-old of no great distinction, but Jason Marquis, Matt Morris and Jeff Suppan provide a much deeper front line than the Dodgers, who will go with a trio of starters in Odalis Perez, Jeff Weaver, and Jose Lima. If you had told me last October that the latter two would be the linchpins of a playoff team, I’d have demanded that you put down the crack pipe.
This might be a rout except for the fact that the Cards, especially Rolen, Pujols and Morris, may not be entirely healthy. St. Louis wrapped up the division months ago, and while they may be well-rested, they may also be flat. The Dodgers, if they can jump on the Card starters, have a legitimate chance so long as their bullpen — with Eric Gagne showing some wear — holds up. I don’t have overwhelming faith that it will happen, but I’ll be fully absorbed, wearing my Dodger cap and cheering this scrappy bunch.
• • •
For more fine coverage of from the Dodger and Yankee viewpoints, check my amigos at the All-Baseball group, Jon Weisman for the former and Alex Belth. For their opposite numbers, see the estimable Brian Gunn of Redbird Nation and the epic-length stylings of Aaron Gleeman at his blog and at the Hardball Times. For more objective takes on the two series, Baseball Prospectus’ Dayn Perry covers the Yanks-Twins, while Jonah Keri takes the Dodgers-Cards matchup. Enjoy!