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Mere months removed from a record-setting 125-win season that ended with their second World Series title in three years, the Yankees landed the Rocket.
It was Feb. 18, 1999, the day after pitchers and catchers reported to spring training, when Yankees owner George Steinbrenner pulled off the franchise-altering trade to add Roger Clemens, MLB’s premier pitcher, to bolster his team’s championship defense.
Acquiring the power-pitching Clemens, fresh off of his second consecutive Cy Young Award with the Toronto Blue Jays, cost the Yankees another All-Star arm in David Wells, as well as trusted reliever Graeme Lloyd and infielder Homer Bush.
Steinbrenner’s message was unmistakable: The Yankees weren’t content after 1998’s dominance.
“He never dismantled the team,” former right fielder Paul O’Neill, now a YES Network analyst, told the Daily News.
“He continued to overpay for players to keep them there, to allow us to try to continue the run, and he would always add to it. There were years where he would add guys in the middle of the season. There were years where you bring Clemens in right before the season. … I always felt like he wanted to win as much as the players did.”
The blockbuster trade completed a tense offseason in which the Yankees re-signed star center fielder Bernie Williams to a seven-year, $87.5 million contract after nearly losing him to the archrival Boston Red Sox. David Cone, who won 20 games in 1998, also re-signed, as did third baseman Scott Brosius, the reigning World Series MVP.
Clemens, who previously pitched for Boston, arrived with a reputation for plunking opponents. To diffuse any animosity, Derek Jeter and Chuck Knoblauch donned protective catching gear before facing Clemens in a live batting practice that spring — a jokey gesture that earned a rare smile from the stoic right-hander.
The tone-setting Clemens trade helped the Yankees accomplish what Steinbrenner hoped. They won the World Series again in 1999, defeating the Atlanta Braves in the Fall Classic for the second time in four seasons.
“The 1999 season is when we first started to hear the word ‘dynasty,’” Cone, now an analyst for YES and ESPN, told The News. “That made it three championships out of four years. That was kind of rarified air.”
This year marks the 25th anniversary of the 1999 title team, which its players laud as a perfect combination of relentless hitting, big-game pitching, enviable depth and masterful managing by Joe Torre.
The Yankees entered 1999 with sky-high expectations, having won a franchise-record 114 games in the 1998 regular season and 11 more in the playoffs, including a World Series sweep of the San Diego Padres.
“When you win a World Series, the next year, you don’t have any easy games,” O’Neill said. “Everybody is out to get you, to prove that they can play with you.”
Still, the players insist there wasn’t added pressure to repeat. Playing in New York, particularly for the Yankees and under the no-nonsense Steinbrenner, was pressure enough.
“The things that we did in ’98 were unbelievable and you can’t take anything away from that team, but you want to keep winning,” former catcher Jorge Posada told The News. “Every time we got a chance to get to the playoffs, that was our mentality. We’ve got to finish what we started.”
Complicating their pursuit was Torre’s March 10 diagnosis with prostate cancer, requiring him to leave the team for two months as he recovered from surgery.
The Yankees surged to a 20-10 start under interim manager Don Zimmer, a bench coach with two decades of managerial experience. The Yankees were 21-15 and a half-game ahead of the Red Sox in the American League East when Torre returned on May 18.
“Zim had such great experience and great respect in that clubhouse that we really didn’t miss a beat in terms of everybody continuing to do their jobs, even though we were obviously very worried about Joe,” Cone said.
The Yankees’ division lead over Boston grew to four games by the All-Star break. Four days into the season’s second half, Cone delivered the ultimate highlight, hurling the 16th perfect game in MLB history — and the third by a Yankee — on July 18 against the Montreal Expos.
In a stroke of surreal serendipity, Don Larsen — who authored the franchise’s first perfect game in Game 5 of the 1956 World Series — had thrown out the ceremonial first pitch at Yankee Stadium that day to his history-making battery mate, Yogi Berra, as part of a celebration for the latter.
“I had the privilege to pitch on a couple of days prior that were kind of historic,” Cone recalled. “The day they honored Joe DiMaggio after he passed away, and Paul Simon sang in center field before the game. … I got to pitch on the day when we honored Mickey Mantle, the day he died.
“Obviously, that was Yogi Berra Day. I’m 36 years old. I’d been a Yankee for a while. I’d seen these historic days at Yankee Stadium. It was a great distraction for me. … I don’t even remember warming up before that game. I was just enjoying the festivities.”
The Yankees went on to win 98 games, 16 fewer than the previous year but enough to earn another AL East crown over 94-win Boston. The Yankees’ balanced batting order featured four players who exceeded 100 RBI, including Jeter, who set career highs with a .349 average, 24 home runs and 102 RBI to finish sixth in AL MVP voting. Williams finished 11th in MVP voting after hitting .342 with 25 homers and a team-leading 115 RBI.
Mariano Rivera led all MLB closers with a then-career-high 45 saves, while Cone paced the Yankees’ starting staff with a 3.44 ERA.
“I kind of feel like ’99 is when we came into our own as a team,” Cone said. “It was a very confident group. Derek Jeter was really established now as a superstar in the game, and so was Bernie Williams.”
First up in the playoffs were the 95-win Texas Rangers, whom the Yankees swept in the ALDS for the second year in a row. The Yankees held power-hitting Texas to only one run over those three games, needing just five pitchers to do so. Orlando Hernandez, Andy Pettitte and Clemens each twirled gems, while set-up man Jeff Nelson appeared in all three games and Rivera closed out two.
The ALCS presented a greater challenge. Eighty years after their curse-making Babe Ruth trade, the Yankees and Red Sox met in a playoff series for the first time in their bitter rivalry’s history.
“I still remember Mr. Steinbrenner walking around the locker room,” O’Neill recalled. “I think that in itself was pressure to get through Boston.”
The Yankees caught a break before that series. Boston’s ALDS matchup with Cleveland went the distance, requiring the Red Sox to use ace Pedro Martinez in the decisive Game 5. That rendered the right-hander, winner of the 1999 AL Cy Young Award, unavailable until Game 3 of the ALCS.
The Yankees won the first two games, then lost Game 3 when Martinez outpitched Clemens. Behind strong outings by Pettitte and Hernandez, the Yankees won Games 4 and 5, clinching the series without having to see Martinez again.
“Pedro was their horse,” O’Neill said. “We only had to face him one time in the series, and looking back, that could have changed a lot.”
The 1999 World Series served as a rematch of 1996’s, when the Yankees overcame an 0-2 deficit to beat the Braves in six games.
Many of the key players remained, with 103-win Atlanta again boasting a rotation headlined by future Hall of Famers Greg Maddux, Tom Glavine and John Smoltz, along with a powerful lineup anchored by Chipper Jones and Andruw Jones.
“We kind of got overwhelmed in the first two games against the Braves in ’96,” Nelson, who is also a YES analyst, told The News. “Then, interleague play didn’t exist, so despite watching Maddux and Glavine and Smoltz on TV, you never really knew what they were about because we never saw them during the year.
“Now, ’99 was different, because interleague came in ’97 and we saw the Braves during the year, so we knew what to expect. … We knew when we go into Atlanta, the fans were passionate … but they weren’t like New York fans. They weren’t intimidating to opposing teams.”
The Yankees won Game 1 in Atlanta, 4-1. Hernandez struck out 10 over seven one-run innings, outdueling Maddux, who had held the Yankees scoreless until a four-run, eighth-inning rally.
Game 2 in Atlanta also went to the Yankees, 7-2, with Cone tossing seven shutout innings. Braves starter Kevin Millwood, who finished third in NL Cy Young voting that year, wilted in his first World Series start, surrendering five runs in only two innings.
“That was the point where we thought that our pitching was underrated throughout that era, and that we could match up with a Hall of Fame rotation like the Braves’ and go toe-to-toe with them,” Cone said.
Back in the Bronx, the Yankees claimed an instant-classic Game 3 victory. After falling behind, 5-1, during a rough outing by Pettitte, the Yankees chipped away against Glavine, who was pushed back from Game 1 due to a stomach virus. The Yankees scored a run in the fifth inning, another in the seventh and two more in the eighth, forcing the game into extras.
After relievers Jason Grimsley, Nelson and Rivera combined to throw 6.1 shutout innings, left fielder Chad Curtis crushed a walk-off home run — his second homer of the night — off of Braves reliever Mike Remlinger to win the game, 6-5, in the 10th.
The Yankees completed the sweep with a 4-1 victory in Game 4, during which Clemens delivered his signature moment in pinstripes. He held Atlanta to one run over 7.2 innings, outpitching Smoltz, who gave up three runs over seven innings.
“We grinded out at-bats,” O’Neill said. “We put a lot of pressure on pitchers. As good as Maddux was, as good as Smoltz was, and Glavine, every single inning, it seems like, it was tough outs. If you can wear pitchers out and get them to the point where they’re not just breezing through innings, sooner or later, you’re gonna get the big hit. … That’s the way we ended up beating them.”
That World Series remains bittersweet for O’Neill, whose father died between Games 3 and 4. O’Neill played in Game 4 but says the 1999 championship is “foggy” in his memory.
“I can tell you every pitch, every play from every other World Series, where I remember winning, but then I remember not even partaking in the celebration, running into the training room,” O’Neill said. “It was just a weird thing to try to celebrate something you worked for all year but then have something go on in your life that kind of overtakes the importance of a World Series.”
The Yankees also won the 2000 World Series against the crosstown Mets, giving them four championships in five years and solidifying them as one of baseball’s great dynasties.
No team has repeated as champions since the Yankees did so from 1998-2000.
“We always seemed, during those years, to be playing for something. Not just a World Series, but playing for someone or something,” said Nelson, who was the only pitcher to appear in every game of the 1999 World Series.
“In [1998], Darryl Strawberry wound up having cancer. We rallied around that. Or Joe Torre’s brother passing away [in 1996]. You rally around that. Or a player like Roger Clemens, he’s never won a World Series. You rally around that.”
O’Neill, Cone, Nelson, Jeter, Posada, Pettitte, Rivera, Williams and Tino Martinez are among the Yankees who played for each of those title-winning teams.
“It’s very special,” Posada said. “It is hard now [to repeat]. A lot of the players are moving around a little bit more now [through free agency]. We tried to keep the same team as one, and I think we did a great job of that. … The Steinbrenner family, they took care of us to try to keep that team stacked.”
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