Return to World Series 'the time of your life' for Yanks exec Afterman
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For five decades, the company line in the Bronx has been the same: For the Yankees, anything short of a World Series title is a failure.
Jean Afterman doesn’t buy into that.
It’s not that Afterman will be satisfied if the Yankees aren’t able to finish off their quest for a 28th championship. But for the longtime assistant general manager, there has been satisfaction in seeing New York return to the Fall Classic for the first time in 15 years.
“I always feel a little chagrined when people say the season is a complete and utter failure if you don't win the World Series, because that kind of throws away and belittles the enormous amount of work it takes just to play every single day,” said Afterman, one of general manager Brian Cashman’s top lieutenants since December 2001.
“When I first came to the Yankees, nobody in the organization knew what it was like not to win the World Series. Everybody expected to win the World Series every single year, because there was that tremendous run. Then we were dry for a while, and we came back in 2009, so that muscle memory of winning the World Series came back.
“It’s an exercise in humility not to win the World Series every year. I think the challenge is to not get used to not being in the World Series. In the same way that winning is addictive, losing can become a bad addiction. It's hard when you get to the end of the season and there's no postseason; that was devastating last year. To come roaring back, this team is a tremendous achievement.”
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The devastation Afterman referred to was the Yankees’ 82-80 record in 2023, which left them in fourth place in the American League East and out of the postseason for the first time since '16. It marked only the fifth time in Afterman’s tenure that the Yankee Stadium lights were dark for the playoffs. But this one felt worse than the others.
“When we didn't get to the postseason last year, job one from the minute that that happened was, ‘We’ve got to come back bigger, better, faster and stronger next year,’” Afterman said. “Somebody once said that you have to touch bottom at least once in order to know how to swim back up. We touched bottom at the end of last year and swam right back up. The comeback is what I appreciate the most about this team.”
It’s difficult for Afterman to put a finger on the reason for this year’s success after 14 seasons without a pennant, though she sees one significant similarity between the current club and the one that won it all in 2009.
“The players had inscribed on that World Series ring the word, ‘Unity,’” Afterman said. “You don't get to the World Series unless you have that kind of unity and a tiny bit of magic. This is a tight-knit group. Most of the guys on that roster suffered the devastating embarrassment of not making the postseason. So they know where they were last year, and that kind of unconscious memory pervaded everywhere.”
Afterman, a San Francisco native who moved back to the region in 2019 and works remotely for much of the year, will be with Cashman and her front-office family for every game against the Dodgers. Afterman won’t do much sitting -- “I am not a calm watcher of any important game,” she said -- but she’s excited to share the experience with her longtime colleagues as the Yankees try to add another trophy to their celebrated collection.
“I'm looking forward to seeing all the people in the entire organization who put their blood, sweat and tears into everything every single day,” Afterman said. “I'm looking forward to them seeing that reward. I'm looking forward to Hal [Steinbrenner] being able to enjoy the fruits of what he has done. I'm looking forward to Brian up there hoisting another trophy. I'm looking forward to all of the people who I've known for decades and respected for decades having the best time of their life.”
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Afterman -- a thoughtful woman with a great sense of humor and a decades-long love of the theater -- pointed to a passage from William Saroyan’s play “The Time of Your Life” as she looked ahead to this weekend:
In the time of your life, live -- so that in that wondrous time you shall not add to the misery and sorrow of the world, but shall smile to the infinite delight and mystery of it.
“It’s a wonderful quote,” Afterman said. “We're having the time of our lives, so we should all just enjoy it and hope the magic carries us to the very top of the mountain.”
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Afterman said that through the course of a season, she sometimes feels like an observer rather than someone “completely and utterly a part of it,” especially living more than 2,500 miles away from the Bronx.
This week, Afterman will get a firsthand look at the club she had a hand in putting together as it seeks the four victories necessary to schedule a ticker-tape parade down the Canyon of Heroes in lower Manhattan. And while the players will ultimately decide whether that day comes, Afterman will feel a sense of pride in watching the Yankees play in another World Series, knowing everything that went into getting to this point.
“You’re watching everybody's hard work, you're watching the sacrifices that everybody makes, and you're thinking of your own blood, sweat and tears,” Afterman said. “The joy and euphoria from everybody in the organization when you win the World Series, that's just an incredible thing to feel. To see all the hard work pay off, there’s satisfaction in that. That's what I'm going to enjoy.”