1996 defined by start of new Yankees dynasty
Will Leitch
@williamfleitchThroughout our hopefully short time without real live games, we’ll be taking a weekly look back at a specific year in baseball history. What happened, why it mattered, what we’ll remember most. Send us the years you’d most like us to talk about at [email protected].
Year: 1996
NLDS: Braves over Dodgers in 3; Cardinals over Padres in 3
ALDS: Yankees over Rangers in 4; Orioles over Indians in 4
LCS: Braves over Cardinals in 7; Yankees over Orioles in 5
World Series winner: Yankees over Braves in six
MVPs: AL: Juan Gonzalez, Rangers; NL: Ken Caminiti, Padres
Cy Youngs: AL: Pat Hentgen, Blue Jays; NL: John Smoltz, Braves
Rookies of the Year: AL: Derek Jeter, Yankees; NL: Todd Hollandsworth, Dodgers
All-MLB Team (chosen by me, in 2020)
1B: Mark McGwire, A’s
2B: Chuck Knoblauch, Twins
SS: Alex Rodriguez, Mariners
3B: Ken Caminiti, Padres
OF: Barry Bonds, Giants
OF: Ken Griffey Jr., Mariners
OF: Albert Belle, Indians
C: Mike Piazza, Dodgers
DH: Edgar Martinez, Mariners
SP: Pat Hentgen, Blue Jays
SP: Roger Clemens, Red Sox
SP: Kevin Brown, Marlins
SP: John Smoltz, Braves
RP: Trevor Hoffman, Padres
RP: Roberto Hernandez, White Sox
Last week, we looked at 1978, the last year the Yankees were messy, chaotic, in-fighting and, ultimately, champions. After that season, the fallow, disappointing '80s would come, and the first few years of the '90s wouldn’t be much better. But then the Yankees would start to turn it around, thanks to a dedication to their farm system, a calmer, more measured look at how best to compete, and bringing in some reliable veterans like Paul O’Neill, David Cone and … hey, Wade Boggs, look at that. They’d return to the playoffs for the first time in 14 years in 1995, though they very well might have won the World Series in 1994, had there been a World Series.
But in 1996, it all came together. In fact, as good as the Yankees were in '94 and '95, those teams are largely anonymous today, forgotten to history. The Yankees, before 1996, had Bernie Williams and Andy Pettitte and, for 10 starts in 1995, Mariano Rivera. But they didn’t have Joe Torre, and they didn’t have Derek Jeter. So they weren’t those Yankees. Those 1996 Yankees were the first of those Yankees.
The 1996 Yankees were not the best of all the Yankees' championship teams. They opened the season in the snow. They only won 92 games. They didn’t have a single 30-homer hitter, or a starter with an ERA under 3.80, or a single player in the top 10 in MVP voting. But I bet, if you really broke down Yankees fans, if you ask them which of those five Yankees titles from 1996-2009 they truly enjoyed the most … I bet it would be this one. I’m sure it would be.
The additions of Torre and Jeter were not the only reasons the Yankees won the title in 1996, or even the main ones. But they were what was different. They were the start of the new era. Torre had just been fired by the Cardinals after two losing seasons and six consecutive seasons without reaching the playoffs; the New York Daily News trashed his hiring with a blaring “SAY IT AIN’T JOE” headline. (Best quote: “another bad idea from the dunces who have once again turned the Yankees into baseball’s laughingstock.”)
Jeter was a top prospect, No. 4 by Baseball America in 1995, but the No. 2 prospect on his own team, behind Ruben Rivera. (The top four that year: 1. Alex Rodriguez; 2. Rivera; 3. Chipper Jones. 4. Jeter.) But Jeter had been no great shakes in his short cameo in 1995, sent down after just 13 days in the bigs in June and returning for just one at-bat in the season’s final month.
But that Yankees mystique, that whole Yankees exceptionalism, that came from Torre and Jeter. Torre fit in perfectly with his New York history, his gravitas and his calm demeanor around the media. And Jeter seemed groomed specifically to conquer the city, to be the sort of public superstar who hid in plain sight. Even when he won the AL Rookie of the Year Award that year unanimously, he sounded like a kid aw-shucksing his way through it all. “Unanimous?" joked Jeter. "I must have had some of my family voting in it."
The Yankees shouldn’t have been the favorite heading into those playoffs. The Indians won seven games more than they did and had far more postseason experience. The Braves had just won the World Series the year before. Even the Rangers had the MVP in Juan Gonzalez. But the Yankees just had the vibe. They looked like champions even before they were. It was is if the title patch were already on their uniforms.
That team had the usual Yankees veterans, a cornucopia of "That Guy" names, from Dwight Gooden to Mariano Duncan to Cecil Fielder, Darryl Strawberry and Tim Raines. But it was the young guys, the guys who would seed that Yankees team for the next decade, who were the sparks: Jeter, Pettitte, Rivera and the oft-unfairly-forgotten Williams. (Including Jorge Posada, it should really be the Core Five.) The team also had its great moments, from Jeter taking over for an injured Tony Fernandez, to Rivera becoming Mo, to Jeffrey Maier. (Who is now 36 years old, by the way.) And it had a wild comeback victory in the World Series, when, down 2-1 in the Series and 6-0 in Game 4, they fought all the way back, culminating in Jim Leyritz’s game-tying three-run homer. Boggs would get a bases-loaded walk in the 10th to take the lead, the Yankees would win the game and three days later Boggs -- the former Red Sox nemesis -- was riding around Yankee Stadium on a horse, with a championship ring.
The Yankees have been, for better or worse, the signature MLB team of the last 25 years. Years are defined either by the Yankees winning a title or other teams dethroning them; the Red Sox’s 2004 championship, their at-last breakthrough, had so much more extra oomph to it because they did it over the Yankees. For 15 years, the Yankees had been an afterthought, a shell of themselves. They haven’t been that way since; they’ve been the center of everything. You love them, you hate them, you cannot deny the Yankees. That started in 1996. There’s a direct line between that season and today. It was brewing before Torre and Jeter arrived. But they’re the ones who started it all rolling. It’s still rolling today.
Here are 10 other notable facts and moments from the 1996 baseball season.
1. You know what’s a nice touch? Jeter won the AL Rookie of the Year Award that year only because Rodriguez, who was only 20, had played too many games in 1995, a total of 48, with 149 at-bats. That disqualified him for rookie status, which is a good thing for Jeter, because A-Rod was a lot better than Jeter in 1996. He batted a stunning .358 -- he’d never hit over .321 the rest of his career -- had 36 homers and led the Majors with 54 doubles. (He also led the AL in runs and total bases.) He was second in MVP voting that year. The A-Rod/Jeter rivalry would take many forms over the next two decades, but the seeds were there from the very beginning.
2. Another name that would dominate baseball for the next decade: Barry Bonds. He had a pretty massive 1996. He hit his 300th homer, set a career high in walks with 151 (a number he would pass three more times in his career, culminating in the insane 232 in 2004), and he would become the second player in baseball history to put up a 40-homer, 40-steal season. He would also win a Gold Glove, his sixth. Somehow, he would finish only fifth in the MVP voting, which would be his highest finish until 2000, when he’d come in second before rattling off four MVPs in a row. Why did he finish so low in the voting? The Giants lost 96 games in '96, the third straight losing season for Bonds.
3. So who won the NL MVP? That would be Ken Caminiti, who had only made one All-Star Game before erupting with the Padres at the age of 33, partly for reasons we would only discover later. Caminiti had 40 homers, 14 above his career high to that point, with 130 RBIs, and he also won a Gold Glove for a Padres team that won the NL West and reached the playoffs for the first time since their 1984 World Series team. Caminiti would fall off quickly after that and be out of baseball by 2001; he would eventually be felled by his own personal demons.
4. The team that beat the Padres in that NLDS? The Cardinals, making their first playoff appearance in nine years. The Cardinals actually had their own “Torre,” replacing Torre: They hired Tony La Russa from Oakland, buoyed by a new ownership group (there was briefly a moment where some Cardinals fans thought potential new owners might move them out of St. Louis) and a mandate to win however he felt he could. That strategy involved bringing in some of his old A’s stars (Dennis Eckersley, Rick Honeycutt, Mike Gallego, Todd Stottlemyre), mixing them with homegrown stars (Ray Lankford, Brian Jordan) and getting key contributions from other vets (Ron Gant, Gary Gaetti). La Russa would start a feud with Cardinals legend Ozzie Smith that year that’s still going on today, but he’d also get the Cardinals within one game of the World Series. And he’d be with the Cardinals for the next 14 years, ultimately winning two World Series.
5. The 1996 season began in tragedy: At the traditional Opening Day game in Cincinnati, home plate umpire John McSherry, with the game only seven pitches old, called timeout and began to walk off the field. He then collapsed on the field with a heart attack; EMTs were unable to resuscitate him. The game was postponed, and McSherry remains the last player or umpire to die on the field during a game.
6. The A’s, because of construction, actually began their season in Las Vegas, and they would also play games in Mexico that year. This was also the final year of Fulton-County Stadium in Atlanta, the place Hank Aaron had hit his record-breaking homer. That last game would end up being in the World Series -- the defending-champion Braves beat the Cardinals in the NLCS -- and the Yankees shut the Braves out, 1-0. The Braves actually lost all three games at Fulton-County Stadium in the Series that year.
7. Two baseball legends said goodbye in 1996, too early, for health reasons. Kirby Puckett had been terrific in 1995, at age 35, making his 10th consecutive All-Star Game before his season ended by a Dennis Martinez fastball that broke his jaw. He was hitting .344 in Spring Training in 1996 before, after experiencing no vision in his right eye, he was diagnosed with glaucoma. He had several surgeries to try to get back his vision, but they were unsuccessful, and he retired in July of that year. Also retiring that month: Tommy Lasorda, who suffered a heart attack after a game in June (a win, he’ll have you know) and retired a month later. He would return to manage the 2000 USA Olympic team to a gold medal four years later.
8. Roger Clemens pitched his last season (of 13) in Boston in 1996, and it wasn’t one of his best ones: He was 10-13 with a 3.63 ERA and the highest walk rate of his career to that point. The Red Sox, concerned about his conditioning and his age (33), let him go to Toronto in the offseason … where he would win two Cy Youngs. He did have one final incredible highlight left in him in Boston: In one of his final starts with the Red Sox, he struck out 20 in a win over the Tigers, more than 10 years after he’d done it the first time.
9. Cal Ripken Jr. had already passed Lou Gehrig’s consecutive games record the year before, and it would be two years until he would sit for Ryan Minor and end the streak, but the streak was in some jeopardy in 1996. While setting up for the team picture of the AL All-Star team, White Sox closer Roberto Hernandez slipped while stepping on a riser. His left arm flailed back … and bashed Ripken right in the face, breaking his nose. Ripken not only didn’t have his streak end, though, he actually played in the All-Star Game. Hernandez was very relieved: “I thought I’d have to get a damn bodyguard the next time we go to Baltimore,” he said. “I knew that if it ended the streak, I’d be dead.”
10. One aspect of baseball that began in 1996 that’s still going today? Games on FOX. FOX signed a five-year deal with Major League Baseball, taking over for CBS, which had not aired a Major League Baseball game since the start of The Baseball Network two years earlier. (It has not aired an MLB game since.) The broadcasters on the first game (and that year’s World Series)? Tim McCarver and a 27-year-old named Joe Buck, who had been a junior announcer for the Cardinals and a broadcaster for NFL games on FOX for two years. There is actually video of the first game ever on FOX, and their slogan: “Same Game, New Attitude.”