An Insider's Look at the Yankee Dynasty

Buster Olney's new book, "The Last Night of the Yankee Dynasty" is the first major look at the Joe Torre years in the Bronx. I recently had the chance to catch up with Buster. The following is our lengthy chat. Strap yourself in and enjoy.

Bronx Banter: What are the origins of this book?

Buster Olney: I think that at some point—I don’t want to say agent because that sounds pretentious—but the guy who represents me said, “You ought to write a book about the Yankees.” And I kicked around some other stuff and he said, “You ought to write a book about the Yankees.”

BB: Was this still while you were on the beat?

Olney: Yeah. And I was just not interested. Then there was a book project being kicked around that would have involved Joe Torre. Harper Collins asked me about that, if I would be interested in possibly doing something with Joe. The New York Times would never approve that, even though I was off the beat. They’ve gone away from the collaborations. But then when I got done with it [covering the Yankees], I said you know what? I ought to write about it. I should write about basically that group of guys.

BB: Did you ever think in the middle of those years that well, this team is eventually going to be written about, why don’t I just do it?

Olney: No. Not really during that time. Because when you cover them every day you get sick of ‘em. And you get sick of the subject. And the idea of taking on some project where you are burying yourself in those people and those stories and those situations on top of what you do on a daily basis, would be just overwhelming. But I knew I was going to cover the [New York football] Giants in the fall of 2002 as the 2001 season was going along—that was pretty much set in stone—so once the World Series was over there was definitely a separation. And I felt like going into that World Series, and even that season, knowing that that group of guys would be gone, that there was going to be a transitional stage for the team. It seemed like a natural place to start writing about.

BB: One of my first reactions to the book was, "What if they Yankees win it all in 2004? Does that mean the dynasty is still over?" But after thinking about it for a while, and seeing some of your comments in the ESPN chat last week, I realized we’re just talking about semantics. Your book is about that specific group of players. But what if they had won it all in 2002 with a new group of players? Would that have changed how you would have written the book?

Olney: Possibly. You know, I can’t answer that. I know this: If they had won in 2001, the hard lines that developed would not have been in place. I don’t think George would have become as obtrusive as he’s become. He wouldn’t have injected himself into a Raul Mondesi situation probably. Simply because those guys would have still had a long leash.

BB: Winning is the great pacifier.

Olney: Right. And he would have left them alone I think. He wouldn’t have screwed with anything. But he was walking around at the end of Game 7 saying, “There are going to be changes, there are going to be changes.” That was the most significant change.

BB: When did you start writing the book?

Olney: I got the contract in February of 2002, and I hadn’t really started covering the Giants. That wasn’t until March of 2002.

BB: From the get-go did you have the concept for the structure of the book, where you essentially tell the story through the prism of Game 7?

Olney: No. I actually didn’t think about that until late April or early May of that year. And then I thought about it and it made sense. It took me about six months to come up with how I would organize it, and what the transitional points would be, and okay, where can you write about this character, how could you keep it in sequence…

BB: Because it’s not chronological.

Olney: No, and I didn’t want to write that. I thought that would be kind of a dull recount if I did it that way. I didn’t like the idea of doing that. Since it was that was the last game, there were a lot of interesting stories. Some had been told in part, like the pre-game meeting with Monahan and Mariano Rivera. We wrote about Monahan speaking in the next day’s paper, but of course you don’t have the full context. I think it was five or six months into writing that Kevin Towers told me about Buck Showalter’s strip of dirt. And then you look at the videotape and you are like “Oh my god.” And then Rivera confirms that the ball almost ran through him it came at him so hard. So at that point, once I settled on the fact that that was how I was going to structure the book I began to look at different points of that game where you can transition and how you can figure it together.

BB: Had Jane Leavy’s book on Koufax come out at that point, because I know she did something similar with Koufax’s perfect game.

Olney: Yeah, well you know it’s funny, because when I came up with the idea I hadn’t read that but the person who was her editor, David Hershey, edited my book. He was one of the three editors. So I said to him, “You know, I’m thinking about structuring it through game 7.” And he said, “Well, I’ve always liked that idea.” And I didn’t know at that time what he was talking about, that he was being ironic. When I read the book subsequently, I’m like, “Oh, OK, now I understand that comment.”

BB: Who is your book for? Who is the audience?

Olney: I wanted to write it for the more general baseball audience, maybe in the same way that I wrote for the New York Times. I always felt that I could slip in enough stuff that would appeal to baseball nerds like myself, but I wanted to write it for people who like characters. I wanted to write about the people. I obviously love to write about Mariano Rivera’s cutter as a baseball nerd, but I loved writing about Paul O’Neill and I love writing about El Duque and I loved trying to draw in the general audience into things like what makes Rivera’s cutter so incredible. And what is it about Derek Jeter that makes him so great in the post season. There were times when I was sitting there and thought, “Oh, I can do some stats,” but I think those thinks would make the eyes of the average fan glaze over. To say they lead the league in slugging percentage, or they increased their numbers from here, to here-to-here…I really tried to avoid numbers. In general I tried to do it in one shot. Like with Tino Martinez, I would say, “Okay, this is what he did. He hit this many home runs.” I think I summed up O’Neill, “In this many seasons, he drove in this many runs.” That type of thing. So you cover that, but at the same time I felt covering that team that other than the number of victories there weren’t many guys who accumulated great numbers anyway.

BB: How did you organize your research materials into a narrative? Did you look through old articles for observations as well as the interviews you conducted specifically for the book? How many old games did you watch?

Olney: I had two large notebooks that contained all the notes from the interviews I did, as well as chapter sections that contained stories that related to the subject at hand. I used a yellow highlighter to go over the stories and interviews, noting the important details. I spent a lot of time identifying ways to transition in and out of Game 7 -- and sometimes, there was no simple way, and I just did chapter and section breaks, such as coming out of the chapter on Gene Michael.

BB: This was your first book. Even though you were familiar with the subject, what obstacles did you come up against writing it?

Olney: The biggest thing for me was the editing process. Because they warned me—the editors, David Hershey and Dan Halpern—“Hey, we are going to send you the manuscript back. Give us a call when you get it—”

BB: How long was the original manuscript?

Olney: I think it was 450 pages, 420 pages. It was probably 25% longer than what the book turned out to be. They both made it really clear that they liked it and they both said to me, “Relatively speaking this is a very, very light edit.” They liked a lot of it, and then I got it and I wanted to hang myself. I could not believe how much red ink was on it. And it took me a day to build up the courage to even call them. Because when you see the amount of edits and you see the amount of red ink and you see the amount of suggestions, it just discourages you. You feel like a complete loser.

BB: Was it a blow to the ego?

Olney: It’s not an ego thing so much. It’s more like, “Boy, how could I screw this up?”

BB: You mean, “Did I get this all wrong?”

Olney: Sort of, yeah. And then I began to look at the changes. And they’d say, “You know, you repeat this phrase, or this kind of phrase two pages later. You echo this paragraph fifty pages before.” And then you began to look to at it and think, “Man these are great edits, these are great suggestions.” And I told them that. I said, “Ninety percent of what you suggested was great.” There was some stuff—they weren’t as interested in O’Neill with his explosiveness, and I called them and said, “Look. That is the central theme of O’Neill. That is the central part of him and that’s how fans remember him.” I think they wanted me to cut down writing about Rivera’s cutter and I said, “You know what? I think the cutter is the difference between the Yankees being a very good team and the Yankees being this extraordinary dynasty.”

BB: Plus, you are talking about a great pitcher with a singular gift. The cutter is what has defined Rivera.

Olney: Right. So anytime I said to them that I’d prefer something, they said great. There were no arguments at all. Which is different from what I heard. I heard about the knockdown, screaming fights, that kind of thing. But there wasn’t any of that.

BB: Was there anything that you lost in the final draft that you miss not having there?

Olney: I had a section about Bud Selig and how he conducted himself after 9-11 that I wish had stayed in the book, because I thought that was a window into his management style -- and it wasn't good. So I wanted to write about this because I felt it was some reflection of how he runs the game. It was contained within in the epilogue and one of the editors wrote me back and said, “You know what? This isn’t part of the straight line that goes throughout this book.” And they were right. I couldn’t argue with that. But I still wish it could be out there because it was some really interesting stuff. Maybe it will wind up out there in some form or fashion at some point.

BB: The 2001 season is unforgettable because of the larger social context of the moment, and I know that the 1999 Yankees endured a lot of personal issues, which affected the team. Now looking back, is there any one year that you covered the team which sticks out?

Olney: 1998. ’98 was unbelievable. I started to think about it in context of people going to work everyday. I cannot imagine any person, and group of people, going to work everyday and applying themselves with the same energy and consistency as those guys did that year.

BB: Was that appreciably different in other years with that same group of guys?

Olney: Without a doubt.

BB: What made that year different?

Olney: 97. The devastation of 97, losing to Cleveland. Feeling like they had blown an opportunity to win back-to-back championships. They came to spring training [in 1998] with an absolute mission that year. And they had Knoblauch who really transformed the offense. They got off to a great start and they just came after opposing teams every day. I love Tony Muser’s description of the Yankees that is in the book. You know, while they are just killing the Royals, how he would just watch them and have enormous admiration for them, because they did it in such a professional, head-down, no-posing-at-home-plate-manner. And they just kicked everybody’s ass. What was the run-differential? Something like 330 runs that year? [Note: It was 310 runs.]

BB: You mentioned in the book that Jared Wright and Jerry Hairston were two of the guys who the Yankees had beef with during the 96-01 era. Was there anyone else of note? I ask because I recall a game in May of 1999 (May 11th to be exact) when Troy Percival nailed Jeter in the hand in the process of striking out the side in a 9-7 Angels win. Jeter was not pleased. O'Neill followed and fouled off a bunch of pitches before being called out on strikes. He was furious and the water cooler took a beating. Bernie struck out looking to end the game. I just remember seeing David Cone, his face beet-red, standing on the top step of the dugout. (He was the starting pitcher for the next game.) Did the Yankees really dislike Percival on a personal level?

Olney: Yeah, there were other guys who annoyed them; I remember the Percival game, too. From time to time, they would get mad at other guys. But Hairston and Wright were similar, in that they were both young, generally unproven, cocky and demonstrative -- and for a bunch of veterans like the Yankees, these were abhorrent characteristics. Plus Wright injured Luis Sojo, which was a big deal to those guys.

BB: 1998 was the one year during the run where they simply dominated the league. Record-wise that just wasn’t the case in 96 or 99 and especially 2000 and 2001.

Olney: I remember when they had that awful slump at the end of the 2000 season, and they had played a crappy game against the Devil Rays and Joe Torre came in the clubhouse and just reamed them out. And the players said, “You know, you are right.” And they picked it back up. After 98, in the following years, you got the sense that being the “Yankees” the pressure of having to win the World Series was really starting to wear on them. At the end of 2000, they lost all of those games. In 99—that was a tough year for them—they were trying to live up to 98. It wasn’t until halfway through that year that they talked about it and said you know, “Forget it. We can’t match what we did last year.” And they had so many side issues going on. In 2001, they just began to look old. O’Neill was not as good of a player as he once had been. It’s interesting, the last couple of years that I’ve been around the park, people have told me, “Oh, you know O’Neill wistfully thinks that he may have retired too early.” I don’t think he did. He was getting so ravaged by injuries. Basically he was struggling around .250, .260 for a lot of 2001. I think he quit at the exact right time.

BB: David Justice had a bad year. Knoblauch struggled obviously. Tino…

Olney: And you know what? On paper there is no question but that they made the right choice to move Tino out and bring Jason Giambi in. You are not really going to know how a guy is going to be affected by the pressure of New York until you bring him in anyway. It’s hard to second-guess, especially with the YES network coming into play. Giambi was an MVP…

BB: Plus, he would fill in a need and he seemingly fit their profile well.

Olney: Right. They needed an increase in on-base percentage, just like they did in the early nineties. He was the absolutely perfect guy for that.

BB: After all, who was the last big-time slugging free agent the Yanks had signed before Giambi?

Olney: Well, Danny Tartabull, but…

BB: Or even Jack Clark. But really, you have to go back to Dave Winfield.

Olney: You could just see that coming all season. They wanted Giambi. But as you said, Knoblauch was destroyed by 2001. Scott Brosius was OK in the first half and he tailed off in the second half. And his defense just wasn’t that good that year.

BB: That was the season that the Mariners made like the 98 Yankees. When you saw the Mariners that year did you get a sense that they had what the Yankees had in 98?

Olney: No. And I don’t know what it was. I watched them the whole year and I never had the feeling that they were as dominant and I don’t know why that is exactly. But when you watched them play they weren’t as scary as I felt Oakland was [when they played the Yankees]. When Oakland won that first game of the playoffs I was like, “Wow.” The Mulder game. You are thinking, “They aren’t going to make it out of this series. They are an old team and here comes Oakland.” As for Seattle, I don’t know. Maybe it was because Edgar [Martinez] was getting a little bit older and his bat speed was slowing down. Brett Boone was such an erratic force in the post season because you knew he just go so hyped up. You could see that between him and Cameron that they were the type of team that could be pitched to in October, as opposed to the 98 Yankees who had all these guys who were so patient. They drew walks. You could see a great regular season team in Seattle. At the same time you were like, “Who is going to be dominant for them in the post season.” You just didn’t have the same feeling.

BB: What was it like in the clubhouse during those 2001 playoffs? Once the Yankees got past the A’s did you get the sense that they felt they were playing with house money?

Olney: They definitely gained a lot of energy, there is no doubt. But it’s almost like the fact that they survived Game 3 with the flip and they managed to hang in that series, it was like suddenly this old team who was in its last run together seemed to pick up all this energy.

BB: I know you are not a psychologist but did you think that they players knew just how important it was for many New Yorkers—discounting Met fans, of course—that they win in 2001?

Olney: They definitely knew it because so many of them were actually going and making appearances on their own. In the HBO 9.11 show, Giuliani said that when O’Neill was rehabbing the stress fracture in his foot he offered to go down and spend a half an hour at some place and he ended up spending the entire day. Everywhere they went and every pre-game ceremony, there were all these firefighters there, shaking their hands, and “Thanks so much, we appreciate what you did.” It was constant. I thought the weariness showed. Between the fallout and the exhaustion of emotion that took place after September 11th, and the fact that they weren’t a very good team, showed. Like you said, when they survived Oakland it was like they found the fountain of youth.

BB: Did you get the impression that players handled the emotions differently? Were some able to channel it into their performance while others—and I’m thinking of a guy like Bernie Williams—may have just been more philosophical like, “Hey, these are only games. In light of what’s happened it doesn’t really matter much who wins or loses.”

Olney: No, I’m not sure if they could. I mean there is no doubt that they played with an enormous amount of emotion in that World Series.

BB: I know there was an incident where Jeter got on Bernie during the Series.

Olney: Bernie was late showing up for Game 6.

BB: Was that something that was completely out of character for Williams?

Olney: Yeah. It was. The rest of the players were on the team bus. He had come from some other place. So he was late and Derek was livid. I think I wrote in the book, he said to Bernie, “You shouldn’t want to be any other place at this time.” And he got on him. That probably was the most unusual moment in the whole post September 11th run. I think the other one was when Pettitte drilled Magglio Ordonez after Bernie got beaned. That was the only time I ever saw Pettitte throw at anybody.

BB: And he was sheepish about it when you spoke to him about it after the game.

Olney: Yeah, because basically he was a conscientious objector and he was ashamed to throw at somebody but it was a very emotionally moment. You know it was the second game they had played after coming back from September 11th and Bernie is there lying on the ground, kicking his feet; it looked like he was seriously injured. I couldn’t believe it when Pettitte hit him. But it made a lot of sense given the time.

BB: Do you know if Bernie and Jeter were able to get past the Game 6 incident?

Olney: Yeah, they were. From what people said, Bernie basically knew that he was wrong and he absorbed the criticism and that was the end of it. In some ways Wells did the same thing when Jeter yelled at him. He absorbed it and they moved on.

BB: Does Bernie command a certain level of respect in that clubhouse given the fact that he’s the senior member of the team or is he so introspective that people just don’t look at him in that kind of way?

Olney: He’s liked. I can’t say that he has the stature that say a Tino did during the run. One of the great things about this group of players was how tolerant they were of each other. And Bernie, for some of the odd things he would do—between the music and his funny sense of humor—

BB: What kind of sense of humor does he have?

Olney: Ah, he was just very quiet, and…it’s hard to describe. He definitely was an odd…he’s not your standard baseball player. He didn’t enjoy getting into the standard clubhouse repartee, and in the early years of course, that worked against him. In the later years, they pretty much rolled with it. Some of the other players didn’t like the fact that they had to cover for him in the clubhouse sometimes because Bernie often liked to get out of the clubhouse as quickly as possible sometimes after games. We’ve seen that with the Red Sox in recent years. It really angers the players when they are left to answers questions from the media for other players. I remember a couple of times Derek with a half-smile on his face, sort of joking, sort of not, looking around and saying, “Oh, Bernie’s gone, huh?” when we were asking him questions that somehow involved Bernie. I think that annoyed some of the other players.

BB: What was Tino Martinez’s stature like?

Olney: What’s interesting is that I learned more about him doing this book than any other player and I told him that. Because when I was on the beat he could be very surly, he could be difficult. And when he was, you were like, “OK, the guy is somewhat of a jerk on some days.” And then as I was researching the book and you talk to more people and you realize it was a bit of an act. He was, in some respects, trying to put us off to protect the other players. What’s interesting is that he didn’t only fool me and other members of the media, he fooled the coaching staff. You know the coaching staff found him to be difficult and found him to unapproachable in some cases, and found him to be a guy, especially when he’s in a slump, to be like, “Boy, he’s so difficult to be around.” And Joe actually wanted him traded in the 2000 season. They had a deal arranged with Atlanta. The coaching staff was like, “Yeah, trade him.” And then they backed off and wound up not doing it. But in talking with the players, they had these great descriptions of Tino working the scenes, sort of fostering the daily look at each game more than any other player. In other words, he’d go out to dinner with Jeter and Posada before a series and would say, “OK, we need this and this and this to happen in this series.” And so if they were playing a playoff series against Seattle then he would sit down with Jeff Nelson and say, “We’re going to need you in the seventh inning against Edgar Martinez. You’re the man.” And he’d pump up Nellie, who he’d known for a long time. And--I love this story, and I didn’t know this before I did the book--but Jeter and particularly Tino would aim his post game interviews at opposing players. Then he’d get on the team plane and saying to everybody, “Hey, wait ‘til you see my post game interview on ESPN, I hope they run it.” Tino wanted to project confidence into the camera, and spoke as if he was speaking directly to players on the other team. If the Yankees were behind in a series, Tino might say, "Yeah, we've been in this situation before and we've responded, and I'm sure we will again.” It was a way to remind the opposing players of how tough the Yankees could be. Tino felt that you could always sense, through the interviews they saw on television, when players on other teams were beaten.

BB: How did he differ from O’Neill?

Olney: Paul liked the other players, supported them, but he tended to his own personal war with failure, while Tino had a broader concern about the others. Tino was the guy who would be monitoring the team as a whole and he had a greater sense of being prepared for each game and each series. Paul fretted about his own failures, in how they affected teammates and the team's ability to win. So yes, he was self-absorbed, but not in a selfish way, if that makes sense.

BB: Was it a fraternal thing for Martinez?

Olney: No, I think it was a competitive thing. I think he’s just a competitive guy. I love that story that Jeter told me about Tino’s mad face. It was after Robin Ventura came over and they were like, “Yeah, Tino gets this look on his face and it gets you all fired up right before a game.” And Ventura said, “Oh, you mean his mad face.” He had played with him in the Olympics. And Jeter and Posada were like, “Yeah, you’re right that’s exactly it!” The way Jeter told the story was really funny.

BB: You mentioned that there was some beef between Posada and Martinez at one point.

Olney: Yeah, Jorge didn’t exactly say what the problem was, but this is the type of thing that existed, I thought. Tino was very wary of the media and they all were very wary of the media’s potential power over what they did. That if things spun out of control, if crisis began to erupt and players began sniping at each other, that in effect it would put pressure on them all and create this extra monster. So they really worked to keep things in-house by in large. Posada and Martinez apparently had some kind of falling out at the end of the ’99 season and the first I knew of it--and the first I think any writer knew of it--was when Posada told me, “We had a falling out. We kept it from you guys.” Both Tino and Posada said, “That’s what we had going, we had a good thing going, we all protected each other in that regard.” Goose Gossage referred to that to. That when he was playing during the crazy years with Billy and Reggie all these side things that happened just added to the weight of each game and each performance. And the microscope just got a little closer to them. He was talking about Torre and how Torre diffused things, but the players did a great job of diffusing it too.

BB: Torre stepped into an ideal situation with a group of players who policed themselves.

Olney: They played hard and you are right: They took care of business. They had the one year in 97 when there was a lot of that [negative clubhouse] stuff and they basically ran those guys off the team. Charlie Hayes and Doc [Gooden]. Anybody who had off-the-field stuff got run off the team. During the season, Gooden got into a scrap with a cabbie over a small fare -- in Texas, I think, and it made the back page of the Post--and Hayes and Wade Boggs were at odds over playing time. It wasn't the type of pub that was good when the team wasn't going well.

BB: What was Boggs like in the clubhouse?

Olney: You know, I didn’t do a lot on him. He’s very much of an eccentric. He’s kind of an odd guy but once the game started, his teammates felt that he was into it. As it was described to me, he was a bit of a neurotic, but to be honest I didn’t focus on him because he was just there for a short period of time.

BB: He was part of the Showalter transition years. What about Cecil Fielder?

Olney: Yeah, I didn’t even ask about Fielder to be honest with you. Except in regard to what happened with Tino during the 96 World Series, which was a classic case. The reason why Tino didn’t openly complain about being benched in the 96 World Series—and he was openly mad—was not because he didn’t want to make himself look like a complaining jerk but by coming out and complaining about the fact that he wasn’t playing, the inference was, “I’m better than my teammate.” And the guys I interviewed talked about that. Tino and Cone and Jeter talked about that sense of, “That’s why Joe Girardi didn’t complain, that’s why Tim Raines didn’t complain, that’s part of the reason why Darryl Strawberry didn’t complain about playing time.” Because they knew that by complaining they would be dumping on a teammate.

BB: How big was the presence of Rock Raines and especially guys like Cone and Strawberry, seasoned veterans who had experienced their fair share of highs and lows over the course of their careers, on their teammates?

Olney: The interesting thing is that I don’t think anyone necessarily sat down and drew up a plan of how to put together a team that fits together perfectly in its personalities. But what’s amazing when you think about it is how many guys fit so many roles perfectly. Cone. The fact that he had such a mastery of how to deal with the media was extremely useful to all of them. The fact that he could mange things like giving money to the minor league coaches, and knowing how big of a deal that would be, and how great it would be viewed, was huge. And it wasn’t only, “This is the right thing to do,” it was, “This is the right way to handle this for our benefit.” He was great at that. Tino was great at the day-to-day preparation. I think Derek and Rivera brought an unflagging sense of confidence; it just never wavered. Then you throw in guys like Raines and Sojo, whose sense of humor was big. They talk about Raines as being one of the few guys who could ever approach O’Neill in the midst of those games when he was throwing his helmet all over the place. He’d walk up to him and say, “O’Neill, what’s the problem?” “Get away from me Rock, come on!” Those two guys were just perfect for that group. The over-riding theme of the book is those teams, because they had a lot of guys who had played for a long time, could develop that kind of a thing. I don’t think it was planned, but if you wanted to construct clubhouse chemistry, they had all of the perfect parts. They policed themselves and they trusted each other and they protected each other. They had so many guys that helped them deal with the pressure of playing for Steinbrenner in such subtle ways. Raines described what they would think about when they came up to bat after a teammate had screwed up. It wasn’t, “Oh my god I’ve got to get a hit. There’s second and third and one out.” It’s, “I want to pick up Paulie. I want to pick up Tino because he just popped out.” And it was such a wonderful way to illustrate how they thought of each other.

BB: Is that kind of attitude abnormal on the teams you’ve covered?

Olney: Oh yeah. Compared with the Orioles in 95 and 96, yeah. I don’t think Robbie Alomar had great trust in Cal [Ripken] and I don’t think Cal really invested in what the coaching staff wanted to do. He was invested on his own terms, only on his own terms. There was no self-policing at all. They had the Iron Man, the man who played everyday and they were the biggest dog team in the league. I mean, it made no sense.

BB: Covering baseball from the inside like you have, how would you quantify chemistry? Because you can look back at the Swinging A’s of the 1970s or the Bronx Zoo Yankees as teams with notoriously "bad chemistry" who were successful on the field.

Olney: You can’t quantify it. I think in some cases that type