Chapter 24

MORE THAN A GAME

September 11–November 6, 2001

BRIAN CASHMAN IS speeding down I-95 on this crisp, sunny September morning, unsure of what the world will look like once he reaches Yankee Stadium. One minute he’s staring into a mirror at his home in Westchester, knotting the tie he was going to wear for a luncheon today honoring George Steinbrenner. The next minute his wife Mary is telling him a plane just flew into one of the Twin Towers.

Nothing is making any sense. Certainly not what he’s hearing on his car radio.

At 8:46 a.m. an American Airlines 767 slammed into the World Trade Center’s north tower, the radio announcer says.

At 9:03 a.m., a United Airlines 767 flew into the south tower.

At 9:31 a.m., President George Bush calls both strikes an “apparent terrorist attack on our country.”

At 9:37 a.m., an American Airlines 757 jetliner crashes into the Pentagon.

At 10:03 a.m., a United Airlines 757 crashed in a field outside Shanksville, Pennsylvania.

Like every American on the morning of September 11, Cashman struggles to comprehend the scope of what is unfolding. He can see the giant plumes of black smoke rising from the World Trade Center as he pulls off the highway exit in the Bronx for Yankee Stadium. And by the time he races up to his office and turns on his TV, things are even worse. So much worse.

The television cameras follow small, dark objects, one after another, as they fall down the side of the burning north tower. They’re office workers who were trapped in the floors above the inferno, men and women who’ve chosen to fall 100 stories to their death rather than be burned alive. Orange flames flare out of the giant dark holes in the top floors of each tower, just the edges of the fires that rage within.

Then the south tower comes crashing down. Thousands of office workers and first responders can be seen scrambling to escape the huge white clouds that billow down the streets of lower Manhattan. The chaos intensifies when the north tower collapses 39 minutes later, and all anyone watching can do is wonder how many people got out before the fall. And hope their family members and friends were among the lucky ones.

Cashman is still close to Tim Coughlin, his former roommate of three years. The 29-year-old son of football coach Tom Coughlin works as a bond trader for Morgan Stanley on the 60th floor of the south tower. Like so many New Yorkers with family and friends who have jobs at the World Trade Center, Cashman calls his ex-roommate’s cell, but none of his calls get through. It will be almost 24 hours before he learns that a Port Authority police officer directed Coughlin to a safe route out under the south tower, just minutes before it came crashing down. The female officer never left her post.

Cashman’s eyes are still riveted to the television screen as he starts dialing his players, trying to locate those who live in the city first. The GM gets Derek Jeter, who says he’s talked with Tino Martinez and Gerald Williams. “We’re all fine,” Jeter says. Cashman finds Torre, who is also calling players. He reaches Rick Cerrone, the team’s communications director, and asks him to tell the media today’s game is postponed.

Tomorrow’s game? Who knows what tomorrow will bring.

Cashman gets a call through to Steinbrenner at the Regency and isn’t surprised when it’s Randy Levine who picks up. The Yankees president, who lives on Manhattan’s Upper East Side, was supposed to fly out to Milwaukee for an owners meeting late this morning. But the only planes flying now are the F-16 fighter jets circling the city.

“Guess you didn’t make it to the owners meeting in Milwaukee,” Cashman says.

“No—Buddy canceled it,” Levine says. “Can you believe what’s happening?”

“How’s the Boss?” Cashman says.

“Like everyone, he’s trying to figure out what just happened,” Levine says. “We talked to Giuliani and told him the Yankees will do anything he needs us to do. He told us to stand by. He’ll let us know when he needs us. This is just crazy.”

Cashman goes back to calling to his players. He leaves a message for Chuck Knoblauch and another for Roger Clemens, who’s already in a rental car with his wife, driving home to Texas. Clemens lives in the shadow of the Trade Center and was awakened by a call from a friend to alert him to what was happening. He rushed to the roof of his building in time to see both towers tumble down. He’ll make his first stop in Tennessee, where he gets word that the mother of one of his close friends was on one of the hijacked planes.

Cashman finds White Sox GM Kenny Williams, whose team is in town for a three-game series with the Yankees. Williams has tried to find a way out of the city for hours without success. “You can stay in my house,” Cashman tells Williams, who declines. He’s lined up a bus to get the team out first thing tomorrow morning, and he doesn’t want to risk even a minute’s delay.

Not an hour passes before a young staffer tells Cashman that the Stadium is being evacuated. “Bomb threats,” he tells the GM. Of course. What better target than America’s most famous Stadium? Cashman hurriedly gathers his papers, takes a look around his office—who knows when it will be safe to return?—and rushes to his car. As he pulls out of the team’s parking lot, he sees a handful of Stadium workers milling about and looking lost.

“What are you waiting for?” Cashman shouts from his window. “Are you gonna wait and see if this place comes down, too? Just shut it down and go home!”

Bomb threats are called in all around the nation, and federal and state authorities are shutting down landmarks, banking centers, and skyscrapers. That includes Milwaukee’s 42-story Firstar Center, home to Firstar Bank, the Foley & Lardner law firm, the private equity firm Baird Capital, and the Commissioner’s office. Bud Selig has set up shop across the street at the stately Pfister Hotel, huddling with owners when he is not trying to get through to the White House.

Selig had scheduled a special owners meeting today and tomorrow to discuss contraction, but those plans were quickly scrapped. John Ellis and others with the Mariners organization jumped in a car as soon as the news hit and are driving back to Seattle. Braves executive Stan Kasten is driving back to Atlanta. The six or seven owners who made it to Milwaukee and stayed have given Selig their ideas about when baseball should get back on the field.

Selig hears from Karl Rove, who tells him the administration is weighing security concerns against a strong desire to get America back to what’s normal. Like playing baseball. But how do you play baseball when no one is sure how many bodies lie beneath the rubble in New York City? A decision about tomorrow’s games will have to wait until tomorrow.

It’s a tired Commissioner who comes to the phone to talk to the New York Times late in the afternoon of a day that already feels endless. “I’m going to have to use my judgment,” Selig tells the paper. “We are a social institution that needs to be not only responsible but hopefully helpful as we move forward. I don’t have a timetable.

“Right now I’m in shock.”

The shock is not going to wear off anytime soon.

The daily bomb threats will continue for weeks as many Americans—and every New Yorker—wait for the next attack, which they are sure is coming. Selig is one of many business and government leaders tasked with figuring out how this new world works, how they’re supposed to balance security and sensitivity with dollars and cents.

On Wednesday morning, the Commissioner cancels the next day’s games, then comes back that afternoon and cancels games for Friday, too. A day later he announces play will resume Monday, with the six days of missed games tacked on to the end of the season. The Mets will open in Pittsburgh instead of New York, giving the city an extra four days to tighten security, get a final count on the dead and missing, and finish grieving. If that’s possible.

“I really don’t think it’s the right time to play baseball,” says Jeter, who lives near the United Nations on Manhattan’s East Side.

By midweek, Shea Stadium’s huge parking lots are transformed into staging areas, with food, clothes, and equipment arriving by the crateful as hundreds of volunteers load them onto trucks bound for lower Manhattan. Todd Zeile and John Franco are among the many Mets doing the heavy lifting. So is their manager, Bobby Valentine, who lost a close friend in the south tower and can’t seem to leave this stadium. About half the team is out visiting area hospitals. Shea’s suites become sleeping quarters for firemen who have flooded into New York from all around the country. Rescue workers sleep in cots set up in the stadium’s hallways and tunnels.

Both baseball and the players union give $5 million to the newly created MLB-MLBPA Disaster Relief Fund. Steinbrenner pledges $1 million to a fund for the families of police officers and firefighters killed in the towers’ collapse and offers the Stadium to rescue workers to shower and sleep. The mayor wants to hold a prayer service at the Stadium. “Of course,” George says.

Giuliani calls Steinbrenner on Friday with another request. “We need help with morale,” the mayor tells his friend. It’s still too dangerous at Ground Zero, Giuliani says, but could Steinbrenner ask some of his players to visit a few key places on Saturday?

“The Javits Center, St. Vincent’s Hospital, and the Armory,” Giuliani says.

“Done,” says Steinbrenner.

Others in the Yankees organization aren’t as sure. They’ve all been waiting to do something—anything—to help, and visiting volunteers at a convention center and injured rescue workers at a hospital is perfect. But the Armory is where parents, wives, husbands, and so many children are waiting to hear if the DNA samples they carried with them match any of the remains found at Ground Zero.

“Is that really appropriate?” Cashman wonders. This same day Giuliani announces the city still has 52 unidentified bodies and 408 unidentified body parts. The list of missing stands at 4,717. Do family members really want the Yankees attracting attention on one side of the room if they get word about their loved ones on the other?

Giuliani tells Steinbrenner and Levine not to worry. “You’ll help,” he says. “Trust me.”

It’s a bright and sunny Saturday morning when a handful of Yankees players, coaches, and executives arrives at the Stadium. They look up at the snipers on rooftops bordering the Stadium, poised to provide extra security. This is the Yankees’ new life. They all gather at the pitcher’s mound, kneel, and say their prayers. A short workout follows, then they load into a couple of vans and head to Manhattan.

They talk to volunteer workers from all corners of the country at the Javits Center, and everyone is now a Yankees fan. Then it’s time for the two-mile ride over to the Armory on Lexington Avenue.

Cashman, Torre, and Levine are on the trip. So are coaches Willie Randolph, Lee Mazzilli, and Don Zimmer, and Yankees PR man Rick Cerrone. Jeter, Knoblauch, Bernie Williams, Scott Brosius, Mariano Rivera, and Paul O’Neill are all there, too.

No one moves when they park at the Armory. Out the windows they can see the fence surrounding the Armory covered with photos, each one a husband or wife, a son or daughter who is still missing. Damn, we’re just a baseball team. Of what use can we possibly be to these poor people?

Someone from the mayor’s office boards one of the vans. “We’ve told them you were here,” he says. “They really want you to come in.”

The group slowly enters the building, where they stop again, not sure what to say or do. A family member recognizes the Yankees contingent and waves for them to come inside, and many of the grieving walk over to greet them. Several pull out pictures of their loved ones wearing Yankees hats and pinstriped jerseys.

Others remain in a daze, staring at their visitors. Bernie Williams walks over to a woman, devastation etched on her face, tears welling in her eyes. “I don’t know what to say,” Bernie tells her softly. “But you look like you need a hug.” The two embrace, and both of them cry.

Torre meets a woman who says she was a student of Joe’s sister Marguerite, a nun at a Catholic school in Queens. A young boy, whose family is inquiring about his father, comes over to O’Neill, whose left foot is encased in a protective walking boot for the stress fracture he suffered eight days ago. The two talk for several minutes before parting, and O’Neill limps over to Cerrone.

“He wanted to know how I felt,” he tells Cerrone. “Can you believe that?”

When it’s time to leave, many of the Yankees embrace those who must now return to reality. “Thanks for coming, we won’t forget this,” they are told repeatedly. No, they weren’t intruders. Instead, they provided a few moments of welcome relief and a reminder that life will not always be as hard as it is today. The Yankees are emotionally drained but also uplifted by the knowledge that they could help people whose suffering is unimaginable.

It’s a day they won’t soon forget, either.

This is what the new normal looks like:

Hundreds of police officers—more in major cities—patrol outside and inside every baseball stadium and are joined by National Guard troops with rifles strapped across their backs. Bomb-sniffing dogs check the stands, tunnels, and locker rooms before games. Fans are told to leave coolers and backpacks home. Small bags and purses are allowed—but will be searched—and fans should not be alarmed if they’re patted down at the gates. Even players have to show identification before they’re granted entry.

Once everyone makes it inside, the games are part pledge of allegiance, part revival meeting, part celebration of America. Selig asks for a pregame moment of silence and instructs teams to play “God Bless America” instead of “Take Me Out to the Ball Game” at the 7th-inning stretch until further notice. He orders 400,000 small American flags to be handed out to fans for each team’s first game back, and an American flag patch is sewn into the back of every player’s cap and the neckline of his jersey.

Monday night’s games are filled with emotion. At Coors Field, Diamondbacks and Rockies players solemnly unfurl a giant American flag across the outfield. At Fenway Park fans lock arms and sing “New York, New York” during the 7th-inning stretch. Spontaneous chants of “U-S-A! U-S-A!” break out during games across the nation.

The Commissioner’s flags do not arrive in Pittsburgh in time for Monday night’s game with the Mets, so Pirates officials hand out I LOVE NY pins to everyone who comes to the hastily scheduled game. Players line both sidelines for the moment of silence; the Mets wear hats honoring police, firemen, and rescue workers and have “9-11-01” stitched into their right sleeves.

Pittsburgh fans also open their wallets, donating almost $100,000 during the game for a relief fund for the hundreds working at Ground Zero. The Mets win, 4–1, with the decision going to Brooklyn-born reliever John Franco. “For three hours, I hope we gave some pleasure to the guys who have been working,” says Franco, who now lives in Staten Island, home to many of the firemen and policemen lost on September 11. “We’re not playing just for ourselves, we’re playing for the whole city of New York.”

The Yankees return to play one night later in Chicago, where the atmosphere is again filled with emotion. White Sox fans give standing ovations to Yankees players as they come out for batting practice, and signs embracing New York—CHICAGO LUVS NY… NEW YORK, CHICAGO WEEPS WITH YOU… WE ARE ALL YANKEES—are held or hung in every corner of Comiskey Park. Both teams stand along the baselines and applaud policemen and firemen as they take positions ringing the infield. Officers solemnly hand candles to managers Joe Torre and Jerry Manuel.

“We love you, New York!” bellows one fan, breaking the pregame silence.

New York belts three homers and beats Chicago, 11–3. One night later, Roger Clemens makes history, pitching six strong innings in the Yankees’ 6–3 win to become the first pitcher to go 20–1. Clemens stands at the clubhouse door waiting for his teammates after the game, hand extended in thanks, but most Yankees hug the Rocket instead. Roger is smiling when he meets with reporters a few minutes later, but talks much more about firemen and policemen than fastballs and strikeouts.

“It doesn’t have the same feeling it would’ve had a couple of weeks ago,” Clemens says.

That same day, Paul Beeston calls Don Fehr and tells him contraction is off the table for next season. Fehr isn’t surprised. Americans were slow to embrace baseball after it shut down during the best of times, but now they’re turning to the game to reflect and recover in the worst of times. How can they shut down any city’s baseball team after this?

New York is still in mourning—and on edge—when the Braves arrive to play the Mets on September 21. It’s the first sporting event in the city since September 11, and talks of chemical and biological attacks circulate daily. Smoke still rises from fires burning below the rubble at Ground Zero, where hundreds of rescue workers continue to search the 16 acres of broken concrete and melted girders.

Giuliani’s confidence and determination have buoyed New Yorkers, and the mayor receives a thunderous ovation when he joins the Braves and Mets on the field at Shea Stadium later that night for pregame ceremonies. Diana Ross, dressed in black with a red, white, and blue ribbon over her heart, sings “God Bless America,” and the crowd of 41,235 cheers loudly when policemen, firemen, and rescue workers are introduced. The camera finds one fan holding a sign with just the right message: ONCE BITTER RIVALS, NOW UNITED!

Indeed, the spirit of national unity seems to have sapped the usual acrimony from tonight’s game. “If I looked at the game objectively,” the Braves’ Chipper Jones says, “I’d be rooting for the Mets.”

The Mets are again wearing the hats of the NYPD and FDNY. Manager Bobby Valentine and every player will wear these hats for the rest of the season. They also donate a night’s pay to a rescue workers’ relief fund, an amount in excess of $450,000.

Many of the players will talk of being in a daze when the game finally begins, no one more than Mets catcher Mike Piazza, whose apartment is five miles from where the Twin Towers stood just 10 days ago. Piazza lets a perfect throw home bounce off his glove in the 4th inning for the game’s first run, and the Braves hold a 2–1 lead when the catcher steps to the plate with one out and one on in the bottom of the 8th. He watches Steve Karsay’s first pitch sail down the middle of the plate untouched.

Piazza takes four slow steps back from the plate, trying hard to focus, then digs back in. Karsay throws another fastball, and this time Piazza swings and launches a majestic fly ball far over the left-center-field fence. The stands are literally shaking, fans hugging, jumping, and shouting, as Piazza rounds the bases. Never has a home run meant less about a game and more about a people than this one right now.

The game ends minutes later, and the fans listen to Ray Charles’ recording of “America the Beautiful” while the PA man reads the stats of the home team’s 3–2 win. The stands remain full, as if leaving will bring everyone back to reality, and renewed chants of “U-S-A! U-S-A!” follow one after another.

It’s a sentiment that continues at games everywhere as Americans struggle to find the balance between everyday life and new terror threats. The Yankees clinch another AL East title on September 25. One day later Diane Sawyer asks her Good Morning America audience, “Should you buy a gas mask?” in response to terror warnings. Sammy Sosa hits his 59th home run on September 27 and carries an American flag high over his head as he rounds the bases at Wrigley Field. Alex Rodriguez, the first shortstop to hit 50 homers, hits his 52nd and last of the season on October 4, the same day anthrax is discovered in the Florida offices of the tabloid newspapers National Enquirer and Star.

Bonds continues his chase of Mark McGwire’s home run mark, but most Americans are more focused on President Bush’s deliberations over when to take the country to war. The Giants star breaks McGwire’s record on October 5, hitting Nos. 71 and 72 in a Friday night game in San Francisco when much of the nation is asleep. He will finish with 73. Selig is not in attendance, choosing instead to be at Tony Gwynn’s last game in San Diego. Neither is Bonds’ father, who was in Connecticut for a charity golf event. (Despite the constant swirl of steroid rumors that engulfed Bonds all year long, the 37-year-old will be rewarded with a five-year, $90 million contract in January.)

The Yankees play their last four games in Tampa, where Centcom—United States Central Command—is meeting at MacDill Air Force Base to finalize plans for an invasion of Afghanistan. The Yankees lose the first three games to the Rays, but it’s not the final game of the season, on October 7, that has Steinbrenner’s attention. Like the rest of the nation, he’s far more concerned with the announcement his friend George Bush makes that afternoon.

“On my orders,” the President says while sitting stiffly at his desk in the White House Treaty Room, “the United States military has begun strikes against Al Qaeda terrorist training camps and military installations of the Taliban regime in Afghanistan.

“More than two weeks ago, I gave Taliban leaders a series of clear and specific demands. None of these demands were met. And now, the Taliban will pay a price.”

For the next four weeks, Americans will alternate between watching news footage of bombs falling on Kabul and following postseason baseball. Like most Americans, Steinbrenner figures this war will last no longer than the seven months Bush’s father took to drive Saddam Hussein out of Kuwait 10 years ago. And like most Americans, Steinbrenner could not be more wrong.

Only two teams in baseball history have ever won as many as four consecutive World Series. Joe McCarthy’s Yankees did it at the end of Lou Gehrig’s career and the beginning of Joe DiMaggio’s in 1936–39. Casey Stengel’s Yankees won five straight in 1949–53, when DiMaggio was handing off to Mickey Mantle. It was often said that rooting for those Yankees teams was like rooting for U.S. Steel. Or, as iconic Chicago columnist Mike Royko once wrote, “Hating the Yankees is as American as pizza pie and cheating on your income tax.”

But no one hates George Steinbrenner’s Yankees—not this year, not with the nation at war against the terrorists who attacked this team’s home city. To most Americans, this isn’t a baseball team trying to win its fourth straight World Series. No, these Yankees are the nation’s touchstone to a city still sorting through the rubble and mourning its dead. For once, rooting for the Yankees feels like the right thing to do.

Sadly, it doesn’t look like this new feeling will last very long. Oakland comes into Yankee Stadium to open the postseason and wins two tight, well-played games. No team has ever come back to win a best-of-five division series after losing the first two games at home. And these A’s, a power-laden team blessed with strong starting pitching and a star closer, beat the Yankees in six of nine regular-season games—all six wins coming in Oakland.

Just when it appears all may well be lost, it’s Jeter who pumps life back into his team, this time with a defensive play for the ages. It comes in Game 3, with the Yankees clinging to a 1–0 lead in the bottom of the 7th. Oakland’s Jeremy Giambi is on first after a two-out single. Terrence Long slams a double into the right-field corner, and when Shane Spencer’s throw sails over the heads of two cutoff men, Giambi has a clear path to home plate with the tying run.

Then suddenly there’s Jeter, flashing across the diamond, gloving Spencer’s errant throw on the dead run as he crosses the first baseline, then flipping the ball backhand to Jorge Posada. Giambi is so stunned to see Posada with the ball that he never slides, and the Yankees catcher tags the A’s outfielder a split second before Giambi’s foot hits home plate.

Properly inspired, Rivera closes out the game, then watches his teammates pound the A’s 9–2 the next day. Mo’s back on the mound for the final two innings of Game 5, striking out the last two A’s hitters to complete the comeback.

“These kids have been through so much emotion in this city,” says Steinbrenner, whose players meet with rescue workers and family members of those lost on September 11 before every home game. “Then to come up with this for the city is great.”

Steinbrenner’s team brushes aside Seattle—winners of a record-tying 116 regular-season games—in five games, and much of America is pulling for the Yankees to win a World Series title for the people of New York. Standing in the way are the Arizona Diamondbacks, a team just four years old and already a major concern for the game’s Commissioner. If Selig is worried about Steinbrenner spending too much of his money chasing after players, he may be even more worried about Arizona’s Jerry Colangelo signing players with money he doesn’t have.

Colangelo has spent more on Curt Schilling, Randy Johnson, Matt Williams, and his other stars than his team brings in—by far. The Diamondbacks are $48 million in the red after just three seasons, and if 10 players—including the entire five-man rotation—had not agreed to defer large chunks of their salaries back in February, the team would not have been able to meet its payroll. It’s this kind of recklessness Selig is determined to stop with the next contract.

But Colangelo’s deficit spending looks awfully shrewd when first Schilling and then Johnson dominates New York, holding the Yankees to one run and six hits as the Diamondbacks sweep the first two games in Arizona. Johnson, the player Cashman talked Steinbrenner out of acquiring, is especially masterful in Game 2, allowing just three hits and striking out every Yankees starter at least once in a 4–0 shutout.

The Series shifts to New York and a packed Yankee Stadium. Both teams have known for days that President Bush was making his third trip to this stricken city on October 30 to throw out the first pitch in Game 3, so everyone understands emotions will be running high. And when Attorney General John Ashcroft announces a day before the game that there’s credible evidence of another terrorist attack coming within the week, all of New York is on high alert.

Mayor Giuliani assigns 1,200 police officers to the game, the Secret Service again positions snipers on rooftops ringing the Stadium, and bomb-sniffing dogs search everywhere from grandstand seats to each locker in both clubhouses. The Stadium opens more than three hours early so fans can get through the airport-style metal detectors that have been installed at every gate. No one enters without identification.

When the Diamondbacks bus arrives at 5 p.m., each player—no matter how recognizable—is stopped at the entrance and searched with a metal-detecting wand before he can enter. Every Yankee goes through the same drill.

Air Force One touches down at Kennedy Airport, and the President’s helicopter flies by the Empire State Building, illuminated in red, white, and blue, before landing adjacent to Yankee Stadium in Macombs Dam Park at 7:25 p.m. Bush is escorted through secured tunnels in the bowels of the Stadium and into the umpires’ room, where he autographs baseballs while a Secret Service man is outfitted with umpire gear. The agent will be on the field with Bush.

An aide finds a batting cage, and Bush is practicing his pitching motion while wearing his bulletproof vest when Derek Jeter walks over to meet the President. “Hey, Mr. President, how are you doing?” Jeter says as the two men shake hands.

“Good,” Bush answers. “Good luck tonight.”

“I hear you’re throwing out the first pitch,” says Jeter. “Are you going to throw the ball from the mound or in front of the mound?”

“I think I’ll throw it from the base of the mound.”

“I wouldn’t do that if I was you, Mr. President,” says Jeter, his black game bat in hand. “You better throw it from the mound or they’ll boo you. This is Yankee Stadium.”

“Well, okay, I’ll throw it from the mound.”

The two men shake hands again, and Jeter begins to walk away, then he stops and looks over his shoulder. “Don’t bounce it, Mr. President,” he says. “They’ll boo you.”

Moments later, the President emerges from the Yankees dugout wearing a blue pullover with the letters FDNY stitched across the back, and 55,820 fans erupt in thunderous applause. The ovation grows louder as Bush climbs the mound and louder still when the President lifts his right arm high in the night air and gives a thumbs-up sign to the crowd.

Bush then winds up and throws a strike to Yankees catcher Todd Greene. “U-S-A” chants echo through the Stadium as the President strides off the field, waving to the crowd. He passes a sign that captures the crowd’s emotions—USA FEARS NOBODY. PLAY BALL—stops to shake hands with Giuliani and Senator John McCain, sitting beside the Yankees dugout, then disappears down the dugout steps.

It is a huge moment and a huge night. It is America standing tall against its enemies, and doing so by playing a game of baseball.

Bush is ushered to Steinbrenner’s box, where he spends the first three innings with the Yankees owner, Selig, and New York Governor George Pataki before returning to Washington. Clemens delivers an overpowering performance, giving up one run and striking out nine before handing a 2–1 lead to Rivera in the 8th. Mo strikes out four of the six batters he faces, securing the win and pulling the Yankees back into the Series.

If Game 3 was all about emotion, the next two games are nothing short of magic. With the Yankees trailing by two with two out in the 9th, Tino Martinez belts a two-run homer off Arizona’s ace reliever, 22-year-old Byung-Hyun Kim. An inning later, Jeter tags Kim for a game-winning home run to even the Series. The Yankees are down to their final out again the next night, trailing 2–0, when Scott Brosius takes Kim deep for another game-tying home run. Rookie Alfonso Soriano rifles a game-winning single in the 12th, and the Yankees are now the team of destiny.

The Series returns to Arizona, where the Diamondbacks beat up on Andy Pettitte—who’s unaware he is tipping his pitches—and crush the Yankees, 15–2, setting up a climactic Game 7. But there is another game going on behind the scenes. With the current contract expiring at midnight, November 7, labor negotiations restarted when the Series was in New York. And Selig, looking to gain the upper hand, had a surprise for Fehr.

The owners are once again considering contraction.

Fehr is stunned. Even floating the idea is a public relations disaster. He barely has time to think through the implications of Selig’s possible maneuver when Beeston tells him contraction is officially on the table minutes before Game 7. This time Fehr erupts.

“You fucking guys don’t know what the fuck you’re doing,” Fehr shouts. “This is crazy.”

The deciding game is a taut affair. The Diamondbacks push a run across against Clemens in the 6th, and the Yankees answer with a run off Schilling in the 7th. And when Alfonso Soriano hits a solo home run in the 8th, Torre calls on Rivera for a two-inning save to nail down the team’s fourth straight World Series title, the 27th in Yankees history. Rivera strikes out the side in the 8th but allows a leadoff single in the 9th, then throws a ball slickened by wet grass into center field on a sac bunt, putting runners on first and second with no outs.

Jay Bell bunts back to Rivera, who throws to third to nail the lead runner, then watches in disappointment when Brosius fails to throw to first to double up the slow-running Bell. When Tony Womack hits a broken-bat double down the right-field line, Game 7 is tied.

Rivera hits the next batter, and Torre pulls the infield in against Luis Gonzalez, Arizona’s 57-homer cleanup man. Gonzalez swings at an 0–1 pitch that breaks his bat and bloops the ball over the drawn-in infield. It lands no more than a foot onto the grass in left-center field, but it’s more than enough to score Bell with the winning run.

The Diamondbacks, not the Yankees, are the World Champions.

The Yankees season ends with a cracked bat and a furious George Steinbrenner, who is waiting for his team in the visitors locker room. Fox put up a stage when it appeared the Yankees would win, shaking the superstitious owner to the core. Enraged by his team’s loss, he stands at the door to the locker room, arms folded across his chest, glaring at each Yankee as they walk into the room. Rivera enters, meets Steinbrenner’s angry stare, then quickly looks away and finds his locker. Standing next to George, cringing and embarrassed, is his 31-year-old son Hal, who wishes he could walk away and hide.

After the last Yankee has walked through the clubhouse door, Steinbrenner seeks out Brian Cashman. He has a message for his young general manager. “We’ve done it your way,” the Boss tells Cashman. “Now it’s my turn.” He’ll give the GM and Torre new contracts this month, but he’ll make their lives miserable, too. No longer the team of destiny, the Yankees are headed back to the kind of dysfunction only the Boss can create.

Steinbrenner’s reaction aside, the Diamondbacks’ 9th-inning rally off the game’s premier closer is a fitting end to the most dramatic World Series anyone can remember. For two weeks, the Yankees and Diamondbacks enthralled a nation still worrying about terrorist strikes, anthrax, and a reeling economy. The social institution of baseball has delivered, providing Americans with a blanket of comfort and a path back to normalcy.

Just as Bud Selig hoped it would.

And yet two days later, the Commissioner tells America the social institution of baseball is closing the doors on two of its teams.

“No modern American sport has done this, but it makes no sense for Major League Baseball to be in markets that generate insufficient local revenues,” Selig announces after the owners vote 28–2 to approve contraction. “The teams to be contracted have a long record of failing to operate a viable major league franchise.”

Fehr is in his Manhattan office when Selig delivers the news. After all these years, very little the Commissioner does surprises him. The game’s labor contract expires tomorrow at midnight, but its rules still apply the next day when Fehr files a grievance, contending that contraction violates baseball’s basic agreement with its players.

Selig refuses to announce the two teams slated for elimination, and Fehr is pretty sure he knows why. The Expos are a given; Montreal drew all of 642,745 fans this season. And sources tell Fehr that Twins owner Carl Pohlad has agreed to take the money—closer to $150 million than the $250 million the media reports—and run. But it’s virtually impossible to eliminate two teams in time for the 2002 season: the grievance is sure to go to arbitration, which will take months, MLB’s already sent out a schedule for all 30 teams, and in September the Twins signed a contract that locks them into playing in the Metrodome for another year.

Fehr sees this announcement for what it is: a threat to get a new stadium in Minnesota and a hammer to get concessions from the union at the bargaining table.

That Selig would make this bluff now is a bit tough to stomach. It’s not the first time he’s thrown the entire sport under the bus to get his way—this is, after all, the man who canceled the World Series in pursuit of a salary cap—but the timing borders on despicable. It’s been a long, tense six weeks living and working in New York, which continues to look, feel, and even smell like a war zone. It’s unsettling to look down 5th Avenue, still shrouded in dust, and not see the Twin Towers.

The Yankees postseason had given New Yorkers something to rally around, just as the World Series had shown the nation—and the world—that Americans could get on with their lives. Selig is right, baseball is more than a game, and Fehr is almost offended by the insensitivity of the Commissioner’s decision.

He sits down at his computer and types out a new press release.

“Over this last season, and especially over the last several weeks, we have been reminded vividly of the special place baseball holds in America,” Fehr writes. “This makes it all the more unfortunate that the clubs would choose this moment to dash the hopes of so many of its fans.”