One of my mentors, the late Pulitzer Prize–winning New York Times sports columnist and author Dave Anderson, told me years ago that writing a book was like scaling a distant mountain peak. “A long, step-by-step climb,” Dave said. “But, when you’re done, the view from the top is great.”
I would add that step by step you have to rely on so many others for a boost in the journey to the top.
In recognition of that, my first thank-you goes to the dozens upon dozens of players, coaches, managers and team executives in baseball who consented to be interviewed for this book across nearly two years. Baseball is a community, and there is a reason why baseball locker rooms are called clubhouses. The term reflects the usually sociable atmosphere of those quarters, especially before games and during spring training, which is when I did all of my interviews.
Over and over, I asked people to recall their times from 1990 to 1995, at home and on the road, in clubhouses, hotels and dugouts around the country in an attempt to retrace the story of those Yankees teams. I was fortunate that so many were happy to be transported back in time.
Buck Showalter sat for several long interviews and was always thoughtful, perceptive and funny in his recollections. His wife, Angela, did the same, offering her own valuable, off-the-field perspective.
Gene “Stick” Michael, one of the wisest, wittiest and most popular men in baseball, was gracious with his time, taking me back to his childhood and on into the twenty-first century of major league baseball, too. In the more than thirty years I knew Stick, every conversation was illuminating, entertaining and somehow made you walk away feeling a little more cheerful. Stick died unexpectedly in September 2017. In one of our final conversations, he told me he was looking forward to reading this book.
“So don’t screw it up,” he said with a laugh.
I’m going to miss hearing his critique.
I am in debt to many lifelong baseball men who willingly recounted their memories, sometimes in multiple interviews, including Bill Livesey, Mitch Lukevics and Brian Cashman.
Hal Steinbrenner, George’s son and now the Yankees’ chief executive, does not accede to many prolonged interviews, but he amiably agreed to a lengthy, revealing talk about the early nineties and the impact of those days on his father and the team—then and now.
Susan Canavan, my editor at Houghton Mifflin Harcourt, enthusiastically threw her support behind the book’s premise from the very beginning, a boost like no other. She also helped develop some of the dominant narrative themes: revival, ingenuity, perseverance in adversity. That is one of the reasons that so many authors love working with Susan. Also at Houghton Mifflin Harcourt, I had the benefit of scrupulous, deft editing by Larry Cooper and the dedicated assistance of Jenny Xu and Mary Cait Milliff. My longtime friend and New York Times colleague Patty LaDuca pored over the manuscript to check facts and offer insight on improvements.
My agent, Scott Waxman, once again did what he does best: listened, gave sage advice, then quietly and efficiently made sure a prospective book became a reality.
Jeff Idelson, the president of the Baseball Hall of Fame, and others at the hall, especially communications director Craig Muder, and John Horne and Cassidy Lent in the research library, leaped through various hoops to help me access their vast files of research and photos.
The Yankees’ Jason Zillo, though ceaselessly on the move, still managed to line up interviews for me or find someone’s phone number whenever I asked. Kristen Hudak with the Baltimore Orioles offered similar assistance, as did Peter Chase of the Chicago Cubs.
As an aside, I just want to say that I don’t know how anyone wrote baseball nonfiction before the advent of baseballreference.com. It is a research tool so instantly valuable, it almost seems like a magician’s trick.
My editors at the New York Times have always helped guide my career. I’m very fortunate to have been recruited to the paper in the mid-1990s by the one and only Neil Amdur. His successors as sports editor, Tom Jolly and Jason Stallman, helped make me a better reporter and writer, as has one of their colleagues, Randy Archibold. Jeff Roth, the Times’s photo morgue maven, was of great help when I begged for his wisdom.
Covering baseball in the 1990s, I was surrounded by scribes who went on to become some of the best-known baseball faces, voices and writers in the country, including Jack Curry, Michael Kay, Bill Madden, Ian O’Connor, Joel Sherman, Claire Smith and Tom Verducci. In my research for this book, it’s been edifying and a pleasure to go back and read how intrepid and clear-sighted their work was even when the Yankees were going bad. Like the team they were covering, perhaps we all should have seen the greatness coming.
On a separate note, Michael Kay’s thoughtful CenterStage interview show, where scores of Yankees have appeared, became must-see television.
As she has done for my previous books, my wife, Joyce, took over as chief researcher without being asked. She produced and cataloged a treasure trove of material—thousands of newspaper stories, correspondence, videotapes and photos. I start with the idea for a book, and Joyce’s research makes the words come alive on every single page.
My children, Anne D., Elise and Jack, were frequently enlisted into the project, contributing in myriad ways, including brainstorming a book title. As the youngest and the only one still in college and (sort of) living at home, Jack was put to work assembling a detailed, methodical timeline of every major event or substantial occurrence in baseball from 1990 to 1995. I bet he’s now the rare fan his age who truly grasps how much wild-card playoff teams changed the face of baseball.
Most of all, I am forever grateful for a family that willingly treats any major project within the household as a project for all of us.
That’s how you get to the mountaintop.