TWO DAYS AFTER the Yankees had climbed back into a tie for first place with the Toronto Blue Jays, they traveled Texas to face the Rangers. With the Yankees leading by a run in the seventh inning, Bernie Williams broke in quickly on a fly ball hit by Julio Franco.
On the swing, Franco had broken his bat, and the sound of splintering wood had fooled Williams, who suspected a bloop fly to shallow center field. But as Williams raced forward, Franco’s drive instead carried over his head. As the ball rolled to the wall with Williams chasing after it, the tying and winning runs came across the plate in a 5–4 Texas victory.
It was the second consecutive Yankees loss. When reporters entered the visiting clubhouse after the game, they saw George Steinbrenner consoling Williams at his locker.
“He’s a young player and he’s got a lot ahead of him,” Steinbrenner said. “If we’re going to be there, he’s going to be there with us.”
The endorsement was appreciated; the Yankees still lost their next two games as well.
The team made a brief rally with two wins in the next three games, but a disastrous Abbott outing led to a 15–5 drubbing that stifled whatever momentum the Yankees had been building. It was only eleven days since Abbott’s no-hitter, a blissful, sunny day in the Bronx. On the road in Milwaukee and playing in a spitting rain, the Yankees had fallen three games behind Toronto.
Then came a four-game losing streak. Starting pitchers Mélido Pérez and Scott Kamieniecki were also forced to miss starts because of injuries. Their rookie replacements were not up to the pressure of a pennant chase. O’Neill had badly bruised his left elbow after crashing into an outfield wall in pursuit of a line drive and would miss several games. Mattingly was batting .221 since August, and the bullpen had blown three saves.
In mid-September, a story surfaced in the New York Post that Steinbrenner had been badgering Showalter with second-guessing phone calls throughout the Yankees’ recent slide in the standings. The next day, other New York newspapers confirmed Steinbrenner’s meddling and added another thunderbolt to fuel the news cycle: Showalter was so annoyed by the owner’s harangues he might resign at the end of the season.
“I don’t know where these things come from,” Showalter said, “but they are totally untrue and unfounded.”
Nonetheless, the Yankees kept sinking in the standings. By late September, they could only catch the Blue Jays if they won their last nine games. It didn’t happen.
When the Yankees were eliminated from the pennant chase on September 27—Toronto won its third successive AL East—Showalter refused to discuss whether the season had been a success overall, despite the fact that the team was on its way to a second-place finish. “I know what the goals are in this organization,” he said. “Success? I’m not going to use that word.”
But others were doing it for him. With an 88-74 record, the Yankees had their best results in six seasons. If baseball’s wild-card playoff system, established in 1994, had been in place that year, the Yankees would have been the first wild-card qualifier.
The 1993 Yankees had also drawn more than 2.4 million spectators, which was an increase of about 700,000 fans from the previous year. The team’s television ratings had risen to heights not seen since 1985, a jump that had the MSG Network and New York’s WPIX battling bitterly over broadcast rights for the 1994 season.
The Yankees, seemingly in a death spiral just two years earlier, were relevant again, even if they had fallen short of a division title.
Mike Stanley made note of the difference from year to year. “In September last year, there were foul balls into the upper deck and they would clatter and bounce around and set off a mad scramble for the baseball,” he said. “This year, people were catching the ball on the fly because the upper deck was filled.
“There was a buzz in the stadium again. There was a buzz in the city about the Yankees when you walked the streets.”
Stanley was one of the big surprises, batting .305 with a .389 on-base percentage, an impressive number for a slow-footed catcher. Stanley led all the starters with a .923 OPS. An even bigger surprise was left-handed outfielder Dion James, whom Michael signed on the cheap as a free agent for less than $400,000. James was meant to be a steady reserve and insurance against injury, but he ended up playing in 115 games and batted .332 with a .390 on-base percentage.
Boggs proved that 1992 was the fluke he said it was and again batted over .300 while driving in 59 runs. O’Neill, playing every day by season’s end, hit .311 and had 75 RBI.
Other Michael and Showalter experiments with the lineup paid dividends, too. Danny Tartabull complained about being relegated to the role of everyday designated hitter, but he thrived at the plate with 31 homers and 102 RBI. Mostly as a backup, Mike Gallego batted .283 with 10 home runs and 54 runs batted in. Another bench player, the longtime Yankees farmhand Jim Leyritz, hit .309 with 14 homers and 53 RBI.
The Yankees brain trust also guessed right about which of the “Williams brothers” to promote to a starter in 1993. Gerald Williams hit just .149 in 42 games. Bernie Williams slumped badly in the last month of the season when he hit under .240, but for the season overall he was a .268 hitter with 12 homers and 68 RBI.
“My stats were OK but they didn’t reveal how much growth there had been as a player,” Williams said, looking back at 1993 more than twenty years later. “That was my first full season in the majors, and that’s a big adjustment—at least it was for me. It’s the moment when you stop wondering if you belong at that level and become convinced you belong at that level. But there’s still a long progression. It takes time. I improved in incremental steps.”
Mattingly had a reasonably healthy season, driving in 84 runs with 17 homers and a .291 batting average. “But the biggest thing was, it was fun to come to the ballpark every day,” he recalled. “We had reversed so many of the things that had brought us down in 1990 or 1991. Yeah, we fell short in ’93. But so what? We were getting better and better and we knew it.
“Most of all, other teams knew it.”
On the mound in 1993, Abbott’s record was disappointing (11-14), but he remained injury-free and started 32 games, two fewer than the Yankees ace, Jimmy Key, who had a sparkling 18-6 record with an ERA of 3.00. As both a starter and a reliever, Bob Wickman appeared in 41 games and won 14 of 18 decisions. The thirty-six-year-old closer Steve Farr saved 25 games despite a series of arm troubles.
“What I liked about the 1993 team was how gritty and defiant they were,” Showalter remembered many years later. “We were neck and neck with the Blue Jays for about two months and they would win their second straight World Series that year. People kept expecting us to collapse because we didn’t have the deepest pitching and we were playing plenty of inexperienced kids. But we hung in there. And you know why? Because we had guys who stuck together and fought for each other. It was a different feel—different than even one year earlier. I felt like the plan was working.”
Michael, too, was convinced it was working. “Just look up the 1993 team’s on-base percentage,” he said with a grin in 2017. “I won’t tell you; just go look it up. And when you do, remember how important I said on-base percentage would be to our production.”
As a team, the on-base percentage that year was .353, the second best in the majors. Just three years earlier, when Michael was named the new general manager, the team’s on-base percentage had been .300, the worst in the major leagues.
After the 1993 season, Showalter narrowly missed winning the American League Manager of the Year award, which went to Gene Lamont of the White Sox, who won the AL West. Steinbrenner said his manager—“Bucky,” he called him—should have won the award. He also agreed to sign Gene Michael to a new general manager’s contract.
“We knew we had more work to do, but we knew things had turned around and everyone could see that,” Michael said. “The big league club was a good team. And the minor leagues were still stocked.” Baseball America ranked the Yankees’ farm system fourth.
“People throughout our organization felt pretty good,” said Bill Livesey. “Things were looking up.”
In early October, Livesey and Lukevics made another plea to Brien Taylor, trying to convince him that he would benefit from one more off-season instructional camp in Tampa. “We said, ‘Brien, you don’t even have to pitch, just go there to work on fielding fundamentals and your pickoff move to first base,’” Livesey said. “And frankly, all our minor league guys usually benefited from staying a little busy in the off-season. Although Brien was not someone we ever worried about off the field. Quiet as a mouse. But young. Still young.”
Taylor once again refused to visit the instructional camp. “I want to rest and take it easy,” he told the Yankees.