IN THEIR FIRST matchup after the 1994 All-Star Game, the Yankees swept four games against the Seattle Mariners, whose young, promising hitters were easily manhandled by the Yankees’ wily, veteran pitching staff.
The Yankees did get another look at Seattle’s newly improved six-foot-ten left-handed pitcher, Randy Johnson. In seven major league seasons, Johnson had always thrown about 100 miles an hour, in an era when no one threw that hard. But he had also led the league in walks three times. In 1994, Johnson had learned to get his breaking ball over, and his walks were down.
The Yankees still found a way to beat him this time, peppering Johnson for eight runs in barely more than six innings. But Johnson made an impression, one that lingered. “If Randy keeps fine-tuning that breaking ball, he’s going to become a nightmare,” Mattingly said.
In the meantime, for the Yankees, the dreamlike 1994 season continued. They won 10 of 11 games on a sojourn through Seattle, Anaheim and Oakland, a grueling excursion that usually tests and grates on East Coast–based teams. But the Yankees treated their West Coast swing like a blissful retreat, scoring 90 runs, smacking 19 home runs and batting .315 on the trip. The Yankees record was 60-36, the best in baseball, and they had been in first place for 78 consecutive days.
“The plan was working perfectly,” Willie Randolph, the third-base coach, recalled years later. “Stick had said the goal in ’94 was to have a mature professionalism in the clubhouse and on the field. As he said, ‘Guys more in line with how Mattingly played the game.’ And you could really see that. We now had players who were grinders. Guys who would work an at-bat and take a pitch. They were playing unselfish, team-based ball.
“All teams have their own style—a certain way they play. But Stick and Buck and the other leaders of the team knew they wanted high on-base-percentage guys, and you hadn’t heard too much of that before ’93 or ’94. They did a great job of going out and finding guys who fit into that philosophy.
“And as guys saw the results, they understood what was going on and really bought into the plan. I keep saying it was the Yankee Way like it’s some kind of magic formula, but we did have a certain approach that was a little bit different than other clubs. We were able to grind, to beat people up and to wear people out. We got into other teams’ bullpens and won a lot of games. It was all working.”
No other American League team was seriously threatening the Yankees’ incandescence. The top team in the AL West, the Texas Rangers, were five games under .500. Baltimore trailed the Yankees by six games in the AL East. The Chicago White Sox were on top of the AL Central, but they had been plagued by inconsistencies. The White Sox had just one feared hitter in their lineup, the future Hall of Famer Frank Thomas. The pitching staff was suspect, with a team ERA over 4.00.
The startling Yankees were the class of the league. “We just had every part of our act together—I don’t know if I’d ever been on a team that hummed along like that,” Jimmy Key said many years later. And remember, in his career, Key was on two World Series winning teams and four other playoff teams.
“The ’94 team had a potent combination of talent,” Key continued. “There was timely hitting, versatile starting staff and a very good bullpen. We had tough guys and we had a couple of young rising stars like Bernie Williams who mixed in well with the older vets like Boggs, Mattingly and Stanley. Paul O’Neill was really finding his groove. The coaching staff had a lot of experience—Randolph, Clete Boyer and young guys like Butterfield and Glenn Sherlock.
“And Buck? Buck was a mastermind, up until the wee hours plotting for each game.”
In the middle of the Yankees’ West Coast swing in 1994, the New York Times beat writer Jack Curry published an absorbing account that took the reader into the complex baseball strategies and tactics that Showalter pondered every day. The piece covered a single game against the Oakland Athletics and their gifted manager, Tony La Russa, who was regarded as baseball’s resident genius—and with whom Showalter had tangled in a near brawl on the field during the 1992 season, Showalter’s rookie year as manager.
Curry, a future Yankees broadcaster, wasn’t in the dugout with Showalter, but he met with Showalter at length before or after the game, going over the manager’s scouting, scheming and in-game machinations.
An early revelation in the story has Showalter studying videotape of Oakland’s starting pitcher Todd Van Poppel the night before the game. Showalter noticed a pattern to how and when Van Poppel threw a fastball. On the mound and staring at the catcher’s signals, Van Poppel usually nodded his head once, then shook his head once, then nodded affirmatively again.
Showalter surmised that Van Poppel was saying yes to the call of a fastball, no to a specific location and yes to the next location.
Over and over, Van Poppel repeated the sequence, almost always unhappy with the first location when his catcher called for the fastball. Showalter also noticed that Van Poppel started nearly every batter off with a fastball.
The next day, Showalter communicated his intel to the Yankees hitters—if they saw the yes-no-yes sequence, expect a fastball. Van Poppel did go through that progression on the mound in the first inning of the game while pitching to Bernie Williams, who crushed a Van Poppel fastball for a deep drive that was caught at the center-field wall.
In the third inning, Van Poppel did it again, and Yankees designated hitter Danny Tartabull jumped on the fastball to slam a three-run homer to give the Yankees a 3–1 lead.
An inning earlier, Showalter’s advance prep might have saved the Yankees a run. Watching video of the previous Yankees-Athletics game, he saw that Oakland base runners attempted to steal second base after Yankees pitchers threw to first base twice.
When starter Sterling Hitchcock walked Oakland’s Scott Brosius, Showalter instructed Hitchcock to throw to first base three times. On the third throw over, Brosius had already begun his break for second, but Mattingly relayed the throw and Brosius was tagged out at second base. It turned out to be a big out when Hitchcock walked two more batters in the inning.
By the fourth inning, the Yankees led 5–2 and had Williams at first base and Tartabull on third. Showalter noticed that Oakland middle infielders were playing deep and not doing something customary when there’s a runner on first base. Normally, the shortstop would hold his glove in front of his face to exchange a covert signal that indicated who would cover second base on a steal.
But if they weren’t bothering to signal, Showalter knew the infielders were instead planning to play so deep that neither would cover second base. With a Yankee runner on third base, La Russa might also have decided not to risk a Yankee double steal.
La Russa’s motivation didn’t matter to Showalter; all that mattered was his suspicion that the Yankees were being given a free base. Williams broke from first on the next pitch and cruised into second base standing up, since no Athletics infielder moved from his position and there was no throw from the catcher.
A single promptly extended the Yankees lead by two more runs. They romped to an easy victory.
Three days later, on July 28, the 31 players on the players’ union executive board voted unanimously to go on strike if the terms of a new collective bargaining agreement could not be reached with the owners by August 12.
The players’ decision cast an ominous cloud on all future games, because everyone knew the talks between representatives of the owners and players had been at a stalemate for months. There weren’t even any new negotiating meetings scheduled before August 12.
The chief issue remained a per-team cap on player salaries, a system already adopted by the NBA and the NFL.
The players felt a strike was the only bargaining leverage they had against the owners, who could wait for the existing labor agreement to expire at the end of 1994 and then unilaterally impose new work rules, including a salary cap.
By striking in August, the players imperiled the 1994 postseason, which, not insignificantly, put in jeopardy the $140 million to $170 million in revenue those postseason games would make for baseball’s owners. But collectively, players would lose more—as much as $180 million in unpaid salary. The players, however, had a large strike fund to reimburse the rank and file.
Thirteen years earlier, there had been similar labor strife in the middle of a season, and the issue then had also been a salary cap that the owners wanted to impose. In 1981, a fifty-day strike interrupted the season, and when it was settled (without a salary cap), the postseason was held, albeit with an extra playoff round to account for first-half division champions and second-half division winners.
With good reason, the players in 1994 may have expected an outcome comparable to 1981. But that would prove to be a serious miscalculation.
Unlike 1981, when the owners had only a meager amount of strike insurance, baseball’s ownership in 1994 came to the bargaining table well prepared financially. Intent on a long fight for a salary cap, the owners had for years been funding a plentiful strike insurance policy.
In 1981, the labor impasse ended when the owners ran out of strike insurance. In 1994, when it came to contingency plans, the sides were more evenly matched.
In the Yankees’ clubhouse the day the strike date was set, the mood was unusually glum. “I’ve lived through a bunch of these strikes and lockouts,” Mattingly said. “But this one feels different. It feels worse.”
The team was tense and tempers flared in that night’s game as pitcher Jim Abbott, normally poised on the field, jawed at the home plate umpire over balls and strikes. Shortstop Randy Velarde slammed his glove to the infield dirt after an error. Paul O’Neill, who never needed an excuse to throw a tantrum, went hitless and stormed into the clubhouse, where he destroyed a wooden chair with his bat.
“We better settle this strike,” Showalter said later. “I don’t know if we’ll have any furniture left with Paul O’Neill in that mood.”
But the Yankees did not let up, extending their lead in the AL East. On August 3, they won their sixth straight game, which assured them the first-place spot in the division on August 12.
The team did not pop any champagne afterward.
“It’s not a celebratory occasion at all,” Mattingly said. “We all want a settlement. We all want a 162-game season. I don’t think anyone in this clubhouse wants an asterisk beside this season.”
Though not pleased, George Steinbrenner was at least impressed. He had been pleading with Showalter and Gene Michael to do whatever they could to get the Yankees into first place on August 12. Steinbrenner remembered 1981 when a first-place finish on the day of the strike meant an automatic berth in the postseason.
Steinbrenner, like most at the time, felt sure that even if there was a strike, it would be settled in time to continue with the baseball playoffs and World Series, which had been held every year since 1905. Even two world wars had not disrupted the playing of the World Series. “Our game has some serious issues right now,” Steinbrenner said. “But none of them will be made better by depriving baseball and baseball fans of October playoff baseball.”
Michael had been the Yankees’ manager in 1981. More than thirty-five years later, he said he approached 1994 just as he had 1981. In both cases, he expected the season would eventually be finished with a World Series champion. “To me, ’81 and ’94 felt the same,” he said. “I kept telling Showalter: ‘Don’t think about the strike. Don’t think about the “what ifs” that other people are throwing out there. Just keep winning. Just pile up the victories, because we’ll need them when we resume the season.’
“I was convinced and I think Buck was convinced. No World Series? It was inconceivable.”
On August 11, the day before the strike deadline, Mattingly brought his two sons—Preston, who was six years old, and Taylor, nine—to Yankee Stadium five hours before the scheduled game that night against Toronto.
Mattingly hit grounders to his kids in the outfield and played catch with them. He wanted them to play on that field at least one more time.
“This could be my last game,” Mattingly said.
He did not mean his last game in 1994.
“Who knows what’s going to happen?” he said. “I may never play again. You never know what’s going to happen.”
Seated at his locker, Mattingly, whose 6,540 at-bats without a postseason appearance were a franchise record, packed a cardboard box with belongings before the game.
“Maybe I never play in the World Series or the playoffs,” he said. “If that’s my fate, then so be it. But as much as it makes me sick right now, I don’t think we’re doing the wrong thing by striking. I know it’s not popular with the fans, and it shouldn’t be. But at the same time, fans don’t understand the issues.
“It’s not about how much money any of us are making. It’s about protecting the future players. Guys older than me went on strike to ensure the generation of players in this clubhouse now—my generation—would have some kind of free agency available to us. I have to do the same thing for the guys coming after us. We have to do what’s right for all the players even if it’s hard right now, since we’re in first place.”
Mattingly was right that the baseball strike was not popular with fans. The New York Post sent a reporter into the bleachers for that night’s game and heard an earful of animus directed at the players and owners. “These players are very selfish,” said Adam Droz, a twenty-one-year-old college student whose bleacher ticket cost $6.50. “I’ve got no pity for them or the owners.”
The scene in the Yankee clubhouse before the game looked familiar, except it usually happened in October. Players were exchanging off-season telephone numbers and baggage was being packed. Lockers were emptied and baseballs were being autographed, an end-of-season ritual when each player would customarily take a box of signed baseballs home to donate to charitable causes.
There were conversations about what to do next. Some players were considering the rarest of things: a midsummer vacation with the family. Danny Tartabull was heading to a beach resort, but would not divulge which one. “I don’t need ESPN following me there to talk about the strike,” he said.
Wade Boggs wanted to go fishing. Jim Leyritz would return to Florida to finalize divorce proceedings. Showalter also planned to be in Florida. He had promised his daughter Allie that he would drive her to her first day of second grade. “There’s one positive about all of this,” he said.
The Yankees lost that night’s game to the Blue Jays, their fifth defeat in the last six games. Their record was 70-43. The Yankee Stadium public address system had played several songs that spoke to the mood of the 37,333 in attendance: the Beatles’ “We Can Work It Out,” Elton John’s “Don’t Go Breakin’ My Heart” and finally REM’s “The End of the World as We Know It.”
Lawyers for the owners and representatives of the players’ union did not meet on August 11. Their positions unchanged, they had little to discuss. The strike, the fifth in baseball, began as soon as the last game of the night, Seattle at Oakland, concluded. Ken Griffey Jr. hit his fortieth home run in that game. Earlier, San Diego’s Tony Gwynn had two hits to raise his batting average to .394. San Francisco’s Matt Williams had smacked 43 homers.
Paul O’Neill’s .359 batting average was the highest in the American League. The first-place teams were the Yankees, Chicago White Sox, Texas Rangers, Montreal Expos, Cincinnati Reds and Los Angeles Dodgers. Montreal had the best record, 74-40.
George Steinbrenner had the most to lose of any owner, since postseason games in New York generated the largest revenues available in baseball, as well as the most bountiful sponsorship dollars in the next season. He held a small meeting with reporters outside his Yankee Stadium office after the August 11 game.
He began by insisting he was in solidarity with the owners. He then spent a fair amount of time disagreeing with many of the stances taken by the owners’ chief negotiator, Richard Ravitch, especially the notion that the owners needed a salary cap to restore competitive balance to the game. Ravitch had repeatedly informed the players that without a salary cap, teams from large markets with higher payrolls would dominate smaller-market teams with lesser payrolls. But, Steinbrenner said, “it’s very difficult for Ravitch to argue competitive balance when Montreal, with the second-lowest payroll, has baseball’s best record. I don’t know how that helps the case for a salary cap.”
A handful of owners sided with Steinbrenner, but the majority did not. A hard-line, influential coalition of owners had drawn a line in the sand. They were tired of giving in and tired of losing at the end of every labor impasse. To them, 1994 would be the year that the owners finally stood together and won meaningful concessions from the players.
At any cost.
As Steinbrenner said in a 1998 interview at lunch in his Tampa hotel: “There was a bitterness and a resentment boiling within some owners in 1994. You could not, and would not, change their minds.”
Showalter was the last player or coach in the Yankee clubhouse on the night of August 11. “I am in a stage of denial right now,” he said as he waited to leave. “Every time I think about closing that door behind me and what might happen after that, I get a lump in my throat.”
Twenty-four years later, Showalter had no trouble recalling the moment.
“You know when you think something isn’t real, like you’re having a nightmare?” he asked. “That’s what it was like. I was almost dazed. I walked to my car in the parking lot, and I sat in it for like fifteen minutes. I really thought someone, a security guard or a clubhouse guy, was going to come running out to tell me that there was a settlement and the strike was off. I didn’t want to leave.
“Eventually, I started the car and headed home. The next thing I remember is waking up in the middle of the night. I still thought I was having a nightmare.”