1996 World Series: My Look Back

As I mentioned in my Dave Winfield post a couple weeks back, I began following the Yankees closely in 1988. In many ways, it was a watershed season for the Yankees. It was the last of Billy Martin's five tours of duty as Yankee manager and the last time Lou Piniella appeared in a Yankee uniform. It was the swan song for co-captains and longtime Yankees Ron Guidry and Willie Randolph - the last two connections to the glory years of the late 70s and early 80s, and essentially the last hurrah for Winfield as well. It was also Rickey Henderson's final full season in pinstripes.

Don Mattingly had another very good year, but it wasn't quite as good as the lofty standards he had set from 1984-87, and he failed to finish in the top ten in MVP voting for the first time since his rookie year. He would be productive again in 1989, but only show flashes of his former brilliance thereafter.

In the broadcast booth, Bill White was calling his 18th and final season of Yankee baseball with Phil Rizzuto on WPIX, leaving after the season to become President of the National League. On the cable side, it was the Yankees' final season on SportsChannel before moving to MSG Network the following year and ushering in a new era for baseball TV contracts.

On June 13, 1988, the Yankees were 39-21, playing .650 ball and leading the AL East by 3 games. They went 46-55 the rest of the way, finishing at 85-76, only 3.5 games out of first but fifth in the seven team division. For the next several years, that would be the highwater mark of my Yankee fandom, at a time when to me Yankee baseball was most important thing on the face of the planet.

1989 started a string of four consecutive losing seasons for the Yanks, lowlighted by an American League worst 67-95 (.414) season in 1990, the Yankees fifth worst winning percentage in their history and the worst since 1913. The only MLB team worse that year was the Braves at 65-97.

As I touched in the Game 6 recap, things began to change in 1993. General Manager Gene Michael and manager Buck Showalter had changed the culture of the team, bringing in character veterans like Key, O'Neill, Boggs, Mike Stanley, and Mike Gallego and fostering the development of young talent like Bernie Williams, Jim Leyritz, Sterling Hitchcock, and Bob Wickman.

The 1993 team spent a record 21 days tied for first place without ever being able to get ahead of the mighty Blue Jays. In the last season of the two division format, the Yankees finished with the third best record in the league, but were left to watch the postseason on TV.

In 1994 the Yankees were 70-43 with the best record in the AL and second best in baseball when the strike hit and Bud Selig and the recently retired Donald Fehr elected to leave the biggest black mark on the game's history since the Black Sox Scandal.

In 1995 the Yankees won the innaugural Wild Card and jumped out to a commanding 2-0 lead over Seattle in the best of five ALDS. They then lost three straight in Seattle, Games 4 and 5 in heartbreaking fashion.

That offseason the team changed drastically: Showalter and Michael were gone. Mattingly left the game, holding off on official retirement for a year. Stanley was traded to the Rockies. They were replaced by Joe Torre, Bob Watson, Tino Martinez, and Joe Girardi. The roster was peppered with young unproven players like Derek Jeter, Mariano Rivera, and Andy Pettitte. I wasn't quite sure what to make of this new guard.

But as the 1996 season unfolded, it became apparent that there was something special about the team. By the time the World Series rolled around I had just turned 16. While my suffering certainly wasn't as bad as what fans of other teams have had to endure, I was elated to see my favorite team in the World Series for the first time in my conscious memory. After a rain delay pushed Game 1 back a day, the first two games amounted to a beatdown and stomach punch. Suddenly the luster of just being there had worn off. But the Series was about to change, for the Yankees and for me.

On the morning of Game 3, Tuesday October 22nd, I boarded a plane for Washington, D.C. A teacher had nominated me to attend a leadership conference and my parents were insistent that I go. I was less than enthused about it to begin with, but now, as it interfered with my watching of the Yankees in the World Series, I was postively pissed about it.

Seeing as the conference entailed taking two hundred some horny teenagers and boarding them together for five nights, the organizers figured it best to have every moment of every day planned from roughly 7 AM to 10 PM, so as not to allow any time for extracurriculars. It didn't leave much time for watching baseball either. My memories of Games 3 through 5 are sketchy at best. I was able to catch a bit of the late innings. I remember the Boggs walk. I remember the dramatic catches by Tim Raines and Paul O'Neill to end Games 4 and 5, O'Neill screaming and slapping his hand against the fence in right-center, as his torn hamstring just barely held up. But I missed all of Game 3. I missed the Leyritz home run. My team was charging like a freight train and after waiting nine years for it, I couldn't even enjoy it.

Game 6 fell on Saturday night, my final night in D.C. I phoned my parents numerous times that day, making sure the VCR would be running. Meanwhile, the conference bussed us all off to some hotel in D.C. for a farewell dance. I kept sneaking out. I saw the Girardi triple while hanging out in the hotel bar. The chaperones came and pulled me out of there, but I snuck off again. I found the hotel's weight room. The door was locked, but miraculously the TV was on and it was showing the game. I stood there, peering through the window. I saw Grissom get thrown out at second and Cox get tossed. Shortly thereafter, the power to the weight room went out. As I wandered the hotel searching for another TV, I began considering taking to the streets of D.C., trying to find a bar or someplace where I could watch the game.

It wasn't to be. The pesky chaperones hunted me down again, and this time I was a marked man. Like a prisoner on suicide watch, I was brought back to the dance and placed under constant surveillance. There were no radios there, no TVs, and cell phones had yet to proliferate the earth. I was stranded.

Later in the evening, as Billy Idol's version of "Mony, Mony" played, the DJ dropped the volume and got on the mic. "I have some bad news," he announced, "The Yankees have just won the World Series". I erupted. I don't remember the specifics, but I know that I and a few less dedicated Yankee fans I had befriended over the week spent some time high fiving and yelling and such. To this day I can't hear that song without thinking of that moment. But it was odd, and in some ways sad. It was killing me not to watch; I should have home witnessing it with my father.

I watched the tape as soon as I got home, but it was anticlimactic. In a well-intentioned effort to better me, my parents and former teacher had robbed me of something far more valuable: seeing the Yankees win their first World Series in my lifetime. I was fortunate that just two years later, as I shipped off to college, the Yankees started a run of three consecutive championships, so that helped ease the pain. But they say you never forget your first, unless of course you never remembered it in the first place. To this day the Yankees have never won the World Series with me in my home state of CT. So if any of you would like to take up a collection to set me up with a nice place in Manhattan, let me know.

7ZZZzzzzzz

F___ing SIX?????

Five

4?

00.0

Yeessssssssssss!
Yeeeesss?

Ummm...
No?

Fuck.

1-18!

DePaul, owners of a 0-18 conference record heading into the Big East Tournament just took down the #9 seed Cincinnati in the first round 67-57.

Piggy back rides for everyone!

If all goes well, I will be making a trip to one or more of the sessions of the Tournament this weekend and documenting the experience via the blurry digital camera pictures and ex-post facto snark that you have come to expect from this establishment.

Spike Lee Plays D

I don't know who would be penalized, but I'm fairly sure this is against the rules.

With the Knicks down by two and under a minute to go, Spike Lee decided to get his lean on and help Al Harrington force the Magic to spend their last timeout. Well played, sir.

Spike is trying to be fairly discreet, but unfortunately, the guy in the suit next to him looks like he's about to piss himself.

We Will, We Will, Sign You [Clap] Sign You [Clap]

Yesterday on the Max Kellerman Show on 1050 ESPN Radio, they had callers propose an chant for Knicks fans to serenade LeBron James with at the Garden. They settled on the above one, based on Queen's famous arena song.

The night after Kobe dumped 61 (with no rebounds and 3 assists) on the Knicks at the Garden, LeBron topped it by scoring 52 with 11 dishes and 10 boards, the most points in a triple-double since the merger.

"Look At It Dave": A Photo Retrspective [The Fack Youk Experience]

In case you missed this post, we got tickets to the Knicks game last night through www.scalpers.com, er, I mean... StubHub. They weren't that expensive but I still hate StubHub with a passion. They charged us a $36 fee because it was within a certain amount of time before the game began. That is pretty ballsy. I can't imagine why it would cost you more to give me a ticket at one time as opposed to another. You're just being dicks about it. That's the same pricing system the airlines used, and see where that got them? That horrible site led to the extinction of truly cheap tickets, but no one really seems to care. Fuck you StubHub. Fuck you over a rusty park bench.

Anyway, I'm roughly 103% certain that the charges against Eddie Curry are false. Stuff like this always is. We've heard this one a million times, highly paid but underachieving athlete is sued by a personal employee for making homosexual advances. No? Okay, but his driver seems like a bit of a nut job and an anonymous commenter said he knew him and that he's a weirdo (INFALLIBLE!). That doesn't make this any less funny, to us anyway...

We made a two part sign. One (decoy) that said "Lets Go Knicks", and one taped (via a duct tape "hinge" of sorts) underneath that said "Look At It, Dave" and in the process became the oldest people to ever carry a sign to an NBA game without a child in their presence.

Phase One:

Phase Two:Nothing more bad-ass than a Sunday River face warmer.

What we failed to realize during the 25 minute half-drunken flurry that resulted in obtaining the necessary supplies and creating this abortion of an artistic work, is that you can't see fucking orange marker from across a semi-dark arena. We had a friend of a friend sitting about four rows back from the court and told us the only words he could read were "Look" & "It".

We probably would have known this if we were the type of asshats who would actually bring a sign to a professional sporting event for a reason other than to make a joke that about 5% of the people at the game are going to get in the eight possible seconds we would have been on the jumbo-tron.

I was skeptical at first, but the "Knicks City Kids" are downright ridiculous (Terrible picture, sorry. Didn't want to be the creepy guy with the sign taking multiple pictures of 8 year olds). I'm pretty sure they chain them up in an abandoned subway car underneath Penn Station and allow them to do nothing other than practice dancing.

MSG is nice enough to give you a lid to help you avoid spilling your beer on other people on your way back to your seat. It's a nice thought. However, they fill the beers up to the very brim and when you walk, it makes the keg swill inside foam up, thereby creating a constant flow of suds through the straw hole. And when you try to take the lid off, it creates some soft of a vortex, causing you to spill more beer.

I'm guessing the total amount of beer spilled has been reduced by the introduction of the lid, but there is absolutely no way to get from the concession stand to your seat with one, much less two beers without your hands and the side of the cup being covered in shitty light beer.

The Knicks City Dancers' routine included a riveting crescendo where they went through about eight sexual positions in four seconds. It was resplendent, I tell you.

What? I'm Trey Anastasio, lead guitarist of the band Phish, shut up. Does that give me more credibility when I try to talk about music?

[Ed. Note: That terrible photoshop took me like 25 minutes and that "joke" got less funny by the second. I spent so much time on it, I still feel compelled to include it though. I really need to figure out how to use Gimp.]

I took this picture so I would remember the final score.

Oh, about the actual game...

We sat next to some chill kids from Philly, who if they are reading this, probably don't think it's funny because they've heard all the punchlines already.

The Knicks actually were within 1 point (or 3 maybe, I don't remember or care) but it got pretty exciting in the fourth quarter. Danilo Galinari drained a three (in his first game back) and Al Harrington made a few as well in a really awesome, signature SSOL(F?) shootout. Andre Iguodala had super sick dunk that I'm sure made the Top Ten on SportsCenter. One of the guards on Philly (not exactly in research mode at the moment) had a silly juke which should have been up there as well, but probably wasn't.

The penultimate moment of the night, that sort of summed up the whole experience, was when Nate Robinson got free on a breakaway. Every single person not in a wheelchair was on their feet, about to have a sportsgasm and he fucking finished it like John Stockton. I wanted to cry. YOU WON THE SLAM DUNK CONTEST YOU AMAZING LITTLE MAN. DUNK FOR ME!

See what I did there? Someone on 35th & Madison is going to be very confused for about 2/3 of a second.

"Get This Idea Will Just Had" [The Fack Youk Experience]

Clifton: you going to the knicks game tonight?

11:26 AM me (Jay): probably

get this idea just Will had:

we are gonna make a sign that says...

take a guess

Clifton: i was going to say you should make a sign

haha

what?

me: GUESS

11:27 AM Clifton: fack youk and something about curry

me: close, we didn't even think about the fack youk part

"Look At It, Dave"

Clifton: hahaha

11:28 AM me: probably scroll www.fackyou.blogspot.com on the bottom except spell it right

Clifton: they probably aren't going to let you in with thatme: ahhh yes, but here's the genius part

we are going to make two signs and tape them together, with the one on the outside saying something hokey and gay like "Let's Go Knicks" with a basketball or something

11:29 AM Clifton: thats awesome

me: and then bust out "Look At It, Dave" in like the 2nd quarter and see how long it takes to get kicked out by the MSG gestapo

Clifton: that is outstanding

me: we might get some publicity, and it's sort of fucking hilarious

Clifton: there must be a blog post about the experience

11:30 AM me: there will be a preliminary post and a follow up probably

11:31 AM Clifton: good stuff

11:32 AM me: i may or may not just rip this GChat and post it directly on the blog

Clifton: that is not a bad idea either

Like The Knicks? Root For The Cavs!

I'm not a huge basketball fan, but my primary affiliation is with the Knicks, just based on who my dad rooted for and the Starter jacket I had in 5th grade. If most of my time living in NYC didn't coincide with the Isaiah Thomas era, I probably would have caught more than one game at MSG. I'd could have been even less of a fan if our gym teacher in high school didn't just roll out six or eight basketballs and do everything but rename our gym class "45 minutes of pick-up games".

I've never followed a full season of Knicks basketball, but if they get LeBron, I'm jumping on the bandwagon before ESPN has the headline up on their homepage.

True Knicks fans (or real fans of any team) would probably take offense to this, and rightfully so. They've suffered through the bad times, and know every bench player's name. They probably know the broadcasters verbal tics and are already intimately familiar with SSOL.

When a team is winning, they become more popular because casual fans become serious ones and also because assholes like me come out of the woodwork. We might not like the sport enough to suffer through a couple bad seasons in a row, but can be enticed into watching or coming to a game if the team is competitive. We might have some real sports loyalties, just not in basketball.

Donnie Walsh and Mike D'Antoni have all but screamed from the rooftops that they are pursuing Mr. James if he is available in the 2010 offseason. They've shed almost every contractual obligation beyond the 2009/10 season except Eddie Curry and Jared Jefferies (along with the possibility of picking up Danilo Galinari's option). They are creating a very tempting void for LeBron and maybe even one other max contract to fill in "The World's Most Famous Arena", home of the league's most valuable franchise.

A void doesn't only exist on the 2010/11 Knicks roster. Despite being founded in 1946, the Knicks have only two championships to their name (1970 & 1973). As a result, they don't really have an all-time "face of the franchise" type of player. Walt Clyde Frasier left in 1977 and Patrick Ewing never won a championship. LeBron is only going to be 26 when he becomes a free agent and if he puts in 6-8 years with the Knicks, I'd give him a 98% chance to be best Knick ever. That's not a bad legacy to leave.

King James has been remarkably diplomatic while being badgered by the questions of what he's planning to do in the summer of '10. He says:

I don't know if it's going to happen. I'm so focused on this season and what we have at task with the Cavs that it's hard for me to even think about that date. But at the same time, you have to stay open-minded if you're a Knicks fan.

But it's going to be a lot of teams that are going to try to strengthen their teams, and there's going to be a lot of free agents out there in 2010, so if you guys want to sleep right now and don't wake up until July 1, 2010, then go ahead, because it's going to be a big day.

LeBron is from Akron, and the Cavs are as close as he can get to a hometown team as far as NBA franchises are concerned. Common knowledge assumes that he could be a brighter star on Broadway or with Jay-Z's Nets if the Atlantic Yards project ever goes through, but how much bigger can LeBron get? He's got a massive Nike sponsorship with incredibly well done commercials (you're gonna want to click that). He's going to make basically the same NBA salary anywhere he goes and he's already in the process of surpassing an aging Kobe as the preeminent star in the league.

I think the single biggest factor in his decision is whether or not he wins a Championship in Cleveland. Just judging by his generosity with the ball (6.6 career APG), and his demeanor in press conferences, I think he's the kind of guy who badly wants to win a title for his city, whose lack of ultimate professional sporting glory stretches back to the Browns' NFL Championship in 1964. There are certainly other factors, but giving the city of Cleveland a Championship would free him of a ton of guilt and allow to to be embraced as a hero instead of jeered as a Quisling on his trips back to town.

Maybe I'm wrong, but wouldn't that at least make it better for everyone involved? It's not like the Knicks are going to win an NBA Title in the next two years...