Yankees Mag: Three and Oh!

When you look back at the Yankees’ dynasty from the end of the last century, it’s easy to consider it as a single entity. But few people know better than Joe Girardi -- who played on three of those championship teams before managing the 2009 Yankees to the top of the mountain -- that baseball greatness is built on incredible individuals doing incredible individual things.

Now 25 years removed from his last world title as a player, and 15 from his managerial triumph, Girardi has no trouble listing off the characters and plotlines from the legendary teams he was a part of. But it’s also reductive to look at that era from 1996 through 1999 and think of it simply as a collective three World Series championships in four years; it minimizes the value of each moment, each contribution, each celebration. The third World Series title wasn’t a continuation of anything, but rather purely its own accomplishment.

On Aug. 24, Girardi will lead his 2009 team back to the Bronx as the Yankees celebrate its 15th anniversary during Old-Timers’ Day. For the former catcher and manager, who coaxed his team to greatness as surely as he shepherded Dwight Gooden and David Cone through a no-hitter and perfect game, respectively, it’s a return to the Bronx intersection where he enjoyed his greatest professional triumphs, each an individual chapter in a thrilling biography. He leafed through the pages of his life story with Yankees Magazine deputy editor Jon Schwartz during an interview that was heard on a recent episode of the New York Yankees Official Podcast. Subscribe at yankees.com/podcast, or at the podcast app of your choice.

Yankees Magazine: It has been 15 years since the Yankees team you managed won the World Series. But 25 years ago, in 1999, you were a year removed from winning with possibly the greatest team of all time. How was the experience different? And the response?

JOE GIRARDI: There’s a lot of joy in winning and a lot of satisfaction. I think it was different from the standpoint that in 1998, we felt so much pressure to win because of our record. In 1999, our record was good, but it was not the ’98 record, and to validate our record, we had to win the World Series.

YM: I suppose you want them to feel different, right? I mean, I think we’re too complicated of a species for it to just be binary emotional responses of win -- yay! -- or loss -- boo! -- right? You want there to be some nuance to each of those years.

JG: Well, I think it changes because the people on the team change. It’s always someone’s first time, and I think that makes it enjoyable for everybody else. Because the one thing I’ve always said is, as a manager, I want players to experience what I experienced and to have the opportunity to win. And I think when you see it for the first time with players, it’s really gratifying.

YM: You were a veteran before you came to the Yankees, but you had never won. How hungry were you in that moment?

JG: I was hungry. But I think you become hungrier after you win. Because you know what the feeling is. Until you’ve experienced it, it’s only in your mind, and you can only imagine how good it is. Whatever you imagine, it’s going to be better than that.

YM: So then when do you get to reflect on the achievements in the moment? Derek Jeter had an easy time saying that a season was a failure if you didn’t win a championship because he immediately won a championship. Aaron Judge hasn’t had the same good fortune, but he has the same mentality. So, when does a guy like Aaron get the grace to give himself a break?

JG: I think you remind them to take time to reflect when the season’s over, when the week is over, when it’s the All-Star break. But our game is such a grind that you don’t get to rest between your days very much. I had a great day yesterday, but man, I was 0-for-4 with three strikeouts today, left three guys on base. We could have won. We lost, 5-4. … That’s the hardest part about this game. You don’t have much time to reflect on a good day because the next day comes like that.

Players don’t want to become comfortable. They want to have that little chip on their shoulder; the great ones, that always pushes them. Derek had a great line: He’d always say, “Humble yourself, or the game will humble you.” So, I think it’s the edge that he played with. I think it’s the edge that Aaron Judge plays with. I think it’s their leadership styles that are really similar.

YM: I think winning is a skill, something you learn, something you hone in a lot of ways. I’m pretty confident that’s true as a player; I think it’s also probably true as a manager. How did you hone that skill as a catcher on those 1990s Yankees teams that allowed you to be a good manager a decade later?

JG: I think winning teaches you how to win; I don’t think players know how to win until they’ve actually done it. And it’s such a collective effort, where everyone buys in, and everyone’s willing to do whatever it takes, and everyone’s willing to sacrifice the individual accomplishments for the team goal. I think winners know how to sacrifice that and understand that at the end, everyone’s going to be rewarded anyway.

YM: Andy Pettitte once told me about a rehab start he was making late in his career during the Minor League playoffs. Instead of just reporting to the affiliate and throwing his allotted number of pitches, he watched video on the Minor League opponent, really worked on a game plan. That never happens. His message, he told me, was that he owed it to the guys in that room to take the start seriously because they were playing for something. But he also owed it to them to show them how a big league legend prepared. You can say that the Minor Leagues are all about skill development, but when you’re managing a big league team, you want guys who are called up to know how to act, how to perform, right?

JG: It’s understanding how to compete. We can sometimes get lost a little bit in launch angle and velocity off the bat and exit velo and spin rates and how much ride. But you know what it comes down to? You beating the person across from you. That’s competition, and that’s what Andy Pettitte was as good at as anybody I ever saw. He had a focus, he had a stare, he had a way to prepare, and he just did it every day. And it was routine. Because he understood what it took to win, and he didn’t like losing. Until you hate to lose, you won’t be a great winner. And Andy Pettitte hated to lose.

YM: I’ll always remember Michigan football coach Lloyd Carr, when I was writing for the student newspaper there, saying in a press conference, “You’ll never win if you don’t hate losing.”

JG: I mean, you have to hate it. To get that true hate for losing, you have to get to the top to see how great it is up there and how bad it is down there.

YM: On the flip side, you also have to learn to deal with losses. But when a team has won as much as you had by 1999, how do you keep the perspective? How do you learn how to lose when you never lose?

JG: You still lose 50 to 60 games. But I think what it does is it helps you develop a routine to be the best version of yourself you can be. I remember that all the hitters, a bunch of us would go lift weights after games, and we would talk about the games and the at-bats, and one guy might say, “How did you hit that guy? I didn’t see him.” And so, it became a constant conversation, learning from each other, learning how to get better. And it became routine, and that’s what made it so special. Mariano Duncan had that saying in 1996 …

YM: “We play today, we win today, that’s it.”

JG: That’s it. And that kind of carried over to ’97, ’98, ’99 -- that’s what we expected.

YM: When you play the first few weeks in 1999 without Joe Torre as he’s recovering from prostate cancer surgery, I wonder what you learn about him and about his impact on the team.

JG: I think we all pretty much knew the impact of Joe on the team. I always said, Joe had the amazing ability to make you feel like everything would be all right. If you prepared and you stuck together, everything would be OK. It was that simple. But when he wasn’t there, it kind of shocked us. And it made us realize how fragile life is. Because when you win a World Series in your late 20s, your early 30s, you feel like you’re on top of the world and you’re invincible, and all of a sudden, just like that, something can happen.

YM: That team had a couple of run-ins with mortality. Paul O’Neill loses his dad on the eve of Game 4 of the 1999 World Series. I have to think that when you get to October, certainly after the previous four years, you’ve already learned that the teammate relationship is about more than driving in a guy from third in a key spot. It’s really a brotherhood, one where everyone needs each other at some point.

JG: When you have someone who’s willing to walk through it with you, to help you through it, to be there for you? They can’t necessarily take the pain away, but there’s something about that bond, where you feel that closeness that you can share, you can shed a tear and you’re not embarrassed.

And the great thing about the teams that we had, it wasn’t just one guy you felt like you could do it with. You could do it with a dozen that you felt comfortable with, and you could do it with three or four coaches that you felt comfortable with. And that was amazing.

YM: July 18, 1999, before the game, you hand Yogi Berra your glove so he can catch a first pitch from Don Larsen. I think you asked him to bless it for you. Then you proceed to catch 88 perfect pitches from David Cone, the second perfect game in two years for the Yankees. What other magic tricks do you have, Joe?

JG: I don’t know! But I had this small glove that we used to use as a training glove, the size of a glove that Yogi would have used back in the day. And I asked him if he wanted that glove. He’s like, “Heck, no, I want your big glove!” I figured, “Well, I might as well ask him to bless it because Don Larsen’s throwing out the first pitch, and it’s Yogi Berra Day!” It was uncanny, what happened at the Stadium those years, all the different things. Doc Gooden, David Wells. It was truly amazing, the things that we had a chance to witness and be a part of.

YM: I know that you’re going to demur here when I ask this, but how rewarding is it to look back on your role in those moments? It’s David Cone’s perfect game, but you’re not a bit player. In 1996, after Doc’s no-hitter, he said, “Joe Girardi is the best catcher I’ve ever thrown to.”

JG: It’s extremely rewarding. I take a lot of pride in the relationships that I had with those guys, but let’s face it, I didn’t throw one pitch. Not one. All I had to do was catch the ball, throw it back and not screw anything up.

YM: Calling the pitches is not a small thing, but go on.

JG: But you’ve called those pitches a thousand times, and it’s not like you had 100 no-hitters, right? The bottom line is, it comes down to them executing pitches and defense being played. I’ve always said, my favorite thing about managing is watching people succeed and figuring out that they can really do it. And in that moment, when you’re watching someone succeed, and they see themselves really doing it, it’s awesome.

YM: Is there a time in your managerial career where your experiences stopped being about synthesizing what you had taken as a former player and turning that into being a good manager, and instead became synthesizing what you had taken in years of managing and turning that into being a better manager?

JG: Oh, yes, absolutely. You never want to forget how hard the game is to play and what you went through as a player, but you learn so much more when you’re answering for 25 people instead of one. As a player, you answer for yourself. As a manager, you answer for everyone. And I think you learn that, as a first-year manager, you’re trying to do as much as you can, but then you realize you can only do so much, and you’ve got to let people do what they do. And the reason you hired them is because you trust them. I’m not going to try to be a pitching coach. I don’t know how! I’m not going to try to be an infield coach. Don’t know how to do it! I might recognize something that I’ll ask the pitching coach or the infield coach, “Why is this happening?” But then I let him go do his job, and I’m going to stay out of it.

YM: If you stepped into Monument Park tonight, you could walk around tributes to some of the greatest people who have ever played baseball. Babe Ruth, Lou Gehrig, all those guys. As you get older, though, and I apologize for doing this to you, a lot of the plaques that go up are your friends. You caught Mariano Rivera. You played with Derek Jeter. You probably dodged water cooler shrapnel from a Paul O’Neill outburst. How do you make that normal?

JG: I think you realize how blessed you are to be a part of something so special. And you appreciate the players’ greatness. Little things about each player. Mo and his humility. Derek’s belief in himself. Paul O’Neill’s intensity, never giving an at-bat away and striving for perfection. It’s just really cool to be a part of their lives and to watch how they did it.

YM: When you’re a World Series champion, you’re a champion forever. Does the third one change anything more than the second one changed anything? Are there levels to this, or is it just, at the end of the day, I’m a World Series champion?

JG: No, there’s levels because of the sense of accomplishment. But it’s also a ring for each child. I have three children. So, it would have been hard to split two up. The thing that stands out to me when I think about the David Cone perfect game and 1999, the story was kind of finished. Because in 1996, when he came back from his aneurysm, he threw seven shutout, no-hit innings, and Joe Torre had to come to him in his first start and say, “Coney, we’re going to take you out because the prize is in October, not September, and we don’t want to hurt you.” And then to see that come back around, it completed the story. Because I think every year is a story in and of itself.

This interview has been edited for clarity and length.

Jon Schwartz is the deputy editor of Yankees Magazine. This story appears in the August 2024 edition. Get more articles like this delivered to your doorstep by purchasing a subscription to Yankees Magazine at www.yankees.com/publications.