Looking Ahead

It was October of 1995; the Yankees had just suffered one of the most devasting playoff losses in franchise history. I was eighteen years old, and I’m sure I cried. I waited my whole life to watch the Yankees in the playoffs, this wasn’t what I was expecting. I didn’t know it at the moment, but everything was going to change. My favorite player, the player I grew up watching and wanting to be like would be retiring. The manager, who took a losing team and turned them into a playoff team, his contract was up. What should have been a time of celebration, turned into a time of change and uncertainty.

Surprise Changes

What I thought was going to happen was that the Yankees would resign my favorite player, they would resign the manager, they would make a few improvements and then they would come back better and stronger. What actually happened was that my favorite player retired, they traded for a young player to replace him, and they decided to not bring back the manager. I don’t like change, and I really don’t like it when someone decides to replace the people I love. What was going to happen next? What was going to happen to the team that I love? What was going to happen to the manager who led the team from a team with a losing mentality to a playoff team?

Lesson One – Others Notice

The story of Buck Showalter. The Yankees hired Buck Showalter as manager before the 1992 season. That is an important year, that year was the last time the Yankees had a losing record. It’s been 33 years since the Yankees had a losing record, that is so crazy to me. It all started with Buck Showalter. He went back to the basics and changed the whole atmosphere of the club. He observed everyone and got rid of anyone who wasn’t a team player. But it only lasted four years. How can you decide to get rid of someone after such a short timeframe when they made such a huge impact? They looked at what they had, they decided they needed a new voice, so they made the change. It felt like nobody noticed the impact. The strange part was that big people noticed. In November of 1995, Buck Showalter was hired as the manager of the Arizona Diamondbacks. What makes this story so crazy was that Arizona would not play their first game as a franchise until March 31st, 1998. Yes, you read that correctly, he was hired almost two and a half years before they would play their first game. When he was hired, they had zero players on their roster. They had nothing, but they wanted him. From a distance they could see how he turned around one of the greatest franchises in sports. They noticed how he evaluated people and how he only wanted team players. They noticed how he paid attention to the small details that most people overlooked. He may have no longer been wanted in New York, but in Arizona, he was the architect.

Lesson Two – Sometimes Everyone Wins

I was happy for Buck Showalter; he was given the chance of a lifetime. But I had my own issues to deal with. The Yankees decided to bring in a manager who was kind of older for a manager and to be honest, he had never really won anywhere. His name was Joe Torre. The day after he was hired the New York papers put his face on the cover with the headline “Clueless Joe”.  Everyone agreed, it was a horrible hire. How would this guy who never won anywhere take over for a team that was filled with a bunch of young kids. To make things worse, before the season even started, their starting shortstop got hurt and was done for the year. They could have made a trade, but they elected to go with a young kid who most agreed wasn’t ready yet. So, what happened that year? Of course, they won the World Series! That young shortstop, his name was Derek Jeter. He would go on to be one of the greatest players to ever play the game. All those young kids, they would go on to be called the core four. They would play in seven world series, winning five of them. I remember 1996 as if it was yesterday, I still go back and watch the last out of the World Series. They spent the whole entire year as the underdogs. It was crazy to sit back and look at everything that happened in those twelve months, it was an emotional roller coaster. I loved winning, but deep down I was still sad that my favorite player missed it. I guess you can’t have everything.

In Conclusion

Change is hard, and most of the time, I don’t agree with the decisionmakers. What I have to remind myself is that sometimes people must leave so that they can be who they truly are. I also need to remember that even if they are gone, I can still win. My job is to do my best, and once I win, I need to make sure I remind everyone that the only reason we won was because of the people who set us up. The people who made us go back to the basics and focus on the little things. They might not be there anymore, but we couldn’t have done it without them.