As Close To Perfect A Team As This Yankee Hater Has Seen

By Daniel Okrent

All my life I've hated them. Growing up in an American League city in the 1950s, it was impossible not to hate the Yankees, unless you were an egregious front runner. The Detroit kids I knew who liked the Yankees were the same kids who wore preknotted ties to school, had perfect parts in their hair and were really good at making dioramas. They liked General Motors too and, for all I know, the IRS.

And now I'm one of them. To make matters worse, this superb, balanced, record-setting, stunningly appealing team is not only wearing the loathed pinstripes; it's wearing pinstripes supplied by George Steinbrenner, for heaven's sake. Somehow this man--this bully, this human plague--has got far enough out of the way to allow the assembly of as close to perfect a baseball team as anyone under 70 has ever seen.

The great Baltimore manager Earl Weaver used to say his most important decisions occurred at the end of spring training when he had to pick his 23rd, 24th and 25th players. He knew it was the fit of disparate parts that made a collection of talents into a smoothly functional team. Stars were nice, but balance won ball games.

Ergo the 1998 Yankees. The wonder of this team was on display two weeks ago at the All-Star game. Not one Yankee had been sufficiently dominant to have been voted by the fans to the eight slots they get to fill on the starting team. The other 22 slots were filled by the American League manager: this year Cleveland's Jim Hargrove. He had to choose at least one player from each of the league's 15 teams. Yet he managed to select five Yankees--no mean mathematical feat.

When a team isn't dependent on stars, it develops an immunity against injury. Centerfielder Bernie Williams, shortstop Derek Jeter and relief pitcher Mariano Rivera, the team's three best and most reliable players, have all spent time on the disabled list this season. But like members of some impassioned guerrilla army, as each man has fallen, another has risen in his place. It is to this fungibility of parts that one must attribute their astonishing record of 68-23 through their first 91 games, for a winning percentage of .747. That pace, if sustained, would put them in reach of the winningest team ever: the 1906 Cubs, who finished 116-36 for a percentage of .763.

I'm happy to say Steinbrenner deserves almost no credit for such ruthless (and Mantle-less) efficiency. This team is the brainchild of now departed general manager Bob Watson and has been gracefully deployed by its manager, the modest Joe Torre. It's been assembled from a veritable spare-parts bin of players: Hideki Irabu from Japan, Cuban emigre Orlando Hernandez, a few from trades and the free-agent rolls. Perhaps most remarkable is the provenance of Jeter, Williams and starting pitcher Andy Pettitte: Each came from the once suspect Yankees farm system.

Speaking of which: through last week five of the Yankees' six farm teams had winning records, and three were leading their leagues. We Yankee haters just might have to get used to this.

Daniel Okrent is the author of three books about baseball