Let’s end one debate before it really gets started. The Red Sox gave it a nice run for a while, but the Yankees are the team of the decade — again.
I can just imagine what the scene in Red Sox Nation is about now. The fans are bitter. Very bitter. The Yankees are back on top, and that can’t be sitting too well in New England.
Boston fans can cry all they want that the Yankees bought a championship, but so what? The Yankees are winners. They get the ring. Their city is happy and they are sticking out their tongues at the Red Sox and the rest of the world.
Don’t get me wrong. Boston had a good team and made a nice run for a few years, but now they have got some holes. The Yankees and Red Sox won two championships apiece this decade, but you’ve got to ask, “Who was more dominant?” The Yankees get the edge because of what they did earlier in the decade, nearly winning two other titles.
I was involved in the 2003 World Series that we lost to the Marlins, and I’d like to think if my back wasn’t as bad we would have won it, because I would have been a better pitcher than if I didn’t have to take injections.
If people want to vilify me for leaving Game 5, that is their prerogative. It doesn’t haunt me one bit. If people say we lost because of me, then those people have a problem.
They don’t know what I went through. I had a bad back, and you don’t know how many injections I went through to stay out there the whole year. I was taking injection after injection because I was pitching well and wanted to help the team instead of having surgery. Instead of going under the knife I took the injections. I did that for Game 1 of the World Series and pitched pretty well.
Right before Game 5, I had back spasms. I threw five or six warm-up pitches and told pitching coach Mel Stottlemyre to get another pitcher ready because I wasn’t going to make it. Mel was like, “No, you can do it.”
I threw maybe 10 warm-up pitches total in the bullpen — I spent most of the time lying on my back — and said, “If you guys want me to pitch, so be it.”
I went out there and my first pitch was like 78 mph. I soon came out of the game, and here is why Joe Torre is such a tool: I came out of the game and some guys were mad. I went in the training room and had no trainer, no doctor, no coach, nobody. I had to have one of the clubhouse kids put an icepack on my back. Then I had back surgery a week later.
If my back is healthy we win that World Series. If Mariano Rivera slams the door against the Diamondbacks in 2001, the Yankees win another. Even so, the Yankees started the decade with a championship and ended it with one. That’s a pretty cool thing.
The team of the ’90s is also the team of the ’00s. Maybe one of these decades the Red Sox finally will surpass the Yankees.