I had to remind myself today that the Yankees won 4 World Series in 5 seasons between 1996 and 2000.

If you had told any Yankee fan that this would happen back in oh, 1990, they would’ve laughed at you.

If you told them that they would have one manager for 12 seasons, they would’ve thought you were insane.

And if you told them that the winning would happen with Joe Torre, who hadn’t done anything remarkable as a manager elsewhere (he had coached one team, the 1982 Braves, to the playoffs), it would be greeted in the same way as “Yasser Arafat is going to win the Nobel Peace Prize” …

When I first started watching baseball in 1986 or so, it was hard to keep up with the Yankees’ managers. They went through Billy Martin, Lou Piniella, Billy Martin again, Stump Merrill, Bucky Dent … it was ridiculous. And as the team traded away Ricky
Henderson, Dave Winfield, and Don Mattingly’s back rendered him ordinary, the stadium emptied out. The Bronx was a dangerous place at night, no place to take a family to see a game … especially with a sub .500 team that included such luminaries as Mel Hall, Jesse Barfield, Steve Balboni, etc.

And then it changed. It started with the acquisition of Jimmy Key and trading Roberto Kelly for Paul O’Neill. That’s when the team became a contender. And before you knew it, the Yankees were the class of Major League Baseball.

To be honest, I question whether the same streak would’ve happened with one more year of Buck Showalter. How big a difference did Torre really make? They had David Cone, Andy Petitte, Bernie Williams (who was an All Star caliber player in his prime), rent-a-sluggers like Cecil Fielder, Tino Martinez, Derek Jeter, etc. It’s not like they were at a talent deficit.

And as I mention Torre’s earlier failures as a coach, consider that he was coaching an awful post-Seaver Met team, and a Cardinal team that wasn’t very overwhelming (they went from the Coleman/McGee/Jack Clark World Series contending teams under Herzog to the Ray Lankford/Bernard Gilkey era). Coaches are largely defined by the players they have. Look at Phil
Jackson. What the heck has he done with the Lakers and an empty cupboard? He won 9 championships because he
had Jordan and Pippen for 6 of them and Shaq and Kobe for 3 of them. With Kobe and Lamar Odom, he hasn’t experienced the same success … I wonder why.

Crappy coaches can win championships if they have the right players. Do you think Syracuse won an NCAA title because of Jim Boeheim? Or do you think it had more to do with Carmelo Anthony?

I’m not saying anyone off the street can walk in and do the job. But I think you could’ve put almost anyone in the dugout the last 12 years and the Yankees would’ve won 3-5 World Series.