Cone Ready to Become Savior for the Yankees

By Ross Newhan

Sept. 1, 1996 12 AM PT

The essential hope was that he would be able to pitch again, period.

Beyond that, the hope for the New York Yankees was that he would return in early September to a team that had virtually wrapped up the American League East title, ease back into a starting groove and be ready to pitch the playoff opener.

Now, the hope for David Cone is considerably different.

The wrapping has shown signs of tearing and the Yankees are in a division dogfight with the Baltimore Orioles and resurgent Boston Red Sox.

And Cone, who had an aneurysm removed from his right shoulder May 10 and has made two double-A appearances since, is being looked on as what he was before his career-threatening condition developed--the ace and more.

The savior of a pitching staff suddenly coming apart.

“Three and a half months ago, I’d have jumped for joy to know I’d be back pitching, but now I’m greedy,” Cone said at Anaheim Stadium. “Just getting back is not enough. I want to pitch well. I want to be a reason the Yankees get to the playoffs.

“No one player can save a team. No one expects me to be the savior. To me, that’s just semantics. I’ve got to go out and pitch, no matter how many games we’re ahead, but if I were to come back and fall on my face, it would be very disappointing.”

He will start Monday in Oakland. The Yankees were 23-26 since the All-Star break and 13-16 in August as they face the Angels Saturday night.

Their 12-game July 28 lead is now four over the Orioles. The Yankees have used 48 players, a quilt costing $60-million plus.

Suddenly, the voice of George Steinbrenner is being heard in the Bronx, wondering if his team is good enough to win, putting the onus for motivation and leadership on Manager Joe Torre, ripping the inconsistency of pitcher Kenny Rogers, his $20-million investment from a winter of playing free-agent poker with Oriole owner Peter Angelos.

Rogers, who has given up 20 earned runs in his last 13 1/3 innings and acknowledges he may be pressing in his first real exposure to a title race, will try to silence “the Boss” and the Angels today.

Cone’s return Monday will allow Dwight Gooden an extra day of rest. He has thrown 155 innings after having thrown none during his drug suspension of last year and 49 1/3 the year before.

It is the first day of September and if Cone isn’t looked on as the savior, it is only a matter of semantics as the Yankees ponder a rotation of the potentially spent Gooden, an inconsistent Rogers, a fragile Jimmy Key and a recycled and unpredictable Wally Whitehurst.

Only Cy Young Award candidate Andy Pettitte (19-7) has consistently stopped the bleeding of the second half, a situation compounded by some inflammable middle relief and the loss of John Wetteland, the major league save leader who has been out since Aug. 13 because of a groin injury.

Cone’s presence, besides his performance, could be pivotal.

“It’s great to have him back,” Torre said. “I never thought the day would come. I don’t care what the lead is, he adds so much to the staff just being around. He’s like a security blanket. He gets us back to where we were at the start of the season.”

The hired gun had found a home. Romanced by the Orioles, Cone signed a three-year, $19.5-million contract with the Yankees. He was 4-1 with a 2.03 earned-run average in six early starts, but he suddenly began to wonder if there was more to the numbness and the blue tint of his right hand than the frigid April weather.

An angiogram confirmed a circulatory problem, but medication failed. Additional tests disclosed the aneurysm, described to Cone as a blister or bubble on the vein that would squeeze off clots under pressure.

“I don’t believe it was ever at a point where it was life-threatening, but I could have lost a limb if it had ruptured while I was pitching,” he said.

“No one could guarantee I’d pitch again, but there was no alternative except to have it corrected.”

A one-inch strip of vein was taken from his left leg and grafted into the damaged area.

Chicago White Sox closer Roberto Hernandez had a similar procedure in 1991 and was out for three months.

Yankee legend Whitey Ford told Cone that he’d had a 12-inch graft in 1955.

“Whitey offered me his doctor,” Cone said. “The problem was, he’s now 90.”

Cone didn’t touch a baseball for eight weeks, began a conditioning program in Florida in mid-July and threw 83 pitches Monday in the second of his two double-A appearances.

The Yankees wanted him to make a third and return to their rotation next Friday, but Cone pushed for the earlier return.

“I’m where I’d be at the end of spring training,” he said. “I feel I can help. I feel I can step up to 100 pitches. My command is sharp, I’m mixing in all my pitches. Why waste it in double-A? I’ve made 40,000 pitches over the last 10 years. There are only so many bullets in a 33-year-old arm.”

Can the rearmed Cone rearm a rotation that desperately needs it?

As Torre noted, he could be the greatest September call-up ever.

RICH GET RICHER

An Atlanta Braves pitching staff that was 11-3 with a 2.70 ERA in 1995 postseason play and already considered baseball’s best, got stronger with the addition of Pittsburgh’s Denny Neagle, 27-14 with the generally hapless Pirates over the last two years and the National League’s winningest left-hander in 1996.

The Braves gave up a legitimate prospect in power-hitting first baseman Ron Wright along with rookie right-hander Jason Schmidt, who opened the season as Atlanta’s No. 5 starter and makes his Pittsburgh debut today.

But who can argue with Atlanta General Manager John Schuerholz?

“Pittsburgh did themselves well, but we got exactly the guy we need,” Schuerholz said.

“It makes us far stronger going into the postseason and far stronger for next season.”

Dealing from the strength of a productive farm system, Schuerholz has annually restocked the Braves. In a summer of major injuries, including Dave Justice, Jeff Blauser and Steve Avery, his recent additions alone include Neagle, Terry Pendleton and Luis Polonia, along with the promising Jermaine Dye and Andruw Jones out of the system.

If the development of Jones and Dye leads to a decision to trade Justice, Neagle’s acquisition probably ends Avery’s Atlanta career. Since May 10, 1994, Avery is 17-23 and has gone beyond the sixth inning in only 30 of 64 starts. He has been sidelined seven weeks because of a pulled rib cage muscle, which is not to say the Braves aren’t trying to get him back on the mound, a potential reliever in the playoffs, but his left-handed availability isn’t nearly as imperative with the addition of Neagle.

Avery also won a nasty arbitration at $4.2 million last spring, and given the choice, the Braves seem likely to put their free agent resources into John Smoltz.

Said Schuerholz, when asked if Avery would be back: “I have no idea. He’s going to be a free agent. We have no control over him.”

BELEAGUERED BUC(K)S

The motives of new Pirate owner Kevin McClatchy aren’t clear. He has said he wants to start a rebuilding process shaped around young players that will bring the Pirates to a championship level by the time they move into a new ballpark near the turn of the century. Many suspect that Pittsburgh will never deliver on a new park. They insist McClatchy knows it and is merely trying to gut the payroll until he can move, possibly to Charlotte.

A $21-million payroll was expected to go to $24 million next year, but there is instability in the ownership structure. One initial investor has pulled out, taking his original $5 million. Others may follow. McClatchy has ordered the payroll cut to $18 million.

Neagle was the first to go, then Charlie Hayes, acquired by the Yankees on Friday. Orlando Merced, Jay Bell and Jeff King could follow.

Manager Jim Leyland, who has been through this before, isn’t happy but says he will stay, honoring a $1-million-a-year contract that runs through 2000.

There is no escape clause, but McClatchy, given his current financial agenda, would certainly allow Leyland to dump that lucrative contract if he changed his mind.

League sources continued to say Saturday that despite Leyland’s denials, there is a strong chance he will move to the Florida Marlins next year.

He once worked with General Manager Dave Dombrowski with the Chicago White Sox and is a golfing buddy of owner Wayne Huizenga, whose deep pockets have to be attractive to Leyland after 11 years of payroll deprivation in Pittsburgh.

Of the latest developments, Leyland said:

“No question there’s a lot of chaos here right now. I’d be lying if I said there wasn’t confusion and chaos.”

NAMES AND NUMBERS

--Tom Keegan of the New York Post, while interviewing Davey Lopes on his experiences coaching under new Met Manager Bobby Valentine when both were with the Texas Rangers, offered the opinion that Valentine seemed genuinely humbled by his subsequent managerial tours in the minors and Japan.

Responded Lopes, “Until you just said that, I had never heard the word humility associated with Bobby Valentine. If he’s learned that, it will make him a better manager in his working relationship with people around him.”

--Alleged to have lost the young Mets with his candid criticisms, fired manager Dallas Green said, “Certainly that bothers me. I raised four kids of my own. I raised 10 a year for the Phillies [as farm director]. . . . Discipline and honesty shouldn’t be pushed aside so we can make it Pollyanna. The hard truth about major league baseball is that it’s a very difficult profession. All I was trying to do was bring the work ethic into focus.”

--The Cleveland Indians became only the fifth American League team to sweep a season series in a non-strike year when they defeated the Detroit Tigers on Wednesday night and finished 12-0 against Detroit.

Winning pitcher Orel Hershiser clearly had tongue in cheek when he said, “There was actually a lot of pressure on me. I didn’t want to go to old-timers’ games and have guys say, ‘Yeah, we won the World Series that year but you were the only pitcher who couldn’t beat Detroit.’ ”

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Twentysomething

Seven players have hit 20 or more home runs for the Baltimore Orioles this season, breaking the record set by the 1961 New York Yankees. With the addition of Eddie Murray and Todd Zeile in recent trades, the Orioles can field a lineup of nine batters with 20 or more home runs. A look at the players who accumulated their home run totals with the Orioles, as compared to the 1961 Yankees:

1996 ORIOLES

Player: HR

Brady Anderson: 41

Rafael Palmeiro: 31

Chris Hoiles: 23

Bobby Bonilla: 22

Cal Ripken Jr.: 21

Roberto Alomar: 20

B.J. Surhoff: 20

1961 YANKEES

Player: HR

Roger Maris: 61