Chili’s Hot on Yankees

He will retire as a New York Yankee, perhaps this year. The caps have come and gone fast, like the summers: seven with the Angels, six with the San Francisco Giants, two with the Minnesota Twins, one with the Kansas City Royals, now two with the Yankees.

They were all just caps, at least until last year. The Yankees won the World Series, and Chili Davis wore one of their caps.

Tino Martinez had tried to explain the magic to Davis. So had Bernie Williams, and Paul O’Neill, and Derek Jeter. Davis didn’t fully understand, couldn’t fully understand, until the October parade that celebrated the latest World Series championship for baseball’s most celebrated team.

“When you win in New York, everybody knows about it,” Davis said. “And they never forget. When you win a World Series here, they don’t forget. You win a World Series here and you will always be a Yankee, as far as the people here are concerned.

“The parade was so good that I thought it was short. I was enjoying it too much. We took a turn off the street we were floating down--and when I say floating, I mean floating--and we went into a courtyard. You looked back down the street, and you saw rows and rows and rows of people. It was a real exciting scene.”

The millions lining that Manhattan parade route that day call the Yankees their team, as do millions more across the country and around the world. Actual baseball knowledge is optional. The Yankees attract followers from the worlds of stage (“Damn Yankees”) and screen (“Seinfeld,” on which one of the characters worked for the team). When the Japanese attacked Pearl Harbor in World War II, the pilots supposedly yelled “To hell with Babe Ruth” as they dropped their bombs.

Babe Ruth, perhaps the greatest of baseball players, wore the Yankee cap too.

Davis and the Yankees play the Angels tonight, in the first of three games at Yankee Stadium.

“This is the last uniform I will wear in major league baseball,” Davis said.

At some point during that parade, he almost expected someone to tap him on the shoulder and remove him for not playing enough games to appear on the float. He played the first two games last year, then required ankle surgery and did not return until late August, so his was a 35-game season.

He also feared an extended stay in the renowned doghouse of Yankee owner George Steinbrenner.

The Yankees started his minor league rehabilitation assignment at Class-A Tampa, but rainouts forced a transfer to double-A Norwich. That didn’t help much because, with the Eastern League pennant race in its final weeks, pitchers refused to throw Davis so much as a fastball.

“They were flipping me 2-and-0 changeups,” Davis said.

After 11 games, the Yankees promoted him, but only to triple-A Columbus. Davis made the mistake of wondering aloud when he might return to New York.

“George said, ‘Leave him down there until he starts getting some hits,’ ” Davis said. “I thought, ‘Oh here we go with the George stuff.’ ”

Davis got four hits that night, then set his alarm for 5:30 a.m., thinking the team bus would leave its Virginia hotel at 6:30 a.m. Actually, the bus left at 5:30 a.m., leaving Davis, hesitant to face the wrath of Steinbrenner. He asked the desk clerk for any messages.

Why, yes sir, this urgent message from Brian Cashman, the Yankee general manager: Do not take the bus with Columbus. Fly to Kansas City to join the Yankees.

Whew!

No cause for anything but applause this year, not with Davis hitting .340 and tied with Jeter for the team leads in home runs, with seven, and runs batted in, with 25. He’s 39 now, and the older he gets, the better he gets.

When he made his major league debut, with the Giants in 1981, some of his teammates were Vida Blue, Joe Morgan and Johnnie LeMaster. But Davis had his first 100-RBI season at 33, his first consecutive .300 seasons at 34 and 35, his first 30-homer season in 1997, at 37. From 1994-97, he hit at least .275 with 20 home runs and 84 RBIs each year.

Some lessons took time to digest, some took immediate hold. Davis particularly credits Rod Carew, the Angels’ hitting coach, with playing “a big part in making me a better hitter.”

He feels no less a player as a designated hitter. He hasn’t set foot in the field in five years and hasn’t played regularly in the outfield in 10 years, but he endorses the rule that allowed such stars as Paul Molitor, Eddie Murray and Dave Winfield to extend their careers.

Davis calls the Angels’ Tim Salmon “the hardest-working young player I’ve ever seen” and Yankee O’Neill “the hardest-working old player I’ve ever seen.”

Davis winks. O’Neill is 36.

He reserves his highest praise, however, for Kirby Puckett, his buddy on the 1991 Minnesota team that gave Davis his other World Series championship ring. Davis calls Puckett “the most fun-loving, inspirational, hard-nosed guy I’ve ever played with in my career” and has an autographed Puckett jersey in his memorabilia collection.

Davis said he is considering retirement after this season. The Yankees hold an option on his contract for next year. “If I decide not to come back, that makes it my option,” Davis said.

He will think it over, talk with the Yankees, then decide. He will not, he insists, play for any other team.

“I’ll go home after the season and decide what I want to do,” he said. “It’s not a definite. I still enjoy the game. If I decide to leave, I’m going to miss it.

“As long as I’m on a team that has a chance to win, I’d like to win. When the winning is done, I’m gone. If this was my last year under contract and I was in Kansas City, there’s no way I’d come back next year.”

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Power, Either Way

All-time home run leaders, switch-hitters

1. Mickey Mantle: 536

2. Eddie Murray: 504

3. Chili Davis: 338

4. Reggie Smith: 314

5. Bobby Bonilla: 275

Source: New York Yankees