It Ain’t Over for Yankees, but It Could Be Tonight

It is a rare elimination game for the New York Yankees, the possible end of this dynastic run, and it is even more than that.

The bid for a fourth consecutive World Series title, a fifth in the last six years, is a large part of it, the largest as always for the October-hardened Yankees, but there is also this: If the Yankees do not defeat the Oakland Athletics tonight, if they do not win three in a row, there will be no hurrah to potentially a last hurrah for some key components in this most recent chapter in a storied tradition.

Right fielder/designated hitter Paul O’Neill is expected to retire. Tino Martinez is eligible for free agency and may not be re-signed, the first-base vacancy filled by long-touted Nick Johnson or, perhaps, expensive free agent Jason Giambi, providing one more painful scouting report as the first baseman of the A’s, who are up 2-0 in the best-of-five division series. Then too, third baseman Scott Brosius also may be allowed to leave as a free agent, although it is not clear how the Yankees would replace him.

Imagine. On Friday’s off day, as the Yankees worked out at Network Associates Coliseum, where the A’s have won 17 consecutive games, there was this proud team with no option but to flatter its opponent and talk in cliches--the need to take it one game at a time, to capitalize on what have been infrequent scoring chances, to remind themselves and others that they have come back from playoff deficits before.

Imagine. Even before leaving New York early Friday morning, Manager Joe Torre felt the need to pull a dusty cap from his office shelf with the Yogi Berra inscription “It Ain’t Over Til It’s Over” and, indeed, he is wearing it as another reminder to his team as he conducts a clubhouse meeting Friday afternoon, telling the Yankees to have a relaxing dinner on the off night and come back and have fun in tonight’s game, hoping his veteran group can pick up on some of that “frat house” zeal of the young A’s.

Imagine. Well, do we really imagine that O’Neill and Martinez and Brosius aren’t thinking that they could be playing their final games for the Yankees unless they keep this going by beating Barry Zito, 9-0 with a 1.32 earned-run average in his last nine starts?

“Look,” Martinez said, “I’m not giving any thought to where or when this might end for me as a Yankee. I’m thinking that we’re going to take this back to New York (for a decisive Game 5) Monday night. I’m confident we can do that, and that’s where my focus is.”

“Look,” O’Neill said, “the only thing I’m thinking about is finding a way to hit the ball like I always have. It isn’t happening right now and I’ve got to change that. When my career is over, it’s over. Who cares where my last game is?”

It’s possible, of course, that the man whom owner George Steinbrenner has called a warrior has already played that last game. O’Neill, with a still-tender stress fracture in his left foot, is hitless in eight at-bats against the A’s. David Justice is one for eight, and Torre--whose loyalty to his struggling veteran has drawn some media criticism--was mulling the possibility of not playing the two left-handed hitters against the left-handed Zito.

Times change, teams change. The Yankees, who have lived off their selective hitting and quality pitching in other Octobers, are dying against the young A’s hurlers, having scored only one run in 142/3 innings against Tim Hudson and Mark Mulder.

A year ago, in their first trip to the playoffs, the A’s took the Yankees to five games. They are a little older, a little wiser, and they have merely won 60 of their last 77 games.

“They have all the makings of a championship club, a team on a mission,” said Yankee center fielder Bernie Williams, also one for eight. “When you have a young team that believes in itself and is playing with that kind of confidence and inspiration, you can throw experience out the window. They were here last year, and they have three of the best young pitchers in the game. I mean, they’re throwing a lot of strikes, getting ahead of almost every hitter. You have to give them credit, but you can’t give them too much credit or you don’t have a chance.”

The Yankees have not lost a division series since 1997 against the Cleveland Indians. They came back from 1-2 and 0-1 deficits to defeat the Indians and A’s in the 1998 and 2000 division series and won four in a row to rally from an 0-2 deficit to defeat the Atlanta Braves in six games of the 1996 World Series.

“Well,” Torre said, “that’s what you look at. You look at the past history of your ballclub in certain situations when you had to win, and ’96 certainly was one of those times. That was a seven-game series, but still it doesn’t change the fact that you have to go out and win three games. Anything you can grab onto right now as a reminder that in spite of losing you really can’t stop thinking good things about yourself.”

Maybe the best thought for the Yankees is that Mike Mussina will be pitching tonight.

Mussina was 17-11 after signing that six-year, $88.5-million contract as a free agent, won his last five decisions and was a big-time playoff pitcher with the Baltimore Orioles, striking out 53 and giving up only 12 runs in 422/3 innings.

Certainly, he said, any time you pitch an elimination game it’s the biggest game you’ve pitched, but “this is why I wanted to come to New York, to get a chance to win a championship, and we’re going to go out and see if we can still pull it off. We’re not going to win three games in a 24-hour period, we’re only going to win one, so that’s the approach you have to take or you start pushing yourself and asking for things you can’t deliver.”

As a Yankee, Mussina carries the weight of history, but he said, “I think everybody that puts on this uniform feels like we’re representing an organization that’s done a lot in the past, but we’re still trying to prove something today. So I’m not thinking about what Whitey would do in this circumstance. I’m thinking about what I’m going to do.”

Mussina referred to Whitey Ford, who helped pitch the Yankees to World Series triumphs in other Octobers and staved off eliminations in the World Series of 1955, ’58 and ’60. Now, however, a Yogi cap might be the best the Yankees can do in reviving echoes of the past against these young A’s, seeking to produce their own history, seeking, perhaps, to bring the careers of some influential Yankees to a premature end.