Ending on Whimper, No Bang

Even as the Florida Marlins were bathing in champagne, even as the New York Yankees still showed the scars from Josh Beckett’s throttling, the personal stranglehold he put on the 99th World Series, one immediate question reverberated in the Bronx:

What happens when George Steinbrenner, with a delivery that can be as high and hard as Beckett’s, gets his hands around his team’s neck?

“Well,” said Yankee center fielder Bernie Williams, “the front office doesn’t design this team to play well in the postseason. It’s designed to win in the postseason.

“When that doesn’t happen, people get upset, including the players, and there are a lot of people upset about this. I’m not paid to make decisions, but I think it’s safe to say there will be changes.”

The Yankees lost to Beckett and the Yankees, 2-0, in Game 6 on Saturday night and now have not won the World Series that Steinbrenner pays them to win for three years and have been eliminated from each of the last two postseasons by a wild-card team.

That’s a blow to the wallet, a hit to Yankee pride.

The Boss was not in the New York clubhouse after the team with a $180-million payroll had lost to the team with a $53-million payroll, but his menacing shadow is never far away.

As Manager Joe Torre has said throughout the postseason and reiterated after Game 6:

“When you work for George Steinbrenner, there’s no room for second place. If a one-run lead doesn’t hold up in the ninth inning of Game 7, the season is a failure.”

The Yankees didn’t even get to Game 7, and the changes began immediately.

Don Zimmer, Torre’s bench coach and favorite shoulder, said he would not be back. It was no surprise considering that Zimmer, 72, has been an outspoken critic of Steinbrenner’s constant sniping, the pressure he has put on Torre and the coaches.

The surprise was that Zimmer bit his tongue and didn’t go out firing.

“I woke up this morning and my wife was crying and saying, ‘Don’t make yourself a little man,’ ” Zimmer said, meaning she didn’t want him to sink to Steinbrenner’s level.

“There are things I’d like to say but I won’t,” he said. “It’s been 55 years [in professional ball], a great ride. I’m going home. We’ll see what happens down the line.”

It’s believed that the Florida-based Zimmer may join the coaching staff of former Yankee Lou Piniella with the Tampa Bay Devil Rays.

As Zimmer controlled his tongue, other Yankees did as well, insisting they did not take the Marlins lightly -- nor would they discredit them in defeat.

“They beat the Giants, they beat the Cubs and they beat us,” Derek Jeter said. “I think that establishes how good they are.

“Are they better than we are?

“Well, right now they’re the world champions, so I guess you have to say they are, and that hurts to say.

“The only reason I play is to win a championship, which should be the only reason anybody plays. When it doesn’t happen, I can’t find the words to describe the feeling.”

Beckett inflicted the ache, out-dueling Andy Pettitte, keeping the Yankees off balance by throwing more curveballs than he did in Game 3, a tantalizing bender in the high 70s to complement his mid- to high-90s heat.

The 23-year-old right-hander threw a complete game on three days’ rest, and Jeter said:

“You can throw that three-day stuff away. We’re not playing the calendar, we’re playing the man. He beat us, we didn’t beat ourselves.”

Said Williams: “It’s very frustrating not to have scored any runs for Andy the way he threw his heart out, but you have to give Beckett credit. He didn’t give us very many opportunities, and we didn’t take advantage when he did.

“That’s the way baseball goes. We have nothing to be ashamed of, we gave it our best effort. It’s just that the Yankees aren’t in the business of trying. We’re in the business of doing, and we didn’t do.”

The repercussions can be severe.

The Yankees won a sixth straight division title and 100 games overall despite the extended loss of Jeter, Williams and Mariano Rivera, a revolving door in right field and the use of 19 relief pitchers among an un-Yankee-like 49 players overall. But all of that, along with their division series and league championship series victories, may not be enough to dissuade Steinbrenner from a major overhaul.

Eddie Layton, the Yankee Stadium organist for 37 years, is retiring, as is pitcher Roger Clemens. Pettitte is eligible for free agency and is already at $11.5 million. Pitcher David Wells is not expected to be back, and Jeter, for his shoulder and thumb, and Jason Giambi, for his knee, will probably have off-season surgery.

The ineffectiveness of the Yankee offense in the Series ( 21 runs in six games) undercut the lowest team earned-run average (2.13) for a losing Series team in 59 years.

The Yankees are old at some positions, startlingly inept at others, and Steinbrenner, said Torre, “hasn’t always been as public” in his criticism as he was this year.

Was he just warming up?

Steinbrenner has said that Torre will be back for the final year of his current contract, but having tolerated eight years of the pressure, Torre wouldn’t talk about the future Saturday night, saying he first had to deal with the “empty feeling” of the loss to the Marlins.

General Manager Brian Cashman may be on more tenuous ground.

“Whatever happens,” he said, “I’ll deal with it. I’m used to the expectations and pressure.”

He paused, then added:

“You have to be firing on all cylinders to get through three rounds of the playoffs, and we weren’t against the Marlins, which is not to take anything away from them.

“The stakes are high in New York, and it’s tough swallowing the disappointment right now because we’ve fallen short of our ultimate goal. I think there’s a lot of things we can take pride in, but it’s hard to focus on that right now.”

Cashman said he hadn’t sat down with the Boss and hadn’t addressed the anticipated changes of the off-season, opting to wait until the final out of the final game.

With the Marlins still dancing on the Yankee Stadium infield, he shook his head and said, “We’ll start addressing those issues now a day earlier than we had hoped.”