http://www.nytimes.com/2009/11/07/sports/baseball/07vecsey.html?scp=3&sq=cashman&st=cse
Amid Celebrations and the Cheers, Cashman Reflects
By GEORGE VECSEY
Published: November 6, 2009
More from kindness than melancholy, Brian Cashman urged all the Yankees to
enjoy the ticker-tape parade through Lower Manhattan on Friday morning.
The players earned it; they had every right to feel the love from the crowds
in the narrow streets. This was their hour. They should be able to dial it
back for the rest of their lives.
Cashman, the Yankees’ general manager, has known championships — three of
them in a row from 1998 through 2000. He is no longer so young, all of 42,
and he knows that every championship is different, knows how much luck goes
into it, even for a team with the biggest payroll in baseball, $206 million
in the season just ended.
Cashman said a lot of fine-tuning went into this title. He praised his
manager, Joe Girardi, for taking a cue from Giants Coach Tom Coughlin, who
ratcheted up his personality and promptly won the Super Bowl in 2008. There
was a Girardi-Coughlin connection, Cashman said, which loosened up the
players to perform at such a high level over the season.
“This might be the last time they are all together,” Cashman said in a
reflective mood Thursday, not that many hours after the Yankees defeated the
Phillies to clinch their 27th championship.
“We are all together now,” he said, anticipating the way the players would
be shuttled slowly through the canyons, in a paper blizzard in bright
sunshine, almost as close as they were in the mosh pit on the mound Wednesday
night.
Cashman never made it to the dais around second base. He did not want to lose
sight of his 11-year-old daughter, Grace, so they stood below and watched all
the Yankees players fill the dais. Much better, he said.
Then he took Thursday off. Never got south of the Connecticut-New York
border. Never punched the time clock to satisfy the home office in Florida.
The kinder, gentler Yankees. He took Grace and Teddy, 6, to school. Went out
for lunch at Subway. And in his quiet way celebrated the first championship
since 2000.
Cashman was introduced briefly as the architect of the team and, along with
everybody else in the entourage, received a key to the city, in honor of the
27th championship. “They are all special,” he said, recalling how he could
see the excellence of 1998 coming. Then came the romp over the Braves in
1999. And he called the five-game conquest in 2000 of the Mets “the best of
them” because it was “a battle for the city” that he and the Boss did not
want to lose.
Then came the dry years. They stayed with Cashman on Thursday — how the
great Mariano Rivera could not hold Arizona in 2001; how the Yankees had a
lead against Florida in the 2003 Series; how the 3-0 lead against the Red Sox
in 2004 got away after Tony Clark’s drive bounced over the five-foot fence
in right field in Fenway Park, making Ruben Sierra go back to third on the
ground-rule double. Sierra never scored, and Cashman still sounded upset by
that bad bounce. He has held his job in an organization not known for its
patience. And now he was heading for a parade.
“People said the new stadium was cursed,” Cashman said, obliquely referring
to the $1.5 billion price tag and the David Ortiz jersey that had been hidden
in the foundation as a hopeful prank. There was talk the Yankees were messing
with their tradition by moving for the swag of luxury boxes across the street.
“We have the finest stadium in the world,” Cashman said. “Now it comes
with the blessing of success, just like the old ballpark.”
He presided over the signing of C. C. Sabathia, A. J. Burnett and Mark
Teixeira at prices that seem obscene to many fans. Cashman understands that.
The main thing was to not pick players who did not work out, which has
happened on his watch.
“I wouldn’t say satisfaction,” Cashman said. “I would say thankful.”
He was also proud of Girardi, who in 2008 exuded a hard-as-a-rock persona,
not just to reporters but even inside the clubhouse. By coincidence, Cashman,
in his bachelor days, had roomed with Tim Coughlin, the son of the Giants’
coach, who had been prodded by his own wife and Giants management to stop
being such a miserable cuss of a football coach.
As Girardi had some rough moments in his first year, Cashman showed Girardi
an article about Coughlin’s self-transformation on the way to a Super Bowl.
The Yankees invited Coughlin to throw out the first ball, and Girardi and
Coughlin got to know each other. That’s all Cashman was saying on the
subject.
Girardi seemed even softer early Thursday with his wife, Kim, at his side,
along with their son Dante, who had just turned 8 minutes before and seemed
quite proud of it.
“Joe let people in to see his heart,” Cashman said after a season that
began with a Yankees expedition to a Florida pool hall — a page out of
Coughlin’s textbook for bonding, Cashman noted.
Now Girardi would get a parade through Lower Manhattan, just as Coughlin had
21 months before.
Cashman has learned this does not happen every year, even with the very rich
Yankees. He praised Hideki Matsui, who drove home six runs on Wednesday,
touching off celebrations in Japan.
“He is a complete pro,” Cashman said. “He made a whole nation proud,
across the globe. He deserves all the glory.”
Everybody knows Matsui’s contract is up, and so are other contracts.
Championship players have virtually debarked from the open buses and
flatbeds, to step into free agency.
“It’s part of the game,” Cashman said, not blustering, just being honest.
“It’s part of the industry. It’s the nature of the beast. Even our
three-peat teams were not the same every year.
“They are a band of brothers,” Cashman said. “I hope they cherish it.”
E-mail: geovec@nytimes.com
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