FanPost

The Spirit of '96 and the 2015 Yankees




I was 8 years old in 1985 - hitting that stride as a boy where all you wanted to do was collect baseball cards, play baseball and watch baseball. Having a lineup full of "Tin Foil Sticker Yearbook" stars like Don Mattingly, Rickey Henderson, Dave Winfield and Ron Guidry and the immortal Phil Rizzuto and Bill White calling games on WPIX each night made enough of an impact that I still wax nostalgic about that squad thirty years later.

The 2001 Yanks were also special, despite the Luis Gonzales bloop, given everything that was going on in New York that dreadful autumn. I still maintain that winning all three games in The Bronx in the Series was a more important outcome than had they won the World Series 4-3 and taken each game in the desert instead.

And seriously, how could you not consider the 1998 Yanks? The greatest team of the modern era.

Personally, however, nothing is likely to supplant the 1996 Yankees as the most memorable squad I've ever watched. Not long after that great '85 campaign (97 wins, no playoffs????) the pinstripes went into the abyss for almost a decade. And due to a law in physics that someone will prove someday I'm sure, the first 20 years of your life take longer than the next 80. To a kid growing up across the River, on the Jersey side, the stretch from 1987 to the '94 strike might as well have been a half century. I wouldn't wish that on any adolescent. Empty ballparks. Unlikeable players. Season being over by Memorial Day. The Stump Merrill Yankees. (Always felt bad for both Stump Merrill and Horace Clark - their names forever tied to the darkest days of franchise history through no fault of their own).

But the 1996 Yankees put that era to sleep for good. With a new manager and a savvy blend of aging legends, hungry youngsters and a few key players in their prime, this team was one of the more tested and resilient groups the franchise had ever seen. The numbers didn't say this team was the best team in baseball. The standings didn't either. Nor did the most accurate predictors of success: The Las Vegas sports books. But Joe Torre's team had an "It" factor.

And so do the 2015 Yankees.

I know that the baseball community has evolved to shudder at terms like "It factor", "clutch", "destiny" and "mojo" and I understand why. More often than not over the course of a baseball season, more than any other sport, statistical analysis is the best and most accurate indicator of success. I've come to appreciate advanced metrics and I've learned to look beyond traditional counting (RBI) and even useless (Wins) stats. But there's still something to be said for watching a team night in and night out and getting a sense of the squad's personality, ability and determination.

The current incarnation of #Mission29 is not perfect, but in the age where revenue sharing, expanded playoffs and analytics have brought us the greatest parity the league has seen since the end of the second World War, you don't need to be perfect to win the World Series. This team was constructed in a much better way than it was initially given credit for - in a way not unlike their predecessors of 19 years ago.

Consider...

  • Both teams were in their first season without their longtime captain and Yankee Icon. Donald Arthur Mattingly played his last game in Game 5 of the 1995 American League Division Series. And you probably remember the short stop who walked off the field in Game 162 at Fenway Park last season.
  • Both replacements struggled out of the gate in the face of intense media scrutiny and fan scorn. Tino Martinez earned his 'stripes in late May with an extra inning grand slam in Camden Yards. Didi Gregorious has had a more subtle rebound after a brutal start at the plate, in the field and on the base paths. But as we head towards Labor Day, we see why he was a Brian Cashman target this offseason, and it feels like we have a future there.
  • The anchor of both teams, arguably, is the back of the bullpen. The veteran John Wetteland, while known to induce panic from time to time routinely took the ball from a rising stud named Mariano Rivera back then. Right now we have the closest thing we could hope for to Rivera in Dellin Betances giving way to Andrew Miller on a nightly basis.
  • Coming off a painfully long stretch where the Yankees didn't develop or keep any young talent, 1996 saw the continued improvement of Bernie Williams and Andy Pettitte along with the debut of two more eventual Monument Park residents in Derek Jeter and Rivera. Jorge Posada would later see action as a September call up. As we speak, Betances has made two All Star appearances in two seasons. Luis Severino has been anything you could ask for and then some in his three starts. We're catching a glimpse of Greg Bird right now and Aaron Judge - perhaps the most scintillating of The Next Four - is lurking in Scranton/Wilkes-Barre.
  • Darryl Strawberry salvaged what started out as a Hall of Fame career before his own self sabotage by showing up every day in the Bronx and doing his job. Sounds vaguely familiar to a phenomena overtaking River Avenue right now.
  • Depth. Depth, depth, depth! What was missing from some of the more overpriced and under-performing Yankee rosters of this millenium has been the ability for the manager to find suitable replacements to rest regulars. '96 saw a bench with Charlie Hayes, Tim Raines, Reuben Rivera, Luis Sojo and Jim Leyritz. Today's gang may not be as well known, but the likes of Chris Young, John Ryan Murphy, Brendan Ryan, Bird and (when he returns) Dustin Ackley give Joe Girardi options on a nightly basis, both in terms of rest and in late inning situations.
  • In retrospect, you can look at 1996 as either the start of The Dynasty or the end of The Recovery. The turnover from 96 to '98's team was much more pronounced than the subtle changes within the other dynastic seasons. There were a lot of key contributors in 1996 who were out of pinstripes for The Threepeat. Wetteland, Wade Boggs, Jimmy Key, Mariano Duncan, Kenny Rogers, Dwight Gooden, Cecil Fielder, Hayes. Looking ahead two seasons from now, it's not hard to imagine we're without Mark Teixiera, Carlos Beltran, or CC Sabathia. With a deluge of high end pitching set to hit the market, I wouldn't bet Freddy's pan on the trio of Ivan Nova, Michael Pineda and Nate Eovaldi occupying rotation slots in 2017. 2015 may be a similar transition that the beloved 1996 season was.

Above all else, these Yankees find a way to win, and they're entertaining as heck in doing so. The thirty minute treat last Friday that gave us Carlos Beltran's pinch hit go-ahead home run and the Andrew Miller-Troy Tulowitzki twelve pitch dual could turn out to be a pivotal moment in a memorable season.

Not unlike Tino's grand slam.

Just have to hope the NYPD doesn't let Teixiera try and hop on a horse. We're still going to need him in 2016.

FanPosts are user-created content and do not necessarily reflect the views of the Pinstripe Alley writing staff or SB Nation.