E-Mail This Article to a Friend Right on the money Recapping the Yankees in 2004 BY CHRISTOPHER YOUNG

The New Yorkers, like the Red Sox, had a busy off-season following their World Series loss in six games to the Marlins. For some teams, a berth in the Fall Classic is cause for celebration; that is not the case in the Bronx, where the team’s history and legacy are tied in to the highest expectations imaginable, and therefore a silver medal to Yankee fans is about as unacceptable as a last-place finish would be.

Repairing the existing elements of the roster was the first order of business last November, and first baseman Jason Giambi underwent successful knee surgery to alleviate the chronic pain that the second-year Pinstriper had played through all season long. At around the same time, it was determined that Derek Jeter would not need surgery to repair a torn ligament in his left thumb, an injury which was suffered when the Yankee shortstop dived for a ball in Game One of the ALCS against the Sox. While the injury did not hamper Jeter’s efforts for the balance of the post-season (he hit .308), it still was a concern for the team and a relief that the thumb would heal on its own.

Nonetheless, the organization had bigger fish to fry, as the team was losing at least two-fifths of its starting rotation. The team in early November decided against picking up David Wells’s option, and Roger Clemens had announced prior to the 2003 season that he would be retiring upon the conclusion of the campaign. Replacing a six-time Cy Young winner was daunting enough, but the Yankees were also faced with the prospect of losing lefty starter Andy Pettitte, who was a free agent and entertaining offers from his hometown Houston Astros, among others. The Yanks had no reason to believe that Clemens would renege on his retirement, but it probably could have retained Pettitte if they had moved forward with more expediency and sense of urgency when it came to offering him a contract extension. Apparently New York believed that it would ultimately be able to come up with a trump offer to retain the 32-year-old’s services, and instead focused on Gary Sheffield, who after two years in Atlanta was also a free agent and interested in coming to New York. Thus, it came as a huge surprise to the Yankee brass when Pettitte instead accepted the Astros’ free-agent offer of three years, $31.5 million, even though the Yanks’ initial offer of a $30-million, three-year deal had not been countered.

Things began to snowball thereafter in the New Yorkers’ front office, and in rapid succession, outfielders Sheffield and Kenny Lofton, along with relievers Tom Gordon and Paul Quantrill, were inked to free-agent deals, and trades with the Expos and Dodgers brought Javier Vazquez and Kevin Brown, respectively.

The Yankees had to keep up because the Red Sox were completing deals of their own, including the completion of the stunning negotiations that got former World Series co–MVP Curt Schilling to waive his no-trade clause to come to Boston, and the signing of the game’s premier free-agent closer, Keith Foulke. The biggest trade, though, was the one that the Red Sox were not able to complete, as a deal that would have brought Alex Rodriguez to Boston fell through because the Players’ Union would not accept the premise that A-Rod’s contract would have to be restructured for less money in order to make the terms acceptable to both teams.

The event of the off-season that had the most long-lasting effect, though, did not take place on any baseball diamond, though, but instead on a hardwood basketball court, where Aaron Boone — recently re-signed by the Yankees to a two-year contract — tore his ACL playing a pick-up hoops game and was immediately deemed out for the season. Little did Red Sox fans know that the man who delivered the ALCS–winning homer in Game Seven in the Bronx would indirectly bring deliver another dagger to Boston’s fans hopes in 2004, because Boone’s unavailability, instead of hurting the Yanks, instead put into motion an improbable chain of events that further bolstered the team’s roster and fortunes. For no sooner was Boone’s contract voided when clandestine negotiations began between the Yankees and Rangers to acquire A-Rod, and Brian Cashman was able to succeed where Theo Epstein was not, getting the reigning MVP’s contract re-worked in order to allow the trade for Alfonso Soriano to go through. A-Rod would move to third base from shortstop, and the Yanks’ payroll again reached stratospheric heights, but no one in tri-state area was complaining. The Pinstripers were loaded again, poised to field an almost invincible squad in 2004.

All of Boston’s off-season moves to that point seemingly paled in comparison with the Yanks’ addition of Sheffield, A-Rod, Vazquez, Brown, Gordon, Quantrill, and Lofton — to a team that already was the defending AL pennant-winner.

Oh, there were some concerns in Yankeeland, but none that any of the other major-league squads wouldn’t have loved to have. Could A-Rod and Jeter co-exist? Would Brown be injury-free for the duration of the season? Would Giambi return to form? Would having so many superstars affect the chemistry? Would the Yankees ever lose?

The latter question was answered on Opening Day, which was spent in Japan against Tampa Bay for MLB’s annual kick-off in the Land of the Rising Sun. Mike Mussina was pounded by the upstart Rays, 8-3, in a game that, because of the time difference, New Yorkers would have had to tune in to before the sun rose over Gotham on March 30. The Yanks managed to calm the potential ledge-jumpers the next two day, winning 12-1, but the team was only 5-4 when it arrived in Boston for a four-game Patriots’-Day weekend series in mid-April. When the Red Sox took three of four that weekend and followed that up with a three-game sweep in the Bronx the following weekend (capped by a 2-0 shutout loss to public-enemy-number-one Pedro Martinez), the Best Team Money Could Buy was only 8-11 and in third place, trailing the upstart Sox by four-and-a-half games.