The 1998 New York Yankees went 114-48, breezed through the postseason to capture their 24th World Series title and featured a number of star players performing at or near their peaks, including Derek Jeter, Bernie Williams, Paul O'Neill, Mariano Rivera, David Cone and David Wells. With legendary skipper Joe Torre at the helm, it's no surprise that the team had as much success as it did, with the 1998 campaign widely regarded as one of the single greatest seasons that an MLB team has ever had.
That's not to say that they pulled off the magical, historic ride without a hitch, though.
In the latest episode of Jomboy Media's "Toeing The Slab," two of the aforementioned Yankees greats — starting pitcher David Cone and manager Joe Torre — talked about baseball's past and present, including their time together on the 1998 Yanks. At one point, the conversation turned to yet another of the aforementioned teammates, David "Boomer" Wells, and how Cone's decisive actions as a friend and teammate made a big impact on the stellar season.
"I told Joe this after the fact, I took Boomer under my wing because I saw someone who was floundering a little bit and someone who was dangerously close to affecting our team," Cone said. "And I really felt like Boomer needed a friend. I'm not taking credit for anything that happened that year, other than the fact that I really got in his hip pocket and really pushed him and tried to help him along because he was that important to our team."
Cone saw Wells as someone who sought approval and someone who could use a friend or father figure in that regard, seeing as his father wasn't around as he grew up. As Norm King of SABR wrote in Wells' biography, the talented pitcher didn't meet his father until he was 22 years old. For many players, Cone says that Torre filled that father figure role admirably, but his relationship with Wells was a little more difficult.
"There was an incident — it was in Texas, I guess — where he had a big lead and I just thought, you know, he was throwing more than pitching out there," Torre recalled. "I took him out of the game and I think that was the low point in our relationship. We were going in Minnesota, I think it was from there, and David Cone made a point of getting us together one-on-one and it was a little give-and-take on both of our sides because he (Wells) didn't like the fact that I had somebody warming up when he had this lead.
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"So there was a little give-and-take, I appreciated it. But Coney was the one responsible for making that possible, which worked on both sides, and the relationship improved and the understanding of each other improved, so he (Cone) was a big reason why it happened."
This all happened in the earlier part of the season. Going through the game logs, you can see a May 6 game in Texas, as Torre mentioned, in which the Yankees jumped out to a 9-0 lead after two innings. Wells then surrendered a whopping seven runs in the third to put the game back within reach — can you really blame Torre for pulling him? — and pushed his ERA up to 5.77 on the season after seven starts. 11 days later, the Yankees played against Minnesota — which Torre mentioned as the next game up after their face-to-face — and we know what happened there.
"I know that David Wells was at the point where you thought that he might go nuclear, so to speak, in terms of going to the media and start becoming a real distraction to the team — blasting his manager, blasting Joe, blasting Mel, going full bore and turning this thing into a much bigger situation than it needed to be — and that's when I stepped in," Cone said on the impetus for him to push for the Wells-Torre confrontation. "...I remember Joe going, 'whoa, that was a little rough,' and I said, 'Joe, let me have it, I got him the rest of the way, he needed that, that's gonna help.' And from that point on, I think it was shortly thereafter that he threw his perfect game and we just rolled from that point on and he wasn't a distraction the rest of the year.
"He was the No. 1 pitcher on one of the greatest teams of all time."
From May 17 and on, Wells went 14-3 with a 2.93 ERA throughout the remainder of the regular season. That dominance carried into the postseason, as he tossed an eight-inning gem of shutout baseball to kick off the ALDS against the Rangers and went on to win the ALCS MVP with two wins, 18 strikeouts and a 2.87 ERA over 15.2 innings of work against Cleveland. He won in his lone World Series outing, as well, and took home the second ring of his career, capping off a remarkable, albeit tumultuous, 1998 season.
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