The Last Night of the Yankee Dynasty: The Game, the Team, and the Cost of Greatness

Long before they became the travelling roadshow of over-the-hill once-weres and young never-will-bes that continue to disappoint in the big show of the World Series, the New York Yankees were a team stocked top-to-bottom with the best talent money could buy, but also a cohesive and productive unit. In "The Last Night of the Yankee Dynasty", Buster Olney provides the reader with a unique and moving portrait of the Yankees of the late Nineties and the emotion-drenched season of 2001, when winning a baseball game for America's team took on more significance. What he emerges with is a portrait of a team on the brink of failure. Olney uses Game Seven of the World Series to build his narrative around, and he effectively conveys both the tense drama of that one storied night and the events and characters who came to be on that night. Olney breaks through the image of the Millenium Bronx Bombers as "invincible" to show their human side. Olney's task isn't easy, considering the restrictions George Steinbrenner places on clubhouse media, but he manages to peel away at the mystique and reveal a team of complicated individuals brought together by a desire to win, and the costs of constant success under a man like Steinbrenner. We get a look not just at men like Paul O'Neill, Scott Brosius, and Derek Jeter on the field, but also men in the front office like GM Brian Cashman, former manager Buck Showalter, and the Yankees' clipper for that championship run Joe Torre. Oleny humanizes the often faceless Yankee corporation, leaving the reader with sympathies for those most responsible for the impossible string of victories as they stare down the possibility of losing. Other profiles include Darryl Strawberry (whose plight with drugs has never been rendered so tragic before), Jorge Posada (an unsure prospect who emerged as one of the team leaders), and Chuck Knoblauch, who fell victim to a mysterious ailment during his tenure in the Bronx. Olney also lets us see the men who would upset the dynasty: men like Curt Schilling and Randy Johnson, who would carry on trying to beat the Yankees even after the emotional toll of September 11th made the New Yorkers "America's Team". Olney's book is not only a look at the championship run that came crashing down one November night in Arizona, but also the forces that converged in society and a larger perspective than just baseball to invest in the traditional game new notions of what it meant to keep playing in the wake of tragedy. This will long be the official history of that magnificant and hated Yankees run many years to come. No other book could do justice to the mighty New York Yankees of 1996-2001 and their amazing rise (and shattering fall). Buster Olney gives Yankee-lovers and Yankee-haters equal reason to identify with the team despite their alligences. You'll have to look long and hard to find a better glimpse into the machine that Steinbrenner built, before it self-destructed and became a shadow of its former

If you have followed the Yankees over the past 10 years, you know that the team has kept a tight lid on any controversial matters and fans who want to find out more about any possible tension in the clubhouse and front office will have to wait for some tell-all book. Well, this is the book. Not that Buster Olney has gone out of his way to kiss and tell. Rather, as the beat writer for the New York Times covering the Yankees, he knows all the personalities and seems to know what the players are thinking and how tensions developed and were resolved. The Yankees since 1996 have been intriguing because they have won many pennants and have stayed competitive despite rising salaries and huge egos in the clubhouse. But thanks to manager Joe Torre and his coaching staff, these tensions have been kept under control. That does not mean that the players always got along or that the team was always on the right track. In this book, Olney deftly outlines the personalities and conflicts on this team as a backdrop to describing the seventh game of the 2001 World Series, the last night of the Yankees dynasty. Any Yankees fan recalls that game with horror as they took a lead into the ninth inning and lost the game with Mariano Rivera on the mound. They came so close to winning their fourth straight title! Somehow, the author manages to weave the personality profiles and other tidbits about this team as he runs through the game pitch by pitch. Students of good writing should take notes on how Olney transitions all of these subjects. Of course, owner George Steinbrenner comes off as the boarish, unstable, arrogant man that he is. No surprise there. Yankees biographers are nearly unanimous on that point. But reading the book, you feel like you are in the Yankees clubhouse, and intimate details about players make you feel like you know them. Somehow, Olney has tapped into the mind of general manager Brian Cashman and the fact that he literally gnashes his teeth at night, under Steinbrenner's thumb. A subtext is how the Yankees have remained competitive in a high-priced market and other teams have struggled to keep the pace. This makes life difficult for the Yankees general managers, who are under CONSTANT pressure to keep the team strong and to ensure a World Series title every year. Since the Yankees have not won the World Series title every year, sometimes "just" the pennant, life is quite difficult for Steinbrenner's staff. You wonder what went on when behind closed doors after the team lost four straight to the hated Red Sox in the 2004 league championship series. The days and weeks following that catastrophic loss would make for another excellent book.

Buster Olney offers up a truly unique account of the Yankee championship run that ended in 2000. Dynasties in professional sports are a rare breed in this day and age; in this book Olney lays out the unique Yankee roadmap that led to four victory parades down the Canyon of Heroes, fueled by mountains of Steinbrenner cash and many bottles of Tums consumed by many who worked for him. Olney provides great insight into the inner workings of Yankeeland, and puts a human face on this always professional and often boringly efficient Yankee Dynasty. The whole thing is played out against the backdrop of baseball's current era, where the Yankee revenue-producing machine churns out previously unheard of gobs of cash to fuel all the lofty expectations. All in all, an objective tome on a fascinating subject, for baseball fans and casual observers alike.

Finally, a Yankee book without the fluff. In Buster Olney's "The Last Night of the Yankee Dynasty," Olney delivers a page-turning account of arguably the greatest baseball dynasty since the advent of free agency. The 1996-2001 Yankees, who won four World Series Championships, were a cohesive unit who put their egos on the back burner and did what it took to win -- not a bunch of guys in it for themselves as is so common with teams since free agency. Olney delivers this point very eloquently with descriptive prose and fresh reporting that makes you feel like a fly in the inner sanctum of one of sports most famous -- or infamous -- teams. After reading this book you feel like you know many of the integral Yankee figures -- Mariano Rivera, Derek Jeter, paul O'Neill, Brian Cashman, Joe Torre and King George, to name a few. Olney provides a fair, unbiased assessment as well, revealing flattering and unflattering details about people like Jeter, Torre and Steinbrenner. For me, this book was truly a page turner, and in the sports genre page turners are few and far between. Whether you're a love the Yankees or hate them, a sports fanatic or not, this book is a great read for everyone -- even George Steinbrenner, if he can handle it.

The Last Night of the Yankee Dynasty brought me back to that night in November 2001 when, I was sure, the Yankees would find a way to win yet another championship. I remember that sinking feeling when Luis Gonzalez's hit fell beyond Derek Jeter's reach. But Olney's account of the Yankees' run from 1996 to 2001 does much more than recount a single baseball game. It digs into the psyche of the team, and explains how the personalities who made up this team won, and lost, together. When you read a boxscore, you see numbers on a page. But Olney shows that the people who put up those numbers are just that, people, who were struggling with their own problems, which included playing under the watchful and impatient eye of King George. As I read about the interactions of Steinbrenner with the various players, team management, agents etc., I felt like I was seeing this team from the inside. You don't have to love the Yankees to appreciate this glimpse into the Yankee franchise. If you are a sports fan, you'll love The Last Night of the Yankee Dynasty ... as long as your name is not George Steinbrenner.