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

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Summary: It's not the Front Office's Fault
Review: Although 2001 was the end of A Yankee dynasty I think Olney blames the Yankees for things that were out of their control. O'Neill, Brosius, Knoblauch, and Tino all left the Yankees after that year but their departures were not the fault of the Yankees Front Office. Three of the four simply retired and Martinez moved on (but now the Yankees have brought him back to the Bronx). Was that Mr. Steinbreinner's fault. No, they just left the game. The Boss has attempted to fill that void left by those departures and in my opinion he's done a hell of a job. A-Rod's a little better than Brosius! The Yankees signed the runner up for the AL MVP award in 2004, Gary Sheffield, and brought back Tno this offseason. But Olney is right about the loss of chemistry. You can easily replace the numbers guys like Brosius and O'Neill put up, but you can't replace the heart and chemistry these guys brought to the table, at least that easily. These guys were special players and they don't come around often. Special in the sense that whenever the Yankees were down in October you knew in the back of your mind that they would come back. They fell in 2001 but look at games 4 and 5 in NY. Insane! Those 2 games are among some of the greatest postseason games ever. But you've got to tip your hat to Boston for what they did in 04'. They belived and in the end the proved why the won the season series and showed that they were a more complete team. But George is at work building a new dynasty in the hunt for an unprecedented 27th World Title. The Big Unit is already being fitted for his jersey and I have strong feeling the Carlos Beltran will be inked this offseason. Let me say something else. I don't care how much money you spend, it doesn't guarantee anything. Mr. Selig doesn't just fed-ex the trophy to the team that gives him the biggest check. Secondly, anyone who thinks that the baseball needs a salary cap is a fool just because of the fact that the Yanks haven't won since 2000. Now if the Yankees had sealed the deal in Arizona and somehow won three more in a row then the floor might be open for discussion but after the Angels won in 02' and the MARLINS!?!? won in 03' baseball is definetly competitive. The stupid Twins win the central every year, the Athletics who don't pump a dime into their organization win the west usually. Baseball is very competitive. Hey, there haven't been any repeats since the Yanks (98-00) so clealry no one team is dominating. Also, let's no be "idiots" and look at this in a marketing sense. New York is the center of this planet. It drives the world's financial markets, its the most populated city in the U.S., and its where they drop that big crystal ball for New Year's! Why should the New York, a massive market, be forced to spend the same amount of money as Kansas City? It just doesn't make sense. It's insane! Oh, and by the way, America practices an economic system involving Capitalism, not Communism. Anyone can spend for whatever they want, whenver they want. It's the beauty of America. So let's keep America a capitalist society and let the Yankees and whoever the hell else wants to, spend. Besides, without the Yankees, why would all of you Yankee haters even watch the postseason?

Rating:
Summary: An In Depth Look At the Bronx Bombers
Review: For starters, this book talks not only about the Yankees' dynasty from 1996-2001, but also the overall process of building the dynasty.

What's great about this book is its revelations of the personalities of the players, managers, coaches, and above all Steinbrenner himself. Several player confrontations are revealed as well as confrontations between Cashman and Steinbrenner. Moreover, the overall pressure of playing for the Yankees is also revealed in great detail.

Definitely a book worth picking up but there is one point that is way off in this book and that is the subtle criticism of the Yankees spending and pricing other teams out of competition. Spending does not guarantee winning. It's been four years since the Yankees won a title and teams with half their payroll have won in recent years (Marlins, Angels). Steinbrenner can spend all he wants, but ultimately, he as well as every other team must spend wisely and create a balanced roster.

Overall, this book is fun to read and is a definite page turner.

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Summary: A Red Sox fans take...
Review: I bought this book to find out what the reason was that not only I believed the Yankees were at the end of the road regarding continual World Championships, but why a sports writer who covers this team did, also. Great insight into a two-timed convicted felon (Steinbrenner) as owner of this once-mighty team and some of the reasons they have fallen from grace...I LOVED IT!

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Summary: Very insightful-- even for Yankee Fans.
Review: I did not know what to expect from Olney's book. Being a die hard Yankee and baseball fan, I thought I knew just about everything. Man, was I wrong. Olney brings his first hand knowledge to every chapter. (he covered the Yankees for some years with the NY Times) Readers are enlightened at the behind-the-scenes events that the book brings out learning of trades that never were, some never even known about. The book gives a detailed look about the most recent Yankees dynasty that ended on Nov. 4, 2001, starting way back in the late 80's and detailing every move that brought the end to one of the greatest dynasties ever.

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Summary: Hello? How about the 2004 season?
Review: I understand ancient history is important to understanding the current situation in the Balkans or the Middle East. I was floored by the scope of this book. Where is the 2004 choke against the Red Sox? Had this been recommended to me by Amazon I probably would have bought on the strength of the title and been disappointed. Just goes to show Amazon has my number.

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Summary: A must read for any Yankees fan
Review: 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.

Rating:
Summary: A must read for any ardent baseball fan
Review: If you love baseball the way that I do then you either love the Yankees or you hate the Yankees. There is no in between. But Buster Olney does something with his book that no stathead could ever do, he humanizes the Yankees. In particular, he gives an in depth look at the Yankee teams from 1996-2000 that so dominated the sport of baseball. The main backdrop for the book focuses on Game 7 of the 2001 World Series, which is defined as the Yankees downfall. The years that have followed that fateful day, in particular this past playoff implosion versus the vaunted Red Sox, show that Olney is not at all incorrect in his assumption that the Yankee dynasty is dead. Olney shows just why the Yankees were such a powerful force during their five year run as top dog. Hint: It had more to do with chemistry than talent. He also shows why the Yankees face an improbable road towards another string of championships. Hint: It has something to do with a megolomaniacal billionaire. No amount of money can recapture the pride that Yankees fans felt for their team at the end of the 20th century. Yet no amount of money can also fix the irreperable damage that King George has done to the psyche of his personnel. Triumph, tyranny, in depth info, heart, rationalization, and overall superior storytelling, Olney's book has it all.

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Summary: Olney goes nine innings
Review: The thing about the Yankees is, whether you like them or not, they have the best players in baseball. Notice I didn't say they have the best team in baseball. This year it's the Red Sox. But the Yankee players are usually the best that money can buy.

Funny how we laud successful people like Jack Welch, Herb Kelleher and Martha (before the orange coveralls) Stewart. But then we rip Steinbrenner. Probably because he's such a rude, mannerless billionaire. My suspicians are that often the two characteristics create a symbiotic relationship.

I'm a Red Sox fan from that part of the world. My parents are buried at St. John's in Winthrop. My brothers played sports there. My sister works there. The day before I left for Vietnam my Dad took me to Fenway to see the Sox and the Yankees.

But I'm sure the Red Sox brain trust, Lucciani and Epstein et. al., are as difficult as Steinbrenner. Face it. If Mother Teresa is in the lobby of the Empire State Building and she wants to go to the top and see the view and say a few prayers for the poor and Red Sox management is in one elevator and Yankee management's in the other, she's taking the stairs.

But Buster Olney takes the last game of the Diamondback Series in 2001 and shows it to be 'the end of the line' for the Yankees. Certainly he seems prescient. Buster takes the game inning by inning and reports on everything from the pitch count to what striking out players were swinging at. And then in between the innings, he tells the story of the fall from grace, the cost of greatness, why some players flourish under the searchlight scrutiny of New York and why some sing The Stones' dirge, "Gimmee Shelter."

5 Stars. Excellent sports book. Go Sox. Larry Scantlebury

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Summary: The title sells the content short
Review: This book covers much more than that night in Arizona when the six-year Yankees run from 1996-2001 came to an end, it goes in depth into how the team was constructed, the lives of the main components, and goes behind the scenes of the turbulent Steinbrenner-Cashman relationship. And on top of that, the inning-by-inning account of Game 7 is done to near-perfection, and after I finished, I threw in my VHS of that game to catch some of the little subtleties that Olney included in the description. Great job by Olney.

Almost every Yankee fan young and old will enjoy this book. The only Yankee fans who may not are the ones who think the dynasty continues today with the likes of Giambi, ARod, Sheffield and so on. The 1996-2001 Yankee teams were just that -- TEAMS -- and Olney did a fantastic job portraying the heart and soul of those teams in what I'm pretty sure is the first real attempt (of what will eventually be many) to cover that dynasty in great detail. Die-hards like myself will already be aware of many of the tidbits Olney includes, but that doesnt detract at all.

Despite the hatred many baseball fans have for the Yankees, it can still be enjoyed by fans outside of New York, and not just because it involves the Yankees losing. Fans of the sport who appreciate when a group of players pour their hearts and souls into the team effort, even though individually they arent the best players the game has to offer, will appreciate what Olney has put together here.

Rating:
Summary: An enlightening read, but could have been better.
Review: This book does a great job of telling what I've been trying to describe to fellow Yankee fans: the way Stein is running the team now, there will be no more dynasties. The anecdotes and descriptions in here prove it. I only have a couple complaints. One is that Olney spends a lot of time describing the same thing. He spends pages on Steinbrenner's personality, when really, what's left to be described? Also, the jacket of the book promises us conclusions of Olney's about the dynasty and the years that followed, and we never really get those. They are only finally addressed in the epilogue, and I wish he had spent more time musing about ramifiactions and such as the book was progessing, and in the end, he barely manages to tie together what should be an easily arrived at point. Finally, I wish this book had come out after this season, because EVERYTHING has changed...

If you are a Yankees fan, this book is a MUST read, if only to get you nostalgic and force you to realize that yes, the glory days are over, and the bought team we have now will never be what those teams were. If you are an objective baseball fan, it's also worth it. If you're a Red Sox fan, this book will just feed your whining and (now) gloating, even though your team is headed down the same track as we speak.

I applaud Olney on a very good book.