Yankees: Jim Leyritz answers some questions about the ’96 team and his career

MG:
You mentioned Mariano Rivera, and what an amazing pitcher he became. He has just been inducted into the Baseball Hall of Fame. What were your thoughts when you first saw him? You were in the Bronx during his rookie season- what were your thoughts of him when he first came up?
JL:
Well, you have to remember that when he came up early in 1995, he was a starter and he was horrible. He had two pitches, which again, I know that it sounds funny now because he really only had one, but at that time he was a starter with two pitches. His fastball was good, but his slider was terrible. Someone somewhere must have told him that he threw a good slider because he wanted to throw it all the time, and I can tell you as a starter how many times I begged him not to throw that pitch. He was sent down in ’95, and when he came back up, all of a sudden he had this devastating cutter.

MG:
Mariano Rivera only one of the star players that came up while you were with the Yankees; there was a young shortstop who also made it to the Bigs during your tenure with the Yankees. His name was Derek Jeter. What did you think of him when he came up?
JL:
Well, the interesting thing with that is in 1996 if Tony Fernandez doesn’t break his hand, Derek Jeter doesn’t start in the big leagues. I always joke that when they did something for Derek Jeter retirement, Tony Fernandez should have been the first person they were inviting because if he doesn’t get hurt there and doesn’t start the season, the course of history is changed dramatically.

I met Derek in the offseason of ’95 going into ’96. We both lived in Tampa and we were working out at the complex together. I just remember looking at him and watching him throw 150, 200 baseballs and taking 300, 400 swings in January. I kept trying to tell him, “Hey kid, listen, this is your first big league camp. You’ll get plenty of time to get into shape, don’t start trying to do it in January”, but he’d just refuse. He would say, “This is what I do, this is how I work out, and I’m going to continue to do that.” It was pretty impressive for such a young kid to be so disciplined.

MG:
You were on both sides of the greatest rivalry in American sports as you played for both the Yankees and the Red Sox.
JL:
Yes sir.
MG:
What is so special about that rivalry?
JL:
The passion and loyalty that the Yankee fans and Red Sox fans have, I have seen nowhere else and I played on six different teams. When I got traded to Anaheim, I didn’t feel that same passion there, and when I got traded back to the Red Sox, I was so excited to get back to fans, even though it wasn’t Yankee fans, to get back to the east coast fans that had a true passion for the game, and that’s why most people say, “Oh, you probably didn’t enjoy your time in Boston”, and I’m like, to be honest with you, I really did. But unfortunately I had some issues with their pitching coach who wanted to call every single pitch like a college kid and I refused to do it, so I ended up getting traded halfway through that season.

MG:
You have faced your share of elite pitchers. Who was the toughest pitcher you had to face?
JL:
Randy Johnson in his hay day. He was the toughest from the left side, and Pedro Martinez from the right.

MG:
Who was the funniest teammate you had throughout your career?
JL:
I would say David Cone. The one story that I always remember because it involved my father, was before game three of the ’96 World Series. My dad and I were sitting in a hotel bar in Atlanta. It was about 11 o’clock at night, and David Cone was sitting there with his father at the bar. My dad looked at me and said, “Hey, isn’t Cone pitching tomorrow?” I said, “Yeah”, “Then why is he at the bar?” And I said, “Well dad, if you were pitching game three of the World Series with your team down 2-0, you think you would be able to sleep without any drinks?” Coney was a great teammate.
MG:
Cone ended up having a great performance in game three.
JL:
A great performance to go along with Bernie Williams’ home run.

MG:
We mentioned the 1995 season, and one of the main headlines that year was Don Mattingly’s first postseason appearance. Don Mattingly is one of the most beloved Yankees of all time and he is not in the hall of fame. What are your thoughts on Mattingly’s case for Cooperstown?
JL:
If Harold Baines could get in, Don Mattingly should get in. But I do understand the argument that if Donnie could have played two or three more years, he would’ve been a shoo-in. Unfortunately, a lot of the Hall of Fame voting is longevity, and unfortunately, Donnie didn’t have such a long career.

MG:
Who was your favorite pitcher to catch?
JL:
Well, I was Andy Pettitte’s personal catcher in ’95 and ’96. And we did pretty well together. I was also Sterling Hitchcock’s personal catcher in ’95 and then again in ’98 when I joined the Padres. I take a lot of pride in catching Sterling because when I got traded to the Padres, they were getting ready to put him in the bullpen. And Bruce Bochy called me in and said, “You think you can catch Hitchcock?” I told him that I caught Sterling in New York, and Bochy ended up leaving him in the rotation. Sterling wound up finishing that year as one of our better pitchers and then went ahead and won the National League’s Most Valuable Player in the playoffs.

MG:
You faced your former team, the New York Yankees in the 1998 World Series…
JL:
Yes, and I went 0-10.
MG:
How was it playing against your old team?
JL:
It was strange. You have to remember that my personality was very outgoing and being the loud mouth. So I kind had fun with it. I remember when we got to New York, Steve Lyons (who was still working for FOX) and I rode the subway together, because he had heard the story that I always took the 4 train to the Stadium, and so he wanted to see if I was still taking it, and I did. But I think the one thing that I take away from all that is there was nothing like playing in New York City and to make it there, to have the career that I had- not necessarily the career, but the postseasons, it made it really strange to be facing them in ’98 and then get traded back in ’99. I hit the last home run of the century. So that was it.
MG:
Were you well accepted by the New York fans when you returned to Yankee Stadium?
JL:
Well, it’s funny. The very first time I came back to Yankee stadium as a member of the Anaheim Angels in 1997, they played “Welcome Back Carter” and had this whole video montage with my highlights when I was out in the outfield stretching and I got a standing ovation. I returned in 1998 with the Padres. And when I was introduced at the World Series, the very first time in New York, I got a standing ovation again. The next guy to get introduced was Wally Joyner and they booed the living crap out of him. Wally ran up to me and he goes, “Thanks man”.
MG:
You can’t compare Wally Joyner to Jim Leyritz in the hearts of Yankee fans.
JL:
Exactly.

MG:
Who was your favorite manager to play for?
JL:
I would say Bruce Bochy. Bochy, being a former catcher, was sympathetic to the catchers. Additionally, he just was so approachable, so communicative as far as if you were going to play that day or not. I think a lot of it had to do with being in the National League that he really convinced me that “Jimmy, you need to come to the ballpark every day ready to play, whether you’re in a lineup or not because at some point, you are going to play because you can play so many positions and you can hit coming off the bench “.

“I’M GOING TO BE A CATCHER!”

MG:
Gary Sanchez, the Yankees starting catcher is having a much better season behind the plate than past years. What do you see that’s changed in his approach?
JL:
He lost some weight but he seems more flexible so he’s able to handle the low pitch like he couldn’t do last year. I think he probably really worked on that. I think that, and this is just a guess, that a lot of Joe Girardi’s criticisms when Joe was the manager, and when Joe was on the MLB Network. I think Gary might’ve finally taken it to heart and worked on those things that Joe was trying to get him to do. Every expert that had the Yankees winning last year had Gary Sanchez as their best hitter and he wound up hitting .190.

I think there was something bothering Gary Sanchez last year and that we didn’t see the real Gary Sanchez. He went home this off season and worked on himself, whatever it was. He obviously he took care of and he came back and now he’s the guy that we thought we were going to have two years ago.

MG:
Catcher is a very unique position in baseball; Why did you decide to become a catcher?
JL:
There is a great story behind that. My best friend growing up in Cincinnati, Ohio was a guy named Tommy Brennaman, who’s now an announcer for FOX. His father was the announcer for the Reds, Hall of Famer, Marty Brennaman, and so we used to go to spring training with their family for a couple of years. One year when we went, they were doing a TV show with Wild World of Sports where Johnny Bench was teaching catching and Pete Rose was giving hitting drills.

I was a center fielder/shortstop, I never even thought about catching. But I got to do the catching and Johnny Bench. So we did a catching segment and he was teaching me how to block balls and how to throw down the bases and I was doing all these things to show the young kids what to do.

So as soon as we were done with the segments, Johnny called me over and said, “Hey kid, are you a catcher?” And I said, “No, Mr. Bench. I want to be like Pete, I want to be an outfielder.” And he said, “Well, you know what you got some pretty good skills there and catching it is the quickest way to the big leagues”. Again, I was a 14 year old kid and I wasn’t really listening. He was able to kind of read me, and that I wasn’t really buying into it. So he said, “Maybe this will help”. He took off his mitt, signed it, and gave it to me. I went home that day and told my dad, “I’m going to become a catcher”, and that is how it happened.

Now here’s the interesting part of the story. I became a catcher and I was supposed to be drafted out of high school in the first round. Four days before the drafts, I was playing tennis and I broke my leg. I never got drafted. The team that was going to draft me out of high school, by all irony, was the Atlanta Braves, the team I ended up killing in the playoffs. After the injury, I couldn’t squat for two years. I went to junior college and learned to play the outfield again and some third base, I wasn’t drafted out of junior college.

I went to Kentucky for one year and I asked the coach if I could catch a little bit. He wouldn’t let me. So I played 3rd base, and didn’t get drafted again. And when I didn’t get drafted, I called my college roommate who was my teammate at Kentucky and said that I wanted to play with him in a collegiate league, but I wanted it to catch and if his coach would let me catch, I would play for them. Well, the coach said, yes, play for us and you can do whatever you want. So I went out there as a catcher. We ended up making the playoffs that year. I was catching in the NBC tournament in Wichita and these scouts from the Yankees were there to watch this guy named Dave Hollins who ended up playing for the Phillies. Even though they were there to watch Hollins, they saw me catching, and I wound up hitting like .500 for the tournament.

So after the game, the final game we played, a scout by the name of Doug Melvin, who I’m sure you’ve heard of, approached me and said, “Hey kid, what are you doing catching?” I told him that I was a catcher by position. He said, “well, not according to your draft report, you can’t”, because I guess my college coach told him I couldn’t catch so to make the long story short they looked at me and said, “We just saw you catch, and we want to sign you”. They ended up signing me right then and there out of that collegiate league. So I ended up never being drafted.

MG:
Who was you your childhood idol growing up?
JL:
Pete Rose. Pete was my idol growing up because Tommy Brennaman and I used to pick up baseballs in the batting cages when Pete used to hit, and it was pretty special. He used to just talk to us all the time. One piece of advice he gave me was to approach every bat, whether it’s the first bat of spring training or the last of that of the World Series, that you don’t approach any of those bats any differently. And if you do that, you’ll never get caught up in the pressure of the crowd or the moment because you’re taking every bat like it will be your last at bat.

That’s why when people say to me, ‘how were you able to come through in the clutch and not just once, but so often’, I tell them that because at 14 -15 years old, a guy like Pete Rose, who I idolized, gave me that advice, that’s what I lived by. In high school, I always wanted to take the last shot of the basketball game. I always wanted to be in control of the outcome, and that’s how you could do it.

Bob Costas covered the 1998 playoffs when we were getting ready to play the Atlanta Braves and he made a comment that it would be better for baseball if the Atlanta Braves beat the Padres and played the Yankees in the ’98 World Series rating-wise and everything. Well, we ended up beating the Braves and I made tee shirts that said, ‘hey Costas, sorry, but you got us’. The ’99 playoffs comes around, and he is broadcasting the World Series. I got traded to the Yankees in July of ’99, and I hadn’t hit a home run since I got back and I hit a home run that ended up becoming the last home run of the century. That was when he made his now famous comment, that “you could send this guy away in the spring and summer as long as you bring him back in October”.

The Evolution of Baseball

MG:
Who is your favorite player to watch now?
JL:
When he is healthy, I love watching Aaron Judge. I love this McNeil kid and then of course in California where I live, I get to watch Mike Trout play, and that is pretty special.

MG:
Who was the toughest pitcher to catch?
JL:
Tim Wakefield had one of the best knuckleballs ever and he was pretty hard to catch. And then I caught, Joe Niekro when he was with the Yankees and he was pretty nasty too.

MG:
There is talk about the National League incorporating the DH. What do you say about that?
JL:
I think there should be a DH for both leagues. Even in the high school ranks the travel ball and things like that, they have what they call ‘pitcher only’. So these kids are not even swinging a bat if they are pitching, and this starts when they are in their teenage years- and if you’re going to do that throughout the teenage years, I think you have to incorporate it throughout college, and into the minor leagues also.

MG:
I think additionally, you see players that just can’t field and they make a joke of their position, for example, Bryce Harper was one of their worst fielding outfielders last year. He signed a mega contract with the Phillies, he’ll be 38 when the contract’s up. Do you imagine a 38 year old Bryce Harper playing right field?
JL:
Right, exactly.

MG:
The game has changed since you played. What do you miss most about the way it was played back then? Was it the hustle? Was it pitchers going deep into games?
JL:
I liked it when the pitchers had no pitch count. What I really liked is that the hitter couldn’t dig in because most pitchers establish that the home plate was theirs.

MG:
This year we had the Tim Anderson, bat flips, suspensions, etc. What are your takes on the quote on quote ‘let the kids play’ movement?
JL:
I’m not totally against the bat flip as far as when it’s meaningful and it’s a game changer. I think the bat flip, again there’s a certain amount of respect that we have to have for the other players and for the game’s class. What really set all this off was when Jose Bautista did it. He also took some time to enjoy the home run that he hit. That’s when you do it, because that was a huge moment. There has to be a balance between respect and fun.

MG:
Any tips you have for an aspiring catcher?
JL:
The most important thing that I try to teach catchers is what they call ‘thumb up’. Whenever the pitcher gets ready to throw, you put your thumb up, kind of like you’re giving the thumbs up sign with your glove so you don’t get what I call ‘thumbed’ when you get your pitch. This way, you can handle the inside pitch just as well as you can handle the outside pitch. My advice for young catchers is to learn how to frame a baseball because if you can frame the pitch, you will help your pitcher tremendously.

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MG:
Recently it seems that there have been more injuries in baseball. They used to be slowly but surely seem like the numbers. I mean this year the entire Yankee roster was injured. Can you share an opinion why you think that is?
JL:
You’ll laugh at this, but Mr. Steinbrenner wanted me to weigh 207 lb instead of 220 lb. I said, Mr. Steinbrenner, I can be 207 lb and have no body fat and I’m going to pull something. You can’t pull fat! He was fine with it after that. For the first nine years of my career, I was never hurt besides for when I was hit by a pitch. I was very durable.

MG:
Thank you for taking the time to answer a few questions!
JL:
It’s been a pleasure! Thank you for having me.