On October 23, 1996 - thirty years ago today - the Yankees were six runs down to the best team in baseball, three outs from a 3-1 World Series hole. What happened in the next hour is why there is a dynasty to remember.
Every Yankees fan of a certain age has a night they can place themselves. Where they were. Who they were with. What they yelled at the television. For the generation that grew up in the long drought after 1978, that night is Game 4 of the 1996 World Series in Atlanta.
To understand why it mattered, remember where the franchise stood. The Yankees had not won a championship in 18 years. George Steinbrenner, the owner who had bought the team for $10 million in 1973, had dismissed Buck Showalter after the 1995 season and handed the club to Torre, a Brooklyn baseball lifer the tabloids openly mocked. The team he assembled was a strange, wonderful mix: a rookie shortstop named Derek Jeter, a 21-game winner in Andy Pettitte, a young Mariano Rivera setting up closer John Wetteland, and veterans like Wade Boggs, Tim Raines, Darryl Strawberry and Cecil Fielder chasing the ring that had always eluded them.
DID YOU KNOW?
Joe Torre's hiring on November 2, 1995 was so unpopular that the New York Daily News greeted him as "Clueless Joe." He had never played or managed in a World Series, and his managerial record with the Mets, Braves and Cardinals stood 109 games under .500. He told his new team that first spring: "I don't want to win one championship - I want to win three in a row."
Two Games From Gone
The World Series opened in the Bronx, and it was a disaster. The defending champion Braves, with a rotation of Greg Maddux, Tom Glavine and John Smoltz, won Game 1 by a 12-1 score behind 19-year-old Andruw Jones, then took Game 2, 4-0, behind Maddux. The Yankees flew to Atlanta down two games to none, with the city's talk shows already writing the obituary.
They steadied themselves in Game 3, a 5-2 win built on David Cone's stubborn outing and a three-run rally in the eighth. But even that only set the stage. Game 4, on the night of October 23, 1996, is the one people remember.
Six Runs Down
Atlanta jumped ahead early and led 6-0 by the fifth inning. In the sixth, the Yankees scratched back three runs on hits from Fielder and Charlie Hayes. Still, with closer Mark Wohlers - 100 miles per hour, 39 saves that season - looming for the eighth, a 6-3 deficit felt like a formality.
Jim Leyritz did not treat it as one. With two on, the backup catcher worked the count and got a hanging slider. He hit it over the left-field wall. Tie game. Leyritz later admitted he barely knew what Wohlers threw: "I always say sometimes it's better to be ignorant than smart."
The game went to the tenth. With two outs, Braves manager Bobby Cox ordered Bernie Williams walked intentionally to load the bases, choosing to pitch to the 38-year-old Boggs instead. Boggs, a five-time batting champion, took a walk against Steve Avery to force in the go-ahead run. A Ryan Klesko error added another. Wetteland closed the 8-6 win, and the Series was tied.
The Trade That Wasn't
Here is how close it all came to never happening. That spring, worried about Jeter's fielding, Steinbrenner pushed to trade Rivera to Seattle for infielder Felix Fermin - a deal that would have sent the greatest reliever ever to the Mariners and Jeter back to the minors. Super scout Gene Michael argued the owner down until Steinbrenner finally grumbled, "You'd better be right."
He was right. Jeter won the American League Rookie of the Year award unanimously that fall. Rivera was unhittable in front of Wetteland. And three nights after Game 4, back in the Bronx, the Yankees beat Maddux 3-2 in Game 6 behind Jimmy Key. The last out settled into Hayes' glove in foul territory - Hayes had dislocated a finger on the previous pitch and told no one - and Boggs ended the night riding a police horse around Yankee Stadium. Championship number 23. The first since the Bronx Zoo teams of 1977 and 1978.
What One Night Started
The Yankees won it all again in 1998, 1999 and 2000 - four titles in five years. Jeter said later that Steinbrenner had promised that if they won, he would keep the group together, and they kept winning. But players and fans alike trace the whole era back to one inning in Atlanta. Lose Game 4 and there is no Game 6, no horse ride, no dynasty, and Torre is forever "Clueless Joe."
Thirty years on, the details hold up because they were earned: a rookie, a comeback, a hanging slider, a bases-loaded walk. That is how the Yankees used to win - not quietly, and rarely the easy way. It is worth remembering, today of all days.
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Sources: Baseball-Reference.com (1996 World Series box scores, Games 1, 3, 4 and 6) · MLB.com ("Watch Yankees win 1996 World Series Game 4"; "Yankees' 1996 World Series championship revisited"; "Charlie Hayes reflects on 1996"; "MLB 1996 Year in Review") · National Baseball Hall of Fame ("Torre's hiring starts new Yankees dynasty") · Los Angeles Times (October 24 and 27, 1996)
Photo: [Y2kcrazyjoker4](https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Derek-Jeter-in-May-1996.jpg) via Wikimedia Commons, [CC BY-SA 4.0](https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0/deed.en) (Derek Jeter at Yankee Stadium, May 1996).
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