If I asked you what pitcher lead the American League from 1990-1995 in wins, complete games, and innings you probably would say Randy Johnson or Roger Clemens. You would be wrong on both counts as it was none other than the 1993 AL Cy Young Award winner, Jack McDowell. Sometimes overlooked during a career that was short-circuited due to elbow problems, McDowell remembered the ups and downs when he appeared on my weekly radio show. He specifically recalled the 1995 season, which he spent with the Yankees. The events that led him to end up in New York were odd, as it included an illegal trade. His journey also included a walk off hit that should never have happened, an incident with the New York fans, and a rarely talked about free agency collusion.
“What a fun year, probably the best group of guys I ever played with,” McDowell said when I brought up his New York experience. The circumstances of McDowell actually becoming a member of the team were quite strange. McDowell described it as “a mess.” He was traded from the White Sox to the Yankees on December 14th, 1994. The problem with this transaction was it was in the middle of the strike when player movement should have been frozen. McDowell was supposed to be a free agent during this time, but in the anti-trust exempt world of Major League Baseball the owners tend to do what they want, when they want. When the strike settled, the Players Association didn’t support McDowell, who along with Kenny Rogers are the only two pitchers who had to wait seven years to reach free agency.
McDowell didn’t have his best statistical season that year, but he was an integral member of the staff. The Yanks used 12 different starting pitchers that season. A kid by the name of Mariano Rivera even received 10 starts. McDowell remembers Buck Showalter telling him how he was going to push him throughout the season. “Showalter called me in the first week of the season after Jimmy Key got hurt and he said listen, I know you’re an innings eater, and I know that you don’t care about your personal stats you care about the team, but we are going to have to ride your ass .” And ride it they did as pitched 217 innings in 30 starts. He finished third in the American League in innings (behind David Cone and Mike Mussina), but only because missed the last two starts due to a muscle tear in his ribcage. Despite it all he would finish a solid 15-10, with a 3.93 ERA.
The real story happened on July 18th, when he was lit up for 9 runs in 4+ innings by his former team, the White Sox, in the second game of a doubleheader at Yankee Stadium. As he left the mound the fans booed, and McDowell decided to return his feelings in the form of giving them the middle finger. “I was busting my ass and I was out there for 7 innings whether I was getting my butt kicked or not. I was out there to get my ass kicked, but I was sucking it up for the team, and when you doing that and getting booed by these supposedly intelligent New York fans, and they’re booing you when you’re sucking it up and getting your ass kicked by the team who traded you, that kind of made me snap.” The newspapers were all over this. Dave Anderson of the NY Times demanded the Yankees trade McDowell. Yankees GM Gene Michael fined McDowell $5,000 for the infraction. Ironically, it was the group of people he directed his ire, the fans, which he credits for blowing over the incident as he remembers hearing nothing but support from the stands the next day.
The Yankees made their late season run with McDowell winning 4 of 5 September starts. When they reached the postseason that ribcage muscle was still bothering him, but he started Game 3 of the ALDS. The Mariners began their historic comeback from a 2-0 deficit that night torching McDowell in a 7-4 victory. Two nights later, Buck Showalter made a decision that cost him his job and saved baseball in the city of Seattle. Instead of staying with Mariano Rivera he turned to McDowell. After a scoreless ninth inning the Yankees took a 5-4 lead in the top of the tenth, but Showalter didn’t go to his closer John Wetteland. He asked McDowell to get three more outs to clinch the series. Everyone remembers the Edgar Martinez double and Ken Griffey Jr. slide into home plate, but the events that led up to that are what the cliché “baseball is a game of inches” is all about. McDowell said that Joey Cora was out on the leadoff bunt hit as Don Mattingly tagged him, but it was missed by the umpire. Even more punishing was what Randy Velarde also told him about Griffey’s single up the middle. “Griffey rarely hits ground balls. If you look at his career numbers against me I pretty much owned him. Velarde kinda knew this and was trying to play up the middle and they were moving him, moving him, moving him, and it ends up after two pitches he finally moved and he hit a groundball just out of reach.” Edgar Martinez then came up and the rest was history.
Despite the challenging season in the Bronx, McDowell wanted to return. The firing of Showalter put the managerial search as the priority. “It was one year out of the strike when the second round of collusion was in force. If you got an offer you had to get it. The Yankees hadn’t made me an offer, they hadn’t hired a manager, and you know if it had been a bad hire what a mess that is. I had two offers and two offers only. One from Cleveland, which was a 2 year deal, and one from the Marlins, which was a two year deal. At the time, Kevin Brown had the same two offers. So, one of us was going one place and one of us was going the other, and I said I am going to go with the Indians.”
McDowell was never the same after ’95 as he suffered from injuries the rest of his career. A botched elbow surgery limited him to 24 starts after the age of 30, and he would retire after the 1999 season. He’s been busy in his retirement touring with his band Stickfigure, coaching High School baseball, working with Glen Campbell and Surf dog with their merchandise, and even manicuring the high school baseball field. He is remarried and more focused on being a dad today than anything else. His New York experience certainly didn’t go as scripted, but you don’t get a hint of bitterness. “Sometimes a lot of my favorite moments aren’t like I kicked butt this day. They’re just moments that you happened to be part of something that you look back and say, wow that was really cool.”
