TAMPA, Fla., Feb. 17 — There were 55,913 fans at Yankee Stadium on Oct. 21, 2000, and millions more watching on television. Todd Pratt had the best seat of all for the moment that came to define a Yankees dynasty.
In his last season at age 40, Todd Pratt hopes to earn a job as the backup catcher for the Yankees.
Pratt is in camp with the Yankees now, trying to win a job as the backup catcher. In 2000, he started for the Mets in Game 1 of the World Series. He had scored the go-ahead run in the seventh inning, and the Mets led, 3-2, in the ninth. The Yankees had swept the past two World Series, but Pratt could sense a momentum shift.
“If we had won that game,” he said at Legends Field this week, “we might have broken the Yankees’ glow, or whatever they had.”
It was up to Armando Benítez to close it, with Pratt guiding him. Jorge Posada flied out to start the ninth. Paul O’Neill came to bat, hitting .182 since mid-September. He could not catch up to Benítez’s sizzling fastball, and was helpless against the splitter.
Benítez got ahead, a ball and two strikes. But O’Neill would not give in.
“It was just incredible,” Pratt said. “He kept fouling off tough pitches after tough pitches. It was mentally wearing me thin back there, going, ‘Come on, he’s got to swing and miss, or he’s got to put it in play.’ ”
One foul ball landed just beyond the reach of third baseman Robin Ventura, whose range was restricted by the extra box seats set up for the World Series. Benítez kept firing, and O’Neill kept fighting.
On the 10th pitch, O’Neill walked on a high, outside fastball, enough to rattle Benítez and rouse the Yankees. O’Neill went on to score the tying run, and the Yankees won in 12 innings. They captured the series in five games.
Pratt pointed to another play in Game 1, Derek Jeter’s pinpoint relay to cut down Timo Pérez at the plate in the sixth inning, as the pivotal moment. Jeter has never gotten enough credit, Pratt said, for whirling and throwing without a crow hop, somehow knowing that the speedy Pérez had not run hard all the way.
But O’Neill’s at-bat had greater symbolism, Pratt said, for what it represented about those Yankees.
“That was the heart right there,” Pratt said. “Every foul ball was a beat of the heart. It just kept them going, kept them going. That would be the description of that team.”
Much has changed for the Yankees since then. But Jeter and Posada remain, and the two Yankees who hit Pratt with pitches that night — Andy Pettitte and Mariano Rivera — are his new teammates this spring.
Pratt turned 40 this month, and he said this would be his last season in the majors. He will retire if he does not make the Yankees out of spring training. “I’m not going to take a younger guy’s job,” Pratt said.
Pratt would seem to have an excellent chance to make the team. On the first day of workouts, he caught the staff ace, Chien-Ming Wang, in the bullpen. On the second day, he caught Rivera.
He also has a low uniform number (14), the locker next to Posada and a much longer track record than the other leading candidate, Wil Nieves. The initial front-runner, the veteran Raúl Chávez, broke his hand in winter ball, prompting the Yankees to call Pratt.
Pratt was glad to accept their invitation. He was a candidate for the backup job last year until the Yankees signed Kelly Stinnett, who had experience catching Randy Johnson. Pratt signed with Atlanta and hit .207, his lowest average in five years.
But he reported here in good shape and has a strong supporter in the third-base coach, Larry Bowa, his manager in Philadelphia for more than three seasons. Bowa praised Pratt for his preparation and said he was the rare backup who could be a team leader.
“He’s not afraid to get on somebody,” Bowa said. “Even though he’s not playing, if he sees something, he’ll say something.”
Part of the reason players listen, Bowa said, is that Pratt can also laugh at himself. It was Pratt, after all, who rushed from the Mets’ dugout to hoist Ventura in the air as he rounded first base after smacking a ball over the fence to end Game 5 of the 1999 National League Championship Series. Ventura never made it to the plate, turning a grand slam into a single.
“When he plays, somebody’s going to laugh at something he does,” Bowa said. “Whether he screws himself into the ground on a swing or fouls a ball off his foot, he just has that personality.”
Pratt, whose home run clinched the Mets’ 1999 division series victory against Arizona, can appreciate the major league life because he once gave it up. In 1996, when Pratt was 29, he retired after the Seattle Mariners cut him in spring training.
He returned home to Florida, worked at Bucky Dent’s baseball school and entered the business world. Pratt’s goal was to own a Domino’s Pizza franchise, and to do so, he tried to learn every aspect of the job.
Three years before, Pratt earned a World Series bonus as a member of the N.L. champion Phillies. He spent it on a luxury car, which turned out to be an unusual way to deliver pizzas.
“I wasn’t a delivery guy, because you’re not learning much there,” Pratt said. “But there were times when we were short-handed and I had to go out. It was kind of funny, because I was delivering pizzas in a BMW. It cost me in tips. People would see the car outside and say, ‘Hey!’ But I needed the tips.”
The Mets brought him back into baseball in 1997 and improved his salary. Ten years later, Pratt has pulled up to the Yankees’ door for his final stop.
INSIDE PITCH
Position players report to spring training Sunday, but Bernie Williams will not be among them. Williams has not ruled out accepting the Yankees’ minor league offer, but he has not instructed his agent to take it. “I have not heard anything from Bernie,” the agent, Scott Boras, said Saturday night. “He’s not given me any information, so I don’t know what his timetable is.” Boras said Williams could report by March 10 and still be ready for opening day.
The Yankees’ starters threw Saturday for the second time, and catcher Jorge Posada said he was convinced that Carl Pavano was healthy again. The pitching coach, Ron Guidry, was also impressed. “I was tickled to death by how he threw the ball today,” Guidry said. “If he threw 45 pitches, he probably didn’t miss but five spots.”
Guidry also urged Kei Igawa to slow his delivery and took note of the top prospect Phil Hughes, who is working on a slider to complement his fastball, curve and changeup. Posada said Hughes, 20, was talented enough to make the team out of spring training, although that almost certainly will not happen. “It’s different from last year,” Posada said. “The way he’s walking around, waiting to take the ball — the attitude, you see it.” ... Manager Joe Torre had a cold and missed the workout.
