The Pride and the Pressure: A Season Inside the New York Yankee Fishbowl

by Michael Morrissey, Anthony J. Causi (Photographer)

Derek Jeter
Jason Giambi
Bernie Williams
Gary Sheffield
Alex Rodriguez
Johnny Damon
Melky Cabrera
Hideki Matsui
Bobby Abreu
Jorge Posada
Mariano Rivera
Chien-Ming Wang
Robinson Cano
Mike Mussina
Randy Johnson “The Yankees always said they valued players who could handle the white-hot spotlight, could handle life in the Yankee Fishbowl.”
-- from The Pride and the Pressure What’s it really like to wear the pinstripes? This riveting account from New York Post writer Michael Morrissey takes readers inside the clubhouse of the 2006 New York Yankees and reveals what really goes on behind the hype, the media glare, and the roar of the fans surrounding the most fabled organization in the world of professional sports.

The New York Yankees began the 2006 season with baseball’s highest payroll and sky-high expectations—and more challenges than other any Yankee team in history. From owner George Steinbrenner right on down, the team took an urgent, almost militaristic, approach toward winning their twenty-seventh world championship. Morrissey had full access, chronicling the ups-and-downs on the field and the public and private skirmishes that defined their

·Why manager Joe Torre and general manager Brian Cashman chose to stay on for another season, despite chafing under Steinbrenner in 2005
·The saga of Alex his peculiar relationship with the fans and the media and the crushing scrutiny that shaped 2006
·How Johnny Damon, the fun-loving, former Red Sox superstar, assimilated into the Yankee line-up and clubhouse
·How Jason Giambi quietly overcame a steroid scandal and became a reliable, formidable power once again
·How the acquisition of Bobby Abreu at the trade deadline redefined the Yankees, attempting to overcome serious injuries to Gary Sheffield and Hideki Matsui that nearly derailed the team’s prospects
·An unexpected role for Bernie Williams, a huge fan favorite whose Yankee career seemed to be over until team injuries drew the aging star back into the line-up
·Why the Yankee pitching rotation never felt bulletproof – from inconsistencies by Randy Johnson to the embarrassing injury streak suffered by Carl Pavano
·How Yankee superstar and captain Derek Jeter handled relentless expectations to win the World Series, guided the team through disastrous injuries, and faced stinging accusations of not supporting teammate Alex Rodriguez


Nothing in sports compares to the prestige and weight of wearing the pinstripes. THE PRIDE AND THE PRESSURE takes Yankees fans behind the scenes and brings it all to life.

Genres: Baseball

288 pages, Hardcover

First published January 1, 2007

Reviews

[Don Gorman · Rating 1 out of 5]

(1 1/2). This was a birthday present from a good friend. It is meant for a very small universe. Only total Yankee nuts and diehard baseball aficionados should even think about cracking this book. This is a Yankee beat reporter putting together a year long history of a season. Interesting once in a while, boring most of the time, and detailed to a fault. It became fairly obsolete within 6 months of its issue. If, however, you are within the tiny universe I described at the opening, it has a few nuggets.

[Don LaFountaine · Rating 3 out of 5]

This was a pretty good book that is about the New York Yankees 2006 season, though it was more about the personality traits of the team personnel than the actual games of in the season.

The book discusses what it was like in the Yankee clubhouse during the 2006 season from the perspective of a journalist from the New York Post. Throughout the pages the reader will hear about:
- What Brian Cashman thought when he was looking at the roster, and how he felt after finally wresting control of baseball operations from George Steinbrenner's Florida group, led by Randy Levine.
- How the team was affected by George Steinbrenner's health.
- How Joe Torre handled the clubhouse
- How the A-Rod and Jeter issue was handled by the two players
- What Randy Johnson, Gary Sheffield, Carl Pavano, and Jason Giambi were like
- How new players like Johnny Damon handled the pressure
- and a couple of series of games, namely the 5 game series against the Red Sox and the 2006 ALDS against the Detroit Tigers.

Basically this was a tell all book about the members of the Yankees in 2006. Though this was expected given the title of the book, I was hoping for more baseball and less drama. I know the author saw more than the average fan as he had greater access to the clubhouse than fans do. And there were a number of things that occurred during the 2006 season that from a fan's perspective the author was right in a number of his criticisms of the team. With that said, the book seemed to me to be written by a bitter newspaper baseball beat writer who was trying to get back at people in the clubhouse. It read like a supermarket tabloid and was essentially one long constant criticism of the team. It also seemed to me that the author was "ghost writing" for A-Rod. While he criticized everyone associated with the team, including A-Rod, the author seemed to be very forgiving of Alex while blasting Derek Jeter as a cold hearted player who will freeze out people whenever he felt like it who also did not deserve to have MVP consideration that year because A-Rod had better numbers, that Joe Torre was a clueless manager who did not know how to run a team, or did not care about how the team was run, did not support his star slugger and even hurt him by changing his position in the lineup, and how A-Rod was constantly harassed by the unrelenting fans and uncaring teammates.

Baseball fans will probably enjoy this book and not just for the story. I found it very interesting to read about the season 10 years after it was written. Hindsight made reading this book kind of fun. For instance, the author talks about how the Red Sox did not make any moves at the trade deadline in 2006 and that Theo Epstein was taken to task for it. Yet he seemed to had made the correct move as the Sox won the World Series in 2007. With that said, the book will probably be best enjoyed by fans of Alex Rodriguez, people who enjoy tell-all books, and Yankee fans,

[Tom Gase · Rating 1 out of 5]

When I bought this book for a buck at a book fair I didn't realize it was by a New York Post writer. If I did, I would have put it back in the pile. This book goes all over the place talking about a lot of the players on the 2006 New York Yankees, but doesn't really talk about the season that much at all. Kind of reads like a tabloid book. Look, I don't want to read two chapters on Brian Cashman. I just don't. The writer also does something near the end of the book that I absolutely hate, which is call out other newspapers for reporting while saying his paper, the NY Post, scooped another paper. It just looks juvenile, like something a fourth grader would do. "We got this story and they didn't, and we're cool and that paper isn't! Yeah!!." Who cares? The New York Post absolutely stinks. Quit trying to pump yourself up Mr. Morrissey.

[Flora · Rating 2 out of 5]

Maybe it's just my indifference toward baseball. But really I think the man just needed a harsher editor. The chapters tried to center around characters, which made the book chronologically loosey-goosey, slightly repetitive and, at times, a little incoherent (not helpful for someone who only remembered the occasional Red Sox series and of course the Lidle crash).

[Michael · Rating 3 out of 5]

I don't remember anything about this book, except one anecdote about Hideki Matsui and his vast porn collection. As I recall, he missed a good part of the season with a wrist injury. The joke writes itself.

[Jeff · Rating 2 out of 5]

Pretty disjointed writing. Hard to get through this series of opinionated stories even with my love of sports books.