 Hello again everyone and welcome to another edition of Yes We Are Here. I'm Jack Curry and today I'm joined by Joe Girardi, the manager of the Philadelphia Phillies and a man who owns four World Series rings with the Yankees, three as a player, one as a manager. Joe, as I welcome you into the show, the first question I need to ask you, how are you, Kim, and your three children doing during these challenging times? We're actually doing pretty well. We've adapted pretty well to being quarantined at home for the most part and, you know, there's a lot of things that we can do because we live in Florida and we can get outside every day and social distancing is a lot easier. So my daughter who shoots a ton of baskets every day, that has worked out. My son continues to play long toss and we've been able to hit a little bit. So I think the hardest thing is kids miss their friends and they miss competition. And, you know, we've had to, you know, keep them away from other people, but they've done pretty good for the most part. I'm not surprised to hear that Girardi children are very active. If you've covered a game at Yankee Stadium back in the day, your kids after the game or were on the field taking advantage of that big expanse of green. And speaking of big expanses of green, Joe, you're away from that right now. I asked on Mattingly the same question. How have you kept up the communication with your players, with staff, just trying to make sure that you're ready for something that you don't know the timeline with yet? We've had a ton of Zoom calls like everybody else and some Zoom anxiety at times. You know, sometimes it's 9 or 10 during the course of a week. We've done it as a huge group where we've had 125 people on the call. We've done it as smaller groups where we broke up into positions and into, you know, reliever starters. Each coach has kind of taken his group of players and keeps in close contact with them. The trainers do, the strength coaches do as well. I'm sure the players are probably tired from hearing from us because, you know, they have to stop what they're doing, opposed to if they hear from us at the ballpark, we can kind of randomly chat. But we've kept up really well. We have another Zoom call today, you know, with the coaching staff as we, you know, get closer. You know, how do we see these changes affecting our club? You know, you have to start talking about, you know, if there's a DH, how does that affect our club? You know, and what, how does it affect our lineup and those different types of things? And if pitchers are only going three or four innings at the beginning, you know, who do we think about taking for longer relief that helps us get through all this? Joe, what excited you about your team before things were put on hold? This is your first year, you're in spring training in Clearwater. As you're leaving the ballpark on different nights, what's making you excited about 2020 with that Phillies club? You know, I'm excited about the talent that we have. And I'm also really excited about the young talent that we have. You know, some of the young players played extremely well in spring training. Players willing to adapt to changes. I've been very pleased with a guy like Gene Segar, who has moved over to third base and took all the reps in spring training at third base and did a fantastic job. The depth of some of our young pitchers, and we have an unbelievable stable of young left handed pitchers, which is kind of unusual to have that many. We kept throwing one out there after another and I was extremely impressed. I was also extremely impressed in how hard our guys play on an everyday basis, even in spring training. There was one situation in spring training where Bryce Harper stole second, stole third. And I looked at the third base coach and I said, this is spring training. Do not allow him to steal home, right? Let's put the hold on him. So I've been really pleased in how hard our guys have played. Joe, you mentioned players having to adapt. I want to flash back to 1996. It's your first season with the Yankees. Tino Martinez is his first season. Joe Torrey's first season as manager. It's Derek Jeter's first full season. At what point in that year did you say to yourself, I think I'm on a team that could do something special? I think it started to get to be about June or July that we realized that we had something special. And we had lost Coney for a while and we were able to overcome losing a top-notch starter and we built a pretty big lead by the end of July. I'm going to say we had about a 10-game lead on Baltimore and maybe even 11. And I felt there's something really special about the talent on this team but more importantly about just the clubhouse culture and how we had so much fun playing every day. And I think Mariano Duncan had a lot to do with that with the t-shirt we played today. We went today and it kind of took off and we felt that we had the emergence of some really young superstars that we didn't realize were going to become the players that they are. Hall of Famers, Derek Jeter and Mariano Rivera and Andy Pettit. These guys really stepped up and showed that they were a huge part of this club. You know, Moe kind of started off as like a fifth inning reliever, sixth inning reliever. Kind of worked his way to the sixth, seventh and eighth on certain days. But it just, you started to realize that with the veterans that we had and with this influx of unbelievable young talent, we had a really good team. Joe, you mentioned David Cohn and speaking to Joe Tory recently, he talked about being behind 2-0 to the Braves but he felt he had a little security blanket going there in game three. David Cohn in Atlanta, he knew he would handle everything that that assignment meant. Why was Cohn the perfect guy to pitch that game and how did he navigate his way through that game? Well, I think he had been through the situation so many times. He had been through it with the Mets. He had been through it with, you know, other teams where he was the hired gun. You know, that's what they called him the hired gun and he had that personality that he was always feisty, always a fighter, just a huge competitor. He knew the situation wouldn't overwhelm him. And that's exactly what happened. I remember Joe Tory walking out to him maybe in the fourth or fifth inning and he's like, I got this skip, don't worry, I got this. And I think he got Freddie MacGriff to pop up or something. It was a big part of the game and he just had that confidence and we knew that he was the guy that we needed on the mound. Game six, Yankee Stadium, it's a scoreless game early against Greg Maddox. Paul Neal's on third base, one out. You're at the plate, first pitch swinging, you triple, you're knocking a run. Joe, I've sat in press boxes for 30 years. I've never felt a press box shake the way it shook after you hit that triple. What do you remember about that at bat and how it propelled the Yankees in that inning and in that game? You know, I really thought that Joe might give me the safety squeeze because we had did it so many times during the course of the season. A lot of times it's with a left hander on the mound, but I was pretty good at it and Paul Neal is fast enough that I thought that, you know, if we could get the lead, we could get to our bullpen eventually, it would work out. But Joe didn't. And as you know, I was not one of those guys like the Yankees look for, patient hitters. I was one of those guys that looked for the first pitch I could hit and I would swing at it. And fortunately, Marquis Grissom was playing fairly shallow. And I understand why he wasn't respecting my power because I didn't have a lot. And I was able to hit it over his head. And I tell people, I don't really miss playing. I don't miss the physical and mental grind. But if there was one moment of time that I wish I could go back to, it would be that. Because I don't think I ever felt the emotion of the stadium. It happened so fast for me. And I was so excited that I didn't really hear the crowd. And that's the one moment of time I wish I could go back to. Joe, you talk about how your hating approach was. If I saw something early, I was going to jump on it. You had caught Maddox for four seasons. Was it anything you knew about his tendencies about maybe he was going to try and get ahead of you? Or was it really all about you in that moment that this is my approach? I'm going with my approach? No, I mean, he was an aggressive pitcher that was always around the plate. And I knew that from catching him. And so many times he was able to throw that sinker off the plate that would come back and you would give up on it. And you would take it for a strike. Well, I knew not to give up on it. But he also threw me a cookie down the middle, which he usually doesn't do. So I took advantage of it. But I think knowing him and what type of pitcher he was probably helped me. Joe, that season began with you having to replace Mike Stanley, popular Yankee. You had to deal with some criticism from fans, some criticism from the media. 1996 ends with Charlie Hayes catching that pop-up and you guys getting to celebrate. How would you describe that one year journey to get to the point where you're a new Yankee and now you're a championship Yankee? Well, I probably went from the toughest starting point to the greatest ending point for me in one season to where what I realized about Yankee fans is they're extremely loyal. And if you've performed in the past, it doesn't matter who comes in. They're going to be loyal to the guy who was there before. And you have to prove your worth. And that's what I had to do. But it was really tough in the beginning. My wife, Kim, had a long talk with me about being myself. Don Zimmer had a long talk with me about being myself. Don't try to be Mike Stanley, and you'll win people over. And the first month, I struggled mightily. And it really started with Docs, no hitter. The things started to change for me and that people started to appreciate that, no, I was not a power hitter like Mike Stanley. I was more of a defensive minded guy. And they started to appreciate it. And it was from being at the bottom and going all the way to the top, it was really enjoyable. Joe, speaking of the top, by 1998, you and Jorge Posada are sharing the catching duties. That team ends up winning a combined 125 games with the postseason, wins another title. I asked Joe Tory this question. I realized that the 27 Yankees and the 61 Yankees and any other team, they're not here to argue for themselves right now. But do you feel as if you had played on the best team of all time in 1998? I think you could make that argument. I think Seattle won 116 a couple years later, but didn't finish the job. We were able to finish the job. And I will say, that's the most pressure we ever felt in any of our title runs, because we wanted to validate what we were doing. But I think you could argue. I mean, we had everything. We had starting pitching. We had really, we had a very deep lineup. We had youth. We had veterans. And it all started in Seattle. I think we were one in four or whatever. And Paul O'Neill got knocked down by Jamie Moyer. And that's what turned it all around. And we took off after that. And we joked that we need to send Jamie Moyer a playoff share, that we were going to vote him one. But that team was really, really good, really special. And we expected to win every day. And there were seven game-winning streaks, eight game-winning streaks, nine game-winning streaks. And we just continued to roll. And it was because of the depth on the team and the lineup, the rotation. You had Romero Mendoza, who was a great swing guy, could do so many different things. We had left-handers in Stanton and the Grand Lloyd. We had the right-hander in Jeff Nelson. And of course, we had Moe. And Moe had learned so much from 97 that he was at his peak. David Cohn has also referenced that meeting that you talked about. And I think when you look at the results that followed, it might have been one of the greatest team meetings in history. Because I think you guys went on a run of 64 and 16 or something like that after that. Does that, those memories, I mean, how often are you reflecting on those days? I know you have a job now at the Phillies, where you're worried about today. But when you give yourself a chance to reflect on your career, how much are you thinking about those championship teams? Oh, you definitely think about them. And I think what you think about is, you know, I was just watching on MLB, a Yankee Red Sox game. You know, it brings back to memories. But out of that meeting, there was anger. There was emotion. But when we walked out, we were together. And the feeling was, no matter what, we got each other's back. So I mean, you reflect on the importance of team meetings that really mean something. There's a lot of team meetings where there's a lot said, and really nothing ever comes from it. But that was one that was emotionally charged and a lot came from it. And you try to remember that, you know, and I try to remember that as a manager, that there are meetings that are really important and that we need to come together when we come out of that meeting. And that's exactly what happened in that one. Joe, you had the opportunity to be teammates with Derek Cedar, Mariana Rivera, Jorge Posada, and Andy Pettit. And you got to sort of see them on the way up. Then you got to manage them. How did those relationships develop or change along the way when you go from being a teammate to then being their manager? Well, I think the hard part was I had to make some decisions that sometimes they didn't necessarily like. I mean, anytime you gave Derek Cedar a day off, he didn't like it. So he was managing, he was in your office. And I saw them as they started to get older and their bodies probably, you know, couldn't take the pounding that they took before. I mean, Jorge Posada was one of the greatest catchers I ever saw play. I mean, he'd play 140 games a year. He was durable. He was an offensive catcher. He was a defensive catcher. I mean, I look at George Posada as a Hall of Fame player. I knew Andy Pettit couldn't give you the 120 pitches all the time and necessarily bounce back. So, you know, we limited him a little bit. I tried to pick a few more days off for Derek. And these guys, what made them great was their belief in themselves. And it was a fine line that I had to walk where I didn't want to crush that belief, but I also knew that I couldn't wear them out physically because they wouldn't be as productive. So, there was a fine line. But the one thing I knew about all of them is they had great hearts. And then all they wanted to do was win. The team was first and all they wanted to do was win. And that made my job easier. And I knew that they were always prepared mentally and physically and I never had to worry about them. And that also made my job a lot easier. Joe, as we close this out, you and I both know there are some really talented players who never get to a World Series or there are talented players who get to a World Series and their team doesn't win. How blessed, how fortunate do you feel that you were part of a group? Now, you were there for three of the four in that 90s run, but that you're synonymous with such a winning legacy of those 90s Yankees teams. Oh, I feel like I'm extremely blessed. I grew up rooting for Chicago Cubs and they had a lot of great players. You know, Billy Williams, Ernie Banks, Ron Sano, Ferguson Jenkins, just loaded with Hall of Famers that never played in the World Series. And, you know, the Miracle Mets beat them that one year and I realized how fortunate I am. You know, my life in my baseball career has been a storybook. It really has. And each stop that I made was a great stop, Chicago, Colorado, and then I went to New York and those four years were the most fun that I ever had playing baseball and professional baseball. And it was because of my teammates. It was because of Joe Torrey and the coaching staff that he had, the trainers, how great they were. We just really had that team bond that there was a closeness there. And I'm really blessed. I am so blessed. You know, I wrote on the coattails of a lot of people that helped me, you know, propel into being a manager. You know, being around those great teams, I think helped me become a manager and I was really blessed. A storybook career, Joe. I don't think I could have said it any better. That's a perfect way for us to end today. It's always a pleasure to talk to you and hope that I see you on a baseball field sometime soon. Yeah, me too, Jack. And it's great talking to you and you've now become a garage rat. You're no longer a gym rat. You're a garage rat and keep working. That's all anybody can do. That's right. And the workouts hopefully will transfer to a baseball field sometime soon. Hope so.