 We are back with another edition of Yes, We're Here because yes, we are still here. All of our Yes Network family members trying to connect and bring some content during these difficult times. And right now we get to hang with Buck Showalter and relive some of the more positive aspects of $19.95 buck. We know there's an eventual end to $95 that isn't going to bring a smile. But $95 feels relevant right now to the sports world because you guys dealt with a shortened season. And knowing you are the preparation nut that you are, I'm just wondering, Buck, what was your focus as you were getting your guys ready for the start of the regular season knowing that it was a truncated beginning to the year compared to what you guys were used to? Right. It was really surreal. It was uncharted territory, everybody was kind of making their way as they went. It started back in 94 and we all remember where we were and certain things happened in our history, our country, our life. And I can remember hearing Bud Selig saying that they were going to cancel the season. I remember sitting in my living room and they were really going to do this. And we went to camp with the replacement player, which was awful, probably the low point of my career. We actually opened up Coors Field with replacement players at Exhibition Game 7th inning. We got Ward and Doug after the strike had been settled and we had to head back before Laugerdale. The coaches were ecstatic. They were all, it was just awful. And when the ball went between our second baseman and Selig's to lose the game, we were already out of our uniforms halfway up the runway to get out. We were so excited about getting back with the players and getting back spring training. And the things that we really, and I would caution anybody that's asked, Aaron's asked me a couple times, is you're really going to have to go slow. You can't pick up where you left off when you go to camp. But, you know, we fought a defending champion mentality that whole year. And unless you've been in a locker room and there's that, you know, wait a minute, we won last year. We felt like we had the best record in American League. We felt like we were on our way to a special season. And we kind of came into that. It took us a long time to find our step. We had to have one of us August, September, August, September in the Yankee history and where to get into playoffs. And, you know, you talk about some tough memories, but I think the best memory I take from that is how many people have come up to me through the years and said that rekindled their love of the game again and got them reinterested in the game instead of the strikes and people not and walkouts and lockouts and whatever you have that if we had to take that moment to get our game back on its feet and so be it. But we did lose to a team with a free hall of famer. That was pretty good baseball team in here. Yeah, not too shabby at all. You know, because we go there, Buck, and to that series with Seattle, I want to focus on something that David Cohn always talks about. He always says that when Mattingly ran out for, you know, his warm-ups in game one of the DS, it is the loudest. He has ever heard Yankee Stadium. What do you remember about the atmosphere and specifically how pertain to Don Mattingly finally experiencing playoff baseball? Well, the only competition for David's statement there, and I agree with him was when he hit the home run in the playoff. It was like, you know, you actually, people think I'm kidding. You had to do all your communication up the runway. You know, this, OK, that's the loudest they've ever heard of all Parker Stadium. You could not even talk to the guy sitting next to you without him or what'd you say? You actually had to go up the runway to talk to a pitching coach or a player. And it was the only time I thought a dugout was going to crumble. It was shaking that old thing. And I'm telling you, it was like, I actually stayed in front of it for a while after Donnie Coleman. I thought the thing was going to cave in. Don't tell him about that. Wow. Very quietly, that season was about Don Mattingly. And I think everybody cared so much. He cared so much about the weight his words carried. And, you know, he didn't go around using that to say callous things. He was very constructed. He had a lot to do with a lot of people's careers. You talk to Paul O'Neill. You talk to even David Cohen. You talk to they all would have been good players, but just to be accepted and to be respected by Don Mattingly was very important to those guys. You know, there was a lot of battles we had because Donnie statistically wasn't doing that well. But, you know, we knew what he meant to our club and the backbone of it. And we always wanted to treat him with respect. He had told me two weeks before that, hey, I'm going to have to get it going. I may blow my back out one day, but we're not going to get where we want to go unless I can do the thing the first baseman for the New York Yankees needs to do. And to this day, he did so much for that organization by telling us on the plane coming back from Seattle that he wasn't playing well so we could get ahead of everything and trade for, you know, marketing. Mm-hmm. Buck, when you think about his level of leadership, you know, not just in 95, but throughout his run with the Yankees and obviously you had him for longer than just 95, but what were the maybe the traits that stood out most to you about Donnie as a leader that maybe even were particularly unique to Don Mattingly? Well, Donnie carried what his teammates fought in the presentation, but there got to be a point. It wasn't look how, look what I can say, because I'm the leader. Donnie took it very seriously. He just, he didn't ask you to do anything. He wasn't willing to do himself and he didn't take himself too seriously. You could kid with him. He had great work habits. He just, but he didn't do it to be showy about it. His substance was his style. You know, when you think about, I mean, how many times someone go, hey, you remind me of Mattingly, it's hard because people are trying to always do something that show they've got style instead of their substance being their style. You know, I had a guy named JJ Hardy with one of you guys that really remind me of Donnie. Interesting. Buck, I want to, well, we're on 95. I want to take us back to spring training and maybe even just early in the season we'll extend it to that. When you're getting kind of like your look at where Mariano's at in his development at that point and obviously he ends up playing a huge role for you guys at the end of the season and then, you know, where Andy Pettit ends up being and, you know, he ends up being a fixture in your rotation throughout 95 as a rookie. You know, what was kind of your vision for, and I know Andy had a, you know, a much more, you know, lengthy impact on the team that year but what was your vision for where those guys might factor in to the 95 Yankees when you were first seeing them, you know, in spring and in the early parts of the season? Well, you know, we knew who we were and who we weren't. It was very important for our organization to have great leadership in final office with Gene Michael but, you know, there's a process with young players. You can't skip from A to Z. You know, where Andy was in the process, where Mariano was in the process, I mean, we took a lot of grief and really banged it around whether we should even take him on a post-season roster and he played a big part in it. I don't think he was ready to be Mariano. If you remember, he had a process with wetland where he worked through that to get there. You know, he hadn't really discovered the cutter yet and he was mostly late fastball and he gave up some hits in that series, a big home run, but he can't get right back on the horse but there's a process with young players and what they're gonna become isn't always what they were at that stage and understanding that and trying to create, we felt so good about bringing young players into that environment because someone like Matty, we knew they were gonna get a great vision of what it was supposed to be like to be a New York Yankee and a major league player. It's one of the things, the reason why we took Jeter on the travel roster just to watch because we wanted him to be around that environment. It didn't take Johnny Super Scout to figure out Derek was gonna be a pretty good player, okay? I mean, you know, that's why he was picked in the first, what, two or three picks in the country. I mean, let's slow down, don't call ourselves how smartly we're taking Eric Jeter in the first round. How about Buck with Pettit? You know, we've talked about him a lot in, you know, recent years obviously about how he became a leader of the staff and you know, one of the relationships we always talk about is him with Cece and then Cece talked about how, you know, once Andy was gone, he wanted to take on that role and I know one of the guys he brought under his wing was Jordan Montgomery. But if we go back to the beginning of Andy's career, he always would talk about his relationship with Jimmy Key and the way that, you know, he emulated Jimmy Key. What was the dynamic like between those two lefties? That's a great point. A lot of people forget that, Ryan. He, there was a torch back then. It was important to pass a good torch down, you know? And, you know, guys took that responsibility. Some of you guys don't want that responsibility of leadership, you know? They want to call them headphone guys. They want to put their headphones on, they want to go back to the room, shut the door, put the do not serve and go away reality. You know, these guys were okay with the reality. And Jimmy, I remember Jimmy talking to Andy about it and maybe Cohn would talk to it about it. Your job is to give your team a chance to win the game. It doesn't mean that, you know, when you're not carrying good stuff, which is going to happen about maybe 10 starts out of 30 plus where you've got everything at your disposal, what are you going to do to keep your team in the game? That's really what separates you. So when it's, you know, early in the game and it's getting ready to get away from you, you can keep that in touch. You know, all of a sudden everybody wants to talk about the eighth and ninth inning but it's what Andy Pettit or Jimmy Key did. Because Jimmy didn't have great stuff then. He was pitching with Gile. He was pitching the repertoire. He was, he's the first guy to have a, we call it a slide step changeup or jump where he would jump at you quickly and speed your body up and then throw a changeup. First guy I ever saw throw then everybody started copying. Had a great move to first held runners, knew who to pitch around. I mean, I could sit there and go get a cup of coffee. Two guys I knew he wasn't going to pitch to. But he knew how to manage a matting order. He knew what went into it and he passed that along. A lot of guys aren't free with that. Jimmy was free sharing that information. So was Andy. You're so confident in your own personality and who you are that you don't mind sharing it with somebody else. But they don't share it with just anybody. They picked the right guy who can take it to another level. Cece was that guy, Andy was that guy for Jimmy Pete. And it worked out well for everybody. No, it definitely did. And all of our eyes who watch Yankee baseball benefited because of it. Buck, I told you when I said 95, you didn't know where we were going to go, but we stayed mostly on the good parts of 95, right? Well, I try to look at it all positively, but I just hope and pray no Yankee fan ever has to get on a plane from Seattle back to New York after game five. That was awful. I mean, Buck, we always hear about like, I mean, David says all the time, it's like, you know, it's the quietest, most like gut-wrenching plane ride he's ever experienced. I mean, it really was just tears and silence. Well, you know, Donnie at that time, I spent a lot of time, Donnie came up and sat down so I need to talk to you about something that's about his pending retirement. And he had two boys or three boys at home that needed him there for a lot of reasons. His back was, as he told me, was not going to let him do the thing for the first base. He used to be Yankee, I want to give you guys heads up so you can go out and get somebody for the whole world knows it. It was a lot of walking around, just, you know, we all shared the same emotion. And the only thing we really had to show for it was I'd still got upstairs with a hat that's got these ace and a jack in the wild part in winter. It was the first year we ever had it. And, you know, the great September we had to get there. I know coming off the field in Toronto and we had clinched getting in and just let the look on Donnie's face. Back then, you know, it's just a glance. It's catching eyes with somebody. You know, they know. You don't have to sit there and let the whole world know that you're happy. You know, it's just that certain camaraderie you have through going through that together. It was tough. You know, the coaches and managers were in no part of being in spring training with a replacement player, but you had no choice. Well, Buck, it's always great hearing your stories and your perspective, man. Thank you so much for doing this. And stay safe and stay well. And, you know, to our audience, yes, we're here. Yes. God bless you. I appreciate you. Thanks, Ryan. You got it, Buck.