July 25, 1998: White Sox hand championship-bound Yankees rare loss on Old Timers’ Day

Baseball fans and former players love comparing great teams from different eras. So with the New York Yankees, baseball’s most storied franchise, in the midst of a historic 1998 season, comparisons to previous championship squads were inevitable when former Yankees greats gathered before a crowd of 55,638 at Yankee Stadium for the 52nd annual Old Timers’ Day celebration on July 25.1

The past greats agreed on one thing – this 1998 Yankees squad was special.2 The Yankees entered the day with a 72-25 record, including an incredible 37-7 mark at home. They were a whopping 16 games ahead of the second-place Boston Red Sox in the American League East Division.

“They’ve got a balanced ballclub, and the way they’ve been going, I think I’d have to give their pitching an edge over ours,” said catcher Johnny Blanchard, who appeared in five straight World Series with New York from 1960 to 1964.3

Ron Guidry, the ace of the 1977 and 1978 Yankees, the franchise’s most recent teams to win consecutive World Series, agreed: “We had a good pitching staff in ’78, but it was more of a makeshift kind. Here you have five guys that go out every fifth day and pitch. They have five great starters. Their pitching is stronger than ours.”4

“I think they’ve got a great team,” said pitcher Whitey Ford, who started a record 22 World Series games for the Yankees between 1950 and 1964.5 “Managers always say how there’s a lot of dead wood on their teams, but not on this one. Every one of these guys does their job and does it well. We won a lot of games just because of our power, but they do it with a lot of combinations.”6

Former Brooklyn Dodgers pitcher Ralph Branca had served as an honorary coach in the exhibition game between former Yankees and Dodgers prior to the Yankees-Chicago White Sox game.7 He made a more direct comparison to the great New York teams of the past: “When they win five World Series in a row like the Yankees did from 1949 to ’53, then talk to me about it.”8

The ’98 Yankees were on a four-game winning streak, including a 5-4 win to open the three-game series behind seven strong innings from their ace Andy Pettitte. The White Sox were 44-58 and in fourth place in the AL Central Division, 14 games behind the first-place Cleveland Indians.

New York’s season had an inauspicious start; the Yankees dropped four of their first five games on a season-opening West Coast trip. They rebounded to win 16 of their final 18 games in April, even while structural problems at 75-year-old Yankee Stadium changed their schedule. On the afternoon of April 13, a 500-pound concrete and steel beam fell from the upper deck into the field level seats along the third base line, resulting in the cancelation of that night’s game against the Anaheim Angels.9 The Yankees were forced to play one game at Shea Stadium, home of their crosstown rival New York Mets, and the following three-game series against the Detroit Tigers was swapped for a future series, sending the Yankees to Tiger Stadium while repairs were made in the Bronx.10

With starter David Wells suffering from gout, New York started 29-year-old right-hander Hideki Irabu one day earlier than planned.11 Irabu, in his first full major-league season after beginning his career in Japan’s Nippon Professional Baseball, had won his previous three starts, including July 15 in Detroit when he hurled eight shutout innings. He was 9-3 with a 2.86 ERA.12 His opponent, Mike Sirotka, was 9-9 with a 4.84 ERA in 21 starts. In his previous outing, the 27-year-old lefty had allowed just one run and struck out seven in a complete-game victory over Cleveland.

In the first, Irabu allowed a one-out single to Mike Caruso but struck out Frank Thomas to bring Albert Belle to the plate. Despite being hitless in the previous two games, Belle was batting .418 with 13 home runs since July 1. But Yankees catcher Jorge Posada threw out Caruso stealing to end the inning. Irabu then settled in and retired Chicago in order in the second, third, and fourth innings.

In the home half of the first, Derek Jeter singled with one out and advanced to second on an error by right fielder Magglio Ordóñez. Sirotka stranded Jeter by striking out Paul O’Neill and getting Bernie Williams to ground to second. In the second, Posada singled and went to second on a groundout by Chad Curtis but was left there when Scott Brosius struck out.

Homer Bush led off the Yankees’ third inning with a double to center.13 He advanced to third on Chuck Knoblauch’s soft grounder to third base and scored on Jeter’s grounder to left to give New York a 1-0 lead.

After Sirotka pitched a perfect bottom of the fourth, the White Sox took the lead. Belle, Robin Ventura, and Greg Norton each singled to start the fifth inning and tied the game. Ordóñez followed with a liner to right fielder O’Neill, who made a strong throw, but Ventura slid by Posada’s tag attempt and touched the plate with his left hand to put Chicago up, 2-1.

New York threatened in the fifth when Brosius doubled and went to third on Bush’s groundout. Knoblauch walked to put runners on the corners with one out, but Sirotka’s pickoff move trapped him off first and the White Sox tagged him out in a rundown. Jeter then flied out to center to strand Brosius.

The Yankees did capitalize on a scoring opportunity in the bottom of the sixth. Williams and Tino Martinez singled with one out to put runners on the corners, Posada’s sacrifice fly to right brought home Williams, tying the game, 2-2.

The White Sox surged back ahead with four runs in the seventh. Belle, Ventura, and Norton started with singles to plate one run. Ordóñez picked up his second RBI of the day on a hit to left field that scored Ventura.

New York manager Joe Torre replaced Irabu with Darren Holmes. Mike Cameron grounded to first baseman Martinez, who ranged to his right and made a backhanded snag, but Norton beat the throw as Cameron reached first and Ordóñez moved up to second. With one out, Ray Durham slapped a single to right field to bring in Ordóñez and make the score 6-2.

In the final two innings the White Sox went down in order against 27-year-old rookie Mike Buddie, but they had already scored all the runs they needed.14

The Yankees threatened against rookie reliever Bob Howry in the seventh inning when Bush singled and Knoblauch walked with one out.15 But Jeter couldn’t check his swing on a full-count pitch and O’Neill forced Knoblauch at second base to end the inning.

After Howry retired the first two batters in the eighth inning, the Yankees’ offense stirred again with a walk by Posada and a single by Curtis. Chicago skipper Jerry Manuel brought in closer Bill Simas, who retired Brosius on a line drive to left field for the third out.

In the Yankees’ final at-bat, there was no drama. Simas struck out Bush, Knoblauch, and Jeter on 11 pitches to secure the victory, ending Chicago’s eight-game losing streak at Yankee Stadium.16

“We got 10 hits, which should be enough to win a ballgame,” said Torre. “It was just one of those games. We gave up six runs as a pitching staff, and that’s tough to overcome.”17

Irabu reflected on his outing, which resulted in a season-high six earned runs on eight singles. Through his interpreter, he said, “I didn’t think it was bad today. I felt pretty good. But toward the end, I was starting to get the ball up a little bit, and that was where the problem was.”18

The Yankees easily won the AL East with a record of 114-48, the most wins in a season in American League history and the second most all-time behind the 116 wins by the 1906 Chicago Cubs.19

But they knew the big prize was a World Series title because owner George Steinbrenner had said repeatedly, “They haven’t won anything yet.”20

“The (1954) Indians won 111 games,” warned 83-year-old Yankee legend Joe DiMaggio. “And got beat four straight in the World Series.”21

New York beat the Texas Rangers in three straight games in the AL Division Series and Cleveland in six games in the AL Championship Series. In the World Series, the Yankees swept the San Diego Padres in four games to claim the franchise’s 24th title. New York won again in 1999 and 2000 to make it three straight before losing the 2001 World Series on a walk-off single in Game Seven.

Author’s Note

This game was the fifth of 10 games that the author and his father attended as part of a Jay Buckley baseball tour. The 10-day trip included games in Milwaukee (doubleheader), Pittsburgh, Baltimore, New York (Yankees), Boston, Montreal, Toronto, Detroit, and Chicago (Cubs). Also included was a day at the Baseball Hall of Fame in Cooperstown, a tailgate party at County Stadium, and free time for shopping and sightseeing in Baltimore, Boston, Montreal, and Toronto.

This was one of just two games the author saw at the original Yankee Stadium. The other was during the final season of the historic ballpark on August 5, 2008, against the Los Angeles Angels while on a vacation with his family.

Acknowledgments

This article was fact-checked by Bruce Slutsky and copy-edited by Len Levin.   

Sources

In addition to the sources cited in the Notes, the author consulted data from Baseball-Reference.com and Retrosheet.org. He also reviewed a recording of the WGN television broadcast of the game, posted on YouTube.com.

https://www.baseball-reference.com/boxes/NYA/NYA199807250.shtml

https://www.retrosheet.org/boxesetc/1998/B07250NYA1998.htm

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UbUX-BdcT2E

Notes

1 Former Yankees pitcher Jim Bouton was back at Yankee Stadium for the first time since his last season as a Yankee in 1968. He had chosen not to return previously because, until 1998, he had not been invited back for Old Timers’ Day since the 1970 publication of his controversial book Ball Four. Yankee greats Yogi Berra and Reggie Jackson did not attend the festivities due to feuds with Yankees’ owner George Steinbrenner. Don Mattingly chose not to attend, apparently feeling too young at age 37 to play in an Old-Timers’ game.

2 The 1998 Yankees team was honored at the 2023 Old Timers’ Day Game. https://www.mlb.com/news/yankees-honor-historic-1998-club-on-old-timers-day.

3 Peter Botte, “These Yanks Compare with Classic Clubs,” New York Daily News, July 26, 1998: 94.

4 Botte.

5 As of 2024, Ford was second on the list of most World Series appearances by a pitcher, behind Yankees reliever Mariano Rivera, who had 24.

6 Botte.

7 The Yankees’ legends won the exhibition game against former Dodgers greats 1-0 on Willie Randolph’s home run in the fourth and final inning. Randolph was the Yankees’ third-base coach in this game.

8 Botte.

9 John Griffin, “1998 Yankees Diary, April 13: The Walls are Tumbling Down”, PinstripeAlley.com, April 13, 2023, https://www.pinstripealley.com/2023/4/13/23681029/1998-yankees-history-this-day-yankee-stadium-collapse-concrete-steel-beam-old-ballpark-shea-stadium, (accessed June 6, 2025).

10 Jim Griffin, “Remembering the Time the Yankees Called Shea Stadium Home in 1998,” Pinstripe Alley, September 20, 2015, https://www.pinstripealley.com/2015/9/20/9350081/yankees-mets-shea-stadium-home-game-1998.

11 Lawrence Rocca, “Fuhgetaboutit,” New York Newsday, July 26, 1998: C3.

12 Irabu entered the game with the fourth-best ERA in the American League, behind Bartolo Colon (2.60), Pedro Martinez (2.71), and Kenny Rogers (2.80).

13 Bush, a 25-year-old rookie, was making just his fourth start of the season at second base. There was speculation that he was being showcased for a possible trade before the no-waivers trade deadline. He remained with the Yankees for the entire 1998 season before being traded with Graeme Lloyd and Wells to the Toronto Blue Jays for Roger Clemens on February 18, 1999.

14 After left-hander Lloyd retired Caruso for the second out of the inning, Buddie entered the game and walked Thomas before getting Belle to pop to second.

15 Sirotka left after six innings in which he allowed two runs on eight hits and a walk. He threw 109 pitches.

16 Simas had 23 saves in 308 career games, with 18 of them coming in 1998.

17 Brian Heyman, “Rare Fold in 7th,” White Plains (New York) Journal News, July 26, 1998: 1D.

18 Heyman. Counting this game, Irabu finished the season 4-6 in 12 games with a 6.00 ERA and did not pitch in the postseason. He pitched four more seasons in the big leagues and never had an ERA below 4.84.

19 In 2001 the Seattle Mariners tied the Cubs’ record with 116 wins in a season. The 2001 Mariners and 1998 Yankees benefited from the 162-game schedule, implemented in 1961, which allowed them eight more games than the Cubs played in 1906.

20 Botte.

21 Botte.