Synopses & Reviews
For an extraordinary handful of years around the turn of the millennium, the Yankees were baseball's unstoppable force. With four World Series championships in five seasons and a deep bench of legends and comers -- Clemens, Rivera, Williams, Soriano, Jeter, O'Neill -- they dominated the major leagues.
For the members of the team, though, baseball Yankees-style was a pressure cooker of anxiety, expectation, and infighting. As the spending and emotion spiraled, careers were made and broken, friendships began and ended, and a sports dynasty rose and fell.
In The Last Night of the Yankee Dynasty, Buster Olney tracks the Yankees through these tumultuous seasons and into the scandals and disappointments of 2004, providing insightful portraits of the stars, the foot soldiers, the coaches, the manager, and the Boss himself. With unparalleled knowledge of the game and an insider's familiarity with the team, Olney also advances a compelling argument that the philosophy that made the Yankees great was inherently unsustainable, ultimately harmful to the sport, and led inevitably to that warm autumn night in Arizona -- the last night of the Yankee dynasty.
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“…An astonishing richness of detail here that you simply wont find anywhere else.” Boston Globe
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“The best contemporary book about baseball in several years. Yankee fans and haters alike will find it riveting.” New York Sun
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“Buster Olney... has chronicled the definitive story of the Bronx Bombers at the end of the 20th century.” New York Post
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Well-mulled, highly atmospheric, and richly versed …both subtle and opinionated... Kirkus Reviews
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A remarkably prescient work … Olneys observations are eerily germane to … [2004s] postseason meltdown. Wall Street Journal
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A well-mulled, highly atmospheric, and richly versed story of the Bronx Bombers great 1996-2001 ride. Kirkus Reviews
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“Vivid, informed, and gracefully written, The Last Night of the Yankee Dynasty is sports writing at its very best.” David Halberstam
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“The best and clearest view yet inside the secret society that is the New York Yankees.” --John Feinstein, author of Season on The Brink and Caddy For Life
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The definitive treatise on the great Yankee teams of the last seven years. Peter Gammons, ESPN
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“A wonderful story about money, power, and baseball that will keep you reading until the bottom of the 9th.” Mike Lupica, New York Daily News
Synopsis
For six extraordinary years around the turn of the millennium, the Yankees were baseball's unstoppable force, with players such as Paul O'Neill, Derek Jeter, and Mariano Rivera. But for the players and the coaches, baseball Yankees-style was also an almost unbearable pressure cooker of anxiety, expectation, and infighting. With owner George Steinbrenner at the controls, the Yankees money machine spun out of control.
In this new edition of The Last Night of the Yankee Dynasty, Buster Olney tracks the Yankees through these exciting and tumultuous seasons, updating his insightful portrait with a new introduction that walks readers through Steinbrenner's departure from power, Joe Torre's departure from the team, the continued failure of the Yankees to succeed in the postseason, and the rise of Hank Steinbrenner. With an insider's familiarity with the game, Olney reveals what may have been an inevitable fall that last night of the Yankee dynasty, and its powerful aftermath.
About the Author
Bestselling author Buster Olney covered the Yankees for four years at the New York Times. He is a senior writer for ESPN: The Magazine and an analyst on Baseball Tonight.