“He knows I’m flaky up there on the mound, and he calms me down. I couldn’t have gotten through it without him.” DAVID CONE ON JOE GIRARDI
Most of us will never be able to understand the bond that forms between teammates on their way to a title or athletic achievement. And even most of those teammates will never share the rapport of a pitcher and his catcher, such as theone David Cone has with Joe Girardi.
For the volatile Cone, Girardi was more than the man putting down the signs and catching his pitches.
Girardi has been the best friend who has helped Cone through nearly every struggle on and off the mound, and the man who helped guide him through his perfect game Sunday and into baseball immortality.
“I can’t tell you what he’s meant to me as a player and as a person,” Cone said. “He knows I’m flaky up there on the mound, and he calms me down. I couldn’t have gotten through it without him.”
And Girardi admits that their relationship on the mound is almost brotherly.
“It has to be almost a best-friend relationship when you’re on the field. You have to be willing to do anything for him, and allow the pitcher to do anything to you,” Girardi said.
“Obviously it’s a game where you’re supposed to keep your emotions under wraps. But it’s impossible,” said Girardi, who went with Cone to City Hall yesterday and received an award of his own as Cone got the key to the city.
“If he throws a bad pitch, he needs to snap; it doesn’t bother me, ’cause I know it’s not personal. That’s one of the reasons we work so well together.
“That’s one of the things I learned. When you’re out there, you can’t take anything personal when the game’s on the line. You leave a lot of emotions out on the field.”
Cone is emotional by all accounts, including his own. He does internalize a lot of his angst on the mound, but his emotions do build up to a boiling point, making the low-key Girardi – who is much more sedate than Jorge Posada – the perfect catcher for him.
“You don’t notice it, but when it comes out [it bursts],” Girardi said. “His [emotions] are more bottled-up. You see his face getting redder and redder and then it comes out. There have been times when I walk back to the catcher circle and I have to laugh.”
According to Cone, their rapport on the field is so strong that sometimes a peek can be worth more than a thousand words.
“The best thing with Girardi is when I do shake him off, he goes straight to the pitch I like. There’s no wasting time [with three or four pitches],” Cone said. “Sometimes I don’t even have to shake him off; I just stare at him and he comes back with the pitch I want to throw.”
Cone didn’t have to shake off Girardi many times Sunday when he needed just 88 pitches to toss the third perfect game in Bomber history.
Girardi also caught Doc Gooden’s no-hitter against Seattle May 14, 1996, and Cone’s first game back from aneurysm surgery, when he threw seven no-hit innings against Oakland Sept. 2. But none of those games meant as much to Girardi as Sunday’s.
“It means a lot emotionally. This is perfection. For one day, you can’t get any better. I think that’s what every player strives for; perfection. And for one day, he can honestly say he was perfect,” said Girardi, who took Cone down and wrapped him up to protect the pitcher from the ensuing pile-on. He called it a “tremendous moment,” but didn’t want the Yankee ace to get hurt.
“It means a huge amount to me. We take a lot of pride in what happened out there,” Girardi said. “The wonderful thing about the Yankees is they’re going to give me home plate, and I’ll always have that to remember this game [by],” said Girardi, who also has the plate from Gooden’s no-hitter.
“I can look at that every day and remember. Not that I need it [to remember], but it’s just another one of the great things that’s happened here. It’s really special.”