Remembering the 1998 Yankees With World Champion Speedster Homer Bush

After battling every day of the 1998 season for a roster spot, playing time, and exposure, Homer Bush's role had become much more clarified in the month of October: steal us an extra base.

And in the ninth inning of a 1-1 tie in Game 2 of the ALCS against Cleveland, Bush knows his moment has arrived. Before a runner can get on base, Don Zimmer pulls the speedster aside and whispers in his ear. He's got it all planned out. "Rock (Raines) gets on, you pinch run for him," Zim, Joe Torre's stalwart and confidant, says. "We're gonna have Shane (Spencer) fake the bunt, you steal the bag. Then he bunts you to third, and we drive you in with one out." A set play from the bench, spiraling several hypotheticals deep. Bush wasn't nervous. After a season of uncertainty, his tunnel vision in October made him an all-new sort of weapon. The team believed in him. He believed in excelling at the margins.

Naturally, as was often the case, Zimmer had seen the future. Rock singled off Paul Shuey to start things off. Bush trotted to first, working his hamstrings, with all 57,545 held breaths in the building knowing exactly what was coming next. As if he were painting in Zim's vision, number by number, Bush broke for second...safe. Step two, accomplished. Alas, when Bush's October moment came, the plan fell off its hinges after he executed. Spencer struck out instead of advancing the runner. Scott Brosius was intentionally walked. Jorge Posada bounced into a twin-killing to send the game to extras, where the Best Team in Yankees History fell 4-1 in...ignominious fashion, to say the least. For the first time in months, the unfallible attitude was pricked.

From Opening Day, the 1998 Yankees had sky-high expectations, which is why it's so impressive that New York fans got to spend so much time with the speedy Homer Bush in the first place.

"With a team so stacked, there weren't a lot of roster spots," Bush told 12up in a recent conversation. "Luis Sojo had a broken hand. If Sojo was healthy, you'd have never heard about me in New York. I showed some value when I played, and then when Sojo came back, they let Dale Sveum go instead. I just kept grinding."

For Bush, that was the key to the team's otherworldly success -- depth, but most importantly, depth that never stopped striving to be better. "Halfway through the season, I was still there, and you realize how special it was. No one ever got comfortable," Bush said. "You look at that bench -- Rock, Chad Curtis, Chili Davis. Everyone is fighting."

Luckily, on a team laid thick with veterans who'd owned the game in the early 90s, Bush still managed to carve out 45 games' worth of contributions, hitting whenever he was called upon, posting a ridiculous .380 mark. His quick-twitch frame even provided a single homer, helping his team to a double-header victory against the Angels. "As you can imagine, I was pumped -- Joe didn't tell me until after the first game that I was playing," Bush recalled. "Jeter got the game-winning hit later."

By the end of the year, however, it was getting tougher for Bush to grind away. He knew the ultimate goal, but he was starting to lose footing -- and who wants to lose a grip on their season just as the lights are about to turn brightest?

"I didn't know if I was just in a mental funk personally, because I just didn't know what the next year would be like," Bush recalled, highlighting the team's September skid. "I made a couple mistakes and Joe (Torre) really got on me and said, 'I need you.' That's how I knew I was gonna make the postseason roster. He put his arm around me and let me know it was my time."

You're not going to believe this, but the 114-win Yankees managed to turn it around, buoyed by a Shane Spencer power burst and an excess of impressive personalities in all corners of the locker room -- from David Cone, to David Wells, to...Tim Raines?

"Raines was BY FAR the funniest guy in that room. You can ask Jeter, any of those guys, who their favorite teammate was, and they'll say Raines," Bush related. "None of his comedic acts were degrading. They were just...funny. That's why everybody loves him."

After Bush's stolen base turned from a fait accompli winning run to a snuffed-out rally, the Yanks managed to fall once again in Game 3 and face their first real adversity in two months, down 2-1 with a title on the line against the Cleveland Indians. In retrospect, though, was it any wonder that Orlando Hernandez was able to regroup their spirits on the road, torpedoing this 25-man wrecking crew to a six-game series victory?

Four in-a-blink victories later, and the century's greatest team was celebrating their coronation on the San Diego turf. Thanks to his resiliency and a season of grinding, Homer Bush had now earned capital-Y Yankee status for the rest of his life.

"There are several pictures, like, a SportsCenter picture where you can see the side of my face. I can pick myself out for sure," Bush recalled, of the title-winning 25-star pileup. "For me, that championship meant so much. One, it's out of the way, now I can just go play. Two, I was gonna make more money with a WS share by almost 100%. But man, just the joy of bringing another title to New York. I just knew it was gonna be the gift that would keep on giving, and man, was I right about that."

A few days (and a few San Diego bar closings) later, it was time for the parade, where Bush recalls hanging out with one familiar face above all others.

"I remember landing and seeing Darryl Strawberry, because he had had cancer that year," Bush reminisced. "That meant so much. And then, I mean, man, just all the PEOPLE. They told us it was 2-3 million people. There were people hanging on like the stoplights. That was mindboggling to me. I was thinking to myself, 'That's not safe. Man, get down.' That was crazy to me."

Twenty-two years later, that title endures. Though the Yankees' greatness expanded in '99 and '00, Bush had moved on to Toronto, expatriated in the Roger Clemens trade. But the 1998 ring, which still represents the greatest single season in MLB history, will forever be on his finger, earned by seven months of never being satisfied.

Oh, and would you like to close this with an unpleasant memory to make you feel old, Yankee fans? Bush's son is draft eligible in 2020, as long as it all works out.

Yup. Kid floats just like his father, indeed.