MLB, PCF again team to ‘Keep Dad in Game’

It was the top of the eighth inning and the bases were loaded on a Tuesday night in Toronto. The date was Sept. 14, 1999, in the middle of their three-year world championship streak, and the Yankees were losing at Toronto, 6-2. They seemed on the verge of their seventh loss in their last eight games, unbecoming a dynasty.

Joe Torre remembers it vividly, because that is roughly the first time he felt back to normal after undergoing prostate cancer surgery earlier that year.

“On the field, it was funny,” Torre recently recalled. “Here I am, you think you’re facing death, and now this is only a game we’re playing. Win or lose, but it’s not the game of life. This is the game of baseball. We were in Toronto, and we’re losing the ballgame and we’re starting to come back. … Bernie Williams was up there with the bases loaded, and I don’t mean to sound disrespectful, but I was ready to sell my soul for a home run. Then I realized I was getting back to normal.

“You had players and coaches who were trying to treat me with kid gloves, and then all of a sudden I started going berserk a time or two, and they knew I was all the way back. So it was OK.”

Nearly 17 years later, Torre is going strong as Major League Baseball’s Chief Baseball Officer and leading a charge to help fight prostate cancer as Father’s Day approaches on June 19. MLB and the Prostate Cancer Foundation (PCF) are once again teaming up to hit home runs for prostate cancer research and encourage fans to “Keep Dad in the Game” as part of the yearly celebration of Father’s Day and annual Home Run Challenge.

The record will show that Williams did, in fact, give Torre a comforting grand slam to tie that 1999 pennant-race game, leading to a Yankees victory — as well as a tie-breaking homer the next night for another come-from-behind …

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