2009 Yankees: Nick Swisher's Energy Helped Lift the Yankees

Welcome back to the next chapter of 2009 Yankees: The Last Championship - a week-by-week remembrance of the year in which they gave us their most recent World Series title. Nick Swisher wasn’t one of the Yankees’ A-list stars in 2009, but he made key contributions all through the year in his first season in pinstripes, plus he brought an infectious optimism that permeated the clubhouse. Lets get to it.

NEW YORK (Sept. 14, 2009) - When Nick Swisher stepped into the batters’ box, he had a particular routine that began in the 2005 season when he was with the Oakland A’s.

At the bottom of his bat were the initials of his paternal grandmother, Betty Swisher, who died in August of that season from brain cancer. He would kiss those letters, then look to the sky to acknowledge her heavenly presence.

A year later, when his grandfather Donald Swisher passed, Nick added his initials to his bat, too, and from that point, through a couple more years with the A’s, one with the White Sox, four with the Yankees, three with the Indians, and one with the Braves, he would perform the same routine.

“A lot of people ask me if I’m looking up at the sky, but the one thing that really helped me get through the tough times of losing those two were to give them the best seats in the house,” Swisher told the Daily News on Mothers’ Day 2009. “In my mind, that’s the top of the stadium. At Yankee Stadium it’s actually the top of the Megatron, so I visualize them sitting there, watching me play.”

It isn’t totally clear why, when Swisher’s parents divorced when he was in eighth grade, he decided to live with his grandparents in Parkersburg, West Virginia. His father Steve - a former major league catcher who had grown up there and was a local athletic legend at the town’s high school - was by then in the midst of a lengthy minor-league managing career. And his mother, Lillian, who passed away in 2013 after a second bout with leukemia, may have been ill.

Regardless, Betty and Donald took care of Nick through high school until he went off to attend Ohio State where he was Big Ten freshman of the year in 2000 and an All-Big Ten selection in 2001 and 2002 for the Buckeyes which led him to becoming a first-round pick of the A’s in the 2002 draft, a moment that was heavily covered in the book, and ensuing movie, Moneyball.

“They got to see me in the big leagues and that was important,” Swisher said. “People ask me about the way I play - having a blast, playing hard. I don’t want to disappoint them because they see everything. In my mind, after the game, they go back up to heaven and they’re chilling, doing whatever they’re doing. I know they’re cheering for me; I just wish they could be here in person to see all this.”

What they got to see in 2009, his first season with the Yankees, was an ever-upbeat personality who energized the often buttoned-up clubhouse in the Bronx, and a player who played 150 games, hit 29 homers, drove in 82 runs, had a slash line of .249/.371/.498 and an OPS of .869.

“He’s an energetic guy, the team feeds off him,” Yankees hitting coach Kevin Long said of the lefty swinger who cracked a home run and double to help lift the Yankees to a 5-3 victory over the Los Angeles Angels in a makeup game played on the evening of Sept. 14. “When he goes in a slump a little bit, guys feed off that, too. We’ve talked to him about being up-tempo, whether he’s going good or bad because our team kind of feeds off Nick Swisher.”

Swish, as he was known in the Yankees’ clubhouse, may not have had the same high school career as his father - also known as Swish during his playing career - but he far exceeded his pop in the major leagues.

Steve Swisher played at Parkersburg in the late 1960s, went on to star at Ohio University where his number is retired, and became a first-round pick of the White Sox in the 1973 draft. He never made it to the South side of Chicago because six months later he was traded to the North side along with veteran pitcher Steve Stone for fading Cubs star and future Hall of Famer Ron Santo, a trade that obviously angered Cubs fans who loved Santo.

Steve went on to play nine years in the big leagues for the Cubs, Cardinals and Padres as a light-hitting, defense-first catcher who played in the 1976 All-Star Game but never reached the postseason.

After his playing career ended in 1982 before Nick turned two years old, Steve went right into coaching and managing and spent 15 years traversing the country and changing jobs incessantly, so he missed huge chunks of his son’s youth, part of why his marriage dissolved.

However, when Nick began to show signs of potential major league talent, Steve abruptly quit as manager of the Triple-A New Orleans Zephyrs just four games into the 1997 season. “Nick has made a lot of sacrifices for me,” Steve said. “Now it’s my turn. I’ve been thinking about this for a long time. He was an honorable mention All-State as a first baseman and I want to go watch him play.”

When Nick was drafted, his father gave him one simple piece of advice. “He has to keep everything on an even keel. The highs can’t be too high and the lows can’t be too low. All the media attention in the world doesn’t make a difference. You can hit the ball and have nothing to show for it. As long as he keeps everything in perspective and works hard, he’ll do fine.”

Nick did more than fine. He was with the A’s by the end of 2004 and became a regular starter in 2005. By the time he retired, his 12-year, 1,527-game career showed 245 homers, 803 RBI, a slash line of .249/.351/.447 and an OPS of .799. While his numbers were not good in the postseason, unlike his father, he made it to October multiple times and wound up playing in 47 playoff games.

The Swishers are one of only eight father-son duos who were first-round draft picks, made it to the majors, and represented their team in at least one All-Star game, Steve in 1976 for the Cubs, Nick in 2010 with the Yankees. But the one thing Nick has that his father doesn’t is a World Series ring, the one he earned in 2009 after he signed a four-year free agent deal to join the Yankees.

Swisher wasn’t as integral to the Yankees’ ascension to the top of the AL East as Derek Jeter, Alex Rodriguez, Mark Teixeira, or Robinson Cano, but his offense complimented theirs and he gave the Yankees solid defense in right field. And every once in a while he played a key role in victories such as this game against the Angels, a makeup from a May 3 rainout moved to what should have been an off day for both clubs.

Players hate losing a day off almost as much losing a game, but not Swisher. He tried to have fun every moment he spent at the ballpark, so he was fine playing this game and in the third inning he hit a solo homer off Jered Weaver, matching a solo shot by the Angels’ Vlad Guerrero off Joba Chamberlain in the second.

Then in the fifth Swisher led off with a double and he and Johnny Damon came around to score on Teixeira’s two-out, two-run triple that pushed the Yankees ahead 3-2. Eventually, Los Angeles tied it in eighth, but the Yankees pulled out the victory with two runs in the bottom half, the first coming when pinch runner Brett Gardner stole third and scrambled home when the throw went into left field, the insurance marker scoring on Cano’s single.

With both teams comfortably leading their respective divisions, there was certainly a sense that this might have been a postseason preview, and that’s exactly what it turned out to be a month later.

That’s because at this point in Yankee history, the Angels represented trouble. They had beaten the Yankees in the 2002 divisional series on the way to their first and only World Series title, and they had done the same in 2006. By the end of the 2009 regular season, the Angels owned a 41-33 record against the Yankees since the start of 2002.

Swisher was new to the Yankees-Angels history, but he recognized the playoff atmosphere the game had and he said, “That was a huge win for us. You get the feeling we could be running across that team again in October.”

Here’s how the rest of Week 23 went for the Yankees:

• Sept. 15: For as good as the Yankees were, they had a problem every fifth day when they handed the ball to Sergio Mitre. The Blue Jays hammered him for seven runs in five innings and rolled to a 10-4 victory. Swisher had two hits and scored a run and the Yankees actually had 11 hits against Roy Halladay, but he still won his 15th game.

• Sept. 16: Down 4-2 in the eighth, Hideki Matsui tied the game with a two-run homer off Scott Downs, and then in the ninth Brett Gardner singled, stole second and scored the winning run on Francisco Cervelli’s single.

• Sept. 18: The Yankees opened a six-game West Coast swing in Seattle with a dramatic 3-2 loss as Mike Sweeney doubled with two outs and on the next pitch from Mariano Rivera, Ichiro Suzuki hit a walk-off two-run homer. “When Mariano comes in, you usually don’t leave the field shaking hands,” Sweeney said. “Against the best team in baseball, and the best closer in baseball, we got a double and a home run to win in the span of two pitches.”

• Sept. 19: The Yankees might have been a little pissed off after that the next night because they ripped the Mariners 10-1 as Teixeira hit two homers, a triple and single to drive in five runs.

• Sept. 20: Seattle won the series as it scored seven runs in the first two innings off Joba Chamberlain for a 7-1 victory, Ken Griffey Jr. hitting a home run and driving in four runs.

NEXT SATURDAY: The Yankees clinched the division crown with a sweep of the Red Sox, the clincher coming appropriately enough with long-time vets Andy Pettitte delivering a fine start and Mariano Rivera earning the save.