Most people agree that the 1998 New York Yankees were one of the best teams ever. They won 114 games, which was a new record for the team. During the regular season, they only lost 48 games and went on to win the World Series. With those 114 wins, the Yankees also set an American League record, but it would only stand for three years before the Seattle Mariners won 116 games in 2001, the Yankees won the World Series, which the Mariners can’t say about themselves.
Let’s find out where those Yankees players are now 24 years later.
Derek Jeter: Yankees’ captain
Derek Jeter is one of the best Yankees of all time and fondly called “Captain Clutch,” “Mr. November,” and just “The Captain.” Jeter is one of the few Yankees who can be mentioned in the same breath as Ruth, Gehrig, DiMaggio, and Mantle. This gives him a special place in the hearts of Yankees fans.
During his 20-year career, all of which was spent in New York, Derek Jeter became the face of the Yankees in a way that few other players could. He had great style and was always one of the best hitters in the AL in several ways, and he was a reliable part of the Yankees’ success for 20 years. He has a lot of postseason records, including hitting .321 in six World Series games with the Yankees and winning five titles. In the Fall Classic of 1998, he hit .353 at the plate.
Derek Jeter is a celebrity spokesman for many products. The Yankees retired Jeter’s number and he got 99.75 percent of the votes in 2020 to get into the Baseball Hall of Fame. He stayed in baseball after he stopped playing. From 2017 to 2022, he was the CEO and part-owner of the Miami Marlins. Arena Club is his most recent project. It is a trading platform for sports collectors.
Mariano Rivera
“Sandman” spent his whole 19-year career pitching for the Yankees. Mariano Rivera is often called the best closer in baseball history. His 652 career saves make him the best in MLB, and he threw the last pitch in a few of the five years that New York won the World Series. He was the last MLB player to wear the number 42 when it wasn’t Jackie Robinson Day. He was allowed to keep the number until he retired in 2013.
During the 1998 postseason, Rivera pitched 13 and a third innings without allowing a run and earned six saves, three of which came in the World Series. He threw his last pitch in the major leagues in 2013. His number 42, which had been taken out of use in all of baseball since 1997, was taken out of use by the Yankees. In 2019, he was the first player in baseball history to be voted into the Hall of Fame by everyone. He lives with his wife Clara in Westchester, New York. They brought up three boys. He has continued to help people in different ways. In the summer of 2022, he became co-president of the United International Baseball League, which wants to grow the game in India, Pakistan, and the Middle East.
Bernie Williams
Bernie Williams was born and raised in New York and played his whole 16-year career in the Bronx. Because of this, the team was able to trade Roberto Kelly, who was the center fielder at the time, to Cincinnati for Paul O’Neill. He was a good outfielder for New York who hit from both sides of the plate. He won the AL batting title with a .339 average. He was the first player in Major League Baseball history to win a batting title, a Gold Glove Award, and a World Series ring all in the same year.
Williams was known as a clutch hitter who did well in the playoffs. He won four Gold Gloves and the same number of World Series titles during his career. He quit after the 2006 season, and the Yankees took away his number. Williams, who used to play Spanish guitar in the Yankees locker room, is still very involved in music today. He has made several jazz albums and still tries to get the government to pay for music and art programs in U.S. schools.
Paul O’Neill
Even though he played for the Reds for the first half of his big league career, Paul O’Neill is the best known as a Yankee. After the 1992 season, he was sent to New York in a trade. He never really left the Bronx. O’Neill was known as “the heart and soul” of the Yankees’ late-1990s dynasty. In 1998, he had 116 RBIs, which was the second-most on the team. Former Yankees owner George Steinbrenner called him a “warrior,” and he played in Game 4 of the 1999 World Series only a few hours after his father died.
When O’Neill retired in 2001, the Yankees retired his number and he has worked as a commentator and analyst for Yankees games on the team’s YES Network. He lives in Ohio with his wife Nevalee.
David Wells
David Wells was a journeyman pitcher who spent 21 years in the major leagues with nine different teams. He is best known for his time with the Yankees. Early in the 1998 season, he pitched a perfect game at Yankee Stadium. That season, he only lost four times. In his first year with the Yankees, a year before, he wore a real 1934 Babe Ruth hat to a game.
The “Boomer” pitched for New York twice for short periods before retiring in 2007 as a member of the Los Angeles Dodgers.
Wells is now known for both his big body and his big personality. He has covered baseball on TV for TBS, Fox Sports, and the Yankees’ network, YES Network. He has also taught high school baseball at Point Loma High School in San Diego, where he went to school. Aside from that, he stays busy with “other projects.”
Jorge Posada
Jorge Posada is known as one of the Yankees who was most loved during his time. Posada spent his whole 17-year career in the major leagues with the Yankees. He was an All-Star five times and won the World Series four times. Posada was one of the most feared hitters behind the plate in the 1990s and 2000s. He won five Silver Slugger Awards and caught some of the best starting pitchers in New York’s history.
Posada stayed with the Yankees as a guest instructor after he stopped playing in 2011. He joined Jeter to buy the Miami Marlins, Posada became a special advisor for the team. He also started the Jorge Posada Foundation, which does research on a birth defect called Craniosynostosis. This is a condition in which the head starts to grow too early, which can affect how the brain grows. Jorge Jr., Posada’s son, was born with this condition.
Chuck Knoblauch
Before the 1998 season, the Minnesota Twins sent Chuck Knoblauch to the New York Yankees. He had a great first season in New York. He was an All-Star four times with the Twins. In 1998, he hit a career-high 17 home runs, and he and Derek Jeter played well together in the middle of the field. After that first season, things didn’t go well. Knoblauch, in particular, got the “yips” and couldn’t throw to first base. By 2002, when he was only 34, he was no longer playing baseball.
Knoblauch was accused of assaulting his common-law wife in 2010 and again in 2014 for another case. He lives in his home state of Texas and works with young baseball players in Houston.
Tino Martinez
Tino Martinez played for four different major league teams, but the Yankees are the team most people remember him for. With 123 RBI, he led the Yankees in 1998. Martinez was a good hitter and a good defender at first base. He also had a knack for getting big hits when it mattered most.
In the first game of the 1998 World Series, Martinez hit a grand slam home run, which broke a tie and set up the Mets’ four-game sweep of the San Diego Padres. Martinez was replaced by Jason Giambi before the 2002 season. He then played for the St. Louis Cardinals and the Tampa Bay Rays before coming back to New York for his last season in 2005.
When he retired, he stayed with the Yankees as a coach and also did TV broadcasts of Yankee games. In 2013, he was also a hitting coach for the Miami Marlins. He works in commercial real estate in his hometown of Tampa, Florida, where he was born and raised.
David Cone
David Cone played most of his 18-year career in the major leagues in New York, but he pitched more for the Mets than for the Yankees. But most of the best parts of his career happened with the Yankees, including winning the third of his five World Series rings in 1998. Cone was the only Yankees pitcher to win 20 games in 1998. He went 20-7 and also won the deciding game of the ALDS against the Texas Rangers.
The next year, Cone pitched a perfect game at Yankee Stadium on “Yogi Berra Day.” He only pitched for the Yankees for six years, but fans of both the Mets and the Yankees remember him fondly.
Cone retired in 2003 with the Mets. He has spent most of his time covering baseball games on TV for both the Yankees’ YES Network and ESPN. He was born in Kansas City, Missouri, but now lives in Greenwich, Connecticut. He sold a condo in New York City in the spring of 2022 and moved to Greenwich.
Andy Pettitte
Andy Pettitte was the Yankees’ staff ace in 1998, and he still has the most postseason wins of anyone in MLB history, with 19. He pitched for New York three times and won five World Series. He also pitched for the Houston Astros.
He was one of the “Core Four” Yankees, along with Jorge Posada, Mariano Rivera, and Derek Jeter. He was a big reason why the Yankees won four World Series in five years. He was an All-Star three times, the most valuable player in the 2001 ALCS, and won a league-high 21 games in 1996, which was only his second year in the big leagues. The Yankees no longer use his number 46.
Pettitte lives in Houston with his family and takes care of them. Josh, his oldest son, was picked up by the Yankees, but he got hurt and had to quit. His second oldest son, Jared, plays baseball for the Miami Marlins.
Who are the other Yankees of the 1998 team that you want to know about? List their names in your comment below.
