One of the perks of the visitors' clubhouse at Seattle's Safeco Field is a soft-serve ice cream machine. Mel Stottlemyre, the Yankees' pitching coach, licked at a vanilla and chocolate twisty cone as he left the clubhouse Wednesday night, a pleasant-tasting reward that took the place of a pat on the back from his boss.
Though the Yankees' 10-game winning streak ended with a 7-6 loss to the Mariners, Stottlemyre headed for the team bus encouraged by the way the pitching righted itself, two weeks after George Steinbrenner singled out poor pitching -- and, by proxy, Stottlemyre -- for the team's sub-.500 start.
Stottlemyre said he never read the May 5 article in USA Today that contained criticism from Steinbrenner.
He said he had not heard from Steinbrenner about the staff's turnaround. That did not surprise him, he said, because Steinbrenner never calls him. Stottlemyre, 63, has considered retirement several times in the last few years, and last November, in a conference call announcing his return for 2005, he said outright that this season would be his last.
On Wednesday night, Stottlemyre did not seem as emphatic on that point, said that he still enjoyed working with manager Joe Torre, but implied that he was ready to go if Steinbrenner wanted him to go.
"I've been close to retirement before," Stottlemyre said. "The times I've come back, I've always known I'm welcomed by Joe. I always felt like George wanted me back, too, and that was important for me.
"Now, if he's tired of the job I'm doing, it will probably make it easier to walk away, because it'll be tough."
Steinbrenner declined an interview Thursday but issued a statement of support for Stottlemyre through his publicist, Howard Rubenstein. "Mel Stottlemyre is a great Yankee and a very loyal employee," the statement read. "He certainly turned it around, and I give him a lot of credit."
Yankee pitchers threw three shutouts and compiled a 2.60 earned run average in the winning streak after posting a 5.10 ERA in the team's 11-19 start. In the streak, Kevin Brown won his first two games of the season after losing his first four.
Torre and Stottlemyre also defined several bullpen roles, establishing Tanyon Sturtze and Tom Gordon as the seventh- and eighth-inning bridges to closer Mariano Rivera. And Carl Pavano, who worked with Stottlemyre on mechanics after giving up four homers to the Mariners on May 11, bounced back with a five-hit shutout in Seattle on Tuesday night.
"There's nobody stronger than that man," a grinning, pleased Torre said of Stottlemyre. "He's very strong, and there's a relaxed confidence in what he does. Nothing is going to deter him in what he thinks or the way he does his job. He showed me early on in our association how tough an individual he is."
In 2000, Stottlemyre showed even more toughness, undergoing stem cell transplant surgery and beating a rare form of blood cancer. Torre's coaches have been targets of Steinbrenner before, and Stottlemyre knows how to handle it.
"Sometimes I hear rumblings when things don't go right," Stottlemyre said. "You just try to do everything you can in your area. That's basically all you can do. As a coach, you try to make sure guys are doing their work. When they do good, they make you look good. When they do poorly, they can make you look poorly.
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