The following is excerpted from CHUMPS TO CHAMPS: How the Worst Teams in Yankees History Led to the ’90s Dynasty by Bill Pennington. Copyright © 2019 by Bill Pennington. Used by permission of Houghton Mifflin Harcourt. All rights reserved.
In the dark, Derek Jeter and Mariano Rivera checked into a gritty budget hotel next to Newark Airport and glumly walked across the street to Bennigan’s, an Irish pub-themed casual dining chain popular in the New York area during the mid-1990s. It was the kind of New Jersey place that would have been filled with Yankees fans on this evening, June 11, 1995.