Charlie Hayes

Charlie Hayes spent parts of two separate stints in pinstripes, got squeezed out by an expansion draft in between, and still ended up holding the ball that ended an 18-year championship drought. That's the whole Charlie Hayes story in one sentence, and somehow it's still underselling it.

Traded Away, Traded Back

The Yankees originally got Hayes from the Phillies on February 19, 1992 (a trade that started as a totally separate pitcher swap back in January -- these things had a way of snowballing). He rewarded them with a career year: .257, 18 homers, 66 RBI in 142 games as the everyday third baseman. Then the Rockies took him with the third pick of the 1992 expansion draft that November (the Yankees actually tried to block it on a technicality involving the Marlins' territorial fees -- Bud Selig wasn't having it), and Hayes went on to start at third base in Colorado's very first game in franchise history.

Four years and two more organizations later, Pittsburgh shipped him back to New York on August 30, 1996, in what was basically a salary dump with a month left in the season. Hayes played 20 regular-season games for the Yankees that year. Twenty. (You could blink and miss a stretch that short.) And somehow he's more remembered in the Bronx than plenty of guys who played a decade here.

The Catch

Game 6 of the 1996 World Series, October 26, Yankee Stadium. The Yankees led the Braves 3-2 in the ninth with Mariano Rivera already done and John Wetteland trying to close out the franchise's first title since 1978. Two outs. Mark Lemke worked a full count.

Lemke fouled one off toward the visitors' dugout, and Hayes went after it -- got tangled up with a Braves batboy near the rail, tumbled into the dugout, and dislocated a finger on the way down. He didn't catch it. He didn't tell anyone what happened to his hand, either. He just jogged back to third and got ready for the next pitch.

Lemke popped the next one up too, this one staying in play. Hayes squeezed his glove around it, and the Yankees were champions for the first time in 18 years.

Hayes had actually contributed earlier in that same World Series, too -- his fly ball in Game 5 skipped past Marquis Grissom in center, and he came around to score on a Cecil Fielder double for the only run of a 1-0 win (the freakin' only run of the game, and it happened because a fly ball to Grissom didn't go the way it should have). Nobody remembers that part. Everybody remembers the glove.

One More Year, Then Gone Again

The Yankees kept Hayes around for 1997, platooning him at third with Wade Boggs. He hit .258 with 11 homers and 53 RBI in 100 games -- his best full season in pinstripes -- and even turned it up in the ALDS loss to Cleveland, going 5-for-15. Wasn't enough to save the series (nothing was, that October), but it was a solid final note.

That November, the Yankees traded him to the Giants -- the organization that had drafted him in the first place, back in 1983 -- for Alberto Castillo and Chris Singleton. Hayes played four more seasons around the league before retiring in 2001 with 1,379 career hits and exactly one championship ring, the one he'd caught with his bare glove and a dislocated finger.

He never hit 20 homers in a season for the Yankees, never made an All-Star team anywhere, and got squeezed out of the Bronx once by an expansion draft he had no control over. None of that matters. Charlie Hayes is the answer to a trivia question every Yankees fan should know cold: who made the catch.