DJ Caruso, director of ‘Bronx Zoo ’90’, exclusively delves into the new Peacock series centered on the 1990 New York Yankees.
An upcoming documentary will chronicle the New York Yankees of the 1990s.
No, not those Yankees.
It isn't about the well-documented teams from later in the decade that won four World Series titles in five years. It's about the forgettable team that began the decade by going 67-95 to produce the franchise's losingest season of the last century.
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The 1990 Yankees' lack of on-field success added to their highly unusual off-field drama, creating the mayhem detailed in Peacock's three-part docuseries "Bronx Zoo '90: Crime, Chaos and Baseball."
"I don't think there's ever been another team like the 1990 New York Yankees," director D.J. Caruso told NBC Local.
Few teams have had their owner hire a gambler to dig up dirt on its well-compensated star player, as George Steinbrenner did at the height of his feud with Dave Winfield.
Or had a pitcher throw a no-hitter and still lose the game, as Andy Hawkins did.
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Or had an active NFL player playing in the outfield, as then-rookie Deion Sanders did.
Or had their biggest offseason acquisition go missing at the start of spring training, as Pascual Perez did.
Or had illegal exotic animals prowling around the team's clubhouse, as Mel Hall's cougars did.
The fact that he was "just walking them into the locker room says all you need to know about what the 1990 Yankees were about," Caruso said.
Yankee Stadium at the time, literally and figuratively, was a zoo.
The docuseries, which premieres on Peacock on May 16, is based on articles about the 1990 Yankees written by New York Post baseball columnist Joel Sherman, who at the time was a beat reporter covering the Don Mattingly-led team.
Caruso began reading Sherman's articles in 2020 when professional sports were shut down during the COVID-19 pandemic.
"It just became to me, thematically, a look under the hood or look behind the curtain of this dynasty that emerged in the '90s," Caruso said. "How could a team that was so bad on the field and off the field in three years turn this thing around and become the greatest franchise in the history of all sports?"
The Yankees' drastic turnaround from laughingstock to dynasty began around the time Steinbrenner received a lifetime ban from the team's daily operations for paying gambler Howard Spira $40,000 for information on Winfield. It continued as the team distanced itself from players like Sanders, a Pro Football Hall of Famer who is now the head coach at the University of Colorado, and Hall, who while playing for the Yankees was involved in a high-profile romance with 15-year-old Chastity Easterly.
Easterly and Hall, who is serving a 45-year jail sentence for the rape a 12-year-old girl, were both interviewed for the docuseries.
"It was really eye-opening for me to kind of go there and interview Mel in jail," Caruso said. "It wasn't what I expected. I expected someone to kind of maybe have a little bit more remorse, but he didn't really seem to have that. It was interesting. He sort of was still portraying himself as the victim in his own story."
The 1990 season included some of the darkest days in Yankee history, but it also laid the groundwork for the formation of the team's core that rebuilt the Yankee pride, tradition and success later in the decade.
"Like all good stories, whenever you go through these periods of darkness, it's how you come out of it on the other end," Caruso said. "So, you're going to see that this franchise rose from this dark period and came out with great light. But within the darkness, there are so many great interpersonal stories. Some are tragic, some are mind boggling."
