The Yankees' season had been on a path to nowhere for about eight weeks when the clubhouse doors slammed shut in Toronto, the team determined to hash out its differences face to face.

Tact went out the window that afternoon. The words bouncing off the walls of a tiny room at Rogers Centre were scathing and heated. And when the faces of those chastised returned to their natural hues, the slumbering, slumping Yankees were gone. ...

"It was not fun," first baseman Doug Mientkiewicz said. "What we heard from the people that were talking, it was embarrassing. It hit you right between the eyes. To hear what we heard from who we did, as a first-year Yankee, I didn't want to go down as the group that was the first team to not make the playoffs. I didn't want that hanging over my head all winter."

His reasoning was sound: Gordon said Chamberlain would never be able to sustain 100 miles an hour as a starter, over 200 innings. But because he’s had success throwing so hard, Gordon said, Chamberlain would be tempted to try. That, Gordon said, could backfire and cause him to wear down much quicker than he would as a reliever.