The Silence Of The Lambasted.

It's Not For Lack Of Trying

I've wanted to post but the words just fail me. Every time I got a thought, it just ran away.

I simply don't know what to say about this team any more. I have faith, though, that they will inspire Me, soon.


Friends In Low Places

Apparently one can not be a credentialed member of the New York media without swearing one's undying loyalty to Joe Torre, and the legend thereof.

The latest gem I'm aware of is courtesy of Yankees' broadcaster and ESPN radio host Michael Kay. Monday Kay dismissed a caller who complained about Torre with this gem:

"Joe Torre's not the problem -- he's been managing the same way for eleven years."

Is the media so mesmerized by Torre that they have lost all common sense? Michael, for the record -- and read this slowly, and repeatedly necessary:

When a manager manages the same way, without the same kind of team, then the manager is the problem.

If we still had Wetteland and Stanton and Nelson and Mendoza in their primes, hell yes -- I'd be routinely pulling the starters at the first sign of trouble. But that ship has sailed. The bullpen isn't as good and (this is related, of course) the starters aren't as good. You have to manage differently with a different kind of team.

Michael . . . is that really so difficult a concept to grasp? Joe is a big part of the problem. And one of the few parts that can be readily fixed.

[Thank you, iris, for pointing Me to Kay's comment.]


Party Like It's 1959

I've written before about how perhaps this, 2007, is "that year." The year where it all goes wrong and a team with good talent just doesn't perform. The 1959 Yankees. Mostly all the same guys who won the World Series the year before, and lost the World Series in seven games to an inferior team the following year. It's just that stuff happens, sometimes.

Predicting "that year" is a tough business. I was pretty sure that 2006 was "that year" (and in retrospect I wish that it had been).

I started to wonder if somehow what's happened since 2000 isn't in some measure a balancing of the books. Perhaps it's payback time. The bill coming due for every whacked-out move Torre made that he got away with. Every Luis Sojo clutch postseaon hit. David Cone in relief in the World Series. The perfect games. The ball call on that 2-2 pitch from Mark Langston to Tino Martinez. Ricky Ledee getting a clutch hit off Kevin Brown (the good, pre-Yankees Kevin Brown). Joe playing the B team, the C team, the D team, hell I think Skippy the ball boy pitched a couple games for us back then and no one knew it and we still won.

I know. There's really no "evening up." But sometimes I still do wonder.