Tag Archives: Yankees

September 20, 2010 · 2:06 am

Short sTorre: We don’t need ya in Flushing Joe.

On Friday, Joe Torre decided to take a break from coaching and announced that this would be his final season with the Dodgers and effective at the end of the season, Don Mattingly would take over as manager of the Los Angeles Dodgers.

The moment that happened the natural progression of events happened in a New York minute: Torre was listed as a managerial candidate for the New York Mets.

Thanks Joe, don’t call us, we’ll call you.

I watched Torre during his Yankee years and one thing he did better than anyone is understand that if you made friends with the media you could lay an egg and they would still call it gold.

Torre’s greatest trait is his demeanor.  Joe Cool.  Always dignified in his responses, it seems almost wrong to attack him like most reporters in New York love to do.

His media savvy is unquestionably good and he knows his way around an interview.  He’s handled the New York press better than anyone in the history of managers and he’s smart.

Torre landed the Yankee gig as guys named Jeter, Mariano, Pettite, Bernie and Posada were beginning to stake their claims to Yankee immortality.  He rode them to 4 World Series titles and the respect among the managerial greats.

I’ve always had a problem giving props to guys like him and Phil Jackson who himself had Michael Jordan and Scottie Pippen in his first run of 6 titles and then Kobe and Shaq and later Gasol in his next run of 5.  Its easy to win when you have all-time players like that.  But I’ve grown to appreciate their style and success over time since the job title expands to ego shrinker and team organizer.

But Torre often got too much credit for the Yankees success.  His best asset was his persona: the unflinching, steady, even keeled approach to every situation.  Act like you’ve been there before and you plan on going back.  Quiet confidence and a professional attitude that became the Yankee way.  He taught them how to behave NOT how to play.  He’s a good manager, not a great one.

People may disagree with that but Lee Jenkins in yesterday’s SI.com article wrote about how Torre grew tired of waiting for his young players to grow up and cited a comment that Torre made saying that during one of his team meetings he made them talk their problems out to each other because perhaps a younger voice was needed.  Also with his leaving he was removing the last shred of dignity the Dodger organization had as ownership is going through a nasty divorce.

The Mets are a lost franchise, necessary of some of Joe Torre’s personality.  Necessary of his professionalism.  I don’t doubt that he could infuse the team with that, but the Mets need more, much much more to be relevant again.

As a Met fan I’m tired of the calm, good media people kind of managers this team has had.  They need a guy to come in and shift the attitude.  To change the way things are done.  A guy who has a track record of salvaging horrible wrecks.  A person who can put his foot down and get his point across to a generation that Torre feels he can’t relate with.

I’ve been on the Bobby Valentine bandwagon for quite some time.  Who knows if he’s the answer.  What I do know is that he’d fill the job description.  He’s a recognizable persona.  A character of interest.  An individual oozing confidence.  A guy who has had a history of turning water into wine.  Miraculously returning to the dugout in costume, unafraid of the consequences and willing to speak his mind to whomever when he feels its necessary.

The Mets need a guy to bench David Wright in the midst of one of his bad streaks.  A guy to get Jose Reyes back to hustling.  Someone who won’t be chicken to tell Carlos Beltran coming off knee surgery that he’s playing right field: end of discussion because we have a good young centerfielder.  Because Angel Pagan is our best player and moving your best player around the diamond is about as dumb as firing your manager on the first game of a west coast road trip at 3 am local time.

A guy that wouldve forced management to cut ties with Oliver Perez the moment he showed up to spring training out of shape.  Somebody who wouldve pulled Luis Castillo aside after he made comments voicing his displeasure playing on the Mets and then undressed him as a player in front of his teammates: to send a message that if you don’t want to be here, no ones keeping you here.

Jerry Manuel used to toss around the word “Gangsta” but he forgot what that meant.  He turned into 90% of rappers who also use that phrase to describe themselves.  Bobby Valentine is gangsta.  He took a team not nearly as talented to the World series in 2000.  I know he can do the same to this Mets team.

Despite everything the Mets have been through, a majority of these wounds are self inflicted.  My vote is for a team of Kevin Towers and Bobby Valentine to restore credibility to the Mets.  Let’s ignore the pull of another soft spoken media savvy manager, let’s go for a guy who can, not a guy who talks about what he can’t.  Its time for a change.

Don’t call us Joe, we’ll call you.

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July 14, 2010 · 3:29 pm

You didnt have to love him to know him.

Truth be told I’ve never been fond of “the Boss.”. You have to realize that I didn’t fully understand who he was until 1997 when the Yankees lost to the Cleveland Indians in the playoffs and he went on a public tirade. I thought he was a pretentious jerk when my more knowledgeable cousin, said “that’s just the Boss being the Boss.”

So that was acceptable behavior huh? Two years ago I read a book titled “the Bronx is Burning” by Jonathan Mahler and I finally understood the bizarre behavior and shockingly realized that the behavior from the early 2000’s was a tamer version of his former self.

Its in bad taste to focus on the negatives of someone immediately following his death but it lends a clue as to who George Steinbrenner really was. Was he the impossible to work for guy who fired Billy Martin 5 times in sometimes crazy fashion? Was he the zany owner depicted on Seinfeld? Was he the caring guy who took Ray Negrone in when he busted him for graffiti’ng around Yankee stadium and giving him a job? Or was he the guy who was banned for life from baseball after hiring a reputed gambler to get information to use against Dave Winfield one of his former players who received plenty of venom?

There’s so many different sides to him. You hear the bad and the good, and yet you can’t find a middle ground. You hear about his relentless pursuit of championships which often had him mending and ending relationships with employees and friends.

Then you hear about the guys he loved. The ones he couldn’t turn his back on. Two come to mind immediately for me, Doc Gooden and Darryl Strawberry. I found it odd that he would give these two second chances constantly. They were known as former Mets. Two guys who helped the team in Queens rule New York in the 80’s while Steinbrenner’s Yanks were stumbling. When George returned to the game in 1993, he came back with a different viewpoint. He trusted his scouts and their expertise in building a champion from within.

By 96 they were champions, but wouldn’t you know those two former Mets helped the Yankees return to glory and maybe that was what made it easy to like them. In his eyes these former stars helped his team back into relevance and more importantly dominance and the over riding theme in everyone’s summation of George is that he wanted to win.

So that first title in a really long time (well anything past a year was a generation in George’s eyes) was in essence due to the efforts of two well known New Yorkers, former stars who helped resurrect his franchise to where he wanted: the top.

George loved stars and he reveled in the New York rivalry. For him, the 90s were about wrestling the city from the Mets back to the Yankees.* So when the Mets and Yanks played in the World Series in 2000, it was an intensely personal series for him. Forget the championship, he cared for the city’s bragging rights.

His legacy is rooted in his polarizing persona. The aura that he carried which froze a room. You can imagine the Darth Vader theme playing as he walked the room if his life had a soundtrack. He was the guy that walked into a room, and could control it by virtue of his presence never having to say a single word.

His pursuit of titles was admirable as was his need to impress his father. He wasn’t able to buy his hometown Cleveland Indians and “settled” on the Yankees. He bought it for $8.8 million and made it into the $1.6 billion empire it is today.

It took a George Steinbrenner to do that. The eventual rise of the Yankees was due to George’s insistence on having the Yankees as a first class organization and doing everything the same way. The Yankees today are an organization that goes after every major free agent, that pays the biggest contracts and is a behemoth in sports itself and just so happens to play in the world’s number one market.

It took who he was to make the Yankees what it is today. Fact is, the Yankees have used his whatever it takes attitude to bring championships to build the team.

I envy that. While owners like the Wilpons look to save money, George went full speed ahead because he managed his company with his heart and with passion, not with his brain. Sometimes it worked and sometimes it didn’t. But Yankee fans can never say that they weren’t always doing everything possible to win a championship and that’s what makes winning in New York that big. Its an expected outcome because this city more than any other has the resources to do it. He’s not even the richest owner in baseball. But he was the one willing to go above and beyond.

I remember when Hank and Hal Steinbrenner took over. People immediately wondered whether they would be like George, but not surprisingly, they weren’t. How could they? George swung from one end of the pendulum to the other. He went from nice to nasty. From giving to bullying. No one could ever duplicate George Steinbrenner.

This last week has been especially tough to the Yankee family. They are the favorites to win their sports leading 28th championship. They have lost their public address announcer, Bob Shephard, and George Steinbrenner, links to their past.

I suppose this moment had to come eventually. That death conquers all and would even swallow the giant that was Steinbrenner. Most outside the New York area may not understand his importance, but everyone knows him. Make no mistake that his presence was felt in more ways than just pennants in New York. His mark was left in free agency. His YES Network is a multimillion dollar network that makes him more revenue and gives him control over how his brand is broadcasted.

Steinbrenner at his simplest was a man who wanted to win, nothing more, nothing less. I may not have had nothing nice to say about him before but it doesn’t mean I don’t get him for who he was and what he meant to sports. You don’t have to hate, you only have to appreciate.

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