Looking Ahead
Not much to say after a 17-6 win, except that with Bernie hitting 228, its time to end the DH experiment. Bubba is hitting 221 with a lot less at bats and you put him in the field, he's immediately the best or second best defensive player on the team. Bernie is done. they knew it last year, and if BGW believes, correctly, that torre sentimentalizes over Tanyon Sturtze, well Bernie would be the archetype.
My post today is on the upcoming return of Johnny Damon to Fenway. Much was made among the chowderheads about his perfidy in going to the Yankees. His breach of loyalty to Red Sox nation has been much vilified, and of course Red Sox network, otherwise known as ESPN, has linked this traumatic leavetaking to the general absence of player fealty that characterizes the free agent era. Instead of fans and players bonded in mutual tribalism we are told we have a one way adhesion of fans to the teams that more or less disregard them.
I think this analysis is, in essence, inaccurate. What is going on under free agency (in which the front office no less than the players) is not a quantitative difference in loyalty so much as an assymetry in the kinds of loyalty that fans and players feel. Actually it is players who have loyalty to the team, defined as the 25 or so guys they are playing alonside on a daily basis. What they don't have loyalty to is the franchise. The fans on the other hand have no loyalty to the team; when the front office is able to move 5-6 guys in the offseason, 20% or more of the team and replace them with better players, the fans are typically content (look at the chowderheads this year salivating over Beckett and Crisp, apologizing for Loretta and Lowell, supporting Taveras and Riske etc.). That's because fan's loyalty, like that of the front office, is to the franchise. When the chowderheads decry Damon's betrayal of the team, it should be noted that the front office, in their prioritizing of the franchise, had already let Martinez and Lowe go, cut Embree, let Kapler, Todd Walker and Bellhorn go, traded Bip Roberts, replaced Cabrera with Renteria and Renteria with Gonzalez, traded Mirabelli for Loretta, unaccountably let Mueller go, and quite sensibly got rid of that overrated asshole Millar, whose only virtue seemed to be that his name sounded cool when pronounced in parodic Bostonese. Well, you get the idea. There really weren't very many people left from that championship team for Damon to remain loyal to: Ortiz, yes, Varitek, sure, Timlin, Manny, but he always wanted out anyway, and Schilling, whom everybody in baseball quite justifiably loathes.
So while that line about Damon looking like Jesus, acting like Judas, and throwing like Mary is witty enough, the only part of it that's true, particularly these days, is that he throws like Mary--which is to say like Bernie.
My post today is on the upcoming return of Johnny Damon to Fenway. Much was made among the chowderheads about his perfidy in going to the Yankees. His breach of loyalty to Red Sox nation has been much vilified, and of course Red Sox network, otherwise known as ESPN, has linked this traumatic leavetaking to the general absence of player fealty that characterizes the free agent era. Instead of fans and players bonded in mutual tribalism we are told we have a one way adhesion of fans to the teams that more or less disregard them.
I think this analysis is, in essence, inaccurate. What is going on under free agency (in which the front office no less than the players) is not a quantitative difference in loyalty so much as an assymetry in the kinds of loyalty that fans and players feel. Actually it is players who have loyalty to the team, defined as the 25 or so guys they are playing alonside on a daily basis. What they don't have loyalty to is the franchise. The fans on the other hand have no loyalty to the team; when the front office is able to move 5-6 guys in the offseason, 20% or more of the team and replace them with better players, the fans are typically content (look at the chowderheads this year salivating over Beckett and Crisp, apologizing for Loretta and Lowell, supporting Taveras and Riske etc.). That's because fan's loyalty, like that of the front office, is to the franchise. When the chowderheads decry Damon's betrayal of the team, it should be noted that the front office, in their prioritizing of the franchise, had already let Martinez and Lowe go, cut Embree, let Kapler, Todd Walker and Bellhorn go, traded Bip Roberts, replaced Cabrera with Renteria and Renteria with Gonzalez, traded Mirabelli for Loretta, unaccountably let Mueller go, and quite sensibly got rid of that overrated asshole Millar, whose only virtue seemed to be that his name sounded cool when pronounced in parodic Bostonese. Well, you get the idea. There really weren't very many people left from that championship team for Damon to remain loyal to: Ortiz, yes, Varitek, sure, Timlin, Manny, but he always wanted out anyway, and Schilling, whom everybody in baseball quite justifiably loathes.
So while that line about Damon looking like Jesus, acting like Judas, and throwing like Mary is witty enough, the only part of it that's true, particularly these days, is that he throws like Mary--which is to say like Bernie.
posted by joe valente | 1:22 AM
2 Comments:
that line about Damon looking like Jesus, acting like Judas, and throwing like Mary
That's funny--hadn't heard that one before.
When you said in your blog description that Every day of the season I will detail the errors, misjudgements, and omissions that make him the most overrated manger in the history of the game, some scoffed. Some thought there was no way you'd really write about every game this season. Some wondered if you really could find something to criticize about Torre's "performance" day in and day out. Some might have even thought to themselves, He's got too much "real" work to do--look at his CV, for Jebus' sake--to keep updating this blog every day.
But here it is, the end of the first month--of the season and of the blog--and you are still going strong. One day the blogosphere will look back on this as a historic document: a day-by-day microhistory of the 2006 Yankees and their ultimate failure (I predict in the ALDS).
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