Why Me? Why Meeeeeee?
Not since Nancy Kerrigan got kneecapped by Tonya Harding's goons (the only high point in the history of figure skating), has a self-pitying wail of athletic grievance like that disgorged by our man AROD on the pages of SI echoed through the halls of public consciousness. He really doesn't understand. Indeed, I suspect Ms. Kerrigan had a much clearer idea of why she was writhing in pain on the floor of a Detroit lockerroom than AROD does about why he is so generally disrespected. Certainly his speculations--"is it because I'm good looking (yeah that always inspires detestation) is it because I'm smart ( as someone who actually is smart, let me assure you AROD, that's not it), is it because I'm biracial (have you ever heard of Tiger Woods? does the name Derek Jeter ring a bell) is it because of my salary (I think BGW has put that one to rest: a Yankee fan envious of stupidly exorbitant salaries would go mental in pretty short order), "is it because I play on the most popular team" (well, it's also the most hated team, and by the way I think Derek Jeter plays on that team as well, just in case you still haven't noticed).
No, we know why it is, it's that clutch thing, which, properly understood, is closely related to that being a true Yankee thing. Really, I think I figured out how this works. It wouldn't do AROD any good to quote his RISP numbers even if they were a little better, even if they were a little better in the late innings, even if they were a little better than other major leaguers of note, or other Yankees. What's at stake in our perception of AROD, which is to say WHY HIM, is what I will call the Differential. The Differential is the gap, up or down, between how good a given player, or a given Yankee, is all the time and how good he is in the clutch. The measure of a true Yankee is not some absolute percentage of clutch performance, but the ratio between how he typically performs during a particular period and how he performs in the clutch over that same span. Reggie Jackson was a 260 something hitter, but not in the clutch; Scott Brosius was a 240 hitter but in the clutch he was good and compared to his own benchmark he was a monster. Why was Lou Piniella one of the great Yankees? Because you simply didn't care a lick if he'd struck out three times earlier in the game (and he probably had), you knew his clutch potential was an entirely separate matter. Did Paul O'Neill, could Paul O'Neill have a game so bad that you didn't want to see him come up in the 9th. I would submit, no, his differential quotient was too high for that. So by the way was Chuck Knoblach's: until his last season, you couldn't get him out when you had to get him out, but you sure could otherwise. And that's the fuility of the sportswriter's argument about how great AROD is "really," which is to say statistically. The better he is and claims to be and is seen as being everyday, the higher the threshold for his clutch performance and the more dismal his Differential becomes when he goes 2-15 against the Angels in the ALDS.
You want the profile of a true Yankee? Let's follow the path of Aristotle, who came to define tragedy for the ages not by setting out rules deductively but by starting with the best tragedy he knew, Oedipus Rex, and then pronouncing its various qualities and excellences to be the qualities and excellences proper to the tragic mode. So we start with Derek Jeter because we all know that whatever else might be true of the category true Yankee, Jeter has been one. Now Jeter is hitting about 340, but his batting average with RISP is about 390. That's what I mean by a true Yankee, even in the midst of a monster year day to day, he cranks it up in the clutch, he gets that improbable hit off Papelbon in game 4 of the massacre, otherwise known as the coup de grace. His Differential, even when he is going well, remains tremendously high. Let's take the other sterling example of true Yankeedom, Paulie. As 2000 was wearing down and even into the playoffs he was going from bad to worse, but a true Yankee is not finally stymied by his own struggles. Its the World Series, its the Mets, it's the no.7, its Yankeetime, and Paulie delivers, producing out of and in part because of his recent scuffles a huge upside Differential. That is the link between the true Yankee and the tradition of winning. Over the course of the 20th century, it was the Differential--enacted not only by Mantle, who owned the world series, or Dimaggio, who owned the stretch drive, or Jackson, Mr. October, but also by Joe Gordon and Gil MacDougal, Yogi Berra, Thurman Munson and yes Phil Rizzoto--it was that surplus-value expectation, the expectation that as a Yankee you will exceed under pressure the quotidian expectations you have set, that has produced the 26 championships and 39 pennants. If AROD is ever to become a true Yankee and be delivered from the question of why me, he is going to have to do more than perform acceptably or even well. He is going have to surpass himself, play with a greater or a different brand of excellence than he ordinarily displays. He is going to have to imbibe pressure, in true Yankee fashion, as a peformance enhancing drug. Think about Jeter, a glorified Punch and Judy hitter to be sure, delivering that key homer against the Mets and then winning Game 6 2001 with another home run at the stroke of November.
The Yankees got AROD for Soriano, a trade that perhaps looked more lopsided then than it does now. But leaving aside Soriano's amazing 2006, as a rookie he got Curt Schilling for the stunning late inning homer in the desert that should have carried the Yanks to a fourth straight title. A raw,untried if talented rookie, on baseball's biggest stage, pulling a Mazeroski: the Differential. In his years in New York, AROD has not, for all his rep as baseball's greatest player, with his MVP, his homers and ribbies, done anything to approach what Soriano did before he left, before his career even began. Once again, but in a negative sense, the Differential. Which is why to this day and even toiling in the barren vinyard of RFK stadium, Alfonso Soriano retains a memory of true Yankeedom that AROD has yet to experience.
No, we know why it is, it's that clutch thing, which, properly understood, is closely related to that being a true Yankee thing. Really, I think I figured out how this works. It wouldn't do AROD any good to quote his RISP numbers even if they were a little better, even if they were a little better in the late innings, even if they were a little better than other major leaguers of note, or other Yankees. What's at stake in our perception of AROD, which is to say WHY HIM, is what I will call the Differential. The Differential is the gap, up or down, between how good a given player, or a given Yankee, is all the time and how good he is in the clutch. The measure of a true Yankee is not some absolute percentage of clutch performance, but the ratio between how he typically performs during a particular period and how he performs in the clutch over that same span. Reggie Jackson was a 260 something hitter, but not in the clutch; Scott Brosius was a 240 hitter but in the clutch he was good and compared to his own benchmark he was a monster. Why was Lou Piniella one of the great Yankees? Because you simply didn't care a lick if he'd struck out three times earlier in the game (and he probably had), you knew his clutch potential was an entirely separate matter. Did Paul O'Neill, could Paul O'Neill have a game so bad that you didn't want to see him come up in the 9th. I would submit, no, his differential quotient was too high for that. So by the way was Chuck Knoblach's: until his last season, you couldn't get him out when you had to get him out, but you sure could otherwise. And that's the fuility of the sportswriter's argument about how great AROD is "really," which is to say statistically. The better he is and claims to be and is seen as being everyday, the higher the threshold for his clutch performance and the more dismal his Differential becomes when he goes 2-15 against the Angels in the ALDS.
You want the profile of a true Yankee? Let's follow the path of Aristotle, who came to define tragedy for the ages not by setting out rules deductively but by starting with the best tragedy he knew, Oedipus Rex, and then pronouncing its various qualities and excellences to be the qualities and excellences proper to the tragic mode. So we start with Derek Jeter because we all know that whatever else might be true of the category true Yankee, Jeter has been one. Now Jeter is hitting about 340, but his batting average with RISP is about 390. That's what I mean by a true Yankee, even in the midst of a monster year day to day, he cranks it up in the clutch, he gets that improbable hit off Papelbon in game 4 of the massacre, otherwise known as the coup de grace. His Differential, even when he is going well, remains tremendously high. Let's take the other sterling example of true Yankeedom, Paulie. As 2000 was wearing down and even into the playoffs he was going from bad to worse, but a true Yankee is not finally stymied by his own struggles. Its the World Series, its the Mets, it's the no.7, its Yankeetime, and Paulie delivers, producing out of and in part because of his recent scuffles a huge upside Differential. That is the link between the true Yankee and the tradition of winning. Over the course of the 20th century, it was the Differential--enacted not only by Mantle, who owned the world series, or Dimaggio, who owned the stretch drive, or Jackson, Mr. October, but also by Joe Gordon and Gil MacDougal, Yogi Berra, Thurman Munson and yes Phil Rizzoto--it was that surplus-value expectation, the expectation that as a Yankee you will exceed under pressure the quotidian expectations you have set, that has produced the 26 championships and 39 pennants. If AROD is ever to become a true Yankee and be delivered from the question of why me, he is going to have to do more than perform acceptably or even well. He is going have to surpass himself, play with a greater or a different brand of excellence than he ordinarily displays. He is going to have to imbibe pressure, in true Yankee fashion, as a peformance enhancing drug. Think about Jeter, a glorified Punch and Judy hitter to be sure, delivering that key homer against the Mets and then winning Game 6 2001 with another home run at the stroke of November.
The Yankees got AROD for Soriano, a trade that perhaps looked more lopsided then than it does now. But leaving aside Soriano's amazing 2006, as a rookie he got Curt Schilling for the stunning late inning homer in the desert that should have carried the Yanks to a fourth straight title. A raw,untried if talented rookie, on baseball's biggest stage, pulling a Mazeroski: the Differential. In his years in New York, AROD has not, for all his rep as baseball's greatest player, with his MVP, his homers and ribbies, done anything to approach what Soriano did before he left, before his career even began. Once again, but in a negative sense, the Differential. Which is why to this day and even toiling in the barren vinyard of RFK stadium, Alfonso Soriano retains a memory of true Yankeedom that AROD has yet to experience.
posted by joe valente | 11:44 PM
2 Comments:
I have just read the inspired post on the Differential and would like to add Luis Sojo to the list of true Yankees.
EM
Yes, absolutely. Sojo is such a sterling example: the world's greatest 220 hitter, ever. A World Class differential between the kind of player he ordinarily was and the kind of player he was late in a postseason game.
As for AROD, his rep and regular season stats demand not just hits in the eigth and ninth innings, not just big hits, decisive hits in those innings, but such hits on a consistent basis strung over time. Remember that dramatic walk-off homer AROD hit on June 30 to win a game the Yanks looked posdtively dead in, a game that would have dropped them 31/2 back of the Sox. You could say that homer kicked off the July turnaround. But because it was no more than one expected from a superstar, it didn't produce the kind of Differential that made anybody forget past wiltings nor forgive future ones. Only sustained pressure performance, given AROD's considerable aqbilities and reputation as a mid-summer player, can produce the Differential necessary to redeem him permanently in the eyes of N.Y. fans.
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