IF YOU WANT TO KNOW WHY

I so revile Torre, a you need to look no further than today's game. A must win, with an advantageous stretch threatening to go up in smoke thanks to tgheir failure to grind at the plate, it is up to the manager to make sure they are playing with the focus and urgency necessary to keep their season afloat. Instead they lose yet another one run game, this time thanks to a handful of baserunning errors! Cano, Jeter and Abreu all screw up at different points in the game and Torre is left insisting they kn ow how good a team they are, as if their self-image is the ultimate issue. The truth is they are NOT a good team. As Bill Parcells says, you are wht your record says you are and a 500 record says you're mediocre. They ARE an immensely talented team, which makes their mediocrity all that much more the disgrace.In baseball, the difference between being talented and being good typically involves tending to the local: to the here and now of a baserunning situation, a pitch choice, the position of your fielders, the wasting of a single pitch to getg one that's hittable. When you are talented, certainly as talented as this team, playing well is frequently aboujt just keeping your head in the game, completely, for nine full innings. Too often, this team has its head up its ass. And at the end of the day, that's a firing offense--for the manager.