SO, DOES JOE TORRE TREAT BLACK AND WHITE PLAYERS DIFFERENTLY?
The case for the prosecution should begin with one Kenny Lofton.
Charges against Torre of racism or its near, unconscious relatives were summarily dismissed by the press owing to the unreliably egocentric, paranoid and all around prima-donnaish nature of the plaintiff. And I wholeheartedly agree with that assessment of Gary Sheffield's character, or lack thereof. I mean this is someone who manages to be a confessed steroid cheat while continuing to deny the offense.
But the one man who has backed Sheffield up is Kenny Lofton, and his history with the Yankees and beyond makes him, in my view, a compelling witness. Lofton was brought to the Yankees to take over cf duties from a failing Bernie Williams. But Torre never gave him the opportunity to be a full time player in NY, which is clearly what he was signed to be. Instead torre used him part-time and used every shortcoming in his performance as a part-timer to lessen his playing time even more. Now all these years later, Lofton has since proven and continues to prove--in LA, Texas, and now in Cleveland--that he remains the 300 hitter, basestealing threat, and run-scoring machine the Yankees thought they were signing. Of course, the "couldn't do it in New York" label has been dragged out by Yankees management and their journalistic acolytes to explain this state of affairs. But as Melky has proven, the inability to sustain a decent BA or OBP on 10 at bats a week is no indication whatever of one's ability to do so on a full time basis. As fans and followers of the Yankees, I believe we should utterly reject and denounce the whole NY is a "special trial" discourse, which may have had some explanatory value concerning Doyle Alexander but has increasingly become a means for disguising or disavowing the organization's responsibility for not getting what they should have out of their players. Lofot didn't fail as a Yankee because he was playing in NY; he failed because he wasn't playing in NY. Torre's refusal to use him as the regular he'd always been and was expected to be cost the Yankees a first rate CF, who still is a first rate corner outfielder, and may well have cost them a championship in the process.
But, you may now be asking, what does this have to do with skin color? Or what makes me opine that it might have something to do with race? The short but complete answer is Johnny Damon. Damon, like Lofton, was brought to NY to be the regular CF. But unlike Lofton, he is white. And unlike Lofton he was allowed to play regularly and so was given a chance to succeed. Unlike Lofton, when he started to make outs, he was left in the line-up. Unlike Lofton, he continued to hit poorly as a regular and was still left in the line-up. Unlike Lofton, he has now made it clear that he can't, for the moment anyway, hit major league pitching consistently, and he is still left in the line-up. Unlike Lofton, he quickly came to the point where he could no longer hold down center field, and still he is left in the line-up. Unlike Lofton, none of his miscues or misthrows have caused him to be shown-up by his teammates, the way Mariano Rivera showed up Lofton, something you don't do without the manager's consent or connivance. The showing up is important because it chimes with Sheffield's complaint that black players got called out by Torre and white players did not.
Does any of this prove Torre is overly race-conscious? No. Nor, to be honest, do I much care about such proof one way or the other. I root for the Yankees to win, not to be a model of racial harmony. When everyone's making millions, there may be racial victimization, but its priority, compared to things in the real world, is impossibly low. I do care, however, if Torre's latent racial attitude's constitute yet another weakness in his managerial arsenal, if those attitudes militate against the Yankees' defining mission: to win, to win it all, to win all the time.
Sports are the perfect racial laboratory, because performance between the lines is, or can be made, substantially color-blind. As a result, the phrase racist loser contains a basic redundancy. To be the former is, on a level playing field, to be the latter. The Red Sox proved as much throughout the fifties and into the sixties. And racially speaking, of course, the red Sox are the last thing you want to be.
Charges against Torre of racism or its near, unconscious relatives were summarily dismissed by the press owing to the unreliably egocentric, paranoid and all around prima-donnaish nature of the plaintiff. And I wholeheartedly agree with that assessment of Gary Sheffield's character, or lack thereof. I mean this is someone who manages to be a confessed steroid cheat while continuing to deny the offense.
But the one man who has backed Sheffield up is Kenny Lofton, and his history with the Yankees and beyond makes him, in my view, a compelling witness. Lofton was brought to the Yankees to take over cf duties from a failing Bernie Williams. But Torre never gave him the opportunity to be a full time player in NY, which is clearly what he was signed to be. Instead torre used him part-time and used every shortcoming in his performance as a part-timer to lessen his playing time even more. Now all these years later, Lofton has since proven and continues to prove--in LA, Texas, and now in Cleveland--that he remains the 300 hitter, basestealing threat, and run-scoring machine the Yankees thought they were signing. Of course, the "couldn't do it in New York" label has been dragged out by Yankees management and their journalistic acolytes to explain this state of affairs. But as Melky has proven, the inability to sustain a decent BA or OBP on 10 at bats a week is no indication whatever of one's ability to do so on a full time basis. As fans and followers of the Yankees, I believe we should utterly reject and denounce the whole NY is a "special trial" discourse, which may have had some explanatory value concerning Doyle Alexander but has increasingly become a means for disguising or disavowing the organization's responsibility for not getting what they should have out of their players. Lofot didn't fail as a Yankee because he was playing in NY; he failed because he wasn't playing in NY. Torre's refusal to use him as the regular he'd always been and was expected to be cost the Yankees a first rate CF, who still is a first rate corner outfielder, and may well have cost them a championship in the process.
But, you may now be asking, what does this have to do with skin color? Or what makes me opine that it might have something to do with race? The short but complete answer is Johnny Damon. Damon, like Lofton, was brought to NY to be the regular CF. But unlike Lofton, he is white. And unlike Lofton he was allowed to play regularly and so was given a chance to succeed. Unlike Lofton, when he started to make outs, he was left in the line-up. Unlike Lofton, he continued to hit poorly as a regular and was still left in the line-up. Unlike Lofton, he has now made it clear that he can't, for the moment anyway, hit major league pitching consistently, and he is still left in the line-up. Unlike Lofton, he quickly came to the point where he could no longer hold down center field, and still he is left in the line-up. Unlike Lofton, none of his miscues or misthrows have caused him to be shown-up by his teammates, the way Mariano Rivera showed up Lofton, something you don't do without the manager's consent or connivance. The showing up is important because it chimes with Sheffield's complaint that black players got called out by Torre and white players did not.
Does any of this prove Torre is overly race-conscious? No. Nor, to be honest, do I much care about such proof one way or the other. I root for the Yankees to win, not to be a model of racial harmony. When everyone's making millions, there may be racial victimization, but its priority, compared to things in the real world, is impossibly low. I do care, however, if Torre's latent racial attitude's constitute yet another weakness in his managerial arsenal, if those attitudes militate against the Yankees' defining mission: to win, to win it all, to win all the time.
Sports are the perfect racial laboratory, because performance between the lines is, or can be made, substantially color-blind. As a result, the phrase racist loser contains a basic redundancy. To be the former is, on a level playing field, to be the latter. The Red Sox proved as much throughout the fifties and into the sixties. And racially speaking, of course, the red Sox are the last thing you want to be.
posted by joe valente | 12:56 PM
6 Comments:
I've probably said this in this space before, but Torre's non-use of Lofton is one of the strangest chapters in his tenure as manager. As I recall, Lofton was a unilateral signing by Steinbrenner after everyone was telling him the Marlins won in 03 because his team didn't have a proper leadoff hitter. The fact that Bernie could no longer play CF may or may not have also been a factor. So, now you've got a leadoff hitter who plays superb defense, and even has a decent arm. And Torre plays him once or twice a week AS THE DH batting NINTH (with poor Bernie in center). It made no sense. It would have been as though, after all the hubub of re-acquiring Clemens this year, Torre used him as the mop-up guy.
I have no clue what role race plays in it, but no objective observer can deny that Torre's use of Lofton was utterly baffling, in ways that don't necessarily fit into the slow Joe paradigm--as Joe V notes, he was a high profile, highly paid veteran, whom Torre ussually favors. I guess Torre's defense would be that it's all about his famous loyalty to Bernie...
and, while Torre has nothing directly to do with this, I would also note that, a la Sheffield's one cognet point from earlier in the year about race and baseball overall, Ynake diversity is increasingly Asian; Jeter is the only current person of color on the team who isn't Latin American. Sheff, Flash Gordon, Lofton; Tony Womack; Tony Clark, and occasional player Kevin Thompson. am I really off here, or have the Yankees not fielded many African-American players other than those few guys in the last few years? are they different in this regard than other teams?
PS: not to toot my own prophetic skills, but as my comment to the "Philosopher of the Future" post predicted, Wang has delivered 2 consecutive mediocre, 6 inning perfomances, requiring 9 outs from a suspect bullpen. He can't go deep in games right now, which spells bug trouble for the team long term this year. fortunately, the offense has been on those games, but...
oh, I forgot my friend Rondell White and the great David Justice; but I can't think of many other high profile African-Americans on the Yankees since Tim Raines, Chili Davis, Darryl Strawberry, Dwight Gooden, Cecil Fielder in the late 90s; all players that, now, are of another generation. Of course widening the talent pool to Asia and elsewhere is great for the game. But, baseball has shown a lack of interest in promoting the sport in urban and AF-AM communties in the US in general, and Sheff, nuts as he is in most respects, is correct to point out that, factually, this is true. whether it is just part of moving to a much greater diversity that will include many more asian and perhaps even European / Aussie etc. players, or whether it is a troubling sign about baseball's vision of the future is a question I'm unsure about. Certainly, living in Boston, one is ALWAYS struck by the total lack of diversity in the stands at a Red Sox game, but that is again a larger issue in American sports in general.
I had a different take on Lofton. Going into 2004, Bernie was 35 and a Yankee legend. He'd had a bad year in '03 (.265/.367/.411 with 15 HRs), but in '02 he'd hit .333/.415/.493 with 19 HRs. In retrospect, he was done, but at the time that was not obvious -- we could just as soon have pronounced Posada done when he hit .262/.352/.430 with 19 HRs at age 33 in 2005. So, why would you replace Yankee Legend with One Bad Year with Kenny Lofton, who was about to turn 37, a year and a half older than Williams, had just had his best year since the 1990s, and had still hit only slightly better than Bernie in his worst year ever -- just .296/.352/.450 with 12 HRs. Did the SBs and some range in center really justify that? Again, the future told a different story, and Lofton's 2003 marked a real renaissance for him, but again, that was not obvious at the time.
I'm reluctant to convict or acquit Torre of racism from a distance, but I'm also reluctant to blame him for being less than thrilled with being presented with Lofton.
--Michael
Some range! C'mon, anyone could see Bernie was done as a centerfielder, whatever may or may not have been obvious about his future with the bat. Defense has been the single greatest weakn ess of the recent Yankee teams and a lack of proper attention to solid defense ranks just behind bullpen mismanagement in the litany of Torre's sins. After all, Williams could well have been the DH on that team. Since he couldn't run and couldn't throw, center field would seem to have been the last place he should have been playing.
Offensively, moreover, we are not just talking about some stolen bases; Williams couldn't take the extra base when he got on and at the plate he was a double play machine. If you started counting those DP's as 2 outs, as they actually count on the field, boy would his batting average have plummeted. The Yankees, as we all know, have been slow in recent years and the acquisition of Lofton was an entirely reasonable, I would say astute attempt to remedy that shortcoming. But Joe was busy playing the kind of superstar longball that has sunk this team.
I remember being thrilled that they acquired Lofton, expectant about what he could contribute, and disappointed that he wasn't given the chance. And since I'm paid nothing and Torre is paid millions and since I was proven right and Torre wrong, I have no reluctance in blaming him for being less than thrilled with being presented with Lofton. He pitched Kevin Brown, Jared Wright etc. when he was presumably less than thrilled to do so. His refusal to give Lofton the opportunity that the front office presented and that his career to that point clearly deserved.
I don't know that race-consciousness, or unconsciousness, played a part in what I continue to believe was an unconscionable waste of talent. I would only point put that his recent willingness to stick in one form or another with Johnny Damon (whom I do like as a left fielder) makes for a black and white contrast.
I say this as someone who utterly dismissed the notion when Sheffield mooted it, on the grounds that, well, Sheffield mooted it.
You're right that Bernie's range was already a huge problem, though I still think if he'd bounced back with the bat we wouldn't have been worrying much about that. Whaddaya think about Betamit? And Joba soon to meet Joda?
-Michael
No matter how little we might think of Cashman's baseball acumen, there is no way in the world this man could be so stupid as to actually believe his ballclub can make the playoffs with the current bullpen, much less with the current bullpen MINUS it's third best pitcher--with only a mediocre bench player to show for it. and no matter how high you might be on your minor league arms, there's no way he thinks that they are gonna get the team there before they've thrown a big league pitch.
To me, then, it seems pretty clear that Cashman is running the white flag up the pole on this season. And, as Joe V has talked about many times on this page, that's maybe not such a bad thing.
We'll see what Joba and Hughes can do when given some sustained work at the big league level. we'll see whether Ohlendorf or whatever his name is can make that big unit trade look even better than it's been looking since Viz starting pitching well and Randy went under for anohter surgery. and maybe we'll see Damon get everyday experience at LF and Matusi as DH, which neither seem to mind, and which is the best long term situation for the team. and come Sept., we'll see Ian Kennedy, Karstens, et al. come and compete for next year's rotation and bullpen. Could be fun to watch, and Torre could go out with some measure of class as a having spent his last season building a future chamionship team for Girardi to steer.
One side note: in the continuing coded criticism of Torre in the press, there was a fascinating rational given for the Proctor trade:
"On July 8, the day before the All-Star Game break, the Yankees led the Angels by 10 runs when Scott Proctor was sent in to pitch the eighth inning. To the Yankees’ decision makers, this was an obvious sign that Manager Joe Torre would probably always favor Proctor over a pitcher just up from the minors, no matter how promising that pitcher seemed."
So was this trade really just a big Fuck You to Slow Joe from a frustrated front office afraid to actually talk to him about his on-field decisions? i.e. if you insist on only using players with experience, we'll just have to take them away from you?
Post a Comment
<< Home