AN OPEN LETTER TO GEORGE STEINBRENNER
Dear George (if I may),
On behalf of sensible Yankee fans everywhere, let me first say, You promised! You promised if our beloved team flamed out once again in round one, you'd fire the man who has presided over what can only be called an historic run of Yankee post-season futility. When was the last time the Yankees reached the postseason 7 years in a row and failed to win a ring? The answer, never. Six times? Never. Five times, Never. Four times, never. Three times, then? Actually, never. Twice in a row is the longest streak of postseason failure before this one. If October is what counts, as Yankees folk like to say, then AROD is a piker compared to this guy when it comes to postseason foundering. Geez, George, remember when you almost fired Billy Martin for getting swept in his first World Series against the Big Red Machine? How could you not fire Torre for getting swept by the red Sox after being up 3-0?
The one thing at which Torre still excels is cultivating the national press, and in case you haven't heard, they have already started wringing their hands over his fate, wondering if you would really fire Joda, assuring fans you probably won't, making arguments in Torre's defense, even explaining why you really can't. Peter Gammons has recently emerged from his day job--Hall of Fame bathroom attendant to Theo Epstein--to forcefully defend Torre as only a Red Sox operative could. According to Gammons, striking a theme that is becoming quite the rage among the empty-headed blowhards known as sports pundits (I swear they make Rush Limbaugh sound like Albert Einstein by comparison), you can't fire Torre because of the players. The players revere him, the players love him, the players play for him. But if the players don't win for him, and they haven't done that for quite awhile, who cares how they feel? They play, presumably, for their obscene paychecks; if they don't win to ensure his obscene paycheck, they have no right and should entertain no expectation that they will call the tune. If the players claim he is blameless for this very expensive losing streak, that they and they alone are responsible for the embarrassment we have just witnessed, why in the world would anyone credit their input. Once they improve their mediocre defense, their poor situational hitting, their egregious bullpen work, they can take on the added responsibilty of determining mangerial policy and personnel. Until then, I think you should tell Jeter, Posada, Rivera et all to shut up and play! (and while they are at it play better).
Gammons goes on to warn darkly of a free agent revolt. If Torre is fired, Posada will be a Met within a week, Rivera will make you miserable in negotiations, AROD will opt out etc. Here is where you must approach the matter rationally and seize your opportunity. Remember, you brought Torre back this year in part so you could coax Clemens into accepting a 28M dollar prorated contract for 6 wins. How did that work out? Let Posada become a Met; he'll have Minyana crying in no time. You shouldn't be giving expensive new contracts to 36 year old catchers under any circumstances. Yes Jorge had a great offensive season this year, a miraculous one. But that's just the point. At 37, and without divine intervention, his offense is likely to drop off the shelf. His passed balls were way up this year, his runners thrown out were down and he swooned at the plate in the postseason, just like last year, and for the same reason. HE'S OLD AND HE WEARS DOWN. Even if he can still play next year, you'll have to go for at least two years and at 38, the chances that he'll stink far outweigh those that he'll still be an All-Star. Look at Jason Varitek. Posada was never the defensive catcher he was, and do you really want to pay through the nose for that offensive capability? Mo will make negotiations miserable? The best thing you and Cashman did was refuse to offer an extension until after the season. With an ERA of 3.15, a number of blown saves, a rising WHIP, an inability to come in with men on base, Rivera cannot lose much more ground and still be an elite closer. How many years do you want to offer him and how burned are you likely to be on the back end? If Mo wants to go, let him go. NOW IS THE TIME TO TURN THE PAGE. (As forAROD, if he wants to opt out, count your blessings and repeat after me, never has anyone done so much with so few men on base and so little with so many.)
The temptation to cling to dynastic glory spells the death of a franchise. Ask the Boston Celtics, ask the Chicago Bulls. For that matter, ask the New York Yankees of the 1960's. They hung onto Mantle and Tresh and Richardson and Ford and Kubek and Elston Howard, and having won 14 pennants in 16 years and 9 world championships during that span, they missed the postseason for 12 consecutive years before you yourself brought the franchise back to respectability. If you can't learn from the mistakes of those you proved wrong, what can you learn from? Of course there will be wailing and gnashing of teeth in certain quarters if you showed the Old Guard the door. But that is the beauty part of firing Torre. The Old Guard will leave you and you can rebuild the empire without being seen to have violated any sentimental bond with the players. The future of the Yankees is named Hughes, Kennedy, Chamberlain, Wang, Ohlendorf, Sanchez, Cano, Duncan, Cabrera, Tabatha and others you have yet to acquire. Their loyalty to Torre is minimal, as minimal as his abilty to cultivate their talents. We already know what Joe Girardi can do with young players. He had the equivalent of a futures team over there in Florida and he almost got them to the playoffs. But the key word here is future. In every great enterprise, from the Roman Empire to the American space program, there is always a moment or a series of moments when its past is so compelling, so substantial, so impressive, its present so distressed, and its future so uncertain that it threatens to turn into an exercise in nostalgia, an undead organism constituted by its own fading memories. Now is such a moment for the Yankees. That dynasty, those championships that you are being asked to revivify by keeping a Rivera or a Posada or a Torre or even a Pettite, they happened not just yesterday, but last century, last millenium. They are now as dead as your chances of adding to their number with the last players who won them.
George, one of the great things about your ownership these last 35 years has been your understanding of what the Yankees are in a psychic sense. They are not merely a baseball team, not merely a business enterprise, not merely a metropolitan attraction. They are, and you know this, an ever renewed promise of triumph. It is precisely to renew that promise that you vowed to relieve Torre of his job if he failed yet again to deliver on its terms. If you are not to be responsible for breaking the pact that holds the empire together, you must be true to your word in this case. Nothing less than the future of the Yankees, as the promise of triumph, depends on your willingness to consign Torre and, if need be, his player acolytes, to the past they so dominated.
Reaching the postseason repeatedly since the last championship has made it harder to let go of that dynastic period, I understand. Every year it seems just within reach, rather like the American dream at the end of The Great Gatsby: next year "we will run faster, stretch out our arms further..." But if we too do not want to be "borne ceaselessly into the past," however magnificent that past was, we need to recognize when its over. Torre's inability to manage this team effectively is the living presentness of the dynasty's irrevocable pastness. He has to go, not just in spite of the Old Guard's wishes, but so that they will go as well. It's past time for a new Yankees order.
On behalf of sensible Yankee fans everywhere, let me first say, You promised! You promised if our beloved team flamed out once again in round one, you'd fire the man who has presided over what can only be called an historic run of Yankee post-season futility. When was the last time the Yankees reached the postseason 7 years in a row and failed to win a ring? The answer, never. Six times? Never. Five times, Never. Four times, never. Three times, then? Actually, never. Twice in a row is the longest streak of postseason failure before this one. If October is what counts, as Yankees folk like to say, then AROD is a piker compared to this guy when it comes to postseason foundering. Geez, George, remember when you almost fired Billy Martin for getting swept in his first World Series against the Big Red Machine? How could you not fire Torre for getting swept by the red Sox after being up 3-0?
The one thing at which Torre still excels is cultivating the national press, and in case you haven't heard, they have already started wringing their hands over his fate, wondering if you would really fire Joda, assuring fans you probably won't, making arguments in Torre's defense, even explaining why you really can't. Peter Gammons has recently emerged from his day job--Hall of Fame bathroom attendant to Theo Epstein--to forcefully defend Torre as only a Red Sox operative could. According to Gammons, striking a theme that is becoming quite the rage among the empty-headed blowhards known as sports pundits (I swear they make Rush Limbaugh sound like Albert Einstein by comparison), you can't fire Torre because of the players. The players revere him, the players love him, the players play for him. But if the players don't win for him, and they haven't done that for quite awhile, who cares how they feel? They play, presumably, for their obscene paychecks; if they don't win to ensure his obscene paycheck, they have no right and should entertain no expectation that they will call the tune. If the players claim he is blameless for this very expensive losing streak, that they and they alone are responsible for the embarrassment we have just witnessed, why in the world would anyone credit their input. Once they improve their mediocre defense, their poor situational hitting, their egregious bullpen work, they can take on the added responsibilty of determining mangerial policy and personnel. Until then, I think you should tell Jeter, Posada, Rivera et all to shut up and play! (and while they are at it play better).
Gammons goes on to warn darkly of a free agent revolt. If Torre is fired, Posada will be a Met within a week, Rivera will make you miserable in negotiations, AROD will opt out etc. Here is where you must approach the matter rationally and seize your opportunity. Remember, you brought Torre back this year in part so you could coax Clemens into accepting a 28M dollar prorated contract for 6 wins. How did that work out? Let Posada become a Met; he'll have Minyana crying in no time. You shouldn't be giving expensive new contracts to 36 year old catchers under any circumstances. Yes Jorge had a great offensive season this year, a miraculous one. But that's just the point. At 37, and without divine intervention, his offense is likely to drop off the shelf. His passed balls were way up this year, his runners thrown out were down and he swooned at the plate in the postseason, just like last year, and for the same reason. HE'S OLD AND HE WEARS DOWN. Even if he can still play next year, you'll have to go for at least two years and at 38, the chances that he'll stink far outweigh those that he'll still be an All-Star. Look at Jason Varitek. Posada was never the defensive catcher he was, and do you really want to pay through the nose for that offensive capability? Mo will make negotiations miserable? The best thing you and Cashman did was refuse to offer an extension until after the season. With an ERA of 3.15, a number of blown saves, a rising WHIP, an inability to come in with men on base, Rivera cannot lose much more ground and still be an elite closer. How many years do you want to offer him and how burned are you likely to be on the back end? If Mo wants to go, let him go. NOW IS THE TIME TO TURN THE PAGE. (As forAROD, if he wants to opt out, count your blessings and repeat after me, never has anyone done so much with so few men on base and so little with so many.)
The temptation to cling to dynastic glory spells the death of a franchise. Ask the Boston Celtics, ask the Chicago Bulls. For that matter, ask the New York Yankees of the 1960's. They hung onto Mantle and Tresh and Richardson and Ford and Kubek and Elston Howard, and having won 14 pennants in 16 years and 9 world championships during that span, they missed the postseason for 12 consecutive years before you yourself brought the franchise back to respectability. If you can't learn from the mistakes of those you proved wrong, what can you learn from? Of course there will be wailing and gnashing of teeth in certain quarters if you showed the Old Guard the door. But that is the beauty part of firing Torre. The Old Guard will leave you and you can rebuild the empire without being seen to have violated any sentimental bond with the players. The future of the Yankees is named Hughes, Kennedy, Chamberlain, Wang, Ohlendorf, Sanchez, Cano, Duncan, Cabrera, Tabatha and others you have yet to acquire. Their loyalty to Torre is minimal, as minimal as his abilty to cultivate their talents. We already know what Joe Girardi can do with young players. He had the equivalent of a futures team over there in Florida and he almost got them to the playoffs. But the key word here is future. In every great enterprise, from the Roman Empire to the American space program, there is always a moment or a series of moments when its past is so compelling, so substantial, so impressive, its present so distressed, and its future so uncertain that it threatens to turn into an exercise in nostalgia, an undead organism constituted by its own fading memories. Now is such a moment for the Yankees. That dynasty, those championships that you are being asked to revivify by keeping a Rivera or a Posada or a Torre or even a Pettite, they happened not just yesterday, but last century, last millenium. They are now as dead as your chances of adding to their number with the last players who won them.
George, one of the great things about your ownership these last 35 years has been your understanding of what the Yankees are in a psychic sense. They are not merely a baseball team, not merely a business enterprise, not merely a metropolitan attraction. They are, and you know this, an ever renewed promise of triumph. It is precisely to renew that promise that you vowed to relieve Torre of his job if he failed yet again to deliver on its terms. If you are not to be responsible for breaking the pact that holds the empire together, you must be true to your word in this case. Nothing less than the future of the Yankees, as the promise of triumph, depends on your willingness to consign Torre and, if need be, his player acolytes, to the past they so dominated.
Reaching the postseason repeatedly since the last championship has made it harder to let go of that dynastic period, I understand. Every year it seems just within reach, rather like the American dream at the end of The Great Gatsby: next year "we will run faster, stretch out our arms further..." But if we too do not want to be "borne ceaselessly into the past," however magnificent that past was, we need to recognize when its over. Torre's inability to manage this team effectively is the living presentness of the dynasty's irrevocable pastness. He has to go, not just in spite of the Old Guard's wishes, but so that they will go as well. It's past time for a new Yankees order.
posted by joe valente | 11:40 PM
7 Comments:
I will say that the NY Times write up of the game did note some of Torre's manifest failures in terms of on-field decisions. But that dim, muted articulation of what's been exposed here throughout the last 2 years is indeed getting smothered up by the mass media.
I heard the guys on the NYC radio station the FAN going through the exact bullshit Joe V dissects here--the national press admonishing us fans not to be angry, warning about the hell to pay for firing Torre, assuring us what danger lies ahead with free agents, and the looming specter of Tony LaRussa falling asleep at the wheel. At least he had an excuse when he fell asleep--he was drunk. What's Torres' deal? Every time they showed him in the dugout last night, I imagined his internal monologue: "Got to call the grocery store and ask them to save some empty boxes to clear out my office; remember to ask Giambi if he can help me move some furniture onto the U-haul...."
He had no fight; he had no inkling about what to do; he was as deflated and futile as his team. Go gently into the good night. You shouldn't want to come back--this job makes you miserable.
Anyone can see Torre wants to go, but he can't bring himself to do it on his own. George doesn't even have to fire him--he just won't renew his contract. It's not even an action that has to be taken. It's an inaction that rational thought cries out for.
Now, I don't want to see larussa in pinstripes. And I don't trust Don mattingly at the helm. Giardi is THE ideal candidate. Make it so George.
As with the exit last year, I can't say much about the game--it all speaks for itself. The Yankees have indeed become the Atlanta Braves, crica 2000-2005; to my mind, that's worse than being the Florida Marlins or the late 80's Twins--(I think Joe V made this point once before). who wouldn't rather win twice in 5 or 6 years, and miss the playoffs in between, than go to the playoffs every year and get nothing to show for it? Baseabll purgatory.
Thanks, Joe V., AKA Sisyphus, for giving those of us in the (hated)minority of Yankee fans who see what's really wrong with this club both a forum to vent and a regular diet of hard nosed common sense and elegant argumentation.
Like Aleander Pope's definition of wit, I often feel these posts are, for me, "What oft was thought, but ne'er so well expressed." Except, just as often, it's stuff I could never have thought up.
Thanks for an articulate, insightful year. I feared a drop-off from last year's excellence. My fears were unfounded. Well done, sir.
I share your (and BGW's) opinion regarding managers. Girardi has the mettle for NY and all it entails outside the lines. Between them he showed how good he was last year with FL. If Torre goes, Girardi is the best choice to replace him.
I am confounded by the inability of the Yankees to solve pitchers like Paul Byrd. He is a good pitcher; the Yankees are great hitters. It seemed like they took his first pitch 87-mph fastball, and then waved at his off-speed stuff.
More appalling is their lack of fight and energy. Last year the Tigers had much more emotion and drive than the Yankees. This year it was the Indians' turn. Maybe Girardi can light a fire in that clubhouse. I hope he gets the chance. I think Mattingly, as much as I respect him, will bring more of the same businesslike approach that has gotten the team nowhere in the playoffs.
--MUNSON
Thanks much for the conversation guys, now and throughout the year.
Munson, in a technical sense I think you put your finger on the mistaken hitting approach that cost the Yankees game four. While Byrd is a good pitcher, he really hadn't been in over a month and rarely against the Yankees. They seemed determined to show patience and run up the pitch count. That made no sense for 2 reasons. Byrd doesn't walk people or even throw many balls, so the approach won't attain its objective. More importantly, you don't want Byrd out before you've scored a bunch. You'd much rather have to face him than Lewis, Perez and Betancourt. Instead of being aggressive first pitch fastball hitters, they seemed programmed to let the first fast ball go. It looked so good to hit though on the second pitch they swung fasball at sliders and changes, fouling them off and popping them up. Byrd was only getting 5-7 mile separation between his fast ball and his off-speed pitches, hardly enough (when Keith Foulke was down to 5-7 he was out of baseball), so the Yankees weren't getting fooled by him, they were getting themselves out. What I don't understand is why they never caught on. Byrd never changed his approach and they never made him adjust by changing theirs. This made me wonder if some sort of technology gap, or rather techknowledge-y gap, had emerged between the two teams. The announcers pointed out how the Tribe were using in game video as well as computer imaging to show their batters what the pitchers were trying to do to them anmd how they were, or should be, responding. It didn't seem the yankees were taking advantage of this level of technological preparation. Is Joe too old (school)for that?
BGW--Wang certainly lived dow to your expectations. Kudos for calling that. Here's my question. Is he still hurt or otherwise out of sorts as you suspected earlier in the year? Or is he just a frail-minded pitcher unreliable in big games against good teams. I ask because it occurs to me he has typically been pretty bad against the Red Sox and I was trying to remember if he had evcer come up really big in a must win game against a good offense.
Finally, did anyone notice the left side of the Yankees infield was a sieve in the last game? Both AROD and Jeter looked as if their cleats were held in place by geomagnetism, and neither one showed the least inclination to dive for balls in the gap. In the 8th, Jeter even failed to turn and double play he really should have, hesitating long enough for the runner to take him out. Here's the question. Is this about his knee hurting? Does he need surgery in the off-season? Is his problem even correctable by surgery? If not, and here is the admittedly heretical upshot (but the truth is often heretical), given his always limited range to his right, his advancing age, his being further slowed by injuries, can remain the Yankees shortstop for very much longer or is some kind of position change necessary? Neither Wang nor Kennedy can flourish, nor can Pettite survive, if the ground balls they look to induce wind up being hits. I think we saw some of that Monday night.
Joe is gone!
Joe is history now.
In case you're ever in need of an emetic, just replay the ESPN coverage of the Yankees' Torre decision. John Kruk in particular was..."risible" isn't strong enough. I'm sure German has a properly scatalogical term for "intellectually soiling onesself."
I propose a new name for this blog:
F*&! Brian Cashman
By the way, Mike Francesa was saying how this was a sad day for New York. I'm happy as can be! It was well past time for a new face of the organization.
Yeah, Joe. You can't out of blogging the 2008 Yankees just because Joe's gone....
-Michael
P.S. Though nomaas.org right now just has a blue screen up that says:
"Our work here is done.
"Goal attained.
"Goodbye."
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