TAMPA – Joe Girardi has never managed one regular-season game in pinstripes, but he has already established enough of a track record that one can draw inferences.
For instance, we suspect this manager, unlike Joe Torre, would never have allowed the Yankees to remain on the field in the bottom of the eighth inning of Game 2 of last year’s ALCS, when swarms of Lake Erie midges descended on Jacobs Field and attacked Joba Chamberlain.
Torre chatted that night with crew chief Bruce Froemming, who apparently compared the plague of locusts to a rainstorm. Right. Like a rainstorm driving directly into the pitcher’s eyes, the swarm became a pox on the Yankees’ house. Torre allowed the game to continue without protest, even as it – and ultimately the series and his tenure as Yankees manager – collapsed.
We have the sense Girardi would have pulled the Yankees off the field and forced the AL to deal with it. That, by the way, would have been the right move. It was dangerous out there.
The Indians are here for an exhibition game this afternoon, following the suddenly despised Rays – how’s that for an oxymoron? – into Legends Field. These are the Indians who took advantage of the swarming insects to rally in the eighth for the tying run against Joba on a walk, a hit batter and two wild pitches before taking Game 2 in extra innings and eventually taking the series in four games.
But these are not the Yankees who fell with a whimper again.
This is not an attempt to rewrite history. The Torre Era was as glittering in any in Yankees history, producing not only 12 straight playoff teams, 10 division champions, six AL pennant-winners and four World Series champions, but a team that won admiration for the way it conducted itself.
Make no mistake. It is admirable to win with class and to lose with dignity – in life, in elections and on the baseball field. But there is nothing dignified at all about the Yankees’ 4-13 record in the playoffs since Game 3 of the 2004 ALCS against the Red Sox.
One year after another, something has been missing. Well, yes, dominant starting pitching for one and perhaps primarily. But an attitude has been missing. What on earth is the rational explanation for Randy Johnson becoming neutered upon becoming a Yankee?
This is not to imply Girardi is a bomb-throwing agitator. Indeed, he was as relieved as anyone that yesterday’s 7-2 defeat came in as polite a baseball game as has been played, one in which Alex Rodriguez – who’s been known to play with an edge on the basepaths – pulled up 10 feet short of the plate and allowed himself to be tagged out while trying to score on a fourth-inning Jorge Posada double to right when the throw had him beat by 15 yards.
“Alex probably made a good decision,” Girardi said. “You don’t want people suspended and charging on the field.
“That’s not baseball.”
Yesterday was a make-love-not-war kind of a day. Girardi said the firefight that erupted over the last week between the Rays and Yankees is a thing of the past. So did A-Rod. Let’s see if that holds once the 18-game season-series commences in The Bronx on the first weekend of April. Mark us down as skeptical.
For there’s a new sheriff in town, one who seems to bear a resemblance to the Wyatt Earp of “Tombstone,” who just didn’t feel like being arrested.