THERE are many lessons the Yankees must learn from this season.
Don’t rely too much on the kids. Understand that the games in April and May count as much as those in September. Injuries will happen. Realize that the Rays are only going to get better, not worse. Expect danger at any point, including when Chien-Ming Wang is running the bases.
Mariano Rivera, the longest running Yankee, offered one bit of important advice last night: Don’t forget about this year. Remember what happened and how it happened and come to spring training with a chip on your shoulder ready to work.
“A lot of things went on this year, it wasn’t just one thing,” Rivera told me on a night the Yankees slammed the White Sox, 9-2, at Yankee Stadium with their Tragic Number holding at three. “I wish we could point to one thing, but we can’t. It’s not one thing. There are so many things, injuries and so much more. It was a weird, weird, weird year.”
The Yankees should not forget how weird it was and there is only one way to overcome all this.
“The motivation is simple,” Rivera said. “Work hard and stay hungry.”
These Yankees did not stay hungry. The hustling team that beat the White Sox last night was not the team that was on the field most of the year. The Yankees should be embarrassed that the White Sox are likely heading to the postseason and they are going home.
Mike Mussina said it best after the right-hander closed out his Yankee Stadium career with his 18th victory of the season, 268th overall and 121st of his Yankee career.
“This was an example of the way we could have played all year,” he said.
Mussina is so right.
In many ways the Yankees took it for granted that they would make the playoffs, just like they always make the playoffs. They have been knocked off their pedestal. They are not close to being top dog in the division anymore. The Rays took it to them from the first games of spring training and on into the season.
The Yankees cannot look at the season-long problems as a fluke, they must fight back. The first thing they must do is not leave the starting pitching to chance. That’s where the free agent market comes into play with the likes of A.J. Burnett and Derek Lowe. Word out of Los Angeles is that Lowe wants to get back to the competitive edge of a race in the AL East. He is one of those players driven by competition.
This also was a night the Yankees welcomed a baseball treasure to the Stadium, Emilio “Millito” Navarro. Millito was the first Puerto Rican to play in the Negro leagues and is the oldest living pro ballplayer. He will turn 103 on Sept. 26 and gets around better than men half his age. He was 16 when the Yankees won the first of their 26 World Championships. Imagine that. He mentioned how today’s ballplayers are overpaid.
Remember Rivera’s words: Work hard and stay hungry.
Clubhouse manager Rob Cucuzza should start making the T-shirts for spring training. It wouldn’t hurt if the Yankees were reminded of what it takes to get to the postseason. There’s nothing wrong with having a little high school motivation to get you through.
The Final Year at Yankee Stadium became the key theme from the start of this season. The Stadium deserves to be celebrated, but in all this celebrating, the Yankees lost their way as a team. They forgot what it takes to get to the playoffs.
Yes, they have dump trucks full of money, but it takes more than that to get to the playoffs. It takes talent, desire, a lot of luck, and most of all, a work hard, stay hungry attitude.
Bring that to the park every day next season.