WE huddle around the slumping center fielder, our voices solemn and serious. We kick the heels of our shoes around the locker of the enigmatic starting pitcher, exchanging small talk, trying to get a fix on the freak show currently playing inside his mind.
We check in with the superstar first baseman who – whisper this part – left Monday’s game with tightness in the middle of his back, and breathlessly await the return of his wounded backup.
We encircle the manager and we ask him about the slumping center fielder, and the enigmatic starting pitcher, and the superstar first baseman, and his wounded backup. And Joe Torre dutifully tells us that he’s sure Bernie Williams will snap out of it soon, that it’s a good thing Jeff Weaver is taking his act out of town for a while – “He’ll expect to get booed in Boston,” the Skipper says, laughing – that Jason Giambi is fine and Nick Johnson will be good as new whenever he reports back for work.
“Really,” Torre said, “it’s business as usual.”
He’s right, of course. And you know something? That’s too bad.
These are the times when we realize just what we’re missing in this New Age of baseball. These are the weeks when the entire city would be consumed with Bernie’s slump, and Giambi’s back, and Weaver’s bleeding psyche, when eyes would be glued to the out-of-town scoreboard, where the Red Sox, out of town, are getting some good whacks in against the Tigers all week. This would have been quite a wonderful time. Quite a nervous time.
Except it’s not. There is no such thing as a nervous time in July anymore, not in the rarefied atmosphere in which the Yankees presently reside, not even with three games in Fenway Park looming this weekend.
You risk getting branded with a cattle iron – “P” for purist – if you utter such heresies around major league ballparks now, but the fact is the wild-card – for all the interest it has brought the game, for all the oomph it adds to second-place teams who otherwise would be oomph-free, and for all the joy it brought Mets fans in 1999 and 2000, snapping their beloved’s long playoff drought – is hardly a perfect panacea.
How perfect can it be if it’s sapped so much of the energy, so much of the anticipation, so much of the fear, loathing, dread and deliciousness from a late-July encounter between a first-place Yankees team and a second-place Red Sox team. Across 70 years of vile, mutual contempt, nothing was able to do that. Nothing.
But the wild-card could. The wild-card did. Yesterday, the Red Sox awoke three games behind the Yankees, but three full games ahead of Oakland in the wild-card race. So, yes, it will behoove the Red Sox to win as many games as possible to put more distance between themselves and the A’s. But is that really what Red Sox-Yankees is supposed to be about? Shouldn’t the Yankees have to fret more about bringing Williams, Giambi and Weaver into Fenway given their recent woes?
“I wasn’t a proponent of the wild-card when it first came into being,” Torre said. “But I think you look at the overall benefits. It’s been good for the game. It’s kept teams in the race that would never have been in the race, and that helps fan interest. I remember that race some years ago where the Giants won 103 games, finished second to the Braves and had to go home. I think it’s a positive.”
He smiled.
“Sure, it’s taken something away from a series like the one we have this weekend,” he said. “But, hey, if we were in fourth place and the Red Sox were in fifth, it would still be a pretty good war between these two teams.”
But when one’s in first and the other’s in second … well, just last weekend, the Old-Timer’s Day salute to the 1978 season provided a reminder of just how amazing that can be. And should be.