TAMPA – This is a room, more than any other, where time is measured beyond the clocks on the walls, beyond the meticulously crafted schedules attached to the solid side of temporary lockers that dominate the middle of the room.
On this fake wall every movement for every day is planned for: every BP session, every bullpen, every player staying in camp for the day, every player who’ll be bused out to Clearwater or Port Charlotte or Dunedin for a road game. An old baseball saying states that time begins on Opening Day, but it really starts the moments every February when the players file back into this room, the home team clubhouse at George M. Steinbrenner Field.
“Our home away from home,” is the way Andy Pettitte described it.
Pettitte was here when the Yankees formally moved their base of operations from Fort Lauderdale before the 1996 season, and so was Derek Jeter, who has manned the same locker from the moment the Yankees started to hang their shingle on Florida’s Gulf Coast.
It’s more than meaningful that ’96 also happened to be the start of this great modern Yankees renaissance, the first time in 16 years the Yankees finished a full season in first place, the start of 16 playoff appearances in 18 years, five world championships, seven pennants. This is where you can best mark the passage of time. The Yankees changed addresses in the Bronx only five years ago; there’s little history quartered at the Stadium.
Here? Here, you can understand why Jeter is so reluctant to buy into the emotional trappings of his coming retirement tour. He has seen how fleeting, how transient, how temporary all of this can be. Especially in this room.
“I want to enjoy this season,” he said the other day. “But I’m going to enjoy it because I enjoy playing baseball, not because of any circumstances surrounding this being my last year.”
It’s understandable. This is where you are reminded of how players really do come and go, even bold-faced players, even players who bore a place into fans’ souls. Some seem like they’ll stay forever. And every one is eventually replaced.
Across the room, to the left of a hallway that leads to the players’ lounge? That’s the extra-wide stall that used to belong to Mariano Rivera; the name plate on top says “TANAKA” now. All the way down to the left, in the corner, is where Mike Mussina used to hold daily seminars on pitching, economics, current events; it’s now where CC Sabathia ponders his new career phase, in which — not unlike Mussina — he talks about the craft of pitching, has all but turned “velocity” into a four letter word.
Walk around the room, and you see how quickly, how coldly, yesterday can turn into today: Francisco Cervelli standing in front of Jorge Posada’s locker (which was once Joe Girardi’s locker). Jason Giambi’s locker and, later, briefly, Nick Swisher’s, now belonging to Brian McCann, whose quiet seriousness means a likely end to the lineage of whimsy of its two former occupants.
Ichiro Suzuki inhabits Bernie Williams’ old stall in the corner diagonally opposite Cervellli’s. Jacoby Ellsbury stands where Hideki Matsui used to hold court with many of the same Japanese reporters who now crowd around Tanaka.
And on the end of one row of lockers hard by the door exiting to the indoor batting cages (and next to Carlos Beltran’s new spring digs) sits a stall without an occupant, without a nameplate or number, which has become a depository of used spikes, caps, helmets and one bottle of baby powder. This is the once (and perhaps future) spring home of Alex Rodriguez.
Brian Roberts has gotten a quick taste of how relentlessly time moves here. He has inherited Robinson Cano’s spot in the Yankees lineup (though not his locker, which now belongs to journeyman Russ Canzler and his 96 major league at-bats) and he wears No. 14, which in the past has been worn somewhat regally (Lou Piniella, Curtis Granderson, Moose Skowron), somewhat comically (Hideki Irabu, Ron Swoboda) and even, briefly, by Cano himself as a rookie.
“I don’t think anyone expects me to be Robinson Cano,” Roberts said, smiling. “At least I hope not.”
Said Girardi: “He can say, ‘I’m not Robinson Cano. I’m Brian Roberts. I’ve had a pretty good career myself.’”
Besides, there’s no time for that. Look around the room. There’s barely time for anything.