NOW that it’s time to say goodbye, Joe Girardi has decided to say hello. Nice of the manager of the Yankees to check in before they shut down the Stadium.
What took Girardi so long to respond to the casual and often careless approach his team displayed intermittently throughout his first year on the job?
What was Girardi, renowned as a take-no-prisoners commandant upon being selected to replace Joe Torre, waiting for, the 149th and 150th games of the season?
Apparently.
Make no mistake. Benching Robinson Cano until the bottom of the eighth of last night’s 4-2 victory over the White Sox, after pulling him from Sunday’s game against the Rays for his failure to hustle in the field, is as much about Girardi as it is about the smooth second baseman.
It’s as much about the Wait ‘Til Tomorrow attitude that’s marked the season as it is about sending a message to Cano about the responsibilities of being a winning major-league baseball player.
What, exactly, is Girardi’s stamp on the 2008 Yankees? What is it that recommends Girardi as the man to lead the Yankees back to the playoffs, let alone across the street?
Girardi may fancy himself a drill sergeant, but he sure did not inspire the Yankees this season. He sure wasn’t as tough as he looks, and he sure wasn’t as tough as he talked during spring training.
Sunday wasn’t the first time with Cano, but it was the first time Girardi took tangible action to ensure that it doesn’t happen again. More than that, though, Sunday was hardly the first time the Yankees looked like a fundamentally deficient team.
“Robbie has been kind of a microcosm of the whole team,” GM Brian Cashman said. “He hasn’t been the only one.”
If the injuries sustained by Jorge Posada, Chien-Ming Wang, Joba Chamberlain and Hideki Matsui are no excuse, there also is no excuse for the sloppy manner with which the Yankees went about their business at the plate and in the field for much of 2008.
By the way. Remember all the stories last year about how Alex Rodriguez was the mentor for Cano and Melky Cabrera? Not so much this year.
There is no excuse for Girardi’s failure to respond forcefully in the face of such sloth, even if the manager insists he does not regret responding earlier.
“There comes a point where you feel it’s time to do something,” he said. “I felt this was the time to do it.”
Because Christmas probably would be too late.
The season’s signature moment came in Anaheim on Aug. 10, when Chone Figgins’ ninth-inning, dozen-hopper got through the right side of the infield to beat the Yankees when Wilson Betemit, the “defensive replacement” at first base, went to the bag instead of to his right to play the ball and Cano simply watched it slip through.
Betemit made the more easily recognized blunder, but Cano’s failure to even try was the cardinal sin.
Again, though, it hasn’t only been Cano. If Anaheim was the beginning of the end, another questionable play involving the second baseman is the perfect illustration of the malaise Girardi was powerless to correct.
This came in the seventh inning of the Aug. 30 game against Toronto. Adam Lind was on first with none out when Cano attempted a side-saddle relay to Derek Jeter to try to start a double play on a grounder hit by Lyle Overbay. The flip eluded Jeter. Lind advanced to third. The horses were out of the barn. Leading 6-2, the Yankees lost 7-6.
While Cano’s lateral dominated the postgame discussions, it was more noteworthy that no one covered third base when A-Rod fielded the loose ball as it rolled toward left field. Had pitcher Darrell Rasner been in position, Lind would have been out easily trying to advance.
That was the season’s 135th game. Still, somehow a base was left uncovered. But then, bases were left uncovered all season.
That’s the stamp Girardi left on the 2008 Yankees.