Aftermath Of The Yankee Loss 2005

Suffering?
Who isn't?
Derek Jeter has been toeing the Yankee party line saying the year was a failure... again.
Well, even though he is my favorite Yankee since Graig Nettles and Thurman Munson I beg to differ.



30 teams, 8 play-off contenders. That's 22 loser teams. 8 teams, 1 World Series Champion. It's another 7 loser teams.
So on a flat probability of 29/30, your team is a loser; and that's before you get into the vagaries of the relative strengths of the squads.

Fundamentally, your favorite sporting team is an entertainment franchise. If they play interesting baseball and win, it's better than playing boring ball and winning. Winning always beats losing, but you can take tight, well-contested losses. That entertainment factor is what I have instead of watching daytime soap operas or 'Judge Judy'. Indeed, Judge Judy, as fine a piece of entertainment person there ever was, never loses; your sporting team is always out there, risking their reps. You take the losses, says Theo Epstein the GM of the Bosox, because if they didn't feel so bad losing, winning doesn't feel so good either.

This year I've seen the Sydney Swans win it all, and the Wests Tigers win it all. Both of them are my local teams (as I reside dead-bang in the middle of Tiger country). My house mate PJ was ecstatic and I was happy for him when the Swans slipped by for their first Grand Final win since moving to Sydney. As a franchise, they had a hoodoo as long as the Red Sox and White Sox. With the 2 successive weekends, the neighbourhood went ballistic and euphoric for 2 weekends in a row. It felt good just walking down the street, seeing all the Swans streamers and Tigers streamers at every second door. But those teams weren't my teams. I've never shared in their losses, so I could not share in their victories. If I tried, I'd be faking it.

As for PJ, the Swans had never won in his lifetime - he was over the moon.
The Yanks have won 6 times in my lifetime, and even that is more than most teams around. I can count my blessings to have seen Reggie, and Nettles and Munson and Jeter and Posada and Bernie. All in all, it's good when your team wins, but it's no great shame to be knocked out in the finals.

It's also got a lot to do with process. The season is a process, with unfolding dramas and stories; and if there ever was an eventful Yankee season, this was it. I was amazed they clinched the division against the Bosox. That was enough for me, because I knew damn well they didn't have enough parts to make it through 3 tiers of play-offs. Still, it was a fascinating season that gave us Chien Ming Wang; Robinson Cano; Aaron Small aand his improbable 10-0 record; Colorado refugee Shawn Chacon; Randy's first year in pinstripes; Juicin' Giambi's big dry comeback; A-Rod's MVP-type season; and the fading of the old guard even more with Bernie Williams in his last year.



Which brings me to this point: Most fittingly, the Yankee dynasty is completely over now with the impending departure of Bernie Williams who was the first of the Yankee farmhands who came up and became part of the core. That homegrown core now leaves Clutch God Derek Jeter and The Other Cltuch God Mariano Rivera, plus Jorge Posada. It's time to think of the next dynasty around Cano, Wang, and Eric Duncan. Maybe it's time for a big shakeup.

Walk-OffHBP sent me this link:

The contract of General Manager Brian Cashman expires on Oct. 31, and he has surely dreamed of that day many times. It is his get-out-of-jail-free card, his chance to escape the pervasive negativity and culture of blame that Steinbrenner creates around the team.

It is also a chance for Cashman to remove himself from a dysfunctional hierarchy in which some moves originate in New York but many come from Tampa, Fla., where Steinbrenner lives. Neither side trusts the other, but Cashman - not Steinbrenner's Tampa advisers - is the public front man for all moves, a position that is often humiliating.

Steinbrenner is said to want Cashman back, but he could always decide not to offer him a contract. If Steinbrenner lets Cashman make the call, leaving the Yankees would be a calculated risk.

One intriguing general manager's job became available Monday, when the Philadelphia Phillies fired Ed Wade. The Phillies have the payroll to fund a winner, geographic appeal to Cashman's family and ownership not known for interfering with its general manager.

Manager Joe Torre has two years remaining on his three-year, $19.2 million contract. Torre has said he will not resign, putting the onus on Steinbrenner to fire him if he wants to make a move.

Torre has promised to address his feelings on Steinbrenner after the season, and those comments could conceivably elicit a reaction from his boss.

Club officials have long believed that Steinbrenner would never fire Torre, for fear of the public backlash. But after a first-round exit, and with the Steinbrenner favorite Lou Piniella available for work, Torre's status is at least somewhat tenuous.

Whether or not Cashman and Torre return, the Yankees will face off-season challenges. The bullpen will certainly be one area club officials will try to make over, and if recent history is a guide, they will be prepared to overpay.

Walk-off HBP also reported he ran into a guy on the weekend who told him that he was rooting for the Yanks to lose. This guy said he didn't have a team that he liked, but he hated the Yanks enough to want to see them lose. He really didn't care who played as long as the Yanks lost because of their massive pay-roll. That's not some Bosox fan hating my team; that's some Aussie chump in the northwest of Sydney gratuitously hating my team for no good reason whatsoever, with pride. Yeah, rightly I was annoyed to even hear it today of all days.

I don't know why these kinds of people choose to hate the Yankees instead of root for the Tampa Bay Devil Rays and the Kansas City Royals and the Detroit Tigers; teams that really do need help; you know, put their rooting interests where their mouth is and support real underdogs instead of trying to make a virtue out of objecting to the Yankee payroll.
The fact is, they actually don't care enough to care; they just like hating; and they're not risking anything of their own when they say, "any team that's playing the Yankees."
Yep, it's real easy to bandwagon on the winners when you can back 29 out of 30 teams. *Ugh*.

Played Like A Dog You Say?
It's in this kind of screwy world that I wake up and find people are complaining about this guy:


Umm. that's Alex Rodriguez, without whom, the Yankees would have been a no-show. And people are jumping up and down that he hit below the Mendoza line in a 5 game contest, saying how 'un-clutch' he is. In the sober light of reflection most Yankee fans will take A-Rod over any 3B man out there in the whole of MLB. It's not his sole fault they lost his series. It's the pitching that twice put the Yanks in an early hole and a bullpen that couldn't hold onto any lead. Not A-Rod's bat. The fact that A-Rod's bat couldn't miraculously save the Yanks from those holes is regrettable, but the whole tenor of the season has been, "Oh, (insert expensive Yankee starter) just gave up 6 runs in the first 3 innings" - Not, "A-Rod hit .133".
The guy hit .322 with 48 homers and a boatload of RBIs during the turbulent season. Enough with this crappy talk about how 'un-clutch' he is; he got the Yanks there in spite of their awful pitching, and that's mightily clutch enough. I'd be amazed if he didn't get the MVP.