The Yankees Win AL East

The Magic Number Was At 1

So Joe Torre sent out a House Money lineup against the Toronto Blue jays which promptly lost 3-2 to Roy Hallladay. It didn't matter because the Bosox folded against the Minnesota Twins and that was that.

The Yankees have now made the playoffs in each of the last 12 seasons, the longest active streak in baseball now that the Atlanta Braves have been eliminated from contention.

“It’s tough to do; it’s really tough to do,” Derek Jeter said. “You look at teams that have won, and they have a tough time getting back to the postseason the next year. You assume every year you’re going to make the playoffs, but it’s not easy to accomplish.”

The Yankees lost right fielder Gary Sheffield on April 29 and left fielder Hideki Matsui on May 11, both to wrist injuries. Sheffield returned briefly in May, but both missed more than three months. Robinson Canó, the dazzling second baseman, missed more than six weeks with a hamstring strain.

Yet the Yankees held on, patching the lineup with role players and rookies until General Manager Brian Cashman landed a star outfielder, Bobby Abreu, in a trade with the Phillies on July

“Every year has its own story,” Torre said. “I don’t think it could be any more dramatic than last year. But this is very satisfying, no question. Even when we lost Matsui and Sheffield and Robby Canó, this ball club never felt it couldn’t win. That’s something you’d like to bottle.”

Still, it never gets old.

Time To Talk About Personal Stuff At Yankeeland
If there's one thing that has marked Joe Torre's time as the Yankee skipper is that we never got to find out much about the dirty laundry in the Yankee clubhouse. In a marked departure, we find that A-Rod has found a new way to become a bad headline by becoming the Lead Story at Sports Illustrated.

Torre hit .363 with the St. Louis Cardinals in 1971 and .289 the following season, giving him a deep understanding of the ebb and flow of performance. With veteran players especially he operates like an old fisherman checking the tide charts, believing that the worst of times only means the best is to come. Rodriguez will hit, he thought, and he kept telling his third baseman exactly that.

Torre's trademark placidity ended, though, when Giambi asked to talk to Torre in Seattle. "Skip," Giambi told Torre, "it's time to stop coddling him."

For all the scorn heaped upon Giambi for his ties to the BALCO steroid scandal, he is a strong clubhouse voice because he plays with a passion that stirs teammates and even opponents. This season, for instance, he reprimanded his former Oakland A's teammate, Orioles shortstop Miguel Tejada, for occasionally showing up late to games out of frustration over another losing Baltimore season. "You're better than that," he told Tejada. So Giambi's gripe about Rodriguez sounded an alarm with Torre.

"What Jason said made me realize that I had to go at it a different way," Torre says. "When the rest of the team starts noticing things, you have to get it fixed. That's my job. I like to give individuals what I believe is the room they need, but when I sense that other people are affected, teamwise, I have to find a solution to it."

The players' confidence in Rodriguez was eroding as they sensed that he did not understand how much his on-field struggles were hurting the club. Said one Yankees veteran, "It was always about the numbers in [Seattle and Texas] for him. And that doesn't matter here. Winning is all you're judged on here."

Before Giambi went to Torre, he had scolded Rodriguez after a 13-5 win in Boston on Aug. 19. Irked that Rodriguez left four runners on base in the first three innings against a shaky Josh Beckett, Giambi thought A-Rod needed to be challenged. "We're all rooting for you and we're behind you 100 percent," Giambi recalls telling Rodriguez, "but you've got to get the big hit."

"What do you mean?" was Rodriguez's response, according to Giambi. "I've had five hits in Boston."

"You f------ call those hits?" Giambi said. "You had two f------ dinkers to rightfield and a ball that bounced over the third baseman! Look at how many pitches you missed!

"When you hit three, four or five [in the order], you have to get the big hits, especially if they're going to walk Bobby [Abreu] and me. I'll help you out until you get going. I'll look to drive in runs when they pitch around me, go after that 3-and-1 pitch that might be a ball. But if they're going to walk Bobby and me, you're going to have to be the guy."

It's a gripping read precisely because we've never really read this much about the Yankee clubhouse. Do check it out.
The article has created some ripples, like this thing here at ESPN.

It took Giambi's harsh words to remind A-Rod that his five hits in the Yankees' five-game sweep of the Red Sox in August were all soft ones. It took a rare one-on-one from Torre to force Rodriguez into dropping the pose of serenity. And it may require one more tough-love nudge push from someone on the roster to remind Rodriguez that he's on trial as the playoffs are the gold standard by which the Yankees are judged.

It's why Reggie is allowed to roam the clubhouse when he chooses, engaging today's Yankees in conversation whenever he feels like it. Reggie, having just turned 60, isn't nearly as big or muscular as he seemed in those videos from the '77 World Series. Reggie is smaller in person than you'd think. But as Mr. October, he has lifetime cache, here and everywhere.

Jackson doesn't mind getting in A-Rod's face on occasion. And, to be fair, Rodriguez does listen with respect. He did just that with Giambi, too, suppressing the urge to tell his teammate that, whatever troubles he's encountered as a Yankee, at least he didn't resort to steroids to fix them. But all Giambi was doing was filling a conversational void created by the one Yankee who could have -- and perhaps should have -- confronted A-Rod.

That would be Jeter, of course. If there's anyone who could make Rodriguez understand the difference between greatness and greatness under pressure, it's the guy batting almost .400 with runners in scoring position. But anyone hoping for a Jeter-Rodriguez summit shouldn't hold their breath. The cold war between them is even more pronounced than the one with Mussina. Jeter has never forgiven A-Rod for the disparaging remarks he made in Esquire in 2001, and as one Yankee official said, "there is no coming back from one of Derek's grudges. Once you're gone, you're gone."

What's worrying about this picture is that A-Rod really was hung out to dry on his own stats because he was seen to live and die by stats instead of wins and losses. That last bit about how Derek Jeter slams the door on people that he decides to cut is a bit yucky - that's not to say I haven't done it myself, but it's still a little disappointing. I don't have to do anythig with the Angry Fat Man - Derek's got to play along side A-Rod and try to win the World Series.