If Friday night's Yankees-Dodgers game was one of the more exciting ones of the year, Saturday's game was one of the most painful to watch. It wasn't just that A.J. Burnett looked like Dontrelle Willis did against the Yankees last week. (Actually, Burnett was much worse, come to think of it!) It was that the game dragged on, and on, and on. The first inning took forever. Three hours had passed before the fifth inning was over.
I didn't stay up for the whole game - I went to bed when the score was 9-4 Dodgers, and felt like I had watched fifteen innings or something, because what I did see dragged on so long.
A.J. Burnett seems to desperately need pitching coach Dave Eiland back - he's been in a downward spiral ever since Eiland left the team due to some undisclosed personal issue. Please come back soon, Dave! Yankee fans are flipping out over watching A.J. pitch!
And so much for skipping Phil Hughes, eh?
It figures that the Yankees lost, though - it was a FOX game, and the Yankees' record in those games always seems to be bad. And having to hear Joe Buck and Tim McCarver in the booth added to my misery. All the effusive, unwarranted praise for Joe Torre was just nauseating. The two of them acted as if "The Yankee Years" book never existed, and that nobody in the world, except for maybe Alex Rodriguez, had anything but positive stuff to say about Teflon Torre.
They went on and on about how Joe increased attendance, and somehow was involved with the YES Network become a success, and stuff that sounded like it came straight from Torre's mouth. Buck even suggested that Torre would make a great MLB Commissioner. Yeah, because somebody who tells private tales about incredible people like Johnny Damon, all the while preaching the sanctity of the clubhouse, is just the guy I want running the game. Good grief.
Billy Crystal and his dopey Switzerland hat were also nauseating. Guess he didn't read "The Yankee Years" either - his "good friend" Torre threw him under the bus in that book, griping about Crystal getting a World Series ring from the Yankees in 2000.
Then there was the train wreck that was Tommy Lasorda and Reggie Jackson in the booth. Actually, Reggie was fine. It was Lasorda who seemed to have had a bellyful of bile and bitterness, showing incredible hostility towards Reggie. He kept on threatening to deck him, and said Reggie would never be able to hit his curve ball. Huh? I guess I missed when Lasorda was a Hall of Fame pitcher. Lasorda also said Jackson was "about as funny as a bloody nose," but it was the Dodgers' old manager, not Mr. October, who made a fool of himself in the booth.
Banter like that needs to be good-natured, or it just comes off like you're stuck in "Who's Afraid of Virginia Woolf" or something. FOX owes fans an apology for that nonsense.
What do you think? Tell us about it!
I did kind off enjoyed the Lasorda/Reggie banter, Reggie won in a Knockout
ReplyDeleteAs far as AJ is concerned, I wish Thurman Munson or Billy Martin was alive, They would come out and hit A J in the Mouth and say next time he will crush his skull in if continued to mope around
I felt the same way about the Lasorda/Reggie confrontation. Lasorda came off as being really mean-spirited. You could tell Buck and McCarver were really uncomfortable about the whole thing because they didn't know what to say. And that doesn't happen too often.
ReplyDeleteThe Lasorda/Reggie banter struck me as odd, but I kind of got the feeling that Lasorda just wasn't doing a good job with his delivery. They did hug each other at the end. It was uncomfortable for a while though. The Torre praise had me ready to throw up. Talk about revisionism on top of hero worship. Also no mention that the Dodgers don't seem to want him back next year, fwiw.
ReplyDeleteAJ needs to stop acting like a little girl (sorry, no offense to little girls meant) and pitch. Buck and McCarver were saying how Burnett has so much going on in his head that he was going to have problems (maybe it was worded differently but you get the point). Bottom line AJ, just pitch the ball!! He doesn't need Eiland to hold his hand. He is a true head case and guess what? That will never change and we have 3 more years of this crap. I wish someone would pay me 16.5M a year to suck! Actually, he is sucking very well so I guess he is earning his money! Btw, I paid very good money to see the Yankees here in Arizona and guess who was on the mound sucking? Allan James!!
ReplyDeleteLasorda has never gotten over Reggie sticking his hip out and deflecting that DP ball in the '78 WS. Of course, if his team hadn't stopped playing, they should have swept that series after winning the first two games.
ReplyDeleteOne other thing: all the Yankee gurus over the years from Connors to Stott to Guidry to Eiland have not been particularly good at fixing hard throwing right handed Yankee pitchers. Remember Jeff Weaver? Jaret Wright? Contreras, Vasquez (Part I) and Farnsworth? Is Bob Gibson available to help?
ReplyDeleteOne other thing about that World Series, I seem to remember that Bill Russell also blamed the New York Sportswriters for some of the Dodgers problems. But if I remember right and maybe I am wrong, but I seem to remember there was a newspaper strike going on at that time
ReplyDeleteReggie's "Sacrifice Thigh" made Lasorda lose the plot. Like Danny Ozark in '77, Whitey Herzog in '85, John McNamara in '86, Mike Scioscia in '05 and a few others I could mention, when the manager lets a perceived bad call get to him, the players follow his lead. The Dodgers were actually still in command at that point, leading 2 games to 1 and by a run in the game. They choked, the Yanks took advantage.
ReplyDeleteLasorda is bitter. In 1955, the Dodgers sent this chubby, ineffective lefty down. He told GM Buzzie Bavasi to keep him up. Buzzie said, "Okay, if not you, who should we get rid of?" Lasorda chose another lefty, one who had done nothing worth talking about. Buzzie told him they couldn't send that kid down because of the "bonus baby" rule. Lasorda said he was a better pitcher than the bonus baby. Buzzie said the rule tied his hands. Lasorda's career record at that point was 0-0. He went to Kansas City, went 0-4 for them, got his head handed to him in a fight with Billy Martin (they seemed to have made up by the '77 Series), and that was the end of his playing career. To this day, Lasorda thinks he didn't get a fair shake as a pitcher because of that bonus baby. Some kid from Brooklyn, name of Koufax.