Bummer -- Hal Steinbrenner sez his family is not selling the Yankees

Hal (Rip Van Winkle) Steinbrenner has finally woken up from his winter snooze to talk to the press. Specifically, ESPN New York's Wally Matthews. And specifically, to say that he and his siblings are not selling the team, and will keep the team for the next generation of Steinbrenners. Oh goody -- another generation of people who were born on third base and think that they hit a triple running the team! I can't wait! (That's sarcasm, kidddies!)

Matthews talked to Prince Hal for an hour, and said at the end of his piece that he "can't help but like" Hal "and feel for" him. Feel for what, exactly? Because Steinbrenner had a tough father? Many people out there had tough fathers, but didn't inherit multi-billion dollar baseball teams, either. Boo bleeding hoo. This sounds like how the media gave Brian Cashman a pass for so many years because George yelled at him. Good grief.

There is no talk about the Yankees' ticket debacle (shocker!), but Matthews asked Steinbrenner about other things. Here are some of the most interesting tidbits from the story, and the questions I would like to ask Hal if I could:

"I'm not trying to be George," he says. "I never walked into this with the concept of trying to act like George, trying to be everything that George was, 'cause I can't."

No $#%^. Sherlock. Hey, Hal, we don't need you to be George. But we don't need you to be the exact opposite of George, either, where you won't do anything like hold people accountable for fear that somebody will think that you look like your father. Get over your childhood already. We'd all be a lot better off.

"George accomplished all this through his hard work. But for me, this is a privilege. It's a privilege in that I don't feel that I deserve to be the managing general partner of the New York Yankees."

That makes two of us, Hal!

And if my last name wasn't Steinbrenner, I wouldn't be managing general partner of the New York Yankees."

 Well, you do have at least *some* self-awareness!

He is strident, if not exactly passionate, about his role as managing general partner of the Yankees -- that is the description he uses, never "owner," and certainly never Boss -- but nowhere near as wound up as he gets when he talks about flying his airplanes, a GTO single-engine aircraft and a Cessna high-wing that he says he can land anywhere. It is a hobby he only took up in 2000. "That's what I do to get away from this," he said, pointing at his iPhone. "Go up to 2,000 feet and practice takeoffs and landings."...."It scared the hell out of my dad. He was always worried about it. But you know, there's nothing safe about driving on the interstate, either. You minimize the risk, you make sure your plane is in good shape, and you don't make poor choices, and it's a fairly safe thing to do." 

1. Can you go be general partner of a plane company, instead of a baseball team, the job you so desperately wants to "get away from"? We'd all be better off!

2. Paging Dr. Freud, but considering your father lost Thurman Munson when the Yankee captain died doing takeoffs and landing on his private plane, and considering your father then had clauses in Yankee players' contracts banning them from flying planes, you have to wonder how much your hobby has to do with sticking it to your dad.

He said he's never going to react to a loss, or a losing season, by firing someone. He understands his natural reserve tends to make fans believe he doesn't really care about the Yankees, at least not as much as his father did. "Even if I wanted to, I couldn't do that," he said. "I'm not going to try to be something that I'm not. I don't pretend to be as good as him in this role, and I wouldn't even try."

Hey Hal: You know, firing people when they fail at their jobs, year after year, is not only a George thing. It's kind of how the rest of baseball -- and the rest of the world -- works. But you're too busy playing Peter Pan to actually hold people accountable.

On who is ultimately to blame for the Yankees' recent failures: "Nothing is going to happen or not happen without me. So you can say it's [GM Brian] Cashman but I can tell you that Cash and I talk, and Hank and I talk, but again, the decision still falls on me. So if anyone wants to blame anybody they should throw me in there with Cashman, for goodness sakes."

Well, that's great, Hal. You won't fire Cashman. And we can't fire you. But we should keep on sucking it up and buying tickets, just because.

 On whether the Yankees will pay A-Rod the $6 million bonus for tying Babe Ruth's 714 home runs: "We'll see. We'll see. I think we have a much better relationship at this point in time to try to work something out. We'll figure something out. I wouldn't worry too much about that. I think it's going to be a different story this time around." 

Hal, given that 90% of your team's current marketing campaign that features today's players is about A-Rod, it would be kind of hard to avoid giving him this money. But I doubt you even know that, since you show about as much interest in the Yankees as I do in watching "Doctor Who." Oy.

Did Mariano Rivera really call the old Yankee Stadium 'a loud and frenzied cauldron of pinstriped passion'?

There was a rather spirited discussion on my Facebook page yesterday regarding my Squawk about Mariano Rivera's new book, and about the great Robinson Cano/Dustin Pedroia debate. I also noticed something my friend, popular author Jerome Preisler (see his Amazon page), said on his own Facebook page. He had gotten to read an e-sampler of "The Closer," and didn't think that Wayne Coffey had captured Rivera's voice. And after reading some of the quotes and an excerpt from the book, I completely agree. Coffey did a great job with R.A. Dickey's book, which is one of the best baseball books I have ever read. This one, not so much, if the quotes show what  Mo's book is about. Very disappointing.

Here is the most cringeworthy passage that I have seen so far, of Rivera talking about the new Yankee Stadium vs. the old one:

"It doesn't hold noise, or home-team fervor, anywhere near the way the old place did," he said. "The old Stadium was our 10th man -- a loud and frenzied cauldron of pinstriped passion, with a lot of lifers in the stands. Maybe I'm wrong, but it's hard to see that the new place can ever quite duplicate that."

While I mostly agree with the sentiment (but also think that some of the lack of noise is due to the changing fanbase, not just the stadium itself) I don't think for a minute that Rivera said that exact quote. That is sportswriter speak, not real-life speak. Not only does Mo not talk like that, but most people don't. Except for florid sportswriters like Coffey.

Not to mention the bizarre digression in the book discussing the greatest second baseman ever. According to the ESPN article about the tome, "Rivera cites Roberto Alomar and former teammate Chuck Knoblauch as second basemen he'd consider alongside Cano in the debate over the best at the position." Knoblauch? Really? Not only was he in the Mitchell Report, but he had to stop being a second basemen in what should have been the prime of his career because he couldn't make the throw to first anymore (Remember when he accidentally hit Keith Olbermann's mother in the stands?) Knoblauch is a sad story, but he doesn't even belong in any part of the discussion of the best second basemen ever. And the fact that Rivera included him makes me question Mo's judgment a little.

Anyhow, when a publisher releases information about a book's contents, they should leave you wanting to purchase the book, not leaving you scratching your head why nobody seemed to realize that Mo's "voice" in the book sounds nothing like him. What should be a poignant excerpt -- Rivera talking about his difficult childhood -- is flawed because it just doesn't sound like the way Mo talks.

In retrospect, as Jerome and I discussed on Facebook. Rivera and Coffey would have been better taking their time with this book, instead of doing such a rush job. Did they think people would so quickly forget the greatest closer of all time? If they had spent, say, six months to a year more on this, or even just waited for time and perspective before putting pen to paper, they had the material with Rivera's life to make what could have been a great book. Instead, they pushed out a book with groaners like "a loud and frenzied cauldron of pinstriped passion" and fomented controversy for no reason with the stuff on Cano. They should have had more confidence in Rivera's story and given him the type of great book that his career warranted. A dignified one.

Denial is not just a river in Egypt -- It's the state of the Yankees

History's greatest unexplained mysteries include Easter Island, the disappearance of Amelia Earhart, and why the Yankees got swept in the ALCS. At least that's what Yankees president Randy Levine seems to be claiming. He told the New York Times that "there was a total collapse in the A.L.C.S. that was very surprising. Why did that happen? Nobody will ever know." Really? We will never be able to figure this out, no matter how many sabermaticians and baseball historians pore over the numbers? Ridiculous.

Brian Cashman also treated this debacle as some sort of great mystery. He told Ian O'Connor on ESPN Radio that "I'm not sure if I can ever give you a tangible, realistic, honest, this-is-what-I-know from (what) CSI New York has provided. ... I just don't know." Are you kidding me? It's not that complicated, Brian!

Cashman also said this:

"It was kind of like a Yankee flu went through five of our guys in the lineup. ... I do think there is a mental component that really crept in on us, and all of a sudden & you hear our players talking about passing the baton. Well, I wonder if the baton that was passed was one of pressure and tightness and it started going throughout our entire lineup, that, 'Oh jeez, he didn't get it done; I've got to get it done.' And they started getting us out of our game.

Gee, you'd almost think that Joe Girardi's indefensible panic in the playoffs, where his only answer to any dilemma seemed to involve somehow benching/humiliating a player, whether it be Alex Rodriguez, Nick Swisher, or Curtis Granderson, may have had a ripple effect. And that instead of projecting calm, Girardi projected instability and lack of trust in the players who got him to October in the first place by putting up a spring training-style lineup in a postseason game. Nah, that's too out there, right? Who would ever think that a manager showing such lack of faith in his players would have such consequences?

It is interesting that Cashman used the term "Yankee flu." Because there is a term called "blue flu," which describes when police officers, who are not allowed to go on strike, call in sick en masse to express their displeasure with their contract and work situation. Is Cashman suggesting that the Yankee bats deliberately went on strike?

Of course, Cashman still refuses to acknowledge that there is anything wrong with the team he assembled as far as having a season-long inability to hit with runners in scoring position, as well as generally only winning when they hit homers. Mix in some angry boos from the hometown crowd, and add a little missing leadership on the team thanks to Derek Jeter getting hurt in Game 1 of the ALCS, throw in the lack of faith Girardi and Cashman showed in their team, which led to tightness and panic, and it shouldn't really be a big mystery as to why the Yankees lost.

I do have to ask this: have Cashman or Girardi ever read a modern management book? Ever given some thought about how to motivate people? For that matter, reading a classic book like Dale Carnegie's "How to Win Friends and Influence People" would have served them better than what they did. Because their actions in the postseason seem to show not just lack of baseball skills (sorry, Joe, Derek Lowe is not a good option when the game is on the line!), but a lack of people skills. At this point, I wouldn't trust either of them to plan a one-car funeral, let alone run a baseball team.

Unfortunately, they work for the Steinbrenner kids, who are just as unaware of good management as they are. So they will all pretend that this was just some big mystery as to why the Yankees lost in the postseason. Heaven forbid anybody actually be held accountable for this disaster.

What do you think? Tell us about it!

Did Wally Matthews' Boxing Talk Spur A-Rod to Hit Two Homers?

Even though Squawker readers tell me over and over to stop paying attention to what ESPN New York's Wallace Matthews has to say, I still read him every time he writes. Yes, it's a guilty pleasure, although I wouldn't exactly call it a pleasure!

It's more like a "there must be a pony in here somewhere" thing; while he writes a lot of silliness and hyperbole, every so often there is actually something worthwhile or interesting in his columns. And I do appreciate that Matthews has a sense of humor about himself, as evidenced in his tweets.

Anyhow, the reason I am bringing him up today is because of the pre-game talk the baseball (and occasionally, boxing) writer had with Alex Rodriguez yesterday. Matthews details it in his column:

Before the game, sitting in the Yankees' dugout, A-Rod felt like talking. And he felt like talking not about baseball, but boxing.

"What makes this guy Pacquaio so good?" he asked a reporter he knew had covered a fair number of fights.

"Relentlessness," he was told. "Determination. Viciousness."

With each adjective, his eyes got wider. Then, he went out and channeled his inner PacMan, swinging for the KO on every pitch, and later he would say that when he ripped a 3-2 pitch right at the third baseman in his first at-bat, he knew he was coming out of the funk he had been in for the past month.

"I thought my first at-bat set the tone," he said. "I was happy with every swing I took tonight, and I felt like my legs were under me. Just like a boxer."

 Heh! Maybe it was Wally's boxing talk that did it!

Matthews is teasing on Twitter about his influence on Twitter:

I am taking credit for A-Rod's big night so far. B4 the game, we talked boxing and Manny Pac in the dugout. Now, A-Rod's hitting like him

For once, a journalist was a force for good with the Yankees!

Of course, as Matthews points out later in his article, the last Yankee to break out of a slump with a two-homer day was Derek Jeter. Since then, the captain has been hitting just .138 since the slump "ended." So don't get too excited about A-Rod just yet.

What do you think? Tell us about it!

Wally Matthews (who else?) attacks A-Rod for not earning his $32 million salary

I was wondering when ESPN's Wallace Matthews would get his "groove" back, so to speak. Other than him derisively name-calling Joe Girardi as 'Joey Looseleafs" on Twitter, Matthews hadn't written anything truly ridiculous in a while now, even writing a few decent columns here and there. But now he's back in postseason form, babbling about how A-Rod is unclutch. You can just sense the glee in Wally's tone, glad he could get back into the bashing A-Rod saddle!

Matthews writes:

So far, Rodriguez' postseason has been nothing much to cheer about, three singles in 11 at-bats against the Twins, a stat that is lost in the euphoria, or relief, over the three-game ALDS sweep, and not especially poor among Yankees regulars.

But against a team like the Texas Rangers, who have many more weapons on both sides of the ball than the Twins did, an A-Rod evaporation would not only be unacceptable, but perhaps insurmountable for the Yankees.

Let's put Rodriguez's ALDS numbers in perspective here. A-Rod hit 3 singles in 14 at-bats (.271 BA, .308 OBP). Jeter hit 4 singles in 14 at bats (.286 BA, .286 OBP) drove in one run, and scored one run. While neither of them had superstar series, neither of those sets of numbers were abysmal, either. Of course, only one of their numbers merits a column!

And Jeter is the player who hit just .270 this year, showing very little at the plate for the last 3 1/2 months. Yet how many stories did we read this year about how he turned it on again in October, even though his ALDS numbers are virtually the same as not just A-Rod, but as what he did in the regular season? Funny how two players with nearly the same stats get such different treatment from the media.

As for the whole "if one star stinks, the whole team is doomed" idea, Mark Teixeira went 3-for-22 in last year's World Series, and the Yankees still managed to win. Imagine that!

Funny thing is that Matthews then writes about Rodriguez (emphasis added): "Certainly the Yankees could have beaten the Phillies without him last year -- he tailed off to .250 (5-for-20 with 1 HR) in the World Series -- but there's no way they would gotten there without him." Which one is it, dude?

Matthews then opines that:

Now, it's time for A-Rod to start earning that $32 million salary again. One great postseason does not a career make or a reputation change.

Tell that to Bill Mazeroski. Or Bucky Dent. Or Aaron Boone. And also tell that whole rep-changing thing to Bill Buckner and Grady Little. 

Matthews continues on this dubious track:

There's never been a question of what Alex Rodriguez is capable of doing on a baseball field, only questions about whether he actually would do them at the time they are needed most.

Last year, he laid a lot of those questions to rest.

But in one of the most beautiful, and stubborn, aspects of baseball, every season those questions have a habit of re-emerging, demanding to be answered all over again.

Oh, please. This has nothing to do with being an aspect of baseball, but an aspect of the media. Writing about A-Rod, especially in a negative fashion, sells papers, and garners clicks on websites. And you just know if Rodriguez had hit .400 with three homers in the ALDS, Matthews and his ilk would write about how A-Rod could only hit in the playoffs against Minnesota!

What do you think? Tell us about it.

What do the Yanks have to do at Fenway Park to make this a successful weekend?

I was on The Larry Milian Show on Fort Lauderdale's WFTL last night, and he asked me how many games the Yankees needed to win against the Red Sox this weekend in order for the trip to Boston to be a successful one. I said as long as they won at least one, there wouldn't be any panic in Yankeeland, but winning two out of three would be nice.

You never can trust a lead at Fenway Park, though, that's for sure! Oh, and I see that the Red Sox, who just swept the Angels, aren't quite as dead as the media had made them out to be. They also will have a chip on their shoulder, I'm guessing, over their place in the standings.

Also, expect a mention or two today of the fact the Yankees are 19-8 (Dan Shaughnessy, in particular, will be all excited over that figure!)

It seems strange to have another series at Fenway without one at Yankee Stadium first. What's up with that?

What do you think? How many games do the Yankees need to win this weekend? Tell us about it!

Wallace Matthews (who else?) finds black clouds in Yankeeland

The Yankees had a great win yesterday, especially given that both Alex Rodriguez and Curtis Granderson were out of the lineup. Phil Hughes, with his 1.44 ERA and seven scoreless innings Sunday, is pitching more like an ace than a No. 5 starter. Now that the calendar has flipped to May, Mark Teixeira has remembered how to hit again. Brett Gardner (!) hit a homer, and Nick Swisher hit a homer and went 3-4 in the cleanup spot. So what's not to like?

Well, ESPN NY's Wallace Matthews found plenty to complain about in Sunday's 12-3 win. You see, he and Joel Sherman of the New York Post have been reporting about the latest A-Rod controversy - that Joe Girardi at first simply said Alex needed a day off, and then, after questioning, admitted that the third baseman felt a little something this weekend. In the meantime, Matthews had talked to Brian Cashman, who said something about it being muscle-related. (An aside - Cash should know better than to say something that may sound like it's contradicting Joe G. This isn't the first time it's happened.)

Anyhow, I really don't think it's anything to worry about yet, as long as Rodriguez is playing on Monday. But Matthews made a huge deal about it in the postgame, prefacing his question with Girardi with a sarcastic, snotty comment about "let's try this again." Huh? I thought reporters were supposed to be objective, not come loaded with attitude.

Matthews kept up his negative tone in his piece on the game:

But scratch below the surface, and what looks to have been an ideal three days of Yankees baseball might also contain some ominous rumblings, as preseason worries masked by early-season success come back to haunt them.

Straw man alert. Who is calling this "an ideal three days of Yankees baseball," other than Matthews? Friday was a good game, with Derek Jeter showing why he's so acclaimed. Sunday was a laugher. But Saturday was hardly an "ideal" day of Yankee baseball. It might have been the most frustrating loss of the year, with Javy Vazquez imploding, David Robertson and Damaso Marte giving back a lead, and Curtis Granderson getting hurt.

Wally continues:

We had the manager before the game evading the truth on why A-Rod was sitting out. And we had the manager backpedaling, but still obfuscating, after the game regarding the same subject.

And when the final out was recorded, the Yankees had Mark Melancon on the mound, Ramiro Pena at short, and Francisco Cervelli -- yes, that Francisco Cervelli -- playing third base.

Two things:

* Nobody really cares about this A-Rod tempest in a teapot issue but the media. And it was clear, no matter what happened in the game, that it was going to be all Matthews was interested in exploring. Put it this way. If Hughes had pitched a no-hitter, I still would bet that the first question out of Wally's mouth would still have been about A-Rod!

* On that note, you wonder if Matthews was too busy writing his Girardi interrogation during the ninth for him to be bothered looking at the scoreboard. The game was 12-0 Yankees going into that inning. Yes, putting Cervelli at third, and moving Pena to short to replace Jeter, was unorthodox. But if you can't give Jeter a breather in a game like that, when can you give him an inning or two of rest? And what's wrong with having Melancon pitch there? What, was Wally expecting Mo to pitch or something?

Here's the "best" part of Matthews' piece:

Suddenly, the roster that appeared rock-solid throughout April is beginning to look like what some feared it would back in March -- highly skilled but aging, and as such, injury-prone. Aside from Chien-Ming Wang, the Yankees suffered almost no important injuries during their 2009 championship season; already, they have suffered one we know of, and another we merely suspect.

1. Wang wasn't the only important injury in 2009. Guess Matthews forget that a dude by the name of Alex Rodriguez missed five weeks due to a hip injury last year. You know, the same guy Wally is foaming at the mouth about right now because he missed ONE GAME this year.

2. The injured Curtis Granderson is 29 years old. Don't think "aging" is the reason he got hurt.

3. The Yankees' biggest problem right now is Javier Vazquez. Old age isn't really the reason he stinks, either.

At any rate, if you want a good laugh, read the comments section for his piece. It looks like ESPN NY's readers aren't buying what Wally is selling, either! As one reader put it, "It takes real skill to turn a 12 run, series clinching Yankee victory without the bats of ARod or Granderson into a negative story."

What do you think? Leave us a comment!

Oh, Wally Matthews, how I've missed you so!

Today marks the debut of ESPN New York, which opens up a whole new world in New York sports coverage. And the best part of the new site is that it's bringing back the infamous Wallace Matthews to baseball fans' consciousness. Hooray!

Ever since Newsday went under that pay wall, I've missed reading their baseball coverage. Ken Davidoff is one of the best baseball columnists in the country, but I only get to "read" him on Twitter these days. (I actually tracked down print edition copies of Newsday in Staten Island during the World Series just to read his work - that's how much I like him!) Newsday TV sports columnist Neil Best is also a good read as well.

Then there's Wally Matthews, who I missed reading as well, but for very different reasons. He was one of the New York columnists whose stuff bloggers like myself love to hate. For every spot-on column he did -  he had some good pieces last year criticizing the new Yankee Stadium - he also had a ton of over-the-top silly things to say.

Mets fans couldn't stand the way he bashed their team; The 'Ropolitans columnist Andrew Vazzano calls Matthews "everyone’s least favorite curmudgeon of a columnist." Red Sox fans didn't like Matthews' vitriol over Tim Wakefield's knucleball. Wally called the pitch "a bigger menace to the game than steroids, growth hormone or Clomid will ever be." (Harsh but still funny, I think!)

Personally, I loved, loved, loved reading a Wally Matthews column. Because chances were usually very good that there would be something completely ridiculous to rip apart. Anybody who can inspire me with such quick and easy blog entries like that is golden, in my view!

Anyhow, Matthews, who will be covering the Yankees (oh, joy!) for ESPN NY, did not disappoint with his initial column, suggesting "luck" was the biggest reason the Yankees won the World Series last year. "Last year, the Yankees not only had the best roster in baseball," Matthews writes, "they had maybe the best luck in the recent history of professional sports." Really? Hyperbole much? Sure, luck was a factor with the Yankees, but it wasn't the biggest one last year, not by a long shot.

Matthews goes on to cite the biggest piece of luck being that Game 6 was delayed one day by rain, allowing "the beleaguered Yankees pitching staff a much-needed day of rest." Hmmmm. I'm gonna go out on a limb here and think that the rainout the day after Game 3 of the 2004 ALCS was much more of a game changer. But that's me.

Matthews describes Joe Girardi's management last year this way: "Joe Girardi, the semi-new manager, had such a golden touch all year it seemed as if he could have reformed health care, righted the economy and ended the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan in his spare time, if anyone had bothered to ask him." While Girardi did do a phenomenal job last year, you would have hardly gotten any sense of that from the media at the time.

In fact, columnists like Matthews, who slammed Girardi for daring to criticize Selena Roberts' "A-Rod" book, led the drumbeat against Girardi all season, especially in the playoffs. Did Matthews forget how much grief Girardi got taking out David Robertston in favor of Alfredo Aceves in Game 3 of the ALCS? Or using Phil Hughes in relief in Game 5? Or how much the media mocked Girardi for using a three-man rotation in the playoffs? Remember, there were even calls for Girardi's firing if the Yankees didn't win it all!

But maybe the "best" part of this Matthews column is the way he (rightly) credits A-Rod with the Yankees'  regular season turnaround. He writes:

Once the regular season began -- and it truly began on May 8 in Baltimore, when A-Rod, returning from his preseason hip surgery, belted the first pitch he saw out of Camden Yards -- it became increasingly obvious that the Yankees were the best team in baseball....After A-Rod's return, the Yankees went an incredible 90-44."

What's wrong with that, you might ask? Well, it's funny that Wally Matthews, of all people, is writing that without so much as a mea culpa or a "my bad." You see, last March, Matthews proclaimed that A-Rod's Yankee contract was the worst deal in baseball history, writing:

Think about it. Worst. Deal. Ever.

Worse than Andruw Jones to the Dodgers. Worse than Mo Vaughn to the Mets. Worse than Stephon Marbury to the Knicks or Brett Favre to the Jets.

It's not as if he is just an April to October headache. A-Rod is a year-round migraine.

 He also opined back then:

In five seasons, A-Rod has hit 208 home runs with 616 RBIs for the Yankees. During the same period, the Yankees have gone 10-14 in the postseason, suffered the worst playoff collapse in history, haven't made it out of the first round since 2004, and missed October altogether last season.

They are getting worse with him, not better. Not to mention more expensive and more troublesome.

Fortunately for Matthews, Newsday has pulled all his old columns from the site (not that anybody could access them behind the paywall, anyway!), so he probably won't get haunted too much by his old words. (I happened to have written about that A-Rod article at the time, which is why I saved those quotes.)

Welcome back, Wally! It's so much fun to read your columns!

* * *

One aside. I knew Leon Carter, Editor of ESPN New York, at my old job, although I didn't work for him. He always called me "Squawker!" whenever he saw me, which pleased me to no end!


What do you think? Tell us about it!