A Yankee fan's thoughts on the Mets-Dodgers series, and why Chase Utley is a monster and Don Mattingly a bad manager

I agree!

First of all, I'd like to congratulate Squawker Jon and my other Mets fan friends on their team having their first-ever postseason game at Citi Field last night -- and their first postseason victory in nine years!

Citi Field is a beautiful ballpark, and now it finally has a team worthy of it. The house was rocking last night, for sure! (I would have liked to have seen the pregame intros live -- and to have heard the boos Chase Utley received -- though. Here's a clip of the Utley boos.)

These are pretty funny. My fave one is
the Bababooey sign. (Photos courtesy of
New York Daily News.)

Anyhow, I watched most of the game, but it was on past my bedtime, So I went to bed before it was over. Was excited to see that ex-Yankee, and all-around good guy, Curtis Granderson got one of the game's big hits!

Speaking of a Yankee fan's perspective, John S., a fellow Yankee fan and longtime Squawkers reader, left an interesting comment on my Facebook page about the Chase Utley/Ruben Tejada contretemps, Don Mattingly's mismanagement, and Joe Torre's involvement:

"Don Mattingly wimped out. Instead of recognizing that the Dodgers were at a severe disadvantage not pitching one of their aces against the Mets ace, he should have started Utley defiantly, daring the Mets to start something. He may have still lost but the Dodgers would have been furious and united had Utley been drilled. Whereas Utley hits Harvey very well, Kendrick has done nothing at all over his career against the Dark Knight - so why play him? I suspect that Pope Joe made a deal with Donnie here - Utley can play pending appeal which won't be heard until next season (when he probably won't be a Dodger anyway) - just don't play him tonight. It fits very well with the same strategy of NOT bunting on a subpar Curt Schilling. Mattingly learned his lessons well............."

You know, I wish I had thought of this analysis! And yes, I do think Torre and Mattingly made some sort of gentleman's agreement here. (Also, if Utley retires after this year, they'll never have to deal with the appeal.)

But yeah, that bad-guy stance would have been the only thing for Donnie Baseball to do. I don't think very much of Mattingly as a manager, though. (I never wanted him to manage the Yankees.) So I'm not surprised.

And any chance I get to bash Joe Torre is one I will take!

NLDS Mets-Dodgers Game 2 wrapup/Game 3 preview: Chase the Disgrace

Chase Utley's rolling block that broke Ruben Tejada's leg has me thinking of Roger Clemens. Both players did something during a postseason Game 2 that should have gotten them ejected (Clemens threw part of a broken bat at Mike Piazza in Game 2 of the 2000 World Series). Both players' reckless play seriously injured a Met (Clemens beaned Piazza in July 2000). What remains to be seen is if the parallels between the Mets and the two dirty players continue in the aftermath of the respective incidents, or if this time the Mets show the other team they will not stand for dirty play.

The Mets did not respond to Clemens after he threw the broken bat piece at Piazza, and the Yankees went on to win that game and the Series. It took until June 2002 for the Mets to respond, and Shawn Estes throwing behind Clemens' back was a tepid response at best. Yes, Estes homered off Clemens in that game and the Mets went on to beat Clemens. But maybe it's not a coincidence that, after 2000, the Mets would fall out of contention until 2006.

When I heard that Utley had been suspended, I thought the situation had been largely resolved. Utley did something wrong and he and his team were being punished for it. It was still a good deal for the Dodgers - winning Game 2 with the help of a bad call and costing the Mets their starting shortstop at the small price of losing a backup infielder for a couple of games. Then Utley wanted to appeal, which is his right, and MLB said they could not do the appeal today, which is ridiculous. What, are they waiting for Roger Goodell to be available? If the suspension is upheld, but is not in effect until next season, that does not do the Mets any good now, not to mention that Utley could be retired by then. Dragging it out only exacerbates the situation.

As bad as this situation is, the umpires and MLB made it much worse. After reviewing the play, the umpires should have ruled that Utley interfered with Tejada and he and the batter were out. Or, if that's too bold for a postseason play, uphold the original out call. Instead, the umpires used tortured logic to rule Utley safe, giving the Dodgers an extra out and enabling them to rally for four two-out runs.

Joe Torre then made matters worse by fumbling through a postgame news conference, seeming unsure of the rules and constantly turning to an umpire representative for clarification.  As happy as I was to hear Torre's ruling of a suspension the following day, I would be annoyed if I were a Dodger fan, since Torre's initial reaction left him open to charges of overreacting to angry New Yorkers. On Saturday night, Torre should have just released a statement saying that MLB was looking into it.

I don't want to see the Mets deliberately try to injure Utley. Utley and some misguided older players have tried to muddle the issue by saying that baseball must have room for hard-nosed play, and there I agree. I don't want to see runners barred from trying to break up a double play. But it's not too much to ask for a runner to be required to slide toward the base. Or to start your slide before you are on top of the bag.

I'm also not excited about the prospect of throwing at someone like Dodger shortstop Corey Seager, who had nothing to do with the initial play.

But I'm still angry about Utley's play and hope the Mets find some way to retaliate. And this brings us to Matt Harvey, whose recent actions have made him seem more like a 24-and-1 player than someone who puts his team first. The first priority is for Harvey to pitch the Mets to within one game of the NLCS. But I'm also hoping he finds a non-dirty way to retaliate for Utley's dirty play.

If Utley is in the starting lineup, well, I know what I would like to see. But I have to concede it should not be in the second inning or whenever Utley first comes up. I can just hear Scott Boras whispering in Harvey's ear: "Hit him right away and get yourself ejected - you'll win back the Met fans and local media and still manage to keep your innings count down!

The New York Times' Harvey Araton sez Barry Bonds should be in the Hall of Fame. I agree.

Like many baseball fans, I have had a number of thoughts and emotions over the years on what MLB should do/should have done about performance enhancing drugs. It is bizarre to me the way this has all shaken out. Barry Bonds and Roger Clemens, who are HOFers even if you cut out their steroid years, are left out of the Hall. Meanwhile, Joe Torre, Tony LaRussa, and Bobby Cox, who won championships based on PED users, are in the Hall.

Oh, and Matt Williams is an MLB manager, Mark McGwire is a trusted hitting coach, and Nelson Cruz and Ryan Braun make it to the All-Star Game, and Jason Giambi was a beloved elder statesman of the game. Andy Pettitte is getting a monument plaque in Monument Park and a retired number. All admitted PED users. There is little or no consistency.

Not to mention that the players who use PEDs assume all the risks and the punishments, while the ownership that profited and still profits off their use just gets to cash the checks.

Anyhow, the New York Times' Harvey Araton has a terrific column that touches on this issue. Now that the feds have finally dropped their last remaining charge against Barry Bonds, after the obstruction of justice count was overturned on appeal, Araton argues that Bonds deserves to be in the Hall.

The whole thing is worth a read, but here are some of the most relevant points (emphasis added):

It has long been argued that Bonds had pretty much earned a spot in the Hall as Skinny Barry, with a decade’s worth of greatness before the 1998 preponderance of steroid benefits produced by McGwire and Sammy Sosa seemingly, and rather infamously went to Bonds’s head. What came after was surely a distortion of his previously immaculate stats. But in the context of continued revelations about baseball’s culture — foremost among them the Mitchell Report, which fingered Roger Clemens and shattered all notions of steroids as primarily a slugger’s scourge — the achievements of the bloated Bonds can no longer be permanently and completely discredited, viewed in a vacuum.

And this:

Baseball’s original sin wasn’t that it had — and certainly still has — athletes surreptitiously seeking an edge. It was management’s willful neglect of the problem for the sake of profits along with an obstructionist union wrongfully working to shield the guilty at the expense of the innocent.

As I always say, do you think Brian Cashman didn't know that A-Rod was juicing before they re-signed him? Heck, he could have known before trading for him in the first place!

Speaking of Rodriguez, Araton cites him as a positive example of somebody who has been accepted again into the game:

For many, it would no doubt be painful to hear an induction speech from Bonds, Clemens and the like. But wasn’t the notion of A-Rod again circling the bases after all that went down equally distasteful just months ago? Now what you hear is that he’s a great teammate, who served his time, paid his dues. So, in many ways, has Bonds, albeit with a smirk or a sneer. But how he has acted is not the point in the grand scheme. He deserves to be in the Hall, and baseball deserves to have him there, to deal more realistically, or honestly, with the industry’s original sin.

Ultimately, to me, it comes down to a number of things when it comes to putting PED users in the Hall:

• Bonds et al had to compete against pitchers who were juicing (and we will probably never know the full extent of that!) And Clemens had to compete against hitters who were juicing. And they were still superstars.
• PEDs themselves don't make you a great player, or Jeremy Giambi and Randy Velarde would have been big names.
• Bonds, Clemens, Rodriguez, Manny Ramirez, etc. were the best players in the game in their era. How can you represent their generation in the Hall if they have been left out? 
• Jose Canseco has said there is at least one PED user already in the Hall. When that ever comes out, what will be the justification for keeping the rest out?
• What about players (cough, David Ortiz) who get a pass for PED use? Should they go in because writers like them, and they were never punished for such use?

It is a complicated subject, to be sure. But it seems to me that Bonds (and Clemens) need to be in the Hall of Fame. It's time for some consistency on this issue. If Torre, Cox, and LaRussa can be in, then so can Bonds and Clemens.

One other note on Bonds: for a guy who is supposed to be such a jerk, Greg Anderson, his trainer and childhood friend, literally went to jail -- twice! -- so as not to testify against him. Think about that for a second. I don't care how much money one could be given for doing so (some have suspected Bonds paid him off). Nothing is worth sacrificing your freedom that way. It says something about Bonds that Anderson did so for him.

My day seeing Buster Posey, Matt Harvey, and some other assorted shenanigans

I had kind of a busy day yesterday, so I am going to write about it in two very long Squawks. This one will be about the crazy fun and weird stuff of the day, including meeting and interviewing Buster Posey and watching Matt Harvey warm up for the game from about 10-15 feet away, something that got me called a jinx yet again! A later Squawk will be about the honor of attending the Mets' 31st Annual New York Police and Fire Widows’ and Children’s Benefit Fund Game and Family Day at Citi Field. Let's get started!

My day started out in a very weird way, when I saw the following headline from the Staten Island Advance: "Great Kills dentist accused of exposing self to teen employee." It was my former dentist! Fortunately, I only went to Dr. Alan M. Kratenstein briefly last year. But, as somebody else pointed out to me, this dentist's hand was in my mouth, which made me feel sick for the rest of the morning. Oy.

Buster Posey: more charismatic
than Derek Jeter

After a few hours at work, I headed to Topps headquarters to see superstar San Francisco Giants catcher Buster Posey in the flesh. (Thanks to my friend Joe Favorito for the invite!) Posey appeared at a presser there for bloggers to promote the fact that he is the baseball card company's new brand ambassador. And talk about perfect timing, given that he just caught a no-hitter the night before!

You hear a lot about how Posey, who has three World Series rings in five years and an NL MVP award, and who has been voted the new Face of Baseball, is the new Derek Jeter. I actually think Posey is much more charming than Jeter, who too often seemed to talk in a monotone with dealing with the media, as if he were at a dentist visit!

Posey has real star quality. Even if you knew nothing about baseball, you would know that he was somebody, the way he carries himself. Very charismatic.

Posey opens up the Topps baseball card box set.
First card he sees? Ervin Santana. Heh.

Anyhow, he talked about why he signed up to promote Topps. He said it was "really special" to represent the brand. Posey said that baseball cards are "something the younger generation can and should get excited about." He also noted that his grandfather is a big card collector.

Someone asked Posey about what it was like to see himself on a baseball card for the first time. He called it a "cool moment" and "a little bit surreal," and said he would always remember that day. He also talked about how his three-year-old twins, a boy and a girl, act about seeing their father on a baseball card!

Of course, many of the questions were about Chris Heston's no-hitter from the night before, and for what it is like in general to catch no-hitters (Posey has caught three, one away from tying Jason Varitek, something somebody pointed out.)

Posey said that while a no-hitter is a "rare feat" is is "unique in its own way," there is also a "commonality in no-hitters" -- that the pitcher and catcher "are able to get on same page" and "keep that rhythm." Posey said the challenge was to be efficient. He also had a lot of praise for Chris Heston. Somebody asked him if he felt bad that he didn't catch one of Tim Lincecum's two no-hitters Posey had a very humble response, saying that there was no guarantee that Lincecum would have had a no-hitter that day with Posey as catcher!

This is the Ervin Santana card that
Posey touched. I took it home with me.

I got the opportunity to ask Posey a question. I asked what it was about the Giants having so many more no-hitters than other franchises, and noted that they had four no-hitters in four years, and 17 no-hitters in all.  Posey first responded by pointing out that the team has had five no-hitters in seven seasons. Heh! (I didn't even think of Jonathan Sanchez's in 2009 because that was the pre-Posey era!)

My fellow Yankee fans will appreciate who Posey said "gets a ton of credit" for the team having so many no-hitters. That would be pitching coach Dave Righetti, who had a no-hitter of his own with the Yankees in 1983.  He also credited Righetti as being "instrumental" in his progress as a catcher.

Posey was also asked about Matt Harvey, who he called a "great pitcher" with "great stuff," and said that "we know we have our hands full" facing him last night. (Well, that didn't really happen, as you will hear shortly!)

Posey said he is passionate about baseball and said that he has no specific goals, other than to "just win." Although he did then say that he would like to set the record for catcher with most rings. (Yogi Berra has 10, though, so Posey's got a way to go on that!)

A young reporter from SI for Kids then asked him a lot of questions. The best one was what superhero power Posey would want. He said to fly, as he doesn't like to sit in traffic! He also said his favorite move was Dumb and Dumber.

Then Posey did a ceremonial opening of the new Topps Series 2 set for 2015. The very first card he saw? Ervin Santana of the Minnesota Twins, who is currently serving an 80-game suspension for PEDs. Everybody laughed over this. There should have also been sad trombone music!

Here is the front of the card.
What is on the back?

We also got to hear about Topps' new Series 2 line of baseball cards for 2015, which include Chicago Cubs' Kris Bryant's rookie card. They also have some new First Pitch cards, featuring people who have thrown out first pitches at baseball games. This includes "Mad Men" star Jon Hamm and Mickey Hart and Bill Kreutzmann of the Grateful Dead. Talk about cards that were tailor-made for yours truly! (But where was the card for 50 Cent's first pitch?)

I got a picture of the Dead baseball card, but it only showed the front side of the card. So what was on the back of the card? Someone I work with wondered: "Does the back of the card list different drugs (think LSD instead of RBI) and quantities per season?"

So I threw the question out to my Facebook friends, and received responses like: "Number of insufferable drum solos by tour," as well as "Road Trips (not W-L columns, in this case it's Good and Bad), visits to Dock Ellis' house, Toking Average, Bong Hits, Lyric Errors, etc." Other responses included "Number of times hallucinations involving fabulous furry freak brothers" and "Most joints rolled during one tour." Squawker Jon thought the Dead cards should be scratch and sniff.

When I was at Topps headquarters, I also got to say hello to Topps staffer Chris Vaccaro, who I knew from our days at the Daily News. And I got to talk to Steve Keane, my fellow Staten Islander and blogger at the Eddie Kranepool Society. Also made a new friend -- a young woman named Brandon from FanDuel.com. My phone's camera went out of whack during part of the event, so she was nice enough to share some of her Buster Posey photos with me!

Anyhow, I went back to work after this, and then headed to Citi Field in the late afternoon to go to the Answer the Call benefit game (details on that in a future Squawk.) I got to the media check-in at 5:15 p.m., as I was supposed to, but there was a snafu. Even though I had RSVPed, and gotten written confirmation on the RSVP, my name was not on the list. This could have been fixed in two minutes if the Mets' young receptionist hadn't been a (rhymes with witch). Even though I showed her this RSVP information, she simply would not listen to me or do anything about it. I wasn't surprised at how rude and unprofessional she was, given that her tank top and miniskirt getup was a very unprofessional workplace outfit, unless your workplace is on the pole!

Because of her incompetence, I had to wait 45 minutes in the media check-in area until the Mets PR person I was dealing with contacted the Mets communications director -- the same person who got us access to Citi Field for our Guideposts Spartan Race photo shoot -- to get the situation fixed, and get me into the ballpark.

Fortunately, it all worked out in the end, and I was able to get some very moving quotes from people at the picnic, including getting to talk to Rusty Staub, the founder of the benefit fund. More on that later today.

Something funny happened, though, while I was cooling my heels waiting. I saw an older gentleman with a baseball cap on his head come up to the receptionist and say that he was picking up tickets for himself, Tommy Lasorda, and Joe Torre. He then smiled at me while I was waiting -- he must have noticed how stressed I looked. His smile made me relax a little and feel better. I smiled back.

Anyhow, I saw Lasorda come in after that, and I said hello. Was glad I didn't see Joe Torre, because I would have asked him things like "Why didn't you bunt on Curt Schilling?" and "Why did you pitch Jeff Weaver in the World Series?" and "Why did you hate A-Rod so much?" and it wouldn't have ended well!

Anyhow, later on that night, I saw that same smiling, kindly man talking on the Mets broadcast with Torre during the game, talking about  prostate cancer awareness. The man was billionaire Michael Milken. How funny is that?

Matt Harvey, future Yankee

As for the game itself, I got to see Matt Harvey warm up and was about 10-15 feet behind him -- the picnic area was right behind the bullpen. He has a real swagger to him. Like Posey, Harvey has true star quality. But while Posey has an aw-shucks demeanor, Harvey is all strut.

I joked on Facebook that I was scouting him for the Yankees, since we all know he will be in pinstripes at some point!

Of course, seeing him in the flesh, and staying for the game, meant that I got the blame for being a jinx to Matt Harvey and the Mets. Squawker Jon pointed out that Harvey had never lost a game in which the Mets had scored four runs or more. That is, until now!

Me at the game, with a bad selfie.
Jon said I look very startled!

I only stayed until the middle of the sixth inning for the game, but the damage was done. Squawker Jon (and others!) blame me for Harvey's poor performance!

During the game, I walked around the park, and also had a fabulous Patron margarita, as well as some carnitas tacos (without eating the shells.) Also got to meet Facebook friend Brad Kurtzberg at the game. Nice guy!

As for Harvey, it does make me laugh how irate Jon was. He texted me: "What did u do to Harvey?" Hey, don't blame me!

In all, it was a very busy day! Will write about the second half of the day later on this Thursday.

Bill Madden shows the hypocrisy of MLB when it comes to steroids and the Hall of Fame

New York Daily News columnist Bill Madden is really down on steroids. After all, he called A-Rod the "Whitey Bulger of baseball" and has said when it comes to his MLB Hall of Fame vote that "I will never vote for any player known to have used steroids."

Yet it seems like his outrage on PEDs is very selective. After all, he recently exhorted the Mets -- twice -- to sign known PED users, cynically writing that "there is one other added advantage in signing Biogenesis clients" Nelson Cruz and Jhonny Peralta" -- "Both of them have demonstrated they know how to beat a drug test."

And this Sunday, Madden wrote that the Mets ought to sign 40-year-old Bartolo Colon, another Biogenesis client who tested positive for PEDs in 2012. Oh, and Madden thinks they ought to give the obese pitcher a two-year deal! Yet Madden never noted that 1) Colon is a known PED user, 2) Given how well Colon has pitched at his age and weight, he is very likely still using, 3) If he were to get suspended again for PEDs, he would face a 150-game suspension, which could cripple the Mets, and 4) Even if he weren't suspended, the only way somebody over 40 is going to be pitching the way he had is if he's using steroids. Not to mention that there was none of Madden's usual outrage over PED use. Guess he saves that for A-Rod and Barry Bonds.

Then Monday, after managers Joe Torre, Tony LaRussa, and Bobby Cox were all elected by MLB's Veterans' Committee to the Hall of Fame, Madden praised their "integrity and character" and claimed that Marvin Miller was not elected to the hall in this election because of his opposition to PED testing. Madden writes:

You want to know why Miller, who missed by only one vote in the last Expansion Era election three years ago, didn’t come close this time? You probably need to look no further than his repeated statements prior to his death in November 2012, decrying the players union’s agreeing to drug testing.

Almost to a man, the Hall of Fame players have condemned the alleged steroids cheats — Barry Bonds, Sammy Sosa, Roger Clemens et al, who have obliterated their records or passed many of them on the all-time lists — and Miller’s adamant stance against taking measures to clean up the game has diminished him despite all his accomplishments on their behalf.

Let's review. Madden doesn't even note that Torre, LaRussa and Cox were the top three managers of the Steroid Era, all of whom immensely benefited from PED users on their team. Lest we forget that Roger Clemens will not be elected to the Hall of Fame anytime soon because of PED use, but Joe Torre, who he played under for two of Torre's four rings, gets elected unanimously. (Torre also had nine of his 2000 WS Champion Yankees named in the Mitchell Report.)

Not to mention that Tony LaRussa was manager of the Oakland A's when Jose Canseco and Mark McGwire helped get the whole steroid era going in the first place, or that LaRussa was McGwire's manager in 1998 when he beat Roger Maris' home run record. And that Bobby Cox managed, among others, David Justice and John Rocker, PED users.

I think its a real disconnect with baseball -- and with Madden. Why are PED users kept out of the Hall of Fame when the managers who benefited from their PED use elected unanimously on the first try? Why does Madden claim (wrongly, I believe) that Miller was excluded due to his stance on this issue and not even note that the managers he praises benefited from players' steroid usage?

I contend that the only way to get PEDs out of sports is for teams and managers to suffer the consequences, not just the individual players. Yet we're supposed to believe that three of the smartest managers in the game had no idea what their players were doing. Child, please.

The Rain, the Park, and Other Things (Yes, I'm Making a Cowsills Reference!)

I was driving home last night, getting ready to cross the Bayonne Bridge, when I saw a slew of scary-looking clouds in the sky. But WFAN know-it-all Mike Francesa insisted that it was a beautiful night, with a 72 degree temperature and not a cloud in the sky. So much for Mike's weather report. And so much for MLB's weather report.

Not only does the rainout change everything, especially with putting A.J. Burnett in the mix, (and CC had better be pitching tomorrow!) but it also inconvenienced a lot of Yankee fans, including our radio host friend Larry (The Amigo) Milian and his New York Sports Report co-host, Philly "Dizz" Domanic. They flew up from South Florida to see Friday's game, only to see just an inning and a half. Yikes!

To top it all off, the news that Friday's came was being postponed was presented by Joe Torre. You can imagine how thrilled I was to see him, especially after reflecting on the way he mismanaged the Yanks the last time the team faced Detroit in the postseason. Come to think of it, maybe Torre and MLB relied on Mike Francesa's weather report!

Oh, and can we please stop the "Joe Torre should be the Red Sox manager" boomlet in its tracks? Torre has a cushy job now, where he can threaten to punish the people and teams he hates (A-Rod, the Mets, etc.) under the auspices of MLB. He hasn't shown much interest in working very hard for a long time. By his own admission in "The Yankee Years," the clubhouse was hopelessly divided, not playing together as a team. And in any team he managed, he has been the oxygen thief, taking all the attention -- and the credit -- away from the front office and ownership. To top it all off, Joe has no interest in sabermetrics.

So given those facts, how would he possibly be a good fit with Boston, other than entertaining the media with his dopey stories? The press is so solipsistic, focusing on how he made their jobs easier, and not noticing that in recent years, he really didn't do much to make teams better (he would never have even made the playoffs in Los Angeles without Manny Ramirez, for one thing.)  Not to mention that Torre going to Boston would make the furor over "The Yankee Years" look like a day in the park. I should want the Sox to hire Torre, because he would make things even worse. But at any rate, the chances of that happening are about as big as Roger Clemens taking over the team.

Here's hoping that Ivan Nova does as well tonight as the Rays' rookie did against the Rangers yesterday.



What do you think? Tell us about it!

Yankees vs. Detroit, 2006 and Now

I really hope the Yankees win the ALDS this week, not just because I want to see them win the World Series, but because I'd also like to see them avenge what went down in the 2006 ALDS against th TIgers. There's some real unfinished business there, with the cruelest cuts self-inflicted. I rank it second to the 2004 ALCS as the playoff series in this era that angered me the most. Here's why.

Squawker Jon and I starting writing Subway Squawker in March 2006, with the idea of capturing the Yanks and the Mets when both of them were expected to make a run for it in the playoffs. Imagine my chagrin when the Mets actually made it to within a Yadier Molina home run of the World Series (more on that in a sec!), surpassing the Yankees in the postseason.

Arguably the biggest issue for the Yanks that year was that A-Rod, coming off an MVP season, was 1) having an "off year" for him: .290, 35 homers, 121 RBI and a .914 OPS, 2) getting thrown under the bus again and again by his manager and his captain. I think Torre was trying to get him to force his way off the team by making his life miserable. He certainly wasn't trying to get the most or best out of him. (An aside -- compare and contrast with the truly classy way Terry Francona stepped away from the Sox today, acknowledging that he failed with getting players to listen to him, and being genuinely broken up about the way the season ended. But I digress.)

Anyhow, that situation was brewing all summer, and it was obvious to me at the time what was going on, from the way Torre refused to tell the fans to stop booing Rodriguez to the way he blew up, instead of tamping down, every story brewing on Rodriguez, that Joe had a nasty agenda. But every time I pointed out how much Rodriguez was being undermined and gaslighted by Joe Torre, I would hear critical responses from readers, telling me I didn't know what was going on in the clubhouse. True, but I do know a little about human nature, and a lot about passive-aggressive phonies!

And the mainstream media wouldn't acknowledge the undermining, not even when Torre hooked up with his past and future ghostwriter Tom Verducci to orchestrate "The Loneliest Yankee" hit piece, set to run on the eve of the playoffs, just when Rodriguez was in the midst of a great September. Funny thing is, though, that years after the fact, Torre finally acknowledged in "The Yankee Years" that the clubhouse was divided. Duh!

Anyhow, I think that year that Torre wanted to make sure that Rodriguez would fail in the playoffs again, so A-Rod would be off the team, even if it meant sacrificing his team's October chances. First, he batted Rodriguez sixth in Game 1, even though A-Rod hadn't been in that role all year, just to make sure to give him more scrutiny.

Also, Torre's lack of preparation for that series was breathtaking. The team never took Kenny Rogers seriously, which haunted them in Game 3, and Torre let Jim Leyland flatter him with that "Murderers Row and Cano" nonsense, playing St. Joe like a fiddle. He also never asked for the umpire to check if Rogers was doctoring the ball, something Tony LaRussa did in the World Series.And don't forget the sight of Gary Sheffield at first base.

The Yanks did win Game 1 at home,  but they never won again in that series, although they did lead in Game 2 before Mike Mussina blew that lead. Remember Mussina blaming the fact that the game was a day game, with a quieter atmosphere than it would have been if it hadn't been rained out the night before? Good grief.

Game 4 was the infamous day where Torre decided to hang the entire series on A-Rod's shoulders, scapegoating him by batting him eighth, and never telling him beforehand. Then, when the media hordes inevitably descended on Torre, he chastised them for not asking them about why he had also benched Jason Giambi. I thought what Torre did was one of the nastiest, most cowardly things I've ever seen in my life. He wasn't trying to win the game. He was trying to put the goat horns on A-Rod. And I wished that the Yankees would have fired him then and there for what he did.

Anyhow, Game 4 was the day of my cousin's wedding, so I fortunately missed seeing much of the carnage live, although I knew it was hopeless. I spent most of my cousin's wedding reception in a rage about the Yankees, capped off seeing the Mets' chanting about "Party in Queens, Funeral in the Bronx" on the TV at the banquet's room bar when the Mets clinched the NLDS.

I really hoped that Torre would be gone after that year, but the Yankees were stuck with that gold-plated phony another year. There was talk that the Yanks might get rid of him, but Steve Swindal didn't want to pay him without him managing. I said when the team brought Torre back that they would never win another playoff series until he was gone, and I was proven to be right.

Anyhow, I'd like to see the Yankees beat Detroit this year, and for A-Rod to have a huge series in October, as a little cosmic payback for the 2006 ALDS. In fact, that's my prediction -- A-Rod will have a big series, and the Yanks will win in four games.

Too Soon: Why the Yankees Should Have Waited to Have Joe Torre Back at Old Timers' Day

I was looking forward to seeing a former Yankee manager, who also was a very good player, return to Yankee Stadium for the first time for Old Timers' Day. Unfortunately, Lou Piniella's first appearance at the even was completely overshadowed by the return of Joe Torre.

I'm sorry, but I just think it was way too soon to bring back Torre for the event. Especially since he has never apologized for anything he did towards the end, like the way he trashed the organization after he deemed a one-year contract that guaranteed him $5 million (with another $3 million in incentives) an "insult."

And I am not going to forget about "The Yankee Years," and the way Torre, who based his whole Yankee career on being classy, settled scores with anybody who didn't genuflect to him in his time with the Yankees. I haven't forgotten the way he talked about George Steinbrenner's health issue. The way he revealed personal information about Johnny Damon. The way he told the world that A-Rod's nickname on the team was "A-Fraud." The way he got facts wrong, and accused David Wells of being a bad influence on Sidney Ponson when they were never teammates. Torre was so nasty and vindictive in the book, he made me feel sorry for Kevin Brown (!) afterwards.

And the thing of it is, he had a lot to answer for with "The Yankee Years," but thanks to the very same media members who gave him a standing ovation at his Yankee farewell press conference, Torre was able to deflect the bile of his book, as if it was all co-author Tom Verducci's fault. (Which begs the question, how did Verducci find out that information, if not for the guy whose picture was on the cover?)

I'm not saying that Torre should have been kept away from Old Timers' Day forever, but geez, is it too much to expect him to apologize for being a twit, before being welcomed back as Saint Joe of the Bronx again? Or for Joe to acknowledge that he bit the hand that fed him for 12 years, by first walking out in a snit fit slamming the organization, and then writing such a vile book like "The Yankee Years"? And for Joe to apologize for what he said and wrote, before honoring him in Yankeeland?

But instead of having to admit he was ever wrong, Torre got treated like a conquering hero yesterday, not just with the fans, but with the press, where it doesn't look like he got a single tough question at his press conference. I'm not going to be a phony like Torre and pretend that everything he did was okay. It wasn't, and he still needs to answer for it (but unfortunately, he likely will never have to.)

Torre said yesterday:

"I knew this day would come," said Torre, who received a rousing ovation from the Yankee Stadium crowd after his introduction.

Really, Joe? I seem to remember in your farewell press conference that you said you would never return to Yankee Stadium again.

He also said:

“I think they probably wanted to do something else,” Torre said. “I think it became uncomfortable on both sides on how to separate. Unfortunately it wasn’t pretty.”

Heaven forbid St. Joe take responsibility for his immature actions and say something like, "You know, I should have acted more grateful for the opportunity George Steinbrenner gave me. Thanks to him taking a chance on me, I went from being a .500 manager to a Hall of Famer. I should have handled my departure better, and not taken the cheap shots I did on the way out."

But, of course, that didn't happen. Instead Torre said about wearing pinstripes again:

"Putting it back on felt good," said Torre, who managed the Yankees to four World Series championships (1996, '98, '99, 2000) during his 12 years as their skipper. "Taking it off was quite emotional back in '07 because when I was doing it, I knew I wasn't going to be here anymore.

Really, Joe? I seem to remember the Yankees giving you another contract deal, and you turned it down because it was a pay cut. Now you say that you knew it was the last time you would wear the pinstripes as a manager? Which story is it?

Here's the kicker:

I just don't like to dwell on stuff, but I certainly did feel different when I put it on (Sunday morning), because it was something I hadn't done it in a long time, and it's obviously the uniform that has meant the most to my career."

Oh, good grief. Doesn't like to dwell on stuff? That's exactly what he did with "The Yankee Years" -- dwell on every real or perceived slight, settle every score, get back at anybody who didn't treat St. Joe with the deference he deserved.

If you cheered for Joe's return, knock yourself out. Just don't expect me to have joined you.


What do you think? Tell us about it!

Derek Jeter Makes Buck Showalter's Hate List, and Nielsen's Most Marketable List

Two notes: I wrote today for The Faster Times about how Buck Showalter called out Derek Jeter and Theo Epstein. I think what Buck did is fine -- in fact, I compared him to Rex Ryan in taking on the big names! If the Orioles are going to compete in the AL East, he needs to keep on channeling his inner Rex Ryan. IMHO, you have to admit that Jeter is a little bit of an actor at flinching at pinches, that the umps favor him in calls, and that Theo Epstein does benefit from a healthy payroll.

In other news, The Nielsen Company sent me information on MLB's Ten Most Marketable Players. To nobody's surprise, Jeter is No. 1. But what did surprise me was that Mariano Rivera is No. 2, and Alex Rodriguez is No. 9! They are rated on an N Score, which measures "name and image awareness, appeal and personality attributes such as sincerity, approachability, experience and influence, both at the national and local levels." Here's the entire list:

1 Derek Jeter New York Yankees
2 Mariano Rivera New York Yankees
3 Josh Hamilton Texas Rangers
4 Albert Pujols St. Louis Cardinals
5 Evan Longoria Tampa Bay Rays
6 Ichiro Suzuki Seattle Mariners
7 Chipper Jones Atlanta Braves
8 Joe Mauer Minnesota Twins
9 Alex Rodriguez New York Yankees
10 Roy Halladay Philadelphia Phillies

It's funny, though, that Mo, other than his restaurant and that Taco Bell commercial with Joe Girardi, hasn't exactly done much with his marketing rank! And while I haven't seen A-Rod in a commerical in a while, he's still No. 9 on this list. (And no Mets made it on!) Nielsen said the Yanks had as many representatives on the list as the entire National League!

One other tidbit from The Nielsen Company:

For all of baseball, including current and former players, commentators and owners, a few all-time greats lead the pack. Yogi Berra holds the top spot, with an N-Score of 257, followed by Willie Mays (236) and Cal Ripken, Jr. (228). One noteworthy surprise? Joe Torre beat out his former players—Jeter and Rodriguez—with a score of 207, making him baseball’s fourth most marketable personality.

Well, that's just great news on Torre. If it means more commercials, my remote control will be getting more of a workout!
What do you think? Tell us about it!

Why I Don't Want to See Joe Torre on Old Timers' Day

I've been holding my tongue about drama king Joe Torre's announcement the other day that the Yankees invited him to Old Timers' Day, but I simply have to say something. Other Yankee fans may be glad to see him that day, but I won't be.

Like Joe has been known to do himself, I hold a grudge. Especially since he has yet to apologize for anything he wrote in "The Yankee Years," unless you consider passive-aggressively blaming Tom Verducci for it an apology. Not to mention the way he trashed Yankee ownership on his way out the door for what he called an "insult" -- them "only" offering him $5 million for 2008 plus incentives, which would have given him another $3 million just for making the World Series.

Or the way Torre sleepwalked through the playoffs in the last few years in Yankeeland, content to hold Derek Jeter's bat, drink green tea in the dugout, and lounge while Joba Chamberlain was surrounded by a swarm of midges. By the way, I saw that there is some new book called The Beauty of Short Hops: How Chance and Circumstance Confound the Moneyball Approach to Baseball, which talks about how the authors believe luck and chance played more of a role in the Red Sox's winning than sabermetrics did. Well, that, and Terry Francona strategizing against a manager who didn't have the energy or the interest to, you know, actually play to win. (Yes, I'm still bitter they didn't run on Jason Varitek when he couldn't catch Tim Wakefield's knuckleball. Or bunt on Curt Schilling.)

Jim Bouton missed, what, over 25 years of Old Timers' Day for his book "Ball Four"? And it took his daughter dying -- and his son writing an article in the New York Times in 1998 begging George Steinbrenner to invite his father back -- to get him back in the fold. Now Torre's going to back, just two years after his horrible book? Puh-lease.

Torre's book was much worse than Bouton's, and much more of a violation of the locker room code than Bouton's one. It was so hypocrticial for St. Joe to write the book, given how he preached keeping issues in the clubhouse, and given how he slammed David Wells for ruining the sanctity of the clubhouse with Wells' own book. Torre was positively gleeful in revealing that Yankee teammates called Alex Rodriguez A-Fraud? Well, I call Torre J-Fraud. He is a Grade-A phony, pretending to have a kindly fatherly persona, all the while sticking the knife into the back of anybody who didn't kiss his ring.

Yes, Torre did lead the Yankees to four rings in his first five years, and if there were a way to honor him just for that, without all the other baggage, I would stand up and cheer for Torre as much as anybody else.  Yes, the four rings go on the balance sheet, but so do the years and years of playoff failures, despite having the highest payroll in baseball. And as crucial a figure Torre was in the winning, he also held that importance in the losing, when the team was outplayed and outmanaged. He knew what the deal was -- World Series or bust -- but after the four rings, he got complacent, and only cared about his guys in the clubhouse, to the expense of the team as a whole.

Only Torre would act like having a player who won two MVPs in three years was a burden equivalent to having Luis Castillo, Oliver Perez, and Milton Bradley on the team all at once. Only Torre would put on his fake caring act, all the while taking notes for his book. I can't stand Kevin Brown. But did I really need to read about him curled up in the fetal position in the clubhouse? No. And what did poor Johnny Damon do to have his battle with depression revealed as fodder for Torre's book?

Torre has never apologized for his score-settling screed. He has never apologized to the Steinbrenner family for revealing the state of George's health in the tome. And the closest he came to ever publicly apologizing to Brian Cashman for trashing him in "The Yankee Years," even though Cash helped save his job after the 2006 season, was to say last year that he knew the GM "was offended by some of the things" in the book. "Hopefully, we can shake hands and put behind us whatever would keep that from happening." Whoopee.

Why a sincere apology wasn't requested by Yankeeland before having Torre involved with anything in the Bronx again is beyond me. That's not how I roll, so I just don't get it. I don't understand why the Yanks are having Torre come back now, without even getting some lip service from him about how he screwed up with the book.

We already saw what happened when the Yankees took the high ground, and invited St. Joe to the George Steinbrenner tribute. He made sure to leak that info to the media, even though the team wanted it to be a surprise, so that he could hold court with the press and make it all about him.

Now, we'll hear all season, thanks to Torre's lackeys in the press, about the glorious day when St. Joe will make his triumphant return to Yankee Stadium. Well, don't expect me to be among the fans cheering for him.

What do you think? Tell us about it!

John Mara sez the Giants aren't the Yankees

Between the holidays, the snow, and the lack of much of happening in Yankeeland this days, I haven't had much to squawk about as of late. Until now, that is. (Actually, I did have plenty to squawk about in general, like how Mayor Bloomberg treats the outer boroughs like something stuck at the bottom of his shoe, and how most Staten Island streets were completely impassable at the same time he's telling people to go see Broadway shows. But I digress. It's not really sports-related!)

Anyhow, Squawker Jon's Jets are in the playoffs (although Rex Ryan's wife foot fetish video creeped me out), but the Giants aren't. Despite that, Big Blue co-owner John Mara inexplicably decided to keep coach Tom Coughlin after yet another late-season collapse. And in doing so, Mara kind of dissed the New York Yankees. He told the media this, after the Giants didn't make the playoffs:

"In this society everybody wants to fire the coach all the time," Mara said. "The Yankees get knocked off in the playoffs, everybody wants to fire the manager. We don't do that here. He's going to be our coach."

Puh-lease. The managerial revolving door in Yankeeland ended a long time ago. The Yankees have had all of three managers in 20 years, one of whom wasn't quite the right fit for getting the team the ring, one who got them that ring (and three more) but stayed on three years too long, and another got them a ring, but who should lose his job next year if the Yankees have another disappointing playoff round.

At any rate, in the case of Joe Torre, the Yanks made the mistake of keeping him on too long for precisely the same reason Coughlin gets to keep his job -- because he got the team a championship (four, in Torre's case, as opposed to Coughlin's one.) That's not a good thing.

Wally Matthews had an interesting take on this for ESPN New York, saying that the Giants should be like the Yankees in demanding excellence: 

The Giants are not the Yankees? Well, why not? And since when was being like the Yankees such a bad thing, anyway?


The Giants should be more like the Yankees. So should the Mets, Jets, Knicks and Rangers. Winning should be the focus for all of them, and the pressure to perform should be on everyone on all their payrolls, all the time.

But Tom Coughlin is coming back. As a lifelong Giants fan, I am outraged. And I think you should be, too.

I agree with that in general, although I don't think the Yanks kept to that in Torre's case, until three years of first-round playoff exits forced their hand.

Anyhow, Matthews continued the argument, saying:

But if you took the entire Giants 2010 season from beginning to end, from its shaky 1-2 start to its high point, the 41-7 win over the Seahawks on Nov. 7 that had a lot of people believing the Giants were among the best teams in football, to their shameful collapse over the final month of the season, and changed the name "Giants" to "Yankees," and the name "Coughlin" to "Girardi," how do you think the story would have ended?

That part is true. But I would argue that if you change Girardi's name to Torre's there, the media would still say he deserved to keep his job. That Giants loss to the Eagles a few weeks ago, was as big a regular-season collapse (letting Philadelphia score 28 unanswered points in the final eight minutes of the game) as the 2004 ALCS defeat was in the playoffs. And it wasn't the first time the Giants choked, or looked sloppy, or lost a game they should have won. It begs the question, how long does the coach get a pass because of the ring?

Joe Torre was never able to win a single playoff series after the 2004 collapse. All keeping him on did was prolong the inevitable. As I think keeping Coughlin will. And now there's talk of a contract extension? Good grief. What, Jeff Fisher (another overrated coach) wasn't available?

I mostly agree with Matthews' general take on Coughlin, although I give the coach more credit for the Super Bowl victory than Matthews does. The columnist slammed him the hardest for the way Coughlin screamed at rookie punter Matt Dodge after the Eagles debacle:

Aside from being utterly unprofessional, it was the ultimate CYA move, a gesture designed solely to let everyone in the place know that it wasn't Tom Coughlin's fault, it was the kid punter's.


Can you imagine Joe Girardi doing that on the field to a player who missed a sign or made an error that cost the Yankees a game?

No, but I can imagine a certain untouchable Yankee manager scapegoating his superstar by batting him eighth!

At any rate, the lesson Mara ought to learn is that sometimes -- like in doing what's best for your team -- it's good to be like the Yankees. But make that the Yankees after the 1995 and 2007 seasons, not the Yankees after the 2004 season! Sometimes, stability for the sake of stability will continue to bring you futility.

What do you think? Tell us about it!

Tom Verducci plays around with facts and figures in Derek Jeter article

Sports Illustrated's Tom Verducci wrote a full-throated defense of Derek Jeter for the Yankees to show Derek Jeter the money. Verducci's piece is similar to his Joe Torre defense: He's an icon! He's got a lot of rings! How dare the Yankees demand he take a pay cut! The Yankees made him look bad by saying how much he thinks he's worth!

Which isn't surprising. After all, Jeter was one of Torre's and Verducci's key sources in "The Yankee Years." And don't forget, that book is where we heard about A-Rod being called "Single White Female," and how we heard all sorts of sordid details about that supposedly one-sided jealousy/obsession he had with Jeter.

But in this latest piece, Verducci doesn't just bash the Yankee front office and lionize Jeter as an icon. He doesn't just write this article like it's a press release from Casey Close. Verducci also twists around a lot of facts in the case, and I'm not letting him get away with it.

Verducci says:

The Yankees, who reportedly offered Jeter a three-year, $45 million deal, want to cut Jeter's pay by 21 percent, to pay him less money than they committed for Kei Igawa, to pay him less money annually than they do A.J. Burnett, and, including this deal, to pay him less money over his entire Yankee career than they will give Alex Rodriguez just for the nine seasons between when he turns 34 and 43. Of course, no one is allowed to mention Rodriguez's 10-year, $275 million contract in the negotiating room.

1. To pay him "less money than they committed for Kei Igawa" sounds like an outrage. But what he wrote distorts what really happened. The Yankees actually are paying Igawa a total of $20 million in salary. Igawa has a five-year contract. So he's making $4 million a year, not $15M. The extra figure involves the $26 million posting fee the Yanks had to pay Igawa's Japanese team for the right to negotiate with him. That adds up to $46 million. Granted, it was a huge mistake. But it's a distortion to insinuate that the Yanks are paying the hapless Kei Igawa more than Jeter.

2. Here we go again on the A.J. Burnett comparison. Let's review: Burnett was coming off a great season; he won 18 games and led the AL in strikeouts. The Yankees desperately needed arms. A.J. was the second-best free agent pitcher on the market that year, after CC Sabathia, and the Braves also wanted to sign Burnett. That's called leverage, something Jeter doesn't have these days. Sure, Burnett had an abysmal 2010, but it is completely forgotten that his great performance in Game 2 of the 2009 World Series completely changed the series around. If the Yanks had lost Game 1 and Game 2, they may very well have lost the series. Considering that so much of the Jeter hype is about the rings, why isn't the fact that Burnett was a key component ot the 2009 team ever taken into account?

3. As for A-Rod, it sticks in Verducci's craw -- and Jeter's craw, too -- that Rodriguez makes more money than Jeter. Tough. Newsflash -- Jeter was never as good a player as A-Rod. Rodriguez signed his contract at age 32, after the greatest season he had and the best season a Yankee hitter had had since Mantle and Maris. In Jeter's case, he wants A-Rod money when he's 36, and on the downside of his career. As for Verducci's outrage that "one is allowed to mention Rodriguez's 10-year, $275 million contract in the negotiating room," Verducci also fails to mention that Jeter is the second-highest paid player of all time, making $205 million so far. Boo bleeding hoo. If Jeter wants that kind of deal, the Yanks should offer it -- when he gets close to hitting 660 homers, that is!

Then there's the way Verducci tries to put a happy face on Jeter's awful 2010 season:

In his final 28 games, including the postseason, after some physical and mechanical adjustments, Jeter's batting average (.311) and OBP (.390) were in line with his career averages (.314 and .385).


A few down months by Jeter 16 years into his career have handed the Yankees leverage, and they are wielding it like a ballpeen hammer in public.

Those stats look very impressive, but they distort what really happened. From June 10 to September 10, Jeter hit just .232, with a .311 OBP, and an anemic .631 OPS. That isn't just a slump -- that's falling off the cliff for half the season. At age 30, those numbers are a little troubling. At age 36, they're a huge blinking warning sign.

As for the positive figures Verducci highlighted, I ran a look at Jeter's stats over the last 19 games of the season. Jeter did go .342 over those games, with a .436 OBP. But it should be noted that, by the time Jeter finally got into a groove, the Yankees were already assured of a postseason spot. Then he went in to the playoffs, the time he was supposed to shine, and hit just .250, with a .286 OBP, and 10 strikeouts. That's a very different picture than what Verducci paints.

What do you think? Tell us about it!

As a free agent, will Derek Jeter pull an A-Rod or a Torre?

Derek Jeter and the New York Yankees are at an impasse right now in contract negotiations, with anywhere between $45 million and $105 million separating them.  So what happens next? I think one of two things happens -- he could either follow the path of Alex Rodriguez or Joe Torre. Let me explain.

Our Met fan friend Coop of My Summer Family fame is the first person I heard suggest that Jeter could pull an A-Rod, throwing agent Casey Close under the bus, blaming him for asking for too much money,  and then going directly to the Yankees to negotiate. Granted I never bought that Boras somehow acted against A-Rod's wishes -- as dopey as opting out during the World Series was, I am quite sure it was A-Rod's idea. But at any rate, after seeing what a huge blunder he made, A-Rod rang up Warren Buffett for advice. Alex then ate some humble pie, threw Scott Boras under the bus, and managed to get an even bigger contract than he had before. Not that I think Boras cared about that -- no matter how much he got blamed, he still got his 10%, and made Alex richer than ever.

The reason that scenario worked for A-Rod though, is that was plausible to believe that he was Boras' puppet, doing dopey things because the Avenging Agent told him to. Also, A-Rod was willing to humiliate himself in crawling back to the Yanks, begging for another chance. A less insecure, more prideful individual would have moved on, I think.

Could Jeter do the same thing A-Rod did to extricate himself from this mess? I dunno. The media has been on Jeter's case -- for really the first time ever -- about his outrageous contract demands, but I could see them going along with blaming Close, and not Jeter, for how much things have gone awry. It wouldn't be the first time they sent something negative about Jeter down the ol' memory hole.

The real issue would be the "crawling back to the Yankees and admitting he he was wrong" thingy. I'm not really sure Jeter could do it. I am quite positive he fully believes that he's worth $25 million a year for as long as he wants to play. Why wouldn't he? For 15 years, he's had everybody telling him how great he is. Combine that with a personality that cuts people off at the first sign of "negativity," as the euphemism goes, meaning that he doesn't have a lot of people around him questioning him and telling him that he messed up. I just am not sure how he would admit fallibility here.

Remember what happened with Andy Pettitte a few years ago? He turned down an $11 million option the Yanks had, and figured he could get more money. As it turns out, he misjudged the market, and ended up crawling back to the Yanks for $5.5 million plus incentives. But Andy was able to acknowledge that he messed up, and say that while he wished he were making more money, he was glad to still be a Yankee.

But Jeter is just not an Andy Pettitte personality type. The person he's most like is Joe Torre -- somebody who is used to being treated with deference, somebody quick to hold a grudge, and somebody quick to be insulted. So the longer this goes on, the more I can see Jeter complaining about the "insult" of only being offered $15M a year for three years, and him taking his talents to Baltimore or some other team.

Granted, I don't think any team will offer him anything close to what Jeter would make as a Yankee. But the Los Angeles Dodgers never came close to matching Torre's old $8 million salary with the Yanks -- or even that $5 million plus $3 million in incentives offer that the Yanks made him for 2008. You remember, the one he deemed "an insult"? Yet it didn't stop Joe from walking out the door. And a year after leaving, Torre was still so sure he was right, he trashed the organization in "The Yankee Years," complicating his legacy, and further ticking off the Yanks' front office.

Could Jeter do the same thing -- make that the same things, because he and his friends and family are fully cooperating with Ian O'Connor's upcoming biography? Absolutely. Remember, others, most recently Jon Heyman. have written that Jeter is already aggrieved that he's not the top dog he used to be among his teammates..O'Connor's new book promises to reveal info about the captain's declining influence in the clubhouse. Is it possible Jeter might trash the organization? I wouldn't be surprised.

Granted, it would make zero sense for Derek Jeter to burn bridges with the organization that made him a New York legend, and that is offering him more money than anybody else would. But it didn't make much sense for Joe Torre to do what he did, either.

What do you think? Tell us about it!

Shocker! I actually defend Joe Torre (a little) on something!

David Wells took potshots at Joe Torre last week, calling Torre a "coward" for benching him in the 1997 ALDS, and having pitching coach Mel Stottlemyre tell him the news. Only thing is, Wells started Game 3 of that series!

Even I, somebody who has no love lost for Saint Joe of the Bronx, thought this was a bit ridiculous, and unfair to Torre. So I wrote a piece about it for The Faster Times over it.  It's not just that Wells criticized Torre for something that never happened that irked me. It's also that apparently nobody in the media took a look at a stats site to see if Wells' story was true. And even Torre didn't exactly defend himself well over Wells' charges.

Anyhow, please check out my article on it!

Bob Klapisch rewrites history of the Yankee dynasty

Today's Bob Klapisch piece for the Bergen Record about the Yankees in the Joe Torre era might be the biggest piece of Yankee revisionist history I've read all year, with him claiming that Torre never had the talent Joe Girardi had to work with, and that the Bombers were already aging and fading by 1999, just when Derek Jeter was entering his prime, Jorge Posada was coming into his own, and Roger Clemens had joined the team. Huh?

Here are some of Klapisch's claims, with my responses below:

"Torre never had the luxury of managing a roster that had CC Sabathia and Mark Teixeira and A.J. Burnett."

What the??? A.J. Burnett is 23-22 as a Yankee, with a 4.52 ERA. Is he really somebody to envy? I don't think so.

And while Clemens' numbers were surely chemically-enhanced, he was arguably was just a big a force as CC Sabathia in his time with the Yankees. And let me pull a Kanye West and say that A-Rod is one of the greatest players of all time. Torre had him for four seasons, but treated him like something stuck under his shoe. Not to mention that Bernie Williams and Derek Jeter in their prime were as valuable as Teixeira is.

"[Torre] didn’t stick around long enough to have Steinbrenner out of his face."

Not true. Torre went seven straight years of not meeting his job requirement of winning the World Series, and still didn't get fired. Torre's own book admits that Steinbrenner wasn't mentally the same in the last few years. Besides, does anybody think The Boss of old would have not cleaned house after 2004?

"And Torre wasn’t able to collect the dividend on Alex Rodriguez’s breakthrough October after five years of postseason misery."

Hmmmm. Maybe Joe Girardi's lighter touch with A-Rod might have contributed to Alex relaxing at the plate. Just saying.

"Those perks have been awarded to Girardi, who gets credit for his sterile, efficient manner."

What's this "awarded" nonsense? Girardi won the World Series in only his third year of managing, yet Klapisch wants to minimize that, calling his manner "sterile." Please.

"But Girardi would’ve been challenged to extend the Yankees’ renaissance after 1998, when the previous generation’s core started to age out."

Is Klapisch out of his flipping mind? I mean, really. At least Wally Matthews' babbling can be funny -- his line about A-Rod pulling a Madame Bovary death scene in the batter's box is one of the funniest things I've read all year. Klapisch's ravings are just sad.

Let's review. In 1999, the Yankees, who had won 114 games the year before, traded for Roger Clemens, who had just won two Cy Youngs in a row for the Blue Jays. And the team won 98 games.While El Duque was probably already old in 1999, he also won 17 games that season. Derek Jeter had an MVP-caliber year (and his best season ever), Jorge Posada was a budding young star, and Bernie Williams had a .971 OPS.

The only starter you can arguably say was starting to fade in 1999 was Paul O'Neill, who never hit above .300 after 1998. But even then, his numbers were still respectable until the end of his career.

Klapisch should know better; the year where some of the Yankees seemed really old all of a sudden was 2001, not 1999, when they won 98 games. (And yes, even I will give Torre the credit for getting the Yankees within one inning of winning the World Series in 2001-- they totally overachieved that year. And with them winning in 2000 despite the team only winning 87 games in the regular season. Believe it or not, I was a big Torre fan until 2003, when he pitched Jeff Weaver in Game 5 of the World Series. It took that event -- and the 2004 ALCS -- to turn me against Joe for good.)

Here's another Klapisch gem:

"That’s what the haters seem to forget – that Torre coaxed two more world championships out of a team that slowly was being caught by the Red Sox. Maybe that’s why Torre cried like a baby after Aaron Boone’s HR in Game 7 of the 2003 AL Championship Series. Maybe he knew the dynasty was over."

I guess I'm one of those "haters," but I think I know my baseball history a little better than Klapisch does. Because I seem to remember the Yankees beating the Red Sox four games to one in the 1999 ALCS. And the Sox not making the playoffs at all for the following three years. Boston didn't really catch up with the Yankees until after then, when John Henry et al bought the team, Theo Epstein took over as general manager, and the team got a huge player makeover. To suggest that Torre "coaxed two more world championships out of a team that slowly was being caught by the Red Sox" is sheer nonsense.

"There’s been too much revisionist spin of Torre’s career in the Bronx, particularly after 2003. Too old, too out of touch, too laid back, too disinterested – name it, and the blemishes suddenly littered his Hall of Fame résumé. Torre doesn’t have to apologize for any of the Yankees’ non-championship years, although if he had a second chance, he might’ve decided to wait until retirement to publish his memoirs. Instead, “The Yankee Years” damaged Torre’s legacy in some Yankee circles, even though it was co-authored with Sports Illustrated’s highly respected Tom Verducci.

The only "revisionist spin" being written here is by Klapisch himself. Torre had the biggest payroll, with the top stars, each year, and couldn't even make it to the World Series after 2003. That is just as much a part of the resume as the four rings. Just because it took a while for the starry-eyed media to finally acknowledge that isn't revisionism; it's acknowledging reality.

Also love how Klapisch blames Verducci for the book. Do you think there was a single line in that book that wasn't approved by Torre himself? Come on now.

For good measure, Klapisch also blames Brian Cashman for overreacting to how he was portrayed in the book:

"Torre used the book to criticize Cashman’s growing reliance on statistics, for the way he handled the end of Bernie Williams’ career and for becoming the most powerful figure in the Yankees’day-to-day operations by 2005.

Cashman stood in the way of Torre’s previous direct connection to The Boss, planting the seeds of the manager’s resentment. Torre was correct in noting how the Yankees changed the way they did business by the middle of the decade, but Cashman nevertheless was “shocked” at the way his onetime buddy flogged him in print."

Funny how Klapisch implicitly agrees with Torre's criticism of Cashman relying on statistics, when it was the Red Sox's use of statistics that helped to give them an edge. There are things Cash has done that I don't like, either, like signing Nick Johnson and bringing back Javier Vazquez this year, but it's obvious that the GM and not the manager should be "the most powerful figure in the Yankees’day-to-day operations." Especially when the manager thought looking at a stat sheet was beneath him.

Klapisch also writes that Torre "was, and still is, a model of calm and composure, the very qualities that helped him act as traffic cop when the clubhouse was so fractured and cliquish after 2003." This is just laughable. The "clubhouse was so fractured and cliquish after 2003" because Torre took sides with "his guys" over A-Rod and other newer players, instead of running the clubhouse as a team. If Torre had been the same manager that he was in the '90s, then perhaps the clubhouse would have been as united as it was back then.


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Will Joe Torre be the Mets' next Casey Stengel?

Casey Stengel spent years as an unsuccessful manager before winning numerous titles with the Yankees. After turning 70, Casey managed the Mets. Is Joe Torre headed down the same path? I hope not.

The first thing the Mets need is a strong, competent general manager. The new GM must be the one to pick the manager. The best candidates will probably not even want the job if what could be their most important decision is made for them. Especially if it is yet another example of the Mets overpaying a high-priced free agent that is past his prime.

The Mets need a dynamic manager who can energize the team and the fan base. Torre has admitted to having trouble relating to the Dodgers' younger players. His personality seems to energize the media more than anyone else. The Mets already have a manager whose best attribute is dealing with the media.

By the way, the Mets do currently have a manager, and whatever one thinks of Jerry Manuel, it was wrong for Torre to speculate about the Met job while it is occupied. Gary Carter was heavily criticized for doing the same thing a few years ago. Good for Manuel to show some irritation.

Torre has had some success with the Dodgers, winning 84 games his first season and 95 last year. But Willie Randolph had similar numbers in his first two seasons managing the Mets - winning 83 in year one and 97 in year two. Torre made the playoffs and won in the first round before losing in the NLCS in both 2008 and 2009, while Randolph did so in one year.

This season, Torre's Dodgers are currently four games under .500. The Mets are two games under. The Dodgers have off-the-field issues to contend with, but then again, so do the Mets.

If Torre wants to manage next year, he should find a veteran team that is close to winning and just needs a new leader to put them over the top. The Mets, unfortunately, are not close to winning. They need a new manager who will be around for few years to help build a winning team. They don't need Torre.

My thoughts on the George Steinbrenner monument and tribute

I thought the Yankees did Monday's George Steinbrenner ceremony right Monday night. Things got a little dusty in this Squawker household, to use a Bill Simmonsism. Here are a few thoughts on the evening:

* I've decided that if there is anybody I want to meet in the Steinbrenner family, it's Hank. He seems to be the child with most of his father's personality.

* I don't ever remember seeing Joan Steinbrenner before -- she's definitely been out of the public eye forever. The funny thing was, though, when I saw some addled-looking man escorting her, I wondered to myself at first, "Gee, that guy's in bad shape." Then I realized that the befuddled-looking person was Bud Selig!

* Don Mattingly looks so young! Younger than when he was a coach with the Yankees. He still needs to bring the mustache back, though. It was nice to see him. Mattingly was truly a class act in the way he left the Yankees, which is why no fence-mending was needed on his part.

* Good to see David Wells at the event. He was one of Steinbrenner's faves. But, unless I missed it, where was Paul (The Warrior) O'Neill?

* Smartest thing the Yankees did -- and I am sure it was deliberate -- was to not introduce any of the VIPs. While fans cheered for Mattingly and Joe Torre, them being there didn't overshadow the ceremony itself. On the other hand, the media is all about Torre today in the stories. Well, that, and one other thing...

* ...That monument is, um, monumental! I'm wondering if Yankee players in the batters' box will be able to see The Boss' image looking at them, the way the eyes of Doctor T. J. Eckleberg gazed upon the characters in "The Great Gatsby."

* I'm also glad the Yankees won. There wouldn't have been anything sort of Grandish if they were to lose on the night of the Steinbrenner tribute!

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Squawker reader mail, and what Joe Torre and Cher have in common when it comes to memorials

I got a lot of grief in the Subway Squawkers comments section for saying that Joe Torre ought to stay away from tonight's George Steinbrenner monument dedication at Yankee Stadium. I appreciate the feedback, but I'm not changing my opinion.

Uncle Mike chastises me, saying, "Lisa, this has to stop. While it's true that, without George Steinbrenner, Joe Torre would be a ballplayer just short of the Hall of Fame and a manager just short of greatness (he did, after all, manage the Braves to a Division title well before that became common), without Torre, Steinbrenner would have lived the last 32 years of his life without winning another World Series."

Oh, come on. The nucleus of the late '90s dynasty was created by Gene Michael and Buck Showalter. Yes, Torre came in, and led that team to four rings to five years, and he deserves a ton of credit for doing so. But to suggest that the Yankees would never have won a World Series without Torre is a bit much.

And no, Torre was not "a manager just short of greatness" until the Yankees. Here are his winning percentages with the teams he managed prior to the Bronx: Mets: .405, Atlanta Braves: .529, St. Louis Cardinals: .498. He made it to the playoffs ONCE in 14 years prior to the Yanks. That's mediocrity, at best.

Mike says "tonight's ceremony is a way for Yankee Fans to say "Thank you" -- to both men." No, tonight was supposed to be about honoring George Steinbrenner, until the Torre PR machine tipped off Bill Madden and made sure everybody knew he'd be there. (It sure wasn't the Yankees who told the papers -- John Sterling and Suzyn Waldman said the team told them not to reveal the guest list.)

Reader RockN'RollStreetRat wrote: "Tomorrow's ceremony should be about Steinbrenner's baseball legacy with the Yankees, not about any personal squabbles anyone had with Geroge, or that George had with anyone. And when it comes to Torre, he's one of he most important figures in the Boss's Yankee legacy, and one of the team's best ever managers."

I get that point that he and Uncle Mike are making, but here's the thing with that argument. I remember what happened with Sonny Bono's funeral. Sonny's widow Mary asked Bono's ex-wife Cher to give the eulogy. But thanks to Cher's star power and emotional speech, the funeral became all about Cher, and little about Sonny.

Yes, Cher was a huge part of Sonny's legacy, but to hear her weep after she had trashed her ex-husband's reputation for the previous two decades was a bit much. And by the end of her speech, you would have thought she were the widow, and not Mary Bono! Although I think Cher's grief was sincere, I just wish she had shown such appreciation for Sonny Bono when he was still alive to hear it.

Tonight is supposed to be about George Steinbrenner getting his place at Monument Park, not about Torre getting face time shedding crocodile tears. Reader JonMouk71 wondered, "the more cynical might say he is cultivating the media to pressure Wilpon to meet his high price to manage the Mets." Count me in that cynical category.

Anyhow, I'll watch the event tonight, but don't expect me to clap at my TV screen about seeing Joe Torre take over what should be George Steinbrenner's tribute.

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Joe Torre ought to stay far away from George Steinbrenner ceremony

Just heard that Joe Torre and Don Mattingly reportedly will be attending Monday's Yankee Stadium ceremony to honor George Steinbrenner with a monument in Monument Park. Donnie Baseball will be a welcome face at the ballpark. Joe Torre, not so much, at least for me.

I'm not about to let bygones be bygones and welcome Torre back to the ballpark with open arms.  Not when he has never apologized for the way he bit the hand that fed him for twelve years. Not as long as the vile "Yankee Years" book remains in print, where he trashed The Boss when he was unable to defend himself. And certainly not after Torre and his wife Ali compared Steinbrenner, the man of honor tomorrow night, to Torre's own abusive father, the monster who threw Torre's mother down the stairs when he found out she was pregnant with Joe Jr.

What a phony Torre is to even have the nerve to show up in the first place. He's going to "honor" Steinbrenner's memory with his presence, right? Spare me the sanctimony. Just by showing up, Loe will make the evening all about him. If Torre were as classy as his PR machine claims, he would stay away, and not make a mockery of the night.

I remember how Joe and Ali Torre "honored" Steinbrenner back in November, after the Yankees won the World Series. They had an interview with T.J. Simers of the Los Angeles Times, where, as I noted in a Faster Times piece, they described Steinbrenner this way:

“George was such a domineering figure in Joe’s life and his father was like that,” says Ali Torre.

Joe Torre backed that comment up, saying about his experience as Yankee manager, “That was a big part of it with George too. I don’t know how many times I told George, ‘The only thing I wanted to do was make you feel proud of what I’ve done.'"

Columnist Simers didn’t raise his eyebrows at these accusations. Instead he agreed, writing, “The abused going full circle, five times as likely to become the abuser, the experts say, or become abused again. Or go to work for Steinbrenner.”

Torre's wife used that analogy again in another part of the interview:

Ali Torre told her husband and Simers, “The parallel was very similar to what you had with your father. Some of the people in the Yankee organization were bullying you and not treating you with respect all along. You kept trying to survive until you got worn down.”

Comparing domestic violence to the travails of the highest-paid manager in baseball history? Oh please.

It's funny. Torre constantly accused Alex Rodriguez of hogging the spotlight, and making everything all about him. Guess it takes one to know one.

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Take that, Tim McCarver: Keith Olbermann discovers 21(!) pictures of Joe Torre at the new Yankee Stadium

So much for Tim McCarver's claim that the Joe Torre has been airbrushed from Yankee Stadium. The FOX broadcaster told listeners Saturday that there's "no sign of Joe Torre at the stadium." But TV personality Keith Olbermann, went around Yankee Stadium the other day and counted 21 pictures of Torre, both outside and inside the ballpark. (Go to his Baseball Nerd blog to see some of the images.) There is even a luxury suite number 6, featuring pix of the last man to wear #6 - Torre.

I appreciate that Olbermann took the time to set the record straight with some photo evidence, something no NY paper tried to do.

He writes about the issue:

I'm a fan and friend of Tim McCarver's, and Joe Torre is my oldest baseball friend. I've even worked with them both. And I know the Yankees could have done better by Joe, and his exit was unceremonious and poorly-handled by the club. I would also argue that the Yankees are the most self-important, overly-serious franchise in overtly pro sports (I can think of about 27 college programs that would at least give them a run for their money).

But Timmy was just wrong, in style and in substance. Neither literally nor figuratively have the Yankees excised, erased, airbrushed nor Memory-Hole'd Joe Torre. Doubtless the day will come soon, perhaps even while he's still managing elsewhere, that they will formally retire the number and give him the big ceremony he deserves. To see a conspiracy in the fact that the day has yet to come is, at best, to overreact.

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