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!

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!

From Core Four to Sore Three: Why I was right about the Sports Illustrated cover jinx

I told you so. When I saw that Andy Pettitte got taken out of the game Wednesday with elbow pain, it was obvious to see - for the third time in a row - what a horrendously bad idea that Core Four Sports Illustrated cover was. I said nothing good could come of it, and I was right!

This is what I wrote on April 27, in a blog entry entitled: "Did Tom Verducci and Sports Illustrated jinx the Yankees' 'Core Four'", when I saw that SI cover featuring Derek Jeter, Andy Pettitte, Mariano Rivera, and Jorge Posada:

If the Yankees' season goes up in flames any time soon, I know just who to blame - Tom Verducci and Sports Illustrated!

Because as a firm believer in the SI Cover Jinx, I feel like this cover story about the Core Four is just asking for trouble - times four.

Let's review what has happened so far:

* First, Jorge Posada got hit in the knee the previous Wednesday by an errant pitch from Jeremy Guthrie, and missed a game over it. Then he left Monday's game early with a calf strain, and hasn't played since.

* Then Mariano Rivera felt stiffness on the left side of his body after Friday's game. He hasn't played since.

* Now, Andy Pettitte left Wednesday's game after five innings with elbow pain. He has inflammation in his elbow and might miss his next start.

Derek Jeter needs to be put in a plastic bubble or something until this thing blows over!

Thanks for nothing, Sports Illustrated! And Tom Verducci, didn't you do enough damage to the franchise with "The Yankee Years"? Why must you continue to torture us so?

On the other hand, I think that I have a solution for Javier Vazquez's problems. Since he's already walking around with a black cloud of doom around him, a la "Peanuts" character Pigpen, maybe being on the SI cover would change his luck - for the better. SI needs to make up for this Core Four disaster by putting Home Run Javy on the cover, and hoping that a reverse jinx will turn his season around!

What do you think? Tell us about it!

What did I say about that Sports Illustrated cover jinx?

When I saw that Jorge Posada got hit in the knee during last night's game, my first negative thought wasn't about the Orioles. It wasn't even about why Jeremy Guthrie lost control - again - when it came to a Yankee batter. It was about Tom Verducci and Sports Illustrated putting Jorge Posada on the cover this week!

This is why I never want the Yankees to be on the cover of SI during the season. Nothing good can come of it!

Did you notice how Ken Singleton called the plunking? He said, "Look out," like he always does, and then went, "Hor-HEY", with the emphasis on the second syllable. Here's the clip.

According to MLB.com, Jesus might be coming to the Bronx because of this. Jesus Montereo, that is. He, along with Chad Moeller, is one of the AAA catching prospects who might come up to the big leagues if Posada has to miss a bunch of time because of this knee injury.

On another note, One thing I did notice in a bonus excerpt from the interview that had me nodding my head in agreement. Posada made the same point a few of us fans have made about the length of the Yankees-Red Sox games:

Posada: They're talking about speeding up the game, speeding up the game. Listen, they talk about the Boston-Yankees series? Friday we're on TBS, Saturday we're on Fox and Sunday we're on ESPN. It's 2:30, 2:25 and three minutes between innings. And that tells you why the game is taking forever.


At any rate, I hope Jorge is A-OK today.

I heard John Sterling and Suzyn Waldman say last night that the attendance was only 17,000 or so. 17K for Orioles-Yankees? How things have changed! I asked an Oriole fan friend what the deal was with this. He responded:

Bandwagon Yankee fans don't go out in the cold. Orioles fans rarely go at all.

Yikes!

What do you think? Tell us about it!

Did Tom Verducci and Sports Illustrated jinx the Yankees' 'Core Four'?

If the Yankees' season goes up in flames any time soon, I know just who to blame - Tom Verducci and Sports Illustrated!

Because as a firm believer in the SI Cover Jinx, I feel like this cover story about the Core Four is just asking for trouble - times four. It's why I was happy that Sports Illustrated picked the Phillies, and not the Yankees, to win the World Series. That jinx is powerful stuff - look what happened to the Mets' 2009 season after SI picked them to win the World Series!

I'll be interested to see if Verducci, not exactly one of my favorite writers, is able to conjure up a new angle - or new tidbits - about the four players. Not very hopeful, though, given that the cover line says they "broke in together 16 seasons ago," when only two of them - Andy Pettitte and Mariano Rivera - were playing with the Yankees regularly  in 1995. Jeter was a September callup that year and played 15 games. Jorge Posada played in exactly one game - without even a single plate appearance - that year. Posada wasn't on the full-time roster until 1997, and wasn't the No. 1 Yankee catcher until 1998.

But even the faint hope of new anecdotes isn't enough to have risked the tempting of fate entailed with putting those four on the cover. I have to get all A.J. Burnett here - again - and ask why, why, why did SI do it?

What do you think of this cover? Tell us about it!

Tom Verducci still California dreamin'

The Yankees went 35-8 at home in the regular season after the All-Star break, but Sports Illustrated columnist Tom Verducci credits the Bombers' continued home success in the postseason to geography of another kind.

Last week, when Verducci started pushing his "East Coast Baseball Theory," which argues that West Coast teams fare poorly in playoff games on the East Coast, he emphasized the cold weather as a factor, writing that "when you do get to October, the frequently cold, wet, blustery weather provides something else to battle, too."

Sunday's gametime temperature was a balmy 58 degrees, and the night was clear, so that part of the theory somehow got left off when he tried to explain why the Los Angeles Angels of Anaheim lost Game 6 at Yankee Stadium. But Verducci continued to tout the rest of his theory.

Here's the lede of his "Five Cuts" piece Monday on the ALCS:

Let's be honest: The Angels didn't show well in New York. In three games at Yankee Stadium, Los Angeles went 0-3, committed seven errors, walked 17 batters and looked jittery. I am starting to believe that there really is something to my East Coast Baseball theory. West Coast teams went 1-6 this postseason in New York, Philadelphia and Boston. That makes West Coast teams 3-19 (.136) when they come to the Northeast for postseason baseball since 2003, and 10-38 (.208) in the wild-card era. The advantage may be that Northeast teams play in postseason-type environments all year long, where baseball means so much to the fan base that every 0-for-12 streak is a two-hour talk radio rant.

Verducci is right about the errors, and some of those miscues certainly made the Angels look jittery. But the Angels actually walked more batters (20) in their three home games than they did at Yankee Stadium (17). Three of the home walks and one road walk were intentional. So the Angels walked 17 batters unintentionally at home and 16 unintentionally at Yankee Stadium.

As for the notion that Northeast teams enjoy an advantage of playing in "postseason-type enviroments all year long," one would think that advantage would also work against non-West Coast teams from less fervent baseball cities. But the Colorado Rockies took three out of four playoff games in Philadelphia over the last three years (Rockies went 2-0 in 2007 and 1-1 in 2009).

The Chicago Cubs are not an East Coast team, but they have the sort of environment and fan base Verducci describes. But in 2003, the Florida Marlins took three out of four playoff games at Wrigley Field. In the World Series that year, the Marlins beat the Yankees two out of three at Yankee Stadium.

Verducci also brings up the Yankee payroll in a way that contradicts the ideas expressed in "The Yankee Years," the book he wrote with Joe Torre. In that book, Verducci peddles the notion that one of the reasons the Yankees failed to win titles over the last few years was because of acquiring high-priced talent like A-Rod (aka A-Fraud, as the book reveals some players called him). But now Verducci writes:

It was pretty cool to watch what happened in the middle of the infield after the series-clinching out. Rodriguez, finally in the World Series at age 34, yelled so loud the gum popped from his mouth as both he and first baseman Mark Teixeira immediately ran toward shortstop Derek Jeter. The three of them jumped and hugged together -- that's $644 million worth of contracts wrapped up in three men, or more than the valuation of the entire Angels franchise, lock, stock and Rally Monkey, with more than $100 million left to spare.

It is fair to bring up the payroll disparity between the Yankees and Angels in 2009, but it should also be noted that in 2005, the Yankees' overall 2005 payroll was $208M, seven million dollars MORE expensive than this year's $201M payroll. Yet the Angels still beat the Yankees that year, when their own payroll was just $97 million.

The Angels also defeated the Yankees in the 2002 ALDS. In fact, going into the 2009 ALCS, the Angels were the one team that seemed to have the Yankees' number. In the Joe Torre era, the Angels were the only team to have a winning record against the Yankees.

When Torre managed the Yankees, he could not beat the West Coast Angels. But now that Torre manages a West Coast team, the Dodgers have gone 0-5 in Philadelphia over the last two NLCS. Is it a coincidence that his co-author has now come up with the "East Coast Baseball Theory"?

This year, the Yankees finally overcame the Angels. Payroll and geography issues were similar, but one big change is that the Yankees have a different manager. It would be interesting to hear what Verducci has to say about that.

What do you think? Leave us a comment!

Shocker! Tom Verducci slams CC Sabathia, A-Rod, and the Yankees - again

Every Sports Illustrated Tom Verducci column ought to have the disclaimer "this author has financial ties with Joe Torre, so take everything the writer says about the Yankees with a grain of salt." Make that a salt shaker.

A day after writing an evisceration of Joe Girardi that he somehow missed doing on the worst manager in the League Championship Series this year - Joe Torre,  Verducci got his latest dig in against the Yankees in today's column, writing about CC Sabathia and Alex Rodriguez:

CC Sabathia and Alex Rodriguez have been here before: one win away from the World Series. Actually, between the two of them they have been here seven times before. And in seven games in which a victory would have put them in the World Series, their teams are 0-7.

 Um, Tom, how is CC responsible for his team losing two games against the Red Sox in the 2007 ALCS in which HE DIDN'T EVEN PITCH!  And in the game he did pitch, Game 5 of the ALCS, while he didn't pitch great - he gave up four runs in seven innings - he didn't pitch abysmally, ever. At any rate, Josh Beckett shut down the Indians' bats in that game, giving up only one run, and striking out 11. Maybe that's CC's fault as well

As for A-Rod, we all know about his postseason failures. It's not exactly news anymore. But was he single-handedly responsible? No, I think Joe Torre and the rest of the Yankees might have had a little something to do with it.

Speaking of Teflon Torre, how is it that Verducci completely ignored the "Where's Manny? In the Shower" whole to-do?  I had to laugh when I heard Torre defend Manny Ramirez taking a shower when Jimmy Rollins was winning the game for the Phillies. Joe told the media:

"Manny has so much confidence, and when we get a lead late in the game, and I've taken him out, whether it be for defense or we have a big lead, when we go up to shake hands after the game, he's in his street clothes," Torre said. "So it's really nothing different than he's done before. I don't think it's disrespect of anything. He wasn't going anywhere until the game was over, and we can't put him back in the game.

"But that's not something I thought was unusual since individuals are all different anyway. But he's always done that, so it's nothing that last night was going to be any different. As we say, Manny is Manny. He's a cool customer. But he certainly didn't have any lack of respect because of that. I think the way it turned out, it probably doesn't look good. But it's nothing different than he had done before."

If you remember from "The Yankee Years," Torre was apoplectic that A-Rod asked a clubbie to get him coffee (never mind that Torre had his own flunky making him his green tea.) Torre insinuated that A-Rod was a bad teammate and a prima donna.

And here's Manny, not watching his team play during a playoff game, and Joe's cool with that? And he's bending over backwards to defend this? Look, we know this goes on during a regular season game, and the All-Star Game (remember how A-Rod booked out of the game early last year, something I thought was horrible) but a playoff game? Wouldn't Manny need to be out there after the game to greet his teammates?

Look, I find Ramirez endlessly entertaining, but the double standard Torre has for Manny as opposed to the way he treated A-Rod is just breathtaking. And I would be interested to hear his co-author Verducci's take on the subject. But the writer had more important subjects to report, like Bob Sheppard's birthday, and coming up with a "West Coast Baseball" excuse for the LA teams not doing well. Looks like Verducci is still in the tank for Joe.

At any rate, I think it's amusing that, unless I missed it, Verducci has yet to write anything critical about Torre. Gee, I wonder why.

What do you think? Leave us a comment!