The Clash of Sentimentalisms

We have a theory that in baseball sentimentality is inversely proportional to winning -- at least for the Yankees. New York media and fans love to exaggerate the contributions of bad but lovable players. It's why fans fondly recall Andy Stankiewicz's stint with the team in the early 90's, but few remember Dion James, who was vastly more valuable. It's why the portly Enrique Wilson, with a career line of 14 stolen bases against 19 caught stealings, served as the team's pinch runner during the unspeakable horror of the 2004 playoffs. Give us a player with a funny face (Wilson) or a funny name that makes for a goofy sobriquet (Stanky), and we'll find a spot for him in our hearts, and sometimes our lineup.

A corollary to this theory is that the Yankees are more vulnerable to sentimentality than other teams. This is not because New Yorkers are more sensitive souls than the rest of the country. Rather, it's because we're deeply insecure about the team's disgusting wealth. The only way to relieve the burden of guilt -- a burden which stems from the litany of expensive free agent signings and salary dump trades which every year benefit us at some other team's expense -- is for us (the fans and media) to latch onto the journeymen, the career minor leaguers, and any other underdog we can find. Enrique Wilson, Clay Bellinger, and yes, Shelly Duncan, represent the Yankee fan's penance. It's our way saying to a Royals' fan, "we, too, know it feels like to support shitty journeymen. "

Never mind that this is a false analogy, or that Royals fan would be rightfully offended at any suggestion of empathy from a Yankee supporter. The Yankees will always be filthy rich, and as fans we'll always be despised for it. Since it's impossible even for Yankee fans to embrace this side of Yankeedom -- wealth just isn't attractive -- we need to forge some type of underdog-ism in our identity, even if it's largely a lie. Otherwise we'd be unbearable, even to ourselves. But how can we do this without disrupting the team? Can the Yankees build a roster that makes sense and allows us to feel good about ourselves at the same time? Read more

The things we know that we know

After last night's latest kick in the teeth by the most unlikely of sources, we found ourselves considering the vicissitudes of popular and media perception of managers over the course of a season. If the ship doesn't turn, Girardi, thus far admired for his candor and "no-nonsense" approach, may find himself firmly on the defensive.

Girardi is not only in trouble because his team is floundering. What his supporters might be worried about is how fans and the press will reflect on the season if the Yankees miss the playoffs for the first time since 1994 and the Dodgers make it. Columns will be written in droves about Torre's deft managerial touch, and how sorely his calming presence was missed. Maybe he'll even earn manager of the year of the honors.

What Murray Chase and his peers will fail to realize is that correlation does not equal causality, and that Joe Torre inherited a team teeming with excellent young players as he left a team whose golden era had long passed -- and whose decline he helped accelerate.

We of course consider it axiomatic that managers thrive on luck. And has there ever been a luckier son of a bitch than Joe Torre? Read more

Ride me, big Sheldon

Maybe we are being overly pessimistic, but it seems more likely that Shelly Duncan, anointed the "Babe Ruth of the ICL" by our very own Peter Abraham, will be given a shot as the regular first baseman. And why not? He's large (and yet utterly childlike), enthusiastic, prone to smiling, and one of the few genuine feel-good stories of last year. People seem like him, particularly sportswriters, most likely because he's a walking human interest story.

We've already lamented the free ride he gets in spite of what has been a thoroughly mediocre career. At some point, though, the inability of the brain trust to look in an unbiased way at exactly what the team has in Shelly Duncan is going to hurt them.

The big concern is that the right player may become available, but will get overlooked due to the team's faith in Shelly. Dan Johnson was recently DFA'ed, again, and would probably provide a more dependable bat. He's far from Carlos Pena -- unbelievably a Yankee farmhand once -- but he has consistently gotten on base over his career at an excellent rate, unlike Duncan.

Then again, Dan Johnson didn't toil in the minor league for years, and doesn't play the game with the requisite childlike exuberance. And what use would he be to the team without those qualities on a resume? Read more

Books we won't be reading

We thought it'd be fun to keep a list of books we won't be reading this summer, or ever. One that will be pretty high on that list is a new one from Mike Lowell -- Deep Drive: A Long Journey to Finding the Champion Within. If the title alone doesn't grab you, consider that Josh Beckett has wrote the introduction.

We wonder how soon it will be before we reach a saturation point of books about the Red Sox. The Yankees are not immune to self-congratulatory publishing, but the team has yet to violate the unwritten rule which dicates that players who are not one of the, say, seven best on their team don't deserve their own book. (Baseball Prospectus ranks Lowell as the 15th most valuable Red Sox going into 2008). And while Lowell may have won a deserved WS MVP, I somehow doubt that we'll see in print any time soon a memoir from John Wetteland or Scott Brosius.

Alas, until these books cease to make money, we can only guess which excellent new titles will emerge next. A few possibilities:

"Batting Eight: My marginal contributions to the Red Sox Winning Season" by Julio Lugo

"Cleaning My Plate: Backstops Doug Mirabelli and Jason Varitek's share their cooking secrets"

"Putting the 'I' in Team: My failure to meet any semblance of the expectations placed before me" by Wily Mo Pena

"I'm not Greek, nor am I a God: My personal struggle against mistaken identity" by Kevin Youkilis.

We imagine that any of the above titles would be more readable that Lowell's self-indulgent tripe...unless, of course, he managed to track down Ed Yarnall for an interview. (No, we're not bitter about that.) Read more

On Fora and Fawning

If you support the Yankees, are under-35, and have unfettered access to the internet, it is extremely likely that you'll have come across the uninspiredly named "NYY Fans Forum". Some of you may even post to the site, having registered under a clever moniker like "Jeter4eva" and selected a flashy avatar that combines anime imagery with an A-Rod bobblehead.

Lest we sound too arrogant, let it be known that we too have acted on the urge to post, empowered by a unbelievably available username that alludes to our favorite member of Murderer's Row. What really bothers us, though, is that our beloved community of fans -- and we don't use the word "beloved" ironically -- seems to have convinced itself that the team's current struggles, not to mention every playoff and World Series defeat since 2000, can be attributed to a failure to compete. Or, to use an even more vexing term, a failure to "execute".

We think Girardi addressed this point best in a recent post-game interview. Asked about Ian Kennedy's struggle to throw a first pitch strike, a telltale sign of "execution", Girardi curtly replied "it's not like he isn't trying to get ahead of hitters."

In equating a failure to "execute" with a failure to "compete", one necessarily makes the assumption that the players aren't trying hard enough. Or, even more curiously, that they've "forgotten" how to compete, as if competitive instinct were a trig formula or a set of keys. Every time a pitcher walks a batter on four pitches, or a hitter fails to bring home a runner on third with less than two outs, we are told that our players, by not performing these fundamentals, are not competing. It's not about playing well; it's about effort.

This actually makes us pine for the days when Yankee fora were little more than collections of fawning love notes to O'Neill, Bernie, and Jeter. Are we Yankee fans really as bad at losing as we are at winning? Read more