{"id":465,"date":"2006-10-09T10:32:51","date_gmt":"2006-10-09T17:32:51","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/keymasterproductions.com\/blog\/?p=465"},"modified":"2006-10-09T10:32:51","modified_gmt":"2006-10-09T17:32:51","slug":"new-york-equals-atlanta","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/www.keymasterproductions.com\/blog\/2006\/10\/09\/new-york-equals-atlanta\/","title":{"rendered":"New York equals Atlanta"},"content":{"rendered":"

It seems that George Vescey and I are on the same page. I’ve been saying since the Yanks pathetically & meekly lost to the Tigers 3 – 1 that they are now they Atlanta Braves – a team that gets to the playoffs and then loses every year – and that I hate it. Sure enough, in the “Sports of the Times” article in Sunday’s paper, he starts his column with: “As of now, the Yankees are officially the Atlanta Braves. They have a nice little season. They qualify for the playoffs. And then bad stuff happens to them.” I am so pissed off and disappointed. They didn’t play like champs, they played like chumps.
\nAs the Boss put it: \u201cI am deeply disappointed at our being eliminated so early in the playoffs. This result is absolutely not acceptable to me, nor to our great and loyal Yankee fans. I want to congratulate the Detroit Tigers organization and wish them well. Rest assured, we will go back to work immediately and try to right this sad failure and provide a championship for the Yankees, as is our goal every year.\u201d
\nThe thing people need to realize is that the great Yankee teams from 1996 – 2001 had role players with heart as well as<\/em> superstars. They need to go back to that model ASAP. Get SupercalafragalisticexpealaBrosious to play third. Get Chad Curtis to play the outfield. Bring back some hungry players, bring back Paulie to smash some helmets and yell. Get some better and younger pitchers.
\nRodriguez and Teammates Fall Apart, and Yankees Fall Short Again<\/strong>
\nby George Vecsey
\nDetroit
\nAs of now, the Yankees are officially the Atlanta Braves. They have a nice little season. They qualify for the playoffs. And then bad stuff happens to them.
\nThis pattern worked well in Atlanta for a long time, but I have the feeling that Yankee fans (and the Yankees\u2019 principal owner) are not going to put up with this, not for one more year. This kind of showing is not why a gross amount of cable revenue is being paid to Alex Rodriguez, who just may need to move on.
\nAt the moment, the city of Detroit is thrilled \u2014 orange-flag-waving, horn-honking, income-anticipating thrilled. It was fun to see the Tigers\u2019 players touching hands with their fans at the edge of the field (and spraying them with Champagne) after their 8-3 drubbing of the Yankees yesterday, but the Bronx Bombers do not exist for the humanitarian purpose of providing a lift to a downtrodden city.
\nThe Yankees have not won a World Series since 2000. In Yankees thinking, this is a very long time. Yesterday\u2019s loss was one of the most humiliating for the Yanks in the 11 years of Joe Torre\u2019s tenure as the manager.
\nAfter winning their opening game Tuesday, the Yanks watched the upstarts play crisp, aggressive ball while the Yankees panicked, all over the place. Rodriguez was a wreck. Even Derek Jeter was lunging at pitches yesterday. And Torre was juggling players and showing he had lost faith in Rodriguez, his most expensive player. Now begins the revolution.
\nRodriguez is not a bad person. He works hard, but he is being paid $25.2 million a year over 10 years to win the World Series, and that is not happening. He went hitless again yesterday, batted .071 in this short series, and has lost more than a series, more than a season. He has lost his teammates.
\nIt\u2019s a foxhole thing. The players know that Rodriguez has come up tiny in big games over the years. Now, with all of New York watching, A-Rod has come undone. If the Yankees\u2019 management brought him back next year, the players would only ask, what about October?
\nAfter the final game, Rodriguez deflected any talk of moving on. He stood and faced the waves of news media and said: \u201cI\u2019ve never run from problems. I\u2019m 100 percent committed to being a Yankee. This is the only place I want to play.\u201d He added that he might think differently \u201cif they\u2019re dying to get me out of here.\u201d
\nThere was no talk of that from Brian Cashman, the general manager, who said he was stunned at the reversal in three days. He called the attention to Rodriguez unfortunate, saying that other players \u201clet us down at the same time.\u201d
\nCashman also said he had no thoughts of trying to trade Rodriguez, or of making any other personnel moves at that moment.
\n\u201cI would like to figure it out and wrap my arms around anybody,\u201d Cashman said. \u201cI believe in working through adversity \u2014 \u2018I got your back.\u2019 I\u2019m not giving up on anybody.\u201d
\nAs admirable as Cashman\u2019s sentiments were, he has seen Rodriguez become identified as the main problem. Before this series began, Torre announced he was dropping Rodriguez to sixth, saying he had so many superstars he could basically pull a lineup out of his hat.
\nSome managers might have insulted everybody\u2019s attention by pretending there was nothing wrong with Rodriguez, but Torre did the opposite: he confirmed A-Rod\u2019s distress to the one person who might be trying to deny it \u2014 A-Rod himself.
\nA-Rod was subsequently moved back to fourth, and then yesterday was demoted to eighth. \u201cWe\u2019re trying to win a ballgame,\u201d Torre said.
\nThat did not happen. Rodriguez was hitless and even made a throwing error at third base, which led to the Tigers\u2019 fourth run. It was a terrible end to his third year with the Yankees.
\nRodriguez would have to waive his no-trade clause, but it may be time to persuade him to do just that. The body language in the clubhouse is brutal, with Jeter, the captain, and most other key Yankees visibly abstract about Rodriguez. On some great teams, strong clubhouse personalities would have cleared the air, but Jeter\u2019s team seems to lack the crusty resolve of great Yankees teams of the past.
\nOnly Tuesday, many of us were speaking of the Yankees\u2019 lineup as the best in baseball history \u2014 stars at every position, a modern Murderers\u2019 Row. After this series, the 1927 Yankees of Ruth and Gehrig are safe for a while.
\nThe George Steinbrenner we used to know and love would be staging a King Lear imitation right about now, attempting to regain the powers of his youth. It is not clear how much Steinbrenner has left, physically or psychologically, but in his demanding prime he would have been firing or threatening everybody \u2014 relatives, executives, coaches, scouts, players and, yes, the manager.
\nSeeing the Yankees go from Murderers\u2019 Row to virtual Hitless Wonders in recent days makes me wonder if Torre has a feel for this club anymore. However, moving Rodriguez just may revive the energy of this club.
\nSomething\u2019s got to change. Steinbrenner never meant for his Yankees to become the Atlanta Braves.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

It seems that George Vescey and I are on the same page. I’ve been saying since the Yanks pathetically & meekly lost to the Tigers 3 – 1 that they are now they Atlanta Braves – a team that gets to the playoffs and then loses every year – and that I hate it. Sure […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[14],"tags":[69,597,723],"class_list":["post-465","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-sports","tag-baseball","tag-sports","tag-yankees"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.keymasterproductions.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/465","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.keymasterproductions.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.keymasterproductions.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.keymasterproductions.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.keymasterproductions.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=465"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"http:\/\/www.keymasterproductions.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/465\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.keymasterproductions.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=465"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.keymasterproductions.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=465"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.keymasterproductions.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=465"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}