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Lawrence of Arabia
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of the Gulag Archipelago
Apr 2001
time: 06:21
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here some articles from NY Times, much better written than boston globe
quote:
IT could be argued that a season that began with Derek Jeter literally helping Alex Rodriguez into his pinstriped jersey like some dutiful clubhouse attendant symbolically ended with Jeter deferring to an undeserving A-Rod in a fateful swing moment destined in Yankees lore to live on infamously.
In the aftermath of the worst postseason collapse in team sports memory, you could pinpoint any number of plays or decisions made or not made as the defining momentum changer in the American League Championship Series, and who would have the power to prove you wrong?
You could blame Joe Torre for formulaic managing. You could lament the sad state of the Yankees' starting rotation. You could pin successive extra-inning losses completed in the same day on the bullpen. You could come to the eminently sane conclusion that the Red Sox, for all their foibles and temptations of fate, were just the better-bonded team.
For my money, what forever altered baseball's most stubborn competitive karma was a pivotal Game 5, eighth-inning sequence that was illustrative of a Yankees franchise that is groping for markers while being trapped between its past and its future: Jeter sacrificing against Mike Timlin with Miguel Cairo at second base and nobody out in a 4-2 game, with Rodriguez up next.
Two innings earlier, Jeter had stepped in against a weakening Pedro Martínez with the bases loaded, two out and the Yankees trailing by a run. From the television in my New Jersey den came a prediction from Joe Buck or Tim McCarver - can't remember which - that Jeter, his average down around .200, was going to put his stamp on the series, sooner or later. And just like that, with an opposite-field stroke that has served him so well for all of his major-league days, Jeter laced a drive down the right-field line, clearing the bases, giving the Yankees their two-run lead.
Jeter, the captain and still the indisputable heart of George Steinbrenner's $180 million masterpiece, one of the last remaining links to a Torre-managed team that defined the concept of clutch, stood at second, his fist characteristically clenched.
Of all the Yankees, in uniform and out, Jeter has most often acknowledged the drifting of time, four years and counting since the last triumphant World Series, and made the candid distinction between then and now. From his privileged, double-stall perch in the Yankees' clubhouse, he has witnessed the turnover of position players, the parade of pitchers, and been ever so reluctant to misidentify any for the compatriots with whom he won four rings.
Once again, Steinbrenner is learning the hard way that he can dramatically outspend his competition, he can deal for the richest player in the game, but he can't buy chemistry. He can underwrite a cable television network to extend the Yankees' domination of regional airwaves, but he can't order up a whole new batch of World Series classics to rerun all winter.
On that afternoon last February when the Yankees staged a gala news conference to introduce Rodriguez as their newest ratings-driver, the sense of a shifting Yankees personnel terrain was palpable, though it was A-Rod who was volunteering to change positions.
Not a single bead of sweat was seen on Jeter's brow as he answered questions about the new sheriff in town. To all who asserted that he should cede his position to a player widely regarded as his superior, Jeter's diplomatic counter was that he had been the one who for eight years was celebrated for unquantifiable contributions and especially for toeing his Boss's bottom line.
How did Jeter hold up, performance-wise, against the weight of A-Rod's presence? I won't bore you with statistics, but allowing for Jeter's dismal start, let's just say that anyone who watched the Yankees closely and still believes that Rodriguez is the better ballplayer must be more mathematician than baseball scholar.
Jeter, so fond of the fundamentals, has been known to sacrifice on his own, but if I am Torre, mindful of my nine years with Jeter and one year with A-Rod, there is no way I give away a Jeter at-bat in that eighth-inning, Game 5 situation. Sound as the bunt strategy may be, I want Jeter driving the ball to the right side, as he had done two innings before. If I am Torre, I want to cling to the player who has welcomed those it's-on-me moments from his very first October in the Bronx.
Rodriguez hadn't earned that trust at the expense of his friend, Jeter. He struck out against Timlin. The Yankees failed to extend their lead. Life returned to Fenway Park when David Ortiz led off the bottom of the inning with a home run off Tom Gordon. The Red Sox were soon on their way back to New York for Game 6, for one last fateful eighth-inning encounter with Jeter and A-Rod.
So much was made of A-Rod's karate chopping the ball out of Bronson Arroyo's glove that the larger point was missed: after Jeter had singled in a run, brought the Yankees within 4-2, they were one drive into the gap away from being back in the game. A-Rod rolled out to the pitcher, another deer-in-the-headlights at-bat, just when the familiar Yankees-Red Sox karma might have been re-established.
Instead, there was Game 7, the convincing completion of the Red Sox revolution, and there was no mistaking Torre's Yankees anymore for a team that can close the deal.
"We've had teams that were good at it, but this is not the same team," Jeter said afterward, with a trace of disgust. All he can do now is await the next parade of newcomers and hope for the best. |
quote:
THEO EPSTEIN had his hand around a can of Budweiser.
He looked like your basic 30-something in a sports bar in Boston, but there was one difference.
"I'm drinking a beer in Yankee Stadium," noted Epstein, the youthful general manager of a World Series team.
This was early yesterday in the Champagne-slick visitors' clubhouse, where the Red Sox were indulging themselves in one of those rarities in sport: celebrating inside the Yankees' building.
Epstein stopped short of making a toast. That would have been corny, and he is way too smooth for that. But the crumpled can of beer was symbolically hoisted toward all who had suffered, for decades and decades, at the hands of the Yankees.
"I was only 4 when we moved up from New York, a few months before Bucky Dent," he said. "So I can't say I remember it."
But he became a Red Sox fan when he reached the age of reason, "around 1980-81, the end of the Yaz era," he said.
He was a schoolboy of 12 when the ball rolled through Bill Buckner's wickets. He was the boy-wonder general manager last October when Grady Little could not bring himself to remove Pedro Martínez from last year's seventh game. So Epstein, who turned 30 last Dec. 29, has become the repository for Boston memory, Boston suffering.
"Lots of fans suffered in 1949 when they thought they had the best ball club but they lost to the Yankees," he said, referring to Jerry Coleman's hit that eluded Al Zarilla in right field and rolled for a three-run double.
"Lots of fans suffered in 1978," he said, referring to Dent's improbable homer that helped win the playoff.
"Lots of fans suffered last year," he said, evoking the memory of Aaron Boone's home run that won a pennant.
Early yesterday, it suddenly got better. Epstein, who could not land Alex Rodriguez last winter, had brought in David Ortiz for 2003 and Keith Foulke for 2004.
Now the Sox are in the World Series because they achieved parity with the Yankees over the past two years. Even though they lost Rodriguez for a difference of $12 million, they made better decisions than the Yankees and accumulated more energy, more freedom, more creativity in their clubhouse.
"Johnny Damon says we are idiots - and he's right," Epstein said.
In the past, the Yankees almost always had a superior will to go along with their talent, but the Sox have now won 27 of 52 of their meetings in the past two years.
Some of that edge is corporate. The Yankees are owned and run by George Steinbrenner, who talks about "my baseball people" but throttles human initiative at every turn. The Yankees have had great success under Steinbrenner, but have not won a World Series since 2000, and that is the standard.
The Sox have not won a World Series since 1918, but at least they are in this one. They have bright leadership in John Henry, the owner, and Tom Werner, the chairman, and Larry Lucchino, the president. (The New York Times has a sliver of ownership of the Sox, which is never an issue in our writing about them.)
These operators saw fit to hire Epstein, who now has 13 years in baseball, plus degrees from Yale and San Diego Law School. They rely on the statistical analysis of Bill James. At the same time, they put a human face on their organization.
For their traditional morning game on Patriots Day last April, they allowed fans to ring the field to take pictures of the players. Damon, the gentle center fielder with the flowing locks, hugged and smiled and chatted for the patrons. You can't tell me there is no carryover from such good vibrations.
The Yankees, who operate on palpable fear, are now suffering from dry rot, both psychological and athletic.
Early yesterday, Derek Jeter, almost exactly six months Epstein's junior and equally poised, was conducting a postmortem of the latest Yankee failure. When somebody suggested that the Yankees had a history of success, Jeter was very quick to interject: "It's not the same team. I've said it over and over again. It's not the same team."
For several years, Jeter has been suggesting that the Yankees' edge vanished when Paul O'Neill, Scott Brosius and Tino Martinez all departed after 2001. Now the Yankees are a collection of expensive stars and a few misfits. Did anybody catch the silent treatment shown Kevin Brown when the surly pitcher left the mound Wednesday night?
The Yankees are becoming the old Red Sox - 25 players and a whole bunch of separate cabs.
The Red Sox are becoming the old Yankees. Theo Epstein and his players were celebrating in Yankee Stadium. |
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Lawrence of Arabia
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of the Gulag Archipelago
Apr 2001
time: 06:21
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quote:
It was the longest postseason series ever, 29 hours and 7 minutes of theater that shook the psyches of two of baseball's bedrock franchises.
For the Boston Red Sox, winning Game 7 of the American League Championship Series on Wednesday night was the greatest moment of 86 tortured seasons. For the Yankees, it was a colossal flop, the kind they had somehow avoided through decades of charmed Octobers.
"If we're there all the time,'' Manager Joe Torre said yesterday, "why shouldn't it happen to us?''
But why did it? How could it? Who would have envisioned a scenario in which the Red Sox became the first team in baseball history to win a series after trailing by three games to none, and did it against their lordly rival?
"It's disappointing to be here packing my box up, that's for sure,'' Yankees pitcher Tanyon Sturtze said as he cleared out his locker at Yankee Stadium yesterday. "That's a credit to them. Coming back from three down, it takes a special team to do that.''
The Red Sox, who will play host to the Houston Astros or the St. Louis Cardinals in Game 1 of the World Series on Saturday, would not dispute that. But they had help from the Yankees, whose flaws were exposed at the worst possible time. And they benefited from a succession of magical moments, the kind often fated to go against them.
At a news conference yesterday, Torre was asked if there was any moment in the series that struck him as a turning point. He laughed and asked the reporters to guess.
Kevin Millar's leadoff walk against Mariano Rivera in the ninth inning of Game 4, with Boston trailing by a run and just three outs from elimination? Dave Roberts's subsequent stolen base, which put him in position to tie the score? Tony Clark's double late in Game 5, which bounced into the Fenway Park stands for a ground-rule double and kept a Yankees runner from scoring the go-ahead run? Alex Rodriguez's mindless karate chop of Boston pitcher Bronson Arroyo on a tag play in Game 6, a violation of the rules that ended with Rodriguez being called out and a Yankees rally being squelched?
Torre took suggestions until somebody mentioned the sixth inning of Game 5. Derek Jeter had given the Yankees a 4-2 lead with a three-run double off a fading Pedro Martínez. Now Martínez had to face Hideki Matsui, then the hottest hitter of the series and a nemesis of Martínez, who, as in other instances, remained in the game despite a mounting pitch count.
"We had Pedro on the ropes," Torre said. "We were ahead, 4-2. It was two balls, one strike to Matsui with the bases loaded, and he hit a line drive to right-center field and someone who they normally take out for defense made a diving catch. That sort of sits and says, 'That's not a good sign.' That, to me, was the key."
If the ball had gotten by Trot Nixon, the Red Sox right fielder, the Yankees probably would have taken a 7-2 lead and cruised to victory in a game that would clinch the series. But Nixon caught it, and the Yankees did not score again for 15 innings.
By then, they had lost the fifth game and were on their way to losing Game 6. Jeter's double, as it turned out, had given the Yankees the last lead they would have in the series.
Moments like that, and larger questions, will haunt the Yankees. Two hours after Game 7 ended, the Yankees' principal owner, George Steinbrenner, told General Manager Brian Cashman that he would not be fired as a result of the team's collapse. But yesterday, Cashman still had trouble shaking the memories of the last nine days.
"That's what you do when you're sitting at home,'' Cashman said. "You relive the things that prevented you from getting there. It shadows you and flashes in your head. You try to change the subject, and it'll come back."
For three games, the Yankees could do little wrong. They scored the first eight runs of the series, blitzing an injured Curt Schilling in a 10-7 victory in Game 1. Their fans roasted Martínez for six innings in Game 2 as starter Jon Lieber confounded Boston, 3-1.
In the third game, postponed a day by rain, the Yankees scored the second-most runs in any postseason game in history, storming to a 19-8 victory. By the ninth inning of Game 4, with a 4-3 lead and Rivera in the game, clubhouse workers began loading equipment trunks. A sweep was imminent, it seemed.
It is Torre's nature to go for the kill in pivotal games by using Rivera to start the eighth inning. He did it in the Yankees' last World Series victory - Game 3 against the Florida Marlins last season - and in the doomed seventh game of the 2001 World Series at Arizona.
With Boston's 3-4-5 hitters due to bat in the bottom of the eighth in Game 4, Torre called for a well-rested Rivera to finish the sweep, bypassing the struggling Tom Gordon. Dependable all season, Gordon, a first-year Yankee, admitted he could not harness his excitement in the playoffs.
Rivera worked through the eighth, but he walked Millar to start the ninth, and the Red Sox inserted Roberts, a pinch-runner acquired in a low-profile move at the trading deadline. Rivera would rue the walk after the game. "I don't know what happened,'' he said. "I tried to get the ball to the outside corner. I couldn't.''
Roberts stole second and scored the tying run on Bill Mueller's single, up the middle and just past Rivera. Gordon followed with two strong innings, but Paul Quantrill gave up a two-run, game-ending homer to David Ortiz in the 12th.
Quantrill and Gordon had pitched a combined 165 games in the regular season, ranking first and second in the league, respectively. Their use - or possible overuse - was a direct result of shaky starting pitching, which forced them into game after game. The Yankees did not throw a nine-inning complete game all season.
Still, the Yankees could never have expected failures by Gordon and Rivera. Even Millar, the voluble Boston first baseman, had said before the series that the Red Sox needed to get a lead off the starters, because Gordon and Rivera were so dominant.
"That's our strength,'' Torre said, "and we weren't able to close the deal.''
Gordon faltered in Game 5 after getting a double-play groundout from the dangerous Manny Ramirez to end the seventh. The Yankees had a two-run lead with six outs to go, but Ortiz led off the eighth with a homer.
After a walk and a single put runners at the corners, Torre called for Rivera, whom he had not planned to use for more than four outs. Boston tied the score on a sacrifice fly.
The Yankees had chances. Boston had used Keith Foulke for two and two-thirds innings in Game 4, an eternity for a closer, and Foulke walked Ruben Sierra with two outs in the ninth inning of Game 5. Clark then doubled to right, but the wall in that corner of Fenway is no more than five feet high. The ball skipped into the stands, forcing Sierra to hold at third.
"That could have changed the whole dimension,'' Cashman said. "Instead of us sitting at home, we could be going forward.''
The Red Sox won it in the 14th when Ortiz singled off Esteban Loaiza after six foul balls. With the victory, the Red Sox became just the third team, out of 26, to rally for two victories after trailing three games to none in a postseason series.
John Olerud, the injured Yankees first baseman, had been on the 1999 Mets, who pulled off the same feat against Atlanta in the National League Championship Series. But even Olerud figured the Yankees had control of this series.
"I didn't think there was any one time we thought we were in trouble,'' Olerud said.
After going 1 for 13 with runners in scoring position in Game 5, the Yankees went 1 for 6 in that situation in Game 6. The final chance came with two outs and two on in the ninth, with Clark facing Foulke again. Clark, the potential pennant-winning run, struck out on a fastball.
There were few moments to ponder from Game 7, beyond Torre's choice of Kevin Brown as the starter. He had few other options. Boston started Derek Lowe on two days' rest, but Torre would not start Orlando Hernandez on two days' rest because of Hernandez's recent shoulder trouble.
It would be Brown or Javier Vazquez on three days' rest, and Torre chose Brown because of his experience. But Brown left a bases-loaded, one-out mess for Vazquez in the second inning, and Johnny Damon smacked Vazquez's first pitch for a game-breaking grand slam.
"Because of Game 7, people are going to say we didn't get to the World Series because of our starting rotation,'' Cashman said. "We pitched well. We lost Game 7 because of it, but there was a collective breakdown on the team the last four games.''
As he listened to theories about the team and the series on his drive home to Connecticut early Thursday morning, Cashman switched the radio dial to political talk. He did not need to be reminded of the scrutiny the Yankees now face.
This winter, he knows, will be especially uncomfortable.
"Losing is bad enough,'' Cashman said. "But it certainly makes it worse because of how we lost it and who we lost it to.'' |
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Lawrence of Arabia
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of the Gulag Archipelago
Apr 2001
time: 06:21
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im over it
Last edited by Lawrence of Arabia on 22-10-2004 at 10:51
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Apolyton Time is 00:21. |
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22-10-2004 01:36
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. And, also, when A-Rod was dealt from the Mariners, the next year the M's won 116 games.
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