Torre: The Yankee Years

I should’ve been taking notes on this book I am reading: Torre: The Yankee Years. Steinbrenner has all this money to sign players, but it’s always tough to determine who can play under the pressure of New York City. GM Brian Cashman kept bringing in older high-priced players. Many couldn’t take the heat. Flops included Wilson Betemit, Johnny Damon, Jason Giambi, Kenny Rogers, Kenny Lofton, Kevin Brown, Tony Womack, Jaret Wright, Chuck Knoblach, Bobby Abreu, and others. Robinson Cano didn’t want to work. Alex Rodriquez was more concerned out his stats, and being loved, than winning championships. Cashman paid $46 million for a pitcher from Japan who was terrible. They let Andy Pettit and David Wells go after years of success and brought in aging pitchers like Roger Clemens, Kevin Brown, and Randy Johnson. They signed the older Gary Sheffield instead of the younger Vlad Guerrero. Carlos Beltran was a young star willing to take a discount to sign with the Yankees, but the Yankees balked.

 

The Red Sox jumped ahead by using the newer statistical analysis scouting, getting rid of the aging Nomar Garciaparra and signing Curt Schilling to go with Pedro Martinez. Still, Torre was able to take his aging, oft-injured band of highly paid rag-tags and make the playoffs year after year. After the greatest reliever in baseball history (Mariano Rivera) failed to hold the lead in game seven against Arizona - after being within one strike of winning the World Series, after finishing the year with the best record in baseball. In Spring Training the next February a fan told Torre to keep his head up after such a disappointing year.

 

After winning four world championships in his first five years with the Yankees, a feat never before accomplished in the history of baseball, Torre was constantly under the threat of being fired from Steinbrenner and other top executives, who didn’t understand the weaknesses on the team. Steinbrenner’s daughter married her landscaper and George put him on the Board of Directors. All of a sudden the landscaper was telling Torre what to do. But Joe didn’t care. After being fired as manager of the Cardinals, Braves, and Mets, Joe considered his entire time with the Yankees to be gravy. He would stand up to management criticism in meetings. Interesting book.

 

The book also detailed the craze to start pulling starting pitchers early and use more relievers. Said it started after manager Billy Martin’s 1980 Oakland Athletics led the majors with 90 complete games. All four of his talented young starters blew their arms out, and were never the same. Martin was fired and Tony LaRussa was hired. LaRussa was super careful with his next batch of starters, and invented the bullpen by committee that exists today.

Speaking of, the Dodgers have won the National League these past two seasons by expanding  the bullpen by committee idea to include the entire team by committee, with platoons at almost every position. Instead of signing aging stars, they’ve employed younger players – cutting payroll by $100 million.

 

Back when the Phillies were good they used to sell out every game. Now they traded for one of the better catchers in baseball. Rumor has Bryce Harper signing there, then maybe Kimbrel, an Astros pitcher Kiekel, and next year maybe Mike Trout. The Phillies have money the Braves don’t, even though the Braves do have a little. Wish the Braves would get Kimbrel, but not at an astronomical price. Kimbrel has a lot of miles on him already.

Lots of people were making a big deal about Duke/UNC, and deservedly so. Said it was one of the toughest tickets in sports. Saw a list that didn’t include the Masters, which is an even tougher ticket. Years ago Will and I got to see a Duke/UNC ACC final at the Georgia Dome.

 

LeBron James said he was going into playoff mode early this year, as if he didn’t play hard all the time. Maybe not something you’d want the world to know. I know the 82 game schedule can take a tremendous physical toll on a player, especially a player who plays a lot of minutes. One fan said that all players take it easy during the regular season, but when someone else reminded him that Michael Jordan had played hard all the time, the commenter didn’t want to hear it.

The world we live in today. Reality and truth is different for everyone, instead of the truth being the truth.   Like a list of “greatest QB’s since 1900” only included QB’s from 2000 or later. Maybe they got the title wrong.

 

At work I do my best to stay ahead of my customer. Parts can take months to make so I can’t wait until the last minute. On Tuesday I thought I had two weeks of a part in stock, and last week I had asked for the fabricator to ship more parts to the painter. Today our management has a big meeting with our customer, so no surprises were needed. What happened? This morning everything fell apart. (1) The forecast was wrong – at least twice. (2) Parts were shipped to the wrong building. (3) Paperwork was wrong, making us think we had more in stock than we did. So much for those two weeks. (4) The fabricator hadn’t shipped to the painter. (5) Raw material had been cut wrong, due to all the retirements I’d mentioned before. (6) Plus another raw material order was late. Had any of those six things went right it wouldn’t have been so bad.

 

Did you hear? Last Saturday David Lewis married Sherri Hall in Roswell. Danny Downing may have officiated. David and Sherri may be attending Johnson Ferry, but I haven’t seen them.

 

Last night Ceil had small group so I worked late, then stopped by the library. Checked out a Vince Flynn novel and Kick Kennedy biography. Ready for my trip to Macon.

 

Ceil’s group got out early, so she picked up a rotisserie chicken at Whole Foods and fried some rice for our supper. Watched Chicago Med, which continues to go out of their way to plug into the lunatic fringe. Last night it was whites hating blacks, though the hospital administrator had to deal with blacks wanting to hate back. But the black mother realized the error of her ways. General Hospital this ain’t.