The Sports Rumors

Weekend Recap Part 2 of 3

Here is the baseball section of the weekend.

Before You Join the Fire-Torre Bandwagon, Ask Yourself a Few Questions

If you have been residing under a rock with some very high quality ear plugs for the past few days, you would STILL know that the Yankees are out of the postseason, getting beat in 4 games by the Cleveland Indians. Just a few days ago, Yankees owner George Steinbrenner found it necessary to go blabber his senile mouth about how if Torre didn’t manage to move past the first round, he would be fired.

I don’t know what Steinbrenner was thinking, if he even was thinking. Going out and saying such a thing on the heels of an elimination game isn’t “motivation”. It’s stupidity. These aren’t college kids who will go and “play one for the ol’ ball coach.” No, this isn’t a movie. These are professional athletes who are on the highest level of stardom, who make more money than they can spend, and have their own personal agendas to worry about rather than to be motivated by a 77 year old owner threatening their manager’s job. The antic was not only ridiculous, but disrespectful. If my boss threatened my job in front of all the other employees, and went out of his way to do so for several years, I would quit before he got the chance to fire me and I’d make sure I did something to make him hurt. Joe Torre is too nice of a guy to do that or say anything bad about “The Boss”, which makes it even lower and more despicable for Steinbrenner to continuously leave him out to dry like this.

Okay so the series is over and the Yankees are out. Why hasn’t the man fired Torre yet? What’s the hold up? If you say you’re going to do something, do it. If you’re going to stab your friend in the back, the same friend who helped you win plenty of championships and get you to the postseason twelve straight years, make sure you stab him so he doesn’t suffer. Torre has no idea what’s going to happen and the Yankees look like they’re going to take their time in deciding what to do, while he just sits there and waits. The levels of disrespect that Steinbrenner is showing makes me want to stop routing for the Yankees all together.

Stephen A. Smith said on ESPN news last night that the Yankees need to make a change. Why? Because they haven’t won a world series in all of seven years? Seven years is not that long of a time people. Get over yourself Steinbrenner. Get over yourself New York. Getting a team ready and maintaining their focus for the entire season is a manager’s job. It’s a job that Torre did to perfection for twelve straight years. When you go into a playoff series and your ace (Wang) absolutely chokes, how is that the manager’s fault? When no one on your team can hit worth a nickel, after being the best hitting team in the league, how is that the manager’s fault? If your MVP cannot drive in a run when he has the bases loaded and one out, how is that the manager’s fault? What would La Russa have done that would make Wang pitch better? What would La Russa have done to make Arod calm down and hit the way he did in the season? La Russa wouldn’t be able to make Posada have a better series in which he had only one hit. What would ANY manager have done that would have made the Yankees better for those four games?

Say the Yankees fire Torre. What do you accomplish? You bring in Tony La Russa, who everyone seems to be fathoming over. Please. He had squabbles in his tenure with the St. Louis press. What do you think will happen in the New York spotlight? If you don’t get La Russa, who are you going after? I haven’t even heard Joe Girardi’s name mentioned which is a pretty good indicator that he’s not in the running at this point. And forget who the replacement will be, what will happen to the team?

Do you really think Jorge Posada, Andy Pettite, and Mariano Rivera would want to stay? Absolutely not. They were all Joe Torre guys. Everyone on that team, with the exception of Arod, was a guy who loved Joe Torre. They would go out and fight for the guy. Ask them. Pretty much anyone interviewed has said that it doesn’t hurt to lose in the playoffs as much as it does to let down and lose for Joe Torre because he’s such a great manager and a great person. If you think you can find someone better, by all means. But I am 100% sure, absolutely, positively sure, that there is no manager in the game who can handle New York and Steinbrenner, along with the egos that came and went, with as much class and style as Joe Torre did. And I can also say with utter certainty that there is no manager who would have won the way Joe Torre did.

If and when the Yankees fire Joe Torre, I will love to see them miss the playoffs next year with a new manager. How can I say this when I’m a Yankees fan? Simple. I don’t respect organizations that treat good people badly. You screw Torre, you can go screw yourself for all I care.

In other baseball news, the playoffs have now lost pretty much all appeal. The Cubs are out, the Angels are out, and the Yankees are out. Go enjoy your Colorado-Arizona series while I enjoy some football.

A “Player’s guy” is what many described Torre as.