Back for a Rant

Hey all you ex-Leatherheads, I know Flashing the Leather folded but I had to rant somewhere about Joe Torre's book and this is as good a medium as any (particularly now that no one will read it since the blog has been inactive for months).

As everyone knows, Tom Verducci and Joe Torre recently wrote a book, which I have -- admittedly -- not yet read. I have read excerpts, though, and this posting is not so much about the book as it is about the drivel that other folks are writing about it.

So, please read David L. Ulin's piece on it. Or just read what I wrote, I'll boil it down to its most infuriating and barest bones for you.


"Last week, as the controversy over Joe Torre and Tom Verducci's "The Yankee Years" was ratcheting up, I got an e-mail from my brother, who, like me, is a lifelong New York Yankees fan."
. . . okay, he's fessing up. I'm willing to allow for a little bit of homerism, but try not to take it overboard. Is it a deal, Dave? Oh, and please don't tell me that A-Rod isn't clutch. I'll give you my overtime pay from last week if you don't say something about A-Rod not being clutch.


"On the surface, none of this [steroids scandal, the rise of "moneyball"] appears to have much to do with the Yankees: Although Clemens and others on the 2000 team have been embroiled in the steroids scandal, the team never had an ingrown culture of cheating, while the new age, numbers-crunching style of management demands a patience Steinbrenner lacks."
. . . apparently it does not matter how many of your players cheat if it is not your team's "culture." Anyone who watches baseball knows that the rise of Moneyball has a lot to do with the Yankees as they have played the Athletics, Twins and Red Sox (among others) in the postseason several times under Joe Torre.


"Torre's reaction to the steroids question is the one instance in which he pulls his punches; otherwise, he comes off as reflective and forthright. He's terrific on the day-to-day dynamics of the Yankees, the way the selfless, win-at-all-costs culture of the championship teams dissipated with the departure of Paul O'Neill, Scott Brosius and Tino Martinez after the 2001 season, leaving a void filled by selfish superstars."
. . . shockingly, Torre doesn't say anything about steroids. He extols the virtues of his Championship winning teams and throws the "selfish superstars" under the bus. I'm really glad he's going out on a limb here.


"Such a trend began with the 2001 signing of Jason Giambi -- a move Torre opposed in writing, so he couldn't be held responsible if it didn't work out -- and it's personified by the contradictory figure of Rodriguez, perhaps the most talented and least endearing superstar in American sports, an insecure stat machine utterly unable to hit when it counts."
. . . that bit about A-Rod is just wrong. Forget about the clutch thing, if you buy that you're not worth speaking to anyway. The thing that bothers me is A-Rod being the "least endearing superstar in American sports." Terrell Owens? Ray Lewis? Roger Clemens? Barry Bonds? Should we keep going here? These aren't guys who are equally endearing to A-Rod, these are Grade-A bad dudes. Criminals, in many cases. We can go for more, if you'd like.


"Much of the media buzz around "The Yankee Years" has involved reports that Yankee players called Rodriguez "A-Fraud" or that the player was so obsessed with shortstop Derek Jeter that it "recalled the 1992 film 'Single White Female.'"
. . . don't remember this movie. Stupid nickname, by the way.


"In the context of the book, however, these lines are throwaways, not even written in Torre's voice. Far more interesting is the manager's assessment that Rodriguez could not succeed as a team player because he is unwilling to fail."
. . . unlike Paul O'Neill? Oh, I'm sorry, Paul O'Neill just wants to punch people in the face. A-Rod gets sad. What an asshole.


"That's the key to Jeter, who has always done anything to help the team. As for Rodriguez, Torre notes, 'When it comes to a key situation, . . . he can't get himself to concern himself with getting the job done, instead of how it looks.'">
. . . yep, A-Rod moved to Third Base because the Yankees infield would have LOOKED weird. Not to, you know, get the third base "job done."


"That's a pretty damning statement, but there's nothing personal about it; it's observable, quantifiable, as any Yankee fan knows.

"'Rodriguez,' the authors write, 'was conspicuous by the awesome disparity between his skills and his ability to use them in the clutch. Rodriguez hit .245 in the postseason as a Yankee, or 61 points worse than his career average. From the fifth inning of Game 4 of the 2004 [American League Championship Series] -- the onset of the dynasty's demise -- through 2008, Rodriguez hit .136 in 59 postseason at-bats.'"
. . . awesome, not just using small sample sizes as a Yankee in the playoffs (disregarding his play as a Mariner) but CHERRY-PICKING around his successes. This is a real job well-done. Also, the fact that A-Rod basically single-handedly got Joe Torre into his last postseason, which Yankees fans will always remember as being thanks to Joe, is ignored. Awesome.


Then he talks about how Paul O'Neill had the loudest walk you've ever experienced. It's too long of a paragraph to quote for how inane and ridiculous it is. Paul O'Neill walked more than 80 times once in his career. Alex Rodriguez has done it seven times. I admit that I just cherry-picked 80, sorry. The point is that if walking is underrated A-Rod is more underrated than Paul O'Neill. But I don't think he's talking about walks, I think he's talking about LOUD walks. Which are really the only important ones. It sticks out in Joe Torre's mind because it was before he was senile and forgot that you don't bat one of the top 8 hitters in MLB eighth in your lineup in the biggest game of the year. See, this paragraph is long enough as it is.


"This, of course, is part of the appeal of "The Yankee Years," the nostalgia factor, the trip down memory lane. It was great to be a Yankee fan from 1996 until Game 4 of the 2004 ALCS, when Mariano Rivera walked Kevin Millar leading off the ninth inning and the collapse against Boston began."
. . . 2005, 2006, 2007, making the playoffs. What a tough time to be a Yankees fan.


"The Yankees have yet to recover from that loss, but the measure of Torre and Verducci is that they situate this within a larger framework, highlighting the emergence of the Red Sox as a counterpoint to the Yankees' decline. More than that, they trace the arc of the dynasty as a kind of epic narrative, involving an inevitable rise and fall."
. . . true, Joe Torre took over in 1996, but the team was getting better in 1994 and 1995 under Gene Michael and Buck Showalter. In fact, some folks think the Yankees would have been a favorite if there had been a 1994 World Series. Gene Michael deserves about 100x more credit for the 1996 World Series than Joe Torre. That's not mathematically-derived, just a ballpark estimate. They also imply that the decline was not Torre's fault . . . "In that sense, it's fitting that Torre left the Yankees after the 2007 season; it was time to make a change." Now that the Yankees are no longer good, Joe Torre can't have anything to do with the team.


By the way, David Ulin, you just lost my overtime pay.