Head Over Heart

The Yankees took care of business quickly and picked Joe Girardi
as their new manager. I was already sad to see Joe Torre go, but now it looks like Don Mattingly, who I thought to be the next Yankee manager, is going to go. Mattingly a fan favorite, and my favorite player of all time, certainly had expectations to be the heir after serving as bench coach for the past two years, but it looks like the Yankees made their decision with their heads and not their hearts. So now it will be sad to see Mattingly go and who knows if he'll ever wear the pinstripes again.




Looking at Girardi as the next manager is a solid move. The key points to picking him are as follows:

• Girardi knows the Yankees organization, its expectations, and how things are run from being a player from 1996-1999 and bench coach in 2005.


• Girardi has managerial experience as the Marlins manager in 2006 where he won NL Manager of the Year for putting a young, inexperienced, and low budget team on the field and doing much better than expected (they were in the playoff hunt if you remember).


• From his Florida experience, he knows how to work with young players which fits right into the who rebuilding strategy the Yankees have going.


• He has a strong reputation of being a no nonsense leader, strict but fair, wants to win, intelligent (he's a Northwestern grad), articulate, prepares well, pays attention to detail, and handles the media well.


• As a catcher he'll know how to work well with the Yankees young pitching staff, possibly use the run more, and be able to analyze other teams' pitchers as well.

Right now it's pure speculation how he'll fare as the manager in New York, we won't know until spring training starts. In the mean time, the Yankees have Rivera, Posada, and Abreu to think about as well as a hole a thirdbase, their starting rotation, bullpen--lots of decisions. But I think Girardi was the right way to start.

To My Red Sox Friends,

Congratulations, I thought the Red Sox deserved to win and the comeback against the Indians was amazing to watch. This new century has brought a new definition to what it means to be a Red Sox fan, player, Red Sox Nation--you name it. You can throw out the curse, however you look at it this is a new franchise that will continue to do well.

Someone rubbed it in that because I'm a Yankee fan, a Red Sox World Series win should hurt my team the most. The thing about a World Series win is that one team is the best out of 29 other teams. Twenty nine of us don't get to celebrate, just remember that, we all suffer, or whatever you want to call it.

I'll leave it to Doug to summarize, celebrate, whichever he chooses to to this win. He's been absent since August and he'd best able to talk Red Sox on here.

Fake-Rod

"You're asking me what my sincere feeling is. I want to 100 percent stay in New York. Period. That's it. I don't know how many ways I can say it."
-- Alex Rodriguez, on WFAN-AM's "Mike and the Mad Dog." 3/2007

"Either New York is going to kick me out of New York this year, say 'I've had enough of this guy, get him the hell out of here,' and we have an option. Or New York is going to say, 'Hey, we won a world championship, you had a big year, you were a part of it and we want you back.'"
-- Alex Rodriguez, in the same interview. 2/3007

My emotions have the best of me, but I'm officially going to start bashing A-Rod--or as I will now call him--Fake-Rod. As just announced during the World Series, Fake-Rod has opted out of his contract with the Yankees, which shouldn't be a huge surprise given his agent Scott Boras' greedy ways. But I'm a bit more upset at Fake-Rod because of what he said above, something he always said since putting on the pinstripes.

Now, let me be clear, I was never a fan of Fake-Rod, but I also never hated him. Sure he had the biggest multi-year contract ever, but that was the Rangers fault. As a Yankee fan, I gave him a chance but he never fully became a true Yankee because he always disappointed in the playoffs. With that aside though, he's the best player the Yankees have had since--well maybe Mantle.

I was going to write a post on this whole saga and what the Yankees should do, but it's clear now they won't negotiate a new contract. At least they better not. Even so, something I have never been comfortable with about Fake-Rod is that in NY, you never really knew what kind of player he was going to be. He suffered two sub-par years (2004 & 2006) relative to his entire career but also two-MVP season (2005 and yes, he'll win it this year). His fielding and move to 3B was never a solid decision and overall he had a love hate relationship with the fans.

Fake-Rod is still the best ballplayer in the game today, even at 31, but even the greatest players never win a championship. But all along, Fake-Rod talked the talk that he wanted to win one in NY, end his career as a Yankee, and win the fans over. Apparently his talk is worth shit.

All of this will be labeled, the "business of baseball", and the main excuse Boras gave (not Fake-Rod directly) is that basically he (Fake-Rod) didn't know what was going on with the Yankees in terms of a manager, ownership, and certain teammate. Though curiously Boras added, "He really didn't want to make any decisions until he knew what they were doing." So opting out isn't a decision at this juncture?

I'm sure more details will come out in the days to follow. If the Yankees are truly done with Fake-Rod, then only a handful of teams could pay him for whatever he wants, which will be yet again the biggest multi-year contract in baseball. Could he be a Red Sox next year? It would be amusing seeing how adamant Sox fans have been calling him A-Fraud, cursing him out, and seeing the teams payroll likely increase upwards of $200 million like that other team.

Anyway, I'm done with Fake-Rod and so is New York, good riddance!