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For the New York Yankees, this is the worst October since 1986, when America’s most decorated team paused in the early stages of a 13-year playoff drought to watch the cross-town Mets and the hated Red Sox meet in the World Series.
2008 MLB playoffs
In fact, this October is less appealing to the Yanks than that one. Even though the 2008 Mets offered some comfort by choking on muscle memory, this postseason is a house of ungodly pinstriped pain.
It’s a cross between the fall of the Roman Empire and a revival of the Broadway musical “Damn Yankees.”
Joe Hardy has been replaced by Joe Torre, who must’ve made some Faustian deal to score this devilishly sweet proposition: a chance to take the Dodgers to the World Series while the censors who deleted his contributions from that closing Yankee Stadium ceremony do the slowest Bronx-is-burning burn.
Only this goes way beyond a bum-rushed manager seeking payback with the aid of a slugger, Manny Ramirez, who has a distinguished history of sending Yankee mystique and aura over the outfield wall.
Sure, the Steinbrenners already look foolish for presenting Torre an offer designed for him to refuse after he’d earned them a dozen straight playoff berths. Torre extended his personal streak to 13 in L.A. while his replacement, Joe Girardi, ended the Yankees’ streak at 13 (Buck Showalter started the run) and, in the process, failed all the human condition exams Torre forever aced in the clubhouse and press box.
But in the end, Torre is managing a faraway team in a faraway division of an entirely different league. As much as it would hurt the Yankees to see him win it all with the Dodgers, they’ll get over it.
The Red Sox and Tampa Bay Rays? There’s no getting over them.
The Sox and Rays are right out of the American League East. Boston and Tampa are young, tough, hungry, and athletic. They’re everything the New York Yankees are not.
If the introduction of the wild card in ‘95 provided a safety net the Yankees needed only twice in Torre’s time, there is no insurance policy for the third-best team in anyone’s division.
Boston is the larger long-term problem, of course, because it has won two of the last four championships and won’t run into the budget limitations that could ultimately temper Tampa’s ambition. The Sox are loaded with 20-something starters, relievers and position players who are proven winners, all a credit to a front office that has assembled the kind of burgeoning dynasty Gene Michael, Bob Watson and Brian Cashman once pieced together in the Bronx.
NLCS-bound Joe Torre is having the last laugh on the Yankees. (Nam Y. Huh / Associated Press)
The Sox landed Josh Beckett from the Florida Marlins’ staff; the Yanks ended up with Carl Pavano. The Sox signed Daisuke Matsuzaka out of Japan; the Yanks signed Kei Igawa. The Sox developed and promoted Dustin Pedroia and Jacoby Ellsbury to play second and center; the Yanks brought up Robinson Cano and Melky Cabrera. The Sox refused to trade Jon Lester for Johan Santana; the Yanks protected the lesser likes of Phil Hughes.
So Boston wins the playoff series New York doesn’t even qualify for anymore, and haunts the very team — the Angels — that made a living haunting the Yanks.
“We’ve brought some kids up and they’ve done such a phenomenal job of competing,” Terry Francona said after the Sox again eliminated the Angels. “I’m the one who gets to stand here on nights like this and talk, but I hope we do this as an organization, because it’s an exciting time for the Red Sox.”
As it is for the organization that defeated them for the divisional crown.
The rise of the Rays was first forecast by Cashman, of all people, who predicted in the Sept. 28, 2007 edition of the Tampa Tribune that the local laughingstock was about to draw the curtain on its long-running folly.
The Rays were closing up a 96-loss season when Cashman said, “They’re not far (away). If a couple of things go their way, it could happen a lot sooner than people realize. It’s not going to be a situation where they add 10 wins next year and 10 more the year after that. It’s not going to be slow. When it happens, it will happen quick. Now. That growing stuff is behind them now. It’s going to come fast.”
Cashman’s prophecy didn’t ease the sting of finishing eight games behind the Rays, another franchise the Tampa-based Steinbrenners never wanted out from under their big-budget thumbs.
Truth is, George Steinbrenner, the sidelined patriarch, couldn’t have imagined a worse ALCS matchup than the one that starts Friday. Born on the Fourth of July, a longtime USOC elder, Steinbrenner would’ve rather lost the medal count to Cuba and Iran than surrender the division and league to the Red Sox and Rays.
Brian Cashman is sticking around to try and end his Yankee legacy on a more positive note. (Brian Cashman / Associated Press)
But after reaching five World Series in six years, and winning four of them, the Yankees started losing their way the day they gave $120 million to the bloated Jason Giambi, a non-athlete who was everything and anything Torre’s dynastic Yanks weren’t.
Torre lost his last three Division Series in New York, which felt like a cataclysmic trend until Girardi didn’t even make it to the Division Series. Is this the beginning of another postseason Ice Age in the Bronx to match those that stretched from the mid-’60s into the mid-’70s, and from the early ’80s into the early ’90s?
Cashman rages at the thought. The GM said he signed on for three more years because he was afraid his legacy would be defined by recent failures, and not by the successful moves he made in the glory years.
“I’m not going to let that story be written,” Cashman pledged. “I’m staying to change the story.”
Next year, he’ll get to assume the role of executive editor in the new Yankee Stadium across the street.
Meanwhile, Cashman will listen as Torre addresses East Coast-like playoff crowds in La-La Land, and he’ll watch as Boston and Tampa leave his franchise in the divisional dust
Tags: , ALCS, American League, Brian Cashman, bronx, Bronx News, Bronx People, Cashman, eorge Steinbrenner, Jason Giambi, Joe Girardi, Joe Torre, new yankee stadium, new york yankees, Sports, Steinbrenners, USOC, West Bronx, World Series, Yankee StadiumRelated posts
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