About last night, dear
The significant stuff was off the field.
The mini-series that chronicles the saga of a great sports empire ruled by a powerful patriarch dragged on without resolution. Translation: George hasn't decided to fire Joe Torre yet.
And the melodrama of a beloved yet tortured franchise (that would be the Red Sox), saw one of its own say: "Lose? Pffft. So what?"
The meeting of Yankee brass down in Florida broke up without any resolution on Torre. Brian Cashman and other front office execs returned to New York. George and his two sons and son-in-law remained in Florida. Cashman says the whole thing needs more time -- I guess like a cake, who knows.
Alex Rodriguez is still mulling his options. He had his own meetings with agent Scott Boras in California. Rodriguez can duck out of his contract but if he does, the Yanks say they won't participate in the bidding.
Meanwhile, Red Sox slugger Manny Ramirez was -- as the expression goes in Boston -- being Manny.
Dealing with the "backs-against-the-wall" line of questioning on the off-day between Games 4 and 5 in the ALCS with Cleveland leading 3 games to 1, Ramirez took a sharp left at one point and said, "It doesn't happen, so who cares? There's always next year. It's not like it's the end of the world."
Exactly what city does Ramirez thinks he plays in?
Comments
It still hasn't sunk in for me that Torre is not going to be managing the Yankees next year.
I understand that a 33% cut in guaranteed pay is steep, but at the end of it all he was still going to get at least $5 million to manage a baseball team. Would that I had the luxury of walking away from such an offer!
Though I'm sympathetic to Joe, I also wonder if the logic of the team's management is just entirely lost on him (which is why he feels "insulted"). The Yankees are getting farther and farther from a championship as the years go on; as a manager of a team that consistently has the highest payroll in baseball, that trend could easily and understandably be viewed as a sign of regression in his job skills, and a justifiable reason to take another look at what they were paying him.
Reasonable people can disagree about the extent to which Torre's managing affected the Bombers' fortunes, as opposed to front office personnel moves, but it doesn't seem like the Yankees were entirely out of line to me (even if George could have been more graceful about things during the season).
Posted by: Jay Maduro | October 20, 2007 3:09 AM