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But Can They Bunt? This was a great week for the Yankees unless the player to be named later is Alex Rodriguez. Forget Murderers Row. This is Mass Murderers Row. These are the Bronx Atomic Bombers. This team can win without steroids. The Yankees are the Harlem Globetrotters, and the rest of the league is the Washington Generals. All-Stars at every position except one. At second base, Enrique Wilson is the Ringo Starr of the team. Not even. He’s the Pete Best. The good thing is, having eight All-Stars in front of him will really help his average. And that of his A-list replacement, who’ll be here by the end of spring training. One more big name player and AL pitchers will be pitching around Kenny Lofton to get back to Kenny Lofton. In fact, throw out the league schedule altogether and just start barnstorming. All that’s missing is a school bus and a hat to pass around. That’ll teach Alfonso Soriano not to take a pitch once in a while. And that’ll teach Aaron Boone to play hoops in the off-season. This was like the Lakers getting Tim Duncan for Rick Fox and a second round draft pick. Any day now, Hideki Matsui’s press corps will learn the Japanese word for “ringer.” Guess Curtis Pride won’t be cracking the starting lineup this season. Yes, I’m a fan, but something’s seriously wrong when folks like Bernie Williams are fighting for their jobs. Right now, Bernie’s got a better chance of staying on the Billboard 200. This year, bench players will feel like understudies in The Producers. Ask Gary Sheffield what it’s like to have 379 career home runs and be the third or fourth best power hitter in the lineup. Probably a lot like the Baltimore Orioles feel being the third or fourth best team in the AL East. No disrespect to the legendary Joe Torre, but Kid Rock could make out a winning lineup card for this team after chugging a liter of Jack Daniels and doing Pam Anderson. In the All-Star Game, the Yankees and one borrowed player will be competing for home field advantage in the World Series, where they will be facing what will look like a triple-A club. Right now, baseball needs A-Rod to defer not only some of his salary, but also some of his home runs. Time to stop worrying about losing Clemens and Pettitte to Houston. With Soriano headed to the Rangers, just about all our ex’s are in Texas, where they can’t really hurt us. Except for David Wells. And it’s only a matter of time before he shows up back in New York bleary-eyed and goateed. Wells is the Billy Martin of Yankee pitchers. Tell you what, let’s make it fair. Send Mussina to Houston too. Let John Flaherty spell Derek Jeter here and there. Let the pitchers hit. Let the hitters pitch. Let Steinbrenner DH. Play eight in the field every other Tuesday and let the opposition use a short centerfielder during night games. Break up the Yankees. You heard me. At least break up the left side of the infield. New rule—only three franchise players per franchise. Some version of this deal had to happen. The Texas Rangers were carrying more debt than Argentina. Looks like Brian Cashman gets to stay another year. What GM has ever had a more fitting surname? The motto “If you can’t beat ‘em, buy ‘em” deserves its own plaque in Monument Park. Rooting for the Yankees used to be like rooting for US Steel. Now it’s like rooting for Time-Warner. Speaking of which, did you hear that? That was the sound of your cable bill going up. Major League Baseball’s luxury tax worked about as well as the O-ring on the Challenger. The Yankees’ payroll looks like Cleveland’s municipal budget. The Yankees will pay Alex Rodriguez alone each year a bit more than Nelson Doubleday paid Joan Payson in 1980 for the Mets. The difference is, the Yankees will get their money’s worth. Remember all that talk about moving the Yankees out of the Bronx? Whatever. People would go to see this team on Rikers Island. Meanwhile, the Montreal Expos will split the season between San Juan and, worse, Montreal. The Red Sox and Yankees are stockpiling weapons like the US and Soviets in the 60s, and there is no détente in sight. This year, the biggest fight will not be in the bullpen. But like last year’s season, the Yankees won the off-season in the final at-bat. The Curse of the Bambino just got a new lease on life, and this incarnation, too, is transferable to subsequent generations. Yo, Beantown! Forget Bucky Dent and Aaron Boone. This year you’re going to be beaten early and often by a left-side infield with Ruthian numbers and speed the Babe had only when chasing a hot dog vendor. And one more thing--you won’t have Don Zimmer to kick around anymore. As Otter in Animal House once said about Flounder--hey, you can’t abuse Don Zimmer. Only we can abuse Don Zimmer. Like opposing axles, A-Rod and I-Rod are traveling in different directions. Ivan Rodriguez may single-handedly get the Detroit Tigers over the .300 mark this year. But the Tigers are not rebuilding. They are learning how to catch pop flies. You can’t blame Alex Rodriguez for getting sick of losing 12-11. At age 28, you don’t want to feel like you’re playing in a local over-forty league. There will, of course, be an adjustment period. Lately, the Yankees have gone through more guys at third base than Paris Hilton. You hope that A-Rod, out of his normal position, is more of a composite of Wade Boggs and Graig Nettles than Celerino Sanchez and Hensley Meulens. And you hope Alex Rodriguez sticks around a while, because it gets tough to root for a uniform. If Bernie sits, all that’s left of the 2001 Yankee pennant winners are Jeter and Posada. It’s starting to look like the fall 1980 cast of Saturday Night Live, except with talent. As A-Rod, the squeaky clean player with the most pornographic nickname in baseball, leads an obscenely high-paid lineup, there will be intense pressure on newcomers Kevin Brown and Javier Vasquez to hold the opposition to just over a run an inning. If four or five key players go down, this race could really tighten up. But in the pressure-cooker of New York, it gets worse than that. If this team takes six games to clinch the Series, heads will roll. Lose the Series to the Marlins this year and they’ll get the kind of welcome home Stalin gave the Russian POWs released by the Nazis. It’s still a quirky game, and it’s never as easy as it appears on paper. Prediction—the Yankees will lose games to the Detroit Tigers and Tampa Bay Devil Rays in the same month, and rumors will circulate about an early exit for Joe Torre. It may not be too late to snatch Greg Maddux. But please, no deal for Barry, for the same reason we didn’t drop the big one on Iraq. Click here to rant back. |