Joe Girardi's Napoleon Complex, Missing Joe Torre and the Most Depressing Night in My Yankee Life

I'm very upset.  Last night's Yankees game was probably my worst Yankee Stadium experience ever.  I don't mean the new Yankee Stadium, I mean any Yankee Stadium.  It was awful.

I've been going to games since birth basically.  My Dad's had season tickets since I was two I think and I know I missed one opening day along the way for a school trip or something, but that's it.  This season I went to something like 1/3 of the home games.  Until I went to college, I didn't miss a playoff game in my lifetime, and then I usually went home for games, learning my lesson when I had to watch from my dorm room as Posada and Aaron Boone beat Pedro and the Sox in 2003.  Sadly, there wasn't much to watch since then.

Now we're back.  We have the best lineup we've had in years.  The staff is nowhere near what it's been in the past, even pre-major free agent spending, but we have things lined up well with not having to use a 4th starter.  Sidenote: anyone saying our staff is so good is an idiot.  Sorry.  Burnett is inconsistent in ways that should relegate him to a number 4 starter on a Yankees squad like this.  CC's been much better than I even expected him to be, and obviously Pettitte is pitching far beyond expectations at this point in his career, but that's because he's Andy Pettitte and he steps up.  Core four.  This bullpen is crap though, as last night proved once again.  I don't understand the disappearance of Hughes and Joba, but of course the rest of the bullpen sucks.



Nitpicking or not, we have the best overall team we've had in years.  The chemistry is even great by all accounts.  Valid counterpoint of that being that the guys mainly credited with the new, fun attitude in the clubhouse--AJ Burnett and Nick Swisher--have sucked in the playoffs.  But the feeling in the stadium and with Yanks fans is excitement we haven't had in years.

Excitement ended after 1999.  We expected to win.  98 was the perfect season, then 2000 was the first year that we were instituting the new policy that we either win the Series or we failed.  After that we just expected it every year, and never felt the same satisfaction as the high point of 1996 when Mark Lemke hit that popup foul to Charlie Hayes (I was about 50 feet away.  That was the first moment of my young life that I realized I was in the middle of something significant). 

By 2001 we were spoiled.  September 11th only made us feel more like we deserved the championship.  The high as a kite Yankees fans weren't really deterred by that loss though, and we still expected victory every season.

2003 was exciting because it was the peak of the Red Sox rivalry.  That was the year where the concept was invented that the ALCS was the real World Series and the rest didn't matter since the two best teams were in the AL east.  Josh Beckett had something else to say about that.

The year that we don't speak of was the end.  It was the peak of Yankee superiority in a number of ways.  Obviously, when the Sox came back to beat us four in a row after losing eight straight to us including that epic five game sweep in the end of the regular season was the end of us saying they couldn't beat us.

But the culture changed also.  I went to college in Boston at the height of the rivalry.  They always talked shit to me.  "Yankees suck! Yankees suck!" at every bar.  Ridiculous.  So annoying and bitter.  Pathetic.  Yanks fans never talked back though.  We didn't care.  We let them talk because we knew they were just projecting.  It was like there's nothing we could say to them that could make their life any worse than being a Red Sox fan.

Now, the Yankees fans talked shit back to the Sox.  We sunk to their level.  Do not mistake me here.  I am criticizing Red Sox fans.  The only thing worse than Philadelphia sports fans are Red Sox fans.  I don't hate the Sox.  I hate their fans.  They call us cocky, but they're just fucking drunk, angry, aggressive, bitter, classless losers.  Sorry to generalize, but I lived on Charlesgate East where I could hear Fenway even when it wasn't one of the louder nights.  During the playoffs, it would get loud enough that I couldn't hear the TV sometimes.  So don't tell me that I'm speaking from my comfortable New York city apartment.  I've been there many times, and I know A LOT of Sox fans.  I've been in the fights.  I've had beer spilled on me.  I've had my mother threatened.  I've been at Daisy Buchanan's and had girls turn from about to go home with me to trying to get their friends to fight me when she realizes I'm a Yankee fan.  But I never took off my hat or Mattingly jersey.  I didn't criticize the Sox back though.  I just told them what I said above.  They're bitter and angry from being bred in a culture of losing for generations and they want to get back at their mean big brother.  I hate when Yanks fans talk shit to Sox fans though.  And this started after Voldemort (name we do not speak of from Harry Potter) year.

This was the end of Yankees prestige, class and superiority.  I lost a great deal of Yankee pride.  Obviously I'm always die hard, it's still my favorite place in the world, I still break my vows as a Jew by making a religious idol out of Derek Jeter.  But A-Rod isn't the right representative of the New York Yankees.

I was very sad when they got rid of Soriano.  I cried upon reading the letter he wrote to the NY Post about how much he loves New York and the franchise and how he will miss us so.  We miss you too Alfonso.

The last few years, instead of the cool, confident what dramatic way are we gonna pull this one out?, we have how are we gonna fuck this up?  We talk a lot more shit.  We used to ignore the opposing team's fans at the games.  Now we fight with them and point and boo them when the Yankees succeed.  When they don't, we curse at them, tell them to shut up, and throw things at them.  That's what Sox and Phillies fans do, but now we've sunk to their level.  We don't need to do that--we're the Yankees, the most successful franchise in all of sports.

Back to present day.  Sorry for the huge digression/context.  This was the year the confidence came back.  We knew for the first time in years that we had the best team on the field.  We expect to win again, but not like we did after our three-peat.  We appreciate it.

I'm talking now about the real fans.  Like I said before, I have season seats and go to a lot of games, same seats every day if you don't understand how that works.  The usher knows me, I don't have to show my ticket.  I don't know one person who sits in my section.  The most frequent attendee is Kate Hudson, I see her all the time sitting in front of me.  I do not know one other person sitting there.  In the old stadium, while they wouldn't come to a lot of regular season games, it was the same group all around us from 1995 on.  I didn't really know much about the rest of their years, but I knew that every October, we'd be high-fiving or sobbing together.

This new stadium is beautiful and epic, if not also sterile.  Beyond the aesthetics and the home run balls everyone's spoken about, I care about the culture.  It has changed more than anything.  The ticket prices have driven the real fans to the sports bars.  Now, it's just a new guy who can afford tickets once or twice sitting in the seats.  The season ticket holders bought them as an investment, and just sell them so that they can afford to go to five or six regular season games and maybe a playoff game if they want to splurge.

Yankee Stadium fans are notorious for their two strike playoff standing ovations.  Every time there's two strikes we used to stand.  Every time there are runners in scoring position, we stand.  We clap.  We yell.  We make the opposing pitchers throw to first base to try to quiet us, but we're undeterred.

No longer.  Nobody stood last night.  I was told by both Yankees and Phillies fans to sit down during the bottom of the 8th inning.  Ridiculous.  Nobody even stood when there would be two strikes in the late innings, unless there were two outs also.

Everyone was talking about God knows what.  Once Obama left and they got rid of the high tech security, and after the Yankees bullpen imploded the game, everyone left, and they just let random people come down to the seats.  This drunken fat man came down with his baby, feeding her ice cream.  It was barely getting in her mouth, but covering her jacket.  He roamed around the section, blocking our view, turning towards people talking about anything but the game.  It was very annoying.  The security guards talked to a drunk Phillies fan in the section over from us about cursing at Yanks fans time and time again, but never kicked him out.  I don't really care what they do, whether they kick him out or not, but make a decision.  Your job is to uphold a certain authority, so when you tell the guy to shut up and he does not, you're throwing your authority out the window.  It was just silent though.  The most excited the fans got all night was when Gerard Butler, sitting across from me, shouted "Tonight we dine in Hell," after being prompted to by some fans.  He left his hat on during the anthem though.

This was a depressing night.  The Stadium was dead.  The Yankees couldn't get anything going on Cliff Lee, who was casual master of everyone's domain.  CC was fine.  I mean, he had no control, but save for a long pop-up HR and one absolute shot by Chase Utley, he left unscathed.  I actually thought about it before this game.  I expected this to happen really, Lee has been amazing the last few months.  I figured CC would be good but not as good as Lee.  I wanted CC to pitch game 2 and throw AJ in game 1.  Anyway, that's in the past.

Here, we get to Joe Girardi.  The Napoleon of Yankee Stadium.  CC was fine!  He could've easily gone another inning.  Considering the way our bullpen has been throwing, you leave CC in until his arm falls off, until you can turn it over to Mo, or until the game is no longer within reach for us.  Taking him out was another example of the oft-described over-managing of Girardi.

This is where I think the Napoleon complex comes in.  Why does he need to do all of this?  None of these moves have panned out.  Literally every move he's made save for bringing Joba in for one successful ALCS 8th inning has worked out.  That move was washed away by him bringing in Mariano for two innings right away, rather than letting Joba keep going until he got into trouble, keeping Mo and Hughes in the back pocket until the 9th hopefully.  I don't know what he was thinking last night with Bruney and Coke.  He took Robertson out to bring in Coke for a lefty, but Coke IS NOT a left specialist!  Surprisingly, Marte was fine.  A little shakey with the strike zone, but he got it done.

After AJ was so-so last week, and our bats have not produced at all, it's absurd that we don't have Posada in the lineup tonight.  Core four.  Posada's the one who caused Pedro to say that the Yanks are his "daddy."  Jose Molina is a great defensive catcher, but we need Posada's bat.  Molina has not been making AJ any better so far, so Posada gets the nod.  This whole numbers obsession where he justifies starting Haiston over Hinske because of three more at bats and two more hits is just absurd.  The guy's nuts.  At least he finally put Swisher to sleep.

I've been trying to naysay the guys criticizing Girardi as having the easiest job in baseball and just getting in the way, but it's become too hard.  This is basically the situation.  He feels the need at all times to DO SOMETHING, when often, his best move is to let them play.  Enough of the pinch running and mixing and matching bullpen moves.  Jesus Christ, just let them play.  Stop fucking around.  Derek Jeter cannot be happy about this Posada situation.

Maybe Girardi does this because it's the way he is and it's his managerial concept.  I don't remember if he was like this in Florida, but I don't think the comparison would hold either way.  What I'm thinking though is that maybe he doesn't like being considered irrelevant.  Many basically consider Brian Cashman to be doing his job for him.  It's not too tough to fill out a lineup card with the roster Cashman has put together.  Maybe Girardi, small in stature, notorious for taking pride in being the manager in the best physical shape, takes too much pride in his job, and needs to make it more than it is.  Either way, he's doing a shit job at this point.  That being said, if AJ goes 7 2/3 with 9 k's in a 5-2 win with Jerry Hairston Jr. driving in a run and going 2-4, I'll be the happiest guy in the world to take it all back.

Early prediction...I saw all of the Donnie Baseball buzz going on the wires lately.  Is it too far-fetched to discuss him in the dugout next year?  Or Joe Torre the year after, once his Dodgers tenure is up?  Man, I miss Torre so much.  He never should've left.  I understand that we demand change when we don't have success, but we clearly made the wrong choice.  Torre brought a mediocre Dodgers squad to the NLCS two years in a row, and it's looking like we're going to have one wildly disappointing season and one mildly disappointing season with our new Joe.

All of this is related to the culture of Yankee baseball.  We need to get rid of this big money vibe with the crowds first of all.  It's no longer enjoyable.  It's like a Lakers game now, and empty whenever the Yankees are not winning after the 5th.  We need a real Yankee behind this team.  The biggest thing to understand with managing the Yankees is restraint.  Girardi does not have that, as he proved in Florida once, and is now proving again as a Yankee.

We need to bring back the feelings of 1996.  True, we'll never be the underdog again like we were then.  But we need to appreciate this.  We need to earn it.  We did that in '96.  As fans and players.  Now, people show up in the playoffs, expecting their team to win after years of work to get us there.  They just sit down and then leave when the team doesn't deliver.  It just isn't special anymore.  True, we were spoiled with our first run, having so many great guys.  Apart from Jeter, Mo, Posada and Pettitte, we had Paul O'Neill, Tino, Bernie (sitting behind home plate last night and guaranteed sad), Cone, Luis Soho, Leyritz, Brosius, Stanton and Nelson in the pen, Wetteland for a year, Daryl, Justice, Cecil, Charlie Hayes, Wade Boggs, Soriano,  El Duque, Ramiro Mendoza and even Joe Girardi.

We have 4 of them still, kinda 5.  I'm not expecting the same magic.

But it can get a whole lot better than this.

We need to set the example and demand better though.

Let's KILL Pedro tonight for old time's sake.