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And if he were in his prime, and pitching today, he'd be the best pitcher in baseball. The fall-off in quality in the game, especially on the mound, from his day to ours is shocking.
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I suspect that Torre's refusal to comment about coming back to the Stadium for a ceremony stemmed from the fact that he was already planning on managing somewhere else.
I have to say, the Dodgers handled this situation far more disgracefully than you can accuse Yankee management of how they handled the situation with Torre. Leaving Grady Little twisting in the wind that way was just plain wrong.
I expect Clint Hurdle to name Joe to the NL coaching staff for next year's All Star Game, which will finally give the Yankee Stadium faithful their chance to give Joe a proper goodbye, until the day when time will heal the wounds and he get his monument erected and his uniform number retired (I sincerely hope they aren't crazy enough to issue #6 to anyone else in the meantime).
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Posted: |
Nov 1, 2007 - 11:46 PM
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By: |
Eric Paddon
(Member)
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Except JS, so much of the complaining from the worst kind of Boston Red Sox fan, has usually been rooted in something that isn't true. For decades I had to put up with Red Sox fans acting as if the fact that they were "cursed" somehow made them a more special ballclub, and the embodiment of the common folk in baseball and only that evil greedy corporate capitalist mentality fo the Yankees buying championships ever since Babe Ruth victimized poor, pitiful Boston.
Except that so much of that is based on falsehoods of the first order. Ruth was sold to the Yankees because (1) he'd worn out his welcome in Boston by refusing to pitch any longer and (2) the Red Sox owner needed Yankee support in a war with the AL President, not because he wanted to finance a play. Second, much of the Red Sox failure to win a championship for seventy years after that, was due to the horrible legacy of their 1933-76 owner, Tom Yawkey, who despite his benighted status as a "gentleman" of the sport in contrast to the likes of evil George Steinbrenner, was a man who made Boston the last team in baseball to integrate, and who often coddled favorite ballplayers in a country club atmosphere, often undercutting the authority of his managers, and who was even prepared to move the team out of Boston but for the 1967 "Impossible Dream" pennant. Then after his death, Yawkey, determined to beat the adage that you can't take it with you, insisted the team stay in a family trust which led to nothing but ownership instability until the current owners who've won two championships in four years came aboard.
"Yankees s----!" is a chant that made me want to throw up, because if we "s---!" despite being the most successful franchise in the history of professional sports, what does that say about the people uttering the chant? Something that doesn't show much in the way of class if you ask me. Yeah, we used to chant "1918!" all those years, but when we did it, we at least were speaking to a fundamental truth that existed at the time.
I will not say "Red Sox s----!" even though I hate the team more than any other in professional sports, because they earned their championships and I would not think of ruining their moments of triumph. The pity is that we Yankee fans have seldom to never been given the same courtesy in return by Yankee-haters from all over the country. Because "Yankees s---!" is unfortunately a chant that isn't the exclusive domain of the drunks, it's also sadly the kind of pack mentality chant I see in too much "mainstream" fandom.
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Posted: |
Nov 2, 2007 - 1:11 AM
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By: |
JSWalsh
(Member)
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Except JS, so much of the complaining from the worst kind of Boston Red Sox fan, has usually been rooted in something that isn't true. For decades I had to put up with Red Sox fans acting as if the fact that they were "cursed" somehow made them a more special ballclub, and the embodiment of the common folk in baseball and only that evil greedy corporate capitalist mentality fo the Yankees buying championships ever since Babe Ruth victimized poor, pitiful Boston.
As someone who's lived in Boston all my life I say with honesty I have never met that kind of fan, except those who joke about it.
I believe what you write, but by the same token I've never once encountered it here.
Considering the sheer numbers of fans of any ball team, I just find focusing on the biggest idiots self-defeating. I've met many, many a-hole Yankees fans, and no Red Sox fans of the type you have--I think that says something about both of out personal perspectives, personal biases, and what we're primed to respond to. Why would I not pay attention to a team because of what some fans have said or done? I mean, come on, are you really trying to argue that Yankees fans aren't among the loudest, most beliigerent and flat-out nastiest folks around? If I were to consider which teams and which teams fans have contributed to the fannish ugliness that is out there, the Yankees would be the first folks I thought of.
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Posted: |
Nov 2, 2007 - 1:17 AM
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By: |
JSWalsh
(Member)
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"Yankees s----!" is a chant that made me want to throw up, because if we "s---!" despite being the most successful franchise in the history of professional sports, what does that say about the people uttering the chant? Something that doesn't show much in the way of class if you ask me. Yeah, we used to chant "1918!" all those years, but when we did it, we at least were speaking to a fundamental truth that existed at the time.
So it was okay for your side to be nasty and insulting because you came up with a catchier slogan?
Come on, man. I simply can't conceive of these gentle, sportmanslike Yankee fans you seem to know, who clap politely and cheer on both sides, or are just so darned civilized until these awful Red Sox fans started all the ugliness. Yankees fans are among the most obnoxious, 'we're great, you suck" types around--are you REALLY going to try to tell me that Yankees fans never shout "Red Sox suck!"?
Like New York, Boston has a number of colleges in the area, and a lot of drunken college idiots looking for release. The "badass" mentality that has turned me and many others off of sports certainly didn't catch New Yorkers unawares--"Oh, wow, why can't those other teams be NICE like us?"
New York has a lot of blowhard, loud, obnoxious fans--please don't pretend that they only do because some drunken Boston idiot shouted "Yankees suck!" once. The rest of the country sees how the fans of Boston, New York and L.A. behave, and they're not impressed. Why that should turn one off to a TEAM, I don't know.
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Posted: |
Nov 2, 2007 - 12:28 PM
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By: |
Eric Paddon
(Member)
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JS, I'll be the first to admit that the "Bleacher Bum" types of NY fans are exactly as you describe them and just as prone to that kind of crudity and probably worse on a lot of occasions.
What I have more in mind though is what gets printed up in more mainstream outlets. The levels of Yankee hatred get accorded a respectability in media outlets among sportswriters and authors that has long been the source of my irritation, and not the fact that I think drunken Boston fans who are boorish are different from drunken boorish New York fans. I'm thinking of the massive levels of irritation I feel when I walk into a Borders and browse the shelves and see books entitled "The Devil Wears Pinstripes" which is a screed about how evil the Yankees are, and this is written by a regular ESPN columnist, who supposedly possesses a higher caliber of intellect and class than your average drunk in the bleachers. Or another book on the Yankees-Red Sox rivalry that pits it as a "Good vs. Evil" struggle, and then there are the motley collection of books written by the one ex-player I have the biggest dislike of, Bill Lee, who knows how to write his junk about the Red Sox and baseball that makes the "Spaceman" an icon, even though an objective observer would note that Lee deserved to wear the goathorns in Boston history a lot more than Mike Torrez and Bill Buckner were ever made to do (since it was Lee who flushed away a 3-0 Boston lead in Game 7 of the 75 World Series with his eephus pitch to Tony Perez). It's that proliferation of "Yankees s----!" sentiment in the *mainstream* of sports writing and literature that gets me annoyed so much and not that I think Boston fans are worse by nature. I apologize if I conveyed that impression.
Hey, shouldn't this prove to the doubters once and for all we're two different people? 
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Mattingly hit six grand slams in 1987. And never hit another grand slam before or after that.
Mattingly's career as a Yankee player and coach since 1982 (one year after their 1981 pennant) encompasses 18 of the last 20 seasons the Yankees failed to play in a World Series (exceptions being 1997 and 2002).
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Well, so far the Yankee off-season has seen three smart moves with (1) cutting A-Rod loose (2) hiring Girardi and now (3) word that Abreu's option has been picked up for another year.
Now on to 4 and 5 with getting Posada and Mo re-upped.
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