Daily Archives: October 8, 2003

The Boston Globe has articles today written by Bill Lee, and Jim Bouton regarding the Yankees-Sox serious. Seriously.

“I’ll tell you one thing, if you want to give me $50 million more, I’ll promise you we won’t blow the 2-0 lead.”

Billy Beane

Now that the dust is starting to settle over yet another unfortunate playoff performance by the Oakland A’s, general manager Billy Beane is taking some heat. Sports Illustrated’s chief baseball writer, Tom Verducci opines:

There are real reasons why the Athletics don’t get it done in October, and they have nothing to do with shooting craps. This team doesn’t catch the ball well enough, doesn’t exceed at situational hitting and, as one Oakland source put it, “We’re the worst baserunning team in the league.” There is also the matter of their leadership vacuum.

…Nobody is taking anything away from how Oakland, with a small payroll, has fought its way into the playoffs four years running. It’s an amazing achievement. But the Athletics — and not some cosmic Ouiji board — must bear responsibility for their poor execution in the postseason, when home runs and walks are harder to come by and runs are more precious. The A’s ineptness does have something to do with the kinds of players they acquire and the construction of the team.

…Oakland is in many ways a model organization for getting the most bang for its buck and extending its window for success, a very tough task for a small-revenue team. Its management has been properly commended for thinking outside the traditional baseball establishment. But 0-9 in clinchers is no accident. The Athletics have earned their reputation as a team that plays sloppy baseball when it counts most.

Rob Neyer adds:

If you want to blame anything, blame brains. Blame brains for what happened in Game 3. It was Eric Byrnes’ brain that didn’t tell him to go back and touch home plate in the sixth, and it was Miguel Tejada’s brain that didn’t tell him to continue plateward after he’d been interfered with in the same inning. But were these brain problems symptomatic? Well, Byrnes is considered one of the more intense players in the league, and just a year ago Tejada was considered by many the most valuable player in the league.

And yet, an inch here or there and we wouldn’t be having this discussion because the A’s would have won.

Steve Lombardi, who runs the NetShrine discussion forum, has another explanation: the A’s have been cursed ever since Mark McGwire was shipped out of town. (Thanks to Lee Sinins for the link.)

All of the New York and Boston papers have extensive previews of the Yankee-Red Sox serious today. Predictions, puff pieces: all you can eat. Ugh. Quite frankly, they are too many articles to link, and none of them will tell you anything you don’t already know. If you are interested, I suggest you head over to Baseball Newsstand and check out the hype for yourself.

(For Red Sox fans who want to add a little more fuel to their hatred of the Yankees, peep Allen Barra’s latest piece for Slate.)

The senior member of the Red Sox, knuckleballer Tim Wakefield faces Mike Mussina tonight at the Stadium. Like most everybody who follows the Yanks and Sox, I can’t wait. The anticipation is driving me mad.

If tonight’s game is anything like the Cubs-Marlins game yesterday–and way to go Mike Lowell)—I may need to get a perscription, pronto.

Jack Curry had a good article on the Yankees’ Captain Clutch, Derek Jeter yesterday in The Times. Jeter may not be as great as Nomar Garciaparra or Alex Rodriguez, but he is one of the best big game performers of his generation:

“Jeter is the most relaxed person that I’ve seen in the postseason,” Reggie Jackson, the Hall of Famer, said in a telephone interview. “I would relate him to the way Ron Guidry approached it or Catfish Hunter or Mariano Rivera. There’s a relaxed way to go about playing. At the same time, there’s tension. You have to be mentally and physically alert. Jeter is always ready.”

Curry continues:

When the calendar turns to October, Jeter embraces the enhanced atmosphere and the brighter spotlight. Jeter’s 107 postseason hits are a major league record. Jackson, who has advised Jeter about the power of believing – that you are supposed to succeed in pressure situations because you have done it before – said Jeter thrives because he has the talent and because he has the mental makeup to remain placid in precarious spots.

“The postseason is not just another game so you’re not going to play it the same way,” Jackson said. “You’re going to be nervous. There are going to be butterflies. But Jeter understands how to control the butterflies by getting them in the right formation. He does that very well.”

Once again, I am reminded of a bit that Tom Boswell once wrote:

Baseball has a name for the player who, in the eyes of his peers, is well attuned to the demands of his discipline; he is called “a gamer.” The gamer does not drool, or pant, before the cry of “Play ball.” Quite the opposite. He is the player, like George Brett or Pete Rose, who is neither too intense, nor too lax, neither lulled into carelessness in a dull August doubleheader nor wired too tight in an October play-off game. The gamer may scream and curse when his mates show the first hints of laziness, but he makes jokes and laugs naturally in the seventh game of the Series.

Above all, this Ideal which exists only in abstraction seems to have an internal tuning fork which gives him perfect emotional pitch. Strike that fork before each game, and the player vibrates with just the proper energy and spark, just the right relaxation and steadiness, which the game has always required. In other words, baseball’s highest value–at least during those hours on the field–is the ability to achieve a blend of intensity and underlying serenity which, in daily life, we might call mental health.

My brother has always said that the reason Jeter is a great player has more to do with good parenting than anything else. He may not be the best talent, but he is mentally well-adjusted. Jeter’s personality is perfected tuned to what he’s doing; he’s confident without being brash, secure without being flashy. He is a true leader.

“When you look across the room and you see No. 2 on your team, you know he’s going to be ready,” Jackson said. “You know he’s going to be calm. Everyone sees that and it makes them calm, too. The leader of all of this is Jeter. I put him on a high level as a postseason player.”