Daily Archives: October 26, 2004

Phil Taylor has a good piece about the nature of “choking” over at SI.com. Specifically, he addresses whether or not the Yankees choked in the ALCS this year:

We need to get something straight about choking, which is merely the most misunderstood concept in all of sports. It has become a catch-all term, applied to any player or team who: A) blows a huge lead; B) fails in a crucial moment; or C) loses an important game more than once.

…But not everyone who fails when we expect them to succeed is a choker. In fact, most of them aren’t. The Yankees are the latest team to have the tag slapped on them unfairly, a result of their unprecedented collapse against the Boston Red Sox in the ALCS. There are any number of words that accurately describe the Yanks’ failure — “humiliating” comes to mind — but “choking” is not one of them. A choker is a player or team who loses because the pressure of the moment adversely affects their performance. There is no way that could logically be said of the Yankees. They have thrived under pressure so often that it’s absurd to think that they suddenly crumbled because of the magnitude of the moment.

The Yankee brass is meeting with Boss George today in Tampa. Now the fun begins. Willie Randolph apparently had a positive interview with the Mets yesterday. If Joe Torre’s bench coach is hired by the Mets, he’d become the first black man to manage a New York baseball team. But Willie’s been down this road before. We shall see. One question for the Yanks is: who would replace him as bench coach? In an e-mail I got yesterday, Cliff Corcoran suggested that Joe Girardi would be a great fit. I think he’s right.

Meanwhile, the wheels will be turning in Tampa. Questions will need to be answered. Should the Yanks dump Kevin Brown? (Please, please me, oh yeah.) Should they persue Pedro Martinez, or Carl Pavano? Will Carlos Beltran replace Bernie Williams as many people assume? You tell me. But be sure and brush up on Steven Goldman’s most recent edition of “The Pinstriped Bible” before you answer.

Is it sour grapes for me to bitch about Curt Schilling at this juncture? Yeah, it is. So here is a good excerpt from Joe Sheehan’s latest:

I confess that I’ve never been a big fan of Schilling, who has always come across to me as a bit self-aware and self-serving in his populism, but I can’t help but have a ton of respect for what he’s done over the last week, which in turn has made him more likable to me. Sports media spends a lot of its time blathering about “character” and “heart,” usually for no more reason than a guy’s line drive happened to be hit in the right spot. Pitching through an injury that should have ended your season, while undergoing radical, if minor, medical procedures to do so, is an actual demonstration of heart, one that everyone should appreciate.

And here’s Brian Gunn’s take:

I’ve always had mixed feelings about Schilling. Sometimes I think he’s a pompous ass; sometimes I think he’s about the most admirable superstar in all of baseball. And sometimes the two opinions co-exist uncomfortably in my mind. Like that open letter he sent out after 9/11 — one of the more heartfelt things I’ve ever heard from an athlete. And yet, I’m embarrassed to admit, a small part of me thought it was nothing more than Schilling grandstanding again. And then there was the time Schilling showed up at the memorial service for Darryl Kile in St. Louis. Mind you, Schill didn’t really know Kile. They’d been teammates back in ’91, but that was it. Yet Schilling flew to St. Louis anyway, because he considers everyone in baseball his brother, and he wanted to pay his respects in person. 99% of me thought you couldn’t find a classier move in all of sports. 1% of me thought Schilling just wanted to show the world what a great guy he was.

But in the end it’s the better part of Schilling’s nature that wins out for me. For one simple reason: because whether he’s altruistic or self-absorbed, whether he’s authentic or simply posturing, he always comes across to me as a full-blooded human being, clearly a well-rounded poerson with a life outside of baseball. That’s rare in sports, and great for the game.

I haven’t been won over. I still think Schilling is a putz. But when I watch him work on the mound, I admire what an impressive pitcher he is. Often, I lose myself in a dream…”Man, wouldn’t it be great to have a guy like that on the Yankees…”

The World Serious moves to St. Louis tonight. Rain is in the forecast for the next two days as the Cardinals hope to make a series out of it. They’ll have to start against Pedro Martinez. We are familiar with the character of Red Sox Nation, but what about those famous Cardinals fans who are often labled as “the best fans in the country”? I don’t know much about them outside of their reputation. I know my pal Will Carroll thinks they aren’t all that, but he’s a Cubs fan after all. I did run into a lot of Cards fans last year in the Bronx when I attended Roger Clemens’ 300th victory in the Bronx and they seemed like a good bunch. If anything, I was ashamed of the way that Yankee fans treated them that night, taunting and chanting at ’em as we exited the stadium.

I asked Salon.com writer King Kaufman, who currently lives in St. Louis, what he makes of Redbird Nation:

Cardinals fans are what they are. They’re St. Louisans. Very provincial and proud of their own. They absolutely love their Cardinals. Except for Tony La Russa, the Cardinals can pretty much do no wrong. La Russa’s image suffers from his A) not living here in the offseason and B) not being Whitey Herzog.

The mistake people make, I think, is thinking Saint Louis is a great baseball town. It’s not a great baseball town. It’s a great Cardinals town. If it isn’t the Cardinals, no one cares. I think the great baseball towns are the ones that people move to. New York is one, San Francisco is another. Chicago, Los Angeles. You have fans of the home team but also fans of all the other teams. In St. Louis, baseball season ends the minute the Cards are eliminated. Sometimes it’s hard to find the LCS on the radio if the Cards aren’t still playing. You’ll never see a non-Cards playoff game on a TV in a bar if there’s a Rams or (except this year) Blues game going on. It’s very different from what I’m used to in California, with a migrant population, and fans of all different teams around, so that it’s baseball that everyone has in common, not just the local nine.