As much as we might try to think otherwise, race does figure into how we perceive ballplayers. White players tend to remind us of white players, and black players remind us of other black players. I’m not sure if that’s wrong, but I am convinced that’s the way it is.

Along those lines, I’ve finally figured out who Ivan Nova reminds me of, not only in terms of appearance but also his delivery. It took me four turns through the rotation; I should have known earlier, given how few black right-handers the Yankees have employed as starters over the years. Let’s see, there was Dock Ellis in the seventies, Charles Hudson in the eighties, Pascual Perez and Doc Gooden in the nineties, Shawn Chacon more recently…and that’s about it. But none of those guys really remind me of Nova. Instead, it’s the now forgotten Melido Perez, Pascual’s younger brother and one of the few bright spots during the lean years of the early 1990s. Both pitchers are listed at six feet, four inches, with Nova outweighing Perez by about 20 pounds, 210 to 190.

At one time, specifically 1992, Melido Perez looked like the future ace of the rotation. He threw a good fastball, but tamed hitters with a killer forkball, a delivery that tormented left-handed and right-handed batters alike. Unfortunately, he threw so many of the forkballs that he ended up losing velocity, hurt his arm, and faded into retirement one year before the arrival of the glory years in 1996.

While Nova’s appearance and motion remind me of Perez, his repertoire of pitches differs from his predecessor. He doesn’t throw a forkball, instead relying on an explosive mid-90s fastball and a terrific overhand curve. Nova has drawn some
criticism for his lack of strikeouts during his minor league climb, but I’m not concerned given the quality of his stuff. If he can have the success that Chien-Ming Wang had over the first three years of his career, but avoid breaking his foot while running the bases, the Yankees will be pleased with the results.

They must be thrilled with what they’ve seen so far; Nova has pitched well in three out of four starts, with just the one clunker against the bashing Blue Jays. He has pitched capably enough to be thrown into the mix for the back end of the postseason rotation. Let’s assume that Andy Pettitte returns and gives the Yankees what they expect from a No. 2 starter behind CC Sabathia. That leaves the third and fourth starters up for grabs, with Phil Hughes, A.J. Burnett, Javier Vazquez, and Dustin Moseley trying to box each other out for position. From my vantage point, Hughes seems like a cinch for the No. 3 spot; for all of his second-half struggles, his season ERA is still significantly better than Burnett and Vazquez, and his starts often produce the minimum requirement of a quality start (six innings, three runs).

That leaves one spot open for the playoff rotation. So who gets it? Let’s eliminate Moseley, who is lacking both in stuff and postseason experience. Similarly, I don’t want to see Vazquez anywhere near a mound at the beginning of a postseason game. His diminished fastball, along with his glaring inability to compensate for it, make him qualified for nothing more than long man out of the bullpen.

That leaves us with Burnett and Nova. If Burnett can show improvement in his last four starts, I’d be willing to give him the nod. He pitched well in half of his postseason starts last year and still has the firepower to shut down an opponent for seven innings. If Burnett doesn’t improve, then I’d lean toward Nova. Unlike Burnett, Nova has the element of surprise working for him. The Yankees’ potential first round opponents, the Twins and Rangers, don’t have much of a book against Nova. The Rangers have never seen Nova, while the Twins faced him for the grand total of one inning back in May. Working against these lineups for essentially the first time, Nova could have a decided advantage, especially for one or two turns through the batting order…

(more…)

Mark Simon has a neat little post on Boone Logan over at ESPN:

Lefty reliever Boone Logan, now more valuable with news coming down that Damaso Marte may not pitch again this season, has now made 22 straight appearances without allowing a run. He whiffed the two batters he faced in Wednesday’s comeback win.

That scoreless streak, via calculations made on Baseball-Reference.com, is the third-longest streak of scoreless games by a Yankees pitcher in the Live-Ball Era (since 1920).

[Photo Credit: Murphy Elliott]

Got an e-mail from Yankeeist author Larry Koestler today:

I was recently able to conduct an interview with Alex Langsam, who works in the front office of the Pittsburgh Pirates as a Baseball Operations Assistant. Alex was generous enough to spend a significant amount of time providing very well-thought-out answers to my questions. Alex touches on everything from whether we’ll ever see wOBA show up on stadium scoreboards to when we might see some of the Pirates’ young phenoms hit the Bigs to what year the Pirates will return to the playoffs.

One caveat — this interview was conducted prior to the recent news regarding the Pirates’ financial documents and the status of GM Neal Huntington, and so those topics are not covered. Regardless, I wouldn’t have pressed Mr. Langsam nor do I think he would’ve cared to comment on those matters as it is.

Most cool. Dig it:

Yankeeist: You grew up a Yankee fan. Can you tell us a little bit about whether you are able to reconcile your Yankee fandom while working for another Major League organization, or is it similar to what happens when a player who grows up rooting for Team X ends up being drafted by Team Y and naturally switches allegiances to the organization that employs them? Did you root for the Yankees in the playoffs last year given that the Pirates were not involved in postseason play?

AL: I kind of surprised myself in how easy it was to “turn off” being a Yankee fan and switch allegiances to the Pirates. Not that I wasn’t a big fan before, I just found that when you work as hard as you do towards one goal, you have to be in it 100%. There’s really no room to be “rooting” for another team, otherwise you’re not giving the effort that everyone around you in the office is. Odd as it was, the Yankees really just became another team very quickly. As far as rooting for other teams in the playoffs, I found myself rooting for the teams of friends and former co-workers in the industry rather than for the laundry.

Jay Jaffe has a good post on Jorge Posada and concussions over at PB:

Sadly, concussions have become a Very Big Deal in professional sports in recent years as their devastating and harrowing long-term effects have come to light. Among football players, they’ve been implicated in the onset of dementia. On the diamond, they’re thought to be the real cause of what’s previously been accepted as amyotrophic lateral sclerosis, a/k/a Lou Gehrig’s Disease, at least according to one recent scientific paper. Concussions have ended the careers of players such as Brewers’ third baseman Corey Koskie, who collided with a wall while attempting to catch a pop-up in 2006, and Giants’ catcher Mike Matheny, who was forced into retirement in early 2007 as a result of the cumulative effect of all the foul tips he took in the mask — a situation that rings a bell both literally and figuratively as far as Posada is concerned.

Other players such as Jim Edmonds, Ryan Church, Justin Morneau and Jason Bay have been forced to the sidelines for extended and maddeningly indefinite periods of time due to concussions and their aftermath, the poorly understood post-concussion syndrome, which can include headaches, nausea, dizziness, fatigue, loss of memory, insomnia… a potpourri of misery. Cardinals’ manager Tony La Russa basically impugned Edmonds’ manhood while the latter recuperated, and Mets manager Jerry Manuel similarly made a hash of Church’s situation to the extent that his club came under well-deserved fire for their general handling of such cases.

The Yanks were this close to being swept by Buck’s birds. Then Nick Swisher hit a game-ending, two-run home run to the opposite field to give the Yanks a 3-2 win. I missed the game on the count of, you know, I gotta job and all, but I was pleased to hear that Ivan Nova pitched well, and of course, I was pumped about how the game ended.

When Tino Martinez played for the Yankees, women loved him. Girls swooned for Jeter, women went for Tino. He was reliable, solid, plus he had a nice ass. Nowadays, a lot of women love Swisher. Not like they liked Tino, but they find Swisher’s goofy enthusiasm charming. Here’s a shot I took of him at Old Timer’s Day with some of the old Yankee wives:

You might think he’s cool or you might think he’s a clown. So long as he keeps hitting, I’ll take him.

On a more somber note, Brian Heyman reports:

The postgame talk had more to do with Jorge Posada’s concussion symptoms than Nick Swisher’s two-run walk-off homer, which came one year to the day of his last walk-off homer. Joe Girardi was asked about life potentially without Posada, and he didn’t like the thought.

“You’re talking about a guy that’s playoff-tested, World Series-tested, September-down-the-stretch-tested, a switch-hitter in the middle part of our lineup,” Girardi said. “It’s an impact.”

But everything turned out OK with the test results. Posada is day to day and cleared to play.

Forget about Posada not being in the lineup, here’s hoping the man is okay.
[Photo Credit: Bill Kostroun/AP]

Yanks have been flat for a few days. Enough with that. Time to win a ball game.

Let’s Go Score Truck!

[Picture by Bags]

And so it is that CC Sabathia, unbeaten at home since July 2 of last year, has now been defeated. After Tuesday’s anemic 6-2 loss, the words “CC Sabathia” and “Cy Young Award frontrunner” are not being used in the same sentence. Sabathia, three times a 19-game winner, saw his ERA jump to 3.14 from 3.02, and he may have blown his best chance to finally hit the 20-win plateau. His next start comes Monday against the Rays. He has one more start against the Orioles before finishing against the Rays and either the Blue Jays or Red Sox.

Sabathia’s problems started immediately. The first five Orioles reached base and three runs scored before he recorded his first out. We could sit here and analyze location and nitpick his mechanics, but to simplify it, he was off.

“Could you have a worse beginning?” John Sterling asked the radio audience. The question, framed in his trademark condescending harrumph, was not rhetorical. Ty Wigginton could have hit a grand slam and the O’s could have scored five runs before making their first out. Sabathia showed his toughness by coming back to retire the 6-7-8 hitters and escape with a disappointing yet manageable 3-0 deficit.

Lost in that initial series was how poor defense led to the craptastic start. Jorge Posada alone cost the Yankees two runs: 1) His passed ball allowed Brian Roberts to advance to second base. Roberts would score two batters later, on Ty Wigginton’s bloop single. 2) His inability to hold on to Brett Gardner’s throw allowed Nick Markakis to slide home safely with the Orioles’ third run.

And yet with all that, there was still a sense the Yankees would find a way to dig back against Jake Arrieta. They had their chances, too. They plated a run in the first inning and seemed primed for more, with runners at the corners and one out, until Nick Swisher bounced into a double play. In the second, Seth Everett doppelganger Lance Berkman led off with a single only to be erased on a Posada double play. That double play began a stretch of nine straight Yankees being retired.

On the other side, Sabathia continued to labor and the defense continued to falter behind him. Wigginton led off the third with a double — a long fly ball to the right-center-field gap that Granderson had a bead on and nearly caught, but it bounded off the heel of his glove. Two batters later, Nolan Reimold launched a first-pitch fastball around the left-field foul pole and into the second deck. Granderson’s seventh-inning error led to the Orioles’ final run of the game.

It was only a matter of time before the Yankees had a stinker like this, especially with Sabathia on the mound. The offense, despite valiant efforts and numerous opportunities created, couldn’t bail him out. The Yankees were 2-for-11 with runners in scoring position; they were hitless in their last nine at-bats with RISP. Perhaps the play most emblematic of the Yankees’ night occurred in the bottom of the seventh inning, when with runners on first and third and one out, Alex Rodriguez, pinch-hitting for Ramiro Peña, ripped a line drive off the glove of third baseman Josh Bell, only to have it carom to shortstop Robert Andino, who fired to Roberts at second to force Granderson. Berkman, watching the play develop in front of him, had to hold at third. He’d be stranded there as Brett Gardner grounded out to end the inning and the last Yankee threat.

The Yankees have now followed their season-long eight-game winning streak with three straight losses. Tuesday’s defeat marked the first series loss at home since the Toronto Blue Jays took two of three August 2-4.

Credit the Orioles, though. These are not the Dave Trembley/Juan Samuel led O’s that mailed in the season before the All-Star break. They’re playing inspired baseball under Mr. Showalter. In fact, in the 35 games since he assumed managerial duties in Baltimore, the O’s have the best record in the AL East at 21-14, one game ahead of the Yankees.

It was previously thought that with the upcoming trip to Texas, and 13 games against the Rays and Red Sox, the two series with the Orioles would not necessarily be gimmes, but chances for the Yankees to pad the win column and keep the Rays at arm’s length. Not so. The former Yankees manager has given the young O’s a reason to play spoiler.

What’s a four letter word that rhymes with Buck?

CC looks to tame Buck’s killer B’s and win number twenty.

After a two-game losing streak, we’ll be rootin’ extra hard.

Let’s Go Yan-Kees. Make us a memory.

[Picture by Bags]

If you are into following the Yankees’ minor leaguers, peep what Greg Fertel is doing over at Pending Pinstripes. Mike Axisa also does a good job over at River Ave, and now Stephani Bee is adding to the conversation over at PB.

Diggum.

On the last Monday of the summer, so long as you’re not being technical about it, the Yankees dropped a ho-hum matinée to Buck Showalter and the Baltimore Orioles. A.J. Burnett was on the mound for the Yanks, and if we can all agree that CC Sabathia is the Sure Thing, Burnett is pretty much the opposite. He’s kind of like that hottie who sat next to you in history class. Most days she’d ignore you completely, but other days, for no apparent reason, she’d look in your direction and flash a smile that would make Galileo wonder if the sun really might not be the center of the universe.

To be fair to Mr. Burnett, he was decent last week against the A’s, and there was hope that he might be able to string a few good starts together to build some momentum for the playoffs.  What’s baseball, afterall, without the hope?

Burnett pitched fairly well, but just well-enough to lose.  The O’s scrapped together a few hits to take a 1-0 lead in the third, but Alex Rodríguez erased that deficit with a monster shot off the back of the bullpen wall in left.  It was his 100th RBI, which is historic.  This is A-Rod’s thirteenth straight season with a hundred RBIs, a streak matched only by Lou Gehrig and Ol’ Double-X, Jimmy Foxx.  It’s also is fourteenth time overall that he’s reached the century mark, something no one else in the history of the game has ever done.  Not bad.

But back to Burnett.  The Baltimore bats rang a bit louder in the fifth, but Burnett again escaped with just a single run allowed when Brian Roberts was nailed at second attempting to stretch his RBI-single into a double.  Things unravelled a bit more in the sixth when Burnett started the frame by allowing a single to Felix Pie and a walk to Nick Markakis.  Things like this happen, but Burnett compounded the problem by wild-pitching the runners to second and third.  He struck out Luke Scott, which was nice, but Matt Wieters followed with a sacrifice fly and it was 3-1.

The Yankees scored twice in the bottom half of the inning to level the score, but the tie didn’t last long.  In a virtual replay of the fifth inning, Brian Roberts delivered a two-out RBI-single (this time to right) and was thrown out at second.  The inning was over, but it didn’t really matter.  The Orioles had a 4-3 lead, and they’d bring it home from there.

Two quick notes before I go.  First, Derek Jeter is looking a bit better.  His final at-bat last night was a line drive out to right field, and he built on that by stroking a double off the wall in right center to lead off the game this afternoon.  Baby steps.

Second, Joe Girardi is, at least, consistent.  But as Ben Franklin once said, consistency is the hobgoblin of small minds.  A-Rod walked with two outs in the eighth inning, and Girardi reflexively sent in a pinch runner.  I know I’ve complained about this before, but it still makes me absolutely crazy to see him take his best hitter out of a one-run game.

Okay, that’s all from here.  Now if you’ll excuse me, I’ve got some aïoli to make and some burgers to grill.

And he’s bringing his upstart Boids with him. Time to start a new winning streak…

Let’s Go Yan-Kees.

As Brett Cecil mastered the Yankees for the fourth time this year, the Yankee game lacked any drama after Phil Hughes served up a two-run gopher ball (already his second of the day) in the third inning. As the Bombers failed to mount a serious challenge in a 7-3 loss, Yankee fans watching the scoreboard were treated to a roller-coaster ride as Tampa and Boston played hot potato with the leads in their games with Baltimore and Chicago.

As the Yankees went quietly, Tampa was putting up a four spot on the Orioles in the sixth to overcome a three-run deficit. Luckily, the recently defiant Orioles answered back with four of their own in the bottom of the same inning. After Tampa scratched another two runs in the seventh, the Orioles held on tightly to the slim remaining margin. They sealed the win in impressive style as newly minted closer Koji Uehara made short work of the top of the Rays order, whiffing MVP candidate Evan Longoria to end it.

And that was nothing compared to what was going on in Boston. The Red Sox led 2-1 until Daniel Bard’s throwing error in the seventh gave Chicago a 3-2 lead. Boston struck back immediately to reclaim a 4-3 lead courtesy of a Victor Martinez two-run blast. After an insurance run in the eighth, Papelbon needed three outs to make up a game on both the Yanks and Rays. He only could get two. Eight white socks crossed the plate and Chicago ended up with a sweet comeback victory.

These happily wild endgames turned the Yankee loss into a minor annoyance, or possibly to the truly enlightened, a mere afterthought. Hughes was bad. Though he only allowed seven hits in six innings, the hits were all loud (six for extra bases) and the Jays hurt him with every kind of pitch. Hill doubled on a terrible curve and homered on a flubbed cutter. Wells homered on misplaced fastball. Buck touched up another bad cutter and Snider doubled on an ineffective change (pitch identification courtesy of mlb.com’s Gameday). When he needed an out, he didn’t know where to turn, and he mostly came up small.

The velocity charts on Fan Graphs don’t show a lot of deterioration on Phil’s offerings over the course of the year, but pitches that blew past bats in April and May are finding wood as the summer drags out. He is less precise with his location, less effective overall.

But the Jays are a clubbing squad. He avoided the walks, got five K’s and mixed in the change up a little bit more. And he lasted six innings. I don’t think Hughes has many big performances left in him this year, but I’m not going to forget the great start to the year either. Hope he contributes what he can down the stretch, and comes back stronger next year.

(more…)

At least that’s how these two see it. Our cats in the Bronx, waiting for the boids to show up.

The Yanks gun for the sweep today as well as their ninth win in a row. Phil Hughes will toe the rubber for the Bombers. Let’s hope he can put away hitters when he’s ahead of them and have a strong outing. Alex Rodriguez returns, Robinson Cano sits.

Fresh direct from the Lo-Hud Yankees oven, here’s the line-up:

Brett Gardner LF
Derek Jeter SS
Mark Teixeira 1B
Alex Rodriguez 3B
Marcus Thames DH
Jorge Posada C
Curtis Granderson CF
Greg Golson RF
Ramiro Pena 2B

Dudes, it is drop dead gorgeous in New York. Hope you all are enjoying it.

Let’s go Yan-Kees.

What a nice morning for Yankee fans. In New York, the sun is shinning but the humidity is gone, replaced by a cool breeze. A quick look at the standings is enough to make you smile–the Yanks hold a 2.5 game lead over the Rays in the AL East, and a seemingly insurmountable 10 game cushion over the Red Sox, who dropped two games (each by the score of 3-1) to the White Sox yesterday at Fenway Park.

Andy Pettitte threw three innings of a simulated game yesterday, an exercise where Alex Rodriguez got in his hacks, and there was nothing negative to report. The only Yankee who is out of sorts may be Javier Vazquez, and while I can appreciate his frustration, he hasn’t exactly earned anyone’s confidence lately. Does Girardi have too quick of a hook?

What do you think?

The roller coaster season of Javy Vazquez resumed today as he returned to the starting rotation for the second time in 2010.  His most recent rotation sabbatical resulted in two relief appearances (4.1 and 4.2 innings) in which he allowed a total of four hits and two walks.  Interestingly, those two appearances were each as long or longer than any of the last three starts prior to his banishment to the pen.  Perhaps manager Joe Girardi liked this matchup for Vazquez’s return to the hill, as Javy was 1-0 with a 2.38 ERA and only three hits allowed in 11 innings versus the Jays this season.  On the other hand, the wind was blowing out to right at 21 MPH at gametime, and “Homerun Javy” (27 allowed this season) has been a flyball pitcher his entire career.  In fact, his 0.54 GB:FB rate this season is his career worst.  The next worst season?  2004, when he pitched for … yes, the Yanks.

But the Yanks had hope as they faced Blue Jay starter Mark Rzepczynski.  He came into the game with a 6.03 ERA, and had been torched for six runs and eight hits in three innings by the Bombers just two weeks ago.

Vazquez started strong with a seven-pitch top of the first, getting Jose Bautista on a swinging strikeout to end the inning.  With one out in the  second, Lyle Overbay launched a meatball slider into the jetstream to right, and the Jays took a 1-0 lead.  After a walk to John Buck and an Adam Lind popout to short, John McDonald banged another misfired slider high off the left field foul pole, and all of a sudden it was 3-0.

Meanwhile, Rzepczynski sailed through the first two innings, save for a first inning leadoff single to Brett Gardner.  Gardner swiped his 4oth base of the year (though replays showed him to be out), but he was stranded there.

Then the bottom of the third came, and Rzepczynski remembered who and what he was and whom he was facing.  Eduardo Nunez grounded out to short, but Francisco Cervelli pulled a pitch to left, and hustled his way to a double thanks to a weak-armed Travis Snider.  Gardner walked, and then Derek Jeter also pulled one into left for a double, scoring Cervelli.  Mark Teixeira followed with a walk, and Robinson Cano, who had been in a 0-12 slide, bounced one up the middle, scoring Gardner and Jeter and tying the game at 3.

Meanwhile, Vazquez was continuing to find no command of his slider, instead relying on an 87-89 MPH fastball and a 72-75 MPH change.  He managed to avert further damage in the third and fourth, despite two more walks and a single.

(more…)

Back from the bullpen, Javier Vazquez gets the nod this afternoon on a bright and sunny day in New York. I’m taking the wife to the ballgame where we’ll be root-root-rooting for the home team.

Let’s Go Yan-Kees!

The Great One

Ivan Nova gave up a long home run to the second batter of the game but the Yanks jumped on Brandon Morrow for two runs in the first, two in the second and one in the third giving Nova something he’s been unaccustomed to so far in his brief Major League career–a lead.

Then in the third inning Lyle Overbay lead off with a double that fell in the right-center field gap between Curtis Granderson and Austin Kearns. Aaron Hill hit the next pitch even deeper into the same gap for an RBI double. Pitch after that was a ball outside, so Jorge Posada went out to the mound and stood on the outfield side of his young pitcher, uphill so they could see eye-to-eye, and handed him the ball. Posada didn’t take off the face mask. His back was to the TV camera. Before he was finished speaking, Posada placed his right hand flat on Nova’s chest, and left it there for a good five count.

It was a simple, calming gesture, a throwaway really. But it’s that small stuff, those kinds of details, that I find so compelling these days when we’ve got so much access to the games and the players but such limited access to really knowing them as personalities, at least in the way that we knew recent generations of jocks and celebrities, through the print media.

Of course, watching Mariano smile in the ninth inning, enjoying a laugh and handshakes all around once again is one of the distinct pleasures I’ll ever know. It never gets old and I appreciate it each and every time, knowing it will not last forever, knowing the bulk of his great career is behind us now.

Nova wasn’t terrific in his fourth start, didn’t pitch long enough to get the win, one out away. The bullpen didn’t give up a run, Curtis Granderson had two more hits and three RBI, and Fat Elvis had a couple of hits too, as did lil’ Nunez and Pena. Robbie Cano doesn’t look himself, and John Flaherty was on to something when he suggested that this might be a decent time for him to get a couple of days off. Otherwise, it was another happy day in Yankeeland, an ideal way to kick off the holiday weekend.

Final Score: Yanks 7, Jays 3

Hoo-Ha.

Feels so good…ya heard?

1-04 Dry Bones

[Photo Credit: AP Photo/Bill Kostroun, Bags]

Ivan Nova tries to stay souped-up against that formidable talent, Brandon Morrow this afternoon in the Bronx.

The weatherman says a big storm might blow into town. Jays in town for three day games.

Never mind the picnic, Let’s Go Yan-Kees!

The Topps Company produced 11 different cards of Lou Piniella as a Yankee, ranging from a capless 1974 traded card to his final 1984 card, but the one shown here is my favorite. Part of the wondrous 1980 set, the card shows Piniella near the completion of one of his typically sweet swings. Looking at the position of his bat, it appears that Piniella has just used his patented opposite field swing to drop a line drive (or a bloop) into right field. Action cards are always the most desirable to have, but especially when they give you a snapshot of a player doing something for which he is best known. And I’ll always remember Piniella best for that flat, line-drive swing that often seemed pointed directly toward right field.

I feel a little bit sad now that Piniella has retired from the game, a game that he has served for 50 years, in a decision that was expedited last month. We had all expected that “Sweet Lou” would finish out the season with the Cubs before stepping aside, but his elderly mother’s illness mandated that he retire immediately. Family comes first, a decision made easier when the Cubs are hopelessly lost in the National League Central. It’s not as if Piniella was abandoning a team in the midst of a pennant race; if anything, he may have given the franchise a lift by allowing the Cubs to evaluate their interim manager, the unusually pronounced Mike Quade, as a potential fulltime replacement for 2011.

In some ways, Piniella was one of the last of a breed: the colorful and fiery manager. He spoke bluntly with the press–often too bluntly–and argued fervently with umpires–sometimes too much so. But with those qualities, he brought some old-fashioned personality to the table, a mix of John McGraw and Billy Martin, with a little Fred Hutchinson tossed in for good measure. (Hutchinson was simultaneously loved and feared by his players. After giving up a game-ending home run, one of Hutchinson’s pitchers refused to walk back to the dugout to face his manager. He instead walked toward the center field exit.) So many of today’s new managers are cut out of the same mold; they engage in politically correct managerspeak, afraid to ever criticize their players for poor play, and they stand motionless, even emotionless, in the dugout, while passively observing the game in front of them. I have trouble telling many of the new breed managers apart from one another: Manny Acta, Bob Geren, Ken Macha, Brad Mills. I know that they’re all intelligent baseball men, but they’re also so bland, so indistinct, so seemingly interchangeable.

I guess maybe they have to be that way, especially if they don’t have strong major league playing resumes to fall back on, like Piniella. Managers have never had it more difficult than they have it today. The salaries of the players dwarf their pay so many times over that they have been rendered virtually powerless. They can’t publicly scold their players, whose egos simply will not permit it. And they’re afraid to say anything minutely controversial in their interviews with the press, out of the fear that their words could be misconstrued or twisted into the latest installment of a never-ending soap opera.

Piniella was different; he just didn’t care about repercussions. As a longtime player, he had a body of work to fall back on, 18 seasons as a big league outfielder, in case his players sassed him. Unlike previous targets like John Boles and Fredi Gonzalez, he had played the game at the highest level, with a couple of world championship rings as proof. Piniella didn’t worry about becoming embroiled in controversies; if anything, he seemed to embrace the excitement brought about by the conflict.

Now sometimes Piniella went too far. He picked fights with reporters when they posed legitimate questions. He kicked dirt on umpires, something that no arbiter, no matter how incompetent, should have to endure. He could come across as a spoiled, petulant child, like he did two years ago when he carried on about the “suffering” the Cubs had to endure having to play in the Hall of Fame Game in mid-June while in the midst of a pennant race. So yes, Piniella could take his act of fire and brimstone too far, sometimes making himself smaller in the process.

Yet, on the whole, Lou Piniella as a manager was good for baseball. He taught hitters like few others I’ve ever seen, with his prized students including Don Mattingly and Edgar Martinez. Though he often lacked patience with his pitchers, he motivated most of his players, through his energy and his constant call for professionalism. He won a ton of games along the way, culminating in an unlikely world championship for the 1990 Reds. He had a degree of success everywhere, with the one exception being Tampa Bay, where only Joe Maddon has found the way. And let’s not forget that he brought some much-desired verve and allure to the dugout, where the manager is still the boss, even if some want the players to be.

Good-bye, Lou. Enjoy that retirement. But don’t lose that personality.

Bruce Markusen writes “Cooperstown Confidential” for The Hardball Times.

My man Dimelo sent this separated-at-birth call to me last night. Not bad…

After the game yesterday, A’s starter, Dallas Braden was disappointed by the lack of Bronx Cheer he received:

I was expecting more,” said Braden, who verbally sparred with Alex Rodriguez early this season before throwing a perfect game against Tampa Bay on May 9. “They get an ‘F’ in my book.”
(N.Y. Daily News)

Here’s the thing, Dallas. Yankee fans don’t boo sub-.500 pitchers on losing teams. You don’t matter enough to boo. Now, that’s a diss.