Pierre consecutive game streak ends, Proctor consecutive game streak begins.

"Have no fear, Paul O'Neill aficionados."

Sometimes, it's hard not to worry.

The price of gas, the weak dollar, the recession, the military conflicts, crime, homelessness, disease, earthquakes, tornadoes, floods, cholesterol, that upcoming project at work, that knocking noise in my car.

Sigh.

Baseball-wise, I think Yankees fans can "worry" if they want to. It's kind of pointless. Not much a fan can do to affect the outcome of a baseball game and, worst case, the Yankees lose a bunch of games. It has happened before.

But if a Yankee fan was the worrying sort, there's also a lot to worry about as the 2008 season approaches.

The Red Sox, the Blue Jays, the Devil Rays, the Indians, the Tigers, the Angels, the Mariners, Mussina, Hughes, Damon.

Oh no! Oh no! Oh no!

I forgot the most important thing I've been worrying about: What number will Morgan Ensberg wear?

No, SHUT UP ... TELL ME NOW ... WHAT IS MORGAN ENSBERG'S UNIFORM NUMBER?!?!?!?!

Phew.

Two thumbs up.

How could this movie have evaded my attention for so long?

• The singular brilliance of this movie's mission statement is clarified on the back cover: "The team's terrible. They can't pitch, can't hit, can't catch. To top if off, everyone in New York is predicting Joe will be out by the end of the season. To the world, it's hopeless. To Joe, it's a beginning."
  
• The acting is all wrong. Sorvino ignores all the Torre mannerisms, other than general calmness. The lone bright spot is Paul O'Neill throwing tantrums in the locker room ... until Joe calmly reminds him that a baseball season is 162 games. The Brooklyn Italian stereotypes can only be described as made-for-TV.
  
• The Dwight Gooden fixation is inexplicable. Maybe it made sense at the time. Best line: During Gooden's no-hitter, Torre authoritatively declares, "Get Wetteland warmed up." As if Torre even knew the names of the pitchers in the Yankees bullpen.

Still, despites its flaws, it succeeds quite well at something. I'm not sure what.

Felz gives it 3 1/2 spicey meatballs out of 5.

Some athletes just have the confident gait of a champion racehorse.

A compilation of quotes from Yankee hopefuls Jeff Karstens, Darrell Rasner, and Sean Henn:

"Before today, I was feeling all right, but after today, I don't even know. ... I hope I've done enough for them to feel comfortable with me, and that they can trust me as well ... It definitely doesn't look good, but I'm 26. I still have to pitch somewhere, whether it's here or with another team."

Somebody get this man some steroids.

Jesus may be risen ...

... but Mike Lupica's intellect is not.

"And the guy who pitches the second game of the season against the A's in Japan - Jon Lester - would fit right in with some of the kids the Yankees get behind in their own rotation this season."

The Red Sox have a young pitcher who is pitching the second game of the season. The Yankees also have young pitchers.

Is this line of thought going anywhere?


"The Red Sox are still the team to beat, and not just because they have now won two World Series out of the last four."

I think the Red Sox are the best team in baseball. They won the WS and haven't adjusted their roster too much. But baseball is very unpredictable. To illuminate that observation, the very same Red Sox didn't even make the playoffs two seasons ago.

Lupica's line of reasoning is a bit tautological, don't you think? "The Red Sox are the best team in baseball, and not just because they are the best team in baseball."

Lupica could write five million words explaining other reasons that the Red Sox are the "team to beat." But none of these arguments can be more convincing than the fact that they won two of the last four World Series.


"They have spent better than the Yankees ... and have been run better."

As evidenced by the fact that they have won two of the last four World Series.


"The people who own the Red Sox now came in with the right attitude, which was this: You can't win the past from the Yankees, because the Yankees already won it. They wanted to start a new fight, a new fashioning of the rivalry, one that is now the closest to what the Dodgers and Giants had in New York once. And for now they are winning it."

As evidenced by the fact that they have won two of the last four World Series.


"And they are doing this in an era that was supposed to belong to the Yankees, especially since they made the trade for Alex Rodriguez in February of 2004.

Remember, the Yankees did that at the end of the baseball winter in which the Red Sox had tried to move heaven and Fenway Park to get Rodriguez to Fenway."

You, sir, are a liar and a phony.

I remember.

You said that the Rangers were better off with Soriano than the Yankees were with ARod. You said the Mets were the best team in New York. You said that ARod was going to move to centerfield or first base.


"And if somebody had told you his first day in New York that all this time later the Yankees would not only not have won a World Series in the years since but not even played in one, well, how hard would you have laughed?"

Not at all. Because I understand baseball. The Yankees had just lost Pettitte, Clemens, and Wells. They didn't even have Randy Johnson yet, or Chien-Mien Wang.

You really don't remember what it was like, do you?

The starting rotation was Kevin Brown (I had high hopes, to be fair), Javy Vazquez, Mussina, Lieber, and Contreras/El Duque/Loaiza.

I think most observers expected a lot of 12-11 losses and probably a second-place finish in the AL East.


"It has been stated before and can be stated again that Rodriguez has become the face of the Yankees now. Not Jeter, not Posada, not penitent Andy Pettitte, not the great Mo Rivera. It is Rodriguez, to whom the Yankees and their fortunes are now permanently tethered, for better or for worse."

1) "It has been stated" is a meaningless qualifier. It has been stated that the Earth is flat, that the value of Pi = 3.00, and that the light from the stars comes from pinholes in the firmament.

2) "... and can be stated again" is even more meaningless.

3) There is no such thing as "face of the Yankees."

4) The fortunes of the Yankees can not be "permanently" tethered to ARod, unless you misunderstand the meaning of a kindergarten-level vocabulary word.

5) You said Pettitte was "penitent." Screw you.

"So the real question, and it is a good one, becomes this for the Yankees, now and into the future:"

So many questions, I hardly know where to start:

1) Joba as a reliever.

2) Joba as a starter.

3) Hughes.

4) Kennedy.

5) Jeter's range as he gets older.

6) Can Damon rebound and stay healthy?

7) Can Abreu rebound and stay healthy?

8) Can Matsui rebound and stay healthy?

9) Is Mussina shot?

10) How long can Rivera continue his domination?

11) Will Girardi manage like he is in the National League?

12) Will George Steinbrenner die soon?

13) Lefties in the bullpen?

14) A first baseman who can hit?

15) The new Stadium?

So, Lupica, what have you got?

"Will Alex Rodriguez break the all-time home run record before he wins a World Series wearing a Yankee uniform?"

Screw you, Lupica.

That's the real question you've got for the 2008 Yankees?

Look, the bleachers will be $12.

That's what the guy actually says. "The bleachers will be $12," he says.

The man has his finger on the pulse of the New York sports scene.

Mike Lupica on Sunday, March 16, 2008:

"This isn't to suggest that somehow the spring training silliness of the past few weeks is some sign that the Yankees are now officially mad as hell and aren't going to take it anymore, or that Yankee pitchers are maybe going to move David Ortiz off the plate."


March 17, 2008:

"The very next inning, Andy Pettitte threw inside to David Ortiz, before striking him out for the second time in the game. And my guess is that very soon in The Rivalry, Ortiz will get plunked by a Yankee pitcher for the first time ever.

...

Make no mistake - Pettitte’s pitch yesterday was intentional. And Girardi had a lot to do with it."

I hope Torre's sensibilities are not insulted.

Yes sir!

"Andy Pettitte's pitch sailed up and in past David Ortiz's armpit, stumbling the big Boston slugger and drawing boos from visiting members of Red Sox Nation."

This is so wonderful. Best believe that Joe Girardi will not refer to David Ortiz as "Big Papi."

When Baseball Was Pure.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ten_Cent_Beer_Night

"Jeff Burroughs violently reacted to a fan stealing his glove and cap, the Texas players, led by manager Billy Martin, charged onto the field with bats. A huge number of intoxicated fans, some armed with knives, chains, and portions of stadium seats that they had torn apart, surged onto the field; others hurled bottles from the stands. Realizing the Rangers might be in danger of their lives, Ken Aspromonte, the Indians' manager, ordered his players to grab bats and help the Rangers."


http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Disco_Demolition_Night

"White Sox TV announcers Harry Caray and Jimmy Piersall commented freely on the 'strange people' wandering aimlessly in the stands. Mike Veeck recalled that the pregame air was heavy with the scent of marijuana. When the crate on the field was filled with records, staff stopped collecting them from spectators who soon realized that long-playing (LP) records were shaped like Frisbees. They began to throw their records from the stands during the game, and the records often struck other fans. The fans also threw beer and even firecrackers from the stands.

After the first game, Dahl, dressed in army fatigues and helmet, along with a female sidekick named Lorelei and bodyguards, went out to center field. The large box containing the collected records was rigged with a bomb. When it exploded, the bomb tore a hole in the outfield grass surface and thousands of fans immediately rushed the field. Some lit fires and started small-scale riots. The batting cage was pulled down and wrecked, and the bases literally stolen, along with chunks of the field itself. The crowd, once on the field, mostly wandered around aimlessly, though a number of participants burned banners, sat on the grass or ran from security and police. People sitting in the upper deck could feel it sway back and forth from the rioters."

The Billy Crystal at-bat is a shame that will burden the Yankees all season long. Hic. Pardon me, I'm Jerry Green and I'm drunk.

"You cannot love baseball without treasuring the visions of Babe Ruth, of Lou Gehrig, of Joe DiMaggio, of Mickey Mantle.

All of them ghosts of other eras, when baseball was proud and not yet impure."

I'm going to ignore the racial undercurrent of that statement. I doubt if that's what Jerry Green intended.

Still, I got news for you, Pops: Baseball was always impure.

"My ancient visions of the Yankees are of class:

"Derek Jeter getting booed at Comerica Park by his home-state fans just because he plays for the Yankees with the traditional dignity. And Jeter refusing to complain about the jeering.

Johnny Damon, standing on the steps of the visitors dugout at Comerica, and applauding the pennant-bound Tigers after they dumped the favored Yankees in the 2006 playoffs.

Gehrig, trying to keep playing as he was dying with the disease would carry his name, when I was a kid at Yankee Stadium.

DiMaggio, with his grace and flawless, fluid moves in center field.

And Mantle, grinning and friendly, pounding prodigious shots into the upper deck." (While hungover.)

Do you know what "ancient" means? Because Jeter is currently on the Yankees and the Damon story is only two years old. Even in the compressed time period of professional Major League Baseball or the compressed time period of Jerry Green's life, two years is not "ancient."

"Once upon a time, baseball had an entrepreneur named Bill Veeck. He wrote an autobiography called 'Veeck As In Wreck.' Veeck owned the St. Louis Browns, the whipping boys of the American League. In 1951, Veeck signed a dwarf and sent him to bat in a regular-season Sunday game against the Tigers. Eddie Gaedel, 3-feet-7 and 65 pounds, popped out of a cake, wearing the Brownies uniform No. 1/8."

I truly think if I could go back in time and pick any baseball game to attend, that would be the game.

Hilarious.

"It was circus showmanship at Veeck's best. Worst?"

It was writing at its worst. Best?

"Bob Cain was the Tigers pitcher. Bob Swift was the catcher. There are famous pictures of Swift on his knees to catch Cain's pitches.

Gaedel, walked on four pitches, as a pinch hitter. He was too small for Cain to throw strikes. Cain supposedly was laughing as he threw the four high pitches. Commissioner Kenesaw Mountain Landis was not so amused. He ordered Gaedel's name be stricken from the all-time major league records. The one at-bat was later reinstated instated into major league baseball's precocious official statistics.

The event was a travesty of baseball."

1) Can official statistics be "precocious"? What is the context for "precocious" in this story? Major league baseball's official statistics act mature for their age? Do you mean "precious"?

2) That was awesome when Gaedel batted.

3) That was a regular season game.

4) You just said baseball used to be pure, then you bring up a "travesty" from fifty-seven years ago.

5) Lighten up.


"And shame is a burden the Yankees will carry all season long. Some place -- wherever? -- the Babe must be crying."

So now you imply that "pure" Babe Ruth is in Hell.

You really think Babe Ruth is crying because the Yankees gave a Spring Training at-bat to an entertainer? Do you know anything about Babe Ruth?

It showed.

" 'Baseball wasn’t fun the last three years,' [Torre] said. 'The game was fun. The players were fun. But everything connected to it wasn’t fun. I was curious if it could be fun again.'

...

But the tedium of all that swirls around the Yankees had begun to wear him down, somewhere beneath the sad eyes. At times last season, Mattingly felt obligated to give Torre a poke, a reading of his emotional and physical temperature."

I know the job of professional baseball manager is torturous and tedious. Especially for the maanger of the New York Yankees. With the highest salary, by far, of any professional baseball manager.

"More than once, he said, he asked himself, 'Am I doing the right thing?'

He didn’t get a legitimate answer until the days before he left for Vero Beach, when his body began to feel right again, when the notion of another baseball season put him again on the balls of his feet."

Last season, it made headlines -- literally -- when Torre got off the bench and stood on the top step of the dugout.

During a game.

It was like he was actually paying attention to the actual game.

Yankee Manager Criticizes Other Manager.

I don't even care about the details of the argument. I don't think Girardi is right. But I just like the fact that he didn't refer to the manager of the Rays as "Joey" or offer to give him a reacharound.

When Derek Jeter was taken out by Ken Huckaby, Torre did nothing about it.

When Manny Ramirez showed up Scott Proctor, Torre did nothing about it.

When David Ortiz hit fifty homeruns off Yankee pitchers, Torre referred to Ortiz as "Big Papi" and never dusted him once.

Jeter and ARod lead the league in getting hit by pitches and it's not "classy" to complain about it.

It's not "classy" to complain about Joba Chamberlain enduring Exodus:8 on a pitcher's mound in Cleveland during a playoff game.

Here's Girardi, during a Spring Training game, defending a minor league catcher who won't even make the team.

Bud Selig is a trip.

The Steroid Era is over, in case you were wondering:

"Bud Selig has no plans to read any of Barry Bonds' grand jury testimony that was ordered released by a judge just over a week ago.

'No, I don't think so,' Selig said Saturday. 'I think all the lawyers around me will but I don't think there's any reason for me at this time.' "

I read Bonds's grand jury testimony.

I'm not particularly intrigued, but it's convenient enough to download it from the Interweb and give it a quick once-over. Took less than ten minutes.

I think Bonds is lying, sure. His tactic is plausible deniability, but it just doesn't sound too plausible that he didn't notice what "flaxseed oil" was doing to his body.

Having said that, I'm not sure he will be found guilty of perjury, because it seems difficult to prove.

Not much of an analysis right there, but now you know more about the situation than the Commissioner of Major League Baseball.

I got through exactly one sentence.

"He’s coming up on 34 years old, the shoulders still taut, the fade still working, the eyes still burning jade."

Another writer has a man crush on Derek Jeter.

Don't shoot the messenger.

"I always have confidence in myself. But it's tough when you do lose the confidence from your manager to maybe prepare yourself, day in and day out when you have no clue about anything," said Farnsworth, who allowed 108 runners to reach base via hit or walk in 60 innings last season and was 2-1 with a swollen 4.80 ERA in 64 games. "It happened a few times last year."

Eh.

Farnsworth is overpaid and disappointing, but his career ERA is 4.37 and most of that time was in the NL.

Of course Farnsworth's performance is not primarily Torre's fault, and nobody can take Farnsworth seriously. But the only reason we don't take him seriously is because he's a below-average pitcher. Torre is still the worst bullpen manager in the major leagues.


"Definitely, all across the board, communication with the manager, everything," Farnsworth said when asked if the atmosphere has improved under Girardi. "What they said last year about I couldn't go back-to-back days, which was news to me, when it was brought to me. I said, 'What are you guys talking about?' Communication is key for everything."

I'll bet that's exactly what happened. Farnsworth may be a dolt and a bad MLB pitcher. But his criticisms of Torre are probably right on.


"I don't think he has had the type of year he can have," Girardi said. "I think he will benefit from the third year in New York."

Not if Farnsworth keeps blaming others for his failures, he won't.

If Farnsworth pitches well, then he won't have failures, and then he won't need to blame anybody.

If Farnsworth doesn't pitch well, then it doesn't really matter who he blames.

According to Professor George A. King III, PhD, the key to pitching in the major leagues is the development of an internal locus of control.

Wow.

What is an "unusually passive" Joe Torre?

Is that like an "unusually wet" Pacific Ocean?:

"Mike Mussina seemed to be speaking for the entire team when he said, 'We loved Joe, but we all knew things had to be different. Especially the guys who've been here a while and haven't won, we were very disappointed at the way things had been going.'

...

Torre himself seemed unusually passive, staying in the dugout when Joba Chamberlain was being swarmed by midges in the decisive Game 2 of the Division Series at Jacobs Field. Torre repeated this week in Vero Beach, Fla., what he'd said in October, that he should've asked the umpires to stop play. Instead, Torre said, 'I didn't act on it, and I regret that.'

...

Girardi has done it by mingling with players, which Torre did less and less in his later years, choosing to leave the policing to Jeter. Damon says, 'Joe [Girardi] walks in here and he asks for your opinion, he asks how you're feeling, he gives you the feeling that what you think matters.' "

They all knew they needed a change.

Torre's departure was best for both parties.

Yet, anybody who suggested such a thing got shouted down.

Mr. Girardi.

It's so endearing when Joe Torre talks like a 10-year-old:

"I reminded Joe that good or bad, he's going to be questioned," Torre says. "But his intelligence and common sense will circumvent those issues. Joey brings a lot to the table. This kid understands. He's certainly aware of what he's getting into."

"Circumvent" is a mighty big word for somebody who refers to a grown man as "kid" and "Joey."


"He's a lot smarter than I am. He went to Northwestern, for gosh sakes."

You meant it as a disarming joke, but we all know it's true. Joe Girardi can probably name most of the players on the opposing team.


"He told of a fan approaching in the spring training of 2002 and saying, 'We'll do better this year,' after the Yankees had come within an out of beating the Arizona Diamondbacks in the '01 World Series."

They came within two outs. That's why the infield was in; there was only one out.

Probably the columnist's mistake.

But I wouldn't bet my life that Torre knows how many outs there were. It was a long time ago. That kid Gonzo hit that bloop hit. That other kid, what's-his-name, pitched a good game for the Braves that day. I mean, the Diamondbacks.