Joe Girardi inspires Yankees to beat Orioles
by Scott Christ on May 23, 2008 4:43 AM EDT
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PrintI really don't mind having lost a 2-1 game to the Yankees yesterday. Our boys have problems scoring runs and that will be a burden all season long. I take out of that game more the great start by Brian Burres and the totally competent relief work that followed it. The winning run scored on a ball that Robby Cano fought off for a ground ball single through the hole going the other way. They deserved the win, they won the game, and that's fine with me.
What annoyed the ever-loving bongos out of yours truly was Michael Kay on YES screaming about Joe Girardi's ninth inning temper tantrum -- which was a Billy Martin impersonation worthy of comparison to Rick Dempsey's Babe Ruth impersonation -- getting the team "fired up" to come back and win.
They won the game on a ground ball single. It was a tough pitch that Cano got the best of, barely. It could easily have been an out. Very, very easily. And it was a hard-fought, 1-1 game. The Orioles didn't storm out to some big lead and lose it because the Yankees manned up and came back to win on behalf of their tossed skipper.
It's things like this that will always get at me, because it's such a ridiculous idea. Take all the "sports fan" stuff out of your brain, which all of us have and has been MOSTLY influenced by sports media, because when you're five or eight or fifteen you don't know how often the guys on TV are talking out of their you-know-wheres and chalking up wins to things like gumption and stick-to-it-iveness instead of talent or preparation of whatever else that is in any way tangible.
Taken it out of your brain for a moment? Good. Now tell me how a manager getting thrown out LITERALLY spurns the Yankees on to victory. Robinson Cano hit a pitch for a single and it scored a runner, and that was enough to win the game. The Yankees won. Cano deserves the credit, along with Hideki Matsui, who singled to lead off the inning and wound up scoring the run, and Bobby Abreu, who pinch-hit and walked after Girardi was tossed, keeping the inning alive.
Even the AP report is filled with this nonsense:
Joe Girardi bolted from the Yankees’ dugout, and it was showtime. The New York manager took out a season’s worth of frustration on his hat, the umpires and the dirt, earning an ejection Thursday night with the kind of theatrical argument that local fans never saw while Joe Torre was in town. Moments later, the Yankees won in the bottom of the ninth inning. Coincidence or correlation? “Joe got fired up and I guess it got us fired up,” Jason Giambi said after the 2-1 victory over the Baltimore Orioles. The correct answer is, of course, "coincidence." Or, maybe, "The Yankees are really the superior team, so their 2-1 win over the Orioles should not be considered such a miracle." If it is, in fact, such a miracle, then the Yankees have a whole hell of a lot to worry about. I also enjoy the subtle jab at Joe Torre, who only did things like manage the team to the best of his ability for many years. But it's true, he never made an ass out of himself while being wrong in the process. Which Girardi was, for the record. He was wrong. Giambi was rightly called out on a foul tip off the bottom of his bat that Ramon Hernandez caught. It was really a great call by home plate umpire Chris Guccione. I guess maybe the Yankees need things like this right now. They need to believe in "magic" and manager fits having a real effect on the team's performance, since the club is in such a state of disarray, especially when you consider how much they're being paid. That's not even a personal shot at the Yankees. It's just the way it is. It also probably doesn't help my personal situation with this that I do not like Joe Girardi and I loathe Michael Kay (although it's worth noting that YES' broadcasts are top-notch and Kay is actually probably in the top half of regular play-by-play guys around the league, which is pretty astonishing). Credit the Yankees. Credit Cano and Matsui and Abreu. The team did this. The manager didn't do anything. And if we could hit, the film at 11 would've just been another Yankee loss.
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I felt the same way about Kay when I had YES. Although he is monumentally stupid, he is more entertaining than most of the announcer-bots on the FSN channels.
by Awesome Mike Awesome on May 23, 2008 5:39 AM EDT reply actions
yeah
At least he does give a shit and seems to know a little bit about other teams. He’s no genius or anything but he keeps me awake. That’s more than I can say for lots of dudes.
by Scott Christ on May 23, 2008 5:26 PM EDT up reply actions
Inspiring players? It can happen
just not last night. I mean, how do you inspire a player to take a walk? ‘Cause that was the game-changing play in my opinion.
Can such a fit have an impact on a game? Sure. It might, just might, buy you a call later in the game, it might, just might, snap a player or two into focusing just a bit better.
But last night? No tangible effect.
"I wasn't here for the losing years. But it feels a little like the days with Earl in charge and John Lowenstein smashing birthday cakes in the middle of the clubhouse with a bat." - John "T-Bone" Shelby
Nice typo! "Joe Girardi Inspires Yankees to Beat Other Team" is the correct headline.
Plus, Michael Kay - distant relative of Danny, Murray the, Stubby and Joseph, but with the brains of Special - is a reasonable option if your others are Suzyn Waldman or Phil Rizzuto after the 6th inning (aka radio silence). To be fair, many Yerkee fans aren’t exactly enchanted with the guy either. See some of the comments from last spring: http://www.yfsf.org/2007/04/elimination_its.html
Rah Rah Rasputin / Lover of the Russian queen
There was a cat that / Really loved Birds. -- Boney M
Wrong again...
there are NO OTHER TEAMS… just an other GROUP OF GUYS.
"Chickens are hard to catch." Jennifer Scott (Luuuuuuuke's Mom)
sort of funny...
i mean, as much as the yankees whine, they did get jobbed on a few calls this series. that’s fine, b/c they get away w/ a lot, too.
the call on the strikeout was correct, but again, sort of funny, b/c that key walk looked like bullshit to me. i mean, abreu was diving all over the place like johnson was throwing at him, but at least a couple pitches called balls looked like strikes given guccione’s zone during the rest of the game.
bah. still say trembley is WAY preferable to girardi.
foghat goes with everything--birdman, 5/16/08
btw...
thanks, sun writers. i am TOTALLY starting a band called the dave trembley experience.
foghat goes with everything--birdman, 5/16/08
I'm going to have a fantastic day at work today
Because Girardi inspired me.
I think the O’s struggles at the plate is the magic that propelled the Yankees. It’s brutal. Roberts is plodding along. Markakis looks horrible. Huff is back to his early season hitting habits. Scott has rebounded a bit, but he’s not tearing it up. The O’s need a few of these bats to come back to life or we’re in for seeing more decent pitching flushed down the toilet.
The O’s have not been harping about solely pitching and defense as they did last year. As if it were 1966 and before the mound was lowered. We’ll still hear it once in a while, but just once I’d like to hear “we really need to get some bats”. If they can tell us about the need for pitching and defense, seems to me they can just as easily tell us about the need for bats.
Hitting is this team's Achilles Heel
There’s no doubt about that.
Here we are, in a rebuilding year, and yet we are SO CLOSE to being a decent team. I don’t believe, in my heart of hearts, this team has a chance to actually, you know, make the playoffs, but they sure are trying to win just about every game.
But when you see the pitching ad defense we’re getting, and to be SO CLOSE to being good, except for one area – hitting – it’s frustrating. How to fix it? Can it be fixed? What’s wrong with Markakis? What’s wrong with Roberts? Will Cintron help? Will Bynum help? What’s wrong with Ramon? The questions multiply on an almost daily basis.
As SC posted the quote yesterday, and I’ll paraphrase, maybe sometimes players are trying their hardest – they’re just not that good.
Alas, I believe this is the case with the Orioles’ offense. It’s just not that good, and there’s not much that can be done to make it good this year.
"I wasn't here for the losing years. But it feels a little like the days with Earl in charge and John Lowenstein smashing birthday cakes in the middle of the clubhouse with a bat." - John "T-Bone" Shelby
SO CLOSE?
I don’t buy that. I look at the Rays and think “SO CLOSE”. The O’s have a plenty of deadwood to flush and there aren’t many replacements waiting in the wings. 1B, SS, 3B, Roberts may be gone at 2B. Luuke may or may not hang in there in LF. Jones may pan out. Part of me is just thinking “come on and blow the season so you can draft another Wieters”.
The pleasant surprise has been the pitching.
If our pitching stays as good as it is
Then really, all we need is a league average offense and we’ll be dam good team.
But you are right in that getting to be a league average offense doesn’t seem like its going to happen any time soon.
"Whether your name is Gehrig or Ripken, DiMaggio or Robinson, or that of some youngster who picks up his bat or puts on his glove, you are challenged by the game of baseball to do your very best day in and day out. That's all I've ever tried to do."
Annoying
I’m pretty sick of the Orioles acting as an emotional springboard for the Yankees and Red Sox.
This was a perfect win for the Yankees: Kennedy pitched pretty well, Girardi got emotional (which probably shrunk the strike zone for Abreu), Farsworth pitched a perfect 8th in Joba’s place, and a slumping Cano drove in the winning run for a walkoff win.
Any day that goes that well for the Yankees is a dark, dark day for baseball, as far as I’m concerned.
Tough loss
That’s baseball though. I’d feel better about the future if our offense was hitting better than .248/.317/.386. But the pitching is for the most part solid, which is a downright surprise compared to last year. So I’m still optimistic.
I think Payton should have been playing well in. Matsui is not the fastest runner and he could have nailed him at the plate.
And I agree that the YES announcers are some of the better ones out there. They actually will produce facts about the Other Team’s strengths and weaknesses, such as the fact that we lost a slew of one run games last year, and it’s the opposite this year, or that our bullpen is greatly improved, etc. Most announcers are blind to the OT and would just rather ignore them.
Worst announcers, whoever calls the CWS games. Dead air guys who assume that you’re watching so you saw what happened. If there’s a spectacular play or something important happens, they sit there and go ‘wow’ and dont’ say anything for a minute.
Payton SHOULD have nailed him...
his throw was high, but well in time.
"Chickens are hard to catch." Jennifer Scott (Luuuuuuuke's Mom)
Ejected?
I might have missed it, but did Girardi really get ejected from the game?? I don’t remember seeing the ump make the motion, and i’m assuming they usually don’t say nicely that the managers are ejected.
just came back from helping old ladies cross streets
recyled some newspapers i saw laying out on the sidewalk.
Girardi is inspirational.
Okay, back to my day.
The Yankees
are just desperately in need of a narrative right now that doesn’t contain the word “suck” in it – because believe me that’s all they’re hearing around town at the moment. Kay is basically the Rush Limbaugh of sports – a stupid, hopelessly partisan asshole who doesn’t know what the fuck he’s talking about. I like listening to Kenny Singleton though, he’s one of the best announcers in the business in my opinion – and honestly as bad and stupid as Kay is, he is a professional broadcaster, and does understand how to work in his medium, which is something that cannot be said about any of the Orioles announcers unfortunately.
I turned off the YES audio for good on Wednesday after hearing the “you don’t throw at the Capitan” b.s. they were slinging after Hawkins threw at Huff. Kay is an idiot. I don’t mind when announcers are partisan – some of this can be pretty entertaining. But I wouldn’t listen to an O’s announcer that justified an intentional head-high inside pitch.
Writing is God's way of showing you how sloppy your thinking is.
Kinda OT, but B-Rob's slump
... may lift after the trade deadline, I suspect. Now I don’t know why he would want to sabotage his future, it just looks to me like that is what is going on. Go ahead, call me nuts, I’ve been called worse. (Who could possibly be more susceptible to paranoia and conspiracy theories than an emotionally bruised O’s fan?)
The one thing Girardi may have accomplished, besides shrinking the strike zone, is freezing JJ up a bit. The only people he even tried to inspire were Papa Hank and Uncle Hal.
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