A Yankee Cap?

Shh! If you listen intently, you can hear the sound of thousands of frontrunners slinking off the Yankee bandwagon. Fans who couldn’t tell the difference between Charlie Hayes and Von Hayes, or who think Paul O’Neill was Secretary of the Treasury, are looking around for something else to do this summer beside take up the good seats at Yankee Stadium.

And if you have really good ears, you can hear the whinings of Yankee fans who’ve never known adversity: Boo hoo!, four years without a World Series ring!. Some of them are even starting to wonder whether a salary cap might save them from themselves and their spendthrift owner.

But before anybody gets too excited about the Yankees’ misfortunes, let me remind fans in Pittsburgh, Tampa Bay, and Kansas City why a salary cap is not the answer to your problems.

The lack of a salary cap is not what made the Yankees world champions four out of five years from 1996-2000. It’s what has made them chumps from 2002-2005. Over their history, the Yankees have shown time and again that spending lavishly on salaries does not a championship make.

The Yankees spent grossly on free agents in the 1980s and didn’t win the World Series once. They didn’t make the playoffs after 1981, though had the three-division system been in effect, they would have won the wild card in 1984, 1985 and 1986.

The Yankee championship teams were built while George Steinbrenner was banned from baseball, and forbidden from trading away young stars like Derek Jeter, Mariano Rivera, Andy Pettitte, and Bernie Williams. Steinbrenner had to be physically restrained from dealing Rivera, the greatest closer of all time in my opinion, after he blew the 1997 ALDS against Cleveland.

Those teams were home grown, with role players added here and there as complements. They won through smart management, trades that worked out, a lack of injuries, and timely hitting. The Yankees of the late 1990s thrived despite foolish free agent signings like Jose Canseco, Glenallen Hill, Hideki Irabu, and Henry Rodriguez. Even Roger Clemens was an expensive mistake for most of the 1999 season (though he proved worthwhile in 2000).

Since then, the Yankees have grown bloated, patching large holes with large contracts: Giambi, Sheffield, Rodriguez, Johnson, Brown, the list goes on and on. They’ve shown once again that the most expensive team is not necessarily the best team. In fact, the more they spend, the worse they perform.

If fiscal restraint were imposed on the Yankees, they might realize that their farm system is a place where they can spend unrestricted dollars, and a way for them to get an edge over teams that can’t afford a scout in every two-oxen town in the Dominican Republic. They might keep their minor league talent and build a winner from within the way they did in the 1990s.

Meanwhile, a salary cap wouldn’t make the inept teams any smarter. Minnesota, Oakland, and Florida have all shown an ability to make the playoffs without a high payroll. The fact that they can do it and other teams can’t is a testament to their baseball acumen (and the lack of it in other small market teams). A salary cap would only limit player salaries artificially.

Besides, if the Yankees were to start sucking the way they did in the late 1980s, what joy would there be left for the mismanaged teams? They’ll still be cellar dwellers, but they won’t have the Yankees to beat up on any more. It’s no fun to beat up on Goliath if he has his hands tied behind his back. He’s not Goliath any more.

It takes more than money to win a championship. The Orioles, Dodgers, and Mets of proved that in the late 1990s, and the Yankees are proving it again. You need solid pitching, good defense, a little bit of luck. Some might argue that you need a bunch of guys who like to play together (a.k.a. the dreaded chemistry), though the Yankees of the 1970s hated each other, as did Curt Schilling and Randy Johnson in 2001.

The two Florida Marlins championship teams are an object lesson for building a winner. The first team was bought, and quickly sold as soon as the rings were distributed. The second team was built from the ground up, with quality pitching, speed, and defense, and a group of guys who like playing together. Their young pitchers seem poised to keep them in contention for several more years.

But a salary cap isn’t going to make Florida any more able to re-sign those pitchers when they become free agents. They’ll just be distributed about the league at artificially low rates. And ticket prices won’t go down.

Barry’s Deals with the Devil

Get out your tinfoil hats, boys and girls. It’s time for Conspiracy Theory Hour.

In today’s episode, a skinny boy named Barry becomes rich and famous by hitting singles and doubles and tracking down long fly balls hit to left field (not center, left). But Barry wants badly to hit those big homers his dad hit.

Then one day, he meets a leprechaun who gives Barry a magic potion, called the cream, to rub on his body. The cream gives Barry incredible strength, and he starts hitting prodigious home runs. Opposing pitchers refuse to play ball with him, and Barry starts losing friends as he starts piling up homers. Other boys start taking the magic potion, and they too start hitting big home runs. But none so big and prodigious as Barry’s.

One day, a prosecutor starts to notice that Barry’s hat size has increased with the length of his majestic home runs. He compares pictures of Barry’s Mr. Potato-head noggin with photos from him as a boy when he used to dress up as a pirate. He starts an investigation.

Barry protests he has done nothing illegal. He only used a magic potion. He returns to the game he loves best and comes close to breaking the all-time record for home runs.

About the same time, the prosecutor turns over a mushroom and finds the leprechaun. The leprechaun tells the prosecutor that he has been giving Barry the magic potion, and that it contains illegal ingredients. The prosecutor thanks the leprechaun and starts legal proceedings against Barry and dozens of other ballplayers who have been taking the magic potion.

Barry is distraught. He didn’t think he was cheating, and he so badly wants to be the home run king. But the prosecutor says he has Barry dead to rights.

So Barry makes another deal. The prosecutor tells Barry he’ll call off the investigation if Barry agrees to give up his bat and glove and never ever play baseball again.

“But what about the home run record?” Barry asks.

“You leave the home run record alone, and I won’t throw your ass in jail for lying under oath,” the prosecutor says.

Barry considers his options. “On the one hand, I tell this guy to take a leap, go hit a bunch more home runs, and then I will be the king of all I survey. But I also have to testify before Congress, and pee in a cup once a week. More to the point, I have to stop taking the magic potion. I never hit more than 34 homers before the potion. It’ll take me at least two more years to become the king.”

Barry frowns at the first option. “On the other hand, I could retire right now as one of the greatest players of all time and get off scot-free for all those years of cheating. In five years, they’ll elect me to the Hall of Fame and call me the greatest living ballplayer for the next 20 years.”

Barry’s face starts to light up. “Hmm, I think option two sounds pretty good. But how do I retire right now without arousing suspicion? Everybody’s been waiting for me to become the king. I can’t just be like that Wallace Simpson guy and say ‘on second thought, maybe being king wasn’t so important.’”

Barry calls his friend Des Abledlist. “Des, I’ve decided to retire.”

Des is shocked. “Barry, you can’t retire. You’re the best player in the game.”

“No, Des, it’s all a fraud. I’ve been using magic potions to hit those homers. I need a graceful way to retire quietly without anybody getting wise.”

Des thinks for a while. “I know! Come on over to my house for a few weeks while the season starts. We’ll tell everybody you have a knee injury.”

“A career-ending knee injury? In the off-season? That sounds a little suspicious, doesn’t it?”

“It won’t be career-ending at first. It’ll just be a minor injury that needs an operation. You can have the operation, then the knee can get infected from the operation, then you’ll need to drain fluid periodically. It can go on indefinitely.”

“Do I actually have to have the knee operated on?”

“Of course not. That’s just the cover story. I have a few surgeons on the payroll that’ll pretend to do the operation. They’ll even give you the crutches for free. Then, a year from now, you can say the knee never healed quite right, and you have a teary retirement ceremony at the stadium at the start of next year. Everybody’ll think it’s such a shame that you had to hang it up so close to the record."

“Great idea, Des. I’ll be over in 10 minutes.”

And he lived happily ever after.

Fan is Short for Fanatic

Dear spectator:

I regret to inform you that you are not a member of _____________ (insert team name here). While we appreciate the fact that you bleed ___________(insert team nickname and color here, e.g. Dodger blue) and that you’ve named your two daughters ______________(insert first name of Hall of Fame player, e.g. Carlton) and __________(insert last name of aforementioned Hall of Famer, e.g. Fisk), you will not be receiving any shares should the team win the world series.

Please cease and desist from using the royal “we” when talking about the team. You were not selected in the draft, did not go through years of bus trips in the bush leagues, are not invited to team meetings, and are not consulted on player transactions. It that were the case, we would have contacted you before trading away _____________ (insert name of jettisoned popular player, e.g. Paul Lo Duca).

Most of all, please refrain from interfering with the game. Do not touch balls in play—it usually ends up preventing the runner from first from scoring on a double. Do not send your kid onto the field to retrieve a baseball that rolls close to you. A baseball costs $13; the seats that you will be kicked out of cost at least three times that much.

Do not throw beer at or smack a player from the opposing team, no matter how big a jerk he may be. Keep your distance from outfielders who are trying to catch foul balls that will send the team to the World Series for the first time in more than 50 years. And please do not get so drunk that you feel it is perfectly acceptable to run onto the field and attack the opposing team’s first base coach.

If you persist in hurling bottles, batteries, and epithets at the players, be they on our team or an opposing team, we take no responsibility for the likelihood that one of these players will return said object or throw a chair in your face.

We hope you’ll continue to come out to the ballpark and root, root, root for the home team. But if you cross the line between being a fan and a participant one more time, we’ll make sure that you never get back.

Sincerely,


__________________(Insert team president name here)

Erickson at Sixes, not Sevens

Scott Erickson is a 37 –year-old pitcher with a ERA over 6 who has not gone more than 6 in any of his starts all year. Last night, against a Montreal Expo team disguised as the Washington Nationals, he threw 6 scoreless innings of 6-hit ball. Lost in the shutout performance, however, was that Erickson pitched in and out of trouble all night, loading the bases once (before retiring the pitcher for the final out) and benefiting from two double plays to escape damage.

But instead of cashing this check, manager Jim Tracy chose to focus on the fact that Erickson had retired the last 6 batters with 1-2-3 5th and 6th innings. He decided to push Erickson’s luck, and left him in for the top of the seventh after the Dodgers took a 1-0 lead. This despite having one of the best bullpens in baseball ready to pitch the last three innings.

You didn’t need to watch the rest of the game to see how this one would play out, though the details were particularly gruesome. Erickson failed to field a bunt, Hee Seop Choi mangled two hot shots down the first base line, and the wheels slowly came off.

When the Dodgers start playing the elite teams (they begin a two-week stretch against St. Louis, Atlanta, Florida, and Anaheim next Monday), Erickson won’t be able to count on double plays to get him out of trouble. And Tracy will learn to have the bullpen ready to go beginning in the fifth.

NOTES
Hee Seop Choi is finally starting to hit, but he still strikes out far too much (16 hits, 16 Ks) and has one off the ugliest swings in baseball. He looks like he’s trying to start a lawnmower. And his defense is atrocious. He can’t field a ball hit to his left, and he nearly took Steve Schmoll’s arm off with a loopy toss on a grounder between first and the mound.

Make Room for Repko

When Jayson Werth returns from the disabled list in the next few weeks, the Dodgers will have an interesting problem in Jason Repko. The kid who wasn’t supposed to make the club snagged the last flight out of Vero Beach and has played himself into the everyday lineup (well, given Jim Tracy’s penchant for working every player into the lineup at least once a week, it’s hard to call anything the Dodgers put on the field an everyday lineup). But he has written Repko’s name on the scorecard most days.

Repko has impressed me not so much with his hitting or on base percentage (both are lower than that of Ricky Ledee, who has shared the left field platoon with Repko in Werth’s absence. But his youthful enthusiasm brings an electricity to the team that has been lacking since Dave Roberts was sent off to Boston. Roberts, 32 certainly wasn’t young like Repko (25), but his hustle and his knack for taking the extra base made the rest of the team pick their game up. It’s the same with Repko. His contributions don’t always show up in the box score, but I find the games more enjoyable to watch when he’s playing. He also plays excellent defense and has a right fielder’s arm.

He’s still making rookie mistakes, but he seems to be learning from them. And as long as he has the luxury of a big league roster spot from which to learn on the job, he’s only going to get better. When Werth comes back, the temptation will be to send Repko down to AAA so that he can continue to play every day. But it might be worth keeping him around to inject a jolt into the offense whenever it becomes lethargic.