The Blame Game

Whitey Ford

 

It's become an annual event to lick the wounds of another sports meltdown, post the conciliatory social media message and avoid the jackwagons of the interwebs.

Mission (basically) accomplished, although I did have some salty language privately about someone. I mean, seriously, Red Sox fans, how did your team do this year? You guys were on the golf course before the first pitch of the season so pipe down.

Choke on that dirty water.

This morning, as the New York Yankees depart San Diego, leaving the victorious Tampa Bay Rays behind, the fingers are pointing. There's no buzzer this year. No garbage can.

No Houston Astros.

There's just blame and it's team-wide.

Aaron Boone hasn't exactly revealed himself to be Joe McCarthy or Casey Stengel. No, he's not Harry Wolverton either (50-102 in 1912). He made decisions that I found puzzling, at best, in this series, like hitting for Kyle Higashioka and bringing in Aroldis Chapman for seven outs in Game 5.

There, of course, there's Brian Cashman, who is hellbent on being the Rays. That's not a typo. He doesn't just want to BEAT the Rays, he wants to BE the Rays, as in out analytic them. The Deivi Garcia "opener" move of Game 2 has the same feeling of Casey leaving Whitey Ford to starting Game 3 in 1960 versus his customary Game 1.

Is it a perfect parallel? No, but the point (since I seem to need to explain myself 99.5% of the time) is that it was a sketchy pitching decision. Next...

I say it all the time: don't try to be the smartest person in the room, and that's what the Yankees tried to be.

Oh, and we'll come back to Eddie Ford.

The bigger point? Stop overthinking the game. Yes, analytics are great and all but you still have to manage with a feel and a gut. A manager is the one who knows the heart of a player. How are things at home? What do you see in their eye? I can still remember Joe Torre in the face of David Cone in Game 3 of the '96 World Series. He wanted to see what Cone had in his face. He got what he wanted and got the result: a Yankees win.

But then there are the players. For all of Giancarlo Stanton's brilliance with the longball, there he is in a one-run game in the ninth inning, watching three strikes go by. No swing. Nothing. Now, I get the first strike was borderline. Maybe the second one was sketchy. But you have to know your umpire (Marvin Hudson's strike zone was wide but consistent) and you better know him by the ninth inning. Instead you take the Carlos Beltran 2006 vintage. You watch strike three.

Aaron Judge? If you want to be the man in NY (and let's face it, the Pete Alonso argument has gone mute) then you have to be more than clunking your noggin on overhead padding in right field of Petco Park.

Luke Voit? Love ya, man, but you need to step up also.

And as for guaranteeing wins, unless your name is Namath or Messier, no more guaranteeing wins, Luke.

Gleyber Torres? Gio Urshela? Defensive issues were just part of the problem.

Gary Sanchez? Where to start?

And on and on and on.

It was a big game on a big night for a lot of big reasons and the big Yankees came up small.

The small Rays from the small market with the small payroll did just enough to come up big.

They were the better team. Their stable of horses outpaced the Yankees. 

They move on.

The Yankees can go back to the classroom.

*****

I mentioned we'd spend a moment on Eddie Ford, who died late Thursday at 91. Lefty Gomez, by then a coach, named him "Whitey" in the minors and the lefty prospect from Astoria, Queens became the greatest pitcher in Yankees history.

It's funny, he doesn't quite get talked about as he did when I was a kid, mostly because he wasn't the "more-attractive" power pitchers of Tom Seaver and Bob Gibson and Randy Johnson and Pedro Martiez and Roger Clemens.

Whitey was sneaky. His fastball could appear faster but Whitey Ford -- the "Slick" New Yorker -- relied on guile. He admitted that he doctored a few as his arm began to give out by '66 and '67 (Gaylord Perry nods in approval) but he was the smart aleck who stepped in beginning in 1950 when he went 9-1.

He was on the mound for Game 4 of the 1950 World Series against the Phillies' "Whiz Kids" and beat them as the youngest starter in Yankees history.

Until Deivi Garcia threw his fateful inning the other night.

Whitey, along with Billy Martin and Mickey Mantle, ruled the nightlife of New York...and every other city. As a result, you knew The Yankees Saloon was a rowdy place last night.

There was no doubt lots of laughter after Whitey's arrival, with the wisecracks flowing just as easily as the booze. I'm willing to bet even the Great DiMaggio raised a martini to "The Chairman of the Board."

Whitey won 236 games in his career. If Gerrit Cole, CC Sabathia, Andy Pettitte, Ron Guidry, Red Ruffing, Lefty Gomez or "Happy" Jack Chesbro talk about the greatest pitcher -- the complete package, with no disrespect to Mariano Rivera -- in Yankees history, they all know the answer is the kid from Queens.

There's a lot of winning there.

Something the current crop needs to learn.