Every Sports Illustrated Tom Verducci column ought to have the disclaimer “this author has financial ties with Joe Torre, so take everything the writer says about the Yankees with a grain of salt.” Make that a salt shaker.
A day after writing an evisceration of Joe Girardi that he somehow missed doing on the worst manager in the League Championship Series this year – Joe Torre, Verducci got his latest dig in against the Yankees in today’s column, writing about CC Sabathia and Alex Rodriguez:
CC Sabathia and Alex Rodriguez have been here before: one win away from the World Series. Actually, between the two of them they have been here seven times before. And in seven games in which a victory would have put them in the World Series, their teams are 0-7.
Um, Tom, how is CC responsible for his team losing two games against the Red Sox in the 2007 ALCS in which HE DIDN’T EVEN PITCH! And in the game he did pitch, Game 5 of the ALCS, while he didn’t pitch great – he gave up four runs in seven innings – he didn’t pitch abysmally, ever. At any rate, Josh Beckett shut down the Indians’ bats in that game, giving up only one run, and striking out 11. Maybe that’s CC’s fault as well
As for A-Rod, we all know about his postseason failures. It’s not exactly news anymore. But was he single-handedly responsible? No, I think Joe Torre and the rest of the Yankees might have had a little something to do with it.
Speaking of Teflon Torre, how is it that Verducci completely ignored the “Where’s Manny? In the Shower” whole to-do? I had to laugh when I heard Torre defend Manny Ramirez taking a shower when Jimmy Rollins was winning the game for the Phillies. Joe told the media:
“Manny has so much confidence, and when we get a lead late in the game, and I’ve taken him out, whether it be for defense or we have a big lead, when we go up to shake hands after the game, he’s in his street clothes,” Torre said. “So it’s really nothing different than he’s done before. I don’t think it’s disrespect of anything. He wasn’t going anywhere until the game was over, and we can’t put him back in the game.
“But that’s not something I thought was unusual since individuals are all different anyway. But he’s always done that, so it’s nothing that last night was going to be any different. As we say, Manny is Manny. He’s a cool customer. But he certainly didn’t have any lack of respect because of that. I think the way it turned out, it probably doesn’t look good. But it’s nothing different than he had done before.”
If you remember from “The Yankee Years,” Torre was apoplectic that A-Rod asked a clubbie to get him coffee (never mind that Torre had his own flunky making him his green tea.) Torre insinuated that A-Rod was a bad teammate and a prima donna.
And here’s Manny, not watching his team play during a playoff game, and Joe’s cool with that? And he’s bending over backwards to defend this? Look, we know this goes on during a regular season game, and the All-Star Game (remember how A-Rod booked out of the game early last year, something I thought was horrible) but a playoff game? Wouldn’t Manny need to be out there after the game to greet his teammates?
Look, I find Ramirez endlessly entertaining, but the double standard Torre has for Manny as opposed to the way he treated A-Rod is just breathtaking. And I would be interested to hear his co-author Verducci’s take on the subject. But the writer had more important subjects to report, like Bob Sheppard’s birthday, and coming up with a “West Coast Baseball” excuse for the LA teams not doing well. Looks like Verducci is still in the tank for Joe.
At any rate, I think it’s amusing that, unless I missed it, Verducci has yet to write anything critical about Torre. Gee, I wonder why.
What do you think? Leave us a comment!
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