Yanks avoid screening of 'One flew over the Sweet Lou's nest'
Joe Torre isn't a Hall of Fame manager. He might get there anyway, because old-school baseball writers vote on the Hall and there is no more illogical creature than an old-school baseball writer. Torre has ridden the coattails of greatness, and he has ridden those coattails superbly, but for that he doesn't belong in Cooperstown.
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| Lou Piniella: Yeah, there's the even-keel personality needed to keep things tolerable in the Bronx. (Getty Images) |
The Yankees don't need a Hall of Fame manager. The Yankees need someone sleepy, someone soothing, someone who can steer all that talent through the craters left by millionaire egos and around the dung created by the New York media circus.
The Yankees didn't need Lou Piniella, in other words.
Now, look. If the Yankees had replaced Torre with Piniella, as was the speculation until Tuesday's announcement, it would have been a great thing for baseball. Most baseball fans, near as I can tell, hate the Yankees -- and of all the realistic choices to manage the Yankees, Piniella might have been the worst.
The Yankees' hiring of Piniella would not have been a case of the rich getting richer. It would have been the nuthouse getting nuttier. Watching Piniella manage this team would have been gruesome fun, like watching a cock fight.
Not that Piniella is a bad manager. He's not. Tactically speaking, he might well be superior to Torre. If four out of five baseball executives preferred Piniella's acumen to Torre's, it wouldn't surprise me. Teams already have lined up to interview Piniella this fall, and for a reason. In the right circumstances, Piniella is one hell of a manager.
New York will never be the right circumstances.
Piniella had already tried this before, remember, and it was a double-disaster. He managed the Yankees from 1986-87, didn't make the playoffs either year, then was bumped to GM to make room for Billy Martin in 1988. Piniella resigned as GM in May. He replaced Martin as manager in June. Not making that up. Piniella managed out the '88 season, then was fired a second time by owner George Steinbrenner. The media had a blast every step of the way.
Since then, the New York media has only gotten more ornery. The Internet and talk radio are the tail wagging the dog, and the dog was mentally unstable to begin with. Now the NYC media is rabid and frothing to the point where Alex Rodriguez can hit .290 with 35 home runs and 121 RBI and still be crucified on a daily basis.
Baseball isn't a game that can be measured on a daily basis. Any baseball season, but especially one in New York, is like a stock investment -- something that will rise and fall so often that the only sane way to appraise it is to focus on the long term. If Torre has a genius, that's it. He doesn't get high or low, and his mood sets the tone for a clubhouse constantly in danger of splintering, thanks to the cartoonish salaries and egos involved.
There's a reason Piniella made his managing bones not in New York but in Cincinnati (1990-92) and Seattle ('93-2002), where the media is reasonable, the fans are (mostly) rational and the clubhouses are filled with the right mixture of stars and role players. In a place like that, Piniella can be the lightning rod. He can throw a base or submerge home plate in dirt or tackle Rob Dibble. Piniella can snipe at the media. He can bristle about a move made by the GM or make a snide comment about a slumping second baseman. The buttons will be pushed, the team will respond, and the season will go its merry way.
In New York, in that clubhouse, buttons do not need to be pushed. Torre understood that. In his 11 years the Yankees have won 10 division championships because the 162-game season is a marathon, and Torre has a water bottle and a massage for anyone who needs it.
Players don't wear out under Torre. Maybe they don't get fired up, either, but if professional ballplayers can't get fired up about playing in October in New York, they can't get fired up, period. The solution wouldn't have been Piniella. The solution would have been a roster purge.
Now that Torre will get his chance to be part of the solution, we can rue what might have been. The Yankees and the media and the fans are a keg of gunpowder. Piniella would have been the fuse. The spark? Well, Yankees captain Derek Jeter -- a cold, calculating SOB who watched A-Rod rot rather than come to his aid -- is a Torre guy. Piniella, who managed Rodriguez in Seattle, would have been perceived as an A-Rod guy. Fire in the hole!
Brian Cashman also is a Torre guy, which means the likelihood that Piniella would have clashed with his captain (Jeter) and his GM (Cashman), and the certainty that he would eventually clash with the boorish, overbearing Steinbrenner. As soon as the 2007 season hit that inevitable rough patch, media leaks would have sprung daily. By September the $200 million Yankees would have been a drooling mess.
Um ... anyone else kind of hoping the Yankees change their mind and hire Piniella?
