CHASING 3,000

Baseball movies, as a rule, traffic in cheap nostalgia and treacly sentimentality. They don't reproduce the rigorous and humbling game that professionals play or the stifling regimented lifestyle ballplayers lead. They produce a romantic fantasy. They project a Field of Dreams where glorious heroes bestride the Diamond like gods; where hardy, stoic role models play for love and vindication, not money; where tickets sell for a buck, hot dogs, for a quarter; where the crack of the bat, the pop of the ball, the whiff of the mitt, and catch with dad deliver the most unadulterated and gratifying satisfaction life can supply.

"Chasing 3,000," a film released in 2010 with little fanfare, largely adheres the genre's formula in its portrayal of the legendary Roberto Clemente's pursuit of 3,000 hits in the waning days of the 1972 baseball season. Clemente's flirtation with the historic milestone following a late-season flurry forms the backdrop to the story of teenage brothers, Roger and Mickey, two avid Pirates fans transplanted from Pittsburgh to sterile Southern California during the 1972 season and the Odyssean 3,000 mile trek across country they embark upon to witness Clemente's achievement live and among 50,000 like-minded fans at Three Rivers Stadium.

As if two baseball-obsessed teenage brothers' penniless cross-country pilgrimage in the family jalopy to see their beloved hero-- in defiance of their overprotective, solicitous mother-- didn't carry enough prepackaged bathos, the story adds an extra dollop of saccharine by saddling the little with brother muscular dystrophy. Indeed, the family moves to L.A., much to Roger's chagrin, to alleviate the burden on Mickey's disease-ridden lungs. The contrivance of Mickey's frail health serves to complicate the brothers' drive across country and manufactures for the film its principal element of suspense as the brothers race against time to reach Pittsburgh before Mickey's lungs fail, Clemente attains 3,000, and the cops, alerted by their frantic mother, apprehend them.

Lost, meanwhile, is just why 3,000 is such a momentous milestone or why Clemente had gained an iconic status in baseball long before he earned his 3,000th hit and long before he died three month later in a tragic plane crash. Clemente counted among the game's heroes largely for his humanitarian work off the field. What's more, he performed the pioneer role for his group that Jackie Robinson and Hank Greenberg had fulfilled before him, paving the way for the Latino superstars that followed him and functioning as the living symbol of Hispanic immigrants' aspiration for complete acceptance and full integration into American life. And the heroic status Clemente enjoys to this day is a testament to the pastime's function as a solvent of the nation's pluralism almost since the game's inception.

I evoke "Chasing 3,000" here because as Derek Jeter approaches the same milestone all the meretricious hype and hoopla that has accompanied it suffers from a kindred sentimentality that similarly obscures its significance. Of course those susceptible to glib symbolism can read into Jeter's landmark-- coinciding as it does with Barak Obama's Presidency-- some kind of democratic token or monument to an increasingly post-racial society. And despite some superficial parallels in the two men's temperaments and ancestries, I suspect both would resist any interpretation that would serve to minimize the racial prejudice they've had to overcome because of America's obscene legacy of imposing social and legal disabilities on anyone born with "one-drop" of African blood.

Still, those quick to dismiss Jeter's role as a racial symbol, like Robinson or Clemente, should consider the strange fixation TV cameras have exhibited over the years with Jeter's parent. Can you recall another contemporary Yankees whose parents have rivaled the Jeters for the air time cameras shower on them? Did the families of Don Mattingly, Paul O'Neil, Bernie Williams, Mariano Rivera, Jorge Posada, or any other recent iconic Yankees never attend ballgames? Other than Harlan Chamberlain, Joba's handicapped father, the cameras however seem to ignore player's families. Perhaps the voyeurism says more about our tacit prejudices and ingrained reflexes than we realize or care to acknowledge.

Still, what strikes me as the regrettable omission which links "Chasing 3,000" and the media's coverage of Jeter's impending feat is their mutual failure to account for the milestone's significance as an athletic accomplishment or baseball feat. Sure, we've heard time and again that the Captain is about to become only the 28th player in the game's history to number 3,000 hits and the first to amass the total in a Yankee uniform. But there the discussion typically ends. No one seems to address its comparative difficulty or significance. Is the milestone arbitrary? If not, what distinguishes it in distinction or prestige from all the other numbers baseball celebrates-- 600 homeruns or 300 wins or 2,000 RBIs or 700 steals or 54 consecutive games with a hit. Is one monument more prodigious an exploit than the others? Examine the list of the elite 28 players again. Does each conjure in your mind an aura of greatness? And if so, does the player do so because of the milestone or in spite of it?

I don't profess to know the answer to these questions. But presumably, the manifold commentators who hold themselves out as the game's experts and who presume to enforce these milestone's sanctity each year when casting their Hall of Fame ballot, should know the answer or at least, offer an informed opinion. Alas, I haven't heard one.

Instead, the tedious daily narrative recycles endless speculation on which day of the week Jeter is more apt to attain 3,000 or how much pressure he's apt to face as he approaches it or how eager the Yankees and their fans are to see him hit the magic number at home. Worse, it seems to provoke the equally petty and academic discussion about how soon afterward the Yankee franchise can hallow the one player in their history to total 3,000 hits by unceremoniously dropping him in the batting order. In fact, the conjunction of the two subjects-- the dispatch with which the echo chamber clamors to consign Derek to the dustbin moments after his coronation--- only dramatizes just how much these pundits professed regard for Baseball History reeks of the same pious sentimentality and intellectual fraudulence which besets Hollywood's version of it.

Accordingly, when Cooperstown tabulates the voting next November and the phalanx of Baseball Writers, bloated with sanctimony and intoxicated with indignation-- when these self-appointed Guardian of the Milestones fan across airwaves to exalt the sanctity of the numbers and to deplore "steroid cheats" for defiling its liturgy and to justify rejecting Bonds or excluding Clemens, savor a good sneer. For what the Guardians protect isn't the sanctity of a democratic shibboleth. No, what they jealously guard-- in presuming to anoint one a Heroic Legend and to brand another a Anti-heroic Outlaw-- are the prerogatives of power. Woe unto him who doesn't genuflect before their altar.

So Derek Jeter, be prepared. After the bow, expect to Kneel.

MUDDLING THROUGH

So here it is, sprung a little early perhaps, but offering the season its unavoidable, if equivocal, touchstone nonetheless.

No doubt, their rosters still will evolve, if not undergo major renovation, by the time these two arch rivals next do battle during three days in August. Nonetheless, this the third confrontation in as many months with Primeval Nation should allow the Yankees' front-office a revealing glimpse of its team's flaws, an accurate estimation of its strengths, and a reliable index of its fate.

At present, one can't help but see in the 2011 Yankees a paler incarnation of those mid-decade Torre teams less assembled than improvised-- a haphazard patchwork stitched together with threadbare arms; graying vets; and erratic lineups dependent on the home-run ball but that through their pluck, moxie, canniness and heroics from unlikely sources nonetheless manage to brave the dog's days and to transcend their irremediable flaws to reach October, only to expend themselves in the process and to fall in the first-round when younger, faster, more prolific teams feast on debilitated bodies, withered bats, and creaking arms.

2011's team recalls its doomed predecessors' infirmities perhaps because so much of its success stems from the mystifying eclat of two fallen aces chronic injuries seemingly had reduced to ragged journeymen but to which the Yankees-- through their own improvidence, impatience, myopia, and a chronic ineptitude at cultivating their own-- had to resort to fortify the weakest rotation $50 million could buy.

Call it luck. Call it Mystique and Magic. Call them 2011's version of Aaron Small and Shawn Chacon. But there they are-- straight out of Hollywood Central Casting. Barty and Fred, confounding age, shaking off injury, defying expectations and lifting their team ERA to the rank of 4th in the AL. Freddy, through deceit and guile, evoking the last gasps of Mike Mussina. Bartolo, through renascent velocity and incorrigible heft, inviting comparisons to Roger Clemens in his twilight, on the one hand, and to David Wells at his pugnacious best on the other. (During post-game interviews, you half expect to see Carrie Fisher materialize chained to Colon's waist)

Indeed with their 123 ERA+ and 121 ERA+ respectively, Garcia and Colon, together, account for the Yankees' rotation surpassing even the most optimistic expectations and in large part, for the marginal distance currently separating New York and Boston.

Only the certain knowledge that fortune like this can't last; that wizardry of Garcia's and Colon's kind only casts its spell as long as one declines to peer behind the curtain; that eventually an Aaron Small will reveal himself to be Aaron Small and a Shawn Chacon will return to being Shawn Chacon; and that to expect either Garcia or Colon, let alone both, to continue to perform this well through the summer-- or just to stay healthy for as long-- demands a blindness of faith few Yankee fans can muster.

Indeed, closer scrutiny of the Yankees' and Red Sox' rosters and the uneasiness only mounts. Apart from the Yankees bullpen and their late inning corps of Chamberlain-Robertson-Rivera, the Red Sox are at least the Yankees' equal and subtract Colon's and Garcia's aberrant success and Boston is far and away their superior. Although the runs scored totals roughly mirror each other, the Red Sox own a younger, quicker, more disciplined lineup that excels the Yankees in Runs Created (321 to 291), team batting average (.270 to .251), on-base percentage (.341 to .334), pitches per plate appearance (3.96 to 3.90), RISP with 2 outs (.262. to .242) and the gap between them widening as Adrian Gonzales, Carl Crawford, and Kevin Youklis all shake off their early season doldrums and reach their career averages.

Sure the two most prominent under-performers in the Yankees' lineup Jeter (80 OPS+) and Posada (82 OPS+) could rebound as well but their advanced ages suggest less aberrations than the erosion in skill that in our amphetamine-free game that now bedevils players over 35. And, above all, in comparing the two team's starting rotations, the Yankees' current advantage appears fleeting. Upon which prospect are you more likely to stake your faith: on Buchholz, Lester, and Lackey improving (108, 103, and 54 ERA+ respectively) to match their career averages (121, 127, 111) or on Colon and Garcia continuing to confound theirs.

The Red Sox already have beaten the Yankees in six of their last seven meetings this years. True, the mound pairings have favored Boston but more importantly, on the field, they've demonstrated themselves the superior team.

AGE CAN WITHER HIM

Why can't we allow our superstar athletes simply to age gracefully and exit the stage with their pride and dignity in tact? Why the incessant probing; why the ravenous obsession to pinpoint the game, the season, the year in which the player's skills eroded, his reflexes dulled, his luster faded, he will not again duplicate the mastery his performance once displayed?

Of the 12 scouts or officials contacted, none thought Jeter would approach his old self. – New York Post, May 8, 2011

Of course, through the years, one learns that, from the pack of reporters who cover baseball, not to expect much in the way of independent thought, seasoned wisdom, or imaginative empathy. Perpetual deadlines, exhausting travel schedules, a twenty-four media cycle’s insatiable appetite for content, and a journalistic marketplace so ravaged by competition that the lowest common denominator rules; all conspire to precipitate, night in and night out, the same bumptious questions, the same hackneyed debates, the same one-dimensional narrative. Is the Captain mired in a prolonged slump or is this, at thirty-seven, what age hath wrought?

Perhaps, the question persists because the obvious answer satisfies neither the ambitious reporter nor the anxious fan. A definitive answer, that it, awaits 2011’s conclusion and perhaps, 2012’s as well. Recall the flock of vultures circling David Ortiz after he floundered in 2009 and struggled through the first months of 2010. How many predators had stalked still vital (and lethal) prey? By 2010's conclusion, Ortiz had proved the obituaries premature.

For as often as the scriveners invoke baseball's exalted tradition, history rarely informs their commentary unless they have a moral ax to grind. Which consists, more often than not, of a quibble with some player's deviation from their own provincial narrow code of personal decorum: Player X, that is, dared to breach his time-honored responsibility as a social role model. No, the Pride of the Yankees, says Bill, would never have squired strippers around Toronto. The Yankee Clipper, says Joel, would never have resorted to artificial performance enhancers. No, the Sultan of Swat, says Wally, would never never never have placed his interest above the team by refusing demotion in the lineup. To mine a pearl of wisdom Justice Byron "Whizzer" White, himself a former professional athlete, unearthed many decades ago, "the deeply rooted traditions" of any institution are arguable. More often than not, they reflect less objective fact than the orthodoxy of their arbiter.

Admire the irony though. Only yesterday these self-same arbiters were preoccupied with condemning, reviling, and ostracizing Alex Rodriguez for ingesting magic elixirs designed to prolong his career and to preserve his stellar talent and prolific productivity on into his early 40’s? [1]

Today, the mob pursues the mid-30's superstar once celebrated precisely because he shunned the Wellspring of Youth to which so many of his contemporaries succumbed. Listen carefully enough during the post-game press conference though and you can hear reverberate through the clubhouse an echo of the voyeuristic malice, morbid curiosity, and voracious bloodlust that once pursued A-Rod.

“Joe, we’re now 30 games into the season, when is it time to drop Jeter in the lineup?”

A question the manager deftly skirts for yet the fifteen time this week, “Our priority is winning, Joel. We’ll do anything necessary to help the team accomplish its goal.”

Sure, Girardi's practiced platitude has defused the latest foray, but the manager knows that he can't repel the slavering mob indefinitely. What with the radio jackals baying and the ESPN mouths driveling and the press corps, at long last, tasting blood, the Captain’s Teflon armor won’t hold forever. If the crowd turned on Mantle, the Yankees have to know, Jeter's aura won't save him either. This history the moral scriveners know all too well.

For in the gloaming they can hear the swans warbling for Mr. November, and in the clubhouse they can spy the Captain’s “bleeding drops of reds.” No voice sings to the gallantry of aging naturally and no Stadium cheers indignities born with grace. The Guardians of the Diamond have come to watch Age make mortals of legends and to administer last rites. They come to bear witness that however many millions earned, however many starlets bed, however many records broken, Jeter suffers like the rest of us.

For one inarguable national tradition does endure. Americans prefer their heroes dead.

[1] Never mind that cheating the aging process antedates even our national pastime as an American tradition. Ponce De Leon went searching for a Fountain of Youth five hundred years ago. What middle-aged man who swallows Viagra; what post-menopausal woman who injects Botox; what college student who pops un-prescribed Ritalin; what aging stage actress or senescent rock star who “get by with a little help from their [Benzedrine] friends”; what American possibly could begrudge McGuire, Bonds, Clemens, and Rodriguez for taking drugs (legal, extralegal, or illegal) to enhance their performance, to lift their team, and to cling to the uniform and the spotlight for as long as their bodies would carry them?

RECKONING BY THE BOOK

Many people I knew... shared a habit of mind usually credited to the very successful. They believed absolutely in their own management skills. They believed absolutely in the power of the [] numbers they had at their fingetips... I had myself for most of my life shared the same core belief in my ability to control events... [Yet] some events in life would remain beyond my ability to manage or to control."-- Joan Didion, The Year of Magical Thinking

For this Yankee fan, the end of a season invariably tinges the days that follow with an inconsolable emptiness. For six months the game's daily drama and the team's unfolding fate weaves its narrative into the fabric of life, and then, with the abruptness of death, defeat rends the thread, familiar faces recede, and the vivifying tonic that brightens the evening and crowns the day suddenly evaporates. No mourning rituals, No redemptive meaning, No residual solace. Only an aborted plot -- a deus ex machina ending to an unfinished novel.

But this year I can't but wonder whether defeat, in the end, might not serve a greater good; whether, for some within the Yankee hierarchy, it isn't justly deserved.

No, not the players, of course; their season came to a premature, unceremonious, and ill-favored end. Too many sprouted and flourished this year; too many battled and excelled; too many suffered through injuries and persevered through pain not to achieve a success short of their aspirations. The star arrival of Robinson Cano; the budding efflorescence of Hughes and Gardner; the grizzled marvels of Pettitte and Mo; the steadfast yeoman mettle of Tex and A-Rod; and the redoubtable, 300lb Atlantean pillar holding it all up, the double YES, Si Si: would that they received accolades equal to their pluck, tenacity, and splendor and to my gratitude.

In the franchise's upper reaches, however-- from the manager up to the highest echelons of its business department-- Yankee Pride, recently, has meant something more like Yankee Hubris. And if the financial executives don't account for the team's latest defeat, they certainly could benefit from the chastened reflection and withering self-scrutiny rarely stirred in its absence.

Reevaluation ought begin with the 1.5 billion dollar Colosseum and its unintended yield-- exorbitant ticket prices inflated beyond what many can pay or the market will bear; a permanent supply of vacant seats; lower tiers filled with passionless, fickle dilettantes, a permanent corporate gentility ringing the field whose luxury box amenities and royalty suite perks a Prateorian guard has to protect against the descent of the ardent, demonstrative, raucous Pinstripe faithful now confined to remote bleachers and nosebleed grandstands and treated like an unwelcome hoi polloi.

In the new Stadium, Yankees have erected the modern equivalent of an Elizabethan Theatre or Metropolitan Opera House. Class hierarchy and status symbol abide everywhere and personify the very caricature the Yankees' spiteful rivals ordinarily have to cite a 200 million dollar payroll to portray. Only with a World Series to inaugurate their luxury Palace, none but the churlish could complain. This year, however, no championship trophy will silence the objections. Season ticket-holders will vote with their feet. Fading novelty, grossly inflated prices, and PSL contracts' imminent expiration may deliver a reckoning Randy "Shlayger" Levine and Lonn "them eat" Trost hadn't bargained for-- the law of diminishing returns. And the usual blend of strident defensive broadsides and smug Olympian rationalizations to which they've resorted when the subject has arisen in the past won't save them.

May they reap what they've sown-- a drought followed by the whirlwind.

BASEBALL OPERATIONS
More worrisome however than the financial department's arrogance is the dogma that has gripped the team's baseball operations. Manager and GM, it seems, have turned statistical analysis into a theology, and with it, they've fallen prey to the blindness which afflicts the converted in his zealotry.

In an interview Michael Kay conducted on his New York radio show, he recently asked Brian Cashman, "Do you have a problem with Joe [Girardi] going strictly by the numbers? Would you rather he go by the gut?"

To which Cashman responded, "I definitely don't want people going by gut. I wanted people to make informed decisions. It's about being educated and being informed... If you can set yourself in a position to have a rational process in place, then you'll put yourself in a position to succeed more than fail. And I think gut is just irresponsible."

It must comfort the GM to imagine that he and his skipper can manage events on the field according to a "rational process." Unfortunately, the game no more unfolds according to an empirical formula or yields to collective control than do financial markets, international relations, or population growth. Too much human enigma separates statistical probabilities from scientific certitude.

Now, one hardly expects a GM to know much about history or philosophy but had he read Rousseau or Freud or simply studied late 20th century Russian history, he might have recognized in his worldview what we might call "the fetish of reason". After all, the Marxists, too, thought that they could isolate the laws of history and deduce from them the future.

Likewise has sabermetrics seduced Cashman and Girardi. From them, it seems, they've forged a crutch from what best serve as a tool and in the process, have forgotten that intuition and instinct are at least as integral as reason and logic to sound judgment. One problem with placing too much faith in them is that statistics illuminate what has happened more clearly than they forecast what will. Even inside the Diamond, heart and emotion, desire and will, singularity and contingency, chaos and luck, too often, still prevail. The fastidiously prepared and studiously memorized "match-ups" contained within a black book do not determine the outcome, even if one somehow could choose the metric most applicable to the situation at hand.

With a one-run lead in the 6th inning of Game 4 of the 2010 ALCS, for example, which statistic should the Yankees manager heed? With David Murphy at-bat and Benjie Molina to follow, should Burnett's complete history against Murphy and Molina, respectively, control? Or is it Burnett's performance against them in 2010 that matters? Or is it perhaps his overall performance this year in similar middle-inning predicaments? Or rather, is it how he fares after a 100 pitches; or with 2 outs; or at Yankee Stadium; or in the post-season; or if you walk Murphy, with men in scoring position? Or how does one weigh any of Burnett's figures, moreover, against the corresponding numbers Boone Logan, a reliever limited largely to lefties and one or two innings, has compiled?

Even if Girardi bases his decision on the numbers, he still has rely on an educated guess-- on inductive reasoning-- for the right statistic to choose. A "gut" decision isn't "irresponsible". It's inevitable.

Now, would the Yankees would have won the 2010 ALCS had Joe Girardi discarded his black binder and ignored the statistics and chosen more wisely in the situation described above? Probably not. The numbers may not forecast the future but they don't lie about the past. When his team bats .100 points less than his opponent's over six games and his pitching staff yields, on average, three and half more runs, even the canniest of managers isn't likely to stave off defeat. Still, Girardi's decision-making in the series certainly didn't help. Whether it was intentionally walking Murphy in Game 4-- putting the tying run in scoring position and the go-ahead run at first-base-- or whether it was his folly of repeatedly opting for Logan, Robertson, Mitre in critical situations-- most notably, Robertson, in Game 6, despite batters' .440 average against him -- meanwhile shunning Joba or saving Wood until too late, his discretion eluded him. Instead, much like last year during the postseason, pressure seemed to paralyze the manager so that rather than allowing the game's situation to dictate his decision, he fell back on some preconceived notion the statistics had inscribed.

Which suggests that the manager's fixation with the numbers actually indicates a failing more fundamental and more troublesome-- it implies either an incapacity to learn from mistakes because of a worldview so circumscribed it can't recognize or assimilate error and a character so rigid it cannot adapt or grow. Indeed, because past proficiency does not guarantee future success, on the probability that Girardi lasts another 3 years I wouldn't hazard a bet.

THE GIRARDI COMPLEX

No doubt, the moment will arrive. The question is when and how badly the manager will cost them.

Figure Sabathia will make Girardi's task easy. Averaging 3.79 pitches per plate appearance, the Twins rate about league in plate discipline. And with his ace receiving a much-need eight day respite, the manager will let C.C go as deep into the game as performance, pluck, endurance, and mettle will carry him.

The pratfall, unfortunately, is apt to occur much later and thus at a moment all the more pivotal. Imagine Game 2 with the still not fully recuperated Pettitte reaching a 100 pitches sometime in the 6th inning or perhaps, in Game 3, while a still young Hughes battles his way into the 7th before his innings totals reach unchartered terrain and his efficacy wanes.

Like most contests between the Yankees and Twins in the postseason, the game will be close at the time. Perhaps, the teams will enter the 6th or 7th tied or with a run separating them. Imagine Pettitte's cunning and guile holding the Twins at bay through six until the aging veteran surpasses the hundred pitch mark and the fatigue sets in. Or perhaps, the fastball and curves Hughes was throwing innings earlier on the corners starts to drift into the zone as he pitches his unprecedented 182nd inning in a season.

The Twins capitalize and within the blink of an eye, mount an incipient rally. A walk, a single, and with runners in scoring position, Joe Mauer waits on deck. And as the momentum suddenly shifts, game and series enter a watershed moment and upon the outcome, the Yankees' post-season fortune suddenly hinges.

The camera, naturally, will pan to the dugout. The shot will frame Joe Girardi frantically flipping through pages in his trusted black binder, searching for the key that will unlock the enigma his decision confronts with him. As usual, the expression on the manager's face will betray everything. The furrows in his forehead will deepen, he'll rock on his haunches, and an unseemly grimace will imply he hasn't had a bowel movement since January.

Having arrived at the answer his homework holds, the diligent student will stride to the mound, signal to the bullpen, and remove his disgruntled starter. Summoning his one and only lefty, Girardi will hand the ball to Boone Logan. But the modest .711 OPS the AL's reigning MVP has compiled against left-handed pitching and the two hits in seven plate appearances he's accumulated against Logan won't matter. Star will abuse novice and double down the line. Still, Girardi made the conventional call. Few can quibble with his decision.

But next ensues the Girardi hallmark-- the decision that defies common sense and eludes cogent reason. It begins with the genuinely perplexing question. Should he stick with Logan to face right-hand hitting Delmon Young because left-hand hitting Thome follows? Young's .927 OPS against lefties certainly excels his .781 against righties, as one might expect, but the disparity in Young's splits pales in comparison to his successor. Thome's OPS is 1.154 against righties and .769 against lefties. Further obscuring the answer, Logan hasn't faced either. Inside the dugout, the spinning wheels accelerate.

Eiland trots out to the mound to stall. Girardi returns to black binder. The camera this time features him riffling its pages frantically for the answer it doesn't contain. "Matchups"-- Girardi's favorite shibboleth for what he may or may not realize are statistically insignificant sample sizes-- won't decide the question. Neutralize Young with Joba or Robertson and lose Logan. Or gamble with Young and neutralize Thome. And the only means the manager has to resolve the dilemma will be to exercise the very faculty in which he has proven time and again he is desperately lacking-- instinctive judgment or if you prefer, intuition. A faculty Girardi's behavior often suggests he doesn't merely distrust but that he, moreover, represses consciously. As such, here is where Girardi, time and again, falters, and the reason why isn't all that opaque or complicated.

So often we hear the cliche about baseball. "Baseball isn't like the other professional team athletics." In baseball, the harder you try, the greater you fail. Batters press. They squeeze the bat. They step in and out of the box as their thoughts overwhelm them. They obsess about the pitcher's repertoire, his situational tendencies, his pitch sequence, prior at-bats against him. On the other end, pitchers, tormented by anxiety or frustration, sabotage their native gifts as well. A starter aims the ball instead of pitching it. He fixates on the umpire or overthrows.

How often, for example, have we observed A-Rod's obsessive conditioning, relentless work ethic, and assiduous study come back to haunt him? How often have his virtues, under pressure, instead of relaxing him, conspired to derail his talent? Or by contrast, how often have we observed the far less talented Jeter marshall his aloof, Olympian coolness and thrive as consequence. So, too, Bernie and his lovable but inscrutably serene abstraction.

Each provides an object lesson in the role the mind plays in baseball. Together, they dramatize the vacant mental state best suited to baseball. The Buddhists call it nirvana-- literally, the extinction of consciousness. For only by extinguishing thought, do we alllow the body's natural instincts, the muscle's ingrained memory, and the athlete's sublimely acute reflexes to assert themselves. Where reason yields, man can react. And in the land of the Diamond, the vacuous mind reigns. (Or in Boston, if you prefer, the Idiot is King.)

No less with managers does this axiom apply. Recall 1995 and the ALDS. Was there ever a more devoted, industrious, intellectually prepared manager than Buck Showalter? Yet in Game 5, after Showalter had exhausted and deflated his closer the two previous nights, he let David Cone nearly destroy his arm by throwing just shy of 150 pitches. Then he removed Mariano Rivera, after he easily retired two batters, only to hand the game to Jack McDowell. I needn't remind how the drama ends. Still, how did Showalter not know he possessed the most dangerous weapon Panama ever created? How could a manager so prepared, so reflective, so knowledgeable about the inner workings of the game possibly blunder? (By the way, it's no accident either that just a year later, the manager whose temperament shared much in common with his captain and his star center-fielder, rehabilitated his closer, discovered the greatest reliever of all-time, and won a World Series with much of the same talent.)

Ah, the fault, dear Brutus, lies deeper within. For high-strung, tightly-wound, smoldering managerial aggression, few but Billy Martin can equal Buck Showalter. Though Girardi certainly belongs in the discussion and therefrom his flaw stems.

Alas, Girardi's temperament less resembles the Yankee manager he once worked for than Joe Torre's predecessor. No one should gainsay Girardi's intellect or fail to applaud his work ethic. But the most innovative and advanced information money can buy are no substitute for receptive instincts and discriminating judgment. In fact, statistics, too often, encourage the fallacy the numbers are clairvoyant. No, like player, like manager, only a mind at ease can intuit the moment and unleash his subconscious to respond accordingly.

The Yankees enter the 2010 post-season, if not necessarily with a less talented team than in '09, than certainly with a older and on paper, less formidable one. As a consequence, Girardi's decisions at critical moments are apt to determine the Yankees' fate more now than before. But in the hours before game time, the manager would better serve his team by spending less time scrutinizing video or studying his opponent's weaknesses or pouring over scouting reports than in a yoga room or with his kids or on the phone with A-Rod's therapist. Whatever it takes to relax him.

Otherwise, when that pivotal moment does arise-- as, no doubt, it will-- Girardi won't use the statistics that crowd his binder. Instead, the statistics inside will use him.

In which case, the only numbers which will matter will inscribe one-way tickets on flights leaving New York.

HOW TO LOSE GAMES AND ANTAGONIZE PEOPLE

Query: how do you know it's September? Because the Yankees manager's bullpen decision have begun to defy reason and worse, because he won't deign to explain them.

The Yankees won a World Series' last year, but it wasn't because of Joe Girardi. To the contrary, they won in spite of him.

For some reason, the frequently mercurial and arbitrary rationale governing Girardi's allocation of his bullpen earned him the extenuating charge of "overmanagement". The characterization is misleading however. Haste is no less culpable a vice than complacency. A manager's consistently premature removal of his relievers jeopardizes his team no less than unwarranted faith in them. The former, in fact, begets the latter. Using and discarding his best relievers, as Girardi so often did through the playoffs, ultimately compelled him to rely on inferior ones. Having deployed and removed Robertson and Chamberlain before circumstances warranted, Girardi had then to rely on the likes of Coke, Hughes (8.54 ERA in the '09 post-season) and Bruney. The most infamous instance cost the Yankees Game 3 of the ALCS and perhaps, Game 5 as well. Mismanagement wears many guises.

Last night in Tampa, a new one arrived. With the Yankees having lost three consecutive games and six of their last seven; with the team playing to decide 1st place; and with the Bombers tied 0-0 in extra-innings against the divisional rival poised to snatch the pennant from them, to whom does the manager entrust the game? One of his most forbidding relief pitchers, Joba Chamberlain? No. One of his most consistent andd reliable arms, David Robertson? No. Instead, the manager selects two of his worst. First, Chad Gaudin. Next, Sergio Mitre. Gaudin comes within one strike of walking in the winning run. Mitre promptly finishes the job by ceding the game winning homerun.

Perhaps, Gaudin and Mitre superficially impressive ERAs hypnotized Girardi. If so, don't let them deceive you. A closer look at the game logs available on Baseball-Reference.Com reveals that Gaudin owes his 4.00 ERA largely to stifling teams like Oakland, Seattle, and Kansas City. Likewise, Mitre and his 3.65 number. Neither fares well against opponents that can hit. AL East teams have a combined .300 batting average against Gaudin in 2010; against Mitre, it's not much better.

Joba Chamberlain, by contrast, despite his inflated 4.72 ERA has amassed a 2.00 ERA over the 18 innings he's pitched since July 30, and through all of 2010, he's held AL East teams to a .215 batting average. While Robertson boasts a 2.64 ERA since the 1st of June.

So with 1st place hanging in the balance and the Yankees in danger of losing for the seventh time in eight games, where exactly were Robertson and Chamberlain? Indeed, after Girardi's baffling decision sealed his team's fate, reporters asked the manager this very question during the ritual post-game interview. Consider not just his guarded and circular responses but his adamant refusal to elaborate upon them.

• Kim Jones: "In the extras, to go Gaudin and Mitre there, in those spots... did you have everyone available?"
• Girardi: "No, I did not... So I used the people available and we'll go from there," says the manager with a dismissive flick of his hand.
• Kim Jones, again, "Any injury concerns there?"
• Girardi: "Well, they've [Chamberlain and Robertson] been used a lot lately so it's something we thought we had to stay away from."
• The Daily News' Mark Feinsand: "Joe, Joba hadn't pitched since Friday, the two days off didn't help?"
• Girardi: "We just thought he needed another day."
• Feinsand: "Was it something you saw?"
• Girardi: "No, No, we just thought he need another day."
• Jones: "Was it the pitchers who indicated to you that something wasn't all right"?
• Girardi: "No, we talk to our guys and make sure they're all right. We communicate with them them and that's what we do."

Unfortunately, the transcription above doesn't fully communicate Girardi's terseness in response. Worse than the manager's condescending refusal to justify why he felt it necessary to rest Chamberlain for a third straight day (or to withhold, Robertson, for a second) are his curt antagonistic tone and his surly contemptuous manner.

Granted, Kim Jones, still, after all these years, can ask some inexplicably foolish and bumptious questions, but her inquiry above reflects the very questions that occurred to practically every Yankee fan watching last night's game and as it happens, to the YES broadcasters calling it.

First of all, unless Chamberlain is injured or has complained of arm fatigue, it defies explanation that he would NOT be available last night. Joba has pitched a sum total of ONE inning since Wednesday, September 8th, five days ago. And Robertson hasn't pitched much more either. He has pitched a sum total of TWO innings in the identical period.

No one denies the value of apportioning relief pitchers' innings and resting their arms as the season nears its end and the team prepares for the probability of playing in the post-season. But the significance of the Yankees' game with the Rays' didn't materialize out of thin air. A pennant race has embroiled the two teams for months now. If Girardi didn't anticipate the importance of having his premiere relievers rested and available in advance of the series, then the manager, at best, has been remiss. Still, Girardi claims he expect his two relievers to be available Tuesday. But what if neither is needed Tuesday or Wednesday? (Thursday happens to be an off-day.)

In that event, Girardi hasn't just been remiss in squandering his best starter's remarkable outing against his team now leading the Yankees in the standings. Should it prove unnecessary, in fact, for Girardi to use either Joba or Robertson Tuesday or Wednesday against the Rays, then Girardi's allocation of his relievers over the last week and a half will look outright delinquent. Don't forget: while ostensibly "conserving" his bullpen, Girardi also deployed his forty-year-old closer Friday night in 90 degree Texas heat-- a Texan heat that contributed to at least two Yankees starters sustaining injuries over the last four seasons.

Watching Joe Girardi's post-game interview last night recalls something The New Yorkers' Roger Angell wrote a few years ago in a review of "The Yankee Years" about the current manager's predecessor. No, Torre can't claim to have distributed the bullpen's workload with any more foresight, prudence, or equity than his successor. Yet as Angell observed, in a game that, too often, encourages men to act like boys, Joe Torre never ceased to play the role of adult among men. (Perhaps, this explains why the Yankee players who deported themsevles likewise through Torre's tenure and continue to do so to this day have stayed so loyal to him.)

Girardi could stand to learn from them a lesson or two in civility and professionalism. Because treating the press like a petulant and antagonistic adolescent would a captious parent, however exasperating the loss, profits no one. We forgive an adult the occasional unhinged outburst. But smoldering disdain leaves a toxic odor that lingers for a considerably longer duration.

After all, professional athletes earn our respect and our admiration through their willingness to fail in public and to stand at their lockers afterward and to endure with stoicism the disappointment and the criticism it incites.

If the Yankees manager can't fulfill the expectations the world asks of his players, when his contract expires, he should do us all a favor and find another job.

EMPERORS, LORDS, & THE NBA'S ROTTEN GARDEN

The consoling grace of squandering a week engrossed in the vacillations of a free agent whose "Decision," in the end, arouses only disgust and disappointment is that those, upon whom the NBA had palled for the last seven years, can now safely return to ignoring it for seven more.

During the winter's cold, dreary months, the Yankees needn't worry that another new York mistress will steal my heart. For no other team commanding my allegiance has won a Championship past my toddling years. And from the events of the last week, it would seem the Knicks aren't likely to fill that void anytime soon.

In the wake of Lebron James' rebuff, many a fellow Knick fan will wish to vent his or her dejection, frustration, and ire upon the athlete who spurned his team and to denounce him for the media circus "His Decision" excited. However justified the sentiment may be justified, its target isn't. Call the "King" what you will; but, he, at most, is the catalyst for our tribe's fury and vexation. Abject failure and risible ineptitude has characterized the Knicks since the time Lebron James attended high school in Akron. And the reasons for it lie in origins older than a single off-season and stem from causes more fundamental than the choices of a few free-agents.

Apprehending the latter begins with the following question: why does the colloborative decision of 3 millionaire athletes to work together generate an outcry while the conspiracy of 32 billionaire owners to cap their wage escapes mention? After all, LeBron James did not create the system where salary caps protect billionaires' pocketbooks, constrict the number of teams eligible to bid, and relegate others to decades of competitive oblivion. Lebron James, Dwyane Wade, and Chris Bosh did not create a system where one single team actually could afford 3 of the game's top ten players because no other franchise could offer either one individually or all three collectively more money. Nor, of course, did LeBron James create the economic regime that accounts for the same three or four teams representing their conference in the finals every year and for the same five franchises, over the last decade, winning the league's championship. In fact, since the NBA instituted the salary cap for the 1984-5 season, only 7 of the league's 32 teams have won a championship: the Celtics, Lakers, Pistons, Bulls, Rockets, Spurs, and Heat. By contrast, over the same thirty-five year period, SEVENTEEN different Major League Baseball teams have won the World Series.

Critics nonetheless complain all the time about Major League Baseball's revenue disparities, competitive imbalances, and its players' inflated contracts. Yet the Miami Heat just accomplished a feat equivalent to signning Albert Puljols, Hanley Ramirez, and Joe Mauer and no one decries the NBA's financial system. Not even the Yankees have the financial wherewithal to match such gluttony, signing 3 of the game's best and youngest players to six year contracts while they're still in their prime. Of course, that's because, in baseball, Puljols, Ramirez, and Mauer earn an amount commensurate to their worth.

THE TYRANNY OF LITTLE LORD JIM
Sure, LeBron James may imagine himself the "King," but Knicks fans shouldn't let the presumption fool them. He is not the sovereign responsible for the Reign of Errancy that has cast a pall over the Garden and has turned the name "Knickerbocker"-- a name steeped in the pride and dignity of Dutch New Amsterdam-- into a word synonymous with epic pettiness, paranoia, and melodrama in the executive suite and chronic losing, failure, and farce on the court.

How else to characterize the stewardship of an owner who prizes subservience to success? How else to judge a CEO who rewards incompetent GMs because they are servile and ingratiating but who dismisses ingenious coaches and trades gifted players because they are outspoken and defiant? How else should we judge an executive as transfixed by his competitors' advertising billboards as their basketball talent? How else do we regard a businessman who decides the most effective way to forestall bad press isn't to address the ineptitude accountable for generating it but instead to intimidate the journalists responsible for reporting it? How else to perceive the son who stands to inherit a media empire but whose own father appoints him to manage an entertainment arena because there, he, ostensibly, can inflict less damage? (Little did the father suspect that his idiot son would generate so much unflattering press he'd come to personify his family's entire operation.)

Yes, James Dolan's sovereign idiocy has ruled Madison Square Garden for eleven years now. So pathetically deluded is the man, in fact, that he confuses necessity with courage. "It takes courage to play where the lights shine brightest," Dolan said about the Knicks' acquisition of Amar'e Stoudemire. Courage? Only if valor includes a surgically-repaired knee, a league-maximum un-insured contract, and a $100 million dollars.

Few failed, of course, to miss the veiled slight contained beneath the facile praise. Cablevision's entitled son may possesses a little more tact perhaps than Kwik and Loans' founder but they share the identical sense of entitlement. Like Dan Gilbert, Dolan intended to deprecate the character and to question the heart of a player who possessed the ability and the discretion to refuse him. After all, why should the NBA's most coveted player select a team that has accumulated the league's worst winning percentage since 2002? Why would he join a franchise that even with his own addition has little chance to win a championship? Why should he choose to play for an owner eligible to bid on him only by accident? Indeed, who knows that but for Anucha Brown Sanders' lawsuit and David Stern's plaintive urging, the man James Dolan recently dispatched as his emissary to court the King might still be running the Knickerbockers. God bless the sexual harassment suit! No, the only MSG entertainment, at present, that rightfully deserves the lion-hearted is the circus-- the Ringling Brother's, that is, not the Knickbockers'.

IN PRAISE OF VISIONARY TYRANTS
Of course, in his thin-skinned self-pity and vindictive paranoia, Little Lord Jim has inspired comparison with another infamous tyrant who haunted New York sports for decades. His recent death, no doubt, will inspire eulogies that soften or expurgate his worst cruelties and excesses; that exaggerate his nobility, generosity, and compassion; and that credit him with historical legacy he probably doesn't deserve. A sentimental distortion about which I've written before. (http://theyankeesrepublic.blogspot.com/2009/03/boss-turtleneck-last-yankee-king.html)

In fact, I can't help recalling that famous cover Sports Illustrated published in 1993 upon Steinbrenner's return to baseball following his second suspension.(http://sportsillustrated.cnn.com/vault/cover/featured/9370/index.htm)

Dressing the Boss in King George's garments titillated at the time, but perhaps Napoleon's garb would have been more symbolically apt. Sure, the Emperor conjures an image of the tyrant par excellence, the man whose appetite for empire no amount of conquest could sate. But Napoleon, in conquest, also heralded liberation. He emancipated peoples enslaved and disenfranchised for centuries by Popes and Kings, ushering the Enlightenment into the heart of benighted Europe and projecting East the liberty, egalite, and fraternity the Rights of Man contemplated.

Likewise, for all his abuses and depredations, Steinbrenner emancipated the professional athlete from the clutches of owners' exploitation, parsimony, and prejudice. Capitalizing on Catfish Hunter and Reggie Jackson's availability, he built the Yankees Empire but in doing so, also eliminated the last vestiges of the reserve clause's oppression and commencing the era of free agency.

A visionary leadership responsible not only for resurrecting baseball's preeminent franchise from the moribund futility to which CBS's neglect had consigned them, but also for inaugurating the team-owned, regional sports network and raising the value of his team by over a hundred times the amount he paid for it.

It was also Steinbrenner's founding and launching of the YES Network, in fact, that provoked his turf battle with Little Lord Jim. And the lawsuit the Dolans' instigated to abort the YES Network before its birth exemplifies much of the difference between Little Lord Jim and Emperor George III and the diametrically divergent fortunes their teams have enjoyed under their respective tutelage.

The Dolans, on the other hand, illustrate the insidious complacency and ruthless incompetence all monopolies breed. When faced with upstart rivals, monopolies don't endeavor to improve their own product to stave off the competition. They don't adapt to new cirumstances. They don't rejuvenate their infrastructure. They don't innnovate and invent new products or search out new revenue streams. Instead, they throttle the competition. They muster their political power to abort its inception or they throttle it through litigation. Tactics the Dolans have deployed over and over again, whether to derail the Stadium the Jets envisioned on the West Side Long Island railyards or whether to deny the YES network access on Cablevision systems.

It should surprise no one then that under Little Lord Jim's stewardship the Knicks entrusted their franchise to a charlatan who ensnared it in a salary straitjacket and slowly mortgaged its future while ownership did nothing. Celebrated coaches and talented players with the temerity to defy him Little Lord Jim fired or ordered traded. While to this day for his former GM's ingratiating smile and shrewd obedience, the Monopolist rewards him still. Rumors already abound of the charlatan's imminent return.

For seven years, the expiration date on LeBron James' contract read July 1, 2010. For seven years, "the King" spoke of transforming his star into an international icon and the fertile opportunities America's media capital presented. For seven years, the man galivanted about New York City effusing with affection for its vitality. For seven years, he attended Cleveland Indians games, flaunting a Yankee cap and touting the Bombers' commitment to excellence. For seven years, he acknowledged the thrill playing at Madison Square Garden represented.

Yet for the first five of those seven years, Little Lord Jim approved trade after trade and ratified contract after contract that made acquiring the one athlete that could transform his franchise's woeful fate less and less a possibility. Were it not for Anucha Brown Sanders' charges and David Stern's urging, indeed the False Prophet Isiah still might be nodding and smiling while the organization he led burned.

Credit Donnie Walsh for managing in two years to remedy enough of his predecessor's damage simply to offer him a contract. But qualifying for seat to bid isn't quite the same as winning the auction. And the five years of executive complacency and misprision that preceded Walsh unfortunately prevented him from offering the King the very thing the Emperor could offer Reggie Jackson thrity-four years earlier; could promise him indeed the very thing every professional athlete cherishes, above all-- the opportunity to win and to win as often as possible in the limited time his game gives to him. Who better than Steinbrenner to know about greatness and egomania and to woo Reggie with the narcissist's most coveted role-- the opportunity to play Messiah and to lead his team into the Promised Land after years of futility, ignominy, and aimless wandering.

Of course, the Little Lord Jim didn't entertain the possibility. No, the entitled son of Cablevision thought too highly of New York's innate appeal and to the promise he could offer of acceding to the billionaire's throne, just like him. Indeed, about what product does the cable billionaire know more or is he more equipped to sell than his own sense of entitlement? What could James Dolan possible know, after all, about "courage"?

THE CIRCUS IS COMING
You can, if you wish, choose to believe the Garden's premiere clown or its amateur conspiracy theorist and to excuse the near decade long reign of errancy that Donnie Walsh ended only yesterday.

It may rankle less to think that as Spike Lee claims, "it was rigged." That James, Wade, and Bosh conspired years ago to play together and intended from the outset, besides, to do so for the Heat and in Miami besides. From which it follows naturally that the Knicks are free from blame and maybe, it's true that after the years of havoc, Isiah Thomas wreaked, the franchise couldn't redeem itself. By 2008, the team couldn't recover quickly enough both to assemble a contending roster AND to secure cap room to offer three free-agents maximum contracts.

But one inconvenient fact belies the argument. Dwayne Wade didn't invoke his Larry Bird rights. He didn't sign with Miami for the additional $30 or so million the Heat could pay him. You see, were Wade, Bosh, and James determined to play for one of their three original teams precisely so the host player could reap the extra-money, then indeed, their collaboration would have foreclosed the Knicks. Only Dwayne Wade signed for $3 million LESS than Bosh and James ($107 million to $110). What this means is that had Isiah Thomas' Eddie Curry albatross not still encumbered the Knicks payroll, Walsh could have opened enough space in New York's payroll for all three players and would have occupied a position no less advantageous than the Heat. The Big Three might have decided, in advance, to play together but who says they necessarily decided to do so in Miami? Who says New York wouldn't have attracted them had the Knicks been in a financial position to crown them its Royal Family?

Of course, perhaps the latest dream the Garden is pandering already has persuaded you to renew your season tickets, to continue to tune to MSG, and to cultivate the hope that Carmelo and Paul will join Stoudemire to save the Knicks. And if you believe that, well, I have a team to sell you in Brooklyn. For at the Garden these days only clownish escapades, circus melodrama, and magic illusion seems to grow.

Thanks, but no thanks. While Kobe and James vie for supremacy and one of the NBA's Elite 7 franchises racks up yet another championship, I'll conserve the time, money, and energy and in the dark and frigid depths of winter, warm my heart beside baseball's Hot Stove, where free enterprise percolates, where competition sizzles, where balmy Bronx summers loom around the corner and where the Emperor's legacy burns forever bright.

For to err is Dolan; but to see the future is Stein.