Pettitte chooses Yankees over Torre

Andy Pettitte has chosen the New York Yankees over Joe Torre in what was likely an excruciating decision for him.

The Yankees lefty has officially taken himself out of consideration for a spot pitching in the World Baseball Classic for Team USA, a squad that will be led by his former manager Torre. Pettitte’s rejection of Torre’s offer to pitch for the team was a foregone conclusion once the Yankees expressed concerns about Pettitte participating, and possibly injuring himself, in an exhibition tournament. Those reservations outweighed any loyalty that Pettitte felt toward the man who protected him when he was a young pitcher from George Steinbrenner’s trade-happy ways, the manager who was at the helm for the first four World Series titles Pettitte helped win.

I’m not one of those baseball fans who hates the World Baseball Classic and I like the idea of seeing Yankee players participate. But I do understand the Yankees expressing concern about a potential injury to their #2 starter, particularly because they know Pettitte is such a competitor that he won’t be able to restrain himself from giving it his all. And Torre doesn’t have the best reputation in terms of not burning out his arms—protecting his pitchers is one area where Joe Girardi definitely is the better manager.
 

As much personal affection as Pettitte has for his former manager, in this situation the lefty simply was not going to go against the wishes of his bosses. Loyalty only goes so far.

Will the Yankees ever be rid of ARod drama?

Will the drama surrounding Alex Rodriguez and his history – and possibly his present – with performance-enhancing drugs ever cease? Perhaps the better question is whether the New York Yankees will ever be able to rid themselves of ARod and his drama before his contract officially ends in five years.

In a statement, Alex Rodriguez vehemently denied the latest revelations outlined extensively in a story by the Miami New Times that linked him and as many as 20 other Major League Baseball players to a clinic run by a man who allegedly dispensed PEDs. But ARod’s denials are not worth the paper they are printed on. He has lied far too many times to too many people to get the benefit of the doubt when it comes to his past and possibly present use of PEDs.

To be fair, ARod is not the only well-known baseball player on the list. Melky Cabrera, who was busted by MLB and suspended in 2012 for using a banned substance, also made an appearance on the list. Shockingly, young stud pitcher Gio Gonzalez was also linked to the clinic (surprising only because I can’t remember ever hearing or seeing his name connected to PEDs before). But ARod is definitely the big kahuna of the group because of his paycheck and because, well, he’s ARod.

This is probably wishful thinking, but I wonder if ARod’s contract with the Yankees can be voided in any way if it’s proven he used PEDs again. Hal Steinbrenner & Co would love that. It would erase what was the costliest contract blunder in Yankees history, one the Steinbrenners have no one to blame on but themselves. And it’s a huge positive from a business perspective because it would immediately get the Yankees under the self-imposed $189 million cap and allow them to start spending money like the Yankees again.

But getting rid of ARod is likely nothing more than a pipe dream for the Yankee owners and legions of fans. We’re simply stuck waiting for the next ARod revelations and drama. This story just keeps getting uglier and uglier and there’s no end in sight.

Here it goes again for ARod in PED story

Not this again!

A Miami man connected to Alex Rodriguez and other baseball players is apparently under investigation for illegally distributing, you guessed it, performance-enhancing drugs.

I just don’t understand why the New York Yankees third baseman has so much trouble staying away from these questionable characters. How a man with so many resources, which could be used to pay for the best public relations advisors and lawyers, consistently finds himself connected to shady characters is beyond me. ARod invites the scorn and ridicule he receives on a regular basis with his sketchy associations. But more importantly, he invites the question about whether he is cheating again. And if he is doing so now, he is doing it under the more rigorous microscope of Major League Baseball, which apparently is aware of the situation and cooperating with authorities.  

The news comes just days after Yankees general manager Brian Cashman left open the possibility that ARod could miss the 2013 baseball season completely. While it seems unlikely, the fact that it’s even possible speaks to ARod’s precarious physical state, which many observers attribute to his PED usage. If he misses an entire season because of this injury, it’s something that ARod is probably not going to recover from in New York, not when he’s making more than $30 million a year to play baseball and so many people are struggling to pay their everyday bills.

ARod could be completely innocent in this matter, but he won’t get the benefit of the doubt because of his previous history with PEDs. The man really isn’t doing himself any favors.

Fun times with Mariano Rivera and friends

Funny quotes from Ed Randall’s Fans for the Cure event honoring Mariano Rivera:

David Cone on Mariano striking out Jay Buhner in the 1995 division series, then quickly being removed from Game 5 by then-Yankees manager Buck Showalter: “He should’ve brought [Mo] in earlier. Should have kept him in longer. Buck Showalter would still be managing the Yankees.”

John Flaherty talking about feeling confident about facing Mariano as a hitter because he knew Mo would throw him all fastballs: “Three pitches and I was back in the dugout. Be careful what you wish for because you might get it.”

Larry Rothschild talking about facing Mariano as the first manager of the expansion Tampa Bay Devil Rays: “We didn’t see him a whole lot because the games weren’t that close.”

Rothschild on calling Mo after he became the Yankees pitching coach: “There’s no use calling him, he’ll never call you back.”

Mariano on reports that he only needs eight innings of work in spring training to be ready for the baseball season: “That’s plenty. I try to cut it down.”

Mariano on his reluctance to travel to away games in spring training: “They have all these young boys and they want to send me to Winter Haven or Fort Myers. All that traffic. I did that when I was young.”

Mariano on going for the save: “If I’m there for 10 minutes, I’m in trouble.”

Flaherty on thinking he would fit right in with the Boston Red Sox because of his name: “When you hit .190, they don’t love you that much.”

Ed Randall on how players joining the New York Yankees immediately adopt the Yankees professional way of playing the game of baseball: “Locker next to Derek Jeter and see if he pulls that crap, BJ Upton.”

Cone on the Yankees beating the Atlanta Braves in the 1996 and 1999 World Series: “Twice we snatched away team of the decade from the Atlanta Braves. Every time I see [John] Smoltz, I let him know."

Cone on the New York Mets using the Baja Boys song “Who let the Dogs out?” for inspiration during the 2000 World Series: “Jeter goes all right. We’re all looking at each other and going ‘are you kidding'? This is the World Series. Jeter goes up there first pitch: whack, gone.”

Mariano on sitting next to Yankees legend Don Mattingly after he was first called up to the big leagues: “I was afraid to breathe.”

Cone on the Yankees winning tradition: “There’s always someone in the Yankees organization who can put you in your place. The Core Four [has] the great five rings. And then Yogi [Berra] walks in the room.”

“He lets you know,” Mo said of Yogi’s 10 World Series titles.

Mariano on his tweaked nickname for his former catcher Flaherty: “I call him White Flash. We have Tom Gordon—that’s Black Flash.”

Mariano Rivera feeling good just in time

Mariano Rivera is feeling good and that’s the most important news of the day.

I had the pleasure of attending Ed Randall’s Fans for the Cure event honoring Mariano Rivera last night. After an introductory video highlighting Mo’s legendary career, the first question Randall posed to Mo was to ask how he is feeling. The long-time sportswriter and radio host spoke for all New York Yankees fans in and out of that room when he asked Mo to please say he is fine. Luckily, Mo said he is feeling really good.

But I felt so bad for Mo because the next thing he said was that it was torture watching the Yankees play without him after that terrible knee injury last year. As the evening went on, it became clear that Mo is a fierce competitor and was haunted by the fact that he couldn’t be there for his teammates.

“I felt powerless,” he said. “I wanted to do everything, but I couldn’t. It was painful.”

Mo talked about how he desperately tried to rehab in time to help the Yankees last October. I hadn’t realized that Mo was trying so hard to return for the playoffs. Not that he could have helped the nonexistent Yankees offense against Detroit.

But he’s been there for his teammates so many times, as we saw from the career highlights that played throughout the evening. The wonder in the voices of former teammates David Cone and John Flaherty, and even a competitor who beat him in Luis Gonzalez, is obvious when they talk about Mariano. Gonzalez insisted that he got lucky in blooping that base hit over Derek Jeter’s head in Game 7 of the 2001 World Series, but praised Mariano’s humility and graciousness in giving Gonzalez and the Arizona Diamondbacks full credit for that victory.

“What you see is what you get,” Cone said. “Whatever you think about this man, you’re thinking right because he is an exceptional person as well as a pitcher.”

"He's kind of the Superman of baseball," Gonzalez said in a taped interview. "I'm sure as soon as his time comes for him to hang up that number 42, he will be the next one to go into the Hall of Fame."

Mariano and his friends regaled us with stories about game situations and manager Joe Girardi’s stress over Mo’s relaxed pace of getting ready to get into the game. Mo never rushes through his routine, not even at the request of his hyperactive manager. It was obvious that the guys love to mess with Girardi.

“You have to have fun,” Rivera said. “The game is too hard not to have fun.”

Unfortunately, I wasn’t ready with my camera when Mo walked right past me on the way to the podium – he is so much taller than I expected – and I was a bit too far from the stage to get a great picture. But I did manage some decent photos of him and his friends: Cone, Flaherty and pitching coach Larry Rothschild.

It was really cool to be there for such a fun and funny conversation. I’ll post some of the funnier lines from the evening tomorrow. Needless to say, just being there for an event honoring my favorite baseball player was the ultimate thrill.

Francona gets his revenge on the Red Sox

They say living well is the best revenge. If that’s the case, Terry Francona’s payback against the Boston Red Sox seems to be going beautifully.

Francona is back in the manager’s seat where he belongs after a short respite in the ESPN booth to recover from the negative end to his Red Sox tenure, with the manager being made the scapegoat for the team’s epic collapse in 2011 and a nasty hit put on him in the Boston media. The former Saux manager gets to start over with a new team in the Cleveland Indians in a town with a sports media that is not as demanding and vicious as Boston. Plus, his new book is being released and promises to tell his side of the story of how and why he left the Red Sox despite leading the team to two World Series titles.

Interestingly enough, Francona seems to put most of the blame for the collapse of the Saux in recent years on their image-obsessed owners. It’s hard to tell from just reading an excerpt, but he seems to imply that many of the personnel moves that sunk the Red Sox were directed by a marketing strategy rather than a baseball strategy. Francona also suggested that former general manager Theo Epstein, who protected his manager from much of the non-baseball nonsense, was frustrated by this type of thinking and bolted the first chance he got.

I’m planning to read the Francona book as soon as possible. I’m dying to know the details of how it all went wrong for the guys who finally ended the curse of the Bambino and pushed past the New York Yankees on their way to two titles. And even if Francona is disappointed by the excerpt published by Sports Illustrated, it’s not going to hurt his book sales one bit, which won’t make his former bosses very happy.  

Thanks to Keith Allison via Wikipedia for the photo.

Will Clemens ever ‘fess up like Armstrong?

I couldn’t care less about cycling and never bought into the myth of Lance Armstrong even before he got caught doping, but I tuned into the first part of Oprah Winfrey’s interview with him out of pure curiosity.

For me, the most astonishing part of the interview was not that he finally told the truth and confessed to using performance-enhancing drugs. The most interesting and infuriating part was his lack of genuine remorse about the way he attacked and tormented good, innocent people who dared to tell the truth about his PED use.

Let’s be clear: Armstrong did not confess because he feels bad about his despicable behavior. He only admitted the truth because the evidence against him was undeniable and because he wants to broker some kind of deal to return to professional cycling one day. He finally came clean only because he wants something in return, a chance to rebuild his legacy. But I don’t think Armstrong’s interview did him any favors. By his own admission, he was a bully and a cheater and I would be shocked if cycling officials decide to give him another chance after all the damage he has done to their sport.

I couldn’t help but wonder if we will eventually see the same kind of confession from Roger Clemens. The former New York Yankees pitcher and 7-time Cy Young award winner has fiercely denied and battled accusations that he used steroids, even through a perjury trial that could have landed him in jail. He has disparaged the reputation of his former trainer Brian McNamee and challenged the memory of his former pal Andy Pettitte in sticking with his story that he did not cheat the game of baseball by using PEDs. But many baseball writers and other observers believe he did and that belief kept him out of the Baseball Hall of Fame on his first try.  

But I doubt Clemens will follow in Armstrong’s footsteps and confess to his sins. I can imagine that Clemens desperately wants to be in the Hall of Fame, but admitting the use of PEDs will probably not be enough to get him in. We saw Mark McGwire tearfully admit to using steroids. While it cleared the path for him to return to baseball, it didn’t win him any more support from the baseball writers, who have consistently chosen to keep him out of the Hall.

Clemens, unlike Armstrong, doesn’t have much to gain from a confession, other than the small chance of Hall induction. He can un-retire whenever he wants and does not need the permission of Major League Baseball to return to the sport since he was not suspended or banished from the game.

If I had to put money on it, I would guess that Clemens will never come clean about his PED use.

Thanks to McSmit via Wikimedia Commons for the Lance Armstrong photo.