Pat Jordan: Once a Yankee fan

Pat Jordan…not just another crime scene cleanup.

And finally, these Yankees are my most despised of all Yankee teams because they aren’t really a TEAM. They are like the Hessian mercenaries during the Revolutionary War, who never had their heart in the battle. For what? It wasn’t their country they were fighting for. Yankees manager Joe Girardi is a young, recycled, spineless version of Joe Torre, a company man as demonstrated by his humiliation of A- Rod when he benched him, probably under his bosses’ orders, in this year’s playoffs. I’m no A-Rod fan (I remember when, after his first major league season at 19, he returned to his Miami high school to sign autographs for his former classmates and charged them 10 bucks a signature), but even he didn’t deserve that humiliation.

Today, that’s the Yankee way: punish the players you picked when they underperform. That doesn’t even seem to bother the players much, as evidenced by A- Rod’s attempt to pick up a woman in the stands during the game that he was benched. Why not? He was still getting paid.

The Yankee heroes of my youth had more pride than that, which is why those humble, classy Italians, and in the ‘50s and ‘60s that cool, gutsy Irisher with the pink freckled skin (even my mother loved Whitey Ford!) were my idols. Those guys, and the Yankees of the late ‘90s, those quietly efficient gamers of understated talent and personality, all had one thing in common – they were all devoted to the game they loved and they showed their devotion by their effort to win.

Thanks to A. Belth.