This may surprise some of you, but I never read The Yankee Years. I got it from the library when it first came out, but I just like, dreaded reading about 2001 and 2004 so I never even started reading it. I'm pathetic and irrational like that. Well, now that we won, I finally read the thing. And all I gotta say, other than that I massively enjoy David Cone...
Holy fuck Joe Torre and Tom Verducci get off your GD high horse. Is it weird of me to say "fuck" and then use "GD"? Yes? Okay. Verducci, I think you're a really talented writer. You have a way with words, of describing how awesome the game of baseball can be at its greatest moments, that I envy tremendously. But wow, you just love going on and on about steroids when it totally had nothing to do with the Yankees (okay, it didn't have nothing to do with the Yankees, but going on about Ken Caminiti for like 25 pages has nothing to do with the Yankees). You also have an obvious and shockingly controversial love for Derek Jeter and Mariano Rivera, and disdain for Alex Rodriguez.
And honestly, you're completely hypocritical throughout the book. Paul O'Neill freaking out and cursing at himself in the locker room when he left guys on base? He just wanted to win, he hated losing! Kevin Brown freaking out and cursing at himself in the locker room when he pitched a terrible game? He's a headcase that represents everything that's wrong with the Yankees since 2001! George Steinbrenner saying to the media that the 2006 season was a failure because the Yankees didn't win the World Series? That's putting unfair pressure on Torre and diminishing everything he did! Derek Jeter saying to the media that the 2006 season was a failure because the Yankees didn't win the World Series? He hates losing and that's a great mentality to have! Theo Epstein and the rest of the Red Sox front office are awesome because they're unsentimental, oh and they invented the term on-base percentage! But Brian Cashman is a terrible terrible terrible person because when Bernie Williams was totally done, based on, you know, stats, he wasn't bending over backwards to let him on the team! And how dare he suggest Torre make his batting order with the high on-base percentage guys toward the top, instead of just letting him go on crazy whims!
As for you, Torre, aaargh @ this "I never wanted Giambi and A-Rod! It was so awful to have them on my team!!!" bullshit.
Jason Giambi, career with Yankees (2002-2008):
.260/.404 (!)/.521 (!)/.925, 143 OPS+, avg. 38 HR/162 g.
Tino Martinez, career with Yankees (1996-2001):
.279/.348/.488/.837, 114 OPS+, avg. 31 HR/162 g.
Alex Rodriguez, career with Yankees (2004-present):
.300/.401/.567/.968, 152 OPS+, avg. 44 HR/162 g.
Scott Brosius, career with Yankees (1998-2001):
.267/.331/.428/.759, 96 OPS+, 65 HR, avg. 20 HR/162 g.
Brosius's career year, 1998, gave him an .843 OPS for a 121 OPS+. That's very good; he'd never have a year like that again and his OPS+ in the years after was 86. In Alex Rodriguez's worst year ever (other than 1994 and 1995), he had an .846 OPS and a 120 OPS+. That was... 1997. He was 21 years old.* I don't need to tell you what he did in the years after that (but I will anyway. A-Rod in 1999, 2000, and 2001, when Brosius was posting an 86 OPS+: 148 OPS+.).
There's a few reasons the Yankees weren't winning championships with Giambi and Rodriguez on the team but they didn't really have to do with Giambi and Rodriguez. I am not trying to diminish what Martinez or Brosius and their roles on those amazing dynasty teams still mean to me today, but they're just inferior players compared to Giambi and Rodriguez. It probably would have been smart to keep Tino on the team after 2001 while grooming Nick Johnson to be the 1B of the future, and gone after Johnny Damon instead of Giambi, but let's not pretend Giambi wasn't an excellent hitter, even if he could barely manage fitting a glove on his hand. I would never in a gazillion years take Brosius over Rodriguez. At any rate, if you're a manager, you should want Giambi and Rodriguez on your team because they are (or were, in the case of Giambi) excellent players.
I don't want to hear about, "Well, it was Verducci's book, really." Sure, it's got a lot of Verducci in it, but Torre was the one who provided all the behind-the-scenes stuff. And if Verducci really wanted to tell the full story of those years, why did he just go to Torre? Why not get interviews with Cashman or Alex Rodriguez? It's obvious that Verducci wanted to tell one very slanted version of those years, Torre's. I don't know whose idea it was, but they were both frankly wrong to do it, almost disgustingly so considering that Torre is still managing and many of the players he talks about in the book are still playing. If I'm a player on the Dodgers, I don't want to talk to that guy or do anything around him; it could end up in a book some day, after all.
Oh and that conversation between Pettitte and Torre after Pettitte was named in the Mitchell Report so did not happen because it read like part of a terrible screenplay.
* insert "holy crap I'm 23 I have not accomplished anything in my life ;_;" panic here
