Shut up about the Yankees!

Well, baseball is over in New York, so nothing else matters.  The Yankees season expired five days ago and the media is already beating their post-season agenda down our throats.  Where will Torre, Posada, A-Rod, and Mariano Rivera go?  Who cares!  I’m sick and tired of hearing about the same stories everywhere I go.  You can’t turn on the radio, TV, or pick up a newspaper without being inundated with the different possibilities.  Remember the two weeks leading up the Superbowl the year it was in Detroit, and all everyone wanted to talk about was how Jerome Bettis would be ending his career in his hometown?  This has eclipsed that on the ‘Just Shut-up’ radar.   Can’t we just appreciate the games that are going on?  This is proof that Boston isn’t America’s team, it was the Yankees before, and it always will be.  They lead off every sports news show even when they aren’t doing anything.  “New York still hasn’t made an official decision, and oh yeah the Red Sox beat the Tribe last night.”  I was listening to Mike and Mike the other morning and they were saying that they have reporters following Torre everywhere he goes, sleeping outside his house, and even reporting on where he eats dinner.  Why would anyone possibly want to know these things?   A story broke today about how A-Rod is buying a house on New York’s 80^th street.  As a baseball fan this is the stuff I definately want to know.  I’d rather read this than a report about how the Rockies have won 19 of their last 20, and how the only teams in the same neighborhood of such sustained excellence are the 1916 Giants (26 straight), the 1935 Cubs (21), the 2002 A’s (20), and the 1947 Yankees (19).  Then they would tell me that the Giants edition is debatable, because they won 14, tied 1, and then won 12 more.   You’d never know because this story has been overshadowed.  It seems as if the NLCS isn’t even happening.  The games are wrapping up when Conan O’Brien comes on, and they get no coverage.  If they do, it comes a day late and no one cares by then.  Everyone has shrugged off this series and labeled it irrelevant because it’s being played by two “expansion teams.” Where is the coverage for David Ortiz?  He’s currently in the midst of one the greatest post-season performances of all-time.  He’s reached base in 16 of his 18 plate appearances, amassing a robust line of .778/.889/1.556.  If he continues to produce at this pace it would be truly historical, but I guess how the Yankees soap-opera plays out is more important. I understand that we are talking about some of the biggest names in baseball, but since when does Joe Torre matter?  The guy was never a good coach. He inherited a great team and has built a reputation off of George Steinbrenner’s wallet.  He’s more of a liaison than a manager.  Maybe he is smarter than the guys upstairs because if they had any intelligence they would have let him start Joba Chamberlin during the ALDS.  Then again, this is the same guy that decided to leave Phil Hughes out of the rotation, and pitched Chien Ming-Wang on three days rest with his job on the line, so I’m probably giving him too much credit. The thing that kills me is that everyone thinks that Tony LaRussa is going to take the job if it opens up.  If you are going to create stories at least make them feasible.  LaRussa needs the freedom to operate without interference, and he knows Steinbrenner is a notorious meddler.  He wouldn’t last a week there with George in his ear telling him how to handle his pitchers and where to hit guys in the order, and he knows this.  Instead of exploring the ideas of this move they would rather blindly speculate about how it’s close to happening.  All you have to do is look at the egos involved to realize it will never happen.  Steinbrenner knows TLR, and TLR knows Steinbrenner. Hopefully this story will die since LaRussa has publicly expressed interest in returning to Saint Louis.   As far as A-Rod is concerned, can’t we wait until he opts out of his contract before we decide to run stories every morning about where he might end up?  He isn’t even out of New York and everyone is reporting on the ‘book’ Scott Boras wrote.  Just because this document exists doesn’t mean that he has made a decision.  We’re talking about an agent that embodies everything the shark cliché represents.  In one excerpt he guarantees that Rodriguez will play until he is 45-years-old and will break both the all-time homerun and hits record in the process.  That alone should show you that Boras is willing to say, or do, whatever it takes to get his money.  He needs this buzz to drive up the price for his client, whether or not he opts out. What drives me crazy is that we have been talking about these same things since April.  Way back then Rivera was a premier closer about to cash in.  Now, he’s an over-the-hill closer about to cash in.  Rumors about Torre losing his job had engulfed baseball, and the frenzy surrounding Rodriguez was still the same.  Posada was quite then, and he still won’t talk.  Why?  Because the season just ended and he doesn’t know what he wants to do yet, he’s had less than a week to decide his future.  We should all follow his lead and shut-up.