Professional sports is an interesting field to watch. As most of you know by now, I think the majority of professional sports are fixed. You see it in the NFL with completely ridiculous calls, you see it in the NBA with struggling “markets” all of a sudden having tremendous teams to drive fans into the buildings (a la the NJ Nets), and you see it in baseball with the creation of drama between various teams.
Sometimes, though, the stuff that goes on “behind the scenes” is absolutely crazy. Take the Joe Torre debacle with the New York Yankees. Here is a man who would be revered in any other city in the country if he performed as well as he performed for the Yankees as manager. Yet, in New York, the Steinbrenner Machine won’t work for Torre. That’s ridiculous. They insult him with their contract offer and then they have the audacity to make comments about him over the weekend?
What are they crazy?
That punk bitch Hank Steinbrenner said the following in a recent article in the New York Post:
“Where was Joe’s career in ’95 when my dad hired him? My dad was crucified for hiring him.”
What a dumb bastard this guy is. Who in the world doesn’t know that Torre’s career was in the crapper before he came on as the Yankees’ manager? That’s like saying, “Where was the United States before the Revolution?” Any blockhead knows that we were in a bad spot.
Does his previous career make Torre’s performance over the last 12 years any less remarkable? Absolutely not. But this is the Steinbrenner way – classless and defamatory. It’s a real bummer that one of my favorite sports franchises is owned by such low-rent people. Punk Steinbrenner goes on:
“You can’t take credit for success when you’re going good, and then not take at least some of the blame when things change.”
Tell me one time when Joe Torre said that he was not to blame for the team’s inability to get out of the first round of the playoffs. Torre has stressed time and time again that it’s a team effort and that it’s not the fault of any one person in particular, but a group failing that costs the Yankees the big games. Hank is trying to say that by offering Torre incentives to win, he is making sure that Torre knows that some of the blame rests on him when they lose.
That’s the most arrogant, ignorant thing I’ve ever heard. The right thing to do here is for the Steinbrenners to eat their hats, apologize, and try their damnedest to get Torre back. Oh (and for good measure), get rid of Mattingly – he’s a curse!
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