Three Chapters In
Well I got through three chapters of "The Yankee Years" today and I have found nothing shokcing or surprising. I do have two complaints/critiques.
The first is from page 2, where one of the reasons given as to why George Steinbrenner parted ways with Buck Showalter is for "blowing a two games to one lead" in the ALDS. As most fans remember, the Yankees actually blew a two games to none lead in that series. I guess that also means they blew a two games to one lead as the book says, but I don't think that was the author's point. I am surprised that mistake was made. (On a side note, that series loss was far and away the most painful loss I have ever suffered as a fan. 2004 was bad, but this was much worse, especially after they led in Games 3, 4 and 5 and lost all three.)
The second thing that bugs me is the steroids issue. The Mitchell Report made it clear that the 2000 Yankees had a number of players who juiced. There are details of a conversation between Torre and Pettitte from December 2007 when Pettitte was about to admit to part of his HGH use. Torre basically gives him a pass, telling him "You weren't trying to get back to win a game for yourself."
Now, I can't hold Torre to a standrad that didn't exist back then, nobody did much of anything to stop steroids. (With the notable excpetion of Rick Helling who is identified in the book as having stood up at meetings of the MLBPA in 1998 and every year after that asking what the Union would do about streoids.) But, I find Torre's pardoning of Pettitte interesting. Pettitte is clearly one of Torre's guys and one theme that you can see very clearly in the beginning of this book is that Torre is going to back up his guys to the hilt. That's great and loyatly is a good thing, but I wonder what happened to the rest of the Yankees who weren't Torre's guys and were in the Mitchell Report. Did David Justice get a call from Joe Torre? Why isn't this explored more in the book? It's an interesting topic that I wish had more teeth to it.
More later
