Coach's Corner
By Andy "Coach" Cotton, Fri., Aug. 28, 1998
It's not a fair fight. Not really. It's the Bulls against Vancouver. It's the Marines against Granada. It's the Earps against the Clantons. Well, yeah, looking down on the field, it looks fair. Nine against nine. Everybody about the same size. If looks mattered, the home team, the guys getting the worst of this battle, would win hands down. In their crisp, ivory white uniforms, trimmed in bright red, vividly contrasted against the lush green grass, the home team looks good -- damn good, much better than the drab, gray road uniforms of the visitors. Alas, the rarest of things: Style counts for nothing. With all the "best team ever" talk, a sports fan might think Michael and Scotty were in town. Instead, the casual fan is confronted with this starting lineup: Knoblauch, Jeter, O'Neil, Williams, Girardi, Davis, and Brosius. Who? Ruth/Gehrig. Maris/Mantle. Aaron/Mathews. Mays/McCovey. Those are glamorous names. Powerful names. Hall of Fame names conspicuously lacking from these Yankees. Still, the numbers are staggering: 94 wins, achieved faster than any team in over a century of American League play -- an odds-on bet to shatter the best regular season record in the long history of the game -- a 20-game lead over the second-place Red Sox, the largest Yankee lead since 1941, putting them an unthinkable 64 games over .500. New York starting pitchers alone have won more games, 72, than all but four teams in the majors. First in wins, winning percentage, hitting, defense, and, according to Ranger manager Johnny Oates, "team chemistry." The bastards even like each other.
They feature reformed wife beaters and drug abusers, political refugees, surgically repaired guys, fat guys, omnipresent Christians, a Japanese pitcher, an amiable manager, an Aggie, and even an ex-Cub. I can't imagine the arrogant Bulls coming out in pre-game drills and doing show-girl can-can kicks (in unison, for Gods sake!) for stretching. The Yankees do. Their best player (and the AL's leading hitter) could easily pass for a professor of classical languages. If you saw these guys in a mall, you wouldn't look twice. (Of course, this is true of most baseball players, which is why, so goes one of my pet crank theories, "overpaid" baseball players seem to attract so much public animosity. Football and basketball players are such an intimidating physical presence, we know they're special. Baseball players, on the other hand, look so ordinary; we tend to think, "if only for a break back in Little League, I too could play center field." Ask John Fogerty. If you want to dispel that illusion fast, though, watch these guys take infield practice.) Anyway, every day, night in, night out, in Boston and Baltimore, in Cleveland and Anaheim, in Seattle and Kansas City, the Yankees win. A two-game losing streak is news.
So no, it's not really fair. Not this year. It's easy to take shots, as I did last week, calling Texas' efforts against New York "pathetic." For sure, a 2-8 record isn't too hot for the self-esteem, but the Yankees are kicking the shit out of everyone in this summer of '98, so I'll give them a break.
Last weekend in Arlington, before sold-out, though oddly subdued crowds, I watched the Rangers get manhandled, toyed with, and cast lightly aside by portly David Wells, a fine pitcher, who looks like he should be your plumber. The next night, against David Cone, the league's winningest pitcher, I saw a major league ball club (Texas) commit errors -- five of 'em! -- in every imaginable way. Ground balls were kicked, booted, overrun, and bobbled. E-3-4-5-6, and 8. The scoreboard looked like Aggie bingo. The unfortunate recipient of this matador defense was pitcher John Burkett. He was pitching on only three days' rest -- a desperate move so early in the fall -- but in any case, using Burkett, who sports the highest ERA among AL starting pitchers, isn't dealing from a strong position; in three starts against the Yankees, he's 0-3 with an 11.06 ERA. So no, he didn't need the internal sabotage, though giving up eight hits in two innings didn't help his case much either. Yet somehow, despite the brutal savaging of Abner Doubleday's game, the Rangers -- thanks to Cone's poorest outing since early June and two lengthy home runs by Juan Gonzalez, one of which, at the terminus of a swift,
429-foot journey almost shattered the Plexiglas on the second terrace Club Level -- held a 9-8 lead in the eighth inning.
In the end, after four hours, 30 hits, 21 runs, misplayed balls -- in the air, off walls and on the ground -- and a blown save by the usually automatic John Wetteland, the Yankees continued on their merry way toward a moment with destiny, winning number 94, and handing Texas another humbling defeat. Said Johnny Oates, "Thank God I get to wake up tomorrow and the sun is up and it's another day."
So there it is. An outstanding New York baseball team beat a "contender" with a 19-22 record since the All-Star break. It's still plausible Texas could win the West. More than plausible really, since the Angels stink and next week they start a stretch of games (eight) against the Yankees (no reason to believe they'll fare any better than anyone else), Boston, Baltimore, and Cleveland. Then the winner of the West gets to meet New York in the first round of the playoffs. It's just not fair.
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