Greetings from San Francisco. Yesterday, I drove over the Bay Bridge to Vallejo, CC Sabathia’s hometown, and wrote this column about Sabathia dedicating a basketball court to his fallen cousin Demetrius Davis.
It was an extremely touching event. You could see how connected Sabathia still feels to his roots and how he unites the community there.
–In Seattle on Sunday, I spoke with former Yankee Raul Ibanez, who is still slugging at age 41 even while playing his home games at pitcher-friendly Safeco Field. Ibanez’s .500 slugging percentage ties him in that category with Robinson Cano, Prince Fielder and Ian Kinsler among others, although it should be noted that Ibanez doesn’t have enough plate appearances (170) to qualify for the batting title. And also that one of those “others” with a .500 slugging percentage is R.A. Dickey.
Anyway, I asked Ibanez what he thought about guys like Travis Hafner, Lyle Overbay and Vernon Wells (who has declined precipitously as of late) enjoying the same sort of rebound seasons that Ibanez and Eric Chavez did last year. Whether he saw some common denominator.
He did. “I think when it comes to the hitters, Kevin Long is phenomenal, and Joe (Girardi) is unbelievable,” Ibanez said. “The whole environment, no matter what’s going on, if the team’s doing well or not doing well, there’s always a sense of calm in the locker room. There’s never any sense of panic in there. There’s always a really positive vibe.”
That arrives as a bit counterintuitive, since Girardi looked at times last August and September like he was about to go all Clark Griswold as the Yankees’ large lead over Baltimore melted into nothing. But I asked Sabathia a similar question back in spring training, and he gave me a similar answer.
“He’s not far removed from being a player, so he understands what you go through as a player,” Sabathia said of Girardi. “He understands playing here. It’s not that he leaves us alone, but he lets us figure things out.”
I told Sabathia that Girardi can often come off as highly stressed when he meets with the media in his post-game news conferences. I theorized that perhaps he lets out all of his aggression in the media sessions and then returns to the clubhouse looking more relaxed.
Sabathia agreed: “Then he stepped back and didn’t portray that to us in the clubhouse.”
I asked Girardi about it Sunday, before the Yankees’ victory over Seattle. “When I go in the clubhouse, I’m fine, but you guys get me two minutes after the game,” he said. “And I don’t enjoy losing. And I think it’s a bad signal to send that it’s OK to lose. We’re out here to win games. But around them, I’m the same every day.”
Last August and September, Ibanez said, “I never knew what was going on. You can’t tell what’s going on outside by looking at anybody’s face inside the locker room. Obviously, having those core guys, Andy, Mo, Jete ,even though he’s not healthy, I’m sure he comes around sometimes, Grandy, Tex, having those guys around creates a sense of calm, and there’s a quiet confidence there.”
(I’m going to assume you know the full names of everyone Ibanez mentions in the above paragraph.) Girardi said he learned from Joe Torre how to insulate the clubhouse from outside forces.
“You can learn a lot from that where you look at guys concentrating on baseball and having a good time, not having to deal with all of expectations and all the things that go on in New York,” he said. “We make an effort to make sure these guys are enjoying what they’re doing. They enjoy each other. It’s important.”
The Yankees certainly bent in the final third of the 2012 regular season, but they never did break. Ten days out of the last 28, they were tied with the Orioles atop the American League East. When they entered a game tied, they went 9-1. And since Baltimore lost (to Oakland) when the Yankees suffered that one loss, September 14 (to Tampa Bay), the Yankees never trailed the Orioles during that crazy sprint to the finish line.
Girardi indeed deserves credit for such a showing, as do the veteran players that Ibanez mentioned.
“You cannot tell there what’s going on, other than when you’re walking through the clubhouse and all the TVs are on and then you hear something on television,” Ibanez said. “I would turn around and go, ‘Gosh, we’re not doing that well right now.’ But you don’t really realize it, because it’s a really insulated environment. A very positively insulated environment.”
We’ve seen similar positive insulation this season, as the Yankees shrugged off outside expectations that they would stink; my Post teammate Joel Sherman wondered whether this would be the case in his Opening Day column. We’ll see if that can help them continue to defy expectations.
–Have a great day.