Former Boston Red Sox centerfielder Johnny Damon has never struck me as a player that takes anything too seriously. But that was before his current team, the New York Yankees, went from being a championship contender to becoming the joke of the American League.
"The Steinbrenners spent $200 million on us, and we haven't shown what we're made of," Damon told reporters after last Thursday's frustrating 7-0 loss to the Red Sox at Yankee Stadium.
"I know we have 75 games or so left. We've got to do something soon," Damon said.
To a lot of Red Sox fans, the Yankees' fall from grace is nothing short of manna from heaven. How many years did we sit back and watch the Yankees ring up championships while the Sox struggled to keep their record somewhere above the Mendoza line?
Now it's happening in New York, and while Red Sox Nation rejoices, the Bronx buzzards are starting to circle—big time.
"We've got to start hitting," new Yankees chairman Hank Steinbrenner said. "They've got to start waking up. They've shown in flashes what they can still do."
A Steinbrenner attempting to use the media to light a fire under his team is not a new concept in New York. But you can only do that so many times. The larger problem for the Yankees, it seems, is their approach to team-building, which these days looks a lot like the Red Sox of yesteryear.
Back when they were struggling, the Red Sox depended largely on underachieving, over-priced veteran talent while the farm system largely floundered. It wasn't until a new regime and Theo Epstein's dedication to rebuilding that system came to the fore that the Sox' fortunes turned around.
The most important part of that process was not the rebuilding. It was admitting there was a problem, and that's not something the Yankees seem willing to do. They have become so accustomed to reloading rather than rebuilding that the management seems confused as to how to turn things around.
A big reason is Steinbrenner, who clearly feels that this team has the talent to win now—which may be the only thing he and current manager Joe Girardi agree on at the moment.
"We have to get better, that's the bottom line," Girardi said. "We better, or we're not going to be where we want to be come Oct. 1. Everybody has to get better, and it starts with me. I'll take responsibility; it's my job, and we have to get better. We're a much better team than we've played."
I'm not sure that's true, and I'm not speaking as a lifelong Red Sox fan who takes a certain amount of joy at New York's fall from grace. Look at the facts. Their power hitters not producing consistently, their pitching talent is thin at best and they haven't got the prospects to go out and improve the situation.
But perhaps the biggest problem may have nothing to do with what happens between the lines. For my entire life, even when they struggled, you never got the sense that the Yankees ever felt like they weren't going to win. There was always this annoying swagger, the type of confidence of success that often ends up producing the real thing.
Those days, it would seem, are over—at least for now.
"We've got to go out there and play with passion, put the pinstripes on," Damon said. "We've won 26 championships for a reason. Those guys strapped it on every single day and went out and got the job done, and that's what we need to do."
The question is, can they get it done before it's too late?
