Fastball Fans

There are a lot of people not happy with Joe Torre more or less being shafted in the contract talks yesterday in Florida in returning to the Yankees.

Although the Red Sox and Indians are still battling in the ALCS, and the success of the Rockies in Denver is taking that area by storm, almost all the baseball related chatter yesterday was about the Yankees.

Boy, the timing of their announcements are impeccable.

My bud, Jason, who also runs a baseball blog, My Baseball Bias, says what I feel better than I could put into words. It also helps, he’s a huge Yankee fan…

12 Years as the Manager of the New York Yankees - 12 Playoff Berths

4 World Series Championships

6 American League Pennants

10 AL East Division Pennants

The Yankees organization shot themselves in the foot today. Sure, they’ll be just fine in the long-run because of their rather rich economic situation, but upper management went out and embarrassed the franchise today.

Why is this a sad day to be a Yankee fan? To put it bluntly, they treated one of their own like he s**t .

How do you suddenly ask a man who has led you to the playoffs in every year of his tenure to: 1. take a pay cut and 2. agree to an “incentives based contract�? That decision by all who were involved, Yankee President Randy Levine, GM Brian Cashman, Owners Hal, Hank and George Steinbrenner, COO Lonn Trost and the rest of the organization is a total slap in the face to Joe Torre.

The Yankees always talk about how classy of an organization they are, how they always try to do the right thing. Well, today they failed miserably. Egg is on all of your faces. You can’t in your right mind think that Joe Torre needs a financial motivation to manage the New York Yankees into the playoffs. And you can’t tell me that by offering him only a one year contract is nothing less than being disrespectful.

And if you really wanted him back, why not negotiate? Why have him fly all the way down to Florida with only one option on the table?

Because you never wanted him back in the first place. If you knew this, you should have fired him right after the ALDS loss to the Cleveland Indians. As an organization, you “suits� couldn’t have played this any worse. You all needed three days of meetings to decide that you were going to totally humiliate a person by offering him a contract that you knew he would reject?

Gimme a break.

and….

Let me just end with this:

just end with this:

A man who leads a team to the playoffs after a 21-29 start to the season is a man that deserves respect.

Good luck to the next manager of my beloved Yankees, I hope management doesn’t kick you in the ass when you take the job.

Could not have said it any better myself.