Mood Music: Love Will Keep Us Together by Captain and Tenille
Here's a taste of what we have to look forward to if Derek Jeter doesn't start hitting again.
I don't know if I can think of a better recent example of the sports media literally just making something up out of thin air in order to have a story.
The fact that Jeter has a day off in the midst of a 38-games-in-40-days stretch should not be surprising. The fact that Jeter is a little miffed because he and his manager disagree over whether he's got a slight injury shouldn't be surprising.
Apparantly, though, hitting .250 does make it surprising.
I'm afraid we'd all better get used to this. If Jeter doesn't start turning his season around, this will get worse and worse each time he gets the day off.
Then again, it looks like Joe Girardi may be feeding the beast:
"In everything that I do, I consider people’s feelings, I consider how it will affect them mentally....It’s always easy to say, ‘Hey, we’ll do this,’ but I have to look at that player in the face every day, and I have to try to get the most out of that player not just for two days, but for 162 games. When you deal with players, you always have to think of how it’s going to affect them mentally."
You know, love will keep us together. That's a great approach if you're a life coach, or a motivational speaker, but a pretty lousy one if your goal is to actually win real baseball games.
Does anyone else find it ironic that the prevalance of this managing attitude probably goes the furthest in explaining why Girardi was able to enjoy a 15-year playing career despite never really being that good at anything on the baseball field?