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04/14/2005: Thought for the Day:
What would happen, do you suppose, if the Yankees actually missed the playoffs? It has been so long since Steinbrenner's boys didn't at least reach the postseason -- 1993, to be exact -- that the notion seems absurd. A postseason without the Yankees would be like an Oscar ceremony where no one wears a tux.
But it's going to happen one of these years. It's very possible it could be this one. The Yankees, being the Yankees, retooled their whole team in the offseason. They brought in (deep breath) Randy Johnson, Carl Pavano, Jared Wright, Tony Womack and, for a victory lap, Tino Martinez. These were among the hottest names on the free agent market (except for Johnson, whose arrival in a trade was inevitable), and the Yankees scooped them up like they were on Supermarket Sweep.
This is all fine and good, of course; this is what that Yankees do, after all. But each of those additions has one thing in common: They're all on the downsides of the careers. Sure, they're "veterans," but hey, so is Jim Bunning, and he can't even tie his shoes. Add them to the rest of the Yankees roster, which counts Derek Jeter, 30, as one of the young guys, and you can see this team cannot sustain last year's level of performance for much longer.
--Will Leitch
Len on 04.14.05 @ 08:15 AM CST
