What’s in a name? Ws and Ls apparently
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SARASOTA, Fla. -- Initially, it seemed like a pretty good idea.
The New York Yankees, whose World Series hopes would be DOA without some pitching help ASAP, went out and signed the top two free-agent arms in the market in CC Sabathia and A.J. Burnett. And all it cost them was a quarter-billion dollars, give or take some change. As for the rest of baseball, a quote from W.E.B. DuBois applies, with a sports spin: To be a poor team is hard but to be a poor team in a land of dollars is the very bottom of hardships.
Oh, and no IOUs please.
Although those signings are certain to make the IRS happy, New York is bucking tradition in hoping they’ll pay off on the field. Baseball’s Hall of Fame is bereft of players with initials for a first name, and no player who answered to initials has ever won a league MVP. In fact, only one has ever won a Cy Young, and just two have led the leagues in Ks, though that bodes well for the Yankees -- whose home uniforms feature interlocking initials -- since the Cy Young went to Sabathia in 2007 and the strikeout titles went to Burnett (2008) and Houston’s J.R. Richard (1978-79).
But Richards, it should be noted, also led the National League in walks three times.
More common is the experience of the Seattle Mariners’ R.A. Dickey, who is 21-27 with a 5.57 ERA in six big-league seasons. And it’s not just pitchers who should avoid sending out RSVPs for the ALCS because for every B.J. Upton, who won a league championship before he’d played 400 major league games, there are dozens of guys like former catcher A.J. Hinch, infielder R.J. Reynolds or outfielder F.P. Santangelo, who spent most of their falls watching the playoffs on TV.
So WWJD (What Will Joe [Girardi] Do)? Well, knowing all that, he’ll still resist sending out an SOS just yet. After all, it was the poet ee cummings who wrote ‘Knowledge is a polite word for dead but not buried imagination.’
-- Kevin Baxter