Sitting on Pin-Stripes and Needles

Nothing, not a damn thing about the New York Yankees furthers the belief that this is the year they will win their division, win the pennant, maybe go play a little Flushing roulette with the New York Mets in the World Series. These guys are not the Bronx Bombers. If anything, they are the Bronx bummers.

This is not a happy baseball team, the Yankees. When Don Mattingly finally failed to keep it inside him another minute and burst like a geyser with his disillusionment, he showed guts galore but in truth did not go far enough. Mattingly is too much the gentleman to tell the world how bad things really are.

These guys are losers, the Yankees. Not individually, but collectively. Never mind their record. When the going gets tough, the Yankees get stuffed. They have the killer instinct of caterpillars. Seven times-- seven times! --this season, the Yankees have been one out away from victory, only to let the 27th out get loose and then lose.

New York, New York, is the city that never sweeps, and hardly ever takes two out of three. No matter how much George Steinbrenner meddles, or how cleverly he pretends not to be meddling, the Yankees play badly because of him, play sadly because of him, and lack cohesiveness because they never know which 0-for-4 day will earn one of them a plane ticket to another town, or which bad baserunning decision will get the manager thrown out.

The manager, as of today, is Lou Piniella, whose birthday likewise happens to be today. It is not his happiest one. Over the span of a night and a day in Anaheim, Piniella’s fellas blew a 6-0 lead and a game, 7-6, in 12 innings, followed by a 12-0 battering from the Angels on national television Saturday. Somewhere in the night, Count Steinbrenner must have been out for blood.

“You ought to be able to hold a six-run lead,” an unsmiling Piniella said, slumping back in his chair, snapping the elastic band of his drawers against his belly, mouthing the very words his boss must have been thinking or saying or screaming.

It was nearly 2 a.m. on the East Coast when Tony Armas of the Angels struck a two-out, two-strike pitch from Dave Righetti over the fence in left-center, tying the game, 6-6, in the last of the ninth. Three innings later, the Angels took the game, on a night when division rivals Detroit and Boston both won, and the Yankees looked bluer than blue, Righetti sitting in front of his locker well past midnight, staring into it.

“We should’ve put that game away, salted that one away,” Piniella said. “You get it down to the 27th out, get two strikes on the batter, and the guy hits one out. The 27th out. I don’t know what it is this year about the 27th out.”

This from a New York manager, one of whose predecessors originated the phrase: “It ain’t over till it’s over.” If ballgames were 8 innings long, the Yankees would be figuring out their magic number by now. Before this season ends, they have to discover somebody who can nail down the final out in a big ballgame, which is why they showed no interest in the sudden availability of Donnie Moore.

With the times desperate and the stretch run just ahead, no wonder rumors ran rampant the other day that the Yankees were going to offer a job to Reggie Jackson. Just what the Yankees need--a few more weeks of New York City peace and quiet with Reggie Jackson. Just the thing to steady Steinbrenner’s ship, to keep things in the clubhouse nice and calm. Say, here’s an idea: How about a wedding between Reggie Jackson and Billy Martin at home plate? How about sending Mattingly to Columbus for insubordination? How about if the Oakland Athletics and Yankees meet in the playoffs and Reggie DHs for both sides?

The very point Mattingly was trying to make last week was that the last thing the Yankees needed was another iota of controversy. Playing for the Yankees has sapped the fun from the game for this plain-speaking Indiana man. He watched this bunch of unhappy millionaires lose to Seattle on Aug. 21 and then erupted with: “You can’t get beaten over the head every day and want to play. . . . I have to fight myself every day to play here.

“We get constantly dogged. And players from other teams love to see that. That’s why nobody wants to play here. It just gets old. . . . (And) it’s never been as bad as it’s been for this club.”

You should have seen Mattingly after the Angels scored the winning run Friday night. Leaving the field, he looked like a man in agony. He tipped back his cap before walking off the diamond and rubbed his forehead, squeezing the temples, looking for all the world like a man in serious need of an aspirin. As for the Yankee clubhouse, it was quiet as a public library. You could have heard a pin-stripe drop.

The scene from the game itself that stuck inside one’s head, on the way home, was one of those plays that said a lot about why the Yankees are struggling. In the top of the 12th inning, with two men on and two out, Don Slaught, pinch-hitting against Bryan Harvey, looked at a third strike. A division title at stake, and he just looked at it.

Any good professional ballplayer, Slaught included, will ask a critic at this point something on the order of: “Who are you to tell me how to hit? How much baseball have you ever played?” Well, sure. But no baseball lover alive can watch a man take a pitch in that situation and forgive him for it. What can a batter be thinking at that point, that he wouldn’t swing at anything close to home plate?

Rickey Henderson stood in the on-deck circle for what seemed like forever after Slaught took that third strike. Angels were running in and Yankees were running out, but Henderson still stood there, leaning on his bat. We cannot read a man’s mind, but if ever a player’s manner suggested disbelief, it was Henderson’s at that moment.

The Yankees have a lot of problems, so it is not surprising Mattingly took the opportunity the other day to get a few things off his chest. We can only hope that the Yankees keep losing, and that Mattingly has more and more to say about it, because with any luck, Steinbrenner will get ticked off and trade Mattingly someplace where he will be appreciated. Here, for instance.