No first-year honeymoon for Girardi

Wallace Matthews

March 28, 2008

If Charles Dickens hadn't already snagged it 150 years ago, there would have been no more appropriate title for a biography of Joe Girardi than this: "Great Expectations."

Because after the Yankees decided to part ways with Joe Torre, the manager who had led them to six World Series appearances, four world championships and 12 straight Octobers of playoff baseball, Hank Steinbrenner summarized the search for Torre's successor as follows: "What we're looking for is a guy who's maybe going to be one of the greatest managers of all time over a period of, oh, 10 to 20 years."

And you thought Alex Rodriguez was under a lot of pressure.

Last year, the Yankees and their $200-million-plus payroll fell 14 1/2 games behind Boston by Memorial Day and spent the rest of the summer clawing their way back into the playoff picture. Along the way, they revealed holes in the lineup, in the pitching staff and on the roster that you could drive a Hummer through sideways. At many key positions, they are an aging team. At others, they are as green as the grass they play on.

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And yet the only real change they made during the offseason was in the manager's office.

Once again, they are going to war with the army they have, not necessarily with the one they want. They have determined, for better or worse, that all they needed was a new general issuing the orders.

That general is Girardi, who in terms of experience at his position is only slightly ahead of Joba Chamberlian, and way behind the man he is replacing.

"This team's expectations have always been to win the World Series," Girardi said at his inaugural news conference back in November. "That's not gonna change."

Nor, really, is anything else. The Boss may be in the background, but Son of Boss, Boy George, is very much out front with his belief that the 2008 Yankees aren't that far removed from the 1998 Yankees, at least in terms of what is expected from them.

"I will be patient with the young pitchers and players," Hank Steinbrenner said this spring. "There's no question about that because I know how these players develop. But as far as missing the playoffs -- if we miss the playoffs by the end of this year, I don't know how patient I'll be. But it won't be against the players. It won't be a matter of that. It will be a matter of maybe certain people in the organization could have done something else."

Presumably, Girardi, along with GM Brian Cashman, who is in the final year of his contract, are the people to whom Steinbrenner is referring. Girardi has a cushion Torre was never offered, a three-year deal, to achieve the stated goals, but as we all know, a three-year contract with the Yankees is hardly worth the paper it is printed on.

There is no stated mandate for Girardi to bring the Yankees to the World Series in 2008 in order for him to continue managing in 2009, as there was for Torre, and in general, the standards he is expected to live up to are less than what the Yankees held his predecessor to.

But he still is the manager of the New York Yankees, a position that nearly killed Billy Martin and Buck Showalter and caused Torre's insides to churn even as he struggled to maintain a placid public demeanor.

Girardi is famously fiery -- he blew his first managerial job, with the Florida Marlins, after a public run-in with the owner, Jeffrey Loria, who could never qualify as a member of the Steinbrenners -- and judging from his reaction to a spring training collision with the Rays, has not quite learned to cool his temper. The way he handles the input and "constructive criticism" that is sure to come blowing up from Tampa throughout the season will be a constant source of fascination.

Most of all, it will be fascinating to watch Girardi, a curious blend of toughness and intellect, deal with all the peripheral issues that go into managing the Yankees, all of which will affect the quality of his tenure but few of which have to do with the winning of baseball games.

And yet nothing will be more important than the numbers at the end of the season. The Yankees failed to get out of the Division Series last season for the third straight year, and instead of overhauling the roster or rebuilding the pitching staff, all they did was change the manager. And so far, everyone in Yankeeland seems convinced that trading in Old Joe in favor of Young Joe will be the cure for what ailed the team last year.

Said Hal, the Quiet Steinbrenner, "Well, there's not a whole lot not to like about him."

That, too, can change in a hurry around here. If so, Dickens had a title for that turn of events, too -- "Bleak House," a synonym for the manager's office at Yankee Stadium when the team is losing if ever there was one.