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Scorn on the 4th of July? Girardi safe for '08

Ken Davidoff

July 5, 2008

The Fourth of July serves as a traditional baseball landmark, one of those natural points of assessment. It probably won't surprise you to learn that here with the Yankees, it has been something so much more.

Yes, back in George Steinbrenner's prime, you could feel the heat turned up in the Yankees' clubhouse on this day. Most certainly, you didn't want to lose on The Boss' birthday. And you'd have a far nicer holiday if you resided in first place.

So go ahead and regard Friday as another failed test for Steinbrenner's club and for first-year Yankees manager Joe Girardi. Another warning sign in a season in which there's little indication of an imminent turnaround.

Only without the old ramifications.

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The day after Girardi tore into his players in a meeting that prompted the manager to close his clubhouse for 31 minutes, the Yankees again lost to Boston, 6-4. Now they're nine games behind the Rays and six behind the Sawx in the American League East.

Johnny Damon might be headed for the disabled list after crashing into the leftfield wall and hurting his left shoulder, and Darrell Rasner should be headed out of the starting rotation after another subpar performance.

Alex Rodriguez delivered a big hit in the first inning, a two-run double, but he left the bases loaded in the seventh. He was the first player out of the clubhouse after the game, his life once again having turned into a ridiculous soap opera.

In all, it hardly served as a happy 78th birthday for Steinbrenner, who planned to enjoy the milestone at his Tampa home with his family.

"We just need to win more games," Damon said. "When that happens, you don't have to have meetings."

Let's talk about the meeting. Just a few days ago, I praised Girardi for his innovation in game managing. For exhibiting trust in his entire roster - not just his veteran favorites, as became Joe Torre's downfall.

But when it comes to a sensitive issue such as Thursday night's meeting, Girardi has, to put it very politely, a great deal of room for growth.

When you keep the media out of the clubhouse for such a long time - traditionally, we're allowed in within 10 minutes of the last out - you're going to draw attention to yourself. You're going to get a plethora of questions about the meeting, in various contexts.

Girardi tried to act as though the meeting never happened.

"[Thursday] night was a frustrating loss," he said. "Today was a frustrating loss."

Asked how he would assess the team's play Friday in light of the Thursday meeting, Girardi responded: "I thought we played hard. And I think we've played hard all year. It just didn't seem to go our way. It's another loss. We need to start winning games."

Only Girardi knows why he wouldn't acknowledge the obvious - that though the Yankees again were outplayed Friday, they performed much better than in Thursday night's ugly 7-0 defeat.

It's a positive development for the organization that Independence Day no longer is Armageddon. Ownership knew and accepted that this would be a challenging transition season.

Yet no one anticipated the poor offense. The Yankees were 2-for-9 with runners in scoring position Friday, leaving them at a poor .256 clip for the season (206-for-804).

"For some reason, we don't know how to score," Brian Cashman lamented earlier Friday. "An area of strength has been our biggest weakness."

Go ahead and project that something will click for this group, that A-Rod and Robinson Cano and Melky Cabrera will remember how to hit with their teammates in scoring position. You've still got to deal with the starting rotation, which has overachieved so far and can't reasonably expect much more from Rasner or Sidney Ponson. And can Mike Mussina match his first half? Yeesh.

The Yankees were in worse shape a year ago at this time; they trailed the Bosox by 11Â½ games in the division and the Tigers by eight games for the wild card. This feels different, though.

July Fourth felt nothing like a wake-up call and everything like yet another cloudy day in a season that - the Steinbrenner family must hope - at least pays off next year.