Home Delivery

Girardi still intact after hitting some potholes

BY ANTHONY RIEBER | anthony.rieber@newsday.com

May 6, 2008

Article tools

E-mail

Share
- Digg
- Del.icio.us
- Facebook
- Fark
- Google
- Newsvine
- Reddit
- Yahoo

In the last couple of weeks, Yankees manager Joe Girardi endured:

a) The loss of Alex Rodriguez, Jorge Posada, Phil Hughes and Brian Bruney to injuries;

b) A three-game sweep at the hands of the Detroit Tigers;

c) A spat with the reporters who regularly cover the team;

d) A broadside about the team's relatively slow start from Hank Steinbrenner;

e) A lingering cough that hasn't gone away since Opening Day.

Wait, did we say "endured"?

Change that to a) survived; b) moved on from; c) patched up; and d) defused.

The cough? That's still around. So is Girardi's sense that the immediate storm has passed, both for himself and his team after a three-game weekend sweep of the Seattle Mariners.

"I know it's a long season," Girardi said after Sunday's 8-2 win over the Mariners. The Yankees enjoyed a day off yesterday before the Indians visit tonight for the start of a three-game series.

"I also know what it's like to struggle as a player. You know the guys are going to turn it around. I just believe in our players. Everyone goes through struggles, even the greatest pitchers, the greatest hitters. My demeanor is happy-go-lucky, energy every day."

Girardi's predecessor, Joe Torre, probably would never describe himself as "happy-go-lucky." And energy wasn't his forte, either. Calmness was. Calmness in the face of the special adversity that goes along with being Yankees manager.

So how did Girardi handle his first mini-crisis? Was he Torre-like in the face of a down cycle that could have gotten white-hot had the currently wretched Mariners not come to town to help the Yankees get well?

"They have similar personalities, but then again, they're different," Derek Jeter said of the Joes. "They're different people. [Girardi has] been here. He's real familiar with how things work around here. He's doing great. He's always positive. He was like that when he was a player, too. For me, it's just what I expected."

Of course, Girardi doesn't have job security issues to worry about. But how he does his job in the first year after Torre is a relevant topic, especially when Girardi had to spend part of the last week smoothing over relations with the team's beat writers after a series of prickly moments in his pre- and postgame news conferences.

Girardi believed the matter was important enough to address on his YES Network show. He said the disputes were mostly a matter of everyone getting to know each other.

"I'm not always the happiest guy after we lose a game, but I'm also not a guy that does cartwheels when we win a couple in a row," he said Sunday. "My demeanor every day at the ballpark is the same. Sometimes after the game, it changes a little bit for a few minutes."

Girardi took the diplomatic approach in dealing with Steinbrenner. On Friday, after the Yankees had been swept by Detroit, The Baby Boss said he was "very disappointed with the way the season has gone" and also ripped the team's starting pitching after Chien-Ming Wang.

"I'm not sure what his comments were, but we weren't necessarily happy with what was going on," Girardi said. "We had some kids that were struggling and we needed some innings out of some guys. We know that we can do better as well."

Doing better is something the Yankees will try to do now that they are past the 33-games-in-34 days start to the season. They are 17-16 (last season they were 16-17). They have played 18 road and 15 home games.

"We spent a lot of time on the road," Jeter said. "We obviously could have done better, but it could have been a whole lot worse."

Girardi could say the same thing about his first five weeks as Yankees manager. "It's pretty much what I expected," he said.

He was smiling. He has endured. So far.