17 replies to this topic

[Red PR]

http://www.nypost.co...6FVUuvlAUcNUHSP

I knew Jete's and A-rod were not bff's but seems rift was bigger than I thought.

Edited by Red PR, 24 April 2011 - 08:57 AM.

[Brianish]

So it's an unauthorized biography citing nameless officials and non-quote quotes from Mattingly and others? I'm dubious.

Edit - Not to mention the polemical bullshit throughout the article.

Edited by Brianish, 24 April 2011 - 09:23 AM.

[brienc]

Two nasty bitches starring in Housewives of the South Bronx.

[cromulence]

I really can't believe we're still talking about this. Who cares?

[Wingack]

I really think this is the biggest nonstory. Is this causing ARod to be awesome or Jeter to decline rapidly, no so I don't care.

I bet they both hate Justin Timberlake though.

[crow216]

Funny thing about this article was that I was just telling a friend how much Jeter and Arod have been joking around with each other and been next to each other in the dugout this year. Even if you watch the replay from yesterdays game, they were next to each other after Arods grand slam goofing off.

[NoMaRRaMoN]

Funny thing about this article was that I was just telling a friend how much Jeter and Arod have been joking around with each other and been next to each other in the dugout this year. Even if you watch the replay from yesterdays game, they were next to each other after Arods grand slam goofing off.

So you think Jeter wasn't "fak[ing] it"?

Poor Slappy probably thinks they're actually friends again.

[terrynever]

Mattingly says he "faked" his friendship with Boggs yet in Mike Shalin's new book on Mattingly, Donnie Baseball talks about how he and Wade got along so well as teammates, even though most people expected they would not. Mattingly credits Boggs with turning the early-1990s Yankees into a group of hitters with better plate discipline. So now he's saying something different to Ian O'Connor, or to one of Ian's sources?

BTW, Shalin's book on Mattingly is worthless. For starters, he extensively quotes Suzyn Waldman and Michael Kay, as though they would ever have something constructive to say about a Yankee hero. The good news is, someone gave it to me. And it's going back real soon.

[TheoShmeo]

Put this in whatever category you like, but I'm very friendly with a NY sports writer who covers the Yankees and from what he's told me in the past, the NY Post story fairly depicts Jeter's hostility to A-Rod and its impact on the Yankees' clubhouse over the years. To be clear, I don't think that's news or that anyone reading this will be surprised by that.

My friend also said that Jeter is extraordinarily cold, in general. And that A-Rod is generally well intentioned but is just a very awkward, odd guy. Again, nothing shocking there, I know.

To round it out, he said that Johnny Damon is the nicest person he's ever covered in sports.

[terrynever]

Put this in whatever category you like, but I'm very friendly with a NY sports writer who covers the Yankees and from what he's told me in the past, the NY Post story fairly depicts Jeter's hostility to A-Rod and its impact on the Yankees' clubhouse over the years. To be clear, I don't think that's news or that anyone reading this will be surprised by that.

My friend also said that Jeter is extraordinarily cold, in general. And that A-Rod is generally well intentioned but is just a very awkward, odd guy. Again, nothing shocking there, I know.

To round it out, he said that Johnny Damon is the nicest person he's ever covered in sports.

If Jeter is as cold as DiMaggio, maybe he will retire when he realizes he no longer can compete at the level he did in his prime. DiMaggio walked away from $100,000 annually after the 1951 season. He was 36. Joe D would probably come out of his grave to play for Jeter's $17M salary today.

[Rough Carrigan]

If Jeter is as cold as DiMaggio, maybe he will retire when he realizes he no longer can compete at the level he did in his prime. DiMaggio walked away from $100,000 annually after the 1951 season. He was 36. Joe D would probably come out of his grave to play for Jeter's $17M salary today.

Yeah, if you read that biography by Cramer, Joe D comes across like a complete asshole and a fucking tightwad to put Jack Benny to shame. He'd walk over anyone for a dollar that he somehow decided was rightfully his.

[terrynever]

Yeah, if you read that biography by Cramer, Joe D comes across like a complete asshole and a fucking tightwad to put Jack Benny to shame. He'd walk over anyone for a dollar that he somehow decided was rightfully his.

I read it. Creamer kind of picked on an old man with the timing of his book but he seemed to have accurately portrayed Joe D. I don't really need superstar athletes to be perfect people. But it is kind of funny to see how cheap some of them were. I guess Joe never got over being a fisherman's son. Dom did. Joe didn't.

[Gash Prex]

"CC's main concern was our clubhouse, and how people got along," Cashman told the author. "I told him the truth. 'Yeah, we are broken. One reason we're committing [$161 million] to you is you're a team builder. We need somebody to bring us together.' "

Cashman actually said this to the author?

[terrynever]

"CC's main concern was our clubhouse, and how people got along," Cashman told the author. "I told him the truth. 'Yeah, we are broken. One reason we're committing [$161 million] to you is you're a team builder. We need somebody to bring us together.' "

Cashman actually said this to the author?

It makes sense to me, when you consider how the Torre years ended, and the Girardi years began in 2008. Cashman has said in numerous places that he went after Swisher for the same reason.

Torre's final years were not pretty. He had his loyalists -- Jeter, Posada, et al. But you have to figure there were others in the locker room who came in late and saw an old man who had lost coaching friends like Zimmer and Stottlemyre and was still dealing with The Dying Boss's antics.

It wasn't the first time a manager stayed too long. 12 years is a long time. It's remarkable that Joe lasted so long in the zoo.

Edited by terrynever, 24 April 2011 - 08:32 PM.

[Rough Carrigan]

I read it. Creamer kind of picked on an old man with the timing of his book but he seemed to have accurately portrayed Joe D. I don't really need superstar athletes to be perfect people. But it is kind of funny to see how cheap some of them were. I guess Joe never got over being a fisherman's son. Dom did. Joe didn't.

Joe wasn't just cheap. He felt the world revolved around him. That wasn't from growing up in San Francisco. That was the whole thing he settled into in New York. Everything was about him.

The stuff in the book about Joe not helping out their sister(?) late in life and then Dom coming from Boston to help her out and then Joe somehow taking this as Dom just wanting to make him look bad showed what a warped guy Joe was.

Edited by Rough Carrigan, 25 April 2011 - 11:46 AM.

[mabrowndog]

One of the weirder sides of the Joe D. saga was that he was on record with numerous sources as stating Willie Mays was the greatest ballplayer he ever saw. Yet at any of his public appearances, Joe was always introduced (allegedly at his own insistence) as "America's Greatest Living Ballplayer". Guess he never saw himself play.

As for the Jeter book, I agree that the mano-a-mano details on the A-Rod rift are a complete yawner. The more interesting angles seem to be Torre's divisive approach and Cashman's attempts to unify the club.

[mabrowndog]

Well, now the plot thickens a bit...

I guess the Post didn't really get an exclusive. Today O'Connor's employer gets its turn to spill some of the gossip, and this time it's mostly about the contract negotiations this past winter.

The book, "The Captain: The Journey of Derek Jeter," details a Nov. 30 sit-down in which Jeter, his agent Casey Close and Creative Artists Agency attorney Terry Prince met with Cashman, team president Randy Levine and co-owner Hal Steinbrenner to iron out their differences. The Tampa summit lasted four hours, but Jeter stayed for only the first 45 minutes, telling his employers -- especially Cashman -- how angry he was that they had made details of the negotiations public.

When Jeter got up to leave the room, Cashman asked the shortstop to sit back down and hear him out. "You said all you wanted was what was fair," the GM told the shortstop. "How much higher do we have to be than the highest offer for it to be fair?"

Jeter, who had no other offers in his first pass at free agency, ultimately signed a three-year, $51 million guaranteed deal plus an option year and incentive bonuses. But the negotiations were often difficult. When Close told Daily News columnist Mike Lupica that the Yankees' negotiating stance was "baffling," Hal Steinbrenner gave Cashman the green light to take the fight to Jeter and Close in the media. The quote that would anger Jeter the most was the one Cashman gave to ESPNNewYork.com's Wallace Matthews, who quoted the GM saying that Jeter should test the market to "see if there's something he would prefer other than this."

Levine met with Jeter in the shortstop's Trump World Tower home the day before the contract would be finalized. According to the book, Jeter told Levine he needed more money added to the proposed performance bonuses in the Yankees' offer, bonuses tied to awards such as league MVP, World Series or League Championship Series MVP, Silver Slugger and Gold Glove. Jeter spent a couple of hours making an impassioned plea to Levine, who was playing the good cop to Cashman's bad cop. Levine was so taken by Jeter's arguments that one official estimated the shortstop earned an extra $4-5 million in that meeting before signing the following afternoon in a suite at the Regency.

[Worst Trade Evah]

The transformation of Brian Cashman over the last year has been pretty remarkable. For years I only ever thought of him as this mealy-mouthed nerd who did whatever Steinbrenner told him to do -- which might have been accurate when Big Stein was alive. But he has really emerged as a stronger figure now. It's almost like he doesn't care if he gets fired anymore. Telling Jeter to sit down and asking him how much higher than the market does he need to be to be fair is right on the money. Asking Jeter to test the market was a huge reality check for Jeter -- and totally appropriate.

Jeter has taken on way too much of a DiMaggio thing -- cross him once and he's done with you forever, etc. What a douche.

Edited by Worst Trade Evah, 26 April 2011 - 07:49 AM.