By Adam Cancryn
And so begins the end of an era.
Well, this isn’t the real beginning. The real beginning occurred somewhere between the time Mark Teixeira squeezed the last out of the 2009 World Series and the first spring training wind sprints five months later. The real beginning occurred when Derek Jeter found himself out of breath a half-mile earlier than usual during a winter morning jog, and when Mariano Rivera needed a couple tosses before the ball began to sizzle through the brisk air, and when Jorge Posada's offseason batting practice produced a few more fouls and less line drives.
That was the real beginning of the end. But those moments have passed, private instants that all three legends could choose to keep secret from everyone else and, depending on the day’s mix of ego and insecurity, perhaps themselves. So we are instead left with this year as the beginning of the end for the Last True Yankees, the year in which time pulled back the curtain and exposed these three legends as mere mortals.
It started with Jeter. The 2009 season was a peak amid a Himalayan career, a collection of offensive splits that rivaled his MVP year. And at 35 no less, an age when fans and critics alike urged him to relinquish his throne at short for a comfortable tract of land nearby at third base. An age when critics and fans alike began the search for an heir, when 23-year-old Ramiro Pena made the opening day roster and AA shortstop Eduardo Nunez became a sudden person of interest.
Jeter responded by opening 2009 with a blistering 3-for-5 day, and added two more hits the next. By the third game it was clear Pena and Nunez would have to wait one more season, and by the time Jeter rapped his team-leading 11th World Series hit, it was clear that wait would be considerably longer.
Then, somewhere between 2009 and 2010, the veteran shortstop began to waver. Jeter’s bat speed was sluggish, his first step just a touch off. It became a bit harder to recognize changeup, to adjust to the curve. He wasn’t done, not by any stretch. But he wasn’t that spry, boyish Derek Jeter. For the first time since hitting the wrong side of 30, the Yankee legend was showing his age.
The franchise brought him back, and to call it a disaster would be to fall prey to black-and-white New Yorkthink. But Jeter in the twilight of his clear has been hard to watch. It feels as if he has only a finite number of hits left, and each weak groundout brings him a step closer to that Yankee graveyard lovingly called Monument Park.
And so it is the same with Jorge Posada. The only difference is that all his hits may have already been spent. The lifelong Yankee catcher drapes himself over the dugout fence each night, trying to look casual as the game passes him by. It’s the kind of transparent casual feigned by a man that for all the world wants one more chance to show he can still hack it. The kind of casual that fails to mask a man wondering how, in less than two years, the catcher that anchored the team could become the anchor, dragging on that same team.
Posada’s slide has been more pronounced than Jeter’s, but that’s not surprising. He is two years older, and has spend more than 1,800 games in a crouch. He’s had off-years: 1999 when he hit .245, 2005 when he hit .262 and the injury-shortened 2008 when it could have all ended at a respectable 14 seasons. Yet somehow, Posada has come back the next year, with his familiar outsized ears and old-school swing. He has wrung every bit of life out of those more than 1,800 games. At this point, perhaps the better question is how it lasted this long.
The final True Yankee still stands tall. Nothing, minus a little hair on top, has changed since the Yankees let their ’96 Series MVP walk and handed Mariano Rivera the keys to the 9th inning. He still throws just one pitch. Hitters still cannot hit it. Rivera is the eldest of the trio, but appears the best at staving off that final decline.
Yet the cracks are still there. Batters are hitting .236 against him, his WAR is 2.4 and his ERA+ is 226. All those are the worst since 2007, a year considered the low point of Rivera’s Major League career. Maybe more troubling are the five blown saves, putting him on track for the most in at least eight years.
These are minor quibbles, for sure. Rivera’s low points are equal to highlights for many other good closers. But unlike Jeter or Posada, Rivera plays a few innings a week. The sample size is small, the signals of a demise even smaller. When it comes time to do the post-mortem on his career, the trail will lead back to these first few scraps.
This is the beginning of the end of an era, and maybe that’s why it’s so sad. Players whither away every year, and we barely blink. Some fade into the baseball ether and some go out in a fiery ball of poor play or scandal, but either way, it all ends sometime. Jeter, Posada and Rivera seemed above all that, though, above the daily machinations of the game. Even as the world around them changed, their routine never did. Wake up, put on the pinstripes, go to work.
When it looked like they might finally falter–Jeter and Posada in ’08, Rivera in ‘07–each came back stronger than ever. Those shaky years became just a prologue to a second chapter.
It appears there will be no third act, however. Posada is being eased out to pasture, Jeter is hanging on for dear life. Rivera’s outings are filled with an unease, like this might be the at-bat that the hitter realizes the cutter is all he’s got.
The legends of a generation, a generation raised on Yankee dominance and jump-throws from the hole and those outsized ears, are wilting away. And friend or foe, it’s sad. For all the wins, for all the championships, these Last True Yankees are a bitter reminder that even legends fall victim to time.
Well, this isn’t the real beginning. The real beginning occurred somewhere between the time Mark Teixeira squeezed the last out of the 2009 World Series and the first spring training wind sprints five months later. The real beginning occurred when Derek Jeter found himself out of breath a half-mile earlier than usual during a winter morning jog, and when Mariano Rivera needed a couple tosses before the ball began to sizzle through the brisk air, and when Jorge Posada's offseason batting practice produced a few more fouls and less line drives.
That was the real beginning of the end. But those moments have passed, private instants that all three legends could choose to keep secret from everyone else and, depending on the day’s mix of ego and insecurity, perhaps themselves. So we are instead left with this year as the beginning of the end for the Last True Yankees, the year in which time pulled back the curtain and exposed these three legends as mere mortals.
It started with Jeter. The 2009 season was a peak amid a Himalayan career, a collection of offensive splits that rivaled his MVP year. And at 35 no less, an age when fans and critics alike urged him to relinquish his throne at short for a comfortable tract of land nearby at third base. An age when critics and fans alike began the search for an heir, when 23-year-old Ramiro Pena made the opening day roster and AA shortstop Eduardo Nunez became a sudden person of interest.
Jeter responded by opening 2009 with a blistering 3-for-5 day, and added two more hits the next. By the third game it was clear Pena and Nunez would have to wait one more season, and by the time Jeter rapped his team-leading 11th World Series hit, it was clear that wait would be considerably longer.
Then, somewhere between 2009 and 2010, the veteran shortstop began to waver. Jeter’s bat speed was sluggish, his first step just a touch off. It became a bit harder to recognize changeup, to adjust to the curve. He wasn’t done, not by any stretch. But he wasn’t that spry, boyish Derek Jeter. For the first time since hitting the wrong side of 30, the Yankee legend was showing his age.The franchise brought him back, and to call it a disaster would be to fall prey to black-and-white New Yorkthink. But Jeter in the twilight of his clear has been hard to watch. It feels as if he has only a finite number of hits left, and each weak groundout brings him a step closer to that Yankee graveyard lovingly called Monument Park.
And so it is the same with Jorge Posada. The only difference is that all his hits may have already been spent. The lifelong Yankee catcher drapes himself over the dugout fence each night, trying to look casual as the game passes him by. It’s the kind of transparent casual feigned by a man that for all the world wants one more chance to show he can still hack it. The kind of casual that fails to mask a man wondering how, in less than two years, the catcher that anchored the team could become the anchor, dragging on that same team.
Posada’s slide has been more pronounced than Jeter’s, but that’s not surprising. He is two years older, and has spend more than 1,800 games in a crouch. He’s had off-years: 1999 when he hit .245, 2005 when he hit .262 and the injury-shortened 2008 when it could have all ended at a respectable 14 seasons. Yet somehow, Posada has come back the next year, with his familiar outsized ears and old-school swing. He has wrung every bit of life out of those more than 1,800 games. At this point, perhaps the better question is how it lasted this long.
The final True Yankee still stands tall. Nothing, minus a little hair on top, has changed since the Yankees let their ’96 Series MVP walk and handed Mariano Rivera the keys to the 9th inning. He still throws just one pitch. Hitters still cannot hit it. Rivera is the eldest of the trio, but appears the best at staving off that final decline.
Yet the cracks are still there. Batters are hitting .236 against him, his WAR is 2.4 and his ERA+ is 226. All those are the worst since 2007, a year considered the low point of Rivera’s Major League career. Maybe more troubling are the five blown saves, putting him on track for the most in at least eight years.
These are minor quibbles, for sure. Rivera’s low points are equal to highlights for many other good closers. But unlike Jeter or Posada, Rivera plays a few innings a week. The sample size is small, the signals of a demise even smaller. When it comes time to do the post-mortem on his career, the trail will lead back to these first few scraps.
This is the beginning of the end of an era, and maybe that’s why it’s so sad. Players whither away every year, and we barely blink. Some fade into the baseball ether and some go out in a fiery ball of poor play or scandal, but either way, it all ends sometime. Jeter, Posada and Rivera seemed above all that, though, above the daily machinations of the game. Even as the world around them changed, their routine never did. Wake up, put on the pinstripes, go to work.
When it looked like they might finally falter–Jeter and Posada in ’08, Rivera in ‘07–each came back stronger than ever. Those shaky years became just a prologue to a second chapter.
It appears there will be no third act, however. Posada is being eased out to pasture, Jeter is hanging on for dear life. Rivera’s outings are filled with an unease, like this might be the at-bat that the hitter realizes the cutter is all he’s got.
The legends of a generation, a generation raised on Yankee dominance and jump-throws from the hole and those outsized ears, are wilting away. And friend or foe, it’s sad. For all the wins, for all the championships, these Last True Yankees are a bitter reminder that even legends fall victim to time.
Second photo via yardbarker.com
1 comments:
Their decline has been especially striking because for the past 10 years we've become accustomed to players playing well into their late 30s and early 40s. It turns out, however, that those players - Clemens, Bonds, Palmeiro - were all taking steroids.
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