Tino on Baseball Tonight
Tino is apparantly a regular on Baseball Tonight now. They showed a nice montage of his past accomplishments to introduce him. When the history is written, it could be said that the Yankee's dynasty began when he joined the team, and ended when he left.
posted by Dodort at 12:06 PM
6 Comments:
I'm really surprised Tino did not hook up with anyone this season as a backup first baseman. He was bad last season, but not terrible.
As for the signing and departure of Tino being the bookends of the recent Yankee dynasty, that sounds right. The dynasty ended on the night it rained in the Arizona desert. Might say it was raining in hell. Might say it had to rain in hell for Rivera to blow that save. Man, that one still stings. I remember Critchley and I embracing after that game. It was all we could do.
Tino is spreading His word to the rest of the world as a missionary on Baseball Tonight. I hope he keeps that fat-necked Kruk in check. Harold Reynolds and Tino are class acts.
In case any of you bastages read books, Buster Olney's "The Last Night of the Yankee Dynasty" is an excellent work on the "Tino" years of 1996-2001.
Tell us about that book. I only know Buster Olney as the biggest Yankee hater at ESPN. What was the book like?
"The Last Night of the Yankee Dynasty" is nothing short of excellent reporting. Olney is a Steinbrenner hater all the way, and after reading some of the episodes recounted you'll see why he feels that way towards The Boss. But don't get me wrong, it's not a negative piece on the Yankees. What you get is incredibly detailed stories about a lot of the deals that did and did not go through (Anyone remember Albert Belle? We almost signed him and actually made an offer that he asked for but then it turned out he leveraged our price with Baltimore. Only after that fell through did the front office go after Bernie. Imagine the ramifications of that didn't go through!).
The book also talks a lot about the clubhouse, how Torre affected the players' behavior and how he was generous and alternatively "picky" about who gained his praise. One of the interesting stories was about how certain gestures he made when taking a pitcher out of a game would reflect his happiness or displeasure with that pitcher's performance. I forget the story's details but one pitcher was saying how happy he was to get an "approval" gesture out of Torre for the first time in one game.
This is an excellent book, with total disclosure by lots of insiders. When it's all said and done, you'll want to write a "thank you" letter to Gene "Stick" Michael, who is largely credited with building the dynasty during George's temporary exile in the early 1990s.
Adam, I think you've stumbled upon the subject that is going to save this blog.
To the frontpage! To the frontpage!
Caple is more of a yankee hater than olney because he tries to make it into a nation wide thing. OLney has only the new englanders behind him.
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