GO EASY ON THE LASAGNA

GO EASY ON THE LASAGNA

By David H. Lippman

           

The Yankees reached into their seemingly bottomless magician’s hat of minor league stars and pulled out what appears to be yet another amazing rabbit on Friday night, in the form of Jonathan Loaisiga, whose name I had to check twice before putting down. Doubtless he will become a portion of the Associated Press’s spelling test for would-be baseball writers, for that very reason alone.

Summoned to replace the injured Jordan Montgomery or Masahiro Tanaka in the Yankees’ questionable pitching rotation, Loaisiga seemed a strange choice. He hasn’t pitched a lot of game in the minors, none above Double-A ball, and his career had been derailed by injuries. When I heard that he was assigned the start, I was reminded of my English relatives in the War to End All Wars, later called the Great War, now called World War I, who were sent into the trenches of Flanders or into Sopwith Camel biplanes to cope with the German Army or the actual Red Baron, and were soon lying dead on the barbed wire or in crashed aircraft. Their average life expectancy was three weeks and some of these young pilots or Tommies were dead in a day.

Anyway, the first thing we learned about Loaisiga was that his teammates had trouble with his Nicaraguan name, so they called him “Johnny Lasagna.” He seems to have taken that well, but that may have more to do with his limited English. The second thing we learned was that he prepared for the grim task of making his major league debut as a starting pitcher for the New York Yankees (baseball’s flagship franchise) in the new version of their storied home, (New York’s Yankee Stadium), against the Tampa Bay Rays (well, at least they’re mediocre) by watching World Cup soccer action on the big-screen TV in the clubhouse.

With that done, Loaisiga went out to the bullpen like every other major league starter since Cy Young and Christy Mathewson, joined by the pitching coach, did his warm-ups, and then took the mound. Like nearly every major league pitcher making his first major league appearance, he was a little nervous and jittery at the start, walking the leadoff Ray hitter. That set off the usual groans – walking a leadoff hitter is invariably fatal – but after that, he was astonishing to the audience.

He struck out six hitters, didn’t allow a hit until the fourth inning, pitched shutout ball, and got out of his first major league jam in the same inning when he loaded the bases with two out, and struck out Christian Arroyo swinging to snuff out the incipient rally and preserve the 1-0 lead.

After five innings and 91 pitches, Loaisiga turned the 2-0 lead over to the bullpen, which held it for him, aided by a bases-clearing double by Gary Sanchez, whose picture in the dictionary accompanies the word “slump.”

Never mind, Loaisiga was the toast of the town for at least one night and lasagna was probably the meal ordered at a dozen postgame parties.

But before too much hope and excitement is placed on this young man, let’s give him a chance to do two more things: first…let him pitch some more, so that we can see that this is yet another triumph for the new and improved Yankee farm system. Loaisiga had some advantages in his first start – he was facing the woeful Tampa Bay Rays, which lack solid pitching and hitting, and they are having a lot of trouble hitting many other pitchers around baseball. Sending a new guy out to cope with a lousy team is a good way to break him in.

Another advantage for Loaisiga was that the Rays, like all teams he first faced, had never seen him. They weren’t batting against a pitcher, but a scouting report, and probably not a good one at that, as he came straight up from Double-A, not Triple-A, and the Rays might not have done too much scouting on him as a potential opponent – more as potential acquisition, looking at him as “what he can do for us than to us.”

Finally, Loaisiga made his debut in the friendly atmosphere of Yankee Stadium. The Yankee fans would be supportive of a kid making his debut. As soon as he showed talent, poise, and calm, they got behind him. That’s an important psychological boost – think about what might have happened if his major league debut came in Boston’s Fenway Park.

Some of you may remember that the Yankees once sent a pitcher named Tim Redding out to cope with the Boston Red Sox in his first appearance as a Yankee. The Yankees acquired him in a trade for Paul Quantrill from the San Diego Padres. Redding had posted a ghastly 0-5, 9.31 ERA for the Padres, and their batting practice pitcher could do better than that. He started the game, and served up six runs on four hits and four walks. He was yanked in the first inning. He was designated for assignment the next day and spent the rest of the year in Columbus. Admittedly, Redding’s prior record did not spell excellence, but sending a new Yankee to start his first game at Fenway Park is very much like sending that Royal Flying Corps pilot with his three weeks training out to face the Red Baron.

The important issue for Loaisiga is going to be what happens as his career expands. He’s already got his line in the Yankee all-time statistics list, the all-time baseball register, will get his pension, and may even be named to his high school’s sports hall of fame. Now he has to build on one very solid and impressive performance next time out, and the time after that, and the time after that.

Fortunately, he seems to have the tools to do so, based on both his pitching and the calm with which he faced the Rays. The tougher part is going to be living and playing at the major league level.

For one thing, he won’t be able to get away with the same types of pitches he used to obliterate Double-A players. He won’t be able to “put them away” so easily. He’ll serve up home runs to Manny Machado and Mookie Betts. That’s a fact of life. Luis Severino uncorked a home run to David Ortiz in his major league debut, and that enabled the Sox to win the game, 2-1. There was no shame in losing to a David Ortiz home run – lots of major league pitchers, including some brand names and Hall of Famers, have stood there forlornly on the mound, gazing into the right field stands as yet another “Big Papi” HR blasted into the seats. It happens. That’s baseball. Loaisiga’s challenge will be to turn around, bear down, and get the next guy after the home run.

There are many pitchers who could not, but the one that comes to mind in this situation is a young man from Kansas City named David Clyde, who was the star pitcher at Westchester High School in 1973. Drafted first by the hapless Texas Rangers, owner Bob Short had the brilliant idea to pitch the kid in the majors for two games – straight from high school to the big leagues – to pack the seats, thus improving his chances of selling the team. Then Clyde would go back to the minors for seasoning.

Well, Clyde made that first start, in front of the first sellout crowd in Arlington Stadium’s history, facing the middling Minnesota Twins. Clyde walked the first two batters he faced. Then he got some help.

Home plate umpire was the colorful Ron Luciano, who was a warm and decent guy to everyone but Earl Weaver. He called a fair game for Clyde – in fact, a bit too fair. He gave Clyde a strike on an outside pitch to the third hitter, and the rookie was able to gain time and regain his composure. Clyde gave up one hit – a home run to Mike Adams – and struck out eight, and departed after five innings with a lead. Despite the incompetency of the Texas bullpen, they held the lead, and Clyde’s first game was a 4-3 win.

As planned, Clyde took the mound for his second start, pitching effectively against the Chicago White Sox for six innings until a blister forced him out of the game.

This was a year in which the Rangers went on to lose a whopping 105 games under acerbic rookie manager Whitey Herzog, best chronicled in Mike Shropshire’s screamingly funny book, “Seasons in Hell.” At the year’s end, a writer reviewing the Rangers’ season wrote that their highlight film should be “the love scene” from that year’s movie “Deliverance.” Lucky for the sportswriter, his editor was not a movie fan.

Facing continuous disaster, Bob Short made a move that boosted his box office – he scuppered the plan to send Clyde down to the minors, and the poor kid made 18 starts. The stands were packed when he pitched, at home and on the road. 113,000 people went to Arlington Stadium and endured muggy heat and hardy mosquitoes in his first four home starts. The Ragners drew a mere 590,000 all season long.

But soon Clyde was overmatched. Twenty days after graduating from high school, he was facing hitters like Reggie Jackson, Thurman Munson, Harmon Killebrew, Carl Yastrzemski, and Bobby Murcer. They used him as a punching bag. To compensate, Clyde began overthrowing his curve, and lost command of the pitch and the speed differential. His final record for the year was 4-8, with a 5.01 ERA. In his last nine starts, he lasted 38 innings, and posted a 7.34 ERA.

It doesn’t take a sabermetrician to recognize that such statistics are not the mark of a team ace. It took the new Rangers manager, Billy Martin, even less time to realize that the team’s great future needed to go the minors. The Rangers’ brass, seeing the box office receipts when Clyde pitched, disagreed. Clyde spent time in the minors, and a collection of Rangers pitching coaches made all kinds of changes in his pitching style, and then sent him back to the trenches to win the War to End All Wars. In 21 starts, Clyde was 3-9, with a 4.38 ERA. He gave up 129 hits, including 14 home runs in 117 innings.

Clyde made one start for the Rangers in 1975, and suffered an injury. Back to the minors. For three seasons. The one-time ace pitched for Triple A-Tucson in 1977 and struck out 148 men in 128 innings, but walked 119. His final record was 5-7 with a 5.84 ERA. Clyde was now 22 years old, and the Rangers considered him washed up. So did Clyde’s wife, who divorced him. So did Clyde, who became addicted to alcohol.

With these three strikes, it’s no wonder the Rangers traded Clyde and designated hitter Willie Horton to the Cleveland Indians for pitcher Tom Buskey and infield John Lowenstein and some bobblehead dolls.

When the depressed Clyde arrived at Cleveland camp, their shrewd pitching coach Harvey Haddix deconstructed all of Clyde’s many pitching changes and had the weary young man go back to his high school pitching style. It worked, sorta kinda. He was 8-11, with a 4.28 ERA and 83 strikeouts. Granted that nobody could have done well with the 1978 Cleveland Indians, it was something of a comeback. In 1979, Clyde pitched in nine game (3-4, 4.91 ERA), before tearing his rotator cuff. That was the end of the trail, even though the Indians traded him back to the Rangers at season’s end, for baseball cards, but Clyde suffered another injury. The Rangers released him, and Clyde made one last attempt to hook on, this time with the Astros. They weren’t interested. They had Joe Niekro, J.R. Richard, and Nolan Ryan.

Short was able to sell his team and the new management claimed bizarrely that Clyde’s pitching appearances made the Rangers a viable item for purchase. That meant: it could draw attendance and was therefore a potential source of profit. Bottoms in the seats were good for the bottom line. Baseball people, Martin and Clyde himself, agreed that the young pitcher was the poster boy for a kid rushed up too early. He would not be the last, though.

In 1981, the Mets and their media machine ballyhooed Tim Leary, who had posted an astonishing 15-8 record, with a 1.76 ERA and 138 strikeouts for the Jackson Mets. With the Mets setting records for defeats and empty seats at Shea Stadium, they promoted Leary to the majors and he made his major league debut on April 12, facing an Amazin’ seven batters before departing with a strained elbow. The Mets promised he would be back shortly. He spent four months on the disabled list and had to go to Triple-A to rehab. He never pitched for the Mets in 1981. He suffered another injury in 1982 spring training and never pitched. In 1983, he was 8-16, with a 4.38 ERA, but made two starts in September, one of them a complete game victory over the Montreal Expos.

Next year, the Mets gave up on “the next Tom Seaver,” having given up (twice!) on the original, as well, and Leary wandered around the majors, earning National League Comeback Player of the Year honors with the World Champion 1988 Los Angeles Dodgers, who rewarded Leary for his efforts by trading him after the World Series to Cincinnati.

In 1990, Leary was shipped to the Yankees with Van Snider for Hal Morris, minor leaguer Rodney Imes, and a bag of batting practice baseballs. With one of the worst teams in the history of the Yankees, Leary did his best. He posted a 9-19 record. That actually means a lot – you have to have a lot of ability, determination, and hardness to go out there every five days for a team that can’t muster runs behind you, and give it everything you’ve got. It’s kind of like leading the first wave out of the British trenches on the First Day of the Somme…but I think you get the metaphor.

Leary did well in 1990. He posted a 4.11 ERA, which is not bad for 19 losses. He also did badly: he uncorked a league-leading 23 wild pitches. Yet the Yankees re-signed him for three years and $5.95 million. In 1991, he was 2-8 with a 6.95 ERA, when he was demoted to long relief. He finished the year at 4-10 with a 6.49 ERA. In 1992, he was 5-6 with a 5.57 ERA when the Yankees traded him to the Seattle Mariners for minor leaguer Sean Twitty and a stack of Conway Twitty albums. I hope that Leary invested that $5.95 wisely.

Leary’s problem was similar to Clyde’s…rushed up too soon, followed by an instant injury, and he probably never really recovered. He should have gone to Triple A, worked on facing higher level pitching, and had his physical conditioning monitored better. But the Mets wanted instant success. Instead, they got instant failure.

In 1984, they still wanted instant success, and this time they got it. And it wasn’t the physical problems that would do the pitcher in…it was the mental strain.

The story of Dwight Gooden does not need rehearsing. He burst onto the New York scene like Halley’s Comet, posting a 24-4 record in 1985, winning the Cy Young Award, making the Mets respectable. Next year the actual Halley’s Comet zoomed over Earth, and Gooden’s comet began to disappear. He never posted 20 wins again, and his career began to stumble downhill at an astonishing rate of speed. Very quickly he was in rehab centers and enduring suspensions for cocaine and alcohol addiction, and suffering injuries that reduced his fiery fastball to next to nothing.

I covered the 1984 and 1985 Mets for their house magazine, “Inside Pitch,” and I vividly remember the insane media circus that surrounded this kid at his locker after his incredible victories. He could crush anything in his path on the mound, but off the diamond, he was terrified and lost. He faced the microphones of radio reporters, who had the sensibilities and humanity of an army of eighth-graders, looking fearful. He struggled to give answers to fatuous questions. He was asked about everything from how he pitched to Mike Schmidt to what he thought about the Reagan Presidency. He was barely prepared to cope with either.

Later, I realized that this same level of fear and terror probably caught up with him when he emerged from Shea Stadium and found himself surrounded by adoring fans, eager groupies, and fast-talking con men, eager to take his major league minimum salary. Ballplayers call such hangers-on “greenflies,” because they won’t go away, and they all want something – mostly to bask in the glory of the ballplayer, but also to get something from him…money, sex, autographs to sell (more money).

Doc was ill-equipped by temperament or team to handle anything about New York, and within a very short time, he was snorting cocaine. He missed the 1986 World Championship Parade, which was unbelievable – Keith Hernandez climbed over a fence in Bowling Green to reach his float – and later missed chunks of seasons and whole seasons from failing drug tests. He even attempted suicide.

The same thing is going to happen to Jonathan Loaisiga, particularly if he’s successful. Smokin’ hot women will whisper to him in Spanish to come up to his hotel room and do things I can’t describe here. If he’s lucky, it won’t be followed by a blackmail scam involving a guy pretending to be the girl’s husband or father. Guys with a slick line and slicker brochures will try to sell him investments in everything from aardvarks to zebras. Mickey Mantle lost a World Series check to the Canadian Bomb Shelter Company and George Foster his Mets money to a man who sold fake Ralph Lauren shirts – the horses on the shirts had three legs. Reporters are going to pound Loaisiga for quotes on everything from how to pitch to Manny Machado to what he thinks of Donald Trump’s immigration plans. He’s going to need some help keeping the riffraff away, and staying focused on the hitter at the plate.

So that’s my catechism and suggestion to Yankee fans. Let the kid pitch. Let the kid play. He’s not going to be the same next start as he was in the first one. The other teams have scouts, too. American League hitters have seen him on ESPN by now. They’ll change their approaches. He may run into trouble and will. Give him a chance.

More importantly, to the media, fans, and conmen who want a piece of “Lasagna,” don’t ask. You can get some at another restaurant. He may be a kid who had a good start, but he’s also a human being. Treat him like he is one. Give him a little respect. Don’t ask him what he thinks about the New York gubernatorial race. Girls, show some self-respect. Con men, find some other mark. Overheated fans who want 50 autographs…how many do you really need? Give him space.

And a warning to Mr. Loaisiga…the Yankees once signed a pitcher named Brien Taylor. This kid had lightning and thunder in his arm. He was the No. 1 pick in the 1991 draft. He got profiled on “60 Minutes.” The street he grew up and lived on was named after him in his honor. He got into a bar fight one off-season, damaged his left arm, and that was it for his career. He never got past Double-A and his minor league career numbers are a 5.12 ERA and 352 walks in 436 innings. He wound up working for the US Post Office and doing time for drug dealing.

In other words, stay out of trouble in bars. Or anywhere else.

The Stars in Their Courses

The Stars in Their Courses

By David H. Lippman

  

Right before Cole Hamels demolished the Yankees on May 22nd, he made a cryptic statement to the media on how he was hoping he would get a chance to pitch for a contending team in critical games in September and October. As the Texas Rangers were 10-31 before that game, playing with overmatched minor-league call-ups in lieu of skilled veterans like Elvis Andrus and future Hall-of-Famers like Adrian Beltre, it’s unlikely that there will be a pennant chase in Arlington, Texas.

So what did Hamels mean? The answer was simple, of course: later this season, the Rangers, like most teams falling out of contention throughout baseball history, will sell off their higher-priced assets to acquire cheaper minor leaguers for the endless “rebuilding” campaign. Hamels expects to be one of them, and he probably will. He said so.

But what’s interesting about this routine statement was the timing – the Yankees were making their annual visit to the Dallas-Fort Worth blast furnace, and is the one large weakness on this otherwise astonishing Yankee team is their questionable pitching rotation. Despite his age, Cole Hamels would likely fill a critical gap. He knows that. The Yankees know that. And Hamels was smart enough to remind us with that fact before the game and during it.

He’s not the only well-known lustrous ballplayer making such noises. Last year, Bryce Harper, the signature player for the Washington Nationals, told interviewers during the All-Star Game that he didn’t think he wanted to go to the Yankees when his contract expires this fall. Now he’s making noises about the possibility of doing so, reversing his previous stand. And Manny Machado, who is doing a fine job of impersonating a shortstop for the otherwise hopeless Baltimore Orioles, also made similar noises, which got Aaron Judge in trouble when Aaron made them to Manny.

In theory, the Yankees could acquire two of these players (Hamels and Machado) this year, at least as rentals, and all three after the season, putting Miguel Andujar or Didi Gregorius out of a job, or Aaron Hicks out of a job, or filling up holes in the pitching rotation.

Why are these players making these noises? Well, obviously they all want to reel in the immense bucks that the Yankees can (and historically have) throw at the players they want. They also know that playing for the Yankees increases the side money (endorsements and appearances), post-game fun (nightclubs), and opportunities for post-season appearances (and more money). All ballplayers want to ride in the float with their wives and kids down the city’s main street at the World Series Victory Parade. The sole exception was Catfish Hunter, who was a very humble guy – as soon as the World Series was won, he would race for the Stadium exit, the taxicab, and the flight to North Carolina, to return to hunting, farming, and his family.

But this is all a gigantic change from the 1980s and 1990s, when free agents and big-name players would not come to New York and genuinely feared doing so.

Time after time in the 1970s, 1980s, and early 1990s, the Yankees would make their best pitch to some of baseball’s biggest players, and get turned down repeatedly. A three-team trade that would bring New York-raised master hitter Rod Carew to The Bronx fizzled out when Carew refused to play for the Yankees. Bobby Grich, seen as the possible replacement for Fred Stanley at shortstop after the 1976 World Series, instead signed with the Los Angeles Angels, claiming Yankee owner George M. Steinbrenner III “threatened” him.

The result was that the Yankees could not sign a great number of top-line free agents – even during the mid-1980s time of collusion, when Commissioner Peter Ueberroth convinced the owners to resume treating players as chattel. Nobody wanted to join the Yankees.

The reasons in the 1980s were obvious to anyone who remembers the era. Even long-time Yankee fans have trouble keeping tracks of who was manager in a given year. Billy Martin as a default answer usually works. His presence, paranoia, and fondness for alcohol made him a periodic menace to himself and his own team. The Yankees were in perpetual disarray, and players staggered out of the team dazed, exhausted, confused, and relieved.

This kind of atmosphere and the stories the survivors told in their new clubhouses frightened pending free agent ballplayers and their negotiators. Despite the Yankees’ core of talented players – Winfield, Mattingly, and Guidry – their tradition (which needs no rehearsing), and the numerous advantages of playing in New York (endorsement deals and extracurricular activities), “franchise players” avoided The Bronx, except with their visiting teams.

That “boycott” reached its peak or nadir in the late 1980s, when anybody who’d played in an All-Star Game was eager to flee New York or avoid it in the first place…with the result being the horrific 1990 Yankees, whose high in low was Andy Hawkins losing a Chicago game in which he did not give up a hit. Since he lost, the game is not recorded as a no-hitter.

All that changed once Joe Torre and the Core Four replaced Stump Merrill, Steve Howe, Oscar Azocar, Mike Witt, and Pascual Perez. Once again, the Yankees were the hot place for free agents and their spokesmen to bring their wares.

The Yankees promptly re-filed their lineup with a great many talented ballplayers, to the point that players who had no idea of what being a Yankee truly meant were begging to play in pinstripes.

That had some good results: Gary Sheffield, Hideki Matsui, Mike Mussina, to name three – and some horrific ones: Kevin Brown, Rondell White, and Carl Pavano of hated memory. Now we have top players dropping their “no-trade” clauses to accept moves to New York, like Giancarlo Stanton.

But despite revenue sharing and post-season defeats from between 2000 and 2008 and from 2010 and to the present, the big players are seeing the point, and headed for The Bronx. Yankee Stadium is the place to be, and the stars are coursing toward The Bronx.

The Yankees may not gain the services of Harper, Hamels, and Machado this year, or even next. But it’s clear that talented and established players will want to come here. They may not push out the young guys – Torres, Andujar, and Bird, for example – but it’s a pleasant problem for a general manager to face, be he or she sitting in a luxurious office in Yankee Stadium or in a less-than-luxurious living room.

Randy and CC – A Tale of Two Lefthanders

Randy and CC – A Tale of Two Lefthanders 

By David H. Lippman 

There was a story on the radio yesterday that C.C. Sabathia has indicated that he will retire after the Yankees win the World Series this year, which I found expected, inevitable, and saddening.

While Sabathia suffered from some injuries during his tenure with the Yankees, he also enjoyed some moments of true glory – the 2009 World Championship…finally notching a 20-win season…his gritty performance in 2017. He also suffered self-inflicted pain from battles with alcohol, often the bane of many human beings, regardless of profession.

Just as importantly, Sabathia truly exemplified the Yankee traditions. He is a leader in the clubhouse and in the pitching rotation. When he was on the disabled list earlier this year, he defied baseball rules and his injuries (but upholding protocol to back one’s teammates) to vault out of the dugout to lead the battle against Joe Kelly and his head-hunting.

During his tenure with the Yankees, Sabathia has been one of my absolute favorites with the Yankees. He wears his cap at an odd angle, looks baggy on the mound, and seems like a cheery working stiff, carrying the ethos of Thurman Munson without the grouchiness.

But what really attracted my loyalty to him was how he fit in to the New York Yankee environment. It was an epiphany I had quickly, when he first arrived in New York in late 2008, proving himself the diametric opposite of another fabled lefthanded pitcher.

After the Yankees’ humiliating defeat in the 2004 American League Championship Series, the Steinbrenners realized that the team lacked pitchers like David Cone, Andy Pettitte, Roger Clemens, and David Wells, who, when confronted with a do-or-die game, would shove it down the opponents’ throats. They had to give the ball in the finale to the morose, brooding, and cranky Kevin Brown, who fell into a 2-0 hole and loaded the bases. Joe Torre then turned the game over to another poor choice, Javier Vazquez, who gave up a grand slam to Johnny Damon, to end the curse.

Clearly, the 2005 Yankees needed a pitcher of towering strength, track record, and force, who could anchor the starting rotation. Randy Johnson had just such a resumé, and the Diamondbacks were happy to send him to New York in a trade for the forgettable Dioner Navarro, the worthless Javier Vazquez, and the late Brad Halsey. He died in 2014 at age 33, when he fell or jumped off of a cliff in Texas, after bizarre public behavior that led to questions about his mental health.

And that, precisely, was the mistake by the Yankees. On paper, the trade was perfect: the Yankees shedded two players of questionable value and one of some value (Navarro is still playing), and gained one of the most titanic pitchers in the history of the game.

The problem is that while such trades look good on paper (or in a baseball card game like Strat-O-Matic or Statis-Pro), they can into awful problems in real life, for many reasons: financial, physical, or mental.

In this case, the problem was mental. When Johnson arrived in New York for his medical check the day before the signing ceremony, a TV sports crew led by Duke Castiglione lay in ambush for the “Big Unit” as he walked up to the doctor’s office. Castiglione was hoping for the usual “I’m just happy to be here” interview. What he got was instead national news and a mammoth embarrassment to the Yankees – before Johnson had even opened his welcome-aboard press conference.

The video says it all. A nervous, flustered, and awkward Johnson tries to put his hand over the camera lens and push Castiglione and his cameraman aside. The behavior made Johnson appear contemptuous, boorish, and nasty off the field. The term used today for these tableaux is “bad optics,” but I’d rather say that it was simply damaging to the Yankees’ reputation. The man they had just acquired to save the pitching staff had behaved arrogantly and in a threatening manner to a major news outlet that covered them.

I had some idea of what was going on, having been in the media scrum that covered both New York baseball teams in the 1980s. I had seen players arrive in New York, either in trade or up from the minors, who had immense difficulty coping with having a dozen microphones shoved in their face by reporters asking questions (fatuous and otherwise) that they were required to answer with greater thinking and analytical abilities than they possessed. Playing baseball is easy to these guys – not explaining it or anything else in life. Nor are they used to facing as the many cameras, notebooks, and microphones that New York imposes on its professional gladiators.

Johnson was clearly frightened by the situation. The Yankees were also mortified. They are more reputation-conscious than most baseball teams, given their immense history. They would like their players to be known for brilliance on the field, and humility and professionalism off the field.

The press conference that should have been a triumphal unveiling of a future Hall-of-Famer coming to New York became a chastened team and player apologizing profusely to the New York media and fans – including an amused Castiglione – for the previous day’s incident. Little else was covered.

It was a bad start for Randy Johnson, and the season only got worse. He was inconsistent for most of the year, serving up 32 home runs, pitching a 17-8 record, with a 3.79 ERA and 211 strikeouts. Next year, he was worse, with a 17-11 record, a 5.00 ERA, and 172 strikeouts. He looked uncomfortable on the mound, and showed only flashes of the brilliance of his earlier career, and suffered a herniated disk late in 2006.

After the season, Johnson’s brother died, and Randy sought a trade back to Arizona to be closer to his family and support them in their grief. The Yankees were happy to oblige, but I think the grief was an excuse – Johnson wasn’t happy in New York, ineffective, and needed to go. In January 2007, Johnson went back to Arizona for Luis Vizcaino, Alberto González, Steven Jackson, and Ross Ohlendorf. Vizcaino gained the wins in both ends of a doubleheader for the Yankees in 2007, but otherwise, none distinguished themselves. Meanwhile, Johnson recovered as a pitcher, and went on to rack up 303 wins, punching his ticket to Cooperstown.

At his Hall of Fame press conference, Johnson was more gracious. He apologized to Yankee fans that they could not see him at his best, because of his back and hernia injuries.

But as I watched Johnson all through his two years with the Yankees, I could sense his discomfort, and it was clear that it did not come from a creaky back. Johnson had been forced to cut his distinctive hair by the Yankee regulations. He did not look like himself. He was wearing No. 41 instead of his usual No. 51, because the latter number belonged to Bernie Williams, who had seniority and credentials over Johnson. Indeed, No. 51 would go up in Monument Park among the other retired numbers.

It was clear to me that Johnson was an alien on this team, a stranger in the town, and as he struggled, I could see that he was losing the loyalty of the fans, being tolerated and barely tolerated at that. A 5.00 ERA and 172 strikeout season is worse than pedestrian. Yankee fans saw Randy Johnson on the scorecard and an imposter on the pitcher’s mound.

I also sensed, but had no evidence for, that Johnson was uncomfortable in New York, one of the few actual “World Cities,” along with London and Tokyo. Johnson came from Walnut Creek, California, a suburb outside Oakland, and lived in Arizona, where today he is Assistant to the Diamondbacks’ General Manager and has a web page (rjphotos.com) of his photographs, which depict auto racing, rock concerts, and scenes from his international travel on USO tours and African photo-safaris.

While there are shots on his web page of London and Rome, I could see he was happier snapping photos of cheetahs, lions, Buddhist monks, elephants, and African sunsets, than trying to cross Madison Avenue at rush hour. But then, few people enjoy doing the latter.

Flash forward to late 2008. Having been denied the post-season for the first time since the 1994 (and that by the baseball strike, so 1993 is more appropriate), the Yankees moved to strengthen a pitching rotation that had been defined by Carl Pavano’s non-appearances and wasted money. They did so impressive fashion, signing two sets of free agent initials, A.J. Burnett and C.C. Sabathia.

This time, there were no problems. Both pitchers got their medical checks done quietly, and showed up for their joint press conference without drama. They tried on their uniforms, smiled broadly, and said the right words. Then Sabathia added something interesting.

Unlike other ballplayers, he planned to live fulltime in the New York area, selecting a home in Alpine, New Jersey, in which to house his wife, Amber, and their three children – they added a fourth in 2010. I was impressed by that. He was starting off, trying to connect to the region.

After the press conference, CC, trailing the pack of reporters, took a tour of the unfinished new Yankee Stadium, visiting the Yankee clubhouse with Burnett and choosing the site of his locker. The two posed for photos in the clubhouse.

But CC wasn’t done yet. He walked around the stadium, where construction workers were laboring at their tasks, trying to meet that deadline. On camera, CC chatted with the workers, signing autographs and posing for pictures. I was impressed. He was casual about it.

The YES Network put this all on video and their segment on CC’s signing ended with him giving a plug for Yankee season tickets. That impressed me the most – he had neatly threaded several important social needles on the first day…a proper press conference…moving to the region…connecting with the men who were doing the hard work in putting the new Yankee Stadium together…assuming his duties to advertise and support the Yankee team. All in about two hours.

“He’s figured it out,” I said to everyone I discussed Sabathia with. “He’ll do fine.”

I later learned some of the reasons behind Sabathia’s demeanor. He had overcome much in his life. Sabathia’s father Corky was a drug addict who abandoned the family, contracted HIV, and died of stomach cancer in 2002. CC himself was robbed at gunpoint in Cleveland by two former Cleveland State basketball players in the city’s downtown. Right after that incident, CC called his girlfriend Amber and said, “If you were here, this wouldn’t have happened. Let’s get married.” They did so in 2003. By then, CC and Corky had reunited, and one of the pitcher’s tattoos honors Corky.

In 2008, the Indians traded Sabathia to the Brewers in the usual “the-team-stinks-so-let’s-dump-free-agents-before-we-can’t-sign-them” deal. Amber suggested that CC take out a major ad in The Plain Dealer, the city’s newspaper, thanking the fans for 10 years of support and loyalty, which they did.

Amber Sabathia herself has her own website, ambersabathia.com, where she writes on successful parenting. Both have their own foundation, PitCChIn, which supports three useful causes: teaching kids age 5 to 12 baseball; providing kids in need in The Bronx and CC’s native Vallejo, California, with school supplies; and renovating baseball fields for kids to play on.

In 2014, Amber ran the New York City marathon as a fund-raiser for the foundation.

I read all that (then and now), and said, “Oh, he gets it. He’ll be fine. He’ll have no problem.”

Sure enough, the only problem CC Sabathia had for his 10 years in pinstripes has been injuries (inevitable for players) and a struggle with liquor late in the 2015 season.

I did wonder how his family fit in, though, and part of it was answered by their charity. In 2009, I got a call from them, asking if my Mayor was going to attend an event Amber Sabathia was doing at the Newark Boys and Girls Club.

I used the chance to chat with the woman from the foundation, and I asked her if Amber had taken the smaller Sabathias to New York attractions as planned. She said they’d been to the Bronx Zoo a lot.

Well, that’s fine for kids, I admitted, but New York had a lot more. I told her to grab her pen, and rattled off the Brooklyn Children’s Museum (the nation’s oldest); the Queens Museum (the Panorama of New York); the Museum of Mathematics (the only one in the nation, which offers interactive games to teach math to kids, including bicycles with square wheels); and my favorite, the New York Transit Museum, with its Saturday morning art programs for kids. The assistant was duly impressed. She promised to pass that on to Amber.

Then I pleaded with my bosses to support the event in some way. I was eager to go – I would provide Amber herself with fliers on these museums and my guest pass to the Transit Museum. As a family member, I get one every year, good for free admission for two adults and two kids.

But they didn’t respond. We had galactic crises to deal with. I was very upset, as one may imagine. I didn’t want to grill the pitcher about facing hitters or cadge autographs – being a father and a family man, I was more interested in helping a new family to the New York area get settled in. And I like kids. I often took my daughter and her entire crew to the Transit Museum and other museums for special programs, and they had a great time.

Once Sabathia took the mound, it was even more clear that he knew how to fit in. He wore a baggy uniform, his hat tipped slightly, his face unshaven. He looked for all the world like a casual working man, pitching for a pick-up team on a Saturday night. No tension. No worry. Just out there, pitching.

Now it appears that CC Sabathia is going to hang it up at season’s end. We hope he’ll add a second ring to his finger, to go with his 2009 ALCS MVP and 2007 Cy Young Award. I hope it will add up to a plaque at Cooperstown, preferably with the “NY” on the cap. It’s what he should get – he has been a tremendous pitcher.

It won’t be far from another former Yankee who’s up at the Hall, but does not have the “NY” on the cap, Randy Johnson. Johnson’s plaque shows the “A” of the Arizona Diamondbacks, and his Yankee tenure is a line-item on the plaque.

Johnson was a line-item for the Yankees, something more than a footnote, but less than a glittering star. But Sabathia was and is a star for the Yankees, a major power for the team on the field, a leader in the clubhouse, and a community activist off the field.

And the reason was very simple. Randy Johnson didn’t “get it.” CC Sabathia “got it.”