Enemy Perspective

Every year, there are players on your favorite team that frustrate the hell out of you. Maybe it’s their personality; maybe it’s their performance. Sometimes, he’s the clubhouse cancer who always says the wrong thing to the media; sometimes, he’s the utility guy whose batting average is so far off the “interstate” he’s in the Mississippi River. (Too soon?)

These are the guys who GMs vigorously shop at the trade deadline and are mentioned in every rumor—but when the deadline passes, hey, big shock, they’re still around. That’s when you know other teams think the same thing about them as you do—like a girlfriend who doesn’t cook and won’t have sex with you, they’re useless.

This year, on both the Red Sox and the Yankees, there are a couple of notable players like this. We call them lots of names, but most of all we give them a new first name: “Fucking.” As in, “that fucking [name here] killed us again.” The Red Sox have a couple of guys that are up for nomination in this category. The Yankees have a clear frontrunner.

If you’re a fan, you’ve already said the nominees’ names under your breath. Sox fans languish over Willy Mo Pena and J.D. Drew. The Yankees’ guy is so obvious I put his name in the title of this article. And like a Harry Potter villain, I’ll not speak his name again.

No one is quite sure how Wily Mo got on a major league roster, or why Theo and the increasingly incapable Sox front office thought he was worth a decent starting pitcher in Cornrows Arroyo. Yes, he can hit the ball 600 feet without growing his head to Bondsian proportions. Big deal, because he’s also the living incarnation of the JoBu’s boy Pedro Cerano, a character so not believable that he was a perfect fit for the cheesiest sports movie of all time.

Cerano, of course, couldn’t hit a curve ball. Watching Wily Mo, I wonder how many times Varitek has called KFC this year. Top him off with sub-par fielding and you can hear other GMs snickering behind Theo’s back at how badly he got taken in that Arroyo trade.

And then there’s the proud owner of what is now known in Boston as, “That Contract.” Of course, you already know I’m talking about the $70 million in shenanigans that the Sox doled out for the oft-injured, perennially-underperforming, clubhouse-malcontent J.D. Drew. That deal was almost as messed up as Drew’s name: it’s actually David Jonathan Drew, which makes his initials backwards. Why do you sign a guy who can’t even get his own name right?

What I find particularly hilarious about this contract is that every single Sox fan knew signing this guy was a bad idea. I mean, it’s laughingly entertaining. In fact, if you’re reading this on the T, take an informal poll of everyone sitting near you—I’m sure they’ll all say they knew. And yet, Theo—whose ego is clearly larger than any of us ever suspected—signed the guy anyway.

(Ok, the Sox are still in first place by seven games as I write this, which is why I stopped short of calling Eppy an idiot. But if shopping for Jermaine Dye at the deadline—just like they shopped Coco a couple years ago—isn’t an admission that Drew was a mistake, I don’t know what is.)

And then there’s “that middle reliever” on the Yankees. Now, I’m no sabermatrician, but I’m pretty sure a middle reliever who has appeared in 47 games and only has four—seriously, four—one-two-three innings might be a problem. Let me repeat that: he’s pitched in 47 games and only retired the first three batters he faced FOUR TIMES. If you didn’t know he was a pitcher and you looked at his stats, you’d think you were seeing baseball’s first .400 hitter in 50 years.

And yet, until the emergence of Luis Vizcaino, Joe Torre kept trotting him out there as the Yankees’ 8^th inning guy, which pretty much sums up:

1.)    The state of the Yankees bullpen

2.)    Joe Torre’s ability to manage relievers

That Middle Reliever is so bad (how bad is he?) that when he comes into the game, the pitching mound fakes an injury. (da-dum-cha!) Something inside of Ron Guidry dies every time this guy throws a pitch.

Exhibit A: Roger Clemens gives up eight runs in the second—notice how I overlook that performance to place blame on That Middle Reliever—only to have the Yankees get back all eight in the bottom half of the inning to tie the game, a feat so amazing it had never been accomplished before. The Yankees bleed a few more runs later in the game, to trail 11 to 9. With two innings to play, that’s easy striking distance for a team of the Yankees’ caliber. But no! Torre forgot to take his medication that day, so he brings in That Middle Reliever for the 8^th. That M.R. is greeted by boos from the Bronx crowd, and reacts by promptly giving up back-to-back home runs to Konerko and Dye, putting the game officially out of reach.

(Notice I also call him “Middle Reliever” because he thinks himself a closer. I figure that’s the best insult I can deliver.)

You know things have reached an unforgivable level when a team’s own broadcast booth goes beyond their original soft criticism of “throwing hard isn’t good enough” and progresses into, “something needs to be done with this guy.” That’s the broadcaster equivalent of swearing.

I’m not sure a middle reliever has ever killed a team’s playoff chances the way Farnsworth is trying to do. To add insult to injury, he’s also a clubhouse cancer: he called out Roger Clemens when the Rocket signed on. Makes sense—I mean, clearly Farnsworth has earned the right to question the guy who is arguably the best pitcher of all time. (Again, I’m completely ignoring that the best pitcher of all dime dropped an 8-spot pile of dung on the field against one of the worst teams in baseball. Just totally putting that aside.)

If anyone wants to know why I’m in favor of replacing Joe Torre—at the end of the year—it’s this quote from Joe, dated August 3:

“I still believe Farnsworth is going to be a contributor for us.”

Speechless. Dumbfounded. Aghast. I could come up with more synonyms to describe how I feel about that quote, but I threw my thesaurus behind the TV last time That M.R. pitched. I didn’t get the memo that said Torre was now employed by the Red Sox, but that can only be who he meant by “us.”

And that’s the problem with baseball teams: while chemistry is a myth, you still have to have nine guys on the field that can get the job done. When you have gaping holes like Farnsworth and Wily Mo, your team suffers—and so do you. You’re still going to watch because you have to, and you’re going to try to talk yourself into the guy each time he comes up in a big spot.

As you subconsciously move any objects that can be thrown in anger out of your immediate vicinity, you start the psychological game in your head: you hope “just this once” that he gets it done. You tell yourself this is going to be the place where he turns the corner; where we finally see what the front office saw in him when they gave him that ludicrous deal.

It doesn’t happen. He blows the lead or strikes out on a lazy curve down the middle with the bases loaded. All can you can do is hang your head, and ask yourself one question:

“What were they thinking?”

And no one ever has a good answer for that one.