TORONTO – A horse named Dream Wish took the Yankees off the hook for one day when it came to George Steinbrenner.
Less than 24 hours after the Blue Jays humiliated the defending World Champions by laying a 16-3 beating on the Bombers Tuesday night at SkyDome and forcing Joe Torre to hold a closed-door clubhouse meeting, The Boss had his spirits lifted by results in the fourth race at Belmont yesterday.
Owned by Steinbrenner and given a great ride by Jerry Bailey, Dream Wish finished first and paid $9. The Boss, who watched the race from Tampa Day Downs, momentarily dismissed the Yankees’ beating.
“I talked to him and he was in good spirits,” Torre said of Steinbrenner, who gets nervous when he his club goes cold in spring training and is never happy when the Yankees struggle like they have been.
Any baseball talk, Joe?
“You reference it and it was ugly,” Torre said of the Yankees’ third straight defeat and fifth in six games. “There is not a whole lot more than that. He is like the rest of us, he is waiting for us to win some more games.”
When Torre addressed his slumping team Tuesday night, he reminded it more energy was needed, that it was flat and that it hadn’t clinched anything yet.
Jorge Posada was one player who could see Tuesday night’s embarrassment coming. Posada talked about the Yankees not being focused after the Indians’ Bartolo Colon threw a one-hit shutout at them Monday night.
“It’s time for us to kick it in,” said Posada, who was in the lineup and catching David Cone last night when the Yankees attempted to snap a losing streak and Cone tried to convince Torre he can be part of Torre’s 10-man October staff. “We are in first place and we have to play like it.”
The Yankees looked like anything else but a first place club Tuesday night. Andy Pettitte, Jason Grimsley, Ted Lilly, Randy Choate and Craig Dingman didn’t pitch well. Luis Polonia, Tino Martinez, Chuck Knoblauch and Scott Brosius didn’t play well in the field. Outside of Glenallen Hill and David Justice homering off Steve Trachsel, an fill-in for David Wells (gout), the bats never made much noise.
“We were just bad, I don’t think there was any one thing that triggered it,” Torre said. “It was ugly. A game like (that) you are sorry it was nine innings. You wish it could end sooner. We have to do something about it. We were terrible, manager, coaches and players.”
As his nature, Torre gathered his embarrassed club in the middle of the clubhouse afterward and reminded it of something it already understood: The lethargic play that has seeped into Yankee Pinstripes the last week or so has to stop.
“I am concerned because we need a little more energy,” Torre said. “We have faced some good pitching and we have gotten flat and we need to do something about it. We need to perk it up.”
That would be nice. Even though the Yankees started last night’s action with a six-game lead over the second-place Red Sox in the AL East with 13 games remaining and a magic number of seven, the Yankees know that October is a month that carries a lot more weight than any other on Steinbrenner’s calendar. They understand The Boss judges each year by what happens in October; that he doesn’t spend all that money only to have a winning July.
With Cone, who brought a 4-12 record and an inflated 6.29 ERA to the mound, going, the Yankees were looking to wash the foul taste from their mouth that was left over from Tuesday night’s debacle.
“We want to bounce back. We have lost three in a row. (Cone) has been a big guy for us in the past and I know he is going to feel that responsibility,” Torre said. “But we certainly need to play a whole lot better. Results aside, we need to play a lot cleaner and have a lot more energy.”
