TAMPA – Honestly, it wasn’t much to hang a hope on because there is too much talent in the room. However, when other AL teams measured the Yankees before spring training, they believed there was a possible crack in the foundation.
How would the new faces blend in? And how much would the clubhouse chemistry be altered by Tino Martinez not being asked back and Paul O’Neill and Scott Brosius retiring?
Well, with less than two weeks until Opening Day in Baltimore, club leader Derek Jeter reports what other teams don’t want to hear.
“I think everybody has fit in fine here,” said Jeter, the undisputed leader of the team picked to sail through a very weak AL East. “Everybody understands what we are about here and that’s winning. These guys wanted to come here to play, so I think they knew what they were getting themselves into.”
When the Yankees dropped $120 million on Jason Giambi, everybody believed he would drastically improve a lineup that needed an infusion of muscle. But there were questions how the ringleader of the Animal House A’s would fit into the Yankees’ corporate family.
Well, he cut his hair, shaved his face and has blended into the landscape very nicely.
“It’s been great,” Giambi said. “You hear about the way these guys are and it’s true.”
About the only new face you really notice is an old mug who goes by the nickname “Boomer.”
Even when David Wells is low-keying it, he can’t be missed. But he is nowhere near as loud as he was during Boomer I.
As for Robin Ventura, Rondell White and John Vander Wal, they define the word “professional.” Ditto Ron Coomer. Steve Karsay’s attire can cause a stir, but he has settled into “Pitchers Row” very easily.
Of course, the glue to the entire thing is Joe Torre and it didn’t take long for Giambi to realize why.
“He is so honest,” Giambi says. “He tells you how things are going to be and that’s the way they are.”
Jeter is honest, too, when he talks about not winning the World Series means to the holdovers from last year’s killer Game 7 against the Diamondbacks and to the new faces.
“You use it as motivation,” Jeter said about starting a season without a World Championship banner being raised at Yankee Stadium for the first time since April of 1998. “It’s something you don’t want to experience, watching the other team celebrate. You remember it and try to feed off it.”
