George Steinbrenner wasn’t speaking on my behalf yesterday when he issued a statement in which he said the Yankees,” . . . let our fans down” – but then, I didn’t pay so much as a nickel to watch them play, so who am I to say whether fans were or were not let down by the team that was eliminated in the first round by the Angels on Monday?
Dispassionate observer that I am, I tend to believe that the Yankees and all their flaws probably went about as far as they should have gone. The Angels and White Sox, the two AL teams left standing, are both better and better constructed, regardless of their respective sticker prices. So, probably, are the Indians.
“You can talk about payroll, and everybody who gets paid what, but you’ve still got to play the game,” Al Leiter said as he entered the players’ parking lot at the Stadium yesterday, likely for the last time in a professional career that seems burnt after 21 years. “We’re human beings,” he added. “Not robots.”
They’re human beings and they’ve got to play the game; Leiter is absolutely right about that. But he’s also right about people talking about the payroll and who gets paid what, because that’s exactly what 21-year-old Chris Persky of Staten Island – one of the fans to whom Steinbrenner was speaking in his statement – did yesterday when The Post wondered what he thought of the owner’s sentiments.
“I agree with him: They let us down,” Persky said while folding and stacking Yankees merchandise that now will not be sold this month at Stan’s Sports World on River Avenue and 161st St., where Persky works. “Why? Because look at all the money these guys get and they can’t come up with the big hit.
“Come on,” he said. “A-Rod’s getting $250 million over 10 years and can’t do anything, and meanwhile Bengie Molina is getting big hits almost every time up for the Angels?
“They should have won that [fifth] game. They had the chance. They had a lot of chances. How many times didn’t they come through in a big spot?
“Darn right, they let me down.” Persky and the people who help defray the cost of the ballclub’s $208 million payroll have earned a right to their opinions. But you wonder whether it’s fair to expect a team to win a championship every year – to demand that a team win a championship every year – simply based on the amount of money the front office decides its players are worth.
Of course, the Yankees haven’t won a championship for five years now, have they?
“To say they should win every year is stupid,” Persky said. “Anyone who says that doesn’t know anything about baseball.
“But this team had an opportunity to win this series. They should have won this series. The Angels didn’t beat them; they beat themselves.
“They blew it. I’ll say it again: They let me down.”
Before too long, Steinbrenner will likely find a way – make that, ways – to say it again, as well.
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YOU MAKE THE CALL
Robinson Cano’s play at first base in Game 5 figures to be a hot topic all winter long. A look back at the play in which Cano struck out, took off for first when Bengie Molina couldn’t handle the pitch, but was erased under baseball’s Rule 6.05 (k). The rule says the runner is out if, “in running the last half of the distance from home base to first base, while the ball is being fielded to first base, he runs outside the three foot line, or inside the foul line.”
