It’s official: Joe Torre will not be the manager of the New York Yankees for the 2008 season. Torre has reportedly turned down a one-year, $5 million contract extension from the Yankees (motto: “We Spent $195 Million And All We Got Was This AL Wild Card”), which would have been a $2.5 million pay cut from his 2007 salary. The offer came after the Yankees failed to make it past the first round of the postseason for the third straight year. Yankees owner George Steinbrenner had said before the ALDS series with the Indians that if New York didn’t advance, Torre would lose his job. Cleveland won the series in four games.
According to ESPN,
New York’s offer included $3 million in bonuses if the Yankees reached next year’s World Series and an $8 million option for 2009 that would have become guaranteed if New York won the AL pennant…”Under this offer, he would continue to be the highest-paid manager in major league baseball,” team president Randy Levine said. “We thought that we need to go to a performance-based model, having nothing to do with Joe Torre’s character, integrity or ability. We just think it’s important to motivate people.”
Like most people, I actively dislike the Yankees, but I’ve only heard good things about Joe Torre as a person and manager. His players love him, he made the playoffs every year that he managed the Yankees, and he just happened to win four World Championships in the process. In appreciation, the Yankees made him a shitty, half-assed offer that was an insult to his historical accomplishments, and I don’t blame him for rejecting it. I think they just wanted to be able to tell Yankees fans, “Hey, we made him an offer and he turned it down. That’s his fault.”
For god’s sake, if you don’t want someone back, just fire them. I’ve fired plenty of people; it’s actually kind of fun. They have to stand there sobbing while you yell at them and tell them how much they suck at their job and life, then you kick them out of your office and steeple your fingers under your chin while laughing maniacally. Piece of cake.
Led by a masterful pitching performance from Josh Beckett, the Red Sox beat the Cleveland Indians 7-1 on Thursday night to delay their inevitable elimination from the ALCS by one more miserable game. The whole country marveled at their resistance to quitting in the face of Boston’s historical postseason ineptitude, which includes some of the worst blunders to ever affect a major league team. While Boston will almost certainly lose to the Indians in the sixth or seventh game of the series, the Red Sox can theoretically pat themselves on the back tonight for putting off the predestined outcome one more day, thereby extending the agony of being a fan of their cursed team.
Thursday’s outcome did give Bostonians a glimmer of hope in their wretched lives, along with providing an excuse to get drunk on a weekday. Local idiot Wes Boyd remarked that Boston now had the upper hand because the series was moving back to Fenway, and the Sox now had momentum from the win. This prediction was uttered without regard to statistical probabilities or basic mathematics, an unsurprising finding when taking into account the vast quantities of alcohol that preceded the bold assertion.
Later that night, after stumbling home from a bar and unsuccessfully propositioning his girlfriend in bed, Boyd masturbated quietly in the bathroom and fell asleep dreaming of another World Series championship. In his intoxicated state he neglected to set his alarm, resulting in another late arrival to work and subsequent termination from his minimum-wage job. Later that day, as he sat sipping vodka out of a dirty coffee cup and watching “Judge Joe Brown“, he uttered to himself, “At least I’ve still got the Red Sox. 2007 World Champions. No doubt about it.”
