Jane Heller

New York Times and USA Today Bestselling Author

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This Says It All…..Farewell, Yankees, Until Next Season

October 10, 2018

ON BASEBALL

Against the Red Sox, the Yankees Simply Don’t Measure Up

By Tyler Kepner

Oct. 10, 2018

At the end, at last, the play matched the hype. Nearly 50,000 fans, standing and screaming, praying and pleading that the old Bronx ghosts would swallow up the Red Sox one more time. The Boston pitcher unraveling. The Yankees’ bats stirring. Maybe, just maybe … and then … no.

“I was out,” Gleyber Torres said, flatly, and the replay confirmed what he knew. Steve Pearce kept his foot on first base. A furious comeback fell short in the bottom of the ninth, Craig Kimbrel held on, and the Yankees’ season expired with a 4-3 loss in Game 4 of the American League division series. That makes nine seasons in a row without a championship, and another Red Sox celebration on Yankee ground.

“That’s the one team that you don’t want to lose to,” said Brett Gardner, the veteran Yankees outfielder. “We hate losing to them, and we love beating them. They just had our number this year. They have a great team, and we just weren’t able to do enough to overcome them.”

Until the frantic finish, the standout moment of the rivals’ first postseason duel in 14 years was more comedic than dramatic: the Yankees’ backup catcher, Austin Romine, allowing a home run to Boston’s Brock Holt on Monday for the first cycle in playoff history. As a lingering image from this series, it will not inspire screenplays.

The Red Sox are onto bigger things — an A.L. Championship Series date with the Houston Astros, the defending World Series champions, starting Saturday night at Fenway Park. The Yankees will scatter for the winter, with 100 regular-season victories to keep them warm. But how much did they really improve?

This lopsided series aside, the rivalry is hot again because the Yankees so clearly measure themselves against the Red Sox, even more than in the recent past. The rest of the division cannot keep up. The Toronto Blue Jays and the Baltimore Orioles are rebuilding, and the Tampa Bay Rays are plucky and dangerous, but not a superpower.

The Red Sox are. They backed up their franchise-record 108 victories by pushing aside the Yankees and exposing the limits of their vaunted offense. The Yankees led the majors in homers last season, added Giancarlo Stanton in a trade, and promptly set a major league record for homers this season, with 267.

But just like the team whose record they broke — the 1997 Seattle Mariners — the Yankees went bust in the division series, confounded by a solid pitching staff. Except for their Game 2 outburst against a rattled David Price, the Yankees were punchless when it mattered most.

“One of their goals in this series was to keep us in the ballpark, and then coming in here, where we’re so good at that, they were able to do it,” Yankees Manager Aaron Boone said. “Credit to them for being able to hold us down.”

It was the first time since early April that the Yankees had failed to hit a homer in consecutive games at Yankee Stadium.

“We have to keep them in the ballpark — that’s the most important thing,” Red Sox Manager Alex Cora had said before the series, and he was right.

The Yankees had the pitching talent to make a deep postseason run, despite a poor showing in this series. But they hit only .249 this season, the worst average among baseball’s 10 playoff teams. If they did not hit a homer, they often struggled for hits. Red Sox starters Nathan Eovaldi and Rick Porcello combined for 12 innings at Yankee Stadium, allowing only nine hits and two runs to thwart the Yankees’ plan.

“Obviously our goal in this series was to try to get into that bullpen as soon as possible,” Gardner said. “When a guy like Porcello and Eovaldi gives them that length, it’s kind of hard to do.”

The Yankees were 4 for 26 with runners in scoring position in the series and hit .214 overall. Batting average was an overrated statistic for years, mainly because it obscured other factors crucial to run production. Now, perhaps, it is undervalued.

Since the A.L. adopted the designated hitter in 1973, the Yankees have hit for a lower batting average than .249 just three times: in 1990, when they lost 95 games, and in 2013 and 2014, when they missed the playoffs.

Each of the top seven teams in batting average this season won at least 90 games. It sounds so simple to say, but hits remain really important — and this is where the Yankees and the Red Sox wildly diverged. Last season, the Yankees had two more hits than the Red Sox. This season, the Red Sox had 135 more hits than the Yankees.

The Yankees’ pitchers trailed only Houston’s staff in strikeouts, but their hitters whiffed too often, a trait that good pitchers often exploit in October. The Yankees ranked ninth in the major leagues in strikeouts by their hitters, while the Red Sox’ offense ranked 26th. And Boston had almost twice as many stolen bases as the Yankees — 125 to 63.

“Last night I had one home run, but we really scored 16 runs without hitting the long ball,” Holt said, drenched in bubbly in the joyous Red Sox clubhouse on Tuesday night. “But we’ve got guys that can leave at any time, and we’ve got guys that run the bases. We can beat you in a lot of ways. It’s a fun offense to be a part of.”

It sure seems that way. The Red Sox hit .268 this season — nine points better than the next-closest team in the majors, the Cleveland Indians. Boston finished ninth in homers but scored the most runs.

“If you’re a starter facing their lineup, you face them three times without giving up a run, you’ve done something amazing, because they usually chip away and score runs on you,” Yankees reliever David Robertson said. “They grind out at-bats, foul balls off, get on second base and just cause havoc. If you’re not on top of your game, they can put up the runs on you real quick.”

The Yankees had a fine season, to be sure. Miguel Andujar and Torres confirmed the Yankees’ hopes for them; they are, indeed, high-impact young stars. In Boone’s first season as manager, the team improved by nine wins.

Trouble is, in Cora’s first season as manager, the Red Sox improved by 15 wins. Their high-impact young stars — Mookie Betts, Andrew Benintendi, Xander Bogaerts — are further along in their primes, and all under team control for next season, too.

And while Stanton led the Yankees in home runs (38), runs batted in (100) and games played (158) while hitting .266, Boston’s new slugger, J.D. Martinez, was better. He led the majors in total bases and nearly won the Triple Crown.

“We can hit the ball out of the ballpark, which is better than it was last year, power-wise,” said Dave Dombrowski, Boston’s president of baseball operations. “But we make contact, guys can run the bases, we’re athletic, and we’re a good defensive club. I think it’s important to go that way.”

The Red Sox have their flaws. The Yankees built a deeper bullpen, even though Boone seemed strangely hesitant to use it early in Games 3 and 4. Cora used Porcello in relief in Game 1 and Chris Sale in relief in Game 4; he might be able to survive the postseason that way, but it will not be easy.

In any case, his team — like the Astros — has earned the chance. The Red Sox ran away with the division, even with Sale limited down the stretch. Dombrowski fortified the roster with trades for Pearce, starter Nathan Eovaldi and second baseman Ian Kinsler. His counterpart with the Astros, Jeff Luhnow, added an ace last winter in Gerrit Cole, and power relievers this summer in Ryan Pressly and Roberto Osuna.

The Yankees’ general manager, Brian Cashman, made a series of pivotal in-season moves, trading for J.A. Happ, Zach Britton and Luke Voit. But the foundation of his team was simply not strong enough to find more than one way to beat the Red Sox.

Just as they did in the regular season, the Yankees had more strikeouts than hits in the series. Their only win came on the strength of three towering homers in Game 2 at Fenway. The Red Sox could not have been surprised. If they kept the Yankees in the ballpark, they knew they could win — and that is just what they did.

Filed Under: Confessions of a She-Fan Tagged With: ALDS, NY Times, Red Sox, Tyler Kepner, Yankees

I’m Leaving All This To Tyler Kepner, For Now

January 29, 2013

As everyone knows, A-Rod’s been implicated yet again in a ‘roids mess. Personally, I’m still getting over his last admission. Remember the blue sweater interview?

AP Photo/ESPN

Remember how I was wearing my own blue sweater that night in sympathy?

Well, this time I’m just waiting for the next step in the investigation. A-Rod has denied everything, as has Gio Gonzalez, and he’s even hired super defense attorney Roy Black. It looks bad, people. Will the Yankees be able to void his contract? I seriously doubt it. He didn’t fail a drug test, which is really the only allowable criterion short of the morals clause and nobody pays much attention to that. One can’t help viewing this news in the context of Lance Armstrong, also a longtime denier who bullied his accusers. The only person who benefits on the Yankees right now is Kevin Youkilis.

Here’s the latest from the New York Times‘ Tyler Kepner who’s known Al from his Mariners days. I was amused to see how Tyler starts off his piece with a reference to marriage – something I did in my first “Confessions” article for the Times.

***

Rodriguez Linked Anew to Prohibited Drugs (January 30, 2013)

The Yankees had dated Alex Rodriguez for four years before popping the question after the 2007 season: Will you take this 10-year, $275 million contract? Rodriguez said yes, and together they have had some fun. But a marriage that starts with a lie is bound to fall apart, and that is what has happened.

Rodriguez’s contract, which now strangles the Yankees’ future, might be the most lucrative con in baseball history. It colors everything about him. Tuesday’s revelation in the Miami New Times, which tied him to a supplier of performance-enhancing drugs as recently as last season, was another reminder of his deceit.

The relationship might be over soon. Rodriguez’s latest public-relations firm (he has had several) issued a statement Tuesday in which he denied being a patient of the shuttered anti-aging clinic in the story. But baseball is investigating, and with good cause; three of the players named in the report — Melky Cabrera, Bartolo Colon and Yasmani Grandal — were suspended last season after positive drug tests.

The results of baseball’s investigation, in theory, could help the Yankees if they attempt to void Rodriguez’s contract. That would not be easy — the Yankees failed to do it with Jason Giambi — but there may be another exit strategy.

The Yankees have continued to emphasize the seriousness of Rodriguez’s hip injury, with General Manager Brian Cashman asserting last week that it could keep him out all season, not just for the first half. The natural next step in that progression is that the injury would end his career, as it did for Albert Belle of the Baltimore Orioles in 2001. This would allow Rodriguez to collect his money — but with insurance, not the Yankees, covering most of it.

That is the dream outcome, anyway, but for now the Yankees are still obligated to pay Rodriguez the five years and $114 million remaining on the deal they gave him before they knew of his chemical past.

That folly is mostly on the Yankees, of course. Hank Steinbrenner had assumed command that fateful winter, vowing to cut Rodriguez loose after he opted out of his contract. Instead, he rewarded Rodriguez with the richest deal in baseball history, even though no other team was known to be bidding, say, nine years. In retaining Rodriguez, the Yankees also passed on a much younger third baseman, Miguel Cabrera, who was traded to Detroit and now annually knocks the Yankees from the playoffs.

It is an amusing footnote that Rodriguez’s contract was officially announced on Dec. 13, 2007, the day Major League Baseball released the Mitchell Report on steroids. Rodriguez, who had always denied steroid use, was not named in the report. Part of the reason for the length of the deal was the presumption that he was clean and would chase Barry Bonds’s tainted home run record in pinstripes.

It was all a fraud, or “A-Fraud,” to use the term that Joe Torre revealed in his book to be a clubhouse nickname for Rodriguez. Fourteen months after signing the contract, Rodriguez admitted he had used steroids from 2001 to 2003.

Lying about steroid use is hardly shocking, but Rodriguez was pathological. Consider this passage from a recent interview by the writer Jeff Pearlman with Sports Illustrated’s Tom Verducci, who recalled a conversation with Rodriguez in 2002:

“It was in his hotel suite in Chicago after a game one night. He looked at me like I had two heads. ‘Steroids? Gee, why would anybody take them? What do they do? I don’t know anything about it.’ I walked out of the suite shaking my head about his complete and theatrical lack of knowledge about the worst-kept secret in the game. It would be seven years later that we all discovered, by his own admission, that he was loaded to the gills on steroids at that very moment.”

When Sports Illustrated finally exposed Rodriguez as a steroid user, part of his response was to smear the reporter, Selena Roberts, by falsely claiming that she tried to break into his home while his children were sleeping. He sounded vaguely like Michael Corleone with that line, except Rodriguez has always been the Fredo of the Yankee family, awkward and envious and insecure.

Such insecurity has surely fueled Rodriguez’s drive to achieve, while also influencing his many bizarre decisions. He has denied many of them, like sending a baseball to some women in the stands during a playoff game last fall, but with his history of lying, who knows what to believe?

Rodriguez will always have his apologists, mostly people who have never had to deal with him and have never been part of his web of deceit. To some who know him well, including the Yankees and Major League Baseball, he is a source of irritation at best, slippery and duplicitous at worst.

Remember that Rodriguez continued to lie to the Yankees even after admitting his past steroid use. After his first hip surgery, in 2009, he maintained to the team that he had not seen Anthony Galea, the Canada-based physician who pleaded guilty two years later to federal charges stemming from his distribution of human growth hormone to professional athletes.

Rodriguez had, in fact, seen Galea, and baseball officials and the Yankees remain unsure that they know the extent of his links to performance-enhancing drugs. The Yankees might be inclined to overlook that if Rodriguez were still an elite player. But his production slips every year.

That fact, of course, cannot be forgotten. If Rodriguez were a healthy superstar, the Yankees would still want him around. They might have even supported him in their terse statement on Tuesday, which pledged support for baseball’s drug program and noted that the matter was now under the jurisdiction of the commissioner’s office.

Rodriguez has won a championship and two Most Valuable Player awards in New York. He is a historically significant Yankee, emblematic of a complicated era for the game and the team. But the sideshows never end, and it is hard to argue he belongs here anymore.

Filed Under: Confessions of a She-Fan Tagged With: Alex Rodriguez, Lance Armstrong, New York Times, PEDs, Roy Black, steroids, Tyler Kepner, Yankees

I'm Leaving All This To Tyler Kepner, For Now

January 29, 2013

As everyone knows, A-Rod’s been implicated yet again in a ‘roids mess. Personally, I’m still getting over his last admission. Remember the blue sweater interview?

AP Photo/ESPN

Remember how I was wearing my own blue sweater that night in sympathy?

Well, this time I’m just waiting for the next step in the investigation. A-Rod has denied everything, as has Gio Gonzalez, and he’s even hired super defense attorney Roy Black. It looks bad, people. Will the Yankees be able to void his contract? I seriously doubt it. He didn’t fail a drug test, which is really the only allowable criterion short of the morals clause and nobody pays much attention to that. One can’t help viewing this news in the context of Lance Armstrong, also a longtime denier who bullied his accusers. The only person who benefits on the Yankees right now is Kevin Youkilis.

Here’s the latest from the New York Times‘ Tyler Kepner who’s known Al from his Mariners days. I was amused to see how Tyler starts off his piece with a reference to marriage – something I did in my first “Confessions” article for the Times.

***

Rodriguez Linked Anew to Prohibited Drugs (January 30, 2013)

The Yankees had dated Alex Rodriguez for four years before popping the question after the 2007 season: Will you take this 10-year, $275 million contract? Rodriguez said yes, and together they have had some fun. But a marriage that starts with a lie is bound to fall apart, and that is what has happened.

Rodriguez’s contract, which now strangles the Yankees’ future, might be the most lucrative con in baseball history. It colors everything about him. Tuesday’s revelation in the Miami New Times, which tied him to a supplier of performance-enhancing drugs as recently as last season, was another reminder of his deceit.

The relationship might be over soon. Rodriguez’s latest public-relations firm (he has had several) issued a statement Tuesday in which he denied being a patient of the shuttered anti-aging clinic in the story. But baseball is investigating, and with good cause; three of the players named in the report — Melky Cabrera, Bartolo Colon and Yasmani Grandal — were suspended last season after positive drug tests.

The results of baseball’s investigation, in theory, could help the Yankees if they attempt to void Rodriguez’s contract. That would not be easy — the Yankees failed to do it with Jason Giambi — but there may be another exit strategy.

The Yankees have continued to emphasize the seriousness of Rodriguez’s hip injury, with General Manager Brian Cashman asserting last week that it could keep him out all season, not just for the first half. The natural next step in that progression is that the injury would end his career, as it did for Albert Belle of the Baltimore Orioles in 2001. This would allow Rodriguez to collect his money — but with insurance, not the Yankees, covering most of it.

That is the dream outcome, anyway, but for now the Yankees are still obligated to pay Rodriguez the five years and $114 million remaining on the deal they gave him before they knew of his chemical past.

That folly is mostly on the Yankees, of course. Hank Steinbrenner had assumed command that fateful winter, vowing to cut Rodriguez loose after he opted out of his contract. Instead, he rewarded Rodriguez with the richest deal in baseball history, even though no other team was known to be bidding, say, nine years. In retaining Rodriguez, the Yankees also passed on a much younger third baseman, Miguel Cabrera, who was traded to Detroit and now annually knocks the Yankees from the playoffs.

It is an amusing footnote that Rodriguez’s contract was officially announced on Dec. 13, 2007, the day Major League Baseball released the Mitchell Report on steroids. Rodriguez, who had always denied steroid use, was not named in the report. Part of the reason for the length of the deal was the presumption that he was clean and would chase Barry Bonds’s tainted home run record in pinstripes.

It was all a fraud, or “A-Fraud,” to use the term that Joe Torre revealed in his book to be a clubhouse nickname for Rodriguez. Fourteen months after signing the contract, Rodriguez admitted he had used steroids from 2001 to 2003.

Lying about steroid use is hardly shocking, but Rodriguez was pathological. Consider this passage from a recent interview by the writer Jeff Pearlman with Sports Illustrated’s Tom Verducci, who recalled a conversation with Rodriguez in 2002:

“It was in his hotel suite in Chicago after a game one night. He looked at me like I had two heads. ‘Steroids? Gee, why would anybody take them? What do they do? I don’t know anything about it.’ I walked out of the suite shaking my head about his complete and theatrical lack of knowledge about the worst-kept secret in the game. It would be seven years later that we all discovered, by his own admission, that he was loaded to the gills on steroids at that very moment.”

When Sports Illustrated finally exposed Rodriguez as a steroid user, part of his response was to smear the reporter, Selena Roberts, by falsely claiming that she tried to break into his home while his children were sleeping. He sounded vaguely like Michael Corleone with that line, except Rodriguez has always been the Fredo of the Yankee family, awkward and envious and insecure.

Such insecurity has surely fueled Rodriguez’s drive to achieve, while also influencing his many bizarre decisions. He has denied many of them, like sending a baseball to some women in the stands during a playoff game last fall, but with his history of lying, who knows what to believe?

Rodriguez will always have his apologists, mostly people who have never had to deal with him and have never been part of his web of deceit. To some who know him well, including the Yankees and Major League Baseball, he is a source of irritation at best, slippery and duplicitous at worst.

Remember that Rodriguez continued to lie to the Yankees even after admitting his past steroid use. After his first hip surgery, in 2009, he maintained to the team that he had not seen Anthony Galea, the Canada-based physician who pleaded guilty two years later to federal charges stemming from his distribution of human growth hormone to professional athletes.

Rodriguez had, in fact, seen Galea, and baseball officials and the Yankees remain unsure that they know the extent of his links to performance-enhancing drugs. The Yankees might be inclined to overlook that if Rodriguez were still an elite player. But his production slips every year.

That fact, of course, cannot be forgotten. If Rodriguez were a healthy superstar, the Yankees would still want him around. They might have even supported him in their terse statement on Tuesday, which pledged support for baseball’s drug program and noted that the matter was now under the jurisdiction of the commissioner’s office.

Rodriguez has won a championship and two Most Valuable Player awards in New York. He is a historically significant Yankee, emblematic of a complicated era for the game and the team. But the sideshows never end, and it is hard to argue he belongs here anymore.

Filed Under: Confessions of a She-Fan Tagged With: Alex Rodriguez, Lance Armstrong, New York Times, PEDs, Roy Black, steroids, Tyler Kepner, Yankees

A Man Walks Into A Bank Of America

April 11, 2011

No, that’s not the opening line of a joke. It’s a reference to Nick Swisher’s appearances today at various BOA locations to promote the bank’s sponsorship of Major League Baseball. When I was a kid, they used to reward prospective bank customers with toasters. Now, they give you a shot at meeting a Yankee. Not bad.

I’m a BOA customer here in Santa Barbara, but the only famous guy who walked into my bank was a robber back in January.

(Courtesy: dailysound.com)

It took the cops quite awhile to catch him, and he wasn’t even wearing a ski mask. Pathetic, right?

Anyhow, I was jealous that Swisher was on the other coast popping in at my bank, but what can you do.

On to other matters this off-day. I hope A-Rod is feeling better. Clearly, his diet of kale and egg whites didn’t keep the germs away. Maybe he should just have a pizza.

I see that the Rays pounded the Red Sox at Fenway tonight, scoring 16 runs. What I’d like to say about that is this: Why couldn’t we have gotten Dice K last night instead of Beckett? Now that would have been fun.

For those of you who predicted that Jeter would notch hit #2938 during the Red Sox series, I’m sorry you didn’t win the book. My copy came in the mail the other day, and it’s a nice addition to any Yankee fan’s library. It’s filled with pics of the Captain and features a very well written Foreword by the Times‘ Tyler Kepner. But for those who are still in the running for the contest, good luck this week. All he needs is 5 more hits. One of these days….

Filed Under: Confessions of a She-Fan Tagged With: A-Rod, Bank of America, Derek Jeter, Nick Swisher, Santa Barbara, Tyler Kepner, Yankees

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About Jane Heller

Jane Heller is a New York Times and USA Today bestselling author. Her fourteen breezy, witty novels of romantic comedy and suspense are now entertaining millions of readers around the world, along with her two books of nonfiction.

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