Commentary : It Will Be a Long Season Indeed for Yankees

One of the constants about baseball is that the season is a long one. So such an insightful man as Don Mattingly can observe, “We’ve played eight games; we’ve still got, what, 154 to play?”

You know: There’s another game tomorrow.

And then you can think: Oh, there’s another game tomorrow.

Is it a blessing that the New York Yankees still have 154 games to play? Or is it a curse? “You know we’re not going to go 1-161,” said Dave LaPoint, Tuesday night’s starting pitcher and a voice of sanity.

Who could have known that the Baltimore Orioles would be 1-21 last year?

Who could be certain of anything except that eight games into the season, it is now a crisis. One game won doesn’t change much.

There have been earlier crises, like the time Stienbrenner declared Yogi Berra in crisis in 1985 after the first three games at Fenway Park. After that, things got ugly.

Of course, there’s time for the Yankees to turn themsevles around.

But how are they going to do it?

And what if they can’t? Things could get ugly. “Certainly it is not very pretty now,” Manager Dallas Green said.

This is the same manager who had said three games earlier: “We stink.”

This is also the manager whose sense of bearing is offended when he sees players slinking off to the trainer’s room or the players’ lounge to hide from the mirror of the media. He sees it as a symptom of people being unwilling to see things as they are.

“Isn’t that something?” he said. “The egos are such that they can accept the accolades, but they’d beat you over the head for writing what they did wrong. And all you’re looking at is facts.

“I’m trying to get players to recognize what we’re looking at. The fans, however many they’ve been, have seen what you and I have. They can’t be happy with it.”

How ugly can it be for them? Well, one of the things he’s thinking about is shutting the players’ lounge and the trainer’s room as places of refuge. Put the players back in the middle of the clubhouse to stew in their own pew. That would be pretty ugly for some of them.

And the owner, Mr. Dithers? He’s been vowing to be patient, but sooner or later the players are going to feel his wrath. But would it make them better? “I’m sure we all look at it that we’re not that bad a team,” LaPoint said. “I look at some things that have happened and know this isn’t going to happen all season.”

Like what? “Like Rickey Henderson leading off with a double and not scoring. How many times is that going to happen?”

OK. What else? “I can’t think of anything else.”

LaPoint is looking forward to a clubhouse visit from Johnny Petraglia, whose bowling average would make a welcome batting average.

The Yankees will hit better, but how much better? And will they pitch better? They have innings that are so bad “that the offense, what little there is of it, gets frustrated,” Green said.

He said he was disturbed by a willingness to accept defeat when they’re down and to not fight back. Mattingly wasn’t going to point a finger, but the implication was clear enough. “You can fight all you want,” he said. “You can keep getting hit in the head all the time and keep getting up. After a while you don’t get up with the same enthusiasm.”

He says there is enough hitting. “I’m sure there is,” he said.

Is there enough pitching. “I’m sure there is.”

What’s left? “I’m sure there’s enough defense,” he said.

But is there really enough of anything? This is a team that was put together, as the manager said, “from all parts of the world.” There is peril wrapped in danger.

Mattingly said he was concerned that the Yankees could get so far down that the whole season would be uphill. The greater issue is whether they really are better than this.

If there was a plan to the way they’ve been brought together, it is not easily discerned. Is it fair to keep reminding George Steinbrenner that his baseball people gave up Fred McGriff, the fellow who hit two home runs in Toronto’s victory Tuesday night, to get the noted Dale Murray? Of course it’s fair. Steinbrenner is in charge of his baseball people.

It’s not his fault that Dave Winfield’s career is in jeopardy, but Winfield is 37. It’s not Steinbrenner’s fault that Mattingly may never again approach the level of play he had established before he hurt his back.

The manager is desperate for someone to carry the team out of the rut, and Mattingly is saying he’s never seen himself as a man “to carry anybody.” And where is Jack Clark now that they need him? In San Diego. And what did they get for him? Lance McCullers and Jimmy Jones, who is in the minors, and Stanley Jefferson, who would be if they didn’t need to fill the roster.

Couldn’t they have made a better deal for Clark? He was unhappy when Billy Martin was managing and more unhappy when Lou Piniella was managing. Green is his kind of guy. If Green had a chance, could he have persuaded Clark to stay? We’ll never know.

They mortgaged the future to get Rick Rhoden, who pitched more innings than any of them last season, and traded him for three players, the most notable being John Fishel.

In desperation, they’ve assembled a right field tandem -- one who can’t touch right-handed pitching and one who can’t touch left-handed pitching. The designated hitters can’t play even a little bit. They have a shortstop who must be hit for whenever possible.

They have a pitching staff that needs all the outs it can get. So they surrendered Willie Randolph, whose greatest asset was that he could turn a double play, and they went out and got Steve Sax, a free agent second baseman who can hit but about whom the manager said, “We’re never going to turn the great double play.”

And so it goes.

But at least it’s a long season. They’ll probably win another game before it’s over.