“To have the record we had going, during the course of the year, and to continue playing well and never taking a day off, that to me was a hell of an indication that we were special.”
– Joe Torre, following the 1998 World Series win.
It is uncommon to see a team go at it and never take a day off, never phone it in. The team you want to cheer is the team that goes out and plays all 162 games, all 9 innings, every time. While it is easy to see a team do well when they are ahead in the score, the real indicator of a team’s character is when they are behind in the score. So there is nothing more exciting than watching your team battle back after being down. I don’t know about you, but I get an adrenaline rush when watching the Yankees stage a late-inning rally. That is why I think that we have got something special going on down in Tampa.
As of this writing, the Yankees have four consecutive wins or ties where they were behind and came back to tie or win the game. This is a very promising sign. I have seen plenty of games where a team that is behind has given up on the game. They phone it in until the 27th out and they can finally go home. We are seeing signs that the 2014 Yankees are not that team.
Now you might be thinking that this is Spring Training, that this is not the regular season, and you can’t draw too many conclusions about the team’s effectiveness yet. While that may be true to a certain extent, winners always play to win, and it does not matter if it is Spring Training, warm-ups, or the World Series. They are giving 100% all the time. Joe DiMaggio, when asked why he went all out on inconsequential games late in his career, said, “Because there’s always some kid who may be seeing me for the first time. I owe him my best.” Whether you attribute it to leadership, individual discipline, or team camaraderie, great individuals, great teams always come ready to play their best, ready to win.
This drive to win under all circumstances reminds me of some teams of the recent past. The 2009 Yankees notably led the American League in comeback wins, and they went on to win the World Series. The 1998 Yankees, who hold the record for most wins in a season (combined regular and postseason), were infamous for staging 8th and 9th inning comebacks. As Joe Torre noted, they never took a day off, and they went on to win the World Series. In July of 1978, the Yankees were 14 games behind the division leading Red Sox and they refused to quit. They finished the season 53-21, staged the Boston Massacre, won the division on the last day of the season, and won the World Series.
As Yogi Berra once said, “Baseball is ninety percent mental and the other half is physical.” While this gives us all a chuckle, and the math does not exactly add up, there is a gem of a factoid in this quote. So much of the game of baseball is mental. Some players, and some teams, just cannot handle the pressure. When an aggressive opponent applied pressure, some wilt. This team does not seem to suffer from this malady. It is a good thing. It gives us hope that we are going to have a great season. To me, it is a hell of an indication that this team is special.
--Ike Dimitriadis, BYB Writer
Twitter: @KingAgamemnon
My blog is: Shots from Murderer's Row
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