The new New Yorkers

Tradition-rich Yankees deal with an influx of fresh faces

TAMPA, Fla. -- The new New York Yankees ought to be pretty good. Look down the roster, read the hundreds of thousands of preseason breakdowns -- heck, ask the guys themselves -- and the word is clear. The Yankees, again, should be the team to beat.

Well, maybe not right away. As baseball enters its first days of exhibition games, scheduled for later this week, the mighty Yankees are still busy introducing themselves.

"I think we're all a little hesitant," manager Joe Torre said the other day from his office at Legends Field. "You don't know what the unknown is all about."

No, no one knows quite what to expect from Jason Giambi and Steve Karsay and Robin Ventura and Rondell White and, yes, even David Wells. The Yanks are in the biggest overhaul of Torre's tenure, which is now entering its seventh season, and there are a ton of questions. The biggest is how all the new guys will click with that core of Yankees veterans that includes Derek Jeter and Bernie Williams and Roger Clemens and Andy Pettitte.

How will the quiet, limelight-avoiding guys like Jeter and Williams adjust to Giambi, the big-money free-agent first baseman who is as talkative and outgoing a player as there is in any game? What about Wells, the boisterous lefty who once bled in pinstripes but whose 2002 season could go either way? How does he fit in? And Ventura, the reclusive third baseman shipped over from the cross-town Mets? Is he really a Yankee?

Who's in charge here? How long is it going to take this team, so steeped in tradition and winning, to assimilate all these new faces and new talents? Not to mention new egos.

"Obviously, it's not going to be overnight," said reliever Karsay, a native New Yorker who came to be a Yankee after a few years in Oakland and Cleveland and a stopover last season in Atlanta. "I think, once we start to be a part of the on-field activities, once we get to Yankee Stadium and get on that field -- once we start contributing -- that's when this team will start to get its chemistry."

For his part, Torre is not all that interested in when the team starts to come together, or who becomes the so-called "clubhouse leader," or how any of it happens. With their four World Series titles in the past six years, the Yankees have backed themselves into a corner. Everyone expects them to win. Now.

Torre expects more than that.

"I don't really concern myself with the clubhouse," he said. "You put a bunch of professional people here, they know why they're here."

Later, Torre admitted to a "certain curiosity" about how all the new guys will fit in. But it's clear from the start, even before the new New Yorkers throw out the first pitch in this exhibition season: The new guys have to come through.

Pretty good will not be good enough for the Yankees.

As the Griffeys turn

Every spring training has its soap opera. The Ken Griffey Jr. saga in Cincinnati is a flat-out tearjerker.

As we join our hometown hero, he is being lambasted by a couple of old friends (ex-teammates Pokey Reese and Dmitri Young) as selfish and divisive and just an all-around not-nice guy. This despite the fact he took maybe $30 million less from the Reds than he could have had from others just to play in his boyhood home next to his father, Ken Griffey Sr., the team's first base coach.

But … wait a minute. Wait one darn minute. Just as the headlines on the Reese-Young tag-team hatchet job begin to fade, Griffey's dad quits. "Unhappy," he says cryptically.

Well, if Junior didn't get it already -- and it's been pretty obvious -- he knows now: The honeymoon is loooooong over.

Griffey Jr. was traded to the Reds on Feb. 10, 2000 and the whole thing has been a little screwy ever since. After 11 years in the American League with the Seattle Mariners, Griffey smashed 40 homers and knocked in 118 runs in 2000 in his first season with the Reds. Nice start.

But he played in only 111 games in 2001 because of a balky hamstring. He hit only 22 home runs. His sometimes-caustic ways alienated many in the media and cost him the unquestioned love of Cincinnati fans. At best, the Queen City fans now are taking kind of a "We'll wait this out" attitude toward the slugging center fielder.

They may not have to wait long.

Griffey, who has shrugged off the latest scandals, claims his hamstring is fine. With first baseman Sean Casey happy and signed to a three-year extension, young outfielder Adam Dunn about to break out and shortstop Barry Larkin looking fit again, the Reds have some protection for Griffey in the lineup. And Griffey, remember, will be only 32 as the season opens.

Granted, the Reds still have no pitching. And without Griffey Sr. on the bench, Junior has lost a sympathetic ear. Still, with a good year in 2002, things could start to turn Griffey's way in this continuing Cincinnati saga.

Camping out …

Anybody want a guy who can steal bases, has a cannon arm, has 30-plus homers in his bat a year and a .282 career average? Contact Raul Mondesi, who now has arrived in the Toronto Blue Jays' camp … There are good play-by-play men out there, for sure, and there are plenty of guys who have been around awhile. It'll be tough to top the career of a guy like Ernie Harwell, though. The Hall of Famer will make this season, his 42nd with the Detroit Tigers and 55th in baseball, his last … It's kind of strange that maybe the most interesting stories in Florida this spring center around two teams that few may care about by the time September comes: The lame duck Montreal Expos and the Florida Marlins, now run by all those ex-Expos' baseball people … Will someone just let Arizona's Matt Williams skip camp next season? … Did you hear about the homer Giambi ripped off closer Mariano Rivera last week in what is called "live" batting practice? And how Rivera got him to whiff badly on the next pitch? And how, on the next sunny day in Tampa, Giambi came up with a sore hamstring that prompted Torre to scratch him from an intrasquad game? Coincidence? … Finally, through the same math that Padres shortstop Deivi Cruz, Braves shortstop Rafael Furcal, Royals' shortstop Neifi Perez and Indians pitcher Bartolo Colon have used, I have officially determined that I was born yesterday.

John Donovan covers baseball for CNNSI.com. His Spring Training Buzz will run each Tuesday and Thursday until Opening Day.

 

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