No Joy in Mudville, Boston, New York, or Jorge Posada's Back Yard

Unless you're a full-time sportswriter, or a fan with entirely too much time on your hands, the 'feel' for a sports team, any team at all, is going to be instinctive. You like the Red Sox, the New York Yankees, the Tampa Bay Rays, Dallas Cowboys or Buffalo Bills. You don't think about it much, and when pressed, you're not likely to start spouting team stats, underlying management concerns or any detailed analysis of the last 10 games. You just have this...feel. And while a lot of it is about hometown, there's an underlying sense of the game itself that informs an internal, and when confronted with arch-rival fans, an external debate.

Which brings us to Jorge Posada. The arc of the recent "I don't want to play" story started out as little more than a news item.

"Posada removes himself from the lineup."

OK, you thought, sitting there in front of the TV on Saturday night, listening to Joe Buck. That's interesting. Then, Yankee GM Cashman pipes in and says there wasn't any injury problem, which is immediately refuted when Posada himself says something about a back problem.

What?

The story starts to pick up some steam, and before you know it, by the time Sunday Night Baseball rolls around, you've got some sort of full-fledged controversy going on, with echoes of underlying team issues (like losing five straight, or 9 of 12), hints that it's all about manager Joe Girardi and payback for the days when he was the vet and Posada was the "new kid on the block." The New York media market is a fearsomely strong lens through which the light of a story flows. It'll set fire to the measliest pile of kindling you ever saw.

Two major points, I think. On the one hand, a respected member of a team who's paid his dues and demonstrated his commitment to the cause of success should have the right to sit himself down for a day and do so by simple request. By the same token, said "respected member of a team" does not have the right to throw a hissy fit and wrangle with the team's manager over where he's batting in the lineup, especially when he's batting .165. Girardi's response had to emanate from a managerial standpoint, if he's got any hope of maintaining a level of respect with other members of the team.

"Fine, Georgie," he should have said. "Sit down, but it'll cost you a few grand in penalties. I run the team, not you, and if I put you in the lineup, you get your ass out onto the field and swing the bat. End of story."

Girardi, though, has too much respect for Posada to play that strict managerial card. So he moves on. The next day, Posada apologizes, and everybody on the team, and pretty much everybody in the world, with the exception of Bobby Valentine in the Sunday night broadcast booth, is ready to move on, too. The fans even want to move on as they cheer him when he steps out onto the field to pinch hit in the late innings of Sunday night's game.

But the story won't die.

It keeps rolling on in the blogosphere, as evidenced by this little ditty.

Getting back to the whole "feel" thing in search of a second major point, I, for one, as a long time fan of the Boston Red Sox, am more than happy to see Posada sit, because for as long as he's been around pestering the Sox, he has been the one batter I have not wanted to see step to the plate with the game on the line. I don't know the stats off-hand, and frankly, I don't want to know. All I know is that with the Sox down by a run or two, and a couple of Yankees on base, I'd rather see anyone on the team over the past 10 years step to the plate than him. He's had a way of delivering in key situations like that, and I don't care if he hasn't had a hit since before Obama was elected, I don't want to see him up there. Give me Rodriguez, Cano, Swisher, Texeira, anybody but Posada.

It's a "feel" thing, you know?

And I have a "feel," as well, that Posada knows this. Knows that no matter how hard a time he's having at the plate at any given juncture of any given game, that he's dangerous up there with a bat in his hands. And he's frustrated because, from a managerial standpoint, there are some things you can "feel" your way through and some things (like doing your job) that you can't. And bottom line, he screwed up. He thought for a minute or two that he was in Little League, and that pouting was an available option. It wasn't. And isn't.

But you go ahead, Georgie. Sit out when the mood strikes you. I'd especially appreciate it if you'd do so on your next trip to Boston.