FACE OF THE YANKEES
Girardi’s sudden emotional side brings him to forefront of Bomber playoff run
Throughout its history as the network of Major League Baseball, Fox Sports’ coverage has been highlighted by tight camera shots of players’ faces. The camera often finds the marquee mug of a particular team and zooms in on it throughout an LCS or World Series.
This begs the following question: Who is the current face of the Yankees?
The answer Girardi.
This is what happens when someone so buttoned up and in control shows another side of his personality. Here’s a guy who is straighter than an arrow, a manager who once said “he wasn’t running a farewell tour” for Derek Jeter and other Yankee veterans on the way out. The same cat who also wanted everyone to know “he had feelings, too” during the final days of Alex Rodriguez’s controversial Yankees career.
Sure, the Yankees have Judge, Sanchez and Didi. For now, however, the sum of this Yankees team is bigger than any single part.
The Marquee Men Girardi once played with and wound up managing, sucked all the stardust out of the room, reducing him to a prop, especially when compared to Joe Torre. Saint Joe knew how to work the media. His players publicly revered him. Yet in the course of a few days in October that began with Girardi alone on an island after bungling Game 2 of the ALDS (he also concocted a dog-ate-my-homework excuse to justify his ineptitude) and ended with a trip to the ALCS, something changed.
Girardi canned the excuse and took the rap. He publicly showed emotion and how much he cared. While the front office left him hanging, expressing no public support of their beleaguered manager, his young team rallied around him. Inside the Valley of the Stupid, Gasbags were still verbally mugging Girardi, but the majority of the coverage turned positive. Yes, that’s what winning will do. Yet so will seeing a caterpillar turn into a butterfly, so to speak, right before your eyes.
While it wasn’t exactly John (Bluto) Blutarsky screaming “Toga-TogaToga,” Girardi’s description of Todd Frazier saying “Let’s Go!” after the manager addressed his players is close enough. This will be a moment that goes down in Yankees history, when a chapter is written about a young team that wasn’t expected to even contend for the 2017 postseason.
Even when the Yankees were making their push, the media focused more on the moves GM Brian Cashman made to build with youth than it did on how Girardi managed the players, getting the most out of them. When it came to Girardi, the storyline was all about the speculation on whether he would be back in 2018.
That’s all changed now. It took a few days of public adversity for the media to turn Girardi into a sympathetic figure. That familiar characterization of a guy with his head stuck in his binder was turned upside down. So, Girardi went into is simple—Joe Friday’s ALCS Game 1 schlepping a revised narrative.
One that will cause Fox’s camera to stare even deeper into the eyes of the face of the Yankees.
YANKEE POSTGAME … ON SNY
Fox Sports has brought new meaning to the term “waiting in the wings.”
That’s what the crew of the Foxowned Yankees Entertainment & Sports Network is doing before its playoff postgame show finally airs. During the Astros-Yankees ALCS, FS1 or Fox Network’s postgame show (scheduled for 30 minutes), featuring Kevin Burkhardt, Alex Rodriguez, Frank Thomas, Keith Hernandez, and David Ortiz will also be simulcast on YES.
At the conclusion of that simulcast, YES’ postgame show will begin. The Fox show is more personality driven and NOT big on manager/ player interviews, etc. While YES’ offering contains more interviews, analysis and less shtick. Fox suits don’t want the two postgame shows going head-to-head so viewers now must stay up later to catch the YES offering.
On Wednesday night, following ALDS Game 5, fans had another option. While YES was waiting to come on the air with its postgame, SNY aired an hour-long edition of “Baseball Night in New York,” which included live postgame interviews and press conferences from Cleveland. SNY will continue airing live sound immediately after ALCS games and expand the length of “BNNY” following crucial ALCS games.
The Fox/YES situation is just another lesson on how business comes first. When the Yankees were the majority owners of YES, the playoff postgame immediately followed the tilt. YES and Yankees brass insisted on it. Now that YES is owned by Fox, the Fox postgame show is the priority. This cannot sit well with those running YES but their hands are tied, so to speak.
For us, well, we know, it’s tough waiting 30 minutes — or longer — to hear John Flaherty’s original analysis but we all will just have to gut it out.
ON HILL
Is Jemele Hill finished at ESPN? No one is suggesting the co-host of “The Six” SportsCenter with Michael Smith is going to be dumped when she returns from her twoweek suspension for violating the Bristol Clown Community College social media policy, but her profile
LESS OF A LO$$
Not even the Yankees making it to the ALCS is going to help WFAN make money on its Bombers radio deal.
“The playoff run will lead to CBS Radio (current owners of FAN) losing less money this season on the Yankees contract,” a radio mole said. He said instead of losing $5 million on the deal this season FAN/CBS will lose “about $3 million.”
CBS/WFAN pays the Yankees $16-to-17 million per year for the right to air Yankees games. During the postseason there is more opportunity for FAN to sell expanded pre- and postgame shows, as well as other shoulder programming, to advertisers. This helps cut the losses.
Yet since the Bombers playoffs games are not exclusive to FAN (they are also heard on ESPN-98.7) as well as SXM’s MLB play-by-play channels, advertisers cannot be charged a premium. Wally