Strange set-fellows
More laughs than rivalry for Joe & Pedro on MLB
Joe Girardi’s first season away from being Yankees manager has brought a lot of what he predicted in those sobering days after being told he would not return.
There are more dinners with his wife, more time spent watching his three kids play sports and a baseball broadcasting job.
There is also the unexpected: such as friendship with former Red Sox ace Pedro Martinez. The two have spent time together as colleagues at MLB Network, including breaking down a Yankees-Red Sox series in May. They also have seen each other outside of the studio, as their high-school-age sons were baseball teammates in the spring.
“We laughed most of the time. I was watching his young son play and [he’d] had a couple of big swings and hit a double off the wall. I asked him, ‘Pedro you didn’t swing like that?’ He said, ‘Yeah, but I could bunt.’
“‘You’d probably knock him down if he had hacks like that.’ He said, ‘Probably,’ ” Girardi recalled before getting back to the YankeesRed Sox rivalry.
“All the great games the teams have had together over the past years, the confrontations that have taken place through the years. It was a lot of fun.”
Girardi did not expect to be spending time in MLB Network’s Secaucus, N.J., studios this season. The 53-year-old led the Yankees to within one game of the World Series last season and the re-upping of his contract initially felt like a formality, until word started to leak out there was doubt on the Yankees’ end.
“The relationships with the players, coaches, your staff, training staff, front office,” Girardi said when asked what he missed about managing. “The competition, obviously, I really miss. I used to love that part of it. Seeing young players have success, maybe you had your hand in it a little bit. Seeing a guy get his first hit, his first home run, seeing players grow as people and players where they continue to improve. I really miss that.”
Girardi has made no secret he hopes to return to managing. When he was fired by the Marlins after one season in 2006, he rejoined the YES Network where he had worked previously and spent another year there before taking the Yankees job. He sees advantages of working at a place now where he is focused on every team, as opposed to just one as he would if he was working as a manager or in any one team’s booth.
“I think doing this and following all 30 teams gives you more knowledge about players that you might be managing against or for [in the future],” Girardi said. “As an American League guy, you’d see one NL division a few times a year and that was it. You may not play the Padres for a few years, so you are not really familiar with them. I am familiar with all of baseball more than if I was just managing a team.”
Girardi said he does have to learn some new broadcasting tricks after spending a decade in the Yankees clubhouse. His nights at MLB Network are spent in their whip-around coverage with seven or eight games going simultaneously.
“Obviously technology has changed since the last time I’ve done this, but it really hasn’t changed my approach,” Girardi said. “It’s easy to break down a play and say, ‘This is what went wrong,’ but I’ll never forget how hard it was as a player. ... The one thing that you have to get used to is watching so many games at one time. They’re all put on the screens in front of you and I always found that interesting. It’s easier to watch one, but I am learning how to do that.”