It's Gotta Be The Cap!

I didn't see much baseball over the weekend, but I did wake up Sunday morning with a replay of the Yankees-Blue Jays game. ESPN Taiwan loves to beat the Wang-kees into the hearts and minds of the local citizenry, and for a Yankee lifer living on the island, it's heavenly.

The first thing I saw when I looked at the television was Joe Girardi sitting in his chair among the other coaches near the on-deck circle. And I was struck by something: the way Girardi wears his cap. And at that moment, I realized we're better off now than we were with St. Joe.

When I was a soldier, one way we used to gauge a new leader was to spot his cap. We knew right off if an officer or a higher-ranking NCO was going to be a prick, a marshmallow, or a hard core, ass-busting (as in, respectable) soldier. We despised the first two, and longed for the third.

The marshmallow was the easiest to spot. He never broke his bill. These types would pull a cap off the rack at the clothing sales store and slip it onto his (West) pointy little head. The bill would extend out flat and unbent, like half a camouflage frisbee had gotten embedded into his forehead. He looked ridiculous, and we knew that if this guy didn't have the stones to break a bill on his BDU cap, he wouldn't have the brick balls to lead a unit on a real mission.

The prick was somewhat more difficult to discern, because his cap resembled the ass-buster's, but only just. Both guys liked to crack their bills on the sides and fold them down across the temples. But what gave away the prick was that he always went too far. He went Hollywood, covering his eyes by pulling the tip of the bill down just above the tip of his nose, and he would hold that permanent Clint Eastwood glare, one eye squinted and the other looking off into the distance for what, nobody knew. We figured he didn;t want us to see his eyes because if we did, we'd know he was ten percent talk and ninety percent bullshit. And that's where the ass-buster had him beat.

Soldiers love a hard-ass leader because for all the shit he drags you through, he lets you know where you stand, and he's usually right there in the shit with you. His bill is broken because it's supposed to be. It looks soldierly. The soldier's uniform isn;t a goddamned tuxedo, and it isn't supposed to be worn like one, a la the marshmallow. But a uniform cap isn't a weapon of intimidation, either, which is what the prick likes to think every time he slips it on and pulls it down cover his face.

Seeing Joe Girardi, his cap cracked and his eyes surveying the field, made me realize something about Joe Torre -- and God bless him, because I loved him -- and that was that he never cracked his bill. He wore the Yankee cap as if it were a toupee, just sitting up there to cover the recedes. I never saw Joe in his manager's uniform and thought that he was just one step away from leaping that top step of the dugout and going toe-to-Torre with anyone who might slip in a sucker punch to one of his guys. Some writers have called that the mature approach, and there's no denying that. But there's also no denying that these Yankees -- and I mean the aging vets who have been there and done that more than a few times -- maybe needed the fire of Joe, the Younger. They needed to know that there was someone behind them with a fire, not just for their game, but a fire for their asses. No one doubts that Joe Torre was the absolute right man for the Yankees when he came aboard 12 years ago -- and maybe he wasn't a marshmallow, but he certainly wasn't General Patton, either -- but likewise, no one can doubt that the fire this team is playing with now is a direct result of the harder-assed approach that Joe Girardi has brought to the club. Has too much been made of Girardi's toughness since the Rays incidents? Probably, but I'm not talking about the media hype that rose up around those two regrettable plays. I'm talking about the inescapable impression that this Yankee team has a new feel about it, a new hustle and urgency that weren't there -- at least not all the time, anyway -- during the last years of Joe Torre. When he said recently that he thought the change was good for both parties, him and the Yankees, he was dead-on (not that that was news to anyone). Torre had become mellow if not marshmallowed, and while there is a place for the ol' softie in baseball circles, that place is not occupying the first seat in the dugout. Let Don Zimmer play that role, wherever he happens to be (Tampa this season). Torre seemed to be headed n that direction. We all wish him well in Los Angeles, but we're also all kind of glad he's there now, and not here.

With Michael Jordan, it was said that "It's gotta be the shoes." Maybe now, with Joe Girardi, it's gotta be the cap. He wears it like a hard-assed, butt-busting, no-nonsense go-getter. A leader. Jerry Seinfeld was right when he said we're all just rooting for laundry, but sometimes it's how you wear the laundry that matters, and I like what I see when I see Joe Girardi back in a Yankee uniform.