Brian Cashman Claims He Never Wanted to Be GM of the Yankees

Brian Cashman and Theo Epstein did one of those "A Conversation With..." blah blah blah type things in Connecticut the other day. And to my complete lack of surprise, Cashman kept up his record about complaining about his job more than anybody in the history of the world, griping about how difficult George Steinbrenner was, and even claiming that Cashman didn't ever really want to be GM of the Yanks. (Really?)

"I never wanted to be the general manager of the New York Yankees," Brian Cashman said, according to Yahoo Sports. "I still don't." Dylan Stableford, the writer of the article, said, "You would think he was joking, but he said it twice."

Brian is babbling sheer nonsense. Why does Cashman say this type of hokum? What is his point, exactly? It's about as believable of the Southern woman who spends days and dollars buying the right dress, then says, "Oh, this old thing" when complimented on it. Fiddle-dee-dee!

The thing is, you don't work your way up the food chain, putting in the crazy, long hours that MLB front office people do, if you don't have your eye on some kind of prize at the end. I interviewed some MLB staffers for an upcoming magazine article, and every single person said how long the hours were. Every day. All year. So why did Cashman put in those sort of hours? Because it was all so he could one day have the honor of being a celebrity bartender at Foley's?
  
And why did Cash not just stay as general manager since 1998, but just sign a new contract with the Yankees, if he really didn't want to be the GM? Because he just wanted to get a chance to rappel down Yankee Stadium in the future?

Here's more from the event. George Steinbrenner "would overreact in every inning. Every inning of every game was Armageddon. He was that way," Cashman said, according to ESPN New York. "That was tough to work through, it really was because everything was the short term, here and now, there was no long term, it was what are you doing in this moment and how are you doing, if you are doing well in this moment." 

Complaining about Steinbrenner being a tough boss is like somebody dating Kim Kardashian in 2012 and griping that she's more interested in publicity than love. You go to work for Steinbrenner, you can't expect sunshine and lollipops every minute.


But even then, we know that the Boss wasn't as tough in the later years as his reputation, and various health reasons ended the Steinbrenner of old. If he were the same old Steinbrenner, heads would have rolled after 2004, for one thing. Yet everybody in power got to keep their jobs after the worst collapse in MLB history. How did that work?
At any rate, nothing is more tedious than hearing people of privilege like Cashman, who have money and fame and power, gripe about how hard their lives are. He ought to team up with actress Katherine Heigl, who is known to do the same sort of moaning about how brutal her life is. Maybe they can go visit some people struggling right here in the good ol' USA, and see how good they have it. Or maybe they can make their tales of woe into a movie -- "Two for the Money."

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Who Is Promoting Brian Cashman as Red Sox GM -- Brian Cashman?

I should be used to Yankee GM Brian Cashman's constant need for whining, puffery and self-promotion by now -- after all, just last month, he complained to ESPN New York's about how his current job required "a price of time, effort, expectations, pressure, stress levels, all that different stuff." You know, kind of like how every other job in the universe does, but at a close to $3 million a year salary. Boo bleeding hoo.

Anyhow, I was still taken aback by the "rumor" that Cashman could be in the running for taking over Theo Epstein's GM position in Boston. Who fed the media the rumor -- Cashman himself? (Incidentally, remember this summer, how Cashman's name was included as a possibility to be the new Cubs' GM? Yet it looks like Chicago only talked to Theo Epstein for the job? Funny how that works.)

It wouldn't be the first time Cashman threw his hat in the ring to be Boston's GM. Remember that New York Magazine profile of him from the summer of 2004, where his wife Mary said, “Brian would like to go to Boston and win the World Series as general manager of the Red Sox. That would be any man’s dream, to go up there and become the god of Boston." That was the same profile which had Brian talking about how smart he was in getting Javier Vazquez over Curt Schilling, and had some anonymous agent praising his trade of Jeff Weaver for the immortal Kevin Brown. At any rate, the fact that Cashman never even got called on the carpet in Yankeeland for that interview showed that the days of the Big Bad Boss were long over. But I digress.

Anyhow, aside from the fact that it's very likely, given how much he has been included in postseason postmortems, that Red Sox assistant GM Ben Cherington is going to be the next GM of the Boston Red Sox, what, exactly, would convince Boston ownership that Brian Cashman would be the right man for the job? What would make their fan base accept somebody who has spent his entire career in the Yankees organization?That at least the Yanks' overpriced free agent pitcher A.J. Burnett stays in the dugout and watches his team during games, unlike fried-chicken eating, beer-drinking, video-game playing John Lackey? (Incidentally, if you haven't read the Boston Globe's investigation of what went wrong, please do so. It is absolutely delicious reading for Red Sox haters!)

I also had to laugh of the ridiculousness of Yankee president Randy Levine's own puffery in declaring that the 2011 Yankees season was a failure, then talking in the same interview about bringing back Cashman. Remember, Levine said: "We are the Yankees. That is the way The Boss set it up. When you don't win the World Series, it is a bitter disappointment and not a successful year." So, when is Levine handing in his own resignation? Or looking for a new GM? Gee, you'd think that all this talk of "World Series or bust" is just a sop to the rubes, since nobody ever actually loses his job or anything! Not even a general manager who once looked longingly at being Boston's GM!

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Report: Were Boston Red Sox Pitchers Drinking Beer During Games?

Quick squawk, as I breathe a sigh of relief that Freddy Garcia, not A.J. Burnett, is the Yankees' Game 3 starter: I read this in today's Boston Herald: "According to multiple sources, more than one pitcher drank beer in the clubhouse during games on the days he didn’t pitch." If this report is true, are you flipping kidding me? Geez, is it too much to expect your players to say sober when they are in uniform during games? And what the heck was Terry Francona doing when some members of his rotation may have been treating game time as Miller Time?

Good grief. Maybe I'm naive, but other than the famous Jack Daniels shot in the Sox clubhouse before Game 7 of the 2004 ALCS, I haven't heard many stories of players drinking beer in uniform during games. Even David Wells, for all his partying ways, was never accused of boozing it up during a game. Whether or not it was a game a player was pitching in is irrelevant. Crazy times!

I listened to the Terry Francona/Theo Epstein presser yesterday, and while they didn't give explicit details, they did acknowledge that there was some clubhouse turmoil and a bad atmosphere, so much so that Francona had to call a team meeting after a 14-0 win! Terry admitted that "We were spending too much energy on things that weren’t putting our best foot forward toward winning." Interesting!

The thing that got me with that press conference was that they both acknowledged problems in the clubhouse, as well as players not being in good physical condition. Hmmmm, isn't that the manager's job? To keep the players working together, and make sure they are ready to play?

(The other thing that amazed me in the presser was Theo Epstein suggesting that John Lackey just couldn't help it when he rolled his eyes at his teammates and his manager. What, is he suffering from Sarcasm Syndrome or something, where he just can't help but show his disdain to others?)

Anyhow, I'm not exactly going out on a limb here, but my guess is that Francona is going to "leave" today as Sox manager, but it really be a firing by the front office. Speaking of which, I got a link in my email yesterday from SaveTito.com. This Yankee fan completely agrees -- I think Tito ought to be Red Sox manager for life. Get your popcorn ready!


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