« David Ortiz Sits, Speaks
Main
Late Notes, Quotes -- Sox 8, Yanks 5 »

Girardi faces heavy questioning

Joe Girardi is quickly learning the difference between managing in Florida and in New York.

It’s not likely that Girardi ever had a meeting with reporters in Florida, when he was the Marlins’ manager, quite like the one he just had with the writers and broadcasters who cover the Yankees. Rather than looking ahead to tonight’s game, virtually the entire focus of tonight’s session was yesterday’s loss to the Red Sox.

Specifically, Girard was asked _ over and over and over again _ how he came to make the decision to pitch to Manny Ramirez in the sixth inning and whether he would do it again. With runners on second and third and two outs, Girardi let Mike Mussina pitch to the Red Sox slugger. And Ramirez ripped the first pitch into the gap in right-center for the two runs that won the game.

``I’m not going to second-guess what I did yesterday because I took the information that I had at the time and made a decision,’’ Girardi said. ``I thought it was the best decision at that time. I think you can look back on any decision you make in your life and hindsight is 20-20. I can look back at my life and say if I did this, maybe this wouldn‘t have happened.’’

Does that mean he would do the same thing again?

``You learn during the course of a year,’’ he responded. ``You gather information and it has a chance to effect your next decision.’’

What amounted to the same question was asked in about a dozen different ways. Girardi kept his composure throughout.

``The most critical person I have to worry about is myself. How if effects me is what I worry about, not how other people think it’s going to effect me,’’ he said. ``The heart that I have to worry about is the one inside my own body. That’s the one that takes losing hard.’’

Girardi, who was a catcher himself, said he often second-guessed decisions he made calling pitches. He told the story of a game in Minnesota about 10 years ago when he called for a curve from Mike Stanton.

``It lost us a game,’’ Girardi said. ``This is something I’ve been doing along time. You think about the situation you go through.’’

Did the fact that Mussina is a veteran pitcher impact his decision?

``A pitcher of Mike Mussina’s credentials, obviously you’re going to want to know what he thinks. Each decision will be based on that pitcher. It won’t be a blanket decision. It’s a feeling you have,’’ he said.

The only time Girard seemed to get a bit frustrated was when one writer insisted, about the fourth time around, that he was no longer looking back, but more wanted to get an idea how Girardi would manage for the rest of the season.

``I guess we can watch and find out,’’ the new Yankees manager shot back. He obviously wanted to look ahead, not back.

``That’s the great thing about baseball. You’ve got another game you have to worry about,’’ Girardi said. ``As I said yesterday, you live with it and you move on.’’

Posted by Paul Kenyon  at 7:26 PM to Projo Sox Crawl | Permalink

Comments

fc | April 14, 2008 1:14 AM link