DUNEDIN, FLA. -- Word from across Tampa Bay doesn't paint a pretty picture of life in the New York Yankees' camp. No Bernie. No Rocket (not yet). A little Joe, but way too much A-Rod and Pavano and Mussina. A DUI infraction for the guy who just happens to be George Steinbrenner's son-in-law and the Yankees' managing general partner, Steve Swindal. Mariano in a contractual drama.
Yes, it all sounds as if the Yankees pretty much have the rest of the American League East where they want it. Like the rest of the baseball world, the Toronto Blue Jays know the reluctance of Derek Jeter and Alex Rodriguez to hang out or break bread together is meaningless insofar as it indicates the Yankees will be any less prepared to defend their division title. This is the AL East, after all. We persevere.
Rodriguez is baseball's version of the dumb blonde, and it was his air-headed musings about a deterioration in his relationship with Jeter that started the latest nonsense. Jeter has never had much time for Rodriguez's Anna Nicole Smith act -- it is one of Jeter's weaknesses, along with dating starlets -- so he responded by saying people have all along made too many assumptions about his relationship with Rodriguez. And, of course, he's right. He's Derek Jeter.
Relax, people. The division title hasn't been won or lost yet, just as it wasn't won last week when the Daisuke Matsuzaka PR machine whirred into gear at the Boston Red Sox' site in Fort Myers, Fla. The first ulnar or medial collateral ligament hasn't popped yet and already there's a great rush to read this or that into this word or that glance.
Look, this is the AL East. Stuff happens. Manny Ramirez is going to report late. J.D. Drew will probably be hurt. The Baltimore Orioles and Tampa Bay Devil Rays are irrelevant and the Yankees and Red Sox will have pitching injuries. So will the Blue Jays.
As Roy Halladay has already said, the AL Central is so good, the wild card won't be coming out of the AL East any time soon. So buckle up and know this about the Yankees' melodrama: They are Jeter's team. Rodriguez? He doesn't have enough currency within that clubhouse to cause a rift, even though the Yankees haven't been the same since the Paul O'Neills of the world starting drifting away. And even though all this appears to be Rodriguez's ham-handed attempt to signal that he will likely exercise the escape clause in his contract at the end of the season -- hey, Alex, don't let the door hit you on the way out -- both he and Jeter are such capitalists in the baseball sense (when it comes to both money and statistics) that they'll continue to realize they need each other.
As for your Blue Jays? They'll open full workouts this morning as a team of happy campers, for what it's worth. They have a surplus of veteran pitchers with something to prove, guys like Victor Zambrano pitching for just one more contract. Always a good thing. Their next major contractual issue won't surface until the end of next year, at which point A.J. Burnett has to make a call on the escape clause (what, you forgot he had one?) in the five-year contract he signed before last winter. Plenty of time to worry about that.
The Big Hurt, Frank Thomas, has already started to put his mark on the team. He and Troy Glaus seem to have adopted a "You first, no, really, after you, I insist" approach to who'll bat cleanup. And Thomas showed a remarkable sensibility in the way he approached Lyle Overbay about acquiring Overbay's uniform No. 35.
After quickly giving his blessing, Overbay didn't know what to say when Thomas said he wanted to "do something" for him. Thomas called Overbay's wife, Sarah, and asked whether she thought her husband would like him to commission a painting of Overbay by Vernon Wells Sr., a well known portrait artist and the father of the Blue Jays' centre fielder. Of course he would, she responded, especially if Wells could paint the couple's two sons, two-year-old Adam and Alex, into the picture. She sent pictures of the kids to Wells's father and made a pact with Thomas to keep it a secret from Overbay, who was caught off guard by the gesture.
"Pretty special," said Overbay, who signed a four-year, $24-million (U.S.) contract over the winter. "I mean, you don't know somebody so you don't know what their tastes or their likes are, and then somebody goes that far for you . . . it just tells you something about the type of person he [Thomas] is. To have that happen to me -- and to sign that contract and stay in a place I really wanted to stay -- it made for a pretty good winter."
