[新聞] Restored Yankees point to meeting

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Restored Yankees point to meeting

Thursday, June 14, 2007
BY LISA KENNELLY
Star-Ledger Staff

NEW YORK -- The Yankees' season was slipping away.

The players kept predicting a turnaround for weeks. They were playing below
expectations, they all said. Any moment now, things would turn around.

But they just kept losing and the Red Sox kept getting further ahead in the
division.

Then came the meeting.

For 50 minutes inside the cinder block walls of Rogers Centre clubhouse in
Toronto, the Yankees -- superstars and reserves alike -- closed the doors and
vented about a season gone awry. For a team that goes about its business with
a cool detachment, voices were raised, according to players at the May 28
meeting.

"All the teams I've been through, anywhere, I've never had a meeting like
that before," veteran reliever Ron Villone said. "On 10 teams, I've been in
dozens of meetings. This meeting was more of a food for thought, for
yourself, more than anything else. Like, look in the mirror, and go out and
feel good about yourself."

With the air cleared, the Yankees then went out and lost their next two
games. But players and coaches agree now that something changed that
afternoon. With last night's 7-2 win over Arizona, the Yankees have an
eight-game winning streak, and the meeting in the narrow visitors locker room
in Toronto is seen as the point their fortunes started to turn.

"Sometimes it takes a couple of days to channel that in the right direction,"
Alex Rodriguez said. "We talked about it in Toronto, we felt we were so
uptight, so trying to please, that it kind of worked against us for a couple
of days.

"It was (about) basically to tighten things up, top to bottom. But as a
result of trying to do that, maybe we got a little bit uptight."

Thanks to Mike Mussina's strongest start of the season and a trio of home
runs by Alex Rodriguez, Hideki Matsui and Jorge Posada, they are above .500,
at 32-31, for the first time since April 20, when they were 8-7.

The Yankees lost seven straight after that, and continued to skid until they
"bottomed out," manager Joe Torre said during that series in Toronto

A person in the room at the meeting, who spoke on the condition of anonymity
because it was to be kept private, said it began with Torre and fiery
third-base coach Larry Bowa addressing the team, emphasizing the importance
of playing with more discipline.

Then they left, leaving the players alone for what was described as lots of
"yelling and screaming" with a lot of players getting things off their
chests.

The meeting lasted so long the Yankees were late to their pregame stretching
routine and had to cut batting practice short.

"I think it just got to the point," Torre said, "where everybody was so
conscious of how bad we were doing, that it just got to them emotionally."

It's hard to identify the precise cause and effect of the meeting and the hot
streak, particularly when the Yankees have had personnel changes along the
way. The most notable example is Jason Giambi's trip to the disabled list,
which has proved a boon for players like Johnny Damon, who has taken over the
designated hitter role with Melky Cabrera in center.

Still, it's hard to deny that the team has been a lot looser and more relaxed
over the past two weeks, which could well be the result of a catharsis in
Toronto. One player called it an "attitude adjustment," pointing out that
it's all the same players on the team, but the results are completely
different.

"It was just a different kind of meeting," said Villone, who has played for
10 teams over the past 12 seasons. "It was real different. It was nice to
have everybody together, because we're so spread out even during the day;
playing the game and concentrating on that, sometimes you don't get to feel
what everybody is going through. You may see it on the field, but you don't
know what everybody is really thinking."

The results in the win column since then, at least, are unmistakable. Since
dropping those two games in Toronto, the Yankees have won four straight
series after not winning back-to-back series all season until last week, when
they took two of three from the Boston Red Sox and three of four from the
Chicago White Sox.

They also picked up a game on the division-leading Red Sox, who lost to
Colorado last night, and are now 8 1/2 games back in the American League East
and 4 1/2 games back in the wild-card race.

"I think we were all hoping to get back to .500 by the Fourth of July or so,"
Mussina said. "You get to .500 and you can realistically look at wild-card
stuff. We've made our way back to .500 a little faster than we were aiming
for. Now we have to play well from this point forward."



Staff writer Ed Price contributed to this report. Lisa Kennelly may be
reached at [e-mail]
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神秘的多倫多會議終於解密了 ^_^


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推 parabird:真神奇!開個會就改變了一切..........