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New England baseball fans will never support the New York Yankees. Any opportunity to fuel Yankee hatred is more than welcomed, as was the case with the Yankees request for a forfeit of Monday’s postponed game versus Tampa Bay. However, it seems as though people are ignoring the facts of the case and jumping straight to opinion.
The Commissioner’s office told the Yankees that Tampa would be in town by Monday at the latest, ready to play the doubleheader. The Commissioner’s office then requested that Tampa leave town Friday night (when Detroit left) or Saturday, to avoid possible travel problems. Hearing this, the Devil Rays administration notified Bob DuPuy, MLB President, that they were unable to secure a charter, and that they would leave sometime Sunday. However, on Sunday, the weather became too dangerous to travel, and the Devil Rays were forced to delay their flight and miss their scheduled start versus the Yankees.
Yankees general manager, Brian Cashman, and President, Randy Levine, were not upset because Tampa missed the game, or because they chose to stay at home during the storm, but rather because they didn’t foresee potential problems with leaving so late. If Tampa had told the Commissioner’s office last Friday, following their game with Detroit, that because of the situation, the Monday doubleheader at New York had to be cancelled, then alternative arrangements could have been made. However when a team decides it’s more convenient to not show up for a scheduled start time, many problems arise. To support their point, Cashman reminded the Commissioner’s office of last year’s September 18 game versus Baltimore, when Hurricane Isabel was ripping through the Mid-Atlantic. After five innings with the Orioles, the game was suspended and made up the following week. Cashman acknowledged that natural disasters are not new to the sport, however the proper steps need to be followed so that every team can have equal guidelines in times of potential disasters.
Cashman and Levine did not demand a forfeit from the league. They sent in a request that Tampa’s actions be reviewed. “Ultimately, all we’ve asked for is for the second game to be moved to the end of the season,” Cashman said. “If [the Commissioner's office] determine that the directives from Major League Baseball were not followed, then that game should be considered a forfeit. If their directives were followed and they couldn’t get out, then we play the game, if necessary, at the end of the year.”
The request for the league to review their course of actions doesn’t sound like a demand at all, but rather a reasonable request after Tampa had clearly caused an inconvenience.
On another note, directed at the motives of Tampa’s choice to stay in town, I’m not entirely sure that their decision can be completely rationalized. Although I do not have housing records of all the Tampa Bay players, I can put together some reasonable logic that says the majority of their players were not really at home with their families. Eight of the Devil Rays players, on their 29 man roster, are younger than 24, and likely do not have families they need to support. Regardless of that, on Tampa’s roster eight players are from countries other than the U.S.A., and only six players were born or attended school in the state of Florida. To me, this means that most of the Tampa Bay lineup makes their permanent home outside of Florida.
The league also made no accommodations for players on other MLB teams, who live in the Tampa area, or the Caribbean, which was another location seriously damaged by the hurricanes. If these players wanted to take a few days off and see if their families were safe and sound, they weren’t granted this special privilege.
To be fair to the rest of the league, Tampa cannot start taking days off to accommodate what they feel is right, without clearance from the league. Cashman, Levine and the Yankees felt that Tampa went about things in an improper manner, and asked the league to review the case and act in accordance with league rules. I truly feel that the Yankees had every right to put in the request that they did, even though I am not a Yankee fan. Furthermore, I agree with Selig’s ruling, but I am not in any way ashamed of the Yankees, or upset with their actions. Besides, if the game were at Fenway, what would Theo Epstein do?
