The Yankees are ever so close to re-signing Brett Gardner for his thirteenth season with the team, but until it’s done, it’s not. Let’s wrap this one up…
The Yankees are reportedly moving close to signing a deal with Brett Gardner. Logic suggests that when two entities wish to engage themselves in a partnership, an agreement is more than halfway in the making.
Such is the case with Gardner, who would rather wear a Russian spacesuit in one of their test flights than the uniform of a team other than the Yankees.
But stranger things have happened in business, and this is one player the Yankees need if they wish to bring their 28th World Championship to the city of New York.
The Yankees and Brett Gardner are synonymous
Do you think that’s overly dramatic, maybe? Think again, because this is not about the usual “numbers thing” that determines a player’s value.
Although, when you looked at those 28 home runs and 74 RBI in less than 500 at-bats last year, maybe there’s something there as well.
No, this is about Brett Gardner – the person and the quintessential throwback to what it means to be a New York Yankee.
And no, Gardner does not display the outward sign of allegiance to the Yankees by making it a point to touch the placard just above at the entrance to the dugout from the clubhouse.
You know – the one that Derek Jeter made a point of touching every game that reads “Thank the good Lord for making me a Yankee,” the supposed words of Joe DiMaggio.
Instead, Brett Gardner uses a more unorthodox approach as he bangs on the roof of the Yankees dugout when he is displeased with the calls of umpires, whom he believes are out to get the Yankees.
In the same episode, Gardner prompts his manager, Aaron Boone, to adopt a character totally beyond his nature, advancing to umpires that his Yankees work the strike zone – and they are “f____g savages.”
In the making, Boone becomes a New York folk hero, and Gardner took the brunt of many in baseball who believed his actions to be overboard and unnecessary.
Brett Gardner has that winning “Feeling”
Brett Gardner knows what it feels like to win. He is now with the retirement of CC Sabathia, the team’s last holdover from their last championship season in 2009.
Since then, Brett Gardner has done nothing but lose. So forgive him if he’s a bit tired of going home early in October.
Luis Severino, Gleyber Torres, Aaron Judge, and the rest of the 2020 Yankees may not quite get it yet, but in baseball, you only get so many chances before your time runs out.
For Brett Gardner, his time in the game is short, and for that reason, he brings an immediacy to the Yankees they need in the upcoming season.
Yankees: There is no tomorrow
And no one else on the team can provide that sense of urgency, other than Brett Gardner.
The Yankees front office seems to “get it” in the same fashion as Gardner as they engage in what amounts to an all-out war to sign Gerrit Cole.
But you have to wonder if the young guys with “all those years ahead” want it as badly.
Is this the year, for instance, that Gary Sanchez decides to be all he can be? Does Gleyber Torres take it to an even higher level than he did last year?
And what of Giancarlo Stanton – just who the hell is he as a New York Yankee?
Brett Gardner is overboard. He plays the game as Pete Rose did as if there’s no tomorrow.
But the Yankees need him to be there as a reminder of what it takes to win it all in this league and level of play.
Few of us can even remember where we were and what we were doing in 2009 when the Yankees last won it all. Brett Gardner can – and that’s why the Yankees need him more than ever…
Pay the man – and pay him well.
Baseball, it is said, is only a game. True. And the Grand Canyon is only a hole in Arizona. Not all holes, or games, are created equal.
