Alaska Employment Law

Here’s one the conspiracy theorists haven’t mentioned, to my knowledge: How is it that Selena Roberts, writing for Sports Illustrated, just happened to blow the lid off Alex Rodriguez’s steroid use at about the same time that Joe Torre and Tom Verducci (a well known, and very good, Sports Illustrated writer) were publishing and promoting The Yankee Years? Hmmmm? I’m sure it’s just a coincidence.

For all the controversy about it, The Yankee Years is a thoughtful, measured, entertaining baseball book. But let’s not kid ourselves about the author. I have read enough of Tom Verducci’s work to know that he wrote this book, and doubtless Joe Torre gave him a lot of good stuff to write about. It’s a fine entertainment. I had no idea what an important role David Cone played in the clubhouse of the late 1990s Yankees teams that won all those World Series titles, and if I had understood better in what disarray the Yankees were after the 2003 season, I would not, as a loyal Red Sox fan, have worried quite so much in 2004 and afterwards. As painful as it was to read about the Aaron Boone game in 2003, it was a true joy to read about the 2004 ALCS (bring back Kevin Millar!). There are excellent pieces in the book about David Wells, and Kevin Brown, about A-Fraud and Carl Pavano and Roger Clemens (whose pre-game “warm-up” techniques with the Yankees are revealed to be a little teensy bit bizarre), about the decline of George Steinbrenner and the rise of the “committee” that, with general manager Brian Cashman, now essentially runs the team.

The second half of The Yankee Years really fits in with a line of baseball books starting with Michael Lewis’s Moneyball: The Art of Winning an Unfair Game and Buster Olney’s The Last Night of the Yankee Dynasty: The Game, the Team, and the Cost of Greatness. All three of these are terrific books to take on the plane with you as you fly down to Florida for spring training - or as you huddle by your fireplace in what’s left of winter. Play ball!