Jason and Sheffield

Wednesday, February 16 was a day that saw Gary Sheffield’s previously unassailable New York image put at risk. The back page of the Post screamed “Cry Baby,” as in, that’s what Sheff called Giambi; the Daily News took a similar tone. Rushing past the newsstands on my way to work Wednesday morning, I glanced at the papers and thought, oh no. What was Gary doing? Why would he go out of his way to sound so righteous and cut down his teammate? Was this the selfish player about whom we had heard last winter and promptly forgotten because of his monster year? Until lunch, I had Gary pegged as a jerk, and I felt duped—he’d tricked me into liking him, into chanting “Sheff, Sheff, Sheff,” from the bleachers until he nodded at us, even into wearing a shirt with his name on the back. Now he had broken with the Yankees’ policy of supporting their embattled teammate, shown no regard for clubhouse harmony or unity entering the season, and sounded like a moralizing hypocrite. How dare he!

Yes, I got that worked up after reading two words, cry and baby. When I actually read the papers, the picture was, of course, more complex. Nowhere, in any of the articles was Sheffield quoted using the phrase “cry baby.” His comments were pretty harsh, but bereft of the sensationalism promised by the covers.

Sensationalism aside, however, the dynamic between Sheffield and Giambi is shaping up to be interesting. On Friday, February 19, Mike Francesca, on Mike and the Mad Dog, said, “He gets in trouble, Giambi, because he told the truth to the grand jury.” Francesca, in the middle of an anti-Sheffield diatribe, touched on an important point: Jason Giambi is in the position he is in—finding himself the face of steroids in baseball—because of a leak in grand jury testimony in which he refused to perjure himself. When asked, he offered a detailed history of his steroid use. Sheffield and Barry Bonds, who also testified, must not have admitted anything (Sheffield stuck with his story about rubbing cream on his leg that, oops, turned out to be steroid-based) or else it surely would have come out in the press.

If one wants to assume that Sheffield and Bonds have been steroid users—and this is a big assumption based only on speculation, one that I do not advocate believing without evidence—than a case could be made for Giambi being the most admirable of the three. He cheated on the field, but he told the truth about it. I’m not trying to make a hero out of him for this, but it should count for something. Based on that and on his press conference a few weeks ago, he seems genuine about his desire for atonement. There is a part of me that says, hey, everyone makes huge mistakes, and it shows strong character to admit them and apologize.

Sheffield’s tactic is different. He is sticking with his story (another media myth that sprang up this week was that he denied what he had previously admitted about the oops cream. Francesca repeatedly hammered Sheff on this point during Friday’s show. What Gary actually said was, as quoted by Anthony McCarron in the Daily News, “When people sit here and say I didn’t know I took steroids—I didn’t take steroids. The bottom line is I put cream on my leg, and if somebody says that’s steroids, that’s a bunch of hogwash.” This is the same thing he said when the story broke last October. Sheffield clearly does not, and never has, equated his steroid-based oops cream with Steroids, capital S. Just another case of the media convoluting the truth, but I digress).

Early last week, the consensus among the Yankees seemed to have been to publicly support Giambi. Tuesday’s headline in the Daily News, in fact, was “Yankee mates go to bat for Jason.” Jeter, Tino, Carl Pavano and John Flaherty all said that Giambi was their teammate and it was their job to support him, no matter what he had done. This seemed reasonable, and professional. The goal is victory, and victory is achieved, in part, by maintaining team chemistry. After reading the papers on Monday and Tuesday, I wondered if I’d have anything to write about in this blog if all the Yankees continued pledging such boring allegiance.

Sheffield, in opening his mouth, ensured that this fear would be short-lived. As McCarron reported, Sheff went on to say, “I’m not like Jason Giambi. I’m not going to sit and cry about things being unfair or attacks are unfair.”

Gee, that wasn’t very nice. What will it be like when these guys meet face-to-face next week?

In Giambi’s defense, I don’t recall him crying about anything being unfair, but I’ll take another look at the press conference to be sure. That aside, Sheffield seems to be pushing hard to situate himself outside the Giambi-Bonds-Sheff ’roid trinity. If his story is true, then this is understandable. One’s legacy is important, and nobody would want to see theirs unfairly besmirched. But Gary, on CenterStage with Michael Kay a few months ago, declared that the only thing important to him is winning a championship. He has said repeatedly that statistics don’t matter to him, and that he only wants to win. His words last week seem to have been spoken in opposition to these goals: there is no way that they, or the exaggerated press coverage that he must have known they would generate, can do anything but hurt the Yankees.

So Sheffield acted in his own best interests, rather than in the best interests of his team. His reasons were obvious, even understandable, though counter-productive to what he claims are his goals. It will be interesting to see if he continues to separate himself from his team, and it will be interesting to see if Giambi ends up being a divisive or unifying presence.