Joe Girardi at Fault

Not a good start for the new Joe. I'm a huge Yankees fan, and yet I will be the first one to tell you New York is at fault in the recent brawl with the Tampa Bay Rays. Manager Joe Girardi's comments following the Rays' Elliot Johnson's collision with Yankees' catcher Francisco Cervelli last Saturday set off this entire string of events. "It's just disheartening. It's spring training, I just don't understand," Girardi was quoted as saying. It was unusual for a hard-nosed catcher like Girardi to be upset over a clean play like Johnson running into Cervelli. Even former Yankees bench coach Don Zimmer, who says Girardi is like a son to him, found the reaction odd. "I can't believe that he went after it the way he did," said Zimmer, who is now a senior adviser with Tampa Bay. "That's not Joe Girardi." New York's Shelley Duncan then responded on Wednesday by spiking Tampa Bay's Akinori Iwamuri during a slide into second base. That was not a clean ... [link]