Dressed all in black, from his tam golf cap to his dress shoes, Reggie Jackson sauntered up to Jason Giambi for a chat behind the McAfee Coliseum batting cage. Giambi listened, but the conversation did not last long.
Giambi had work to do with an impish-looking fellow leaning on the cage, the one with the dark blue warm-up top and a tall sheet of paper rising out of his back pocket.
Giambi sees that fellow, the Yankees hitting coach Don Mattingly, as the possible savior of his career at a time when a savior is exactly what he needs.
PHOTO: EPA
Already, Tino Martinez credits Mattingly for his sudden power surge, with homers in five consecutive games (all Yankee victories) going into the game Friday night with the Athletics.
The symmetry of this was not lost on Mattingly, who retired after the 1995 season. Martinez succeeded Mattingly at first base for the Yankees, and Giambi succeeded Martinez. Now they are all together in pinstripes, the successors grasping for wisdom from the man they followed.
"It's kind of weird that we've all been here a long time," Mattingly said. "Somebody said the other day it's like 20 years with all three, and all three guys are in the same clubhouse now.
"But it's also pretty cool. I've always thought there was a bond between our organization, and also you've got a bond at our position, and we've been through the same thing -- probably me less than them."
Manager Joe Torre said Giambi, who batted eighth Friday night as the designated hitter, would play extensively on this six-game trip. Torre said he needed to know whether Giambi could hit. If he flops, the Yankees may ask him to go to the minors to regain his timing and stroke.
"He obviously has the ability to be a big player," Torre said. "He's been a big player. He can be a big help to us if we find that guy again. He can't find it on the bench."
Implementing what Mattingly has been telling him may determine whether Giambi finds it at all. Torre and Mattingly think Giambi is waiting too long to start his swing, which is why balls he used to whack have been getting by him in his 0-for-15, 10-strikeout swoon since April 28. Mattingly said Giambi needed to swing at the ball farther in front of the plate than he had been.
"I want him to look out front a little bit more, because he's getting beat so far back," Mattingly said.
Torre said Giambi would also play some first base. As the designated hitter, he will take at-bats from Bernie Williams, whom Torre asked to be patient.
"I think the biggest surprise is how upbeat Jason is about going out and getting it back," Torre said. "If I hadn't produced for a while, my confidence would be beat up a little bit."
That is the Mattingly influence.
But Mattingly knows that more than anything, Giambi needs the positive reinforcement only several days of hits and well-struck balls can provide.
"He's got to do it on the field," Mattingly said. "You can say it feels good, you can think it feels good, you can think it may be the right thing, you could be right where you want to be. But if you're not having success with it, you still don't believe it. The bottom line is the bottom line: getting results on the field.
"I don't know how to explain, because I've been through it myself. You go, this isn't right, that isn't right, until suddenly, bam-bam-bam, whoa, there it is, there's that feel. Suddenly, the other way. That's what we look for."
And Mattingly is rooting for Giambi, just as he rooted for Martinez. He respects what they went through, each succeeding a popular player at the position, each enduring to win over the fans of the man who had played before.
Revelations of positive doping tests for nearly two dozen Chinese swimmers that went unpunished sparked an intense flurry of accusations and legal threats between the World Anti-Doping Agency (WADA) and the head of the US drug-fighting organization, who has long been one of WADA’s fiercest critics. WADA on Saturday said it was turning to legal counsel to address a statement released by US Anti-Doping Agency (USADA) CEO Travis Tygart, who said WADA and anti-doping authorities in China swept positive tests “under the carpet by failing to fairly and evenly follow the global rules that apply to everyone else in the world.” The
Taiwanese judoka Yang Yung-wei on Saturday won silver in the men’s under-60kg category at the Asian Judo Championships in Hong Kong. Nicknamed the “judo heartthrob” in Taiwan, the Olympic silver-medalist missed out on his first Asian Championships gold when he lost to Japanese judoka Taiki Nakamura in the finals. Yang defeated three opponents on Saturday to reach the final after receiving a bye through the round of 32. He first topped Laotian Soukphaxay Sithisane in the round of 16 with two seoi nage (over-the-shoulder throws), then ousted Indian Vijay Kumar Yadav in the quarter-finals with his signature ude hishigi sankaku gatame (triangular armlock). He
RALLY: It was only the second time the Taiwanese has partnered with Kudermetova, and the match seemed tight until they won seven points in a row to take the last set 10-2 Taiwan’s Chan Hao-ching and Russia’s Veronika Kudermetova on Sunday won the Porsche Tennis Grand Prix women’s doubles final in Stuttgart, Germany. The pair defeated Norway’s Ulrikke Eikeri and Estonia’s Ingrid Neel 4-6, 6-3, 10-2 in a tightly contested match at the WTA 500 tournament. Chan and Kudermetova fell 4-6 in the first set after having their serve broken three times, although they played increasingly well. They fought back in the second set and managed to break their opponents’ serve in the eighth game to triumph 6-3. In the tiebreaker, Chan and Kudermetova took a 3-0 lead before their opponents clawed back two points, but
Taiwanese gymnast Lee Chih-kai failed to secure an Olympic berth in the pommel horse following a second-place finish at the last qualifier in Doha on Friday, a performance that Lee and his coach called “unconvincing.” The Tokyo Olympics silver medalist finished runner-up in the final after scoring 6.6 for degree of difficulty and 8.800 for execution for a combined score of 15.400. That was just 0.100 short of Jordan’s Ahmad Abu Al Soud, who had qualified for the event in Paris before the Apparatus World Cup series in Qatar’s capital. After missing the final rounds in the first two of four qualifier