I saw nothing but positives for Yankee fans when the Steinbrenner II regime surprisingly bypassed Yankee legend Don Mattingly as successor to Joe Torre and opted instead for Joe Girardi. Girardi, no Gentleman Joe like his predecessor, would, I believed, shake up the New York clubhouse, roiling the staid, business-like squad and making it a bit more aggressive and contentious.

But Girardi has only looked foolish in his first public dust-up of spring training. First he called out some poor Tampa Rays kid for barreling into a Yankee minor-league catcher on a play at the plate. The catcher, a AA prospect, broke his wrist as a result of the collision. Girardi, himself a former catcher, insisted that kind of play had no place in spring training, ignoring the fact that spring training was the only place the youngster had to impress Tampa's brass and that Girardi would likely have praised that kind of aggressive, but clean baserunning from one of his. Moreover, while all men may be equal in the cosmic scheme of things, it isn't so on the baseball diamond. And it wasn't like the Tampa Bay player bowled over Yankee star Jorge Posada and knocked him out for part of the season.

But Girardi's comments led to a predictable result in this week's rematch between New York and Tampa. In the first inning Wednesday, Yankee pitcher Heath Phillips hit the Rays' prize rookie, Evan Longoria, and was ejected. Then far more egregiously, New York's Shelley Duncan, who had mouthed off a bit after the earlier game, slid spikes up into the groin of Ray second basemen Akinori Iwamura. Duncan was ejected, but not before both team's benches emptied onto the field--and later Yankee veterans pointedly offered no defense of his baserunning assault. Girardi, however, was unapologetic following the game, saying that nothing upset him that day except "that my catcher's having surgery today."

In 2006, Girardi was fired from his last managerial job with the Florida Marlins after a season which would earn him Manager of the Year honors. His downfall came when he popped off at the team's owner for his caustic comments aimed at umpires from the stands. While I still think Girardi will invigorate this unusually youthful Yankee team, one has to at least wonder if there's some loose wiring in his brain-mouth connection that might eventually lead to a swift downfall in what is one of baseball's toughest towns.