YANKEE NOTES TAMPA – Joe Girardi, who returned to The Bronx when the Yankees shocked the baseball universe and picked up his whopping $3.4 million option, isn’t swallowing all the talk that the Yankees can’t duplicate last year’s dream season.
“It can happen again,” the veteran catcher admitted yesterday after a light workout at the Yankees’ minor league complex. “Bernie [Williams] missed a month, Andy Pettitte didn’t have the best of years, [Hideki] Irabu’s second half wasn’t that good and we missed Tino Martinez for five or six weeks. Why can’t we be as successful? I don’t see why not.”
While Girardi had multi-year offers from the Rockies and Orioles, he envisioned coming back to the Yankees even if they didn’t exercise the option. Yet, when the car phone rang on Halloween with the news that Joe Torre had successfully pushed for the option to be picked up, Girardi was startled.
“I was surprised when they told me what they were doing,” Girardi said. “They hadn’t said I wasn’t going to be a Yankee but they had said no to the option.”
Then at the 11th hour, Torre talked with George Steinbrenner and Girardi was the highest-paid backup catcher in baseball history.
“I was at a drug store when [Brian Cashman] called me. I was telling my wife [Kim] that we should get our stuff out of storage and put the [Florida] house up for sale. It was on a Saturday at 4 o’clock. We had no place to live so the only phone was the car phone and we couldn’t take it out of the car so the chances of reaching me were slim.”
*The shoulders have a little more tone to them than they did a year ago and the mid-section doesn’t appear to be as soft. At 39, it appears Chili Davis is in better shape for his second Yankee camp then his first.
“I did a little more this year than I usually do,” said the switch-hitting DH who missed most of last year with a tendon injury that required surgery.
Davis, who batted .291 in 35 games, took hacks in the cage yesterday.
Pitchers and catchers report today and will hold their first workout tomorrow at Legends Field. First full-scale workout is slated for Feb. 24.