IN many ways, John Olerud walks into the clubhouse already equipped to being a perfect Yankee because he fulfills five basic requirements.
1. He uses the term, “It’s all about winning” a lot.
2. He has a long resume of distinct professionalism.
3. His mere presence is sure to immediately irritate Met fans.
4. He is more apt to lead Yankee Stadium in a raucous seventh-inning rendition of “Cotton-Eye Joe” than to ever utter a controversial syllable.
5. He already has two World Series rings.
So if this isn’t a perfect marriage, the Yankees and Olerud, Olerud and the Yankees, then it was certainly better than anything you’re going to see on reality television anytime soon.
Olerud has won a batting title. He has those two World Series titles, won back-to-back with the Blue Jays early in his career. Once, a long time ago, he was the first building in what became an all-too-brief Met renaissance.
“He’s a very good player. He’s had a very good career. I think this is going to work out well for both of us, the team and for John,” said Joe Torre, the Yankees manager, who understands the value of having someone like Olerud in his clubhouse because he won a lot of championships back when he had a lot of guys like Olerud in his clubhouse.
“This is a great opportunity for him to show he can still play. And it’s a great chance for us to try and get through while we wait for Jason [Giambi] to get healthy. It’s win-win.”
His final few months with the Mariners scream that Olerud’s best days are behind him, but we all know the addition of pinstripes to a lagging career has a funny way of turning that around. Olerud would seem to have the perfect stroke for Yankee Stadium – anyone who swings a lefty bat that gracefully, that Mattingly-ly, has a perfect stroke for Yankee Stadium – even if he demurs, saying, “When I try to yank it to right field, that’s when I know I’m doing something wrong, because I’m an up-the-middle, hit-it-the-other-way kind of guy.”
Fair enough.
But Olerud’s main contribution over the next few months will likely have less to do with how he plays than how he conducts his business. Even when he was with the Mets, there was always a sense that Olerud would have fit perfectly into the Yankees’ business-first gallery of quiet professionals.
And yesterday, as he slipped into a No. 18 uniform for the first time, as he scattered reporters notebooks with perfectly polite and perfectly unusable quotations, it wasn’t difficult to make the leap to another incarnation of Yankees, the ones who made the last decade their own.
It wasn’t hard to look at John Olerud and see Scott Brosius. It wasn’t hard to listen to Olerud and hear Paul O’Neill. Soon enough, it probably won’t be too hard to watch Olerud play and not hearken back to the way another first baseman named Tino Martinez used to conduct his business.
In many ways, it seems that Olerud channels all those old Yankees, those departed Yankees, the ones who formed the competitive heart and clubhouse soul of the team that won four championships in five years – half of them while Olerud was across town, watching from the safe remove of Shea Stadium.
“This is a place I’ve always admired, a team I’ve always admired because of the way they do things,” Olerud said. “I think it’s going to work out well around here.”
Paul O’Neill couldn’t have said it any better. And wouldn’t have wanted to.