The Yankees are now entering the phase of their schedule where the nightly losses no longer matter. As William Faulkner said, these are “defeats in which no one loses anything of value.”

Of course Faulkner was talking about the loss of hope for all mankind or some such non-sense, it wasn’t anything important like baseball…but the point still holds.

For the first time since 1993 (or 1994 if you want to count the strike season), the Yankees will not make the playoffs. Any one who was holding out a glimmer of hope must realize that by now. The Yanks have really been out of the running for most of the season. But past success in the 2nd half of the season gave many folks false hope.

False hope indeed. You can listen to WFAN or ESPN RADIO, or comb the myriad of message boards, and bask in all the arguments about why the team failed:

Some say: “It’s the injuries. No, It’s the pitching. No, It’s A-Rod. No, It’s Giambi. No, It’s Bobby Meacham. “ Or, “This wouldn’t happen If Torre were still here.”

The sad fact is that there are tons of reasons why this team failed. But letting Torre go is not one of them. The man who single-handily lost the 2003 World Series and then followed that up by presiding over the most embarrassing collapse in baseball history—to the team’s archrivals no less—is rightfully gone.

The multitude of bonehead decisions and non-decisions Torre made in the 2004 ALCS have been well-chronicled in print. Having written that lengthy article several times myself, I have no desire to repeat his egregious offenses in detail again.

But the point now is Joe Girardi should be judged on his own merits. The fact that he has struggled this year in no way sheds a positive light on Torre. These are separate matters.

Having said that, what surprised me the most about Girardi this year is his apparent lack of fire. I wasn’t necessarily expecting a Larry Bowa imitation, but I certainly thought Girardi was the kind of manager who would not tolerate some of the lackadaisical and bone head plays that he has witnessed this year.

I am sure he has talked to Cano in private, but there are times when a more public humiliation gets the message across in a clearer fashion.

Come to think of it…the Yankees get publicly humiliated almost every night, but I don’t think that’s what Girardi had in mind.