At 1:05 p.m. Eastern today, Ira Riklis’ favorite baseball team, the New York Yankees, trotted out onto George M. Steinbrenner Field to begin their defense of their 2009 World Championship against the Pittsburgh Pirates. There’s a long way to go, 33 pre-season games in the Grapefruit league and a long spring and summer ahead before October rolls around again. The team knows how hard it is to repeat but feel focused and ready for the challenge.
After several weeks of training and workouts, manager Joe Girardi gave the team a breather yesterday in the form a team-building outing to a local game arcade. As Ira Riklis knows, you can have the best players or staff, but unless they come together as a team, they’ll never live up to their true potential. As first baseman Mark Texiera put it: “The great thing about this kind of atmosphere is that there’s no veterans or rookies, starters or role players, triple A or single A; everyone is on the same playing field. We’re all having fun, really kind of letting our hair down and getting to know each other without competing on the field.” To help promote the team concept, Girardi recommended that players hang out with people they didn’t know well. And over the course of an long season, that bonding could pay big dividends.