(This story originally appeared in the Oct. 2017 edition of Yankees Magazine).
This one didn’t have much of a shelf-life. But I still really liked the story, and I enjoyed the process of reporting it.
Over the course of the 2017 season, I noticed that Joe Girardi’s YES Network television show was becoming surprisingly ambitious and interesting. What had once been just a camera on him in the manager’s office, recounting a week that anyone watching already knew all about, had turned into a series of trips around different cities with the show’s co-host, YES Network field reporter Meredith Marakovits. In Seattle, they went to the Starbucks Roastery. They made pizza in Chicago and visited his old dorm at Northwestern.
The trips showed a different side of the Yankees’ manager. Often chided for his reliance on on his binder, or his less-than-comfortable manner in front of the microphone (although I’d argue that over the second half of his Yankees tenure, he’d improved in both facets dramatically), Girardi was playful and engaging throughout the television broadcasts. He seemed, despite the artifice that the cameras necessitated, somewhat … real?
So I got them to allow me to tag along for a trip to the Dallas Cowboys’ sparkly practice facility north of Dallas. It was a quick trip — a night in Texas, total of about 20 hours. But it was great to see the whole shoot, to see how the show came together, to watch him engage with the Cowboys personnel (including head coach Jason Garrett). It was also, I have to say, a lot of fun to get to take the tour (even if it felt like a betrayal of my Giants roots).
I always got along well with Girardi. I think he’s a good man, with a good heart. I’ll never forget the times I got to watch him interact with young kids away from cameras, or the way he wore the shirts for different charities during every pregame presser for a few seasons. It was a remarkably kind gesture, and totally selfless. I doubt that he thought much about me either way, but I really got the sense of Girardi’s decency.
He also, it should be said, had a ton of success in New York, from the World Series championship in 2009, to the awesome performance by his 2017 group, that would end up a game shy of the World Series.
So, to put it mildly, there were a host of reasons I felt bad to see him let go once the team was eliminated, not the least of them being the fact that it made my feature about him in that month’s magazine look somewhat silly. But oh well. I still enjoyed the process, enjoyed the story, and enjoyed my four years working with Girardi.
https://www.mlb.com/yankees/news/yankees-manager-joe-girardi-show/c-258700434