At Brian McCann’s new spring address the clubhouse is a little slice of the Big Apple, from the faux Yankee Stadium facade ringing the wall to a media presence already outnumbering the players. Pitchers, catchers and bloggers with an attitude reported to camp in force Friday.
You can’t ease your way into such an environment, like lowering yourself into a hot tub. Into this cauldron you pretty much have to dive head first.
How McCann adjusts to his surroundings, going from the relative serenity of the Braves to the tumult of all things New York will be a study in adaptability. The hometown kid just fit Atlanta so perfectly. He was Fox Theater, not Carnegie Hall; Peachtree Street, not Madison Avenue.
His first day here he was ringed by more media — 30 arms pointing digital recorders at him from all angles — than he was likely to encounter in weeks at the Braves’ Disney enclave.
Two days after he signed his five-year, $85 million deal with the Yankees, McCann received an iPad in the mail that contained selected outings of the new pitchers he would have to catch as well as a cross-section of the American League East hitters he would have to neutralize. His offseason was spent in earnest study.
“Going to be a lot of effort,” he said in reference to the re-education program. “I’ve been in the National League East forever. I almost felt like I knew when (Philadelphia’s) Chase Utley was going to swing and not, almost knew when (Washington’s) Ryan Zimmerman was going to swing or not. To call games against those guys for so long, I picked up on their habits. It’s going to be a big change.”
What might he do, then, to prepare for all the surrounding intensity that comes with being a Yankee? For that McCann does not seem to have a carefully defined strategy.
“To thine own self be true” is a great homily, but not much of a detailed media-management plan.
“I don’t know you prepare for it, you just go do it,” he said. “All you can do is go 100 percent every day and let the chips fall where they may.”
Saturday was McCann’s first mandatory workout as a Yankee, debuting his look in pinstriped britches. Slimming, very slimming.
On his back was his new number, 34. The 16 he wore for eight-plus seasons as a Brave was one of the many retired by the national historical landmark of a franchise he now plays for (it belonged to pitcher Whitey Ford). He can count himself lucky he didn’t need to go to triple digits. The new one he chose was something of a left-handed compliment to a No. 34 he played with in Atlanta, his buddy Eric O’Flaherty (the reliever who also has moved on and been himself re-numbered).
And to think that once — OK, it was only a year ago — McCann was being measured for the position of Face of the Braves. But the franchise did not wish to invest long-term in a catcher, even one with seven All Star games to his credit, who will turn 30 on Thursday.
That was a scruffy face, you may recall.
But now, from the neck up, McCann is about as hairless as a newborn, everything shaved tight according to Yankee specifications. This he does not consider an aesthetic improvement.
His first thought upon gazing at his shorn reflection: “Ugly.”
He looks younger, at least. “I feel younger,” he said.
“Got to like it, I guess.”
The clean look does provide a fitting image for starting over.
And what a do-over this is, McCann uprooted from his hometown team and transplanted to the one that dealt the Braves one of their cruelest defeats in the 1996 World Series. The one whose very name summons visions of Sherman and a flickering torch. “As soon as I signed I had people come up around town and tell me, ‘Anybody but the Yankees,’” McCann said. “I understand it.”
There are benefits to the move. As a left-handed hitter with power, he will be seduced by the only thing modest at Yankee Stadium — the right-field dimensions, a mere 314 feet down the line. This makes him smile every time he thinks about it.
“I think he’s going to be great in our ballpark,” pitcher C.C. Sabathia said.
“I was really excited about getting McCann. Really excited,” he underscored.
In the American League, he will have the option to be the DH on days he is not catching. He can see more at-bats without the accompanying stress of all that squatting and taking foul balls off various appendages. Although he is not ready to become David Ortiz just yet: “I’m not sure how it’s going to work, but I know I still have a lot of games left in me behind the plate,” he said
McCann also will have a front-row seat to his second big send-off, Derek Jeter doing now what Chipper Jones did two years earlier. “Do I wish I had longer to see (Jeter) up close and personal? Yeah, but I’m happy for him,” McCann said.
The corresponding pressures are just as obvious. As soon as McCann took his first step onto the green grass of George Steinbrenner Field on Saturday, the expectations upon him began compounding.
This bunch already has him measured as the next Thurman Munson, the tough guy who stood his ground last season against the antics of Milwaukee’s Carlos Gomez, guarding home plate like St. Peter at the heaven’s gate. Even if months later he was saying he wasn’t sure if he would make such a fuss all over again.
They have him returning the role of Yankees catcher to its rightful place of prominence. The Yankees got but eight home runs, 43 RBIs and a .298 slugging percentage from the position last season, relying mostly on a combination of whozit (Austin Romine) and whatshisname (Francisco Cervelli). McCann can do better than that hitting right-handed, with a tire iron.
“It’s humbling to put on this uniform and share that little dirt area with the catchers in the past,” McCann said, summoning the memories of Bill Dickey, Yogi Berra, Elston Howard and Munson. “As a baseball fan it’s a pretty cool experience.”
“He’s an offensive and defensive catcher,” his manager Joe Girardi (a former catcher) said when McCann signed, “and there only a few of those in baseball.”
In the vacuum that will be created by Jeter’s departure, a certain amount of leadership will be thrust upon McCann — just as it was in Atlanta when Jones retired. Whoa, he said. He would at least like to play his first game in New York before assuming any sort of Cabinet-level position.
Such is the pace of the place where he chose to play. A very different energy greets him here, one that on the first weekend of the rest of his Yankee-loving life he has met with equal voltage.
“I’m excited to be where I’m at, excited for the new chapter in my life.” McCann said.
“You go to a different place, meet different people, learn different things. I think that’s got to make you a better player.”
