Last month in an interview on HBO’s ‘Real Sports‘, Gary Sheffield said that Yankees manager Joe Torre treats his black and white players differently, said that Jeter isn’t all the way black, and the steroids are shot in the butt. As you can imagine, his comments at the time created quite a storm of controversy.
Well instead of keeping quiet in his return to the Bronx, Sheffield took the bait from the New York tabloid media and continued to run his mouth. Here is a sampling of his comments from last night.
On the differences between Torre and Tigers manager, Jim Leyland:
“[Leyland] is real,” Sheffield said. “That’s all there is to it. You get it both ways. You get the positive and the negative, and he’s real about both sides.”
On whether or not he would shake Torre’s hand and vice versa before the game:
Sheffield also said he wouldn’t shake hands with Torre if he saw him on the field, a feeling that seemed mutual.
“Probably not,” Torre said, when asked about greeting Sheffield. Later the manager added: “It goes back to [Sheffield’s] comments. I don’t know where I would cut that conversation off.
On whether not he would have stayed in New York for this season:
“They wanted me back, it was my choice to leave,” said Sheffield, whom the Yankees traded to the Tigers after picking up his option for 2007. “Like I said before, I wasn’t willing to play first base for one year. I could have stayed for one year, but I wasn’t willing to do that.”
But could he have continued playing for Torre?
“I don’t play for the manager,” Sheffield said.
On his comments about ‘Jeter not being all the way black’:
“So if I was talking about Jeter, I was talking about my son. So, obviously, I’m not talking about my son,” Sheffield said.
“When I have an issue with somebody within the Yankees organization or the Yankees, what [the media] try to do is include Jeter in that conversation to distort what I’m talking about. Jeter is an icon. Jeter is not going to get the same treatment as Shawn Chacon, Gary Sheffield, nobody else.”
On whether or not the Yankees would hold a grudge:
“If I lose friends, so what?” Sheffield said. “I don’t need no more friends anyway, I’ve got plenty of friends.”
Instead of taking the high road and just saying “no comment,” Sheffield continued on and just created more fuel for the NY media. The story had died down just like the stories about AROD’s indiscretions. So why keep the fire burning, in my opinion it is because Sheffield likes the attention. Throughout the game when he was at the plate last night, he was steadily booed by the Bronx faithful.
“You have to be a hell of a player to get people to react to you,” he said. “So it’s pretty special.”
