After Time at the Top, An Age of Anxiety

"What we cannot afford to do now is lose 10 of 12 and be nine games out at the all-star break. We have to keep the damage down," said the Orioles' Jay Gibbons, aware that a string of division losses can lead to the swift burial of a whole season.

Veteran B.J. Surhoff echoed the message, saying: "Everybody has bad periods. Minimize the damage. Just manage to keep your head above water until you get healthy and get hot again. Right now, we'd [still] be in the playoffs. It's only June."

However, one Oriole was a bit more candid about the emotions that grip floundering teams as they fall from a glorious spring to a stumbling summer. "You can try as hard as you want, but sometimes when a team has one of these funks, it's like it's written on the wall," he said.

For the Yankees, that writing has been on the wall all season. And it has said, "Is the era of the Joe Torre Yankees over?"

On a night like this when the Yankees overcome another crummy start by (four years, $40 million) Pavano and get the game-winning RBI from struggling center fielder Bernie Williams, it's hard to guess the answer.

Is this one of the Yankees' periodic imitations of life after which they play like demoralized (but very wealthy) dogs for a solid week? Or will the currently crippled Orioles, deep in their funk, be so accommodating that, by the time the Yankees leave town, the New Yorkers will think well of themselves again? No matter what everybody else, including George Steinbrenner, thinks.

Make no mistake, the Yankees arrived at Camden Yards in a gold-plated hearse, dragging their $200 million payroll and a 38-37 record behind them like tin cans tied to a bumper. Actually, the Yankees rolled up in a bus. But anybody who thinks they look dead enough to stuff in the baseball boneyard can certainly make that case. Many in baseball can't wait.

To add the perfect grace note, just before the Yankees entered their dugout, a flack for Steinbrenner issued another of the owner's endless self-serving "statements." This one amounted to a Declaration of Disassociation from his own team.

"My patience is a little short by the fact that the team is not performing up to its great capabilities. The players have to want to win as much as I do," said the Boss.

Steinbrenner "hasn't lost his fighting spirit," proclaimed the owner's personal publicist. "He said, 'We'll never give up.' He wants this message to be conveyed."

Okay, George, you big baby, we get it: It's Not My Fault.

Rounds two and three of this midseason rumble await us. All is in readiness. Boss broadsides. Brush-back hostility. Charges of age-old Yankees bias. An angry manager. A slumping slugger who's hit 60 homers three times but is now, as Mazzilli says, "Trying to hit five-run homers every time up." A Yankees pitching rotation so battered that Chien-Ming Wang starts Tuesday.

You never know when seasons turn. For two teams, it may be happening this week.