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 More Yankees NewsYankees LinksFormer Yankees catcher Joe Giradi is in his first season as the team's bench coach and is possibly being groomed to become Joe Torre's replacement. "I love the preparation and the strategy," Girardi said. "You have to figure out a way to beat your opponent. It's not always wait until they make a mistake. Sometimes you've got to be ahead of them. I love that part of the game." "I've always said Joe Girardi could be an engineer - that's what he graduated from at Northwestern," said Don Zimmer, the former Yankees bench coach who was Girardi's first major-league manager. "He was a winning-type catcher; he could be a manager. He was a radio-TV guy and now he's a bench coach. To me, Joe Girardi will be excellent at anything he does. He's a special, special person." Sitting beside Torre, Girardi is in the same spot where Willie Randolph sat last season. "He wants to learn from Joe Torre and pretty much do the same thing Willie did," Yankees catcher Jorge Posada said. "Willie was here forever. It was good for him to learn from Joe, and now he's a manager in the big leagues. It takes a little time to get to the next level, and I think Joe Girardi wants to do that." |
