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     El Duderino Citizen Username: El_duderino Post Number: 80 Registered: 2-2004  |
The following is a chapter from my time as a New York Yankees employee... Mr. Burns: “Mattingly, I thought I told you to shave those sideburns, you hippie! Get off my team, you’re fired!” Don Mattingly: “Whatever. I still like him better than Steinbrenner.” —From The Simpsons INTRODUCTION The Eagle Has Landed The first email arrived at 9:24 a.m. in our Outlook Express inboxes—exactly as printed below: GMS will be here today and for the balance of the weekend. Further information will be circulated when available. However, remember, through the entire weekend the Loge Level is off limits except for essential matters. The second email, again forwarded to the entire Yankee front office staff, came shortly after noon: Upon GMS’ arrival, we are in a lockdown state; therefore no one should traverse, remain in or otherwise be seen on the loge level unless it is absolutely essential. Absolutely should be defined as a life and death issue. The third email dinged in a few hours later: The eagle will land at 4:30pm. Effective immediately, unless it is absolutely essential, no one should come to, remain on or transverse through the loge level. Then at 4:15: The “package” is on its way. Lockdown will begin in 15 minutes. And at 4:30: The Loge Level is on “lockdown” as of right now. No, the front office was not conducting a drill, we were being braced for the arrival of “GMS,” one George M. Steinbrenner III, a.k.a “the package,” “the eagle,” the principal owner of the twenty-six-time world champion New York Yankees. The Boss arrives at the Stadium a few hours before game time, dropped off by one his cadre of drivers in front of the press entrance. The Stadium security guards push aside a crowd of reporters waiting for game-day credentials, as the New York Yankees’ head honcho strides through the lobby and onto one of the two elevators at the far end the reception area. The very sight of the robust, gray-haired, aging man sends a herd of front office employees—men and women with upwards of ninety-six hours of hard work under their belt already this week—scurrying behind pillars like cockroaches reacting to a flicked-on light. Steinbrenner is making a rare visit to the Bronx to catch a regular-season game. As usual, he is dressed in his ubiquitous blue blazer and white turtleneck, a philosophy of outfitting himself he shares with the likes of Tom Wolfe and the Amish. As the general strides toward this particular inspection of the ranks, I just happen to be mulling by the press entrance. I am meeting a friend in order to sneak him in for that night’s game. It is a maneuver I had fine-tuned over the course of the season. The plan involves bringing my buddy past a uniformed Burns security guard, declaring my friend to be a freelance writer doing a story for the next issue of Yankees Magazine and stating that it was imperative he come up to my office for an editorial powwow. Most of my friends typically arrived for a game half-drunk from too many Amstel Lights at the Yankee Tavern on 161st Street (cheaper than in the Stadium) while wearing their ritual beer-scented Yankee gear. Dressed in a Thurman Munson T-shirt or a 1996 World Champions bootleg cap, they usually look conspicuously like your average Bleacher Creature. Today, however, my friend had to wait. I was a member of the front office staff for a year and a half at this point—the managing editor of the publications department. My title, actually, was arbitrarily doled out by organization officials without the slightest knowledge of publishing. My duties did entail managing editor-type responsibilities, but in a three-person department I also served as editor in chief, photo editor, copy editor, writer, researcher, customer service representative, delivery boy, and even, on occasion, team photographer. Officially, according to the Yankees, I was the assistant director of publications and multimedia. On the masthead in the magazine, I was given the title managing editor, second behind the director of publications and multimedia, more conventionally known as the publisher. Although there had been editor in chiefs in the past, somehow managing editor stuck and, frankly, my everyday jobs would have been the same even I was called Supreme Commander of the Pinstriped Word. In my time as managing editor, or assistant director, or whatever, I had never met the big guy in person. Only a handful of people in the New York offices are a direct conduit to the Boss, a phantom presence who spends most of the season working from his office in Tampa. When he is in town, though, the rest of the workforce avoids him like the plague, and his underlings do not otherwise have to be convinced, commanded or cajoled to keep their distance. The best you could hope for in any direct association with the Boss is an earful of something extraordinarily nonsensical though unforeseen termination is always a likely outcome. What can you say? Some people have a predilection for chocolate, other people are really into pictures of kitty-cats. This guy just has a weakness for firing people. To each his own, I say. Still, the byproduct of this is that the majority of his employees are content to remain an anonymous cog in his World Series-chasing machine. Moreover, when the Boss is in town, employees are strictly forbidden from performing any of their actual occupational duties. The panicky emails that prevent the staff from venturing on the Loge Level—the area of Yankee Stadium where the front offices are chiefly located—when the Boss pays us a visit states that in no uncertain terms. Repeatedly. With nowhere to hide, most employees just call it a day and go home. Steinbrenner’s vice presidents do everything they possibly can to not let the cat out of the bag that people are kept on the Yankee payroll who may not possess a big-league curve. Steinbrenner would have a fit if he found out he paid people to work in the front office. In spite of that, daily gameday operations somehow get done. Steinbrenner would have a fit if they didn’t. But today, for reasons I can’t explain, I’m intent to meet the man. How bad could he really be in person? I mean, you work for him day in and day out and inevitably you hear all these stories, all kinds of rumors. Would he punch my lights out like he reportedly did to a couple of Dodger fans in a Los Angeles hotel after the Yanks lost the ’81 Series? Would he fire me on the spot and then offer to pay for my children’s college tuition, as I heard he did to some poor secretary who screwed up a plane reservation? I wanted to know just how bad he was. Or, for that matter, I wanted to know how overstated the gossip was, if at all. Maybe he was a kindly old misunderstood gentleman with an underserved bad reputation. It was hard to say why I was so curious that afternoon. The Boss gets on the elevator alone, save for the frightened operator who makes no attempt at small talk, eye contact or bodily movement of any kind. This is my chance, I think. There’s the big man right there and he’s all by himself. Right then, a web of possibilities spun themselves together in my mind. I contemplate the absolute two worst things that can happen at that particular flash in time: George Steinbrenner can either fire me or beat me up. He’s been known to do either one or both of those actions on an elevator before. If he fires me, I figure I have a story to tell the rest of my life. I was fired by George Steinbrenner! Just like Yogi Berra, Lou Piniella, Bucky Dent and Billy Martin several times. And if he attempts to beat me up, well, I’d have an even better story to tell. A moment before the doors start to close, before I even have a chance to think of a third possibility, I shove my arm across the threshold of the elevator and hop in. The door hisses shut. I immediately regret my decision. Nothing good can come from this, I think. I don’t want to get canned or socked in the nose. I’ll abort the mission. Before I have a chance to request the next stop, the Boss looks me up and down and notices the identification tag hanging across my neck. The design for the Yankees ID card changes yearly and this season—all black with a picture of Yankee Stadium, a close-up of the interlocking “NY” logo as it appears on a uniform and a headshot of its bearer—makes it particularly recognizable as opposed to a regular game-day press credential. “You work for me?” he asks to my surprise as I had just assumed the most likely scenario was that he would ignore me. “Yes, Boss,” I say, remembering that I heard he loves to be called “Boss.” “I’m your assistant director of publications and multimedia.” I proffer my “Yankees” title as it appears in the official directory in favor of the “managing editor” title used in the masthead of Yankees Magazine. It was suitably more wordy and obtuse. What he said next was something of a surprise, though not entirely given his reputation. It is definitely something that will live with me forever, and a Yankees memory I will treasure well beyond my days as a front office employee. The Boss looks at me and says, without any trace of irony or a smile, “You need a shave.” Despite all the rumblings and innuendo you hear floating around the front office about George Steinbrenner, right then and there I felt like giving the big lug a big hug. I was nearly overcome with joy. It didn't even matter that it was nearly 6:00 p.m. and my day that started at 8:00 a.m. was about to last another five hours, such as it is on game days. Anyone familiar with the The Simpsons will immediately join me in being reminded of the episode when nuclear power plant owner, Mr. Burns, hires professional ballplayers as ringers on the company softball team. All through the episode, there is a running gag that features an animated Don Mattingly getting constant flack from manager Burns about the length of his sideburns. The joke was born from a 1991 Sports Illustrated article reporting that Steinbrenner benched his star first baseman because he refused to get a haircut. Facial hair has become one of the cornerstones of the Steinbrenner legend ever since. At the end of the Simpsons episode, Mattingly arrives for batting practice with a Mohawk haircut to which Burns angrily chastises him again. Said Mattingly: “Mr. Burns, I don’t know what you think sideburns are…” Why the Boss is fanatical about facial fuzz remains a mystery. It most likely is a hangover from his military school upbringing but I have a few other theories, one involving the notion that he can’t grow an adequate beard himself and has a mean case of facial-hair envy. Like his blue blazer and white turtleneck fetish, it’s best to chalk it up to one of those crazy rich people quirks so rampant in that mythical billionaire’s club where they all walk around naked in a steam room with monocles lighting cigars with hundred-dollar bills. We arrive at the Loge Level, and I scramble away through a side door with no intent to press my luck any further, though not before witnessing a precious Yankee moment. It could have been a Kodak commercial they run on the scoreboard in between innings. The Boss passes the receptionist, who dutifully buzzes him in, and eyes a brazen summer intern unfortunate enough to not have access to Microsoft Outlook or to instinctively know better than to let his curiosity get the better of him. “Who are you?” he asks the kid, who has been bragging for months to his friends about his new position. “I’m the new intern for—” “I don’t care who you are,” the Boss says. “You’re fired! Get out!” Clearly, this intern's presence on the Loge Level was not a "life or death issue." Share moments, share life, Mr. Steinbrenner. I take the elevator back down to the lobby to escort my friend through the front door. I tell him that George Steinbrenner—yes, George Steinbrenner!—personally told me I needed a shave. We toasted two eight-dollar bottles of Bud Light to that. After all, the Boss was in town and I wasn't allowed in my office to do any work. | ||
| Duncan Citizen Username: Duncanrogers Post Number: 2344 Registered: 12-2001  |
GREAT JUST F**%ING GREAT. I really enjoyed reading that Duderino! | ||
| Moose11217 Citizen Username: Moose11217 Post Number: 47 Registered: 12-2002 |
Tis the season bump - I love this story | ||
| Duder Citizen Username: El_duderino Post Number: 606 Registered: 2-2004 |
“Every time we make trouble, ol’ George flies out here from another part of the country and gets in our way. Maybe we should make a lot of trouble, so he’ll keep flying out here. Sooner or later, his plane’s gonna crash.” —Dock Ellis on George Steinbrenner in spring training, 1978 CHAPTER 12 OR HOW I LEARNED TO STOP WORRYING AND LOVE THE BOMBERS Say what you want about George Steinbrenner, but here’s a man who overcame the terrible burden of being born wealthy to become, over the course of his life, even wealthier. In many ways, Steinbrenner is remarkably like his portrayal on Seinfeld: reckless, motor-mouthed, wacky in an unintentionally funny kind of way and walking an increasingly fine line between rationality and insanity. The Seinfeld depiction, as voiced by the terrific Larry David, was obviously over the top, but did accurately convey the idea that you’ll never guess what that guy was going to do next. Steinbrenner, though not a loyal man himself, demands absolute loyalty from his ballplayers and employees. Forget free agency, if you’re a Yankee, in Steinbrenner’s mind, you can never be anything less than a true-blue, dyed-in-the-wool Yankee. Of course, if a player every leaves the Yankees, even if it is against his will via a trade, he has become, in Steinbrenner’s mind, a traitor of the worst kind. This is true of players like David Wells and Tino Martinez, fan favorites traded away by the Boss. The organization’s reaction to their defection is to never acknowledge that they were Yankees to begin with. As far as Steinbrenner is concerned, Tino never hit the game-tying home run in Game 5 of the 2001 World Series; there is not a single reference or photo of the moment in any official Yankee publication printed after 2001 (though now that he is back, there certainly will be). Steinbrenner abhors all the other organizations. Not only was the publications department not allowed to say anything positive about any other team in print (even ones that haven’t existed in many years, such as the Washington Senators), the entire organization was on the line for elevating another team’s image. Although it seems so obvious in retrospect, the kitchen staff of the Stadium Club once erred big time by ignoring this unwritten rule. It was the last regular season home series against the Boston Red Sox in 2003 and the division race was still a dogfight. Steinbrenner was in attendance at the Stadium that weekend less for the series and more because his lawyers were hammering out legal papers having something to do with YankeeNets, the conglomerate (since disbanded) that owned the New Jersey Nets, New Jersey Devils and Yankees that Steinbrenner started in 1999 as a way to get programming for his fledgling YES Network. You would have thought he’d have been preoccupied with, say, weighing the benefits of selling his multi-million dollar stake in the fractured company, but instead the Boss took a lap of the Stadium to inspect the ranks. What he exposed was an unconscionable act he deemed both a personal slap in the face, and a black eye for the city of the New York. The Yankee Stadium Club restaurant was not only serving, but also advertising on their menus for all the public to see, New England clam chowder. Now, Steinbrenner, as far as anyone could tell, had no strong feeling either way about soup as a food concept. But a soup that actively promotes and glorifies the region of the country that contains the city of his hated foes, well, that was another story entirely. It was soup unbefitting of the pinstripes; it was as if the soup had spitefully sculpted muttonchops with a handlebar mustache for a World Series game. Steinbrenner loudly berated the traitorous kitchen staff, many of them, it should be noted, do not use English as their primary language and whose job working in the kitchen at Yankee Stadium is just a paycheck. Most of them knew nothing of Babe Ruth, the Boston-New York rivalry or even the current standings. Still, Steinbrenner ordered that the soup’s name be immediately changed to “seafood chowder,” though it remains a mystery why it just couldn’t have been, simply, “clam chowder,” with no strong provincial associations either way. It set a precedent, and I can guarantee you’ll be hard pressed to find Philly cheese steaks, Baltimore crab cakes, or Chicago-style deep-dish pizzas at the Stadium in the future, to say nothing of Boston cream pie. There was a phrase used widely throughout the organization to explain these kinds of Steinbrenner outbursts: “It’s a George thing.” It’s a phrase that refers to something that you are mandated to do, but makes little sense in the larger scheme of things. It’s a disclaimer. Like being asked to find a picture of Roger Clemens posing with 1920s pitcher Lefty Grove. It has to be done or someone will be fired. To understand the New York Yankees of today, it is necessary to understand its principal owner. He is complicated and temperamental. He is a mad genius. He is alternately regarded as the best and worst thing to happen to baseball. In Goose Gossage’s autobiography, The Goose is Loose, the former Yankee pitcher writes, “George Steinbrenner’s behavior...began to dampen my enthusiasm for playing in New York. Ask yourself: How much fun would you have working for a boss who demeans your efforts?” Later in the book, Gossage writes, “Watching the [1998] Series, I felt particularly gratified for Yankee owner George Steinbrenner. With George, you always know he’s going to do anything in his power to win...I commend him for that.” This was the same Goose Gossage who once launched into a clubhouse tirade at Steinbrenner and concluded by calling the Boss “the fat man.” The attitude of most of the front office can be summed up by a paragraph in Sparky Lyle’s The Bronx Zoo. Lyle writes, “I’ll tell you something about George. He’ll tell a kid, ‘You’re not trying,’ or ‘You’re gutless’ and he’ll send him down, and then he’ll turn around and bring the kid back and smile and say, ‘Do a good job for me, son.’ How can you respect somebody like that? It’s like taking your ordinary everyday working person and telling him, ‘I don’t know why I keep you. You never do a job right,’ and turning around the next day and saying, ‘Would you do me a favor?” Every front office employee lived in absolute fear of Steinbrenner, who was known to randomly call people just too make sure they were at their desk on, say, a Saturday morning. If the Boss got your voicemail, it was a good bet he’d fire you the next time you picked up. Steinbrenner is admittedly a very patriotic man and was indeed born on July 4, 1930. As the son of a Great Lakes shipping family, the Boss was born into wealth. He made his fortune as the chairman of the American Shipbuilding Company based in Cleveland. Before long, Steinbrenner entered his first foray into owning a sports franchise by purchasing, for $125,000, an industrial-league basketball team, the Cleveland Pipers. After the team went bankrupt, George was summoned by his father to take over the family shipping business. As the story goes, after his father announced his retirement, George hired back his father to work for him. In 1973, he put together a group that purchased the New York Yankees from hapless owner CBS. In a now-famous line, he remarked at the time, “I won’t be active in the day-to-day operations of the club at all.” Over the years, Steinbrenner has had a long list of malfeasances, brushes with the law and flat-out dances with insanity. The first of which came in 1972, as Steinbrenner was one of the first people indicted in the Watergate scandal, charged with making illegal contributions to Richard Nixon’s reelection campaign. Steinbrenner pled guilty to a felony conspiracy count as well as a misdemeanor charge. The indictment led to the first of two suspensions from major league baseball. His second suspension came indirectly because of outfielder Dave Winfield, who, in 2001, was inducted into the Hall of Fame and scheduled to receive a “Day” at the Stadium that year. Before the season, I had a run-in with the Boss in the corridor outside his office. While discussing feature subjects, out of the blue Steinbrenner mentioned that the bald eagle Challenger, the bird that flies from center field to the pitching mound before big games surrounded by lots of pomp and circumstance, should get more face time. “It’s your magazine, Boss,” I said chummily, though immediately regretting what I said next, which was: “We’ll put the eagle on the cover if you say so.” “Good,” Steinbrenner said. “Put the eagle on the cover.” Now the department had a dilemma. Here we were with a stable of star ballplayers that could have graced the cover of any sports periodical, and we were ordered to use a bird as a cover subject. Not exactly the sort of cover model that helps magazines fly off shelves. The plan we come up with to circumvent the problem while still obeying the Boss’ mandate involved Winfield. We were going to devote an entire issue of Yankees Magazine to the Hall of Famer that would be sold at the Stadium on his “Day.” We already had a nice picture of Challenger sitting atop Joe DiMaggio’s monument in Monument Park. We were going to take that picture and superimpose a shot of Winfield towering above the monuments. It was perfect. Except for the bitter history between the Boss and Winny that was about to resurface. In the offseason of 1980, the Boss offered the free agent a ten-year, fifteen million dollar contract that the slugger accepted. In his first year in pinstripes, Winfield’s numbers were slightly off from the previous season; in 1979, Winny batted .308 with 34 home runs and 118 runs batted in and in 1980, his first season in the Bronx, he hit .276 with only 20 home runs and a weak 87 RBI. Steinbrenner infamously referred to Winfield as “Mr. May,” a jab meant to invoke the postseason magic he lacked in leading the Yanks to another world championship in comparison to Reggie Jackson, “Mr. October.” In the 1981 World Series, despite having hit .350 in the American League Division Series, Winfield went 1-for-22 for a batting average of .045. In other words, in the eyes of George Steinbrenner, Winfield was a loser. And an expensive one at that. After that, the Yankee owner made every effort to belittle Winfield. In 1986 he ordered manager Lou Piniella to platoon Winfield in right field. When Piniella refused, Steinbrenner was furious and threatened to fire Sweet Lou. Several times Steinbrenner tried to trade Winfield, but due to his status as a ten-and-five man (ten seasons in the majors with at least five with his current team), it was impossible to deal him without the star’s prior approval. In addition to the salary Winfield commanded, Steinbrenner had a contractual agreement to pay three hundred thousand dollars a year to the Dave Winfield Foundation, an organization established to help inner-city youth. In an effort to break this arrangement, Steinbrenner went a step too far in keeping the company of man named Howard Spira and, to this day, their association remains something of a mystery. Spira approached Steinbrenner with claims that Winfield’s charity was not on the up and up. Some people say that Steinbrenner had paid Spira $40,000 to dig up dirt on Winfield. Others claim that $40,000 was to keep Spira quiet. Spira eventually attempted to extort upwards of $110,000 from the Boss, threatening to go public with Steinbrenner’s actions in trying to take down Winfield’s charity. In the investigation and hearing that followed, commissioner Fay Vincent gave Steinbrenner his second two-year suspension from baseball from 1990 to 1992. Spira was convicted in 1991 of extortion and went to jail to serve two half-year sentences. Many people still believe Steinbrenner’s suspension was harsh and unfair and part of a backlash by the baseball establishment to punish the Boss for myriad indulgences, including excessive free agent signings and other churlish off-field behavior. It was reported that Steinbrenner’s lawyers were not allowed to depose or cross-examine many important witnesses. On the other hand, few would defend Steinbrenner and few could deny that the increasingly boorish Boss had it coming, including the New York press. By that time, Winfield had already, albeit reluctantly (after citing a no-trade clause in his contract), reported to the California Angels on his way to a Hall of Fame career. Steinbrenner’s son-in-law, Joseph Molloy, was elected as new managing general partner of the team in 1992 and the following month, former Yankees VP Leonard Kleinman dropped a thirty million dollar lawsuit against Commissioner Vincent, one of the main obstacles standing in the way of the Boss’s reinstatement. On March 1, 1993, of that year, Steinbrenner was permitted to resume active duties as general partner of the Yankees. After Winfield was elected into the baseball Hall of Fame, our department was permitted to run a one-page congratulatory announcement in the yearbook. This was a huge deal. Steinbrenner, as Yogi Berra will tell you, likes to hold grudges. The congratulatory page to Winfield was accompanied with a statement by Steinbrenner that read: “I was delighted by the news that Dave Winfield has been elected to the Hall of Fame on the first ballot. Dave is probably one of the greatest athletes I have ever known, and this is a well-deserved tribute to a remarkable career of consistent excellence. At one point, Dave and I had our problems. But today we are good friends, and the Yankees look forward to honoring him during the 2001 season.” All was good. Dave Winfield Day was scheduled to take place at Yankee Stadium on Saturday, August 18, 2001. The entire issue we had planned to honor the star player needed no padding in its hyperbole. Winfield was a twelve-time All-Star, a five-time Gold Glove winner and one of seven men with more than 3,000 hits and 400 home runs in a twenty-two-year career. It was a career spent on six different teams, though the majority of it was almost equally spent between the Padres (1,117 games) and the Yankees (1,172 games). Just as we were getting the Winfield cover—with a very special, cleverly produced appearance by the bald eagle Challenger—Winfield announced that he was going to enter the halls of Cooperstown wearing a San Diego Padres cap instead of the interlocking “NY.” Winfield Day was cancelled. The Day was soon reinstated, though Steinbrenner forbade us to dedicate an issue to him, nor was his number going to be retired and there was absolutely no chance of him getting a plaque in Monument Park. Steinbrenner was determined to make Winfield Day as lackluster as possible. “I went with the team that gave me my very first opportunity,” Winfield said at the time. “All of my ‘firsts’ happened in San Diego and that is where I developed as a player.” Almost immediately after making that statement, Winfield accepted a six-figure front office position in San Diego, along with a very expensive new car. Steinbrenner did not show up to the Stadium on Dave Winfield Day and our department had still not honored the directive to feature the eagle on the cover. A fireable offense, no doubt. In addition, losing that issue cost the Yankees hundreds of thousands of dollars in lost revenue. We also got in trouble with the Postmaster General because we failed to produce twelve issues that year. It didn’t matter to Steinbrenner. He was willing to throw away money like so many spent ticket stubs. Oh, well. It’s a George thing. | ||
| Duder Citizen Username: El_duderino Post Number: 671 Registered: 2-2004 |
How to Fix the Yankees Last week, Michael Kay made a comment on the pre-game YES Network broadcast. He said that Joe Torre should throw a Billy Martin-like conniption fit in the clubhouse to light a fire under his drowsy old team. Reportedly, Boss Steinbrenner – YES Network’s biggest fan, which is kind of like reporting that Rupert Murdoch welcomes the direction of the FOX News Channel – concurred with Kay’s recommendation, though it takes little prompting to get the Boss to agree that it’s a good idea to berate and belittle his employees. This led to all sorts of speculation about Torre’s job security, and questioned a persona that brought his team to the postseason every season under his helm. Perhaps that’s worth repeating. Nine straight years of October baseball. Really, that’s about all you can ask any manager. I mean, c’mon. It went further and led to speculation about bringing in a fiery personality such as Lou Piniella, who at this point would rather have his nosehairs plucked out one by one that watch the Rays lose night after night after night. But yet again Kay is only telling the Boss what he wants to hear. A Joe Torre gone berserk would be met by mouth-gaping stunned silence in the clubhouse, like the townsfolk in Blazing Saddles when Sheriff Bart first rides into town. These aren’t kids. They can’t be scared. Quite the opposite needs to happen if the Yanks suddenly want to reverse the negative energy that’s invaded 2005. The Boss and Torre need to let go a little. No, a lot. Let the guys grow some funky facial hair. This isn’t the 1960s anymore where egregious facial hair implies you’re some kind of anti-establishment hirsute overgrown hippy. At this point, not much can be done with a do that’s truly shocking. Give the players some breathing room. Let them express themselves. Let them hang out without looking over their shoulder like they’re 17 smoking a doobie in their parent’s basement listening to Jane’s Addiction too loudly. If baseball’s not fun, you’ll lose. It’s as simple as that. Ever since 2001, the Boss has simply sucked every molecule of fun out of that organization. It needs to be restored, gradually, if necessary, like reintroducing animals into the wild. And while I’m outside the box, here’s how to solve the Jason Giambi dilemma. On his radio show on ESPN, Steve Phillips likened Giambi to Mo Vaughn’s Mets tenure. Very apt. He’s a burden, an albatross. I understand the Yanks can’t just drop him. Not yet anyway. Not with something like a trillion dollars owed to him over the next few decades. But it’s also painfully clear he can’t hit and can’t field. However, he can throw some. Here’s my thought: make him the reverse Rick Ankiel and turn him into a pitcher. A knuckleballer. Get Hall of Famer and former Yankee Phil Niekro to come teach him the knuckler. Under Knucksie’s tutelage, Giambi can become a late-inning specialist. The Most Overpaid Late-Inning Specialist in the history of baseball, but it’d be a step up from the Most Overpaid Automatic Out in baseball. Lastly, Steinbrenner will learn from his past and NOT trade the future of the organization and two huge bright spots on an otherwise lackadaisical season, Chien-Ming Wang and Robinson Cano, for more overpaid veterans whose best seasons are clearly behind them…that’s right, I’m looking at you Ken Griffey Jr. Ha ha ha ha ha ha. Whoo. I needed a good laugh. | ||
| Duder Citizen Username: El_duderino Post Number: 680 Registered: 2-2004 |
Why I Like the Designated Hitter Okay, I know I’m in a serious minority here, but I like the DH rule. Not only do I like the DH rule, I like the fact that only one league employs the DH while the other does not. Last week on Baseball Tonight, John Kruk (quickly becoming my favorite baseball analyst for his nightly no-bullsh*t breakdowns and the fact that he loves to tell the story of how he gave Wild Thing Williams his number in exchange for two cases of beer) and Harold Reynolds both chided MLB for using the DH. If the game must have this position, they put forward, then both leagues should have it. In the midst of interleague play, it gives the American League an unfair advantage when National League teams play in AL parks. NL teams, they said, are built for NL rules, which means their utility guys aren’t around for power but for position flexibility and speed. In addition, AL pitchers are essentially an automatic out when forced to bat in NL parks. Purists don’t like the designated hitter rule because all change in baseball is met with fear. One of the things that makes baseball so great and enduring – more than any other sport – is its tradition. It’s knowing that going to see a game today is strikingly similar to when our great-great-grandparents went to see a game 125 years ago (minus Cotton-Eye Joe, of course). People don't want to mess with that and it's understandable. More than any other sport, players aren’t just judged based on their current competition but are weighed against the immortals of the game, which is possible because 1) the dimensions of the diamond are so flawlessly logical it’s like they sprung from the cosmos alongside Euclidean geometry and Nicole Kidman, and 2) the rules are essentially the same. But it’s the quirks of the game that make it so interesting. Whereas a football field, basketball court, and hockey rink all adhere to specific dimensions, no two baseball fields are exactly the same. It’s these little idiosyncrasies that make the game wonderful while not undermining the integrity of the sport. And that’s what I like about the DH. It adds another element of relevance, of interest, of strategy. Practically, it keeps some good players in the game longer, which was the original rationale for it. And as far as purity, I was born in 1972. Ronnie Blomberg grabbed a bat and stashed his glove in 1973. It’s all I ever knew. If I had to choose one reason for keeping the DH, and in only one league at that, it’s to hear guys like Kruk and Reynolds and Gammons moaning about it every year. Believe me, they’d miss it if it were gone, too. One less thing they’d have to nit-pick about…and they love to nit-pick. If they didn’t, they’d be out of a job. | ||
| Duder Citizen Username: El_duderino Post Number: 682 Registered: 2-2004 |
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| Duder Citizen Username: El_duderino Post Number: 683 Registered: 2-2004 |
“What does George know about Yankee pride? When did he ever play for the Yankees?” —Billy Martin A BRIEF, YET FACTUALLY UNRELIABLE, HISTORY OF THE NEW YORK YANKEES Part One: The Early Years, The Dawn of Man - 1945 The story of the New York Yankees is an interesting one. Not just the facts and myths surrounding Mickey Mantle and Joe DiMaggio that we all hear about living our lives as Americans, but the true chronological history of the ballclub. It is a fascinating tale, actually, one that is chock-full of backstabbing, conniving, political maneuvering and greed as to make Steinbrenner himself proud. The team was the brainchild of Ban Johnson, the founder of the American League, an enterprising fellow who started his group in 1901 to rival the existing National League. Think of him as the FOX network circa 1989, when they challenged the established Big Three networks with endless programming built around Tracey Ullman wearing a bathrobe and Al Bundy flushing a toilet. Nothing short of revolutionary thinking. Johnson hoped to give the people what they wanted and opened professional franchises up and down the Eastern seaboard: Boston, Philadelphia, Baltimore and Washington. He even spanned as far into the American heartland as Chicago, Cleveland, Detroit and Milwaukee, cities that, a hundred years ago, were considered actual destinations, not merely places your luggage ends up while you’re in California or Hawaii. For his venture to truly take off, though, he knew a team would need to be inaugurated in New York. Not yet dubbed the Capital of the World, New York back then was known as the Capital of Nearly Uninhabitable Tenements and Yellow Fever. It differed little from the New York of today except that yellow fever has been eradicated and replaced with people on the subway who try to sell you batteries, and those same tenements now go for upwards of three thousand dollars a month, not including phone, cable, water, electric, gas, parking, cellular service, dog walking service, cleaning service, DSL hookup, newspaper delivery, window washing, organic grocery delivery, Netflix service, renter’s insurance, HBO, HBO 2, HBO Family, HBO Comedy, HBO Esperanto, HBO Shrek, HBO Yule Log, satellite hookup, diaper delivery, fax, and global positioning system. Ban Johnson was a man who understood the first step toward several 24-hour-a-day baseball channels, with an endless supply of smart-alecky, hipper-than-thou, Caddyshack-quoting sports reporters, was to start an American League franchise in New York. The problem was that New York already had a professional baseball team, the New York Giants of the National League, who, despite playing in the vaunted Polo Grounds, did not compete on horseback. The Giants were owned by a man named Andrew Freedman who was a well-connected member of New York’s Tammany Hall political machine we assume because he offered the elected officials of the city luxury boxes, signed baseball cards and an endless supply of Kripy Kreme donuts. Using his position, Freedman was able to block any proposed site to construct a new stadium to house the new American League team and often threatened to move the beloved Giants to New Jersey, which, at the time, had a population of six cows and still inadequate parking. Before long, Freedman left to pursue a career in monitoring the bottom of the East River in a canvas sack. This made it easy for another ballclub to thrive in New York. All that was needed was an owner, a stadium, players, equipment and an endless supply of oversized novelty foam fingers. The two men who came forward to purchase the franchise were Frank J. Farrell, a noted gambler who owned a fleet of racehorses, 250 pool halls, gambling houses, saloons and more than 1,000 spittoons, and “Big Bill” Devery, a former New York chief of police who never questioned the fact that, despite the law of averages, his standard bet of 32 on one of Farrell’s roulette wheels hit every time. Together, they paid $18,000 for the Baltimore franchise and moved the team to New York. A park was still needed and in 1903, at a cost of $200,000 plus new fur coats for the Teamsters’ wives, Hilltop Park opened at 168th Street and Broadway. The naming rights for the stadium was originally purchased by the Lampwick Hair Tonic Company of Utica, but after CEO Phineas Q. Lampwick was indicted for stock fraud and insider trading, Devery and Farrell took $20 million from the Hilltop Fruit and Vegetable Stand (located on the corner of 167th and Ft. Washington Avenue) and ran with it. The original New York American League team was called the Highlanders and featured a mascot who wore a kilt, a beret and drank large mugs of frosty beer while leading the stadium crowd in the wave. Nicknames and corporate logos were not as legally protected back then as they are now, and often the New York media would to refer to the new team by any of the following monikers: the New York Americans, the Highlanders, the Overpaid Pituitary Cases, the Handlebar Moustache Nine, the Silk Stocking Wearing Sissy Boys, and the Mets. The name Yankees stuck and although the real history of the appellation is open to speculation, it was probably a reference to the Civil War and played well with tabloid headline writers who could rhyme Yankee with “cranky,” “spanky,” and “swanky” easier than they could rhyme Highlander with anything. While the team struggled to find an identity, they struggled worse on the field. They were so bad, in fact, that future baseball commissioner Bud Selig, while not yet even sperm, wanted to contract them. Devery and Ferrell sold the team in 1915 to former congressman Col. Jacob Ruppert and his partner, Col. Tillinghast L’Hommedieu Huston. Ruppert, a brewer, was famous for introducing the eight-dollar plastic cup of watered-down light beer to New York; too many people were busy laughing at Huston’s first few names and making frog references for him to have any significant influence at all. It was during this time that pinstripes first appeared on the Yankees’ uniforms. Some say the pinstripes were added to make Babe Ruth look slimmer. This is patently false for two reasons: One, Babe Ruth wouldn’t show up in New York until years later, and two, nothing could have made the Babe look slimmer. It was also during this period that the Yankees moved into the Polo Grounds, sharing quarters with a team that was completely their opposite in every way, an odd couple of sorts, providing Neil Simon with the inspiration for his famous play, Brighton Beach Memoirs. The Yankees pissed the Giants off in many ways, starting with them constantly forgetting to reload the toilet paper in the locker room. Quite often, when the Giants were trying to score with a chick and had clearly drew a peace sign on the dry erase board on the clubhouse door, the Yankees would come in anyway and ruin the mood. The final straw was when the Yanks purchased the contract of Ruth from the Boston Red Sox. Ruth waltzed into town like he owned the joint, and was endlessly giving the Giants’ players noogies, wet willies and atomic wedgies. In addition, the Giants’ brass were attracting significantly less fans to their games than their tenants, who paraded their star slugger around like circus freak, routinely making him hit with three bats. The Yankees fumed when, after winning their first pennant, the Giants beat them in the World Series and, all offseason, taunted them with a chorus of Queen’s “We Are The Champions.” Before long, after citing multiple problems with the Yankees, including one incident when the Yanks ordered a pay-per-view Playboy channel movie and then flat-out denied it, the Giants kicked the Yankees out of their stadium. “Dude,” they said, “it’s just not cool anymore.” For a few months, the Yanks were forced to crash on the couch of Col. Ruppert’s ex-girlfriend. Finally, in 1922, construction began on Yankee Stadium in a section of the South Bronx even Teddy Roosevelt’s Rough Riders were hesitant to venture into. On April 18, 1923, Yankee Stadium opened to the public and received a game-day record 567,982 fans, all of them clamoring for a Derek Jeter bobblehead doll. Ruth hit the Stadium’s first home run and quickly the building became known as the “House that Ruth Built,” despite objection from Col. Ruppert, who commented that because of Ruth’s insatiable appetite, it would be better off known as the “House of Pancakes.” In 1927, the Yankees experienced one of the best seasons in baseball history, and the “Murderers Row” team would go down in the record books as one of the best ever. That championship year, the Sultan of Swat, the Bambino, and the Babe combined to hit a major league record 60 home runs. The 60th, in fact, became a bone of contention as two bleacher fans argued bitterly over the right to sell it on eBay for enough money as to support their family through the Great Depression and beyond. In addition to his on-field exploits, Ruth dominated the headlines for making promises to sick children to hit home runs in important games. But there was another man, Lou Gehrig, who often topped Ruth’s on-field heroics but didn’t receive as many highlights on the late-edition of SportsCenter. If the film Pride of the Yankees is any indication, Gehrig hit two home runs for sick children to every one Ruth vowed, it was just that nobody knew about it. Gehrig, the Iron Horse, made himself a baseball immortal by playing in 2,130 consecutive games, though it was actually much more if you counted the thousands of times he was walking home and couldn’t say no to a tow-headed, big-eyed, knicker-wearing moppet to throw a few innings of stickball. Gehrig’s other big accomplishment was attracting a debilitating disease that sadly cut short his career but became a punchline for a series of Steven Wright jokes. Gehrig made his famous good-bye speech at Yankee Stadium on July 4, 1939. “Today, I consider myself the luckiest man of the face of the earth,” he uttered to wild applause, and he was not talking about the fact that he won a free king-sized bag of Utz potato chips for fortuitously sitting in Loge 19, Row F, as announced by the little cartoon ruffled chip on the Stadium’s DiamondVision. As Gehrig’s career wound down, another Yankee youngster braced himself for immortality. Joe DiMaggio came to the Yankees from the San Francisco Seals in 1936 amid rave reviews and even more decidedly un-PC ethnic epithets. “I’m hoping someday I’ll be immortalized in a popular song, perhaps nostalgically asking where I have gone,” he said at the press conference announcing the purchase of his contract, “that way, lazy headline writers will never have to worry about what to say when they write about me after I die.” In 1941, as the war in Europe brewed, DiMaggio went on a hitting streak that lasted 56 games. His exploits dominated headlines alongside those of impending World War. Instantly, DiMaggio became a national hero, but it was nothing compared to the high-fives he would receive in men’s rooms across the nation when it was revealed he was nailing Marilyn Monroe. Though he was a private, almost introverted, man, DiMaggio could often be overheard uttering things like, “Dude, I couldn’t believe it either, but those things are real!” In January 1945, Dan Topping, Del Webb and Larry MacPhail purchased the Yankees for upwards of three million dollars from the estate of the late Col. Jacob Ruppert ushering in the modern-era of Yankee ownership as MacPhail, in his first move as owner, fires general manager Ed Barrow and replaces him with himself. MacPhail’s second order of business was to move the Yankee dugout from the third-base side of the Stadium to the first-base side. He had the players, all of them under contract, do most of the heavy lifting. MacPhail also introduced night baseball to the Bronx, when, on May 28, 1946, the first night game was played at Yankee Stadium and every fan was told to bring a box of matches, a lantern or, in MacPhail’s words, “whatever you got.” The following week, lights were installed. A few years later, “Babe Ruth Day” was celebrated at Yankee Stadium and throughout baseball. Looking frail, tired and old, the mighty Bambino took the microphone in front of a capacity crowd of adoring fans and asked the timeless question, “Where’s the beer man?” UP NEXT: Part Deux, 1945 - 1995 (Only because I haven't written the Joe Torre Years yet...) | ||
| Duder Citizen Username: El_duderino Post Number: 684 Registered: 2-2004 |
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| Duder Citizen Username: El_duderino Post Number: 685 Registered: 2-2004 |
"You've got to be very careful if you don't know where you're going, because you might not get there." —Yogi Berra A BRIEF, YET FACTUALLY UNRELIABLE, HISTORY OF THE NEW YORK YANKEES PART DEUX, 1945-1995 As the world said goodbye to their beloved Babe, two new characters were ready to make their pinstriped mark. On October 12, 1948, the Yankees announced that Casey Stengel, the Ol’ Perfessor, would replace Bucky Harris as manager. Casey was primarily known for his mangling of the English language in comically goofy ways. “All right, everybody line up alphabetically according to your height,” was one his better known quotes as was, “You have to have a catcher because if you don’t you’re likely to have a lot of passed balls,” in addition to, “There comes a time in every man’s life and I’ve had plenty of them.” Fortunately for the Yankees, Casey’s grasp on managing was finer than his grasp on grammar. It wasn’t until a few years later that Casey’s folksy wisdom would be challenged by a man who’s singularly illogical take on sentence structure would forever label him some kind of philosophical genius. In the meantime, the Yankee Clipper’s illustrious career was coming to end. In DiMaggio’s thirteen-year career, he hit for a whopping .325 average, dipping under .300 only twice. Of course, his unbelievable 56-game hitting streak is a feat that will probably stand for all time, a record to be held solely by him, although the same thing cannot be said about his wife Marilyn, who essentially became the tramp of an entire generation, fooling around with presidents, presidents’ brothers, playwrights, bartenders, the guy who delivered the morning paper and Gus the lovable shoeshine boy. This seemed to bother Joe D. for pretty much the rest of his life and he was notorious for pulling the nose hairs out one at a time of anyone who even mentioned her name in his presence. The same year DiMaggio retired, a young Oklahoma buck was brought to the big city to succeed Ruth, Gehrig and DiMaggio’s legacy of greatness. Since Ruth wore No. 3, Gehrig No. 4 and DiMaggio No. 5, the Oakie Mickey Mantle was given No. 6 to wear. Subsequently, he had a lousy rookie year, capping it off by ripping his kneecap apart after trying to upstage centerfielder DiMaggio, which, contrary to rumors involving Joe D’s Italian connections, had nothing to do with a piece of lead pipe, a dark alley and a guy named Cheech. In 1951, DiMaggio’s legs were not what they once were while young Mantle could run like the wind, or a least a cool zephyr. Manager Stengel ordered Mantle to grab everything he could in the outfield, borrowing a page from the timeless strategy of Coach Morris Buttermaker when he ordered Kelly Leak to shag every fly ball in the film The Bad News Bears. Since DiMaggio was such a hero, Mantle held back on one play after being called off by the legendary ballplayer and stumbled into a sprinkler. Mantle’s knee problems would plague his career while the Yankee Stadium grounds crew was chastised by management for prematurely attempting to set up a Slip N’ Slide in the outfield during a game. Mantle was sent to the minors and came back up soon after. He was given the No. 7 and the rest was history, or, at least, a made-for-HBO movie directed by Billy Crystal. On April 17, 1953, exactly two years after making his big-league debut, Mantle hit what became known as the first-ever “tape-measure” home run, a 565-foot wallop at Washington’s Griffith Stadium. The following day, Black and Decker and the Home Depot competed furiously for the naming rights to any subsequent tape-measure home runs. Led by Stengel and Mantle, the Yankees won the World Series in 1949, ‘50, ‘51, ‘52, ‘53—an unprecedented five-year run of world championship titles—and again in ‘56 and ‘58, while winning the American League pennant in ‘55 and ‘57. If it wasn’t already in vogue, by the end of the decade there were a multitude of Yankee haters. Especially bitter were fans of the Brooklyn Dodgers, who lost four times to the Yanks in that span, with their only World Series win happening in 1955. They were so frustrated, they moved to California never to be heard from again. In the 1956 World Series, Yankee pitcher Don Larsen, who two years earlier posted a record of 3-21, retired all 27 Brooklyn Dodgers in a row marking the only perfect game ever thrown in Series history. After the game, Larsen retired 27 shot of whiskey in row. The game was also noted for the legendary reaction by catcher Yogi Berra, who jumped on Larsen after the final out, wrapped his legs around Larsen’s tall frame and gave him a bear hug for the ages. Said Larsen: “Geez, I thought he was gonna start humping my leg.” In this era, Yogi became renowned for his own mangling of the English language. Whereas Stengle had his “Stengelese,” Berra had his “Yogisms” and fodder for an endless supply of book titles. As it happened, Yogi was also a helluva ballplayer. He was voted as an All-Star in 15 consecutive years, earned a career batting average of .285 (pretty amazing for a catcher), played in 14 World Series and won 10, and was voted as league MVP three times. Years later, he would again make history by starring opposite the AFLAC quacking duck in a series of commercials that played more than any other spot in the history of broadcasting on the inaugural year of the YES Network. In 1960, the Yankees acquired the services of leftfielder Roger Maris, who helped the team march to the World Series, although they lost to the Pittsburgh Pirates. The following season would go down as one of the most exciting and dramatic of all time, as roommates and fellow outfielders Mantle and Maris feverishly pursued Babe Ruth’s single-season home run record, a mark that most people, including and especially Ruth’s widow, wanted to last forever. Mantle was a media darling, always quick with a joke while Maris floundered publicly. The problem, as most people, including and especially Billy Crystal, saw it, was that Mantle was a drunk and Maris was a sober family man. As everyone knows, drunk people are more fun than sober people. So most fans rooted for Mantle to break the record and vilified Maris, who, on October 1, the final day of the 1961 season, slammed a major league record 61 home runs while Mantle was laid up with a leg injury. The first thing Maris said after breaking the record was, “I need a drink.” After, in a somewhat prophetic statement, he said, “I hope this record won't be broken by mediocre players who OD on human growth hormones and make a mockery of the record after it’s broken by doing really stupid and seemingly random hand gestures, like kissing two fingers and pounding their hearts.” Boy, would he be disappointed. The Yankees won the World Series that year, too, and also the following the year. In 1963 and ‘64, they made it to the World Series but lost. Maris was traded to St. Louis and Mantle’s career was on a decline. In 1964, CBS purchases 80 percent of the team for a whopping $11 million and later buys the remaining 20 percent provided the Neilson ratings remain high. CBS runs the Yankees after the Bob Newhart Show and before the Mary Tyler Moore Show before someone points out to them that the Yankees are a baseball team, not a sitcom, although the team’s level of play in this era barely indicated as such. No one in the world is surprised that the Yankees do not reach the World Series during CBS’ reign. Comments one CBS executive, “The Yankee Show underperformed in the ratings because it was a combination of stuff that everyone had seen before. We had high hopes for some of the team’s stars to make the transition to prime-time, but hey, nobody bats 1.000, not even Mickey Mantle.” The Yankees were about to the enter the much dreaded “Horace Clarke Years.” From 1965 to 1967, the Yankees turned in three sub-.500 seasons, never finishing higher than sixth. Clarke, who played from 1965 to ‘74 got a bad rap, it seemed, just for being on the field year after year after year during the worst losing stretch of the team’s history (though to see the team really down in the dumps, fans had only to wait until the 80s.) He was consistently a .250 hitter and came to represent everything that was wrong with the team, with baseball and the world. On June 8, 1969, Mickey Mantle walked on the moon. Wait, that’s not right. On that day, Mickey Mantle just thought he walked on the moon after too many Scotch and sodas. Also on that afternoon, Yankee Stadium celebrated “Mickey Mantle Day” where his uniform No. 7 was retired. Said Mantle: “Today, I consider myself the drunkiest man on the face of the earth.” Actually, Mantle said, “I never knew how someone dying could say he was the luckiest man in the world. But now I understand,” which was nice tribute to Lou Gehrig, for those of you who aren’t paying attention. The Yankees continue losing into the 1970s, although a gritty, young rookie catcher by the name of Thurman Munson plays his first game in 1969. Just as things start looking up, CBS announced that it was selling the franchise to a limited partnership headed by a Cleveland shipbuilder’s son, George M. Steinbrenner III. One of his partners at the time commented, “There is nothing quite so limited as being a limited partner of George M. Steinbrenner.” Steinbrenner summarily had him killed, declaring his dictatorial reign over the most successful sports franchise in history early and with conviction. In other initial acts of psychosis, Steinbrenner orders the entire organization to conduct business in French, makes the players change the laces on their cleats between every inning, replaces “Take Me Out To The Ballgame” during seventh-inning stretch with the long version of “Inna Gadda Da Vida,” replaces Stadium coffee with Folgers Crystals, insists grounds crew measure each individual blade of grass to insure uniform length, and, in one completely maddening gesture of fascist authority, eliminates beer in the bleacher seats (this is true). While Yankee Stadium was being renovated, Steinbrenner was forced to move his team across the 59th Street Bridge to play at Shea Stadium, and he was decidedly not feelin’ groovy about it. The shared space harkened back to the days when the Yanks bunked with the Giants, and the even odder coupling of the Yankees and Mets inspired Neil Simon to write about it in his play, Biloxi Blues. Finally, in 1976, a remodeled Yankee Stadium reopened to wild applause. It wouldn’t be until at least 20 years later that people needed to bring steel umbrellas to games to keep from getting hit in the head with falling beams. The year after the Yanks moved back into the Bronx, they won the American League pennant. The year after that, 1978, they won the World Series. The year after that, they won the World Series again. Said Reggie Jackson, “It was all because of me. Not long after Reggie Jackson became known as Mr. October for hitting three home runs in row in a World Series game, a candy bar was named after him. Known as the Reggie Bar, it contained way too many peanuts and caused people to break out in an allergic reaction, much the way Munson did having to listen to the real Reggie Jackson speak about himself. The tragic death of Thurman Munson marred the 1980s, and, except for the nitty-gritty, down-and-dirty play of Don Mattingly, not much good happened to the Yanks. Steinbrenner installed a revolving door outside the manager’s office and fired his skippers between innings for 13 straight years. The Yanks had 245 managers in the 1980s. The year after Captain Donnie Baseball retired, the Yanks won the World Series. I heard they did all right for a few years thereafter. But don’t quote me on it. | ||
| Duder Citizen Username: El_duderino Post Number: 708 Registered: 2-2004 |
How amazing do you have to be in Japan to get the nickname "Godzilla?" Really, it was only a matter of time before someone got that moniker, and it could only be used once. I think that alone says everything you need to know about Hideki Matsui. | ||
| Duder Citizen Username: El_duderino Post Number: 712 Registered: 2-2004 |
Pole Position Stick Up Mussina’s ••• Throwing Off Mechanics By El Duderino, MOL Sports Desk After a lengthy meeting in manager Joe Torre’s office, the Yankees have concluded that righthanded starter Mike Mussina’s poor performance this season was caused by, in Torre’s words, “a giant stick up his •••.” X-rays taken at Beth Israel Hospital last week proved positive that Mussina does, in fact, have a long, narrow spike the size of a flagpole wedged firmly between his butt cheeks. Pitching coach Mel Stottlemyre likened Mussina’s condition to “a massive shish kabob.” Continuing, Stottlemyre said, “Mike’s superior attitude has literally turned him into a human barbecue skewer. As you could imagine, it’s completely thrown off his mechanics.” All season Moose has been searching for an explanation for his flat fastball. “It’s like he’s got a rock-solid tail interfering with his follow though,” said catcher Jorge Posada. Mussina’s condescending attitude toward fellow players and press is notorious around the clubhouse. Asked to comment, Mussina said, “I am emphatically obdurate to not verbalizing my idiosyncratic posturization.” He added under his breath: “Querulous jerks.” “Sometimes I feel like taking that Sunday New York Times crossword puzzle and shoving it where the sun don’t shine,” said teammate Gary Sheffield about his often haughty and stuck-up teammate. Asked to elaborate, Torre said, “You know, Moose should just walk around wearing a T-shirt that says, ‘I graduated Stanford in three years and that makes me better than you.’” |
