Blogrolling Thinks You Are Like Cancer

Shockingly, ex NFL RB Travis Henry is having a hard time making ends meet, due to his hobby of making ends meet. See what I did there? That's comedy, you lousy punks.

Jon Papelbon, like many in Red Sox Nation, just can't stop talking about ManRam, and compares him to cancer. Now, this is where the media fails me, really. What kind of cancer, Paps? Breast, which makes you use funny pink bats? Ass or dick cancer, like what so many people wished on you when you did your spasmodic dance routines? Heroic Jon Lester Cancer? Details, man, details. (And yes, the sound you heard was the Bad Tooth squealing with delight that another 5,000 words on what the Paps-Manny Feud Means, and what would happen if, heavens to all heavens, they actually met as adversaries on the field of combat. I feel faint.)

The real jersey purchase of our times: making your own. Screw you, jersey price gougers. Note also the Very Male Way of referring to sewing as DIY. Balls malesy DIY, oi oi oi!

Continuing on the ugly duds theme, Simon looks at St. Patrick's Day sports gear, so you don't have to.


Nick at IMS with more Joba Drama, because nothing endures quite so well as eternal Yankee drama.



Continuing the blog's newfound lease of life as All Spiderman, All The Time. I have lots more of these, people. Do not provoke me.

Fork time?

Last night in Texas, the Yankees lost to the Rangers, and maybe the rest of their playoff hopes. Staff ace Joba Chamberlain left with a bum wing, which is just about the last thing that a team that's trying to get wins out of Darrell Rasner and Sidney Ponson needed to see. This, combined with a bullpen blowup, dropped the Bombers to 5.5 out of the division and 2.5 games out of the wildcard, and the teams that they're fighting for those positions -- Boston, Tampa, Minnesota and Chicago, and you can even count the Rangers in the mix now -- don't have their pitching problems.

The late great A's announcer Bill King refused to go to Texas in his latter years. He hated everything about the place, from the bandbox ballpark to the stifling heat, and he was old enough and revered enough to just opt out of the assignment. The Yankees might want to take up his example, as it was at this park that Phil Hughes got hurt a year ago, while he was in the process of no-hitting the home club.

The real problem for the Yanks is that their margin for error -- an offense that turned bad pitchers into hamburger and good pitchers into spectators by the sixth, because they just worked them ragged -- has been a sputtering mess for most of the year. When you pay what they pay everyday players, you don't expect the ninth-most runs in the majors. (But, of course, this is what happens when you spend all your cash on aging vets, and have no reasonable minor league vets to call up for the inevitable injuries.)

The clock is now starting to become a serious problem, too. Yankee Fan (and, to a lesser extent, Baseball Fan) doesn't usually think 3 to 5 games is a big deal in the standings, because sweeps and streaks happen. But when you look at the historical pattern for this kind of thing, teams that have leads keep them much more often than they lose them, because it's just damned deadly difficult to be a game a week better than your opponents. With less than a third of the season left -- the Yanks have 50 to go -- they needed to put the hammer down now. Chamberlain on the sidelines could very well make that impossible. (Now, if we can only get Tampa to hold on to the lead, and the Twins to make a big fat run to keep the Red Sox out... Fox will cancel the playoffs. Dream a little dream...)

Chamberlain, Without Appeasement

I had the Yankees-Red Sox game on during the monthly poker game on Friday night, since some of my crew are Yankee fans, and I try to be a good host. So we caught the latest Joba Chamberlain throwing at Kevin Youkilis dustup, which made Yankee Fan in attendance happier than pocket aces.

The quick details, for those of you who missed this, not that I'm sure the Lemur allows you to... Chamberlain, in the midst of his best start in the majors, is pitching in the seventh with a 1-0 lead. On a 2-0 count to Youkilis, he comes up and in and nearly kills the guy. Tempers flare, Youkilis barks, and Chamberlain goes on to strike him out. All of which wouldn't be that big of a deal, if it weren't the fourth -- fourth! -- time that Chamberlain has gotten up and in on Youkilis.

Now, I'm not going to defend the actions of the pitcher or the hitter. I've owned both of these guys in my roto leagues, but don't now, and so, I'm not terribly interested in defending either. Nor am I very interested in choosing sides in the Coke vs. Pepsi war. But what did interest me is the reaction of Yankee Fan, who couldn't love Chamberlain more now, and probably never will appreciate the player more than they do today.

Here's the thing about Joba that Yankee Fan loves -- he's young. Too young to know better about rivalries being mostly for the amusement of fans. Too young to care that a suspension could come, or that he'll be ostracized at the All-Star Game or in the off-season and off-time bars where players from other teams are hanging out. Too young to notice that the older veterans on the team, particularly the ones with hundreds of millions of dollars in the bank and off-field worries (Mr. Rodriguez, your alimony lawyer is on line two), don't really appreciate it when the young pitchers on both teams start ramping up the Hatfield-McCoy stuff.

So when the Sawx's Craig Hansen hits A-Rod in the midst of what wound up as a 10-3 pants-wetting panic loss for Boston Fan yesterday, bringing the Yankees even in the loss column and the latest in their 8-game post All-Star winning streak, the Yankees didn't rush the field, or glower at the young pitcher, or provide anything but measured responses in the clubhouse afterward. They won't, because with the handful of exceptions, they are old enough to know better, and haven't been together for long enough (especially, say, in the minor leagues) to have that kind of team dynamic.

Yankee Fan, like all fans, hates that. Yankee Fan, like most fans, would rather be watching football, and anytime baseball is more like football, they're liking it a little bit more, even if it does come at the cost of having a stray baserunner or two. It's also a reason (albeit a small one) why Yankee Fan is frequently an angry fan, despite the success and the Stadium and the limitless resources; when you have no attachment to the players, because they've all been bought and all know better, you are, well... spoiled brats, bullies, and apologists for the same. But I still like you lots more than I do Sox Fan, because at least you aren't expecting me to be happy for you after your team rapes mine.

Today, it's John Lester for the Sox, and Fat Sidney Ponson for the Yanks, in the required by law Sunday Night Game on the Lemur. If Ponson wants to extend his unlikely popularity in the Bronx, he'll hit a guy. If he wants to actually remain employed, he'll pitch well. And that is the difference between fans and management, young and old, and guys who sell jerseys and guys that do not.

Sunday in the park with Joba

Today, for the single good reason of letting the Shooter Eldest say she's been to the old Yankee Stadium, I took her to their game against Kansas City. Here are some notes.

> Joba Chamberlain was better today than in his first start, but still not all that good; Kansas City at home is a team that you should not be comfortable giving up much of anything to, really. For a guy with great stuff, he really does seem like someone you can bleed pitches from, just from spoiling the fastball with foul balls. He also doesn't look comfortable with anything but heat and the slider; maybe he'll go to the third and fourth pitchers if he's ever working with a lead, or just a more traditional pitch court. But if Jorge Posada doesn't fail to squeeze a high fastball, he might have made it to five innings and gotten a win today. (The Jose Guillen homer he gave up was a very big no doubt job, though.)

> The Royals had two players today that did much of anything: Joey Gathright, who made three fantastic catches that kept the game close. He didn't get on base, but he was unreal. The second was Guillen, who might be the only Royals offensive player that didn't look afraid or just plain melty today. Yes, it was, um, freaking hot.

> The game turned on a classic, old-time Jason Giambi at-bat in the bottom of the sixth, as he worked a fading Zach Greinke into a long battle, then took him out to right. Back in his glory days at Oakland, he did this more or less routinely, and if he's back for one last run as a plus offensive player (with a cheesy porn stache to boot), the Yanks have much more interesting offense.

> Your hidden hero so far in the Chamberlain Transition has been Dan Giese, a Scranton pitcher who has acted as the designated Joba long man. He got eight outs today with no baserunners and three punchouts, and in a more just world, would earn himself a look after the next starter flames out. (He's not really very good, but neither is Darrell Rasner.) In both Joba starts, Giese has been effective and prevented the Yankees from having to run a parade out there.

> For the Yanks, Bobby Abreu had the first inning home, Giambi the go-ahead shot, and A-Rod the two-run double that gave them a comfort margin. If Gathright hadn't taken away three hits with exceptional plays, it wouldn't have been close. This just in... the Royals aren't very good.

> For people who care about such things, with a 3-run lead in the top of the eighth and six outs away from a series win, Joe Girardi went to... no, not Kyle Farnsworth, but the actually effective Jose Veras. No idea if that's a permanent change, or just something to do after a slugfest on Saturday, but if it's my club, I make that move. Maybe a month ago. You know what you've got with Farnsworth, and it's not good.

> A final note, for one of my favorite stadiums (and I've been to, gulp, 17 different parks over the years, many of which are no longer in existence)... until today, I never really got why anyone in their right mind would want a new yard. I've been to a half-dozen plus games there over the years, and just love the place, even though I'm really not a Yankee fan and its mind-bogglingly expensive. (My seats today were similar to what my old seats in Oakland were like, but only at a 600% cost premium.)

When you were there, you know it's for baseball, the sight lines are good, the fan base is highly entertaining, and the Bronx just doesn't seem as scary as it used to. It's no fun to drive there, but that's true of all of New York, really. So why do you need a new yard, other than to try to get more money out of a fan base that's already paying an absurd amount of jack for games?

Well, all of that is true... and then there's bringing your eight-year-old kid to the game. She's a great kid, but she appreciates having a little run-around time in a Kids Club; that doesn't exist in Yankee Stadium.

Having her with me makes me all too aware in the bathroom gender inequity issues. The hardcore security situation (and no lockers for bags) creates a dumb situation where a local bowling alley makes money, for no good reason. (And no, doing without any of her stuff in the 5 hours of round-trip train rides that I endured today isn't very possible, either.) The concourses are choked and narrow, and that is especially true when they bring in additional vendors to add options, or have to move supplies around. And when it's in the high 90s without any place to go to get a respite, that's pretty nasty, too.

The new yard might or might not address any of these issues; Yankee Fan has certainly learned to live without such features in the past 80 years. But on the off chance that anyone in MLB still cares about the next generation, they might want to think about such things. My kid had a nice enough time, but that's mostly because she's the proud owner of a foam #1 finger, rather than from anything that happened inside the building. And for what I spent today, her first trip to the Stadium is also going to her last...