Given their dearth of productive options at 1B, why not look into bringing back Tony Clark?

The Human Windmill (nicknamed so not for Scandinavian heritage) may not be bobblehead material, but (1)very good glove, (2)some production between strikeouts, and (3)his baseball card tells me he's a very nice man. 

Any other ideas?  Anyone?

So who represents the judge & jury that have decreed Scott Boras failed in these Arod negotiations?  Sure, he didn’t look good, but he never really looks good.  He just makes his clients gobs of money.  The perception that Hank’s Yanks got the upper hand here and that team Arod/Boras are left with their tails between their legs are overlooking the basic fact that their walking away with some 300M.  Indeed, there was no bidding war like Boras may (or may not) have anticipated.  No, Arod did not get 350M.  It was and will always be all posturing.  Yeah, Hank Steinbrenner got off a few good lines (for posterity: him wondering aloud if Arod wants to go to the Hall of Fame as a Yankee or a Toledo Mud Hen; also rejecting negotiations with Arod by stating he obviously does not want to be a Yankee, and adding the ultimate barb: comparing Arod to Jeter – zing!). 

I’m not quite cynical enough to think the plan the entire time was:

Step 1-- cheese off the Yanks;

Step 2 – play good cop/bad cop with them, making your client the good cop by reaching out to them while agent’s back is turned;

Step 3 – walk away with 300M. 

But it’s probably not far off. 

Announcing his opt out in the waning innings of the World Series – hilarious!

Suggesting he wants to explore other options because the Yanks are in transition – stop, you’re killing me!

Making nice by reaching out the Yanks instead of having the agent do this - okaaaaay

Supposedly making concessions, like the $21M the Yanks lose from the Texas subsidy- I’m listening

Working on a deal in the 275M range – wha?!

Adding a home run incentive clause – who’s writing this stuff?!

Is this really what the guy needs?  Bonus money if he breaks the home run record?  Pressure hoist upon him to hit home runs?  Ohhhh dear, this is a mistake.

We’ll see how the dust settles on this deal, but so far, I much preferred the original idea for him to maintain his contract, and have the Yanks add four years to it @ $28M per.   This would have cost the Yanks about 160M over seven years, methinks, while Arod would earn over 180M. But that wasn’t going to cut it…

It’s certainly wise from Arod’s perspective to stick with the team – to paraphrase Hank’s sentiment, Arod was in danger of being the greatest slugger who ever lived, yet would lack any team identification (many have appropriately said his HOF plaque would have a $ logo).  This is a guy acutely aware of his legacy.  But I think it’s the Yanks who were the ones really over a barrel here.  The need to maintain a contending team as they head into the Disneyland version of Yankee Stadium (heretofore: YS2K9) has had them scampering. 

Some people have a knack for PR missteps, and Arod fits that bill.  But for all the bills he’ll be receiving, he’ll take that trade off.  I’m glad the player is back.  Aaron Boone would have gotten a nice opening day reception, but that love affair which weathered his mostly bad 2003 post-season would have soured fast.   The Yanks are overpaying for Arod, and, like 2004, it doesn’t appear there were any other bidders.  Hence: $25 yearbooks.  Can the commissioner sponsor this deal so Barry Bonds can be erased from the record books?  Maybe that’s why Hank Steinbrenner is so proud of himself.

Oops… I got distracted for a while, but from what I’m told, the Sox won the Series.  This is a just result talent-wise and organization-wise.  Positive stories of Lester and Lowell outweigh the agita administered to me by the likes of Big Papi getting down the line on a ground ball with the speed of a Big Forklift.  This is the post-season, Meat, so save the Garret Anderson impression for Wednesday night softball after you retire. I love seeing a second baseman boot the ball and still throw guys like this out by a hair after the batter has turned it on 75 feet up the line after seeing the ball get booted.  Galling for any runner to do this, but a semi-player like Ortiz who can spend the next 50 minutes sitting down on an inflatable donut if he wants to?  A whole post-season can turn on one play, and the Sox should know this better than anyone.  Other anti-Sox sentiments coursed through me this post-season when Jonathan Papelbon used the same breath to attribute a blown lead against the Yanks in September to migraines, and suggesting this is no time for excuses.  So then what was that?  Classic athlete-speak from long before his time that is so popular throughout the league.  “I can’t make any excuses, but…”

No question this is as brash a team as they come, but a little confidence comes in handy now and again.  The ALCS actually looked over in the middle of game 5, when the Sox were still down in the series 3-1.  No surprise they would win game 5, as the match-up seemed in their favor, but the way in which the Indians lost, throwing the ball around in a reckless fashion, choking it in their hands, seemed to suggest heading back to Boston while they started to crack up was a bad omen.  The next two games would feature Indians defense that really only needed some Benny Hill music to make it a whimsical montage.  Balls thrown straight in the dirt would suggest the brain forgot to tell the hand to release the ball when the arm comes whipping around.  Think this game ain’t mental?

So with guys like Youkilis, Pedroia and Papelbon firmly in place to go along with promising young pitching, it doesn’t seem like the Sox are going anywhere soon.  What I wonder about that organization is do they probe the mental states of the players they bring up or bring in?  How come players don’t generally go all Ed Whitson on them like so many do in the Bronx?  For every one Eric Gagne in Boston, there seem to be five Javy Vasquezs in New York.  Maybe Brian Cashman should have been a Psych major.

I'm trying to tell myself it's not bad if the Sox go on and win the World Series.  They're the best team, Boston's a great city, Fenway is a beautiful park, and they have a rabid fan base.  The "curse" is over, so what's the big deal.

But seeing Manny Ramirez so emphatically turn a 7-2 deficit into a 7-3 deficit, then thrust both arms in the air like he just won a pie-eating contest before circling the bases during the time the Goodyear blimp could have circumnavigated the globe makes me think a Cleveland victory would be true poetic justice.  I still don't think the Sox have much right to lose this series, but they are on the verge of being upset.  And if that does happen, will someone tell Manny?

In a move reminiscent of a younger, more impetuous George M. Steinbrenner III, the Yankees have just traded untouchable prospect Phil Hughes for seasoned righthander Paul Byrd.  Speaking through Yankee spokesman Howard Rubenstein, The Boss offered, "The people of New York deserve a valued post-season hero that will help this team achieve our goal to bring a world championship back to New York where it belongs."  Byrd, for his part, added "I know New York can be tough, but I'm excited to play for a winner and I promise my Indian teammates this will not distract from my current role as game 4 starter in the ALCS against the Red Sox, should the series go that far."

Well, I can’t really elaborate on anything from this game, since my TiVo said “not tonight, pal!” as it so often does, taping the wrong channel and leaving me with 4+ hours of soap operas and local LA news, which was probably a rerun from yesterday anyway.  Why does everyone love the TiVo?  Anytime I set it, the TiVo essentially tells me “it’ll try to record what you want, but I ain’t promising anything… I’ll only disappoint you”.  We have this understanding.

But this much I know: Sabathia gives the Yankees a gift of a shaky outing, but the Bronx Nine decline his charity.  Wang makes the same offer to the Indians.  They politely accept.

I’ve not yet gotten the temperature from fans to know if Alex Rodriguez is on thin ice for not hitting a 10 run homer to give the Yanks the win.  Taking two walks in four plate appearance is fine by me, though. The Yanks letting C.C. off the hook, then rolling over against the bullpen is something that I’m glad my TiVo spared me from.

On to things I have witnessed.  I witnessed Lou Piniella allow Carlos Zambrano to swing away in a tight game with a runner on second and no one out in game one of  the Cubs-D’backs series.  I’m told his reasoning was that Soriano, coming up, is a feast or famine hitter, so Lou was not really expecting a single from him.  (Note to Yank fans who wanted Torre sacked last year: try chewing on that logic from the guy who probably would have replaced him.)  For added fun, I got to listen to Ron Darling on the TBS broadcast actually agree with such asinine logic, adding that Zambrano is one of the best hitting pitchers in the game.  With Zambrano’s lifetime .219 average (and going up against Brandon Webb), this is like saying shoe leather is the tastiest form of footwear when put on a pizza, so let’s have that instead of anchovies.  I reckon if it’s 1986 and Darling is on the mound of a tight game, he’d swallow his Bazooka if Rafael Santana were swinging away in such a situation, so why should a pitcher with a similar average be any different?

That said, maybe Lou had a point.  Soriano, aka, the Man Who Was Traded For Arod, is flailing at pitches like he’s trying to capture a butterfly with a measuring cup—in other words, he’s doing an imitation of himself from the 2003 post-season against the Sox and Marlins.  If you think A-Sor is all that and a bag of Funyons, check out his post-season lifetime numbers.  Plate discipline does not seem to be coming with age.

And if Piniella didn’t have that in mind, maybe he channeled the future and saw pitcher Ted Lilly trying to bunt in tonight’s game two.  Dropping down a bunt is not automatic, but he looked so overmatched, I think he had the bat upside down.  And Lilly was squaring around practically while the pitcher was still addressing the rosin bag.  The foul ball strike out was a foregone conclusion. 

Well my teams (preferred, not predicted) are 0-5 so far this post-season.  Let’s hope the Yanks can survive enough to make the leap from TBS.

How is it possible that Jeff Karstens has pitched only 14.2 innings this year?  Hasn’t he started about 12 games for the Yanks?   I guess falling behind and giving up a game winning homer to the first hitter you see (a .226 hitter at that) keeps the IPs down.

Meanwhile, the formidable Yankee lineup has a way of making bad bullpens cruise in extra inning games.  If not for the fact that MLB has a way to make the division race almost meaningless when the wild card is a fallback, I would be mighty upset right now.

The specter of Kyle Farnsworth coming into the game in the 10^th served to create the urgency for the Yanks to win in the bottom of the 9^th.  A perfect swinging suicide squeeze by Jeter eeked this one out, with the big hit in the inning coming from Giambi (who should be in the lineup instead of Damon anyway).

Rivera actually looked worse yesterday when he hung on for the save than he did tonight when he got foiled by three bloops.  The game would not have reached the bottom of 9 squibber climax had Abreu come up with a throw home in the top of 9 that was not in the vicinity of a pitch that Cano would swing at. 

Other unnerving defense is Posada’s habit of taking throws behind the plate and opening up the front door to baserunners.  It didn’t cost them this time, but almost.  Can’t Tony Pena take him aside with a telestrater in hand?  Wasn’t it Posada who scored the winning run in the Yanks last World Series victory because Piazza did the same thing?

By the way, I was hoping they would replace the Kate Smith “God Bless America” 7th inning strrrrrretch with the theme from Jeopardy as a nod to Merv Griffin.  I should be in their marketing department.

I was also sad to lose Mr. Tom Snyder recently, despite that he turned me down to have a picture taken with him a few years ago outside a book store in Santa Monica.  He wasn’t rude about it.  He just politely said he was trying to catch up with his family (Ma Snyder, perhaps?).  I’m not a Rupert Pupkin celebrity stalker, but every time I boot up my computer, I think, gosh, that picture would have made fine wallpaper.  **** Cavett, if you browse through bookstores in Santa Monica, I’m gunnin’ for you.

A) benching,

B) assignment to the DL, or at the very least,

C) drop in the order.   

In fact, it’s amazing Arod has had so many RBI opportunities when the Yanks leadoff hitter has his average up to the .240s.    Would Jeter-Abreu-Arod be such a bad top 3?  At this point, Miguel Cairo looks like a more effective DH than Damon.  Even if Damon’s speed, attitude, haircut, sang froid, blackmail pictures or whatever it is that is keeping his light, slap-hitting, cannot-turn-on-the-ball swing in the lineup, his rally-killing ways should have stopped long ago by burying him where he’s less obvious.

Right now, Giambi’s return can not come fast enough.  And that may be the only time “Giambi” and “fast” are used in the same sentence. 

There’s not much to add to the GarySheffield’s wake of lunacy, other than he might want to have tea with Carl Everett so they can discuss the fallacy of dinosaurs and the moon landing.   There might be no better reflection on Joe Torre than the fact that people who pop off after they are dealt or released have a history of antisocial disorder and could use a dallop of meds.  It was a nice touch that Sheff referenced two other disgruntled former Yanks of African descent, because both of those ballplayers complained about playing time that they lost to… two other black players!  Genius.  So Kenny Lofton agrees with Sheff.  Tony Womack could not be reached for comment, as he disappeared of planet Earth shortly after it was realized his playing career ended a few years before he retired.

Surely there are many fine editorials on this rhapsody.  I’m fond of this Jon Heyman piece.