The Yankee Thread

[yankees228]

This is actually a popular question' date=' I was asking my dad what he thought about it the other day. He was of the ilk that didn't mind keeping Melky and trying to trade Matsui. I don't think that works, since Matsui is a soldier and the PR and marketing would go to hell in Japan. I say the 2007 team has Cabrera as the 4th outfielder and if Giambi permits, perhaps allow Matsui to DH more often.[/quote']

 

Does Matsui have a no trade clause? Seems like the Yankees give those out pretty easily.

[26 to 6]

What happened the last time?

There was just a lot of unmistakable tension between the two. The entire trip they were on it was just back and forth, especially on the part of Leiter. It was made note of in the papers and on the radio.

 

It's been a few weeks since they've worked together and everything seems fine.

 

This is actually a popular question, I was asking my dad what he thought about it the other day. He was of the ilk that didn't mind keeping Melky and trying to trade Matsui. I don't think that works, since Matsui is a soldier and the PR and marketing would go to hell in Japan. I say the 2007 team has Cabrera as the 4th outfielder and if Giambi permits, perhaps allow Matsui to DH more often.

That's probably how it will work out. Matsui won't be traded. Melky will be the 4th OF, but I can see him getting 3-5 starts a week.

[AlexanderTheGreat13]

Melky is the perfect 4th OF on a championship team IMO. However if another team overvalues him and we can get something good for him I would deal him. Buy low sell high. Trade him at his highest value (if you can get something good).

[empirestrikesback26]

There was just a lot of unmistakable tension between the two. The entire trip they were on it was just back and forth, especially on the part of Leiter. It was made note of in the papers and on the radio.

 

It's been a few weeks since they've worked together and everything seems fine.

 

 

That's probably how it will work out. Matsui won't be traded. Melky will be the 4th OF, but I can see him getting 3-5 starts a week.

 

Leiter comes off as a jackass to me. I don't like him.

[JeterWifey213]

Sep. 14, 2006

CBS SportsLine.com

 

Major League Baseball recently announced big news: Overall attendance is on pace for a record in excess of 75 million.

 

The New York Yankees, with crowds averaging 51,000 per game for a record 4.2 million pace, have the best fans in baseball.

 

Wait a minute. Sorry. Got a word wrong in that sentence.

 

The Yankees have the worst fans in baseball.

 

There. Much more accurate.

 

You know what this is about. It's about the same thing every story on the Yankees has been about all season. This is about Alex Rodriguez.

 

For months, as his batting average sank and his error tally rose, Yankees fans booed A-Rod. It got to the point where daily game stories out of New York focused on two equally compelling story lines: Yankees vs. Visitors, and Yankee Stadium vs. A-Rod.

 

And then A-Rod got hot. It started on the last day of August with three hits, bled into Sept. 1 with two home runs, and has continued for two weeks. Yankee Stadium can't get enough of A-Rod now. He's their guy. After Jeter of course. And the steroid-user. And Matsui. A-Rod's fourth, though. And fourth is special.

 

This is no defense of A-Rod. He's not a pitiful creature. He's a grown man with a great life and an enormous salary, so he'll get no tears because he got booed.

 

Instead, let's laugh at Yankees fans.

 

Look, Yankees fans, if you've really hated A-Rod for most of this summer, then hate him. Hate him for making more money per game ($158,532) than most people make in a year. Hate him for questioning Derek Jeter's leadership in that infamous Esquire interview of 2001. Hate him for being better looking than you, for having a prettier wife than you, for taking off his shirt this summer in Central Park.

 

But to hate him for the sin of struggling on the baseball field? That's dumb -- and more than dumb, it's counter-productive.

 

And that, Yankees fans, is why you're the worst fans in baseball

 

Do fans everywhere boo the home team, or a home player, on occasion? Sure they do, though I'll never understand it. Barring something detestable like displaying a lack of effort or committing off-field violence against women -- and not in that order -- a player should never be booed at home. Just shouldn't happen. But it does, everywhere. Fine.

 

But only in Yankee Stadium, and only with A-Rod, does it happen with such intensity, such glee.

 

"(T)here was a period when they were booing (A-Rod) when it was inappropriate," Yankees general manager Brian Cashman told the New York Daily News last week. "It became the thing to do like, you go to a Broadway show, you boo Alex. It was almost like a little fad."

 

For months it was like Yankees fans wanted A-Rod to fail. Watching him get hits and make defensive plays would have been nice, perhaps, but it was more enjoyable to watch him throw another ball away and then strike out with men on base -- and then let him have it!

 

The thing was, as the booing got worse, so did A-Rod. A trickle of throwing errors became a torrent. Strikeouts piled up. Runners were left in scoring position by the bushel. And the Yankees were the poorer for it. With their best player having his worst season, the Yankees were trailing Boston in the American League East in a season where, with the rise of the AL Central, the wild-card wasn't looking like a viable safety net.

 

Yankees fans -- spoiled as they are by a system that funnels rich teams like the Yankees and the ... Yankees toward October -- weren't helping the cause. They were hurting it. You idiots. More than football, more than basketball, baseball is a mental game. Get inside a player's head, and he's done. Name a basketball player who simply lost his shooting touch and was hounded out of the NBA. Name a quarterback who lost his accuracy at the peak of his career. It doesn't happen in those sports.

 

In baseball, it happens. There's a syndrome for it, and of course it's named for a baseball player, Steve Blass, who inexplicably lost the ability to throw strikes and by 1974 was out of baseball at age 32, two years after winning 19 games. The same mental block struck down the promising pitching careers of Rick Ankiel and Sam Militello, hastened Chuck Knoblauch's retirement as a second baseman and ruined catcher Mackey Sasser.

 

Militello and Knoblauch, like Rodriguez, were afflicted when they were Yankees. (Sasser was a New York Met.) Coincidence? Perhaps. Or perhaps the stress of performing on the world's brightest stage, hindered by routine confidence issues and exacerbated by 50,000 booing enemies at home, made a small problem massive.

 

Anyway, it's a dead issue now. A-Rod's out of his funk, in the field and at the plate.

 

Don't applaud yourselves, Yankees fans. You had nothing to do with it.

 

I can't stand his prima donna ass, I would boo him if I had the chance to do it again. I never wanted Arod on the team, and giving up Sori for him made me dislike him even more. It's not the money, or the "prettier " wife, it's his personality. His need to be accepted by everyone, his arrogance. He just screams ******* to me.

[schillingouttheks]

It really is pathetic how you guys are suddenly all over his meat. You gave him two curtain calls during that Mets game when he looked like he was breaking out of a slump. Then, went right back to booing him for the next 2 months.

 

If I were A-Rod, I would take every chance of a curtain call I got to go out onto the top of the dugout stairs, take my helmet off, and flip all 50,000 fans off.

[JeterWifey213]

I am no where near the man's meat, nor do I want to be. I despise him in every way imaginable. If I'm paying a grand and some change for the tics I'm booing everybody, even the cracker jack dude. Arod is no exception, he just needs to borrow his wife's balls if he plans to stay here.

 

If I were Arod I would stop wearing neon.

[BeanTown33]

he just needs to borrow his wife's balls if he plans to stay here.

aint it the truth!

If I were Arod I would stop wearing neon.

LMAO thats just sad s***. im so jealous that he makes a bajillion dollars and wears neon colors. why oh why can't that be me.

 

ummm, Julian Tavarez anyone???

[JeterWifey213]

LMAO thats just sad s***. im so jealous that he makes a bajillion dollars and wears neon colors. why oh why can't that be me.

 

You know what they say, money doesn't buy class. That's what happens when you're tacky and you get money sad s***.

 

What I find funny is why does everyone care? I rather have fans in my stadium to boo me than have no one there at all You know a troll will be in here saying " Thats you justifying the klassless acts Yankee fans are" hit it right on the head

[BeanTown33]

If I were A-Rod, I would take every chance of a curtain call I got to go out onto the top of the dugout stairs, take my helmet off, and flip all 50,000 fans off.

that requires balls. and i don't foresee shim handing hers over. very unlikely.

 

You know a troll will be in here saying " Thats you justifying the klassless acts Yankee fans are"

eh you know what, some yanks fans say that about the sox fans and some sox fans say that about yanks fans. it's a never ending cycle. i love being a special breed of fan.lol

[a700hitter]

There was just a lot of unmistakable tension between the two. The entire trip they were on it was just back and forth, especially on the part of Leiter. It was made note of in the papers and on the radio.

 

It's been a few weeks since they've worked together and everything seems fine.

I did n't notice anything in particular, but Leiter constantly whines excuses for Yankee players even when they are winning.

[26 to 6]

Melky is the perfect 4th OF on a championship team IMO. However if another team overvalues him and we can get something good for him I would deal him. Buy low sell high. Trade him at his highest value (if you can get something good).

Personally, I wouldnt. I've been high on Melky for like 3 years. Since he was eligible to play in the states (I believe he signed before he was eligible to come play in the minors, so he had to play in the Dominican and whatnot) i've followed him. I defended him through everything last year into this year and now it's paying off for me. I would love nothing more than for him to become a mainstay and a staple in the Yankees outfield for YEARS to come.

 

But I see where you're coming from. I'd probably feel the same way if I didnt personally like him as much as I do.

[Optimist]

Minor League News:

 

Yanks secure second straight title

 

STATEN ISLAND, N.Y. -- After a day of torrential rain, the skies opened long enough for the Tri-City ValleyCats and Staten Island Yankees to play winner-take-all Game 3 of the New York-Penn League Championship series on Friday.

 

The Yankees took full advantage of the opportunity. Behind the stellar pitching of George Kontos and the timely hitting of Kyle Larsen, Staten Island blanked the ValleyCats, 2-0, to win its second straight NYPL title.

 

Kontos, a fifth-round draft pick out of Northwestern, shut down a ValleyCats lineup that had broken through for nine runs in Game 2. The 21-year-old right-hander scattered five hits and three walks over six scoreless innings and struck out a career-high 11 batters.

 

"This was the most intense game I'd ever been in", he said. "I just tried to stay loose and remind myself not to overthrow."

 

Kontos' loaded the bases in a heart-stopping sixth, running the count to 3-0 on Chris Johnson before inducing him to pop up to second to end the inning.

 

"I realized I was trying to do too much in that situation," he said. "I took a step back, took a deep breath and got out of it."

 

Tri-City starter Chris Salamida, the league's best pitcher this season, entered with an 0.94 ERA in 15 starts. But Staten Island plated a run with two outs in the first and never looked back. Mitch Holligoss ripped a double down the left-field line and Larsen followed with an RBI single.

 

"Salamida is an awesome pitcher and we knew this game wouldn't be high-scoring," said Larsen. "He got me to 0-2, and I was just happy to get a pitch to hit."

 

The Yankees struck again in the third, and again it was Larsen who came through with an RBI. Chris Kunda led off with a bloop double down the left field line, advanced to third on Hilligoss' groundout and scored on Larsen's sacrifice fly.

 

It was all the offense Staten Island needed. Salamida finished up with three shutout innings, while Chad Wagler and Victor Garate set the Yankees down in order in the seventh and eighth.

 

Peterson relieved Kontos and breezed through the seventh before allowing a two-out infield single to Max Sapp and walking Game 2 hero James Van Ostrand. Staten Island manager Gaylen Pitts opted for closer Mark Melancon, who retired Justin Tellam on a groundout to second to escape the jam.

 

Melancon's true test came in the ninth, however, when he took the mound with the Yankees just three outs away from repeating as champions. The 21-year-old right-hander struck out Johnson, got Aaron Bulkley to line to second and, with the crowd on its feet and his teammates hopping up and down on the top step of the dugout, whiffed Greg Buchanan.

 

Larsen was one of the few Baby Bombers who was on last year's championship team, so for him, the victory was doubly sweet.

 

"Last year, we played tremendously from start to finish", he said. "But this year was more up-and-down. We really had to battle in this series, so that made winning even sweeter."

 

"Now, we can all just go home and relax."

 

Also, the Yankees have basically severed ties with the Columbus Clippers. In all likelihood, the AAA team will be playing in Scranton next year.

[Cocos Disciples]

Scranton...where The Office is set?

[AlexanderTheGreat13]

Personally, I wouldnt. I've been high on Melky for like 3 years. Since he was eligible to play in the states (I believe he signed before he was eligible to come play in the minors, so he had to play in the Dominican and whatnot) i've followed him. I defended him through everything last year into this year and now it's paying off for me. I would love nothing more than for him to become a mainstay and a staple in the Yankees outfield for YEARS to come.

 

But I see where you're coming from. I'd probably feel the same way if I didnt personally like him as much as I do.

 

If Melky could play CF he could start right now (we have Damon). But that .399 SLG doesnt fit in a COF position.

[Optimist]

9 Straight AL East Titles. Now, onto October.

[26 Reasons to Hate Us]

It now only remains to be seen if we get the Tigers or Twins first...

[rician blast]

It now only remains to be seen if we get the Tigers or Twins first...

 

either way, the Yankees should walk right through the AL playoff teams.

[Optimist]

http://mlb.imageg.net/graphics/product_images/pMLB2-3222337dt.jpg

[RedRuffing15]

http://mlb.imageg.net/graphics/product_images/pMLB2-3222337dt.jpg

 

gotta go pick mine up this weekend

[Mr Crunchy]

wow thats an awesome tshirt

did you guys get 1 that says

2004 ALCS PARTICIPANTS

sort of like the indi colts AFC CHAMPIONSHIP GAME PARTICIPANT banner??

[26 Reasons to Hate Us]

wow thats an awesome tshirt

did you guys get 1 that says

2004 ALCS PARTICIPANTS

sort of like the indi colts AFC CHAMPIONSHIP GAME PARTICIPANT banner??

 

In about 2 weeks we will be participants in the 2006 ALCS. Maybe then the Yankees can finally get revenge against the Sox for what happened in 2004...oh wait, nevermind.

[a700hitter]

In about 2 weeks we will be participants in the 2006 ALCS. Maybe then the Yankees can finally get revenge against the Sox for what happened in 2004...oh wait' date=' nevermind.[/quote']You mean for the record-setting choking they administered to the Yankees that has never been done in over 100 years of baseball post seasons?

[Mr Crunchy]

no one can ever do better than what the yanks accomplished in october 04

it cant be beat

only duplicated

funny

this time of year im generally depressed over the end of summer and the sox tanking

however

i can still hang my hat on those 10 days in october and smile

[26 Reasons to Hate Us]

no one can ever do better than what the yanks accomplished in october 04

it cant be beat

only duplicated

funny

this time of year im generally depressed over the end of summer and the sox tanking

however

i can still hang my hat on those 10 days in october and smile

 

You hang your hat on those ten days 2 years ago. I'll hang my hat on the other thousands and thousands of days before and after that. And the other thing that the yanks have accomplished that can't be beat. Only duplicated. 26 times.

[a700hitter]

You hang your hat on those ten days 2 years ago. I'll hang my hat on the other thousands and thousands of days before and after that. And the other thing that the yanks have accomplished that can't be beat. Only duplicated. 26 times.

What can be duplicated and beat is how many championships that you have seen your Skankees win.

[Mr Crunchy]

26xs

and 0 for the century

despite doubling and tripling the rest of the leagues payroll they still dont have s*** to show for it historically speaking

(unless you consider the international sign for choking now recognized as the ny yankee symbol)...

 

the celtics won 16 in 28 years

none since 86

the canadiens won 23 times

none isince 93

the people in green bay call it title town usa

nothing since 97.

 

big f***ing deal

 

none ever came back from 0-3 like the 04 sox did

[26 Reasons to Hate Us]

26xs

and 0 for the century

 

despite doubling and tripling the rest of the leagues payroll they still dont have s*** to show for it historically speaking

(unless you consider the international sign for choking now recognized as the ny yankee symbol)...

 

the celtics won 16 in 28 years

none since 86

the canadiens won 23 times

none isince 93

the people in green bay call it title town usa

nothing since 97.

 

big f***ing deal

 

none ever came back from 0-3 like the 04 sox did

 

We'll talk in a month. If you'd rather have your one series as opposed to 26 championships, that's just fine with me.

[26 Reasons to Hate Us]

What can be duplicated and beat is how many championships that you have seen your Skankees win.

 

4? Not by the the red sox it can't...:harhar:

[riverside sluggers]

In about 2 weeks we will be participants in the 2006 ALCS. Maybe then the Yankees can finally get revenge against the Sox for what happened in 2004...oh wait' date=' nevermind.[/quote']

 

The Yanks cant get revenge against the Sox for 2004 unless they too come back down from 0-3 in whatever next ALCS they play vs Boston (only way I see of them getting exact revenge). Playoffs speak louder than regular season games, especially ones in August when it was apparent the Sox were falling fast anyway with a depleted team