This Is Harder Than I Thought

Getting back into blogging about the Yankees has been tough since I returned from my hiatus. First game back was on My9. Then a day game. As for the last few games? I missed those because I made my annual trek to Cooperstown for the HOF Induction festivities. Not much access to the games when I'm down there. I might catch a quick glimpse if I meander into a shop that has the game on but for the most part I hear/see very little. I did see Joba almost blow the one game (forget if it was Thursday or Friday). Joba blows.

C'town is always a good time though most people don't experience it quite like I do. I sleep very little and when I do sleep it's in the back of the family mini-van. Showers? Nope. Deodorant and toothpaste is about all I do. Meals are usually pizza and soda. I look at it like a camping trip of sorts.

I spend most of my time while I'm there loitering around trying to pick up some autographs, preferably for free. I'm an avid baseball memorabilia collector. I'm trying to get signed baseballs by every living HOFer. After this trip, I'm down to 6. Lee MacPhail, Tommy Lasorda, Whitey Herzog, Hank Aaron, Sandy Koufax, and Eddie Murray are the ones I'm missing. This year I added Bruce Sutter, Dave Winfield and Rickey Henderson to my collection. I paid for the 3 of those. I also paid to have Whitey Ford sign my Yankee Stadium seatback. All together I dropped about $320 on autos. I did pick up 1 free one and that was from George Brett. I've gotten him before but it was on the side-panel of the ball. This one was on the sweet spot. I could have gotten a few more but since I mainly do just baseballs, I don't get guys more than once. I really do need to find other things to get signed because I do turn a lot down. I'll help other people out though.

There a few things I have for certain people outside of a regular baseballs. I made some bad decisions on strategy and probably ended up costing myself free signatures by Goose Gossage, Reggie Jackson and Tim Raines. I won;t get into details but I moved myself from the right place to the wrong place thinking that the wrong place would become the right place. Lesson learned. Stay put. I'm starting though to go more for the paid signings than fighting the memorabilia dealers for the free ones. They're very cutthroat and love to push and shove and lean over people to try to get stuff signed. Eddie Murray is now the only guy I don't have who goes to C'town yearly who does a paid signing. Unless I think of other things to bring for autos I may bot be doing this much longer. Ah, who am I kidding? I think it's fun even though I take it to extremes. What's 3 days, right? Next year will be tough anyway. I'll be leaving the wife and 3 kids behind. I have an awesome wife who lets me take these trips even though it's an inconvenience to her. Next year might be a little more hard on her with 3 kids 3 and under.

The trip was cut short this year as I had to be back for my niece's baptism. I usually leave around 11am on Sunday (after the HOFers golf). This year I left on Saturday at about 2pm. I missed the Saturday night event which usually yields a lot of free autos.

All things considered it's a pretty fun time. It may not sound like it the way I do it but I wouldn't change anything. I find it to be fun. Maybe I'm weird like that? Who knows?

I should be able to catch tomorrow night's game against the Indians. Knock on wood.

Peace, love and Pinstripes,

J-Boogie

The Baseball Gods Are Against Me Dude

How am I supposed to get back into blogging when I can't ever watch the games. Last night's game was on My9 - not carried by my cable provider. Today's game was an afternoon one - totally didn't realize it until the top of the 9th. A 10-2 loss and a 10-6 win.

Quick observations based on checking out the box scores:

1. Hard to believe Nick Swisher has 2nd highest BA on team @ .302
2. Hard to believe Mark Teixeira is now hitting .256
3. Joba doesn't rule, he sucks.
4. The Yankee bullpen needs a lot of work

Peace, love and Pinstripes,

J-Boogie

Yankees Win And Lose All At The Same Time

I joined today's Yankees/Ray game already in progress. I turned the game on when the score was tied at 3 and it was the top of the 5th. Not bad I'm thinking and then I hear Michael Kay say that Chan Ho Park is the game and Pettitte left with a groin injury. Ooh, that ain't good. I watched a little bit, nodded off, woke up, nodded off, woke up, and so on. The wife later woke me up and the game was headed to the top of the 9th with the Yanks up 9-4. 3 outs and 1 run later, ball game over. Yankees win. Thuhhh Yankees win.

But in the end they lost. Andy Pettitte was diagnosed with a grade 1 strain of the groin and will be out for 4-5 weeks. Andy was well on his way to having his best season ever as a Yankee. He was sitting on an 11-2 record and a 2.70 ERA. It's a huge loss to lose a guy like Andy Pettitte for 4-5 weeks, especially this late in the season in such a tight division race. He's not going to be easy to replace. But they're going to try with Sergio Mitre. Yeah, I don't like how that sounds. I have a feeling this is going to turn into what seems like a yearly thing when a carousel of subpar guys taking turns as the team's 5th SP. Sidney Ponson anyone?

It should be interesting to see what progresses over the next few weeks. I wonder if Cashman is going to roll with Mitre or look on the trade market for somebody. Ah, if only they landed Cliff Lee. If I had to put money on it, I'd say Cashman will stand pat with what the team has. There are bigger issues if you ask me and the biggest is the bullpen. But that's for another post.

Considering Pettitte's injury, it turns out that A.J. Burnett is pretty damn lucky he didn't seriously hurt himself yesterday. Imagine losing Pettitte and Burnett in back-to-back games. Even with A.J. regularly stinking up the place that would have been hard to bounce back from. I wasn't surprised that the Yankees didn't say much about A.J.'s injury and attempted cover up. It's a private team matter and I kind of knew it wouldn't leave the clubhouse. I'm half-expecting Joel Sherman to drop an anonymous quote on us at some point b/c he's a d-bag like that. Anyway, A.J. is lucky his stupidity didn't turn out to be worse.

As for the game today, again slept through most of it. I caught bits and pieces but not enough to make mention of. The Pettitte injury withstanding, I absolutely love the outcome. It's nice when you beat the team that's 2 games behind you. It's nice when you beat one of the best pitchers in the game. It's nice when the Red Sox also lose.

I'll have to rub that in my kids nose.

Peace, love and Pinstripes,

J-Boogie

Getting Your Heart Broken In 41 Seconds

Earlier today I had a conversation with my soon-to-be 3 year old soon that resulted in my writing this tweet: My heart is breaking. My soon 2 b 3 year old is telling me he doesn't like the #Yankees. Says he likes the Red Sox. It's my worst nightmare.

Here's a brief 41 second conversation he and I had about it.

He doesn't know anything about baseball so I'm sure he'll wise up over time and realize the error of his ways. Regardless, it still stings to hear him say it. I've been trying to bribe him all day into denouncing his new found fandom but it hasn't worked yet.

Peace, love and Pinstripes,

J-Boogie

Inanimate Objects Will Always Win In A Fight

When are guys going to learn that taking your frustration out on inanimate objects is not a good idea? A.J. Burnett apparently took his frustration out today on some clubhouse doors, cutting his palms in the process. What a stupid MF. To make matters worse Burnett lied to everyone about it, stating he fell. Yeah, that's believable. I always thought of Burnett as a stand up guy. Knowing that he lied about it to the team kind of knocks him down a few pegs in my book. Not many pegs but just a few. We all lie about things from time to time. I can't say I wouldn't have done the same.

I only got to see the first 2 innings of the game. We took the kids to Chuck E. Cheese for dinner and that took me away from the game for about 6 innings. When I got home I went online to the check out the in-game box score and noticed that Burnett only pitched 2 innings. I knew he must have sustained some kind of injury and found out by checking the Lohud blog that he had cuts on his hand. I didn't think much of it at the time. I caught the tail end of the YES post game show where they were talking about it, but I missed 99.9% of the story so I wasn't sure what was up or what was going on. Kim Jones made mention that the clubhouse was empty so nobody was around to walk about and to stay tuned for tomorrow's pre-game show. I remember thinking something big must have happened.

According to the story over at the Lohud Yankees Blog, Burnett lied about how he got the cuts because he was "embarrassed." Burnett was quoted as saying, “I was embarrassed of the situation. I didn’t want that to be a reason why I came out of the game. I’m an honest person and I’m not going to lie to cover up something. That’s the reason, that’s the truth and I’m definitely not going to lie to this organization and these 25 guys in here who I play with everyday.”

I'll give A.J. some credit for eventually coming clean, but if you're an honest person who's not going to lie and cover something up, why would you lie and cover something up? And if you'll do it once, I'm a firm believer you'll do it again. Trust is a pretty important thing and Burnett's got a lot of work to do to regain that with the team and its fans. Same goes with respect. He's definitely lost some of that.

I can respect being passionate and getting fired up enough to the point where you need to beat something up. Who hasn't punched or kicked something that couldn't fight back? I once beat up an oscillating fan and another time I put a huge dent in my refrigerator door. It felt good for about 1/2 a second and then the pain, cuts, and/or swelling kicked in. I can understand doing that. But I'm not a professional athlete that gets paid millions of dollars and needs his hands to do his job. It was a pretty stupid thing to do. A.J. is lucky that the damage to his hands wasn't worse. The Yankees don't need another Kevin Brown.

In the end I think this is going to be more of a non-story than anything else. I think the team will give him a pass. He'll probably get a lot of flack for it but as long as he doesn't pull these kind of shenanigans again all will be good. But again, he's got a lot of work to do to regain the trust and respect of his teammates and the fans.

What's the best thing A.J. can do to make everyone forget about it? Simple. Pitch better. Burnett is now 7-8 with a 4.99 ERA. He's 1-6 in his last 8 starts, allowing 35 earned runs in 38.2 IP. If A.J. can run off a decent string of games we'll all forget about this. I hope he can make it happen.

Peace, love and Pinstripes,

J-Boogie

It Figures

I kind of thought this was going to happen. The first night I plan to dive back into the Yankees and the game is on My9, which means no Yankee baseball for me. Verizon FIOS here in Buffalo doesn't carry the games when they're on My9. Not 100% sure why the feed isn't picked up on any of the channels like it is on Time Warner and Direct TV, but it isn't. I'm sure I can find it online somewhere but I've tried that before and it's tough to do.

I did get a chance to see the pre-game ceremony on YES. Nicely done Yanks. The Boss would have been proud. George is surely going to be missed.

Tomorrow is Old Timer's Day. No chance I'm missing that.

Peace, love and Pinstripes,

J-Boogie

We Now Return You To Your Regularly Scheduled Programming

Greetings friends and fellow Yankees fans. Long time no talk. I hope you've all been well. I've been doing much better. Life is still crazy, and is about to get crazier, but I'm managing. The reason it's getting crazier is because in a few short weeks, the wife and I will be having our 3rd child (it's a girl) and we'll also be moving into our new home (building new). Both are scheduled to "arrive" within a day of each other. Tack onto that a 3-year old and a 16-month old and you've got sheer pandemonium. I love it.

I must apologize for the extended absence. I really needed the downtime. I did a little blog maintenance here and there. Namely I updated the Swish's Wishes donation total. See upper left. The pledge drive is up to $618. For those new to the site or if you just plum forgot, a couple of us Yankee fans got together and are donating money to Nick Swisher's charity. In a nutshell, for every HR Swisher hits, we're donating $38 to his charity, Swish's Wishes. Want more info? Click here and you'll find it. If you're interested in donating along with us you're more than welcome.

The other big thing I've been doing, and this has been a giant pain in the rump, is I've been deleting all of the spam comments being left by our "friends" in the Far East. It go so bad I had to pseudo-moderate the comments. Any comments left on posts older than 7 days get moderated. I may have to shorten that now that I'm going to be more active. Message to you a-holes: don't waste your time posting spam links in the comments. They'll be deleted pretty quickly. Take that shizzle somewhere else.

I've got a lot of catching up to do as it relates to the Yankees. I've been paying attention but not as closely as I'd like to be. I did post a few blogs recently. I talked about the busted Cliff Lee trade and about the untimely passing of the great George Steinbrenner. Man that still kind of stings. The Boss will certainly be missed. As will Bob Sheppard. RIP.

I'm going to rush through the rest of the catching-up and start fresh tomorrow. Here goes:

• The team is 56-32 and has the best record in all of baseball. They're 8-2 over their last 10, 2 games up on the Rays and 5.5 up on the Red Sox. Not a bad way to come out of the All-star break.
• The starting rotation has for the most part been outstanding this season. They're the biggest reason they're doing so well in my opinion. Hughes, Pettitte and Sabathia could all possibly win 20 games. How nutty would that be? All 3 have exceeded my expectations, especially Phil Hughes. Err, I mean Huuuuuuuuuuughes! Why did I use the letter U 11 times, you ask? He gets 1 U for every W. 11 wins equals 11 Us. I did the same thing for Mike Mussina when he won 20. I've always been a big Hughes guy and figured I'd carry on the tradition. It's insane how good that trio of pitchers has been this year. I'll expand more on them I'm sure as they make their next starts.
• Javy Vazquez is hitting his stride. Finally!
• Robinson Cano (my pre-season MVP pick) has cooled down a little but still kicking some ass.
• Mark Teixeira is finally coming around. His streak happened to start right after I traded him in a computer baseball league I'm in. You're welcome.
• A-Rod may not be hitting it out of the park at his normal rate but he;s driving people in. He'll still finish with 30 HR.
• Nick Swisher is not the rally killer he used to be.
• Joba Chamberlain sucks.
• Mariano Rivera is super-human. He has to be, right?
• The rest of the bullpen needs work and upgrading it should be the main focus at the trade deadline.

And there you have it. It's not as in-depth and as detailed as I'd like it to be, but at least it's something. The plan is to ramp up the blog again. I'm going to do my best to post daily but I make no promises. I may miss something here or there but there definitely won't be any long layoffs. At least that's not the plan. When baby #3 shows up I may be singing a different tune. What did I get myself into?

Peace, love and Pinstripes,

J-Boogie

RIP George Steinbrenner

Wow. What an insane couple of days! First Bob Sheppard. Now George Steinbrenner. I hope that things don't come in threes because I don't think we could handle another loss. Somebody make sure Yogi and Whitey are on lockdown for the next few days.

Wow. I'm still in shock. I always thought of "The Boss" as immortal. Even in his weakened condition I always thought he'd be around. As soon as the news broke I got a flurry of texts about it. A lot of people know I'm a huge Yankee fan so they were checking in. One of my fellow co-workers was surprised I didn't leave work to grieve.

George definitely revolutionized the game when he took over the Yankees. He was a great owner and fans of other teams would be stupid not to want an owner like George. He went balls out trying to win year in and year out. He didn't care if the team lost money. Winning was everything. You have to give him props for that. It was nice too that he went out on top, as a World Champion.

God bless ya George. Even though you're no longer here your presence will live on. Rest in peace.

Peace, love and Pinstripes,

J-Boogie

I Love This Time Of Year

So now it sounds like the earlier reports/rumors of the Yankees landing Cliff Lee were a little premature. Par for the course at this time of year. Deals are always "imminent" and "on the verge" of being done. The word on the street now is that the deal is pretty much dead and other teams are back in on Lee. You have to love the trade deadline and the hot stove. How can you not?

The lesson to learn here is to wait for the official announcement. Until that comes anything is possible. Even the Yankees pulling off this deal. You just never know.

Fingers are crossed it somehow happens.

Peace, love and Pinstripes,

J-Boogie

Yanks On Verge Of Landing Lee

I was planning on making my triumphant return to the world of blogging after the All-Star Break (more on that later) but I have to jump the gun on this. According to MLBTradeRumors, the Yankees are on the verge of acquiring Cliff Lee. Can you say "twenty-eight"? Wow.

The rumored deal has the Yankees sending prized catching prospect Jesus Montero to the Mariners along with minor league 2B, David Adams. Make that deal now.

Montero may turn out to be a beast but right now he's just a prospect. Plenty of sure things have become busts. And with Robbie Cano in the fold, there's no need for Adams. Make this happen.

Landing Lee would likely mean Javier Vazquez would be dealt. That deal would bring back cash and/or prospects. That would make dealing prospects for Lee a little easier to swallow.

Landing Lee would also set the Yankees up nicely to resign him and have an absolutely insane rotation next year. Hughes, CC, Burnett, Lee, and possibly Pettitte. We could be on the verge of another dynasty. And if Lee happens to sign elsewhere, no biggie. The Yanks would probably pick up 2 first round draft picks if he does. That should bring back some decent talent.

How is this not a no-lose situation? Shake hands and sign the deal already.

Peace, love and Pinstripes,

J-Boogie