Showing posts with label True Yankee. Show all posts
Showing posts with label True Yankee. Show all posts

Friday, October 22, 2010

Did You Ever Notice

...that when a team "shows up" they win. And when they don't "show up" they lose? It has to be true because Mike Lupica (I used to love watching The Sports Reporters)is writing about it:

Alex Rodriguez must step up for Yankees in Game 6 of ALCS against Rangers in Texas

I know he didn't write the headline, but whoever did really 7 Mary 3'd it there. Because it's cumbersome. And they had this song in the nineties. It was called 'Cumbersome'. It was like, "I have becoooooommmme Cumbersooooommmmme." You remember it, don't lie. My point being the last half of it should be cut out.

They are the Yankees,

BOOOOO! Oh sorry, gut reaction.

defending champions of the sport, best team money can buy, most expensive pitching staff ever assembled. They are Mo Rivera, the greatest money player of them all, and Derek Jeter

BOOOO!!! Sorry...sorry...

and Alex Rodriguez

BOOO!!! And no, I'm not sorry this time.

and Robinson Cano,

...-shrug-

their best player this season, maybe the MVP of the league and the league championship series before it's over. And here is where they are in Arlington Friday night: Playing for their season. Again. Trying to win a play-in game to get to Cliff Lee.
The Yankees showed up on Wednesday in Game 5, they did, hundred percent.

So did they not bother to try in the first few games? Is Texas so bad that the Yankees just need to "show up" and they'll win? I thought they were in this position because the Texas offense has been clubbing them to death with 25 runs in 3 games.

Now they have to do it again in Texas, or they become another big, bad Yankee team of this decade that got hit somewhere before the World Series and never recovered.
You know who is supposed to show up Friday night for Game 6? Alex Rodriguez.


You know who's not? Shawn Dunston. But "by gum it" he'll show up anyway, like that guy at the Halloween party who doesn't wear a costume. He's unwanted, but he's a friend of a friend so there's not much you can really do.

So far he has three hits in the series and only one of them - two-RBI single that Michael Young should have made a play on, eighth inning of Game 1 - has mattered.

Ha! So the only thing he's done is get a huge hit in one of the two games the Yankees have won. That's why they call him Choke-Rod!

There have been times when he seemed perfectly happy to take a walk, leave it to Cano when Cano was still hitting behind him.

UGH!!!! Are you kidding Lupica? I'm not sure if this is even worth making a joke about at this point. Seems too obvious. How about we go this way: The games the Yankees lost have been by 5, 8, and 7 runs. I'm pretty sure that's not just on A-rod. It certainly isn't because he was patient enough to get on base and help the team's odds of winning, as opposed to reaching out of the strike-zone like...well...Shawn Dunston. And you know what? This year, leaving it to Cano is not a bad idea, as you pointed out, in this article, when you called him a potential MVP.

This game Friday night, then in Game 7 if the Yankees make it, would be a good time for A-Rod to remind us that October and November of 2009 actually happened.

Great, so now the New York media is moving on to the, yeah he got hot once, but that proves nothing. So New York worships guys like Boone who had ONE big at bat for them, but rips the best player on the franchise for the past few years because he only had one good ENTIRE PLAYOFF RUN. Honestly, you guys don't deserve A-rod. He would be a god if he was a Cub or a Red, but the New York media seems determined to find something wrong with him. Oh no, I'm sorry, it's his fault for taking all that money, the rest of us would have turned it down.

Cano isn't supposed to have to carry this offense on his own. Carrying an offense is supposed to be Rodriguez's job description.

That is just ridiculous. Actually lets take a look at what Cano has done in this series while carrying the offense. Game one he did great, but so did A-rod so we're not including that. We're just talking about when he had to "carry" the offense:
Game 2: Double and a HR (win for Lupica)
Game 3: 0-3 (Win for me!)
Game 4: Another HR (Lupica)
Game 5: Another HR (Lupica)
Alright, so that did not work out the way I thought it would. Cano has 4 HR's in 5 games. That is definitely what Lupica calls: 'carrying the offense'. But my original point was...eh forget it, Cano is awesome, I'll just leave it at that.

Rodriguez got his numbers this season, the way he always does in the end, got to 30 home runs and 125 RBI, even hitting just .270. Friday night he is the one who's supposed to hit the ball over the fence, do something to get his team to Cliff Lee. This is the night when big Yankees show up, make the kind of swing A-Rod made against the Twins in the last postseason, the Angels, the Phillies.

Why can't Jeter do something? Isn't he the new Mr. October?

It is a good thing he did knock in those two runs in the Game 1 rally, or this October would remind people, exactly, of the ones when he looked like the easiest out on the team.
He's not the only one in the order who hasn't shown enough stick. Derek Jeter has hits, but has struck out six times.


YES! Someone actually laid some blame on the chosen one's doorstep. It's a big day for the New York media. And honestly, how can you go through this whole article and not blame the pitching at all? 25 runs in 3 games. Tough to get to the World Series with those kind of numbers.

Case Closed!

Friday, October 8, 2010

Bringing Back a Classic

If firejoemorgan.com had a pet peeve it was the use of the term, "true yankee". They had plenty of articles ripping journalists who applied the term to anyone who got a game winning hit for the 'Evil Empire'. Well I intend on continuing the tradition and thanks to Joel Sherman:

Crucial hits make Berkman true member of Yankees

Interesting, I had assumed the trade made him a member of the...oh wait! Joel wrote "TRUE" member. Exactly. Because you see, if you get game winning hits (Boone) you're a "true" Yankee. If you a choke artist like A-rod up until last year, then you're just some bum collecting a paycheck, whether you're the best player on the team or not.

MINNEAPOLIS — Lance Berkman resided in an interesting place as he came to bat in the fifth inning last night.

Wait a second, wait...wait...wait...You can become a true Yankee in the 5th inning? I'm pretty sure that according to the rules you can only become one in the 8th inning or later. Because everyone knows getting a hit in the 5th inning is a lot easier than getting one in the 9th. Just a scientific fact.

Technically, he was a Yankee. He had the uniform, drew a paycheck signed by a Steinbrenner, enjoyed the company of a clubhouse saturated with All-Stars.

If you're not a Yankees fan, you probably get how arrogant that last line sounds. True or not.
But even Berkman admitted he wasn’t really a Yankee. He acknowledged that “they were making the playoffs with or without me.” And since his July 31 acquisition, it has essentially been without him. There were days he seemed to be hitting with a wet sock rather than wood,

I'm sorry, but is it harder to swing a wet sock than a dry one? What does the dampness of a sock have to do with the metaphor?

...so stingless were his at-bats,

That's called mixing your metaphors kids.

so lacking in meaning were his regular-season efforts.

What? His efforts lacked meaning? What on earth does that mean? And could he write it in a more pretentious way?

Thus, with the score tied 1-1 in Division Series Game 2, Berkman was still searching.

I guess so. No journalist/writer now-a-days should start a sentence with 'thus'. It just makes you sound like a cardigan wearing twerp. Thus, people want to beat you up.

He had talked quite a lot about having a moment or two in the playoffs that would make his brief stay with the Yankees more than a footnote, more than an unfortunate pitstop in a terrific career gone to seed.

And ANOTHER mixed metaphor. Congrats. By the way, my great-grandmother called and said no one's used "gone to seed" since the Haymarket Riots.

Carl Pavano threw a 2-0 changeup that dipped down in the zone. At that moment, Berkman had accumulated 107 Yankee at-bats and registered one homer. Heck, there were a lot of batting practices against 60 mph pitches from coaches when Berkman could not get a ball out of the park. In the Yankee Game 2 lineup, the only player less likely to be able to get over the deep center-field wall at Target Field than Berkman was Brett Gardner.

Ha. Also, Gardner, not a true Yankee yet. Though I believe being brought up in the system means different rules apply to you. I'd need to check my manual on "Yankee-ness".


Yet Berkman did not just get it over the wall to put the Yankees ahead 2-1, “he got it over our bullpen,” hitting coach Kevin Long said. “That ball was crushed.”

Rule 2.1 The farther the home run goes, the more of a Yankee the player becomes.

It was his first postseason homer since Oct. 17, 2005, NLCS Game 5, Astros vs. Cardinals; coincidentally that homer also coming in support of Andy Pettitte.

In those days, Berkman was renowned for gap-to-gap might that was mainly absent as a Yankee before last night. He went over center fielder Denard Span’s head again in the seventh inning, launching a double so far that it actually scored Jorge Posada all the way from first with the run that would put the Yanks ahead for good.
“You don’t feel you are part of the team until you do something to help the team,” Berkman said.


That's fine, I think we can all understand that. You show up halfway through a season and you might not feel like you are part of the team. I get it.


So now he is a Yankee, the offensive star in a 5-2 triumph that sent the Twins to their eighth straight playoff loss to the Yankees.

First, lets all laugh at the Twins ineptness. Alright, now lets laugh at the arrogance of a member of the press bestowing "Yankee-ness" on a major league baseball player.

So he didn’t come to New York to hit third. He came to put a coat of paint on that season. He wanted to know for sure if his lost passion was about meaningless games in Houston or something gone dead in his batteries forever. He says now “in my heart, I know this was the right move.”

When did he say he lost his passion? And yeah, leaving a dead team for the perennial favorites
was the right move, brilliant.


And he turned out to have something left in more than his heart.

Just UGH...Baseball has that magic thing, I get it, but this is just 'Disney sappy'.

He still had enough that after getting a favorable call — Pavano’s 1-2 pitch in the seventh was probably strike 3 — he could still capitalize. He walloped the next pitch for a double that ultimately brought an infuriated Twins manager Ron Gardenhire out to complain and, ultimately, to get ejected over that likely missed call. Berkman now had five hits in 12 career at-bats off Pavano, all for extra bases.

Gee, so maybe it had less to do with his heart and more to do with him being able to dominate the pitcher he was facing. It might have a little more to do with talent. I dunno, that's just me.


But the homer and double last night were particularly sweet. They allowed him to step inside the velvet rope and really join the Yankees.

Ehhh...clubs like that tend to be filled with boring, vapid people anyway. Personally I don't think its worth the effort to get in.

Case Closed!