The Girl Who Loved Andy Pettitte

Murray Chass has a not blog, Joe Torre has an actual blog. It’s like they’ll let anyone on the internet.

It’s truly a piece of work, it seems like someone made a Joe Torre parody blog…but it’s a 100% MLB backed work. Consider me subscribed, perhaps he will share his bullpen strategies with us!

No, not the Alex Rodriguez jersey:

The Yankees have a history of introducing new rules and not telling anyone, or having completely arbitrary rules for about a week that they change. In the 12+ years I’ve been going to games, the following have been banned at some time or other, usually not for more than a season at the most:

• Umbrellas (this one was particularly hilarious because they had an umbrella give away night when this ban was going on)
• Food and Water (pretty common from what I understand but it only lasted a month)
• Liquid makeup/lipstick/etc (this one happened at the same time the TSA started their ban–it lasted maybe two weeks)

They also arbitrarily decide to change the size of an acceptable purse, let some people in with backpacks after hassling people with tiny ones, etc. They have, however, never previously tried to ban sunblock from the stadium but are now worried people are sneaking in gasoline disguised as Banana Boat to torch themselves like Tibetan monks. Or maybe they have more sinister financial motivation:

The Stadium does sell 1-ounce bottles of Arizona Sun SPF 15 for $5 - a huge markup that makes its beer seem cheap.

Don’t tell anyone but I bought my travel size bottle of 60SPF sunblock in last night with no problems and had no idea this was going on as I’ve brought it along at every game I’ve attended this season. You can kick me out of my seats but you’ll never take my sunblock!!

Important Update: The Yankees have now been embarrassed into making sunscreen a non-contraband item once again.

The Daily News and the NY Post have recently decided to get in on the PROSPECT HYPE TRAIN and both have articles a few times a week about Yankees and Mets hype train. Too bad they don’t have copy editors for their headlines:

“Jesus Matero impressing Yankee officials”

They spell his name correctly (if you’re confused, they meant Jesus Montero) throughout the article which just makes it funnier/more bizarre.

Other amusing things from the Daily News today include random digs at Alex Rodriguez:

Alex Rodriguez did his best Derek Jeter impersonation Sunday with a flip play to help the Yankees beat the Oakland A’s.

Of course, Jeter’s came in a playoff game while A-Rod helped seal an otherwise routine July triumph.

And Bill Madden whining that the Yankees aren’t winning impressively enough (seriously I’ll just take wins at this point):

A win is a win and good teams find a way to get them, as Joe Girardi was saying Sunday in the aftermath of the Yankees’ sweep-completing, 2-1 squeaker over the Oakland Triple A’s. But much as the Yankee manager would like to believe his team is finally finding its groove, he would be advised not to use this particular series as a true measure of his team’s abilities.

(Random aside: I think the Saturday and Sunday games were absolutely indicative of the Yankees abilities: they can’t score runs and their pitching a lot of the time ekes it out for them.)

Murray Chass, recently fired from the New York Times for being Murray Chass, has started a not blog. Now, when you go there, you may notice it looks like a blog (it even uses WordPress–I looked at the page source because I am nosy like that) but it is most certainly not one. I know this because he says so:

This is a site for baseball columns, not for baseball blogs. The proprietor of the site is not a fan of blogs. He made that abundantly clear on a radio show with Charlie Steiner when Steiner asked him what he thought of blogs and he replied, “I hate blogs.” He later heartily applauded Buzz Bissinger when the best-selling author denounced bloggers on a Bob Costas HBO show.

Bloggers, however, are welcome to visit this site; so are stats freaks, fantasy leaguers and Red Sox fans. How else will they know what is being said about them by a columnist they love to hate?

Otherwise, this site will most likely appeal primarily to older fans whose interest in good old baseball is largely ignored in this day of young bloggers who know it all, and new- fangled statistics (VORP, for one excuse-me example), which are drowning the game in numbers and making people forget that human beings, not numbers, play the games.

There’s nothing really to say here that hasn’t already been said, because you can’t convince someone who is so solidly against any sort of statistics to the point where he actively hates people who use them that those stat-heads in their mom’s basement actually do enjoy watching baseball and often like players regardless because of emotional attachments.

It is, however, really funny to see someone actually use “new-fangled” in a sentence seriously.

A few days ago ESPN’s Daily Poll was “Who is your favorite Jason Giambi”. I forgot about it briefly until I stumbled on the screenshot I took of it. I just want to record this for history:

Also, I voted for Team USA Giambi because he’s so hilariously skinny. Clean cut Giambi on the other hand, is frightening.