Farnsworth came to the Yankees when I was once again able to attend a large number of games a year after working nights (and having no money anyway) for years. This meant that I got to see him a lot—much, much more than I wanted to for sure. To welcome him back to the AL East here are some of my lasting memories involving Kyle Farnsworth of mine at Yankee Stadium.

Old Timer’s Day 2007 – By the time Old Timer’s Day rolled around in 2007 pretty much everyone who rooted for the Yankees also rooted for Farnsworth to get a blister and go on the DL so they wouldn’t have to watch him pitch. I was sitting in the Loge in left field for the game which gave me a good view of the Yankees bullpen. At one point, Farnsworth got up and started tossing. From my seats you could hear the glove hitting the catcher’s mitt so people looked over to see who it was getting ready. Someone yelled out “ARGH IT’S FARNSWORTH” and a large percentage of those within hearing distance let out a big groan. Some (probably drunk) fans threw their food garbage in the general direction of the bullpen and got kicked out.

September 17th, 2007 vs Baltimore – In 2007 the Yankees had enough unsold inventory in the outer reaches of the Tier Box and Tier Reserve that they discounted a huge chunk of the games in September to the $5 price level. I picked up a pair of tickets for a game versus the Orioles and went with a friend. The game itself was pretty boring and laidback, the Yankees had pretty much locked up a spot in the playoffs and had a pretty substantial lead over Baltimore for most of the game. In fact, pretty much the only things I remember about the game before Farnsworth came in are that Daniel Cabrera was starting and there was an annoying guy next to me who kept talking about how his granddad went to see the Giants play at the Polo Grounds in Brooklyn all the time (I did not stab him though I did consider doing so).

The Yankees went into the 9th in a non-save situation and so Kyle Farnsworth came out to finish Baltimore off. It should have been easy—or at least not too difficult—but oh no it was never easy with Kyle. There were very few people left in the stadium at this point and as the Orioles kept not making outs we grew very irate. Finally someone yelled out “BRING BACK PROCTOR” which promptly started a cheer among the few thousand left at the stadium of “WE WANT PROCTOR”. It lasted until Joe Torre hit the panic button and got Mariano up in the bullpen (it turned into a save situation by that point, of course) after which the focus of the crowd shifted to being annoyed that Mariano had to come in (he didn’t really but that’s a whole other line of discourse). Before recording the last out Mariano gave up an RBI double to that bastard Aubrey Huff and we very rationally decided it was Farnsworth’s fault.

April 30th 2008 vs Detroit – This game was bad. The weather was cold and wet, the Yankees got to Jeremy Bonderman early then stopped hitting, and Andy Pettitte pitched badly. The game started to slip away from the Yankees, and Farnsworth came in to pitch the 8th inning to try and keep the deficit at three runs. My boyfriend who was even crankier than me at this point looked at me and said “If he gives up a homerun, we are going home.” I don’t really like leaving games early, but if you’re not having any fun and the person/people you’re with are miserable I don’t see a reason to stay so I agreed to his condition.

Farnsworth gave up a homerun immediately to Placido Polanco (his second of the game!!!), which caused Chris to jump up and scream something about hating Farnsworth and going home and hating Farnsworth. I said goodbye to my row-mates, told them I’d be at the next game in our plan and shuffled out of the stadium. As we walked down the ramps from the Tier there was a lot more yelling about Farnsworth from various parties. It wasn’t Kyle’s fault that the game was bad he just didn’t help things.

The Jose Veras Experience in Picture Form!

Of course, I thought that the last time too.

- C. Britton relieved D. Robertson
- G. Velazquez grounded out to first
- J. Ellsbury doubled to deep left
- J. Lowrie doubled to deep right center, J. Ellsbury scored
- C. Carter walked
- G. Kottaras struck out swinging
- J. Van Every tripled to deep right, C. Carter and J. Lowrie scored
- J. Bailey walked
- S. Casey flied out to center

I thought the game was never going to end, Jesus. The best thing about the 9th was that John Sterling completely lost his mind and started blurting out random “Oh God I want to be home” thoughts.

Ponson is so bad and it’s finally really caught up to him, I don’t think he’ll be having any BABIP induced “good” outings again. Let’s bring up Victor Zambrano so fans get to witness a different kind of awful and make Ponson the mop-up man who will never pitch. Seeing Billy Traber pitch just makes me very angry and I shouldn’t have to deal with that.

Ex-Yankee pitcher Hideki Irabu – once ridiculed by George Steinbrenner as a “fat, pus-y toad” – was arrested in Osaka, Japan, today for allegedly assaulting a bartender after drinking 20 mugs of beer, a police official said.

Irabu, 39, became angered after his credit card was rejected. He allegedly pushed the bartender against the wall, pulled his hair and smashed at least nine liquor bottles. The bartender sustained no injuries.

Irabu paid the bill with another card. The police official said Irabu admitted the assault.

In other news, Johnny Damon can’t catch baseballs in Center Field. The quest for a protected pick continues!

Congratulations, Johnny, this time you actually deserved to get called out!

Kei Igawa will never be useful, ever, in MLB for the Yankees. Major League hitters don’t swing and miss on his pitches often and he is the most extreme flyball pitcher ever in the world. Maybe he can transform into a magical pony for another team, but not one in the Bronx.

It’s true that Washburn is not good either but if he is simply awful the Yankees can just eat his contract and dump him. It’s one of the benefits of being the Yankees. I feel like Igawa is a cloud hanging over the organization that needs to be shooed away, and they keep blowing chances to do so.

Eric Milton was added to the Triple-A roster late Monday night and immediately placed on the disabled list. All of it was retroactive to Saturday.

There are now like a billion starting pitchers on the Scranton/Wilkes-Barre roster, including Russ Ohlendorf who they have got doing starting work until he gets into a groove and stops sucking. That means it’s very likely that the Sidney Ponson Experiment is at a close (it wasn’t a total failure, but it also wasn’t very pretty) and that someone from AAA will probably be joining the roster soon. The most likely candidates are:

• Kei Igawa – I don’t see how he could be better than Ponson, but I also don’t know if he could be worse. Actually, that’s a lie I know he could because I sat through all nine innings of this game and somehow didn’t throw myself off the tier at Yankee Stadium. I know he kills AAA hitters for the most part, but high fastballs don’t work in MLB.
• Jeff Karstens – Pitches about as ugly as he looks but the organization is in love with him. Also generally eats AAA hitters for lunch and is not so successful with MLB.
• Dan McCutchen – Probably the most interesting candidate, I haven’t seen him personally though. It seems like it would likely be a bad idea to rush him up to MLB instead of letting him spend some more time in AAA and having him join the team next year. Primarily a groundball pitcher but his gb:fb ratio hasn’t been that great in AAA which is not really a good sign.
• Ian Kennedy – Hey, remember him? Probably not coming back up to MLB this year (like Phil Hughes) as the organization has pretty much admitted he was rushed. But you never know because desperation makes people do strange things.
• Eric Milton – I don’t even know what to say except “Please, no”. I know his lifetime stats are slightly better than Ponson’s (average rather than below average!), but he is coming off TJ surgery and who knows if that will make him even worse than he was the last two years in Cincinnati.

I recognize that Milton is an emergency option and a flyer case very similar to Ponson, but at least watching Ponson pitch is special kind of comedy as opposed to just painful. I know the team expected Alan Horne to be ready, but I am starting to think the right move would have been to just trade him last year when his value was rather high. He’s 25 and oft-injured and I don’t think he is going to stick as a starter, but at the same time he has control issues that make him somewhat troubling as a reliever.

Man wearing a Kaz Matsui jersey–why would anyone spend money on this? If you spent money on it, why wear it out of the house ever?

David Wright’s incredibly horrible shoes:

LaTroy Hawkins needs to be DFAd and Russ Ohlendorf needs an extended–if not permanent–trip to Scranton.

I know they’re hoping to capture some of the “hot streak” Ponson had in a bottle and there is no Roger Clemens to sign this year but I feel this is going to be an absolute disaster. Is there any way to heal Chien-Ming Wang faster because I miss him so much already.

Other pitching matchups in the series:

Friday (Game 1) – Dan Giese vs Mike Pelfrey
Saturday – Andy Pettitte vs Johan Santana
Sunday – Oliver Perez vs Darrel Rasner