Frozen Popcorn Balls

I was doing a little thinking after Yesterday's near shut-out of the Yankees. Many of you know, this is not an easy thing for me to do.

Per usual, my mind drifted to food metaphors....I thought I had a good one for the Yanks/Toronto series recap:

" Yanks deal OREO in Toronto."

Here's how it almost worked;

O = number of runs Yanks scored in opener of series in Toronto.

R = they actually did score runs in game two. R is for runs.

E = they made a lot of errors during the three game set in Canada.

O = the number of runs the Yankees generated ( through 8 innings ) in game three. If Jason had not chosen to pad his numbers with a meaningless, A-Rod like solo HR in the 9th, I would have had it just right.

So, I'm thinking of a new kind of treat to describe this team's immediate future.....and, of course, the frozen popcorn ball came to mind.

We have lots of players in the organization who represent "kernels" of potential. But most of them have already "popped" ( or shown us what they have ) in their minor league settings, and are as good as they are ever going to be. One player is pretty much indistinguishable from the next, with most, for example, featuring BA's in the .140 - .243 range.

They tend to be old for minor leaguers, and not that well suited to the positions they are assigned to play. The pitchers are all recovering from surgery or will soon be injured in some fashion.

Since none of these players are "hot " ( e.g. did you read today's write ups on Jesus and our AA shortstop, who played for the World Team the other day ? ), and none of them will be "flashing" anytime soon, it seemed a natural to describe them as " frozen" in their mediocrity.

Just as a test to confirm or deny my own sense of our developing players, I did a search of minor league baseball team fantasy league rosters, and not one Yankee prospect is on one fantasy team in any of the leagues headquartered on the eastern seaboard.

The future of the Yankees, in terms of our own sytem's productivity, appears pretty bleak. Kind of like we are about to face our own ice age of below .500 seasons.

So, as a special reminder to our readers that while the Yankee's future is bleak it can simultaneously be sweet, I asked Richard Blais, a former " top chef " contestant, to create frozen popcornballs and give out free samples from Garrett's Popcorn Shops, 560 Fifth Avenue ( 46 st ) on July 15th, 16, and 17th.

IIH, IIF, IIc readers may taste the future between 11:30 am and 2:30pm.

Robbie Cano and his friend Melky will be signing the frozen treats and talking about their .243 averages.