The dream of Andrew Brackman, the Big Unit II, has ended

I don't like this.

I don't like this, because it suggests the Yankees have become penny-pinching, Dickensonian grubs - when we're supposed to be the one team in American professional sports that would give Satan a no-trade clause, if it ensured a pennant. But here we are, sitting by our coal fire, counting our dubloons and cackling over the nickel bottle deposits we just took from the bottom of Bob Cratchit's couch.

A few weeks ago, we measured the gills of former first round pick Andrew Brackman and then pitched him back into Lake Selig. A few writers winked and said we were simply lowering his price. Yesterday, the Wee Willie Winkies proved wrong, because the 6'10" Brackman signed with Cinncinati - the club that once scored Josh Hamilton from the scrap heap, after another team soured on that former first-round dream. 

Brackman was a bust. Couldn't throw strikes. I admit it. But he was our bust. He looked like a giant squid encased in ethyl alcohol, and if he ever calibrated those tentacles, he might be lights-out unhittable. Something tells me he will do just that - maybe around age 30. Won't matter. We let him go. To save money, I guess.

In my life, the Yankees always embodied the one earthly pleasure where I never had to sweat about money - where I was rich, where I never worried about a player contract, and come Christmas, there would always be a new star waiting under my tree. Now, we're pinching pennies.

I don't like this.