Tuesday, December 4, 2018

If Patrick Corbin is a REAL upstate Yankee fan, his signing is a done deal

Truth here: I don't know lint/squat/doodily-dick about pitching. I eat sliders. I don't throw them. Not only that, but I don't do Sabermetrics, or Freakinomics, or basic math. As Humphrey Bogart said in the epic boxing movie, The Harder They Fall, "Don't give me numbers, you can make those numbers jump through hoops!" Screw numbers. And while we're at it, screw knowledge! Screw information! Screw truth! Who needs it?

But wait... there is one thing I do know, and I know it from head to toe, from liver to kidney, from bowel movement to hair extension: 

I know the Upstate New York Yankee fan. 

Oh, yes. I do. I have seen them in the dawn, at the sunset, and under the full moon. I have seen them copulate. I have seen things - dear God, you don't want to know. And if Patrick Corbin is one of us, if he is truly of the cloth - that is, that he was raised to love the Scooter, the pinstripe, and the ghosts of Thurm and Billy - there is no debate within his heart or mind. Everything else is mere negotiation. If it's true that he is from a family of Upstate Yankee fans, well, write this down, folks: Corbin will be a Yankee.

Let me tell you a story about Syracuse Yankee fans. Sometime around the mid-eighties, when the team was crapola and the Orioles were a power, the Yankees were featured on the Saturday NBC Game of the Week. But the local network affiliate, recognizing that the Yankees were out of pennant contention, chose to run the alternative game. 

This unleashed the usual phoned death threats. (I might have made one myself. Once, when an opening day Yankee game was found to unavailable on our cable system, a buddy and I phoned Steinbrenner's office in NYC and demanded to talk with him personally, and then yelled at the secretary who wouldn't patch us directly through.) That day, several Yankee fans went to the Syracuse affiliate  on James Street to complain. They were told to leave. They refused, hanging around the parking lot and berating employees who came out to smoke.  Eventually, police were called. The indignant Yankee fans were dispersed, (though surely, I believe the cops were on their side. I once talked my way out of a speeding ticket by blaming the Yankee game on the radio.)  

Upstate New York was one of the first areas of the country to receive WPIX cable broadcasts during the late 1960s. Patrick Corbin's father and uncles surely grew up on the sweet nectar of White and Rizzuto. Throughout the seventies and eighties, you could drive the length of the Southern Tier Expressway - Route 17 - from Jamestown to Tuxedo, without missing a pitch on the radio. What evolved across the backroads and small towns of upstate was a link to Gotham itself, as deep and loyal as the love of a moose for his flying squirrel.

Patrick Corbin grew up in North Syracuse, where his family elders would have gone to MacArthur Stadium to watch Ron Guidry and Tucker Ashford. Surely, one of his uncles as a room devoted to the Yankees. His family, his friends, his neighborhood want this. And if Corbin is really from upstate New York - that is, he didn't lose his soul in the Arizona desert - that everything that has happened thus far in his career was only a prelude to the beginning of time. And his new age will begin on opening day in the Bronx. 

And if something goes wrong, I'm phoning Hal to complain.

12 comments:

JM said...

Everything Duque says is true. Being an upstate boy myself, it was a high water mark of my childhood when one of the Albany/Schenectady stations started carrying WPIX games once a week or so. I was amazed when told by a family friend that where he grew up, on Long Island, you could regularly watch the games on TV. I felt deprived and, years later, I may have moved to the city in part because it had to be a better place if you could watch the Yankees all the time in those pre-cable days of primitivism.

If Corbin is an upstate fan, we'll get him.

By the way, there's also this guy. Although..."Kikuchi was 14-4 with 3.08 ERA this season, and was 16-6 with a 1.97 ERA the previous year."

http://www.espn.com/mlb/story/_/id/25444004/japanese-star-lefty-yusei-kikuchi-available-mlb-teams

Anonymous said...

I WISH KLUBER OR KEUCHEL WERE FROM SYRACUSE.

TheWinWarblist said...

I do not know what to say to this.

Carl J. Weitz said...

Somebody make a call to Carrier Corp and have them tell Hal that they will rent a suite for the season if they sign Corbin.

Alphonso said...

I think I saw Corbin, once, at a secret Yankee winter meeting we held in February, on Deruyter lake in Madison county.

However, I was a bit "snockered," fell in a 4 foot snowbank, and couldn't get up.

Nor did I care.

Anonymous said...


I notice in all the articles/blogs etc. that I read when they mention the interested teams they never mention the Red Sox.

If what you wrote is true, and I have no doubt that it is, it could be because he HATES the Red Sox and would rather pitch for La Ciudad de Xochimilco before helping out those Massholes. Works for me.

Doug K.

Anonymous said...

John M,

Was it you who said "Sign em all and let G-d sort it out?" If yes then yes. If no then yes anyway.

Doug K.

Anonymous said...

CORBIN'S LATEST RUMOR?

IT WILL TAKE 5 YEARS AND $125 MILLION.

ABORT! ABORT!

COOP CAN'T RESIST HIS 240 K'S IN 200 INNINGS.

SOUND FAMILIAR?

JAVIER VASQUEZ PART DEUX HAD 239 K'S FOR THE BRAVES, AND COOP JUMPED THROUGH HOOPS TO GET HIM....AGAIN.

HERE WE ARE AGAIN MANY YEARS LATER, AND COOP'S METRICS ARE STILL FUCKING US.

HE DOESN'T REALIZE, FOR STARTERS, WHEN YOU'RE IN A LEAGUE WHERE THE PITCHERS HIT, YOU HAVE TO CHOP OFF AT LEAST 40 K'S RIGHT OFF THE BAT, MAYBE MORE.

I KNOW WE NEED MORE PITCHING, BUT I RATHER TAKE THAT $125 MILL AND APPLY IT TO THE LEFTY BAT WE MUST HAVE.

WE ALL KNOW WHO THAT IS.

ALL THESE GM'S SEEM TO BE ABLE TO DUMP MASSIVE CONTRACTS...NOT COOP.

TRADE STANTON...NOW.

HE WILL BE A MUCH LARGER ALBATROSS THAN HE ALREADY IS.

SORRY, I'M RAMBLING, BUT COOP MAKES ME THIS WAY.

Vampifella said...

Damn, looks like the Nats got him. $21 million a year for 6 years sounds like what it went for but I bet the Yanks wanted to go 4 or 5 years at less. Oh well, Yanks Pride, eh?

Carl J. Weitz said...

Yup...Hal cheaped out....AGAIN!

Publius said...

Things ain't like they used to be. 17 is 86 now.

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