The 'Hey Lady' School of Training and Conditioning

So there is James "Mr. Glass" Paxton in my newspaper today, moaning and groaning that the overly hard, Yankee Stadium mound did him in.

Yeah, right, I thought with a smirk as I slurped down my morning gruel.  So what accounts for the other six trips to the DL in your abbreviated big league career?  (I do think to myself like that, smirk or no smirk.)

"You don't want the area [around the mound] too loose, because a lot of guys like it firmer.  They prefer it that way.  But we've already talked about this: whatever it takes," responded Larry "The Genius" Rothschild.  He promised to have the grounds crew sprinkle "a softer, looser compound" around the rubber—maybe my new "Kwik-zand Mound Softener," patent pending.

Uh, boy, I groaned (inwardly, though it may have sounded more like a belch).  I could just see the numerous injuries to all the rest of the staff, as they slid helplessly off our new, slippery elm mound.

But wait!

"I know exactly what he's [Paxton's] talking about, I've felt it before.  The way the mound is here, you can feel like you're stuck in the ground.  It's something you have to work around."—said CC Sabathia.

Say what?

This is one of those amazing little tidbits that often drop out of Kremlin-on-the-Hudson all but unnoticed.

Of course, the writer of the piece was Bob Klapisch, Coops Cashman's latest book collaborator ("How I Cashman Befuddled That Dope Derek Jeter"), so it wasn't like we could honestly expect a follow-up question or anything.

But c'mon:  the Yanks' longest enduring pitcher, ace of their last championship team, and the longtime victim of aching, arthritic knees says the mound stinks, too, and it takes all this time to do anything about it?

WTF?  Is the mound too loose or too hard, or just right?  Only Goldilocks knows for sure.  Or maybe Yanks Training and Conditioning Coach Jerry Lewis.

How has this possibly not been dealt with before?

All I know is:  expect more weird, needless injuries.  It's the Yankees Way!