Yesterday, Sonny Douglas Gray - aka "Pickles," according to Baseball Reference - addressed the word for the first time since becoming a Boston Redsock.
Make no mistake: Gray is a Redsock, 100 percent, all-in. He has guzzled the Kool-Aid, swallowed the Blue pill, donned the bloody shirt, requested the Grey Poupon. And by the time his 2026 teammates visit Gotham - June 5 - the world will know, once and for all, whether his miserable 2018-19 seasons were due to the mean streets of New York - or the fault of "Pickles," himself.
OF Dustin Fowler (played three seasons, a career BA of .215.)
SP James Kaprielian (four years, ERA of 4.61.)
SS Jorge Mateo. (Still going, a defensive fixture in Baltimore, .221.)
You could argue that, in the end, the Yankees didn't give away much. Fowler, Kaprielian and Mateo all showed flashes; Kaprielian looked like the real deal, until he hurt his arm. (Fowler's story was particularly tragic: In the first inning of his first MLB game, he chased a ball into foul territory at Comisky Park and wrecked his knee on an electrical box. Manager Joe Girardi wept as Fowler was carted off the field. He later sued the White Sox and, after a lengthy legal battle, settled out of court. Shades of Moonbeam Graham.)
Honestly? We've never squared Gray's wretched time in NY. We've never explained his rebound seasons in Cincinnati and St. Louis. Some players - Jason Giambi, Cody Bellinger, et al - seem to be born for NY. (Yet as Giambi showed, the first months can be hard.) Some simply never cut it. Gray is one of the most prominent examples.
Did we give up on him too soon? (The Yankees eventually traded him for Shed Long.) Or is there something in the NY experience that poisons certain players?
Will the booing of a supercharged rivalry upset Pickles?
On or about June 5, we'll know.
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We may have our own problems now as Yankee fans - indeed, this is the long winter of our discontent and it's going to go on for many more winters - but I think I can speak for all of us by saying - "Yes, we hear you Sasha Gray, but we can take a moment to acknowledge that you are a nonentity here, that we don't care about you, and that you can go fuck yourself in the deepest recesses of Fenway Park."
Somewhere in Upstate New York:
Scott has ordered us to eat the sled dogs, even though we are still somewhere short of Binghamton. Their toxic livers have poisoned half the exhibition, several of whom wandered off mad into the snow last night. Our one chance is to hope we can find the food cache Amundsen left behind for us...
Um, wait, sorry. Just having a bad dream. Yeah, Sonny Gray. Hated that guy. But what's the old saying? Once is an accident, twice coincidence, 575 consecutive times is your GM is a raging egomaniac blowhole, who can't put together a coaching staff to save his life...
And, Duque, you're wrong. Dead wrong. We didn't trade Sonny Gray for Shed Long. No, sir.
We traded Sonny Gray AND a promising young reliever, Reiver Sanmartin, for Shed Long, JR., I'll have you know! And...flipped Long on the very same day for OF Josh Towers, who never made it to the majors after hitting a lifetime .230 in the minors and who is now playing in Mexico. (Ahahaha! Just thinking of Mexico makes me feel a little warmed. Pass that leg shank, will you?)...
...Sanmartin has never amounted to much for the Reds, bouncing back and forth between Cincy and the minors. But his inclusion in the deal gives us an excellent chance to examine The Full Cashman, in all its beauty.
To wit:
—Passed on future Hall of Famer Justin Verlander, who won two rings, made four World Series with other teams, and would have brought scrumptious Kate Upton around to every big game.
—Instead traded promising prospects for a good pitcher, who never has won anything.
—Let his incompetent coaching staff wreck said pitcher.
—Despite obvious demand from other teams, traded said pitcher to Cincinnati for a marginal, minor-league utility guy, AND THREW IN ANOTHER PROMISING PROSPECT just to sweeten the deal.
—Swapped marginal utility guy for complete OF flop.
The sheer idiocy of this is just dazzling in its evil beauty. Makes one want to put on the original, Shirley Bassey rendition of "Goldfinger."
Hey, wait a minute, chum! That's MY fried dog paw. You already had yours! I've got a knife—
...Yeah, how's that dog paw taste now, motherfucker!
Oh, and hey, Carl Weitz, if you want to bring that "Crimes against the Yankees Universe and the National Pastime" case against Cashman to The Hague, I still have my 91 indictments against our GM. Just saying.
Hoss, I thought you went down on the Edmund Fitzgerald...glad to hear you're clinging to life somewhere up there in the frozen northern territories...
Bit, you have to admit that going down on the Edmund Fitzgerald is preferable to going down on Edmund Fitzgerald.
Hoss, the original pressing of the Goldfinger LP is worth getting just for the incredible sound of the title song. Those horns can pin your ears back. Great engineering and mastering.
This is true of most of the Bond title songs on their respective LPs. Nancy Sinatra will send chills down your spine.
And don't get me started on the original pressings of the John Houston version of Casino Royale. Good god, what an audiophile's dream that one is. The Look of Love by Dusty Springfield is the best version of that song she ever recorded. Bacharach outdid himself. Worth owning, imho.
Doug K.
“It feels good to me to go to a place where it’s easy to hate the Yankees,” Gray said.
If only it were that easy for the rest of us.
Hoss, my best advice to you is watch out where the huskies go and don't you eat that yellow snow.
You know, every once in a while, the spirit seizes me and - wherever I am - I will start to belt out the "Goldfinger" or "Diamonds are Forever" theme songs in my best imitation of Shirley Bassey. No kidding. As for vinyl, I obviously grew up with it, from my dad's 78s and LPs to my own. As a college DJ, I accumulated a few thousand records and, as a degenerate on the Lower East Side in the 1980s, I sold them all for next to nothing, then convinced myself that CDs sounded good enough. And maybe they do, but there are days when I miss my records. I do not miss carting the 20 milk crates around, though. Not that I have moved my ass in a few decades. I gave away most of my CDs a few years ago, as well, after ripping them all. What barbaric times. But you want to know what's even more barbaric? The way that people under 30 now call them "vinyls." I never once referred to a record or an LP as "a vinyl." Very small chance I may have used the term "on vinyl," but it was only for emphasis. How do we cure this imbecility? What re the 39 Steps???
We actually referred to our stereo as "the phonograph." Which, it kinda was. No ear trumpet, but hardly a real stereo.
Good, primitive times.
Carly Simon also kills it with "Nobody Does It Better," at the start of The Spy Who Loved Me, which imho was one of the lesser Bonds.
Baby you’re the best….
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