Updated Johnny Damon timeline

Dec 24: Johnny Damon is not coming back!
Dec. 25: Merry Christmas. Don't expect Damon back.
Dec. 26: No chance of Damon coming back.
Dec. 27: Johnny who?
Dec. 28: Stop writing speculative stories. He's not coming back.
Dec. 29: We can't afford him.
Dec. 30: We're happy with Brett Gardner.
Dec. 31: We're drunk. Don't call. But he's history.
Jan. 1: Nothing changed. He is gone.
Jan. 2: Johnny Damon doesn't exist.
Jan. 3: We won't answer any more questions. He's out.
Jan. 4: This is why people hate the media. He's not coming back.
Jan. 5: Shut up about Johnny Damon, or I'll come to your house and punch you in the mouth.
Jan. 6. Small opening rumored for Damon return.
Jan. 7: Scotch that rumor. It can't happen.
Jan. 8: He's not coming.
Jan. 9: He's not coming, and he's not worth it.
Jan. 10: We have only $2 million to spend.
Jan. 11: Maybe Reed Johnson is coming.
Jan. 12: Hell with Reed Johnson. But not Damon.
Jan. 13: La-la-la I can't hear you...
Jan. 14: Look! Crotch photos of Snooki from Jersey Shore.
Jan. 15: We're giving to Haiti rather than Johnny Damon.
Jan. 16: At last, no more questions about Johnny.
Jan. 17: Hey, who's gonna win the Golden Globes?
Jan. 18: It's over. There is no Johnny Damon.
Jan. 19: Brett Gardner is going to be a fine LF.
Jan. 20: JOHNNY DAMON MIGHT COME BACK!

Jan. 21: NO! HE'S NOT COMING BACK!
Jan. 22: Rocco Baldelli.
Jan. 23: We're thinking about Jim Edmonds.
Jan. 24: JOHNNY MIGHT COME BACK!

BREAKING EFFING NEWS: MO HAS TITS!

Link: Mo Has Tits

UPDATE: Yes, this is a drunk-post!

News from Yankee Country: The Buffalo Beheader Heads to Trial

Bevare.

News from Yankee Country: Beloved SU mascot Otto Orange faces Challenge from Budding Oak

There's a new sheriff in town.

The name is Oakie. Dokey?

News from Western Yankee Country: NY Superman Achieves Incredible 0.30 BAC

His name is Michael G. Bartz, 40, of Clarence.

Says the Buffalo News' Gene Warner:

While on routine patrol Tuesday night, state police at Clarence clocked a vehicle going 59 mph in a 45-mph zone. Nothing too unusual there.

Until the troopers ran a blood-alcohol test and accused the driver of recording a level close to four times the state’s legal limit.

The driver recorded a blood-alcohol content of 0.30, troopers reported. Police can charge driving while intoxicated when a driver registers a 0.08 blood-alcohol level.

Beat THAT, Joba!

News from Upstate Yankee Country: Northern Artists Say "Go Jets!" in Snow Sculpture

From the town of Champion, a call to future champions!

Pinch-hitting Blogger: The Yankee Cougar

Continuing in our month-long elevation of little known Yankee bloggers to the Big Time, here is one of SuperFrankenstein's favorites. Whether she's seducing us with her Yankee acumen or her alluring charms, Emily Claymore -- formerly George Claymore -- is always hot, hot, HOT... for up and coming Yankees! Emily, back from hip replacement, graciously filed this report:

Jesus Montero, meet me the night before Opening Day at the Route 81 Econolodge in Scranton, and I'll do things to your strike zone that a million Curt Schilling fastballs couldn't accomplish! Grrrrrawwwwwwwwm. Yes, I'll miss Melky -- believe me, the Melkman could deliver -- but it's time for the Queen E to set her sites on new Yankee beef, and who better than the Hugo Chavez-lander with the throbbing big bat who is still learning how to play a position. Come early, Jeez, and I'll teach you more positions than Miguel Cairo dreams of! Think of me as your personal exotic Clay Bellanger of utility positons. Who is Clay Bellanger? Hush, child. Just take off your chest protector and strap on your shinguards, because you're going to need them. Oh, and wear your cleets, because you're going to need traction while running the basepaths of your inside-the-park opening day home run! Gr-r--r-rr-r-r-r-r-ahhhhhhwm!

IRABU TO RETIRE

Also, Ed McMahon still dead.

In historic tie, Scranton-Wilkes Barre's Kei and Shelley named Former Future Great Yankee of the Decade

Congratulations to both former future Yankee greats.

In the spirit of unity toward future Yankee seasons,
IT IS HIGH has chosen to hold no run-off election
and to let them share in this sacred honor.

Shelley, may you someday become a great Indian.

And Kei, may you yet become the great Yankee that you formerly were going to be.

Why do we feel so rotten about this Johnny Damon business?

For weeks, I've been trying to ditch this Johnny Damon funk. I just can't. He appears in my dreams, shouting to me from the bottom of a well. He's crying. He's asking me why we pushed him into the abyss. I wake up screaming.

I truly like Brett Gardner. I like Curtis Granderson. I could grow to relike Nick Johnson. (But I hope Javier Vazquez' brain explodes, because the mere image of him in Pinstripes is revolting. HE should be at the bottom of that well.)

Yes, back in December, Johnny wanted too much money and too many years. We said fuck-off, and then pushed the trade buttons. Now he's down there, without a market, contemplating retirement, and Yankee blogs have the audacity to crow about how smart Brian Cashman is...

But conniving is actually the world.

All last season, we played lovie-dovie with Damon. We were going to resign him. That was the line. He gave us everything. Presence. Calmness. Hits. Stolen bases. Power. Clutch. Smarts.

Gone.

Moreover, in coming to the Yankees, he endured a ton of filthy crap heaped upon him by Redsock fans. They hated him with the blank, dull blackness of a billion Tim Green novels. Yeah, we paid him lots of money. But I'd like to believe we offer the loyalty that Boston doesn't. (See Wade Boggs, Carlton Fisk, Pedro Martinez, et al.)

We did dirt to a great Yankee. That's why, this winter, we may look good on paper, but we feel like we're looking up from the bottom of a well.

Pinch-Hitting Blogger: Ultracyberstatman

Once again, we're digging deep into the shitpile of nobodies that is the World Wide Web to lift another Yankee blogger from obscurity.

Rex Hibbard-Staley, a statistician extraordinare from Elmira, NY, and captain of the Glider City KFC Bowling Bucketeers, says he is "not only responsible for serving upstate New York's tastiest chicken breast-crunching, but also its most succulent and sexy number-crunching, too!" We asked Rex to get out his calculator and give us the lowdown on the Melky trade. He filed this report:

The basic idea of hierarchical batting average modeling (also known as multilevel BAT modeling) is to elevate lowest-level Yankee units into a hierarchy of successively higher-level Yankee units, or Yanknits, or in this case, Melknits, for simplicity.

For example, hypothetically, Melky plays CF, in the OF, on NY, in USA. By co-signing individual Melky at-bat performance outcome Melknits on an empiracal Bayes curve -- (not to be mistaken for a Josh Beckett curve, ha ha!) -- as a sum of effects for individual Melknit outfield output, for her/his team, for CF, OF, NY, et al, we get a value of 3.04.

I also applied Melky regression coefficients, which were specified inferences easily drawn from available data for the Melknit population means at any level (CF, OF, NY, USA, NA - that's North America, etc.) from a frequentist perspective as "Best Linear Unbiased Predictors" (BLUPs: see Robinson, Statistical Science, 1991, pp. 15-32). Raw Melkian properties ran consistently 0.03 higher than simple sample-based estimators from the Brett Gardnit model (3.01), making Melknits a useful player tool (see Ghosh and Rao, Statistical Science, 1994, pp. 55-76).

This sequencing suggests for the Yankees to have achieved a 3.07-3.09 rating, guaranteed World Series, they should have kept Melky and signed John Lackey.

Look Who's Got A Facebook Group

Nice job, somebody! A place for Sterlingophiles to give each other much-needed support in a hostile world! Lots of links to this blog's JS videos! PLUS! Some stuff I didn't know about, like this thing where some a-hole called the radio and pretended to be John & Suzyn!

The John Sterling Group on Facebook

SOX FANS BEAT HEALTH CARE

Scott Brown Wins Mass. Race, Giving GOP 41-59 Majority in the Senate

Yankeetorial: The real problem MLB has with the Yankees

Yesterday, the chief boobuh of the Gammonite tribe put everything -- life, death, sun, moon, infinity, etc. -- into perspective with this dire warning:

The dichotomy between large- and small-revenue franchises is again widening.

"When [GM] Theo Epstein took over in Boston, he changed the industry," said Indians GM Mark Shapiro. "Now we see the Red Sox and Yankees operating as if they're creative mid- to small-market teams, and it's widened the gap between them and some of the other franchises."

There it is, comrades. Straight from the horse's mouth.

The problem is not that the Yankees spend too much.

What baseball can't stand is that we no longer piss it away. We no longer throw it at wasted has-beens, based on the bombastic whims of an impulsive meglomaniac. As long as we were trading solid prospects for post-steroidal prime Kevin Browns and ill-fitting Randy Johnsons, everything was forgiven.

Now they're complaining. Just aint fair. The Yankees are acting intelligently.

Friends, this is why it makes no sense to cut payroll, unless -- of course -- the Steinbrenners just want yacht upgrades. (Which might be what this cost-cutting bullshit is all about.)

The problem isn't the cash we spend. It's the Cash who's running the show. Brian. The problem is that we aren't pissing it away.

Soooo.... How can we get back into the good graces of MLB?

LET'S PISS SOME MONEY AWAY ON JOHNNY DAMON!! C'MON! BE SMART! GET HIM!

Remember, campers: They're gonna hate us anyway. Let's be hated as the 2010 World Champs -- because never forget this:

They hate us even harder when we finish second.

Pinch-Hitting Blogger: funnybenfranklinyankeefan.com

This month at IT IS HIGH, since we weren't going to do anything anyway, we've decided to let some of the lesser known Yankee bloggers out there get a taste of the Big Time.

And one of our favorite upstart blogs is funnybenfranklinyankeefan.com, which is devoted to the humorous and little known history of ardent Yankee fan Ben Franklin.


The crazy gang over there -- Wyoming County, Pa.'s famous twins, librarians Myrtle Billingsly and Edith Billingsly-Groat -- are celebrating what they call "Blog History Month" with the following "graphic."

Thanks, gals! Best of luck in 2010 with the extra attention!

Updated Timeline of Johnny Damon signing denial news

TIMELINE

Dec 24: Johnny Damon is not coming back!
Dec. 25: Merry Christmas. Don't expect Damon back.
Dec. 26: No chance of Damon coming back.
Dec. 27: Johnny who?
Dec. 28: Stop writing speculative stories. He's not coming back.
Dec. 29: We can't afford him.
Dec. 30: We're happy with Brett Gardner.
Dec. 31: We're drunk. Don't call. But he's history.
Jan. 1: Nothing changed. He is gone.
Jan. 2: Johnny Damon doesn't exist.
Jan. 3: We won't answer any more questions. He's out.
Jan. 4: This is why people hate the media. He's not coming back.
Jan. 5: Shut up about Johnny Damon, or I'll come to your house and punch you in the mouth.
Jan. 6. Small opening rumored for Damon return.
Jan. 7: Scotch that rumor. It can't happen.
Jan. 8: He's not coming.
Jan. 9: He's not coming, and he's not worth it.
Jan. 10: We have only $2 million to spend.
Jan. 11: Maybe Reed Johnson is coming.
Jan. 12: Hell with Reed Johnson. But not Damon.
Jan. 13: La-la-la I can't hear you...
Jan. 14: Look! Crotch photos of Snooki from Jersey Shore.
Jan. 15: We're giving to Haiti rather than Johnny Damon.
Jan. 16: At last, no more questions about Johnny.
Jan. 17: Hey, who's gonna win the Golden Globes?
Jan. 18: It's over. There is no Johnny Damon.
Jan. 19: Brett Gardner is going to be a fine LF.
Jan. 20: JOHNNY DAMON MIGHT COME BACK!

There'll Be Zero Posts From Superfrankenstein On March 23

Daughtry's coming to Syracuse.

Yankees avoid arbitration and sign playoff workhorse "Mr. Perfect," Chad Gaudin

A perfect record in the 2009 post-season. No runs, no hits, no errors, nobody left on.

And he is ours for another year, mwah-ha-ha-ha-ha-haaaaaa.

Remembering Yankee Weekly World News: 2009 -- Yankees handle Jonathan Papelbon

Who is Boone Logan? Nine facts that just might be the answer, metaphorically speaking, of course

1. He is a graduate of Sandra Day O'Connor High School.

2. He has been with three teams in four years.

3. In spring 2006, he jumped from the White Sox rookie league team all the way to the majors.

4. He has twice been traded along with Javier Vazquez.

5. His lifetime composite comparison, at age 23, is former Yankee Jim Brewer.

6. Last year, lefties hit .231 against him.

7. Last year, in the second half of the season, he got clobbered. Batters overall hit .347 against him, and his ERA exploded.

8. Last year, with the bases loaded, batters hit .333 against him.

9. Yesterday, either he feared arbitration, or the Yankees did. Because both sides settled.