Yankeetorial: It's hard to be angry when you're nine games up. That said, it sure would be nice to have a mop-up man who can close a six-run lead

Derek Jeter has his Edge. I'm trying to sharpen mine. As thinking fans, we must not allow ourselves to sick back and chew Cheetos. Last time we sat back and chewed Cheetos, we were three up on the Redsocks in an ALCS with Javy Vasquez practicing his Canyon of Heroes speech. Remember that? SO PULL YOUR CHUBBY, ORANGE-DUSTED FINGERS OUT OF THAT BAG, AMIGO! THOSE CHEETOS ARE FOR CLOSERS!

Q: What is a Chad Qualls, other than a taller version of the bad Cody Wade?

Q: Is anybody EVER on this godforsaken team going to hit with runners on base? 

Yeah, OK, we're nine up. But for crap sake, if we hit with RISP, we'd have clinched the damn pennant by now. We could be DHing Billy Crystal and letting Mariano Rivera hobble around in centerfield, just to prove he could come back. Good grief, we could showcase Pat Venditte just for fun, and poor Jack Cust could come up to pinch run. We could liberate Frankie Cervelli from the Thruway hellhole of the Traveling Wilkes Barres, and Adam Warren would get another shot. Andy Pettitte could be home hanging with his family - wait, he is home with his family - good grief, how many games up would we be?

But no. We can't hit with runners in scoring position. And Chad Qualls can't even hold a six-run lead. So we're a measily, stinking nine up. DAMMIT, THIS SUCKS! CAN ANYBODY ON THIS TEAM PLAY THE STUPID GAME OF BASEBALL. I'M TELLING YOU, I'M GOING PAULY O'NEILL ON THE IT IS HIGH WATER COOLER! EITHER THIS TEAM SHAPES UP, OR CERTAIN PEOPLE ARE GOING TO SHIP OUT. WIPE THAT SMILE OFF YOUR FACE, DAMMIT. IF ANY ONE OF YOU THINK THAT JUST BECAUSE WE'RE NINE UP, MAYBE 10, WELL, BUDDYBOY, YOU GOT ANOTHER THOUGHT COMING. NOT GONE HAPPEN. NO WAY.

All right. Now GIT. AND DON'T LET ME CATCH ANY OF YOU YOYOS PRACTICING HIS SPEECH FOR THE CANYON OF HEROES.

(Sigh.) It's only July, Jeet. You think they listened?

Link

Redsock radio

Read This Once And Forget Everything Else You See Or Hear On The Subject

 Brett Gardner's injury has still not been properly diagnosed. Until it is, and until he exits the Hospital For Special Surgery with a successful operation, he is not playing baseball again.  He does not need more rest.  He needs repair.  I have been saying this since he went away.  And you all know that.  So take a deep breath, have a dozen manhattans, and forget about how the team will benefit from his return this season.

Joba Chamberlain also should not return this season.  I know he is working hard and " committed" to reappear in the Bronx following his ( "I was only being a good Dad,") trampoline injury, but it is a mistake.  Perhaps a career mistake.  The certainty is that the ankle will not be properly healed to absorb the strain a major league pitcher puts on an ankle.  There is the added risk that he will "adjust" his motion to compensate for the weakened appendage, thereby hurting his arm or back.  We have to eat the dirty and bitter truth and recognize that he should stay away until spring.  This is an official warning as well as sound advice.

The same goes for the idiotic rumors surrounding the miracle man, Mariano Rivera.  He is out for the season and must remain so.

This team is what we have.  A massive give-away of the few A level prospects we have for an over the hill outfielder who has lost 4 steps is not worth the decade of agony that will follow.

But, since Cashman is likely to depart the Yankees soon anyway, why not make one more grandstand blunder?  Why not take a 100-1 shot that this team can be improved enough to go beyond round one?  I fear this is exactly what Cashman will do.  And he has little to lose.

Brian;  that woman gets out of Rikers soon.  I suggest you concentrate on that deadline, not the trading deadline.

Yankeetorial: We can put a golf cart on Mars and find the Higgs Boson, but we can't decipher the mysteries of Brett Gardner and Eduardo Nunez?

I offer two words to summarize the ongoing status of Yankee LF Brett Gardner's problem elbow.

Quack. Quack.

Good grief, what are they using to analyze it, a divining rod? Who's running the show, the team midwife? Gardner's been crocheting in front of the daytime boob tube since Tax Day, his arm wrapped in tin foil, but when he visits Marcus Welby for a monthly checkup, the veterinarian looks in his mouth and says, "Take two aspirin and come back in September." What color beads are we shaking over this guy? 
Yesterday, word circulated that Gardy's elbow not only still hurts, but it picks up an AM radio station from Fort Wayne. That means 2012 looks like a wipe-out, and even though we're nine up - (As a rule, I never relax until we're 20 ahead) - everybody can imagine the September outfield pileup when Raul Ibanez - age 40 - and Andruw Jones - 240 (pounds that is) - run out of diesel. Suddenly, Cashman is back to sniffing for trades, which means overpaying for some warm body who is barely a blogger widget better than Chris Dickerson.

Personally, I blame our chronic inability to develop position players in the minors, which is epic when you consider all the Jed Lowries and Will Middlebrooks who vault from the Redsock primordial loins. (Not to mention the Rays full tap spiggot.) Our Scranton OF - now with Fukodome!- is roughtly the same age as most outfields in the Central divisions.
But one last mystery haunts me: Where TF is Eduardo Nunez? What happened to him? He's like Trini Lopez in "The Dirty Dozen." One minute, he's singing a song; next, he's gone from the movie. Last I heard, they sent Nunez to the Traveling Wilkes Barres to play SS every day. Then... poof, his parachute doesn't open, and he's vanished.

I think he's stuck in one of those Thruway rest stop toilet booths, where the latches get jammed. He could anywhere between Batavia and the Montezuma Swamp. I hate to even think of it: The guy is smelling that delicious Sbarro lasagna and those Roy Rogers Triggerburgers, but the automatic flusher keeps gurgling, obscuring his tortured cries for help. This is like that 2003 movie "Open Water," where a cute yuppie couple is left behind in the ocean to do a "My Dinner with Andre" conversation while playing shark soccer. It takes 90 minutes in the movie for the boat captain to realize that Ken and Barbie are missing. Do the Yankees even know Nunez is gone?

HEY, YOO-HOO, EVERYBODY: NUNEZ IS NOT ON THE BUS! DO YOU REALIZE WE LEFT HIM SOMEWHERE BACK THERE AROUND WEEDSPORT? HE COULD BE IN SOME TREADWAY RIGHT NOW, STILL WAITING FOR THE CONTINENTAL BREAKFAST. WE GOTTA GO BACK AND GET HIM!

Yeesh. We'll find life on Mars before we find a leftielder. Quack.

Bevare: The Redsocks are re-assembling their superteam

"Redvengers Reassemble!"

Hear the full-throated cry from Nordic God/Redsock superpresident Larry Lucchino:

"The one constant off the field is that we have had a veritable All-Star Team on the disabled list. As we begin the second half, we look forward to the return of the 'varsity,' including Jacoby Ellsbury, Carl Crawford, Andrew Bailey, and the ever-dirty Dustin Pedroia. While this infusion of such talent in late July may make other General Managers green with envy, you can be sure that Ben Cherington and his Baseball Operations Staff will approach the July 31 trading deadline with their tireless work ethic. If someone can further help this club, and if the deal makes sense, we will be aggressive. We want to play October Baseball this year."

Bevare. The Fenway Murderer's Roe, which stumbled last year, has learned from its mistakes and returned stronger than ever! With "Perfect Storm" Crawford back to patrol Yazstremskiville, and the ever-dirty Dustin Pedroia quarterbacking the infield, the "varsity" Socks present a formidable opponent. Also, let's not forget wily manager and cool customer Bobby Vee, the Professor X of Bosstown, who knows what buttons to press - and when.

Bevare.

(Let's face it: If we can keep our lead in the East, and Texas holds on in the West, that leaves the Central to the .500 brigade - and the two leftover Wild Card slots to the Angels, Rays or Varsity Socks. Does anyone really think Baltimore can hang in there? Not me. So let those teams burn their systems chasing Ryan Dempster and Matt Garza. After all, they'll need them for the one-game playoff, right?)

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Spike Lee catches bat

Open Letter to Brian Cashman: Don't even pick up the phone

Dear Madam or Sir,

Once again, the Yankiverse is buzzing over potential trades. Because it's July, we always go through this pointless charade, like the 12 days of Christmas, wondering who we can get. And if we do cut a deal, it's immediately cheered and a year later, lambasted.

This year, let's do nothing.

That was the policy of perhaps the greatest GM in modern history, Pat Gillick. They used to call him "Stand Pat," because he recognized that you're better off developing your own players than trading for other teams' mistakes. Gillick built into powerhouses the Blue Jays, the Mariners and the Phillies. He's in the Hall of Fame because he didn't answer the phone in July.

Right now, we have little in the high farm system that other teams covet. The few prospects we have are injured or in slumps. To chase a stud pitcher - a Dempster or a Garza - we would have to drain our lower system in ways that we would likely regret for years.

Say no. Don't do it.

Lately, that horrible winter deal with the Mariners - the Pineda deal - doesn't look so bad. Jesus Montero is not hitting, and Hector Noesi is a disaster. It's hard to imagine a team getting less than we did, but at least we didn't have to see Montero in the all-star game. Thus, you do not have to restore yourself via a trade. You can sit this one out.

Let's not make a deal. Stand pat. Let the Cubs trade whomever they want to whomever they want. We have Andy Pettitte coming back. We have Brett Gardner coming back. We have Joba Chamberlain coming back. We have the utility wire for everything else. We don't need anybody.

Take a cruise. Tour Europe. See Alaska. Or go to Chico, California. That's the birthplace of Pat Gillick.

Yankeetorial: The Aqua-Ape search gives us hope for Brett Gardner's elbow

Last night on the Discovery Channel, bearded and bespectacled scientists updated the world on their continuing search for mermaids, or the "aqua-ape." At one point, a bearder subjected deep sea recordings to a super-spectrographic, magnetic-sequencing digital analysis, isolating individual frequencies and slowing them to sound levels conducive to the human ear. The result: It sounded like crowd noise at a Yankee game.

Yes, folks, the aqua-apes are booing us. They're not hollering "Yoook." They are muy pissed.

As I was watching, two thoughts fluttered out of mental cocoons: 1) Should I grow a beard? (Not a Jerry Garcia thing, mind-you, but a chin-hiding mink, the kind that would grace the face of a Kelsey Grammer or Celine Dion); and 2) If humankind has evolved enough to measure voices of aqua-apes akin to Kevin Costner in "Waterworld," why are our modern scientific methods unable to solve the mystery of Brett Gardner's elbow?

Ah, the vagaries of life! Gardner took a few swings yesterday, and only God and he truly know if time and Florida is curing his ailment. We will always have Florida - (Make what you want of that) - but we are running out of time if Gards is going to supercharge the oceanic depths of our batting order this season. If the elbow barks, and we push Brett back another month, that lands him nearly into September, and it's a Jacoby Ellsbury year.

Now, some of you could ask, who cares? We're winning without Gardner. But Girardi has placed his two posterboys - Jeet and Arod - in a wave of great hitters. For example, Arod bats between Curtis Granderson and Robbie Cano, two lefties; if he can't make it there, he can't make it anywhere. But Jeet, sadly, comes up behind Russell Martin, who has done nothing this year. As Martin's spring slump deepened, Jeter's spring surge diminished. Batting ninth, Gardner can wreak havoc on pitchers, a daily 100-mg of viagra for Jeet that could spill over to Granderson's meager .260 average, as well.

Yesterday's most important swings were not Arod's pop-up with the bases loaded. They took place in Florida. And I hope the Yankees don't let Gardner swim in the ocean. The aqua-apes are pissed. And they are not shouting "Yoook."

D'feet

We gave them a game. I still can't figure out what course of environmental and societal circumstances brought us to be pitching something called Chad Qualls. But we gave them a game.

10 things the Yankees are looking for at the trade deadline

1. Solid, hard-hitting 4th catcher for Scranton.

2. Good $4 cigar.

3. Amelia Earhart.

4. Brett Gardner's chiropractor.

5. Godot.

6. Redsock fan with sense of hope.

7. Cure for cancer.

8. Life on Mars.

9. Secret to Justin Bieber's popularity.

10.  Mr. Goodbar.

Rivalometer

"Paterno was innocent!"

"Reggie is forgiven!"

Yankeetorial: Eveything is going too well. Are we doomed?

Don't gemmie wrong: Aint complainin.'

But something hideous and divisive - the super-honed instincts of a snow-shoveling upstate NYker - is screaming from the Don Zimmer memorial steel-plate within my head: TOO EASY, TOO EARLY. 

Take last night. Hollywood comeback. If that's a playoff game, Teixeira's HR goes up there with Robert Redford's fireworks shot in "The Natural." We snapped California's spine like a Hershey bar. They should not show up today. They should go back to wherever they came from. Hell, I guess. It should be over. Goodbye. so long, farewell...

But it's what, July 14? We still have to survive the Olympics and then the horrible, miserable, Star Trekkie-level conventions. It's a 500-mile hike to Sept. 1. Too easy, too early. We gotta save some Leyritz sauce for later.

We've done everything possible to blow it. Andy Pettitte threw himself into a liner just to make us use Freddy Garcia. Brett Gardner is drinking Boddingtons on a beach somewhere, just so Andruw Jones can trot around in the outfield. God knows Girardi didn't expect Dewayne Wise to be the Second Coming of Roberto Clemente. Nothing has worked. We keep winning.

Too easy, too early?

Aint complainin'. Just worryin.' Zim is talking to me. Bevare.

Lookin Good

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Can El Duque Dominate the Second Half?

Before we plunge into the back half of 2012, let's take a moment to absorb and acknowledge the thrilling late-career surge of El Duque.

It started with the book and ended with the six-game drinking streak. Those two history-making feats bookended a firehose blast of poems and polls, letters and lists, worries and gripes, unleashed with a reckless extravagance that bloggers half Duque's age can only envy.

Even if we acknowledge the occasional disastrous misstep--and even if the experts are right and he collapses down the stretch--2012 will long be remembered for the magic El Duque brought to the game.

Just Thought You Should Know

This is the roadmap for Brett Gardner's "so-called" return to the Yankees before the trade deadline.

A Special Welcome For Ty Hensley

We would like to extend a special welcome to the newest Yankee, Ty Hensley.

Your room is ready and we can do the work anytime you are ready.

It is our recommendation that you have the surgery sooner, rather than later.

Why waste all those frustrating days working out?

Do you really want the humiliation of not making it through two innings in your first outing?

Think of the damage to your reputation, your future " trade value."

In addition, there is only a one in twenty chance you would be any good, even if healthy.

We hope to do for you what we did for Andy Brackman.

No, make that for Raphael Santana.

Last thought.  Have you considered developing a knuckleball?

See you soon.  Shoulder surgeons are on the 6th floor.

Welcome to the Yankees' roster of young pitchers.

10 Reasons Joe Paterno still makes it into heaven

1.   Never indicted. (Yeah, the bar's been lowered.)

2.   Recommendation from Franco Harris (whom God obviously likes.)

3.   Was always polite (at least on TV.)

4.   Was screwed out of 1968 National Championship. (Bear Bryant now coaching Hell.)

5.   Prayed each day (and meant it.)

6.   Tipped big in diners (and meant it.)

7.   Great hair. (OK, the bar is really low.)

8.   Respected the law (though didn't always mean it.)

9.   Strong recruiter. (Heaven needs linebackers.)

10. God tired of losing with Knute Rockne (and hearing that speech.)

It wasn't Ty Hensley holding up the signing, it was an MRI of his shoulder

Wow. This is weird. And sad. And a sign of the times.

Ty Hensley, the Yankees first round pick, signed yesterday for about $1.2 million - about $400,000 lower than original expectations. That ends the speculation that we had another Gerrit Cole on our hands - a draft pick who simply had no intention of signing. But the backstory is now evolving.

Turns out, Cole Hensley and the Yankees had a $1.6 million deal in place shortly after the draft, but then a routine MRI revealed an abnormality in his shoulder, and the Yankees cut their offer. Kaboom. Ever since, the kid and his family have been twisting in the wind. Can you imagine the talks in their kitchen?

Chase Parnam has the full story. The quotes will break your heart, especially where the 18-year-old says this is just "the business of baseball."

Here's the closer quote:

"The Yankees and I are in this together. The deal we came to illustrates this. By being honest about what has been going on, I hope it will lead to a better understanding of medicals like mine. My mom spent 24/7 on the internet just trying to find anything she could so maybe this will help someone else. There is no sense in being bitter, I am still living the dream and am grateful for the amazing opportunities that I have had. Right now I think we all just want to put this behind us and concentrate on the impact I can have on the Yankees now and in the future." 

We drafted an abnormal shoulder. And an abnormal kid.

Glad he's in the fold. For the record, I hate the business of baseball.

Is it my imagination, or is the All-Star break longer this year?

I dunno. I must be losing my mind. But somewhere in the back of my head, next to memories of my Pogs collection, I thought the All-Star break only lasted three days. It started Monday, climaxed with the game on Tuesday, the teams reunited Wednesday, and they started playing again Thursday. Right?

Obviously, I'm hallucinating. Yep, I've lost it, bigtime. Please accept my apologies. The fathers of baseball, traditionalists that they are, would never tamper with the All-Star break schedule. What would be the point? Add an extra day, and you might finish the World Series on Thanksgiving.

Bath salts. Man, I gotta quit 'em.  

Will There Ever Be More Baseball?

This is what it now looks like in my tv room, next to the couch.

Ever since the Yankees left Boston with a win, the only baseball available has been " classic moments " re-runs of Mets games, or the Brooklyn Cyclones playing some team from steel country.

If it was the Staten Island Yanks on the tube, I would watch.  But the Mets' short summer league team has prospects and is, therefore, painful for me to watch.  And while the Yanks' summer team is loaded with waste material, they are still called, Yankees.

So I sit here drinking beer and eating tacos until the stupid and dull all star game break finally passes, like a corncob through a bowel.

Is there baseball tonight?

If not, I'm going to drink moonshine, which is now legal in my state.