Derek Jeter climbing baseball history's ladder

New York Yankees Captain Derek Jeter keeps climbing the ladder of baseball history, showing no signs of slowing down even as he nears the age when shortstops traditionally get pushed to another position.

It seems like every day Jeter is passing another Hall of Fame baseball player on the all-time hits list. Yesterday, it was George Brett, who was gracious and effusive in his praise of Jeter in his congratulatory statement and obvious in his admiration for the Yankees shortstop when he made a guest appearance on a YES Network broadcast last week when the Kansas City Royals were in town. Brett could not decide what he admired more: Jeter’s on-the-field skills or his ability to weather the New York spotlight with barely a bad word written about him.

Eventually, Jeter will join all the players he is now passing in the Baseball Hall of Fame. But people are already pondering the bigger question: will Jeter play long enough to surpass Pete Rose as the all-time hits leader (something that Bud Selig and MLB surely would love to happen). Given his hitting resurgence since he smacked that home run off of David Price for #3,000, Jeter has seemingly quieted all the critics of his ability. I think the real question is will Jeter want to stick around long enough to go for the record. The Yankees Captain has stated that he will keep playing as long as he is having fun. Judging by watching him on the field, particularly his playful interactions with opposing players and his gentle mocking of his own teammates, it seems like Jeter is still having a lot of fun.

Try being the guy who eventually has to replace Derek Jeter at shortstop for the New York Yankees. It’s almost as bad as being the guy who has to replace Mariano Rivera (although I still think David Robertson has the chops for the job). But hopefully a Jeter retirement is far off into the future and we can just keep watching him climb that ladder. 

Yankees for sale? Count me in

Can anyone spare $3-4 billion?

It’s going to take that much dough to take the New York Yankees off the hands of the Steinbrenner family. If the Los Angeles Dodgers are worth $2.175 billion after years of dysfunction and mismanagement, think of how much the Yankees are worth with a hugely successful regional television network. Sure, there are all sorts of questions about the value of the product on the field, with the team struggling during the first two months of the season, falling well short of our admittedly high expectations. But that has not made them less profitable, at least not yet.

For the record, I don’t believe the Yankees are actually for sale right now. I think someone in the Yankees camp casually mentioned the possibility of a sale with one of his banker friends over scotch and cigars one night and the thing just snowballed. Hal Steinbrenner is a businessman, not a die-hard baseball fan, so I could see him wanting to sell the team at some point in the future. But he is a businessman so he surely knows he can get even more for his already valuable property by waiting until general market conditions improve.

I’d be willing to pitch in to buy the Yankees. If we all chip in a little, we and thousands of our fellow Yankees fans could be the proud owners of the most storied franchise in sports. But then we’d have to stop criticizing our team because we’d only be hurting ourselves. 

Mediocre Yankees a cause for concern

I’m not in full-blown panic mode yet, but I’m really starting to worry about the New York Yankees, who have been a mediocre team so far in 2012 rather than the juggernaut they are supposed to be.

It is too late in the baseball season for the Yankees to be a barely-above .500 team. The Yankees and the Boston Red Sox, the traditional powerhouses of the American League East, continue to languish at the bottom of the standings behind the more youthful Baltimore Orioles, Tampa Bay Rays and Toronto Blue Jays. The only thing the Yankees have going for them right now is that they are only 5.5 games out of first place, despite their inconsistent start, in late May. There is still plenty of time for them to right the ship.

But if it wasn’t for a vintage performance by Andy Pettitte, the Yankees would have gotten swept this weekend by the Cincinnati Reds. The Yankees have been getting beat by a lot of teams that they should be pounding on. Most recently, the Yankees have been hurt by a lack of clutch hitting, but poor starting pitching was the main cause of their woes up until a few weeks ago. The Yankees have also been victimized by some unfortunate injuries, not just to Mariano Rivera, but to his replacement David Robertson and Brett Gardner, whose speed is sorely missed on a team struggling mightily to score runs.

I’m starting to wonder not when but if the Yankees will pull it together. I’m not completely panicking just yet, but check in with me in a couple of weeks. 

Andy Pettitte's return brings mixed emotions

Even after a full day, I still have mixed emotions about seeing Andy Pettitte return to the New York Yankees.

I was in Pittsburgh watching Syracuse play in the NCAA tournament when I first heard the news about Pettitte’s un-retirement and I couldn’t have been happier. I was so excited that I vowed to be there for his first start back, regardless of the cost. But then Pettitte testified in the Roger Clemens trial, giving his friend a potential out by all of a sudden claiming there was a 50-50 chance he was mistaken about what Clemens told him, even though he was certain about what he heard the day before. All that excitement was gone in an instant, replaced with anger that Pettitte would bend the truth in such a way to save someone who doesn’t deserve to be saved.

Watching Pettitte pitch again on Sunday was by far the most confusing time. I refused to attend the game in person to support him because of what he said and did on the witness stand. And I wasn’t giving him a standing ovation at home either or cheering for him when he first took the mound. But just watching on television every time he got a batter out or induced a ground-ball double play, I felt the rush of positive emotions that I always felt watching him pitch during his glory days. It’s a classic case of old habits dying hard.

However, every warm feeling was always quickly followed by a reminder of how much damage Pettitte’s suddenly faulty memory did to the government’s case against Clemens. That has completed changed my opinion of Pettitte as a person, who once was one of my favorites largely because he seemed like such a good, honest guy. But he will now find himself, for me, in Alex Rodriguez territory, a baseball player I merely tolerate because the Yankees need him to do well if they are going to be successful.

While I will root for Pettitte to do well for the Yankees’ sake, he will no longer get my unconditional support as he had before. I just don’t think he deserves it anymore. 

Hughes no longer in danger of becoming AJ Burnett

I was beginning to worry that Phil Hughes was becoming the new AJ Burnett for some New York Yankees fans looking for someone to boo and blame for the Bronx Bombers’ mediocre start. But Hughes put those concerns to rest with his gem of a start yesterday.  

With Andy Pettitte coming back to the Yankees today, it was extremely important for Hughes to remind the fans and quite frankly the organization about why they have so much invested in him as a starter. Hughes was on the verge of being shifted to the bullpen, sentenced to a baseball life as a middle reliever, as Joba Chamberlain has been despite his stunning debut in the American League in 2007. But his starting job now seems safe as Hughes delivered by far his best performance of the baseball season. Yes, it was against the Seattle Mariners, but he has been improving with each start and is headed in the right direction.

Hughes claimed he didn’t have his best stuff, but he spotted the baseball beautifully and took full advantage of an improved defense behind him (no longer having to worry about Eduardo Nunez making errors that blow up innings for him as the young shortstop was sent to the minor leagues to work on his defense). Hughes was so efficient that the Yankees finished off the Mariners in about 2 ½ hours. The main improvement has been in Hughes’ attitude, with his newfound aggressiveness leading to more success, which in turn breeds confidence.

Yankee fans don’t have Burnett to kick around anymore so I was worried they were starting to turn their negative attention on to Hughes, a kid who has shown flashes of promise, but has struggled to sustain it. But it looks like he is in the clear again when it comes to restless Yankee fans. All Hughes has to do is keep pitching well and he will hear his name being chanted instead of being booed. 

Robertson deserves shot to be king of the 9th

I had the pleasure of being at Yankee Stadium last night to enjoy CC Sabathia’s bulldog performance (thanks Titi China =). But I was completely shocked to see Rafael Soriano coming out of the bullpen to close CC’s gem in the 9^th inning.

New York Yankees manager Joe Girardi has been steadfast in his desire to protect his relievers, refusing to let them pitch three days in a row, which should have meant both David Robertson and Rafael Soriano were unavailable. But there was Soriano on the mound in the 9^th, as he was so many times for the Tampa Bay Rays before he left for the Yankees as a free agent.

Did Girardi simply not trust the game to a middle reliever such as Boone Logan? Perhaps. No doubt it was an important game, or as important as a baseball game can be in the second week of May, as the Yankees had to show the Rays that they can’t be pushed around in their own ballpark. But Girardi is a long-term thinker, choosing in the past to risk losing one game rather than making a move that could jeopardize the entire season for one of his players. I just hope that Girardi’s move to bring in Soriano instead of Robertson does not reflect a lack of confidence in Robertson’s ability to close.

Robertson has by far been the best reliever, other than Mariano Rivera, on the Yankees staff in recent years and he has earned a chance to succeed the great Mo. Sure, Robertson has had two very shaky outings in save situations since Mo went down, but anyone would be nervous trying to follow the greatest closer in baseball history.

D-Rob is never going be as smooth in the role as Mariano because no one else has Rivera’s poise. Robertson’s nickname is Houdini for good reason. He constantly finds himself in jams, sometimes of his own making, and then fascinates us with his ability to wiggle out of them. As Girardi jokingly said, Robertson doesn’t seem comfortable unless the bases are loaded.

But as Girardi also said, Mariano has been grooming Robertson to be his successor. And remember, Robertson probably thought he had another year to prepare for the closer’s job ahead of Mo’s supposedly impending retirement. All of a sudden, the kid was thrust into the spotlight. He just needs some time to shake the jitters and let his talent take over. 

Mo's blood clot more scary than knee injury

I thought watching Mariano Rivera go down with that ACL injury was the scariest moment of the week. I was wrong. Hearing he has a blood clot is much, much worse.

Mo and I don’t have much in common, but sadly I’ve had a similar experience. About 4 ½ years ago, I went to my doctor with what I thought was a pulled muscle in my right leg, one that was preventing me from walking without severe pain. After examining my right calf, my doctor quickly determined that I had a blood clot and sent me to the hospital, where an MRI confirmed the frightening news. I spent the next five days in the hospital, scared and exhausted, before I was sent home with prescriptions for blood thinners, which I was forced to take for 7 ½ months.

The New York Yankees legendary closer will have to be on blood thinners until his clot dissolves and I sympathize with him because having to take that medication changes your whole way of life. I had to take a blood test once a week and constantly fill and refill prescriptions with the right level of blood thinners. Me being a Weight Watchers devotee, I had to adjust my diet to avoid large amounts of healthy foods such asparagus and broccoli because their Vitamin K levels can interfere with the way the medications work. I could not drink alcohol for more than seven months, including at an annual St. Patrick’s Day get together with my old colleagues where I sipped diet soda all night and was probably the only one in the bar with a non-alcoholic beverage.

But the worst part was constantly being afraid of a head injury, which could be fatal for people on blood thinners. I never left my doctor’s office without him reminding me that I should go straight to the hospital if I ever hit my head. I had a scary moment when I bumped my head after the bus I was on swerved unexpectedly. I was OK, but it was truly terrifying wondering how much time I had.

Recovering from his knee injury was going to be bad enough, but the blood clot will complicate Mo’s recovery even more. But I got through that awful situation and Mo will too.