Category: General Yankees

Not news, really, just some a good cause and some nostalgia.

The Yankees have signed Brett Gardner to a four year extension, $52M, club option for a fifth year. This is most excellent.

Derek Jeter will retire after the 2014 season.

Let the accolades, expositions, and never-ending farewells begin. I’ll start with:

A kid from Kalamazoo
knew what he wanted to do

and did it.

Alex Rodriguez drops his lawsuit against the baseball world. What could possibly have changed his mind?

Nobody likes a quitter, they used to say.

Tanaka is coming to The Stadium, according to Ken Rosenthal. What a nice way to start the day.

Details of the contract? Who cares. 7yrs, $155M if you have to a complete pedant.

The Yankees have Sabathia under contract until 2016, but Roc Nation grows.

One year, 2.5M to play for Detroit. Good luck, big man. It seemed like you never really got things put together in the Bronx.

Seven years, $153M. My MFRS is now a Bomber? I think of Gardner-Ellsbury-Ichiro on defense and I get a very warm and tingly feeling in my thing to be broken later.

The Yankees have signed the Captain to one more year, boosting the option price of 9.5 million. Jeter played 17 games at the age of 39 last season. Is this strictly for PR and continuity — the baseball equivalent of undercoating — or does the Captain have something left in the tank?

A hamstring injury has ended Sabathia’s season, and the injury has no bearing on the Yankees’ playoff chances whatsoever this year. However, I sincerely hope that the big man’s rather ample and thoroughly over-employed hamstring recovers fully in the down-time for next year, because right now this is another check mark in the “reasons why 2014 will suck more” column as the Yankees’ supposed ace has shown that his legendary durability is now moving into the realm of nostalgia, as has so much Yankee legend in the last couple of days.

Andy Pettitte announced he’s done after this season, and this time we won’t be seeing him again. His next start is Sunday at the Stadium against the Giants, which also happens to be Mo’s ceremonial day as well. At least there’s a good reason to watch.

The past few months have been bizarre for Yankee fans.  CC stinks, Kuroda is having a Cy Young-worthy season but can’t rack up wins because the Yankees have no offense, and the only real constant – the A-Rod Circus – keeps throwing up fresh fodder for the back-pages and radio talk-shows with none of it having anything to do with what is actually happening on the field.

And then there is Mariano Rivera, turning in another stellar year to close out a career full of them.  The guy’s performance is simply unbelievable, which is a very over-used word but is appropriate in his case.  If he is perfect over his next three innings, then his career WHIP will dip below 1.000, putting him in the company of just two other pitchers in baseball history, both of whom have been dead since long before anyone reading this was born.

I have been sparse around these parts of late for many reasons, with the diminished state of the Yankees actually being pretty far down the list.  And for those same reasons I have been unable to get to a single Yankee game for the first time in years and won’t be able to do so before re-locating my family overseas next week.

But by the grace of the same God that Joe DiMaggio thanked for making him a Yankee, work will bring me back to NY for a few days that happen to coincide with the Yankees’ last home-series of the season, and so yesterday I splurged on tickets to the September 26 game against the Rays for me and my brother.  The game will almost certainly mean nothing for the Yankees’ post-season prospects, as they will probably have long-since  been mathematically eliminated from October ball.  But I am praying that Mariano will still be healthy and that Girardi will bring him in for that last home game regardless of the score so Yankee fans can watch him trot in from the bullpen just once more and give him the goodbye he deserves.

As tough as this season has been to watch, that memory alone will make the 2013 season a very rich one in my life as a Yankee fan.

Some railed against the Yankees trading Soriano for ARod. Some railed for giving ARod big money on his last contract. Now, in the twilight of their careers, can ARod and Soriano both play at the same time for the same team? Yes, I was one of “some.”

It’s a dream of mine, but it’s late and it’s made possible by the fact it won’t ever happen that Soriano, Jeter, and ARod would work the infield together. Instead, now the Yankees may get a strong-hitting outfielder..

Yep, He’s back.

This bodes well.

Lillibridge has been called up.

Age can be such a B.