WHY WE RETALIATE THE YANKEE WAY

(Photo: Getty)
Russell showed Muscle...2 times. And how is he rewarded? By taking 1 between the numbers.

Look, I don't care what's been said or written. Buck Showalter's track record leads me to believe that the plunking of Russell Martin last night was called from the bench. No doubt. To me, that's Bush League. If the Orioles' didn't want to be the victims of 5 home runs last night, perhaps their pitchers shouldn't have been grooving fastballs over the middle of the plate.

Now, the talk in the booth between Michael Kay and Ken Singleton was truly comical suggesting may or maybe not a retaliation was in the making. Plunking and retaliation is not the Yankee way. Let's go back to the Torre years, remember that? How many times did Pedro or Schilling or now Josh Beckett nail Jeet and Alex? How many times did the Yankees retaliate? Well, more times than not, the HBP went unanswered. I remember leading the call screaming "WTF?" Then I go back to an interview with Torre where he said something about stooping down to their level isn't the Yankee way. How correct is he? The way I see it, the Yankee way isn't Bush League. We're better than that!

Now, Joe Girardi is smart and when the time is right they'll get theirs, but the best retaliation of all last night was watching Gardy put one in the seats. As Alec Baldwin has said, "We win. We do that a lot". That's the Yankee way!

-- Lem Allen, BYB Freelance Contributor
bybcurmudgeon@gmail.com

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