PIELESS IN THE BRONX

 After Russell Martin’s walk off win in the Bronx to sweep the Mets, I thought about things recently that annoyed me. One thing really bothered me... you tell me which one it was:

• AJ Burnett is currently 6-2 in Pittsburgh. There's no pressure there and he's succeeding and may even be a candidate for the All-Star game, yet he couldn't hack it in the Bronx.

•  Jesus Montero, the catcher that wasn’t a catcher with the New York Yankees was suddenly a catcher with the Seattle Mariner and caught a no-hitter on Friday night. Seriously?

•  Not a single person on the New York Yankees thought that maybe we should whip up a walk-off pie for Russell Martin’s face after a truly great come from behind win against the Mets. 

Let's go with the pie one.  Look, I love the win first, if the Yankees can do it, then I’m glad they’re winning, no doubt about it.  But let’s be honest about this, Martin’s homer, while exciting, was missing something…Pie.

The Pie tradition, while corny, was catapulted onto the New York scene by AJ Burnett while he was in pinstripes and in that year of 2009, there were plenty of great come from behind wins, which, in turn, needs pie!  Fans loved it!  You could read any Twitter feed or Facebook page right around an intense tie game in the  9^th or 12^th inning and you’d literally see “I want pie!” or “Time to get the pie out" written somewhere!  We wanted the pie, we loved the pie and now, suddenly, with AJ Burnett going to Pittsburgh and pieing everyone over there, well, there was no pie in the Bronx Sunday and dammit, I miss it.

I remember I wrote a piece shortly after AJ left and I suggested that someone needed to take over the pie duties.  I suggested Ivan Nova in WHY I CROWN IVAN NOVA OUR NEW PIE KING, the guy who considered AJ Burnett his mentor.  I figured, it was simple...a pitcher who threw every 5^th day would be purfeect, kind of like Burnett. Someone who could spring into action when we needed the pie.  Many wanted Nick Swisher and I balked at that idea.  How can a guy who’s playing 9 innings be forced to be ready to pounce to the clubhouse and then run back out when we needed to pie!  Now, not that I'm hammering Swisher, because I'm not, but he told Bryan Hoch of MLB.com that he would take over the pie duties, read HERE.  

He actually said to Hoch, "We're going to have to keep something going, man, because people in New York want pie! You know, let's just keep it going." Swish, you blew it, Martin was hungry for pie, the fans were too...and there was no pie.  

You really have to wonder if the players just forgot about it, or don’t like it and don’t want it or if Yankee brass just asked them to act more like IBM and less like Chuck E. Cheese, who knows.  Whatever the case, us fans want an answer!  Sure, we understand this is baseball, not the WWE and while there’s no show attached to baseball like there is wrestling, we adapted to the “Pie” show and loved watching our champions blow off a little steam after a hard fought win.  Do I need a press release from the Yankees front office explaining why it's not happening? No.  But I do need my pie and when we pay big money to watch our team fight for the World Championship all year, a little extra would be nice, that’s all.

AJ Burnett brought us some fun times. Sure, he had some big wins and big losses, but the pie was the ultimate and I’m glad we had it in the Bronx…the big question is, where’d it go? Guys? Anyone? Come on now?

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