It's been a strange day 24 hours. Very strange. I feel like all day today yesterday I had been talking about one thing....Ian Clarkin's infamous quote. I have also spent all day trying to put the situation into context. Haven't you heard the old saying "kids say the darndest things?" It's true. I know I did.
So the Yankees used one of their first round draft picks to draft him. People should be talking about how great this kid could be for the Yankees if he continues down the road he is on. He has a plus fast ball and he already has two other pitches he uses regularly. Not all 18 year old have this kind of skill set yet. Instead, the major attention for Yankee fans and haters alike is based around video that was broadcast from twelve years ago. I get it, it is buzz and anything about the Yankees is fit to print, but that wasn't a recent quote.
All day today I have been talking about what Ian Clarkin said. At work, we usually have ESPN on all day. You gotta love a job that you can go to that allows you to watch sports as you work, right? At any rate, at work today one of the guys in my office asked how I felt about his "I cannot stand the Yankees, I was actually in tears I was so happy" comment. That was the topic of conversation for at least an hour. After work I stopped at the grocery store. I ran into one of my friends who happens to be a Arizona Diamondbacks fan (not fault to her, she is still a great friend despite her allegiance to that other team) and she made a quick chuckle about it. She saw my reaction and laughed. She knew I must have been hearing about it all day, but she couldn't resist. We have that kind of relationship though. Just as I thought it was all over my neighbor had to get his jab in. My neighbor is an Orioles fan. He laughed and asked me how it felt to have the enemy on my team and if he could be trusted. I told him how old he was when he said that comment and he stopped laughing. I guess he didn't know? It's just been one of those days.
Clarkin himself says that the quote was taken out of context and even apologized for it, read more about it HERE. Well, how many six year olds do you know that can speak so eloquently and know what they are really saying? I know I didn't. I started babbling about anything and everything at an early age. When I was about eight years old I remember sitting at the family dinner table. It was Sunday so we were sitting down to the traditional pasta dinner. My great grandma said a curse word in Italian. I was a curious kid so of course I repeated it and asked what it meant. There was a huge gasp at the dinner table. Everyone was staring back at me afterwards with their jaw dropped, shocked that I said it. I never got the answer to my question. I just remember getting a very long lecture about how I should never ever say that word, but of course since my great grandma said it I repeated it a few times. Kids say the darndest things!
I find it funny that some baseball fans of other teams are getting a kick out of this. As I was scouring the Internet I found some angry Yankee fans too. They didn't like that Clarkin could say such a thing but then have the audacity to put on the Yankee jersey. The fact of the matter is, he was 6 years old at the time of this quote. It's not newsworthy. It's just media hype. The real story here is the Yankees drafted a kid with great promise. At 18 he is a great pitching prospect and not everyone at his age has the ability that he does. If the Yankees can develop him....he could be on the mound for us years from now pitching a no-hitter against the Arizona Diamondbacks (which I would love) and then people won't even remember any of this.
--Jeana Bellezza, BYB Senior Writer and Editor
Twitter: @NyPrincessJ
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