BYB HAD THE BETTER PIECE ABOUT BRENDAN RYAN

Let me ask you something... do you want some newspaper reporter telling you that a player is funny... or do you want to hear directly from that player's wife and the player himself? You do? You mean you want to hear about the "behind closed door" antics and stuff they do in their personal life that make their home jovial?  I thought so. Me too.  I pick the personal story any day of the week.

Daniel Barbarisi of the Wall Street Journal piggy backed off of our BYB interview with Brendan and Sharyn Ryan this week to talk about the looseness and fun of Brendan Ryan in the Yankee clubhouse and with the YES production crew.

While the article is good... I couldn't help but wonder why he chose to do it just a few days after Bleeding Yankee Blue ran our interview.  (By the way, read EXCLUSIVE INTERVIEW: BRENDAN & SHARYN RYAN if you haven't already, but based on the readership... you have.)

In it, Barbarisi quotes Ryan:

‘There’s so much serious stuff in baseball. You can’t say anything controversial, you have to be in character. And I don’t want to be that. I want to be open and honest. Most guys just stay in their box, because that’s the safe way. ’

And there's more from the piece:

"Ryan feels a responsibility to connect with fans and to try to keep the clubhouse light, so just like in Seattle and St. Louis, he can constantly be heard joking with teammates, reporters, clubhouse staff—anyone who will talk to him. Everything he does seems to be engineered to make people smile or laugh, from his walk-up song (1980s hit “Relax,” by Frankie Goes to Hollywood) to his expanding mustache, which has aspirations of becoming a Rollie Fingers-esque handlebar."

We went to the real comedy critic though... Sharyn Ryan:

"BYB: Sharyn, you mentioned to me that Brendan is very funny.  Expand on that for the BYB audience?

Sharyn Ryan:  I don't even know how or where to begin with this question. That was actually one of the things that attracted me to Brendan, besides his handsome good looks!  Rarely is there a dull moment in our lives, there's always laughter going on in our household. I know at the moment Brendan is known for his mustache but he really should be known as "The Man of a Thousand Voices". We all know he loves to do impersonations but the voices and characters he comes up with on his own are pretty special.  "

Plus, where else did you learn about Ryan's evolution of his impersonation of Harry Caray? Huh?  BYB:


3 days later  though, a full Brendan Ryan manifesto comes out about Ryan's comedy from the Wall Street Journal.  Coincidence? Should I be flattered? I am, trust me.

Hey no matter... the more positive press that comes out about Brendan Ryan, the better. The Ryans are terrific people, a terrific family, and they need people to learn about what makes them tick. I like them.

Oh yeah, and notice what I did here; I gave alittle shoutout to Barbarisi.  Instead of taking full credit, like there was no other article out there that was similar, I linked to his, because it's a courtesy... because it's the right thing to do in journalism.   Sure, he can tell you that "he didn't know our Ryan interview was out there", but that interview with the Ryans is the most read interview in BYB's history in just 1 week... bigger than Paul O'Neill (HERE), bigger than Meredith Marakovits and Nancy Newman and Bob Lorenz and even Scott Brosius (HERE).  In short, I don't buy it.

Anyway... I found the whole thing peculiar and wanted to bring it to my BYB family.  I like ours better, that's the bottom line.

Happy Monday.



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