Bleeding Yankee Blue: THE GRINCH STILL DOES EXIST

Tuesday, December 20, 2016

THE GRINCH STILL DOES EXIST

After reading Casey’s inspirational piece Sunday, KEEP LIFE IN PERSPECTIVE..., I found a particular passage haunting me. In the part where he spoke of the importance of doing good deeds, he mentioned he mentioned a BYB wristband package sent to a New York school “just to keep kids smiling around this time of year.”

School kids. The Yankees. A donation. Someone smiling. Somehow the imagery swirled in my head and stuck there in an unsettling way. It kept gnawing at me most of the day until all at once it hit me. It reminded me of this guy.

Much earlier in the day, over my first sips of coffee, I skimmed a story about a Brooklyn high school principal who’d scammed the New York Yankees out of a donation of 100 game tickets under the pretext they’d be used for an outing by the school’s baseball team. But this slime ball named William Jusino used them for a social outing for himself and other school staff during work hours.

Furthermore, based on attendance records of the outing, 52 of the 100 tickets, worth 100 bucks each, weren’t even used by school personnel and couldn’t be accounted for by Jusino. So in addition to screwing the New York Yankees out of the tickets, screwing students out of a ballgame and screwing city taxpayers out of thousands of dollars for the transportation and salaries of all the staff who went to the game that day, it’s likely he also pocketed some serious coin unloading the extra tickets as well. You can read that HERE.

Now, according to the story, this jackass was “disciplined” with a letter of reprimand and the city Conflicts of Interest Board “may” decide to fine him some unspecified amount. Not fired. Not demoted. Not even suspended without pay or made to reimburse the city or the Yankees any portion of their losses.

Now, I’m not a lawyer, but maybe there’s one out there who can explain why. What's up with the tricky language in the city code that can keep this grinning scuzzbucket from being prosecuted by the city or the team for fraud or theft? Why the hell has this Grinch not been forced to apologize to the kids for depriving them of an experience of a lifetime? I’m fairly certain if I were a city employee like Jusino, and I concocted a con like this, let’s just say I would expect more than a reprimand and a fine.

Look, I understand the the Yankees might be leery of the PR implications of suing a school principal who led a mass workday breakout of his colleagues to enjoy their product, but something must be done. So my idea is this: The Yankees should permanently ban Jusino from Yankee Stadium.

Stadiums across the country including the one on River Avenue routinely apply the lifetime ban at their own discretion to simultaneously punish and discourage any and all behavior of which they disapprove, and that can apply to breaking any rule expressed or implied. And on the back of every ticket it states under Section 7 (c):

“The License and Tickets are revocable at the sole discretion of MLB and/or the Yankees, with or without cause, including without limitation, for improper conduct ... by any Licensee (including guests or other Ticket holders), or otherwise, as determined by MLB and/or the Yankees, each in their sole and absolute discretion.”

Improper conduct? At the least.

Jusino's own Department of Education says so. But more important than the message the Yankees should send to others who might consider similar cons in the future, they should ban this dude because he did something far worse than even that adult rat filth you sometimes see snatch foul balls away from kids. He stole their whole ballgame.