DESPITE THE ATTACKS, ALEX RODRIGUEZ IS A YANKEE

This will sound incredibly strange considering the circumstances.  I am now an unconditional Alex Rodriguez fan.  Yes, he sucked in the playoffs, but he showed an amount of class, dignity, responsibility and accountability that were truly, well, what we expect from real Yankees. 

I have been incredibly critical of Alex throughout his career in New York.  I used to believe that he was all about his own numbers and didn’t understand the Yankee standard – winning championships.  But since 2009, we all saw the change in his attitude.  He became a team player.  He finally understood that he gets a bigger ovation for hitting a sac-fly to tie a game than he does for hitting a 3-run homer to put the Yanks up 12-1.  He finally understood that it is the Jeter, Mariano Rivera, Jorge Posada, Andy Pettitte attitude – do whatever it takes to win as a team even if it diminishes your own stats – that Yankee fans love.

Okay.  He stunk it up.  But he wasn’t alone.  The entire team with the exception of Jeet, Ichiro, Mark Teixeira and Eduardo Nunez amassed more whiffs than any of us have ever seen.  And yet the media flat out attacked Alex.  The hypocrisy here is breathtaking.  These were the same writers who thought we were all too critical of Alex when he was turning in MVP seasons that ended with early October exits.  These were the same pundits who criticized us fans when we booed Alex for batting under .200 with RISP after the 7^th inning year after year.  “Come on,” they’d say, “What do you want?  The guy hit 50 homers and drove in 125 runs!”  and we would laugh at them because we could care less about garbage home runs and RBIs. For the record, BYB was maybe the only website defending him in THE ALEX RODRIGUEZ PILE-ON IS RELENTLESS.

(In Photo: Luis Sojo)
Sure, at the end of the day, we want the old Yankee magic! We want the Luis Sojo single that drives in the winning run in the 9^th.  We want the Paul O’Neill 11-pitch at-bat that ends in a walk that starts a rally in the 8^th.  We want guys to do whatever it takes to win.

Alex was clearly not himself this year.  And he may really be in an irreversible, physical decline.  Of course, that’s what everyone said about Derek Jeter after last year… 

Before the Game 4 rain out on Wednesday, Alex stood on the field and took what seemed to be about a zillion iterations of the same 2 questions:  “Alex, why are you sucking?” and “Alex, has the benching poisoned your relationship with Girardi and the Yankees management?”  Alex could have walked away after one or two.  But he stood there, accepted responsibility and didn’t throw anyone under the bus.  He talked about coming together like a family.  And after yesterday’s loss, he was a class act again. 

Well, Alex, welcome to the family.  I’ve got your back.  I may yell at you from time to time until the day you finally hang up your spikes, but hey, that’s what real families do. We argue, we fight, we can even occasionally say hurtful things to each other, but when the going gets tough, we stick together, form a protective wall around our hurting brothers and sisters and support each other.  So go home for the winter, keep your head down, rest, relax and get back in shape.  We’ll be waiting to see you at 3^rd base in Spring Training.

--Chris Kram, BYB Contributor



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ALEX RODRIGUEZ, LUCY & CHARLIE BROWN'S FOOTBALL

Admit it, even though it was an out,  and a DP to boot, you all had the same thought after Alex hit that rocket up the middle in the first inning; Alex Rodriguez is finally coming out of it.  He actually hit the ball on the nose.  It took a tremendous dive by Robert Andino to rob him of an RBI single that would have changed the whole feel of the game.  So when he came up for his next at bat, I expected him to do something big.  He didn’t.  Alex continued to do nothing the rest of the game and whiffed to make the last out.

Alex has become Lucy with the football and we’re all Charlie Brown.  We hope and hope and hope.  We make ourselves believe that "THIS TIME" it will be different.  Then, like Charlie Brown, we run up to kick it and end up flat on our fannies as Alex walks back to the dugout.  Look, we all know he doesn’t want to fail.  We all know he wants to make us happy and he wants to do good for the team... He wants to “kick the football.”  In fact, he wants to make us leap out of our seats, high five each other and lose our sanity as we watch him launch a bomb into the October night as John Sterling yells, “It is high! It is far! It is gone! An A Bomb from ARod!!! And the Yankees take the lead!!!!”   He wants to be our hero as much as we want and need him to be our hero.  But as I tell my kids, we live in the real world.  We don’t have Hollywood writers to script our moments.  We have to accept reality, deal with it and at times, suck it up and overcome it.  That means making adjustments and concessions when they are in order.

Does anyone not believe that Joe Girardi, Brian Cashman and Hal Steinbrenner haven’t spent every waking moment trying to figure out what to do with their $30 million man?  We can imagine the conversations after Monday night:

“We gotta move him down in the order” 

“But his ego and pride can’t handle it – look at what happened when Joe T moved him to the 8 hole in ’07.”

“But he is proof of Stephen Hawking’s theory that black holes exist.  Problem is, that hole is batting third in our order.” 

“Well…let’s give him one more night…”

But how do you move Alex?  I mean, would you move Babe Ruth? Lou Gehrig? Joe DiMaggio? Mickey Mantle?  It’s not that easy when you’re talking about one of the most prodigious offensive talents of all time.  We’d all like to believe we could be that cut-throat.  But while we’re busy screaming at our televisions every time Alex strikes out, Girardi is sitting in the dugout having a massive anxiety attack over this, trust me.

So what to do?  Only Alex can fix this.  Alex could make it a hell of a lot easier on everyone if he simply came to Joe, Cash and Hal and stated the obvious: “I’m hurting the team and we don’t have any more time.  Move me to the 7 or 8 hole until I start to hit.  Robbie should be batting third because Jeet and Ichiro are on base all the freakin’ time.  And Robbie is our beast. My glove is still good and I really believe that I’ll come out of my hitting funk if I’m down in the order.”  Do that Alex and I think we'd all fall in love again...That’s what a hero would do.

After ’09, I swore I would support Alex from then on no matter what. Even BYB has a fascination with Alex, but even BYB is getting fed up.  We all knew that he would never live up to his salary as he aged.  But it’s not about the money.  The top brass made that decision and it actually worked and brought us a World Championship in 2009.  But every year is about the new championship and once again, it’s about the now.  No one team in either league is unbeatable.  But as long as Alex continues to fail, the Yankees will remain more beatable than any other team.  And that means another first round exit. I can't bare to watch that again.
It's unacceptable.

NEWSFLASH: Baseball is a team sport.  Time to put the team and the fans ahead of egos and feelings.  Time for Alex to man up and demand to be dropped in the line-up, ON HIS OWN.  Or time for Joe, Cash and Hal to make the move for him no matter the hurt feelings or public relations fallout.

The O’s are starting a stud righty tonight, Miguel Gonzalez.  Perfect excuse to insert Robinson Cano in the 3 hole and find a place for Alex somewhere down the line behind Curtis Granderson.

And message to Alex... there’s not a real Yankee fan out there that doesn’t want you to succeed.  Any bad feeling we had about you prior to 2009 is gone.  We’ve all grown up.  But we need you to state the obvious and help the team by taking the decision out of Joe’s hands.  Move yourself.  And do it today, for the Yankees, for you and for the fans....trust me, you do it and we all win... and you start hitting, no pressure!

--Chris Kram, BYB Contributor



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TWO WORDS: DEREK JETER

I have a 14-year old baseball player.  Well, he’s more than just a baseball player.  He’s a true talent.  He’s been seen by pro players and college coaches and gotten nothing but rave reviews.  He is a legitimate 5-tool player – a switch hitting shortstop with plus speed, a cannon for an arm. He got incredible range and athleticism and a gamers mentality, the kind of kid who always looks good doing anything on the field.  Baseball has been his life since he was about three years old when he first picked up a bat and without any coaching, swung it like he was born to play.

So on the way home from a weekend tournament, he sat back in his seat and after reading a text from one of his high school buddies and sighed, “I have no life.”  What he meant was this, his friends all went to the football game on Saturday and then to the movies. He didn’t. So what’s a dad to say?  Two words: “Derek Jeter.”

And that’s what I said.  He nodded, and let it sink in and accepted it.  It didn’t mean he is going to be the starting shortstop for the Yankees or that he is going to have 3,200 hits. It didn’t mean penthouse apartments in the Big Apple, supermodels, and more money than you can spend in 10 life times. It meant hard work all your young life.

For my son, the words Derek Jeter mean skipping football games for practice. It means missing the movies to go hit in the cage.  It means school, homework, working out, eating dinner, hitting off the tee in the basement for an hour and getting to practice 30 miles away only to get home in time to go to bed and do it all over again the next day.  It may not seem like a what a high schoolers life should be, but he knows practice makes perfect and it exemplifies the definition of hard work.

There’s a reason why Derek Jeter is my son’s and millions of other’s hero and role model.  He made the same sacrifices. We’ve seen how hard he works to win every day. Derek earned our love, admiration and respect because at 38, he works just as hard as he did at 22 and when pain kicks in, it’s 2 Advil and a glass of water…but the work doesn’t stop.

We’ve all heard Derek’s parents talk about how hard he worked as a kid. We all admire the focus his family has and how important they are in Jeet’s life (Read WHY DEREK JETER IS EPIC FOR 1 GOOD REASON.)   As a person, you can understand that when you set your sights on a career, in baseball, in life, you make sacrifices, sacrifices that seem unfair at times.  But that’s reality and as I tell all my kids, we live in the real world.  Say “Derek Jeter” and you know what it stands for.

I know, this is Bleeding Yankee Blue, where’s the tie-in? Right here; All of our Yankees need to emulate the Captain. They need to start making the sacrifices on and off the field.  They need to hustle, (Hey Robbie Cano, are you listening?) Winning takes work, if it was easy all the pro teams would be doing it. Look, this is simple; with less than two weeks to go to lock down the division, it’s time for the rest of the team to get the memo. It’s time for the Yankees to play like the Yankees every day. Read THE YANKEES NEED TO BE PERFECT NOW.

But back to my son. After driving about 10 miles in silence, the words Derek Jeter sunk in.  I casually mentioned that he’d had a great weekend.  In fact, he had the kind of weekend that most kids will never have.  No, his team didn’t win the tournament, but they showed that all of the hard work paid off.  My boy played his usual stellar baseball and I’m proud of him for that, but there’s one thing I didn’t mention until now;  After playing two games on Saturday (game 1 at 1pm, game 2 started at 9pm,) we had to get up at 5:30 am Sunday to be on our way back to the tournament for an 8:30 game.  That’s right, 5 hours of sleep for a 14-year-old and right back at it.  To top it off, my son was starting.

It was cold when we got to the field.  The other team was well rested. Long story short. My boy  pitched a perfect game.  Not a single batter reached base.  In fact, he was so locked in, he only threw 6 balls.  Perfecto.  Amazing.  Awesome. His teammates were beyond psyched.  Even the opposing teams and fans were giving him high fives. Not only good sportsmanship… respect.  And I got one of those hugs that left both of us fighting back the tears – the kind of hug that teenage boys who are taller than their dads don’t give out in public and you know what? I got it.

So yeah, my son misses the movies, maybe a football game with friends, but in that moment of frustration and having “no life”, there was one thing that happened that Sunday morning…boy wonder did what he worked so hard for but didn’t truly understand it until that perfect game.  He truly understood the definition of that 2 important words… Derek Jeter and I couldn’t be happier.

--Chris Kram, BYB Contributor



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YANKEES NEED A LINEUP SHAKE UP!

Let’s face it, our Yankees offensive woes are real. Sure, they can win one once in a while, but they seem to be losing more than they're winning.  While their inability to get ‘em on, get ‘em over and get ‘em in (a hallmark of the Joe Torre dynasty teams) has been a problem all season, the Yanks can no longer hide behind the home run excuse (or the “say what you want about our RISP woes, we’re winning” excuse). 

They are not winning.  They are losing.  They are 3 for their last 13.  A commanding lead in the AL East is now down to 6 ½ over the Orioles and Rays and only 9 over the Red Sox.  The Yanks have managed breathe life into the Division race.  Hell, they’ve given hop to the Red Sox, a team that should be 14 back and drinking beer in the clubhouse right now.

During that stretch, their starting pitching (with the exception of Ivan Nova’s melt down in his last start), has been stellar.  Lately the bullpen has been less than stellar. So we need to score more runs without counting on late inning bombs.  Either that or we are going to have another frustrating end to another frustrating season with the Yanks making the playoffs and getting booted in the first round when they have to face the likes of Justin Verlander twice or the Angels’ even better rotation.

I know, I’m not the only life-long fan who knows what is needed, you know too, it's a change in the line-up. And I don't just mean a change... I mean a shake up. It’s time to take advantage of Ichiro Suzuki’s speed and ability to get on base.  It’s time to get opposing pitchers worried about that guy dancing around on 1^st base, threatening to steal.  It’s time we saw Joe Girardi have the ability to let Derek Jeter move Ichiro from 1^st to 3^rd on a hit and run, something he does better than any hitter in baseball.  It’s time for Girardi to admit what we all know about Curtis Granderson.  Grandy has become a home run, strike-out hitter.  That is not the type of hitter you want in the 2 hole. That's my opinion, don't jump don't my throat, that's the reality.

So, I am putting in writing what I’m betting almost all of you have been thinking -- a new New York Yankees lineup. 

1. Ichiro Suzuki

2. Derek Jeter 

3. Mark Teixeira

4. Robinson Cano

5. Curtis Granderson

6. Nick Swisher

7. Raul Ibanez/ Andruw Jones

8. Eric Chavez / Casey McGehee

9. Russell Martin / Chris Stewart 

Then, when Alex Rodriguez returns, I’d bat him 5^th and move everyone down accordingly.  I love Alex, but until he starts pounding doubles and home runs again instead of singles, it makes no sense to have him batting 4^th. Don't you agree?

The other main reason for moving Granderson is another obvious fact: Ichiro will see better pitches with Jeter batting behind him.  Jeet will definitely see better pitches with Tex behind him and Tex is protected by Robbie, who is such a good hitter that he doesn’t really need protection.  

With Joba Chamberlain back throwing 97-98 mph and breathing fire like the Joba we saw in his rookie year, the late innings will become more intimidating to the rest of the league.  When Andy Pettitte comes back in September, the rotation will stabilize and be ready for October.  And if the Yanks start to score runs consistently over the course of 9 innings instead of relying on a comeback home run in the 8th, they’ll find themselves back where they belong, on top with a real shot at a World Championship #28.  

How do you see it? Comment.

--Chris Kram, BYB Contributor



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WHY MARIANO MEANS THERE'S PROOF OF GOD: A FAN'S TAKE

For some of us, it’s our nature to seek proof of God’s existence.  Whether we find it in the majesty of a golden, aqua, purple dessert sunset or the life-affirming miracle of a wailing child entering the world from the womb, we all see glimpses of the Almighty in the world around us.

For me, for the past 16 years, I needed to look no further than Mariano Rivera.  He was proof that only God can accomplish certain things. Seeing him on the ground in Kansas City was to have that faith-shaking moment of anguish that we all dread.

That moment calls for a poet.  Bruce Springsteen should pen a song or perhaps former center fielder and guitarist Bernie Williams could write an adagio for guitar (if such a thing is possible).  Mere words cannot express the sense of anguish I have felt since Mariano went down. 

Yankee fans are devastated over Mo.  In fact, all real baseball fans came to the realization that this potentially career-ending injury (Read HERE in case you live under a rock) has an impact that can be felt throughout baseball and throughout baseball’s history.

It is my opinion that not since Babe Ruth has one player meant so much to the game of ball.  Don’t dismiss that statement so quickly.  Think about it.  Anyone who knows the game and how baseball has evolved over the last 20 years would be forced to admit that Mariano Rivera is the single most important player of any position on any team.  Like Babe Ruth, Mariano Rivera changed baseball.  He made having a “closer” a necessity.  And no other closer has been as good for as long as Mo. Pretend you are a major league player or manager in any era.  Now ask yourself this question:  “If I had to choose between any player in history and Mariano Rivera, who would I choose?”  Babe Ruth? Joe DiMaggio? Willie Mays? Sandy Koufax? Albert Pujols? Pete Rose? Derek Jeter? Cal Ripken Jr? Should I keep going?  In any other season before this one, if you are playing the Yankees and you weren’t leading after the 8th inning, it’s game over…You lose.  That puts massive pressure on your hitters. Think about the knot in the stomach of the opposing team that comes with the mere sight of Mariano standing up in the pen. Now think of the calm his presence brings if you’re a Yankee fan…We win. It’s that simple.

But let’s break it down further. Let’s consider the era in which Mariano played -- the steroid era.  Juiced up hitters finding extra distance and more miles, yet, despite that, that skinny kid threw a 98 mph rising fastball as a set-up man in 1996 and developed into the greatest and most feared pitcher ever over time. And think about his cutter, what he calls his “gift from God”. It still boggles my mind. He throws 1 pitch. With Mo, hitter’s know what’s coming and they always have, yet, 9 times out of  10, it’s lights out for the opposition. The ball comes out of his hand at the same release point. Batters knees buckle, swing and a miss, and the opposing teams mouths are left wide open with shock… once again.

Yeah, it’s my opinion that Mariano is proof that there’s a God and despite this bump in the road, Mariano has never been a quitter, but it crossed my mind that Mariano Rivera may never pitch again…and I can’t get passed that.  I wanted… no… I needed the “Mariano Farewell Tour” this season.  I wanted to watch him tip his cap at each stadium to thunderous ovations.  Real baseball fans know greatness and they appreciate Mariano. Mariano deserved it more than any player of the last 50 years. 

I expect him to be back because he knows we expect it. He never let’s down the fans, and won’t now. I believe that and hopefully he does come back, but we'll just have see, or pray to God that it works in our favor when i comes to Mariano...just one more time.

So… it’s word association time.  I say Mariano Rivera....What do you say?

--Chris Kram, BYB Contributor



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