SOMEONE LEFT THE CAGE OPEN...

And I love it.  Hank's on the loose!

   (Christian Red/New York Daily News)

New York Daily News has some great quotes about the Yankees and Hank Steinbrenner and his thoughts on their fight to win a championship this year and what will be needed!  Love when Hank speaks to the media!

Here's a portion of that:

"Hank warned not to count the club out of contending for a World Series title in 2017.

Photo: SI.com

'I wasn't dis-confident for this year. I've told everybody, 'Look, we're going to do alright this year. We're gonna be even better next year. Maybe by a mile.' As it turns out, we're doing really good this year with a mix of the young players and the veterans who we have now,' said Steinbrenner, the older brother of Hal Steinbrenner, who is the organization’s managing general partner and the more visible Steinbrenner face with regard to ownership. “'I still think it will be even better next year. But that's not to say, ‘You never know.’ I mean even though Houston right now looks like the '27 Yankees or maybe the '65 Dodgers, you never know this year. I'm not saying it couldn't happen this year. It sure as s--- could.'...

'We're greedy. We want to win this year. It'd be great to win the championship this year. Obviously we're (32-22). They're playing great as a team'...

'We'll never (trade away prospects). I didn't want to do that in the '80s. But there was somebody that disagreed with me,' Steinbrenner joked, referring to his father. 'Yeah we lost (Doug) Drabek and (Jose) Rijo and guys like that that I loved. That happens. I've always been against that. We traded a ton of prospects away in the '70s too.'”

Look, it's clear that Hal and family don't let Hank out much, because there is one thing that Hank does that not a lot of the others do... and that's be open and honest.  That's what gets the guy in trouble.  But I love it once in a while... it's refreshing.

I had to share this. Hope you enjoy it.

BUONA PASQUA!

Okay, it's a few weeks early for that. But when Yankee fans hear "Pasqua", of course they think of Dan Pasqua. There was a special feel for the Yankees of the 1980’s – where the hits and home runs were more valuable than the fastball and strikeout. I feel a personal attachment to some of the names of that time, and Pasqua was no exception. He came out of the Yankee farm system as a young power-hitting phenom, and he made strong early impressions.

In his first major league game, manager Billy Martin put him in the lineup in the sixth spot. Clearly, he had confidence that this 23-year-old could hit for power. He rounded out the heart of the lineup that read Don Mattingly, Dave Winfield, Don Baylor, and Dan Pasqua. He did not betray his manager’s confidence. In the 5th inning of the game, he drove a ball deep into the right field seats for his first major league hit and home run. He ended up playing 60 games that season, with 166 plate appearances and 9 home runs.

He ended up playing two more seasons with the Yankees. In his time here, he played in 275 games and hit 42 homers in 860 plate appearances – about one home run per 20 plate appearances. He had a batting average of .251 and OPS of .805, which is impressive even by today’s standards. His play in the corner outfields and first base yielded only four errors in his three seasons on the Yankees’ roster.

It was a sad day on November 12, 1987, when I picked up the paper and read that the Yankees traded him, along with pitcher Steve Rosenberg and catcher Mark Salas, to the White Sox for Scott Nielsen and Richard Dotson. By that point, the Yankees realized that poor pitching did not yield much success over 162 games, so they traded some power for some pitching. It is too bad that they did not get much pitching. Dotson, who was past his prime, had a combined 5.13 ERA over 2 seasons with the Yankees. Nielsen’s career 5.49 ERA tells you what you need to know about him.

Pasqua went on to play seven seasons with the Chicago White Sox, before calling it quits early in the 1994 season. He went on to start his own construction company, and later reconnected with the White Sox for various projects (read HERE).  To those of us who remember him in pinstripes, he is a beloved member of the Hall of Bad 80’s Yankees Trades, where he keeps company with Doug Drabek, Jose Rijo, Al Leiter, and many others.

He was a great player, with good power and a good glove, and a guy we all missed as a Yankee.

Also, you can read a very OLD BYB post about Pasqua here... check out: WHY I ROOT FOR THE ITALIANS from June of 2011.

--Ike Dimitriadis, BYB Writer
Twitter: @KingAgamemnon
My blog is: Shots from Murderer's Row

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WHY I'VE ALWAYS LINKED CHRISTMAS TO THE YANKEES

You know who my favorite ballplayer of all time is… Rickey Henderson was the guy I wanted to be in little league and I would mimic his movement as he inched away from the bag and then darted to second base. Yes, it’s true, I was a huge Yankee fan and when he was on the Oakland Athletics, it didn’t matter much to me, baseball fans do that. They latch on to guys they love to watch and appreciate. For me, that was Rickey Henderson, the Man of Steel and there was no other.

Let me also mention that when it came to little, scrawny me, I didn’t even come close to muscle or appearance, but I nailed the impersonation of Rickey, or, at least I thought so. One season I stole something like 40 bases. I remember that not because little league tallied them for us, they really didn't. I remember that because I wrote my stats on an index card after every game. Pathetic I know, but when your a kid who has a hero, you tend to want to be them. No doubt, I wanted to be Rickey. I just remember that once I perfected how to bunt, I'd steal my way around the bases and do it the Rickey way. But enough about me being 10, there is actually a point to all of this.

 

On December 5, 1984, the New York Yankees did the unthinkable… They sent a bunch of guys, Jose Rijo, Eric Plunk, Jay Howell, Stan Javier and Tim Birtsas to Oakland for Rickey and Bert Bradley. I remember at the time, it was going to be the best Christmas and the best 1985 season EVER. Soon, I was able to replace my Henderson Oakland A’s 8x10 photo with a Yankee one. I snagged up all his cards and it clearly was one of the happiest times for me as a New York Yankees fan.

Christmas and Rickey Henderson for me, will always be connected and for some odd reason, at least once, even now in my adult years, I think about Rickey when it’s December. It’s not that I’m obsessed with the dude anymore. Instead, it’s just a fond memory, it just brings be back to 1984, just for a second.

To this day I try to teach my kids the importance of speed in baseball. My 9-year-old uses it to his advantage; he’s like an gazelle, although he takes a page from the Brett Gardner handbook, a slight lean toward second with his right hand pointing toward the dugout.

Yeah, we all have heroes, but mine happens to be one I had as a giddy Yankee fan back in 1984 and I’ll forever remember where I was when I found out Rickey was coming to New York. The next several years, I loved watching him in pinstripes… it was one of the greatest moments of my life, that’s for sure and it's all coming back to me again this Christmas...27 years later. Man, how time flies.

Merry Christmas everyone.