Yankees Hater

A new stadium. A massive contract for CC Sabathia. The Bronx seems to have its own economy, one in which money grows on trees and extreme spending is a neighborhood pickup sport.

But just wait until April.

With Yankees’ tickets becoming as expensive as football tickets, fans will not tolerate very much in the way of losing. Sure, many will want to see the new stadium. So, 2009 will be a novelty season with lofty attendance. But if the Yankees continue to fail miserably on the field like in 2008, then 2010 may stand as the team’s Great Depression.

In a tough economy, $8 hot dogs and $10 beers don’t fly if the team is lousy. The Yankees are obligated to charge big dollars for concessions, because the stadium is expensive and so are the players. The Yankees failure to make a connection between the economy and the Sabathia contract is a major mistake that may have long-term negative ripples.

The only way out? Win a championship. Of course, the Yankees haven’t done that in a while. Jeter is getting older. The new breed of Steinbrenner hardly looks like the old. Looks like storm clouds are moving in…

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Yankees were cast from the playoff race on Tuesday, which was good news for travel site, Expedia.

“Yeah, a few of them have logged in in order to book October trips,” said a website rep. “They want to go to far away places and be anonymous. Unfortunately, MLB shipped thousands of ill-fated “2004 World Series Champion New York Yankees” t-shirts to some of those far-away, poor nations in need of clothing. So there’s a danger of being pulled back into reality real quick.”

For its part, the Yankees organization urged its fans to keep things in perspective.

“We are aware that all Yankee fans have a lifetime right to see the team win a championship each year, so missing the playoffs is a bit of a head-scratcher” a team rep said. “But God works in mysterious ways. Who knows? There’s a still a week to go in the regular reason. Wouldn’t that give MLB ample time to grant us a regular-season exemption and send us straight into the playoffs, given our many past successes?”

Members of the Bronx, N.Y. community felt that Yankee Stadium deserved a better final chapter than what the 2008 players wrote.

“Back in the day, all you could hear on summer nights was wild cheering,” said Jose, a long-time borough resident. “This year, the sounds were gone and the stink moved in. You know that smell you encounter when you’re driving behind a municipal waste truck? It was like driving behind a hundred of those in a convertible with no AC on a 100-degree day. In stop and go traffic.”

Jeff Cantina, a local economist, had his own theory on why the 2008 Yankees failed miserably.

“It’s clear that ‘pay for play’ works…that theory has been proven several times in NY over the past 15 years,” said Cantina. “So if the ‘play’ comes up short, you have to assume that these players were not sufficiently compensated. This is basic logic at work here.”

The Big Apple’s paparazzi were milling around the stadium tonight, trying to get the inside track on where media grabbers Derek Jeter and Alex Rodriguez would be vacationing. A few of the shutter-men had some educated guesses.

“Jeter…he’s obsessed with winning, so he’ll probably book a hotel on Lansdowne Street in Boston and look to experience victory vicariously,” said one of the camera-toting ‘razzi. “A-Rod likes reflections. I hear he’s been looking for a large, still lake that he can peer directly into. I think the Travel Channel has been sending him wind patterns for the Boundary Waters region of Minnesota.”

A fan of the rival Red Sox, had just this to say:

“I love what Hank has done with the team.”

Hank, in turn, had this to say:

“That Red Sox fan said what? I’ll beat his ass good. Where is he? The Yankees will not become a mockery.”

After being informed that the Sox fan in question was a 10-year-old girl, Hank stepped up his rampage until being escorted out of Yankee Stadium by his own security team. Apparently, he kicked one of the chairs in the stadium, which did not square with security’s current directive to protect the innards of the park from vandalism and looting at all costs.

Similar enforcement measures were not taken against the Yankees players, who have effectively defaced the stadium all year with poor hitting, lousy pitching, and error-prone fielding.

(This article was written by Sean McKnight, a reporter who is entirely fictitious. The content of this article in entirely false, except the glorious part about the Yankees missing the playoffs. This is a parody. That’s like an April Fool’s joke, except in September. If you still don’t get it, take off your Yankees cap and go sleep on it).

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The Yankees confiscated suntan lotion at Yankee Stadium over the weekend, forcing fans to bake in 96-degree heat with no protection against dangerous UV rays. The reason for this decision: concern for the fans safety.

The Yanks either missed or ignored this statistic: there are 1 million new cases of skin cancer reported each year. And young children are particularly sensitive to harmful rays.

The Bombers’ offices initially claimed that confiscating suntan lotion was an anti-terrorism measure. Then, the New York Post reported the ludicrous, dangerous ban and the Yanks quickly altered their position. Now, 3-ounce containers of suntan lotion are permitted inside Yankee Stadium.

The speed at which the Yanks changed the policy is telling. You have to question the sincerity of the Yanks’ anti-terrorism rationale given the reversal. I know someone who runs security for a major U.S. corporation. If he firmly believed that allowing suntan lotion was unsafe in the terrorism sense, there is no amount of public opinion that would have gotten that protocol changed.

So if not terrorism, what was the motivation of the Yankees in putting the ban in place? The Yankees did sell 1-ounce tubes of lotion at the stadium for $5, according to the New York Post story. That same tube can be purchased from the supplier (Arizona Sun) online for a retail price of $2.30. Is a fan’s safety really worth $2.70 of profit margin?

Frankly, this weekend, Yankee Stadium was far from an All-Star park.

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BRONX, NY — Hey, we understand the Sox/Yanks rivalry and the catcalls, boos and insults that go along with it. But the All-Star game didn’t belong to the Yankee fans just because it was played in Yankee Stadium. Simply put, they should have left the boos at home.

But they didn’t.

Papelbon was booed lustily. So was Manny, Dustin Pedroia, David Ortiz, Youk and manager Terry Francona. It took such intense focus and energy to properly time the boos that the all-stars from the other teams were largely ignored. Pretty disgraceful.

The majority of the TV viewers must have felt cheated out of a feel-good event. The downer Yankee fans were cheering for pinstripes, and that was it. And announcer Joe Buck pandered to the crowd at every opportunity, like an attention-needing evangelist pounding on the bible in the pulpit to elicit a roar from his congregation. Buck has to be the most overrated sportscaster this century, as he seems to be on an unending quest to prove how smart he is. It’s a baseball game, Joe. Save words like “quintet” for your poetry club.

Then there was Wade Boggs. Wearing that Yankee hat. Wade was a hired gun who happened to win a World Series in the Bronx. No one remembers him as a Yankee. Fans in the Bronx spent most of his career hating him, insisting that Mattingly was better.

Somehow, the fans’ disgraceful behavior overshadowed the major “character” in this year’s all-star story. It wasn’t Josh Hamilton. It wasn’t even Mariano Rivera. It was Yankee Stadium itself, and on this night the historic stadium showed up wearing nothing but rags.

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Mike Mussina, who sees a villain and an excuse around every corner, now says that running bases is the newest form of evil in the big leagues.

Mussina’s teammate, Chien-Ming Wang, partially tore a tendon in his right foot on Sunday in a 13-0 win over interleague rival Houston. The injury, sustained as Wang was running the bases, will put him on the shelf until September.

Mussina had all the answers after the game, as usual:

“We don’t hit, we don’t run the bases,” Mussina said. “You get four or five at-bats a year at most, and if you happen to get on base once or twice, you never know. We run in straight lines most of the time. Turning corners, you just don’t do that.”

Yeah, that’s right…turning corners is the new crazy. Let’s put it in the XGames. Sample broadcast moment:

Play-by-play analyst: Well, here comes big Kenny Popson chugging into third. He can either play it safe and keep running straight into the dugout. Or, he can roll the dice and bend his way towards home plate. Whaddya think he’ll do, Bobby?

Play by play analyst: Good point, Bobby. Today, fifty percent of the fans are here to see a good game; the other fifty percent are here to see an accident. You can literally see those fans on the edges of their seats every time one of those pitchers enters the competition.

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Kevin Millar killed them as a member of the Red Sox, and he’s still killing them as a Baltimore Oriole.

On Tuesday, Millar kept a 2-out, first-inning rally alive against struggling NYY pitcher Mike Mussina by lining a single into centerfield. The Orioles put up 7 runs in the first inning, en route to a 12-2 win, prompting beleagured NYY manager Joe Girardi to say in a post-game interview that the “game was over in 15 minutes.” Millar later homered in the game, adding to his legacy as a pinstripe tormenter.

Millar, for those who don’t know, is a key historical figure in the evolution of this website and our YH caps. In the spring of 2004, we sent two dozen YH caps to Millar in the Red Sox clubhouse on a lark. He passed them out to his teammates. Curt Schilling–then the team’s most-recent and significant free agent addition–wore the cap to a Boston Bruins game (the photo made the Boston Herald) and a zany business was born.

We later created a Midnight Kowboy cap as a tribute to Millar, who is one of our favorite Sox players of all time.

Pictured here is the YH cap we made for Baltimore fansS?lectionnez les platformes supp?rieures du logiciel de http://www.modernepoker.com en ligne, avant de commencer ? jouer.

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Anyone who has been to Aruba knows it’s a beautiful, peaceful place. Crystal blue waters, soothing tradewinds, and starry nights make Aruba a special destination.

Here, islander Ruadhri Paskel and his girlfriend Zihnaira take a time out from Paradise to hate on the Yankees, he in the (now retired) Fenway’s Reverse YH cap and she in the “Hateful in Pink” YH cap. This picture was taken on the North shore, near the famed Natural Pool.

Ruadhri is a Cubs fan on an island littered with many Yankee fans. No matter how hot it gets in Aruba, he never wears a yellow thong with flames on the side.

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Love or hate it, George has built a legacy around the name Steinbrenner. Virtually everyone agrees that George is an original. He appeared in credit card commercials with Derek Jeter, and Miller Lite commercials with Billy Martin. His lofty opinion of his own baseball intellect, when voiced in public, was always amusing. He built the black-hatted villain, and seemed to revel in every aspect of being the perennial favorite to win it all. You could see the steam building up in his head when the Yankees were behind in any game. It was as twisted–and genuine–as anything you could witness.

Then there’s Hank. We’ve all met guys like this. The kind of guy that you will agree with, just so he stops talking. The kind of guy who gets the keys to daddy’s Porsche, boasts about his knowledge of high-performance machinery, and then blows the engine because he fails to change the oil.

The truth is that Hank is the best thing to ever happen to Yankee Haters. Just watch, and enjoy. The oil is already starting to run dry.

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As a result of simple math, one Yankee Hater just got off the hook.

The Yankees indicated that they might pursue civil charges against Bronx construction worker Gino Castignoli after the Yankee Hater submerged a David Ortiz jersey in the cement foundation of the new Yankee Stadium. According to an article in the New York Post, The Yankees alleged that the cost of retrieving the jersey was $50,000. Presumably this would have been the sum sought by the Yankees in any civil suit against Castignoli, though the amount seems absurdly high for 15 minutes of digging. At that cost, who are these guys manning the jackhammers, anyway? Can you imagine the series of discussions that must have led to their role in the construction of the new stadium. How about this:

“Hank, this Francisco Ariba is a stud. He’s a four-tool star: hammer, nailgun, crowbar and screwdriver. Either we sign him, or the Sox will get him to do their right field roof seats.”

“Three year deal. $1.2 million. Don’t take no for an answer.”

The Yankees later donated the Ortiz jersey to the Jimmy Fund, which of course was a nice thing to do. The jersey was quickly listed on eBay. The bids for the unearthed Ortiz jersey were approaching $70,000 as of Sunday night. Now, you may say that a tattered jersey isn’t worth $70,000. And I may agree. The fact remains that some buyer out there is willing to part with $70,000 in order to get the Ortiz jersey. Taken a step further, the Yankees voluntarily relinquished an asset worth $70,000 (or $20,000 more than the $50,000 they say they are out). Frankly, they could have kept it, and shown a profit of $20,000 on the whole ordeal.

So, the question is: What financial damages did the Yankees actually suffer here?

Somewhere in the Bronx, there was probably a family offering up a toast when the bids eclipsed $50,000. Yankee Haters win again.

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Turns out that the New York Daily News’ Mark Feinsand (NY Yankees beat writer) didn’t think much of the most-recent post on YankeesHater.com, and he dropped us a line to say so. In fairness to Mr. Feinsand, we are running the full text of his email here:

“A friend of mine in Boston (I went to BU and still have some pals up in that area) sent me a link to your site. If you’re going to rip me (and I don’t mind if you do .. at least you’re reading/listening), at least get your facts straight. The Daily News 5th Inning has been around for several years, and the beat writer at the paper has always been the person to join the broadcasters in the booth. It is not new this year, so to say I have been rewarded is just factually incorrect.

Also, the broadcast is not on the YES Network. It’s radio. And it’s not even the first year I’ve done it. I was on with them all of last year, too.

My presence there has nothing to do with my Cy Young vote (and by the way, I was not only far from the only writer not to put Beckett first, but I wasn’t even the only one to leave him off my ballot). I’m not even a Yankees fan, otherwise I would have found a way to get Wang on the ballot (he didn’t deserve it either).

As I told the Boston Globe last November, I would have listed Beckett first had I been able to submit my ballot on November 1, but it was due October 1. Oh well.

Enjoy the season. Good luck to your Sox. In case you missed it, I picked them to win the AL East this season.

-Mark Feinsand”

[Editor's note: I have to say, I am impressed with Mr. Feinsand's response. Well-written. Cordial. Factual. With all those nice traits, how the %&*$# did you leave Beckett off the Cy Young ballot last year? At any rate, thanks for the response. For better or worse, lots of us NJ/NY-based YH'ers are reading and listening, Mark. And if you "miss the mark" again, you can be damn sure that we'll call you out first! By the way, the best part of your email was when you indicated that you weren't a Yankee fan. Ah, some common ground. Think we'll have to send you a cap, on the house. After all, if you ain't with 'em, you're usually against 'em!]

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