Yankee4Life

Updated to 11-19 ...Naturally I am kind of disappointed about the Yankees not making it to the World Series, let alone winning it but with the way they played in the final two games of the A.L.C.S. it was hardly surprising to anyone who watched those games that they got what they deserved. When you score a combined one run on ten hits in games six and seven you are going to end up watching the other team move on and that's what Houston did. Yeah they outplayed the Dodgers in seven games in what was a total team effort but that's as far as I'll go with that because there's already enough people on the Astro bandwagon and I'll leave it to them to sing their praises. ...Yankee this,that and the other things to end the 2017 season, Dept: I admit they played a lot better than what was expected and I was reminded of that all year by Jim825, always the optimist. And it's true since I had them pegged for fourth place because I didn't have any faith in them and even when they were playing well I still couldn't bring myself to believe. My fault probably but I've learned not to be taken in by the over-hype of the New York press. Here's a few things that stood out above the rest that still has me doubting this team going into next year. 1. Gary Sanchez. He was so bad this year that he almost made me wish Jorge Posada was still playing and I hated that guy. He had thirteen errors and sixteen passed balls in 2017. He would have had more but fifteen of the games he played in were as a designated hitter. Despite this Sanchez was an All-Star. He was, until you took the bat out of his hand. 2. Aaron Judge. If you needed a perfect example of what New York hype is then look no further than Judge. If he was on any other team (excluding Boston because they'd have already been calling Cooperstown to let him in early) he would have been just another young power hitter with a huge hole in his swing that was easy to take advantage of. Easy? Throw it low and outside and before long he'd be walking back to the dugout. Watching the Yankee games this past summer I would always get up for a bathroom break or to get a drink or stretch my legs every time Judge came up because I had a good idea of what was going to happen and sure enough I'd usually hear Michael Kay telling everyone that he'd just swung and missed for strike three. 3. Luis Severino. I don't know what to think of this guy to be honest. He has come a long way but when the Yankees needed him the most (the wild card game against the Twins and game six of the A.L.C.S. against Houston) he didn't deliver. In fact he was downright lousy. Even Michael Pineda would have done better. But in order for these guys to win next year and beyond his talented right arm is needed. 4. Joe Girardi. I thought he did a good job but the Yankees wanted to make a change so that's that. That's not saying that I wasn't surprised by the news because I was. I really thought he was coming back next year but what can you do? For many years Girardi had an old, veteran team. Teixiera, Rodriguez and Jeter just to name three. All over paid and all immobile. And even with that Girardi made the post season. He'd of done it one more time in 2014 if the Yankees were not so concerned about kissing Jeter's ass in his final year. Whomever they hire I wish him luck. ...I got to admit it was a good World Series although the games were too long again. They always are but somehow they seem to get even longer. Take Houston's wild 13 -12 win in game 5. That took five hours and seventeen minutes to play. That's almost enough time to watch the first two Godfather movies. A lot of loyal east coast baseball fans dragged themselves to work the next day because of this and kids who are fans of the game, well, forget it. They were in bed long before the 9th and 10th inning drama took place. All the time-saving measures the Commissioner wants to put into place is just for show. You want to save time? Tell FOX to slice their commercials in half. You do that and you'll see faster games. I saw the Yankees and Dodgers play in the World Series for the first time in 1977. The Yankees won the first game in the Bronx in twelve innings over the Dodgers 4 - 3. That twelve inning game took three hours and twenty-four minutes to play. Less commercials is key here folks. ...I am not taking anything away from Willie Mays' Hall-of-Fame career but I do not understand at all why the World Series MVP award has been renamed the Willie Mays World Series most valuable player award? I don't need someone to rattle off his stats from the back of his baseball card. I know he had a twenty-two year major league career and he went to the World Series four times while only being on one winner (1954 New York Giants.) That's why I question why this award was named after him. How about naming the award after Yogi Berra? He played on ten championship Yankee teams in his career? Ten is greater than one. Or at least it was when I was in school. ...Because of one easily offended cereal consumer, Kellogg's is being forced to re-design their artwork on their Corn Pops cereal boxes because of a complaint of racism. The cover drawing shows cartoon characters shaped as corn kernels inside a shopping mall. They are shown shopping, playing in an arcade and one of them, presumably a teen-age corn kernel, is skateboarding down an escalator. However there was one corn kernel that caught the eye of one twitter user, a man who has taken it upon himself as a defender of corn kernels everywhere. He noticed that there was one brown corn kernel and he was working as a janitor operating a floor waxer. The guy's complaint was that this was teaching kids racism as they look at their cereal box while they are eating breakfast. Give me a break. Kids could care less what is on a box of cereal unless it says "Free inside." Kellogg's showed how much backbone they had when they quickly responded that they will be redesigning the Corn Pops cereal boxes as soon as possible. And just like that another racist issue was met head on and dealt with in this country. Let it be known that the rights of corn kernels everywhere are recognized and defended in the United States of America. Now pass the milk. ...Now that this actually happened I am waiting for someone to complain about Kellogg's Honey Smacks. Have you seen them? They're all brown. Some of them can even be illegals. ...As soon as I heard about this story I knew I had to write about it. There's a twenty-five-year-old American woman who is facing a twenty year prison sentence in Zimbabwe for insulting their country's ninety-three-year-old President on Twitter when she called him a “selfish and sick man”. Now if this woman had written this about anyone in this country she wouldn't be in the trouble that she is now. But she didn't. She did this in Zimbabwe and over there they don't play like that. Because of that tweet she is being charged with attempting to overthrow the government. Nonsense, of course. All she is is another stupid American who thinks she can do whatever she wants in any country she wants to do it in. Her Freedom of Speech rights is only a right in the American Constitution and the only way I think she can get off the hook for this is if Zimbabwe becomes a state. When you travel to another country you have to remember you are the visitor and you should not expect the people and their customs to adjust to you. You adjust to them. After some time behind bars she'll find this out for herself. ...I prefer to watch television by myself as opposed to with another person or in a group because I have found that when I do that there is always someone who has to start talking non-stop as soon as the show or movie begins. They won't be saying a thing before it starts but as soon as it does you'll have a front row seat to who they saw the other day, what the latest gossip is, how their health has drastically changed since last week or that their car is making a strange new sound. While this is going on I am missing half of what is being said. ...Yehya, the guy who does those crazy movie reviews on the Jimmy Kimmel show really cracks me up. I don't know if I've seen him pronounce one movie right yet. ...With the exception of one incident a few weeks ago where he was escorted out of a Las Vegas hotel for causing a drunken disturbance, O.J. Simpson has been somewhat quiet since being released from jail early last month. Why the guy still wants to hang around Las Vegas is beyond me since that's the same place where he got in trouble and landed in jail for nine years. But he did say that when he got out he was going to do the same things he always did. Now that's a scary thought. If he gets lonely he can probably get someone to give him Casey Anthony's number. I hear she's single. ...Your Thanksgiving Day football schedule is as follows. The first game is the Minnesota Vikings at the Detroit Lions at 12:30 p.m. The states of Minnesota and Michigan will be watching this. Outside of those two states only Jim825 will be tuning in. At 4:30 p.m. the San Diego Chargers visit Dallas to take on the Cowboys. This is perfect. A lot of people may be just finishing eating at this time and watching the Cowboys on TV will help put them right to sleep. Works for me every year. And if you really want to watch a third game that day you got to wait until 8:30 p.m. when the New York Giants face the Redskins in Washington. ...Finally I want to wish everyone a very Happy Thanksgiving on Thursday. For those of you outside of the U.S. it will be just a regular day but for us it means gathering around with family that we haven't seen since last year at this time, eating turkey, watching football and devouring pumpkin pie, not necessarily in that order. Thanksgiving is a very old custom here in the U.S. dating back to the 1600's. At that time people from England came here and landed in Massachusetts and the first thing they saw after they got off their ship was a bunch of Indians walking around. They told them to pack up their teepees and get the hell out of there but just as the Indians were ready to ride off one of the settlers discovered that he was really hungry. So they told the Indians before you take off go and catch about a dozen or so turkeys and cook them for us and then when you are done with that you can scram. Well, they did and the Indian woman were such good cooks that the settlers invited them to have dinner with them since there was no way they were going to finish off all those turkeys by themselves. After dinner was done and the Indians cleaned up the place they started off again but instead of moving away one hundred miles from the settlers as originally planned, the people from England said they only had to move one mile. That's because Christmas was about a month away and they wanted another good meal. The place where they moved the Indians to was right near a swamp and that became the very first ghetto in the New World. The Indians and settlers got along famously for many years until one Englishman, who had a little too much wine, insulted one of the Indian wives cooking skills. Immediately after that was when the first scalping of a white man came about. But that's another story.

Updated to 9-24 ...As another baseball season is coming to a close I don't know whether to be sad that the season will end this week or be relieved that the almost daily torture that the Yankees have put me through will finally and mercifully be coming to an end. I've tried to look at it more positively. Saying that they weren't even supposed to be as good as they were this year, that they were not even supposed to contend for a playoff berth, etc. Fine. But what I can't get past is how terrible they played for over two months starting when they made that west coast trip in June. The way I saw it losing those four straight games in Oakland to a last place team really started it off. Good teams pick themselves up from something like this. These guys didn't. They played the month of July like they were trying to hold on to a life preserver with one hand. Yankee teams in the past I've had faith in. I never had any with this team the entire year. I took out my frustrations on them in the shoutbox, I kicked a football so hard after one of Gary Sanchez' passed balls that I pulled a muscle in my leg, I threw a water bottle at the wall after one of Masahiro Tanaka's starts, not realizing that the bottle was still open and half full and I came within a hair of busting up an expensive pair of headphones after another ball went past Sanchez after he gave a half-assed attempt to catch. This guy gets me so mad that he almost makes me wish Jorge Posada was still around and that's saying something. Next year maybe I will feel different about them. Not now. And now that they are a wild card entry do you see them going far? Cleveland will tear them apart. ...But there were exceptions this year. I loved watching Didi Gregorius play. Now this guy is a shortstop. The range that this guy has! I haven't missed Derek Jeter at all since he retired because Gregorius is doing everything. You can't tell me that ex-Yankee pitchers who played with Jeter are not privately saying to themselves that they'd rather have had Gregorius there. They'll never admit it because it would be a knock on Captain twenty million. But Gregorius has proven he's better on a daily basis. If it wasn't for this guy I'd have had a harder time watching this team. ...Wouldn't you know it with all the destruction that Hurricane Irma caused in Florida that Derek Jeter's estate down there was not damaged at all? Believe me if it had the New York Daily News and the New York Post would have had it plastered on the front page for three days. They'd of made the suffering that the people who were hit by the hurricane the worst seem second rate because Jeter had mailbox knocked over by the high winds. ...All things Red Sox Dept: Instead of creating a bunch of different topics on the dishonest and evil ways of the Boston Red Sox I decided to keep it in one nice and neat little tirade. Easy for everyone concerned and a lot more calming for me because the less I talk about Boston the better it is for me. The city's representative sports franchises continue to prove at every given opportunity that the only way to play a game right is to cheat and, when you are finally caught red-handed, quickly blame someone else just to get the heat off themselves. And that is precisely how the Red Sox got away with using which was first believed an Apple Watch to steal signs but in fact it was a Fitbit product. Like that really mattered. They still stole the signs from the other teams and that's how they were able to have that big comeback against Cleveland in early August and against the Yankees a few weeks later, just to name two games that stood out. Not for one minute were the Red Sox worried about drawing a stiff penalty from Commissioner Manfred because they know they're the Red Sox and things like that don't happen to them. Just to be on the safe side and to make them look like the victim to their fans, who apparently believe anything they are told, they blamed the Yankees for doing something just as bad as they did but if you ask any team around baseball they weren't having any of it. Dustin Pedroia, the team's sneaky second baseman who has been corking his bat since he broke in the major leagues in 2006, was a big part of stealing the signs from the opposition and all he did was laugh and gave any reporter who asked him a what-are-you-going-to-do-about-it smile when pressed for answers. Well, no one did anything. What a surprise. If I were John Farrell I would be very worried about young Rafael Devers. In a recent interview Devers said that Robinson Cano has always been his favorite player because of the way he plays. So when Devers starts jogging down to first base like he's wearing ankle weights and plays like he only got an hour of sleep the night before he'll know why. Finally, I must give credit to where it is due. Fenway Park is a wonderful place to watch a ball game and if you are lucky on some days you can sit out in the sun and work on your tan while watching the game. On the flip side you are practically guaranteed to sit next to a guy who just loves to let black players know what he thinks of them (ask Adam Jones of Baltimore about that) or someone who is keeping the Samuel Adams beer people in business all by himself. Usually if you get one you get the other. Yeah, go Sawx. Just go away. ...The beginning of the NFL season two weeks ago brought a lot of mixed feelings for me. I was glad to see the Raiders back even though they went winless during the pre-season but as they like to tell you it doesn't matter if they win or lose, the teams just want to see their new draft picks get some playing time, give the veterans some time on the field and avoid injuries. This is one of the few things that the NFL tells their fans that I have no trouble believing. But as I was listening to the game on the radio I was continuously reminded that the team was leaving Oakland again and this time I am afraid there won't be a return ticket. Love them or hate them football fans must admit -sometimes grudgingly- that the Raider fans are among the most loyal you will ever find. Look at what they did last week. They sold out the stadium in their home opener against the Jets even though they knew there isn't many home openers left for them. Mark Davis may have been given a $750 million dollar stadium in Las Vegas plus a carload full of incentives including unlimited credit for every casino in town but once they get to Nevada it is never going to be the same for the Raiders again and when that happens I just don't know if I am going to be able to watch football again. ...It wasn't just Oakland that I felt bad for. The people in San Diego don't have their Chargers to root for anymore because they refused to give money to the billionaire owner of the team to build his stadium for him. They voted to pay for schools and other necessities that they decided were more important than keeping a rich owner happy. So Dean Spanos took his team and his football and moved ninety miles up the coast to Los Angeles, a city by the way that never wanted the Chargers but there they are anyway. And they can't even sell out the smallest stadium in the league. As rich as this guy is that's how dumb he is too. ...Highway robbery with a puck, Dept: It's no secret that the city of Detroit has fallen on hard times. Putting it mildly, they're broke. But that did not stop the Detroit Red Wings owners from going there and somehow coming away with $250 million dollars to build a new hockey rink. What's even worse is that $13 million of that is coming directly out of Detroit school taxes. They are already hurting as it is and now it's going to be next to impossible to get a decent education there. Their schools are going to be so hard up now that three kids are going to have to share one desk. I don't understand why they did this and why they are so desperate to keep the Red Wings owners happy here. The only possible reason I can come up with is that the Red Wings are one of the original six National Hockey League teams and there is no way the Motor City wants them going anywhere. But it came at a high cost to keep these people happy. Detroit can not already properly fund their public schools so this cutback of thirteen million dollars is really going to make parents even happier. The real estate prices are among the lowest in the United States because people are moving out of Detroit at a steady pace and to top it off there is a huge police shortage where it is not uncommon to place a 911 call and wait up to an hour for a response. So a mugger can take your wallet, go to lunch and come back and mug you again just so he can be sure he didn't miss anything the first time and still get out of there in plenty of time before the cops arrive. But sure, give the hockey team 250 million. Great move. ...Have you ever noticed how many articles that are written on the internet about a waitress posting a receipt that she got from a customer and the sob story behind it? Last week I finished reading three of them but this one here stands out from the rest on its stupidity alone. Our heroine the waitress was serving two girls their meals and everything was going well until it was time to pay the bill. It seems that both girls did not like the makeup that the waitress had on and instead of leaving a few dollars for a tip they gave her another kind of tip when they wrote on the receipt that "contour is supposed to blend." (Don't ask me what that is supposed to mean. I don't even know what contour is but I know that the waitress would have taken money over that not-so-friendly tip.) Now here is the eye-rolling part. After the woman read what they wrote she said that it "didn't phase her at all." Sure it didn't, not at all. She just needed to take it straight to social media and the internet as fast as she could to let everyone know about how much it "didn't phase her." Yeah it sucks that they did that to you but the only reason why you ran to Facebook and Twitter was to see how many people were going to feel sorry for you. Some people are like that. That's how they get through the day. All you did was give them more attention for their actions. ...It's too bad a lot of you did not get to see ESPN during the 1980s when they spent their time broadcasting and covering sports instead of what they do best these days which is making headlines that make you question the sanity of the people that run the place. Jemele Hill, a female African-American reporter called Donald Trump a "white supremacist " and also “an unfit, bigoted, incompetent moron” and finally wrapping it up by saying that he was “unqualified and unfit to be president.” Well at least she covered everything. ESPN tried to take her off the 6 p.m. SportsCenter show she hosts because Trump wanted her fired but were unable to because of the protests of the other black hosts at the network so they forced her into issuing a public apology. For what? For posting her thoughts on social media. Isn’t that what Twitter is for? Trump does it multiple times a day and he's said much worse about other people than what Hill said about him. Just ask Mika Brzezinski. Want more? Remember what happened in Charlottesville, Virginia last month when all hell broke loose during a white nationalist rally because some people were protesting the plans to remove a statue of Confederate General Robert E. Lee? Shortly after that happened the University of Virginia had their football home opener and ESPN was going to be there broadcasting the game but as coincidence would have it the guy who was scheduled to announce the game was named Robert Lee. ESPN was overwrought with worry here. They didn't want any incidents out on the field by the fans. If they wanted to start fights in the parking lot that was another thing. They didn't have to show that on network television. Now give ESPN credit here. They weren't fooled a bit. After many meetings with a bunch of stuffed-shirt executives in attendance they decided to remove Robert Lee from calling the game in Virginia. That's because one sharp, young junior executive spotted something in Robert Lee's name. All Lee did he pointed out was drop the E from his name so he could go incognito. The big shots were admittedly puzzled as how he turned into an Asian guy but when it they were reminded that it had to be a similar procedure that turned Bruce Jenner into a woman, they shook their heads and accepted that it was possible. Never mind the fact that the real Robert E. Lee has been dead all these 147 years these guys were happy with their decision that only made sense to them. That's why Lee, an Asian man who probably doesn't give a damn about the famous man in history that shares his name was transferred up to Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania to do the Youngstown/Pitt game. That made the suits very happy because now Lee was surrounded by a bunch of Yankees and he wouldn't dare make a move then. ...Now that I got my mind on Charlottesville it reminds me of something that I kept on hearing from some of the people on the TV news and from various articles on the internet that to me, if they had really thought about it, would not have asked the question at all. "How could this happen in 2017 ?" some people were wondering, as if demonstrations of this kind should have a different end result just because it's 2017. Or not even take place at all. The sad fact is that no matter how much progress is made (and in fact there is, just compare the present day to how things were fifty or sixty years ago) there are still and always will be a large group of people that will resist any and all change that they determine to be a threat to the "white way of life." Let me explain what I mean. The guy responsible for that car-ramming incident that killed that woman was all of twenty-years-old. Just a kid. Someone or more likely a group of people had to teach him how to think like that in that short period of time. They had to twist his mind to make him believe their way was the right way and the only way, just as someone before them taught them to think like that. These principles are either picked up or passed from generation to generation and what we saw and learned from that August night is the latest example of it. Fifty years from now if something like this happens again the same thing will be said. How can this happen now? The more things change the more they stay the same. Only the names change. ...Finally, well, I really don't know what to make out of this or really where to start. I expect I should just dive right in. Last week firefighters from a town in Germany called Worms were called to the hospital to assist in cutting off a 2.6 kg weight (which is a little over 5 1/2 pounds) off of a man's you-know-what. I know a lot of you are having a hard time believing this so to help you save time from googling this you can check it out for yourself by clicking on this link right here. Ok, let's go on. The firefighters spent quite a bit of time removing the weight from the guy using a a grinder and hydraulic cutter to get it off. When you think about it what else could they have used? One little slip up and....well you know. What I want to know is what was this guy thinking of when he decided to do this? It had to be torture trying to stand up let alone trying to walk around. And if he had to take a piss? Forget it. Maybe this was the closest weight around. Can you picture instead of this five pound weight grabbing a twenty pound one instead? A do-it-yourself hernia. Those firefighters would still be working on him now.

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