Why did I have to see this hanging in Wal-Mart this afternoon?





It should've been Two-Thirds Off.

Did you ever get your Bronx Bombers/Godfather Logo shirt??

Of course... you?

No, for some reason I blanked out on it and never ordered it. Is it nice? Worth ordering?

What ever happened with Joe Torre?

The meetings in Tampa begin today to discuss this topic and others...

The local news is hinting that Steinbrenner may be giving up the day-to-day operations of the team to his sons. Also, Don Mattingly supposedly told Steinbrenner that he wasn't ready to manage the Yanks.

The truth is, the sons don't know s*it about the team. They've been too busy playing with the horses and hotels that the family also owns (obvious members of the Lucky Sperm Club). With Swindal's firing, the boys are scrambling to play catch-up.

They have a lot of decisions to make aside from The Torre Decision. Namely: ARod, Posada, Rivera, Pettite, Doug M., Villone, Vizcaino, and Abreu. What to do? What to do??

So, you're saying they take after their old man, huh?

Steinbrenner's greatest talent has been his willingness to open his checkbook. Unfortunately, there are times when it's also been his greatest downfall.

Whatever you want to say about him (and I could say plenty), it's a terrible shame to see such a once-powerful force reduced to playing with crayons in the corner.

I'm not that forgiving of this schmuck. I only hope Billy Martin left some extra sharp crayons for him to play with.

I'm with SC. The guy fraternized with gamblers, which is breaking the GOLDEN rule in baseball. Pete Rose and Shoeless Joe will never see the Hall of Fame, yet George was allowed back into the game with open arms because they knew what kind of revenue his spending would create for the game. Please don't take this as anti-Yankee, because it's not, it's anti-hypocrisy. If the guy was a creep when he was young, I'm not going to feel bad for him when in drools on himself in his old age. Besides, the Yankees have bigger fish to fry than this every day soap opera that's been going on. Get it over with, one way or the other.

If I recall correctly, Baseball was never happy with the conviction of Steinbrenner for illegal campaign contributions to Nixon.

But the problem that led to his "lifetime ban" from baseball occurred when he was having his problems with Winfield, and hired someone to dig up dirt on the reight fielder to embarrass and discredit him. Maybe it was the tip of the iceberg. Someone with a better memory can maybe provide more details. Subsequently, Winfield entered the Hall of Fame as a Padre.

That's the "gambler" I was referring to Klydon--Howie Spira, a lifetime bum, gambler and lowlife. Steinbrenner paid him to get the dirt on Winfield.

Report: Mattingly tells Yankees he's not ready to manage

As Joe Torre's future as Yankees manager hangs in the balance, his bench coach reportedly has told the Bronx Bombers that he's not ready to replace Torre in the hot seat.

A friend of Don Mattingly told the Star-Ledger of Newark, N.J., that the Yankees bench coach has informed the Yankees that he's not ready to manage and is uncomfortable with replacing Torre as manager.

Torre's status for next season will be decided during discussions starting on Tuesday morning in Tampa, Fla. George Steinbrenner is expected to attend the meetings along with sons Hal and Hank; son-in-law Felix Lopez; team president Randy Levine; chief operating officer Lonn Trost; and general manager Brian Cashman.

George Steinbrenner said last weekend that he didn't think the Yankees would keep Torre if the team failed to advance from its first-round series with Cleveland. New York was later eliminated in four games by the Indians, the Yankees' third straight opening-round exit, but Steinbrenner has been silent on Torre's fate since. Torre has led New York to the playoffs in all 12 of his seasons and has won four World Series titles.

The New York Post first reported Sunday that Hank and Hal Steinbrenner have taken over the daily running of the team.

Hank Steinbrenner told the Post that he will share final say on team decisions with his brother Hal but Hank will apparently focus more on the baseball side of the business. Hal Steinbrenner will focus more on the construction of the new Yankee Stadium, which is scheduled to open in 2009.

"There's always been a succession -- and that's myself and my brother," Hank Steinbrenner told the paper.

Levine told The Associated Press on Sunday night, however, that George Steinbrenner, 77, will still have the final say on Torre.

"He's still the boss. He's acting like the chairman of a major company," he said. "As in many other instances in major league baseball, his kids have stepped up and are devoting a lot of time on the day-to-day running of the team."

If Torre isn't brought back, Mattingly has been considered the leading contender to take over. Yankees broadcaster Joe Girardi, who won NL Manager of the Year with the Florida Marlins in 2006, and Cardinals manager Tony La Russa, who hasn't decided if he will return to St. Louis, are other often-mentioned possibilities.

Source: ESPN

Why do they have to make decisions about these men?

None of them are under contract for next year, Miggie.

You're right, PB. Spira...there's a name from the past I forgot.

Remember Billy Martin's line about Reggie and Steinbrenner? "One's a born liar; the other's a convicted one." That got him canned.

A baseball soap opera

Channel 7 is now reporting that no decision was reached today regarding Torre's future. They're also saying that prior reports of Don Mattingly not being ready to take over (as manager) were false - Mattingly is eager to be manager.

The plot thickens.

I heard that on ESPN radio about Mattingly wanting the job after all. I don't believe anything anymore. When I see it, I'll believe it.

RUMOR ALERT!

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New Yankees pitching coach

Posted: Tuesday October 16, 2007 08:50AM ET

Should Joe Torre return, Don Mattingly would remain the bench coach, while Tony Pena and Larry Bowa likely would return as the first- and third-base coaches, respectively. Ron Guidry appears to be on the outs, with Dave Eiland - who worked with the team's young pitchers at Triple-A last year - the leading candidate to take over.

Source: Fan Nation

Hmm, maybe it wasn't such a bad move that we didn't overspend on Dice-K, since "Superman" hasn't shined this October

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Dice-K fails to deliver again in October

CLEVELAND -- When the Boston Red Sox outbid the rest of baseball and paid $103 million for Daisuke Matsuzaka, it was with a night like Monday in mind, salivating over the prospect of having a third ace in addition to Josh Beckett and Curt Schilling in a playoff series that would shift the balance toward the Red Sox.

It was a formula with which the Red Sox were confidently familiar. In 2004, they won the World Series in large part because each night in October, Derek Lowe, Schilling or Pedro Martinez stood on the hill.

But the idea of Matsuzaka, who came to America as Japan's top pressure pitcher, as a big-time MLB playoff performer is still on hold. Instead of triumph, or even valor, Matsuzaka did not speak following Monday night's 4-2 loss to Cleveland in Game 3 of the American League Championship Series, preferring instead to stare hopelessly into his locker, even as the Red Sox clubhouse man hung clean jerseys for Game 4 in his teammates' lockers.

He gave a brief statement through a translator but sat beyond consolation. Thus, the Cleveland Indians are halfway to the World Series and the Red Sox are halfway to winter.

His inaugural October has not been memorable. Matsuzaka has pitched twice in the postseason and has not been able to escape the fifth inning in either start. But the difference between his first start -- in Game 2 of the division series against Los Angeles -- and Monday was that by the end of Boston's 6-3 win over the Angels, Matsuzaka was an afterthought in the wake of Manny Ramirez's walk-off, three-run home run off Francisco Rodriguez.

Here, with the ALCS tied at a game apiece with three games at Jacobs Field, the Red Sox needed him to be present, to give them a performance, to be special, and Matsuzaka did not deliver. He lasted just 4 2/3 innings, gave up six hits and left the game trailing 4-0. His postseason ERA is 7.71.

He did not pitch poorly and he did not melt down, like the Mets' Tom Glavine on the last day of the regular season or the Yankees' Chien-Ming Wang in Game 4 of the division series against Cleveland. He also didn't pitch with the kind of presence that gives a lineup pause. He exhausted himself and his manager's patience by throwing 101 pitches in less than five innings. The Indians were confident against Matsuzaka, and should these two teams be even after six games, Matsuzaka is scheduled to start Game 7 Sunday night at Fenway Park.

The issue with Matsuzaka, especially against teams with formidable lineups, is his inability to make things easy on himself. He struck out six on the night, and at times during the season has shown himself to be a strikeout pitcher, but he works too hard for his outs. Of the 22 batters he faced, Matsuzaka finished only four hitters on four or fewer pitches, and one -- Kenny Lofton -- hit a two-out, two-run homer in the second inning on the first pitch. Matsuzaka needed six or more pitches on 12 of 22 hitters, a sure way not to be around for long.

"It's a lot of pitches. It's a lot of deep counts. Saying that, he made one glaring mistake to Lofton for the two-run home run," Red Sox manager Terry Francona said. "The more pitches you throw, especially to dangerous hitters, the better chance you give them. I mean, that's the same concept that we talk about all the time, and they kind of reversed it on us."

Meanwhile, as Matsuzaka labored through the Indians' lineup, his counterpart, Jake Westbrook, alternately lived on the margin and in his lounge chair. When he faced trouble, the Indians shined. In the first, after a one-out walk to Kevin Youkilis, David Ortiz ripped a rocket to the right side. Asdrubal Cabrera snared the liner on one hop and flipped to third baseman Casey Blake -- covering second as Cleveland played an exaggerated shift -- who then fired a strike to first baseman Ryan Garko for an inning-ending double play.

In the second, the Red Sox loaded the bases with no outs but did not score, as Westbrook retired Jason Varitek on a fly ball and Coco Crisp hit into a 6-3 double play. Lofton increased the pressure with his homer in the bottom of the inning.

Westbrook then zipped through the third inning on just six pitches.

There were other reasons, naturally, for the Indians' 4-2 win, most notably Westbrook's ability to force the vaunted Red Sox offense into beating 14 ground-ball outs into the dirt, including three huge double plays. But the endgame is nevertheless the same: There was money on the table, a two-man fight for it on Monday night in Cleveland, and it was Westbrook and not Dice-K who reached out and corralled the pile.

Source: ESPN

The more I think about it, the more I believe Torre should just do an end run around the creepy Steinbrenner family. He doesn't deserve to twist in the wind like this. He should call a press conference and announce he's leaving the Yankees of his own free will, forever leaving Steinbrenner the bad guy in the memories of baseball fans, not just in New York, but everywhere. It would be a public relations coup.

Anyone attend the Save Joe Torre rally in Times Square today??

Cashman and the Steinbrenners have publically stated that they will NOT chase after AROD if he pursues talks with other teams.

Rumor mill has Jorge Posada coming over to the Mets if Joe Torre is not brought back with the Yankees.

Hmmm.

My brother, who is a Mets fan, says that he would LOVE to see Posada on the Mets. I do know that he has close ties to Willie Randolph, so it wouldn't surprise me. Maybe they want Mo, too, since Wagner has not exactly lived up to his self-proclaimed "Sandman" status.

Wasn't exactly the championship parade they were hoping for, but it's nice to see Joe getting his respect.

Which he greatly deserves working for Steinbrenner.

Steinbrenner is showing such disrespect to Torre with the overdramatization of this decision. Be a man and make a decision one way or the other.

I know it would never happen because Torre is such a classy individual, but I would love to see Torre to tell Steinbrenner to go f--k himself. There are two primary individuals to blame for the decline of the Yankee organization: Cashman for the poor talent evaluation and Steinbrenner for paying top dollar at nearly every opportunity. Torre can only manage the players brought in. Does Torre always make the right decisions? Hell no, but what manager does?