Clipped

Oh, come on now. Here's Harvey Araton in the Times this morning.

Goodbye Columbus, may your minor league prospects forever prosper, just like Pettitte, a Yankee original, one of the lucky ones who made the perilous flight aboard the cynically dubbed shuttle, landing safely and securely in the South Bronx in 1995. ... Beginning next season, young Yankees willbe summoned from, or dispatched to, the franchise's new Class AAA outpost in the area around Scranton and Wilkes-Barre in Pennsylvania. The drive will be made in two hours. Maybe someone will send a limo. "It won't sound the same," Merrill said wistfully.

So that's what Columbus asked for for Christmas -- a handjob in the paper of record. Not a bad little stocking stuffer (bad pun alert!), all things considered. I mean, it's on my list too. But why is Araton going for this sort of dreck?

I'd show you the rest, but TimesSelect prevents me from doing so. Suffice to say that Harvey catches up with former Yankee and Clippers manager Stump Merrill and reminisces about how great Columbus was. To which any sensible person says, "What in the hell are you talking about?"

Now, there are any number of reasons not to write this column. For one, Columbus sucks. It's a sprawling Midwestern shithole with a massive inferiority complex and the biggest group of asshole football fans you've ever seen. When the Y2K Style Guide (grammar, not duds) goes live early in the next year, we will not be encouraging cats to call it "THE Ohio State University." Put that in the bank.

Secondly, it's especially crappy. When the obligatory Norfolk sendoff column is written, at least you can write that the weather was decent, the park was new and perfectly serviceable, and the whole thing was right next to the beach. If that's not something you can get excited about, it's nothing to sneeze at.

With Columbus, feel free to snot all over that. The ballpark there was in shambles, easily the worst in the IL. Clippers fans had long ago been drained away by the Crew and whatever it else central Ohioans do when OSU isn't in session. Lose elections, presumably.

But aside from being a crappy, "It's the holidays" blowoff type of column, Araton conveniently forgets what a prospect wasteland Columbus has been since the raison-d'etre for this Web site came into existence.

There's a reason Araton called up Merrill, who hadn't managed the Clippers since 1998, and that's because the Clippers basically haven't been used since at least then. Perhaps further back. This is a clear and entirely sensible consequence of trying to buy your way to a championship.


Who gets mentioned in the column? Jeter, Pettitte, Bernie, Posada and an Aussie washout named Mark Hutton. Exactly. The Yankees haven't come up with a real farm kid since Jeter showed up in '95, and Pettitte was the last pitcher.

Which is sort of the point. For any number of reasons, Columbus has not been a productive baseball town since the first Clinton term. Uber-Yankee writer Steve Goldman hammers on the Yankees' inability or unwillingness to trust young players every chance he gets.

Sometimes, it's Joe Torre's complete and debilitating lack of faith in anyone who hasn't won a World Series for him. Sometimes, it's management's happy trigger finger, unwilling to wield the necessary patience with the younger types.

On the current Yankees roster, we've got the Cancer-Curing Kid, Robby Cano; the tricksy Chien-Ming Wang, possibly my most hated player in the majors, and Got Melky Cabrera, soon to be shipped to Pittsburgh for reliever Mike Gonzalez. And this, my friends, might as well be a revolution.

Of all our least favorite Yankee squads from 2001 to 2005, how many had farm products on them? None. Shane Spencer was still around on the bench, before they shipped him out of town, as was Ted Lilly. Nick Johnson got some dap before they swapped him for the highly successful Javy Vazquez.

The Yankees have been shipping prospects out of their system for as long as a lot of us have been following baseball. Mike Lowell. Jake Westbrook. Craig Wilson, the first time. Sal Fasano, for the love of all that's holy.

If you were a young guy, you got once chance before they moved your ass. Admiral Halsey had a fantastic first start against the Red Sox, muffed his second one, and was in Arizona before he knew what happened. So was Dioner Navarro, at that time the Yanks' top prospect aside from the crap-out Drew Henson/Eric Duncan duo. Now, the Bombers' catching situation is nearly dire, and Navarro's set to break out with Tampa.

This is a vital characteristic of the hateable Yankees, and Araton pretends not to have noticed. Well, guess what? We noticed.

Even more importantly, this column was a wasted opportunity. There's plenty to say about the tenuous state of AAA baseball, arguably at the lowest point in its history.

You've got the structural/prospect issues tearing at its importance. Most top youngsters these days jump right from AA to the majors, bypassing their former proving grounds in the IL/PCL. If you're a baseball fan in Sac-town or Indianapolis or Buffalo, this is not really to your benefit. Reasonable food prices won't save you there.

Then, there's the trickle-down effect of the level jumping -- the players left behind are older, and mostly less interesting. Baseball Prospectus' Clay Davenport has the average age of the AAA player at 27.4, which is pretty damn up there. Again, Jeff Manto (the real-life Crash Davis) sideshows aside, fans will pay to see the stars of the future, not Enrique Wilson.

There are points to be made about potential financial support from organizations swimming (hello, Ted Lilly contract) in cash. A couple mil here and there could shore up fan bases the nation over, but front offices don't seem to be thinking in those terms.

But no. As far as Araton is concerned, the plane to Columbus had a funny name, and Stump Merrill did some interesting things. Let's go nuts.

And with all the metaphorical ground available for exploration in the New York/New Orleans connection ... well, watch your ass.