Pick Your Poison

Like Obie Trice, we're back! I don't know what was wrong with Google, or Blogger, or us, or the cosmic balance of the universe, but there were some serious technical difficulties holding us down this past week. Lord willing, we're all past that now. Thanks for bearing with us. Both of you. No, wait, where are you going? Come back.

Anyways, the Mets looked great in Philly while we were gone, taking two of three and almost sweeping the series. I've got a bunch of thoughts on how the season's gone to this point. Unfortunately, I'm not going to be able to share them right now. I could try to write something about the team, I suppose, but all that would come out was some mangled, Asperger's rant on Aaron Heilman. Nobody wants that. I'm going to give him a week to right the ship, and myself 10 seconds to breathe, and with any luck, I won't muss up the apartment.

Instead, I'm going to focus on the laugh-out-loud boys from the Bronx who, when they aren't hosting Christ's vicar on Earth for a boring-ass, Lakers-preempting Sunday sermon, are tripping over themselves like the Three Stooges. (Note: My roommate is a big Lakers fan, and there were serious problems when he found out that Game 1 of his playoff series wasn't going to be on television because they were televising the Yankee Stadium Mass live. I haven't heard an anti-Catholic rant like that since John Hagee was over for brunch last month.)

Item -- Hank Steinbrenner attempts to sabotage own team

Really, this isn't a big deal. It was a random interview gone wrong, with Hank all riled up about Joba and the slow start, and he said some stuff that he really didn't mean. Some reporter from the New York Times caught the new Boss on a bad morning, that's all. Possibly after the Boss had been slugging some Mamajuana Energy. (Read the entire article linked there -- you'll be glad you did).

Nothing is going to change -- the new Joba Rules, with the innings limit and the eventual (not immediate) move to the rotation will continue as planned. It's just glorious to have a guy completely willing to throw his entire baseball operation under the bus at a moment's notice. It's exciting, right? It makes the Yankees more fun to follow, I know that.

And, of course, it keeps Brian Cashman on his toes. I'd ask for a raise.

Item -- Yankee fans force LaTroy Hawkins into changing his number

I bet most of you saw this last week. Hawkins, one of the Bombers' middle relievers, had been getting killed by Yankee fans for daring to wear No. 21, formerly the number of Paul O'Neill. Booed and heckled during warmups and every time his name was announced, constant "PAUL O-NEILL, clap-clap-clap-clap-clap"s whenever he did anything. Some pressure was mounted, and Hawkins eventually switched his number to No. 22.

You can pretty much pick your poison on this one. Adjective me!

Classless

Naturally. Yankee fans yield to no one in this area. Of course, O'Neill also refused to be left out of Classlessfest 2008, going on WFAN and telling Hawkins to go fuck himself:

What can I say? The fans have always been unbelievable to me there,” O’Neill said in a telephone interview from his home in Ohio. “I don’t really know how to explain it. It makes you feel good that the fans still think of you as wearing that number.

Well, I have an idea about what you can say, you jackass. Something along the lines of, "I appreciate the support, but LaTroy's just trying to do his job for the team, and he doesn't need to be given such a hard time" might have been appropriate. The "Aw, shucks" routine is lame when it comes from actual humble individuals. Coming from a preening creep like you, it comes across as actively venal. Hawkins needs your condescending bullshit like he needs a fastball in the eye.

Again, it bears repeating -- Paul O'Neill thinks it's perfectly fine for Yankee fans to aggressively hector anyone who wears his old number. Unbelievable.

Ignorant

Maybe you think the whole Roberto Clemente thing is a little overblown. Maybe you think he wasn't quite as good as everyone remembers, that Al Kaline was probably a better player. Maybe you think the halo effect surrounding him is undeserved, and the accompanying hagiography is a bit much. You might really just not like the Pirates.

All that could be true. It is still true that Clemente is a seminal figure in the history of baseball, a Latino icon and one of the true heroes of the sport, in a mythical sense. He is a major figure in the Hispanic community, in his home country, even in the history of the 1970s. He is a mainstream figure in a way that few baseball players, much less baseball-playing minorities, are. The campaign to retire his number is not some quixotic lark -- there's a valid argument for it.

Treating Hawkins' desire to honor Clemente like it's a slap in the face to O'Neill is just retarded. It's provincialism at its worst. Clemente is the far more important figure, and it's just ignorant to pretend otherwise. And when it comes to mocking someone for earnestly feeling otherwise, well, see Adjective Uno.

Stupid

LaTroy Hawkins, when in a good place, is a pretty solid pitcher. From 2002 to 2004, as a setup guy, his WHIP hovered around 1.00. In 2005, thanks to some completely undeserved pressure from the Chicago media (Jay Mariotti calling him "LaToya," for example), he couldn't handle being the closer for the Cubs and had to be shipped off to San Francisco; his WHIP ballooned to 1.46 and his ERA went from 2.63 to 3.83 on the season.

He struggled in the wasteland that is Baltimore in '06, posting a crappy 1.46 WHIP/4.48 ERA season, but in 2007, pepped up on community and Christlove in the supportive confines of the Colorado clubhouse, he managed to look highly decent -- 1.23 WHIP, 3.42 ERA in 55 1/3 Rocky Mountain cold innings. Not so shabby, really.

Here, then, we have a guy with a track record of success and a live arm, but a guy with a history of doing poorly when pressured in an uncomfortable way. Again, it's possible I'm missing something extremely important in this CliffNotes version of LaTroy, but that's the outline -- decent if treated properly.

Well, far be it from me to suggest that Yankee fans might not want to go FAR out of their way to alienate their new, sensitive relief ace. Let's just say it might not have be the smartest play, all things c0nsidered.

Hypocritical

The money line from the AP piece:

Hawkins didn't want to discuss the change Thursday, saying the focus on the number was "unbelievable." On Tuesday, he told cbssports.com he made the decision after speaking with Yankees captain Derek Jeter and reliever Mariano Rivera, who played alongside O'Neill.

"I figure if it's important enough for Jeter and Mariano and some other veterans to ask me about it, it's not worth it to keep wearing the number," Hawkins was quoted as saying.

Remarkable. For Jeter, I mean, there's nothing left to say. The guy is an atrocious joke of a captain, and always will be. What kind of a leader takes the fucking fans' side in a scrap like this? It almost defies description, it's so backward. For a guy who hasn't done anything wrong, who's supposed to be a new, important cog on your team, trying to fit in ... to not back him publicly in a thing like this? Anyone who refers to Jeter as a leader again should really be shot. There really can't be any argument at this point.

But the real villain here, actually, is Mo. No matter the circumstances, it takes a certain kind of balls to go up to a guy and tell them you think he should change his number in order to placate the fans. But it takes a truly special set to do the same ... WHEN YOU'RE WEARING JACKIE ROBINSON'S NUMBER. This cannot be overstated.

Let's just think about it for a moment, m'kay? Major League Baseball retires No. 42 universally in 1997, with a grandfather clause. Anyone wearing the number at that point can keep it, but nobody else can take it going forward. That's the rules. Rivera was perfectly within his rights to maintain wearing it, and now, he's the only one.

Yet it's certainly possible to conceive of Rachel Robinson or someone taking offense at players' unwillingness to change their numbers. I mean, it's retired. It is Jackie Robinson's number, henceforth, officially. By grabbing on tight to 42 with his grubby hands, Rivera is on some level equating his importance with that of Robinson's. It is, according to Mo, of the utmost import for him to keep his number, enough so that Jackie will simply have to wait until Mo retires to have the digits to his name alone.

Which is fine, it is. It is not a big deal, and if anyone wanted to make a huge fuss about this, they could have simply not included the grandfather clause. But it is unquestionably a conscious, proactive assertion of rights by Rivera. It is selfish, in a narrow, unimportant sense; selfish all the same.

But when it comes to someone else wearing the non-retired number of a Latino legend in the service of eventually getting it retired, Mo thinks he's got something to say. He thinks his opinion is more important than Hawkins'. He thinks you should do the "right" thing, with the right thing defined as abandoning the cause of a legend in favor of kowtowing to a bunch of drunken fuckups. He has "veteran" advice to dispense.

With all due respect (read: none), Mo, pipe down. You do yourself a disservice every time you open your mouth. Just stay up on the mound, throw the cutter, keep your pie hole closed, and let us try to remember you as the strong, stoic type. It'll be better that way.