See, this is how a True Yankee would have done it...

There's a big story here in Beantown today involving Curt Schilling's recently HOF-enshrined bloody sock. Supposedly, Doug Mirabelli told Orioles and ESPN Broadcaster Gary Thorne that Schilling's sock was covered with paint rather than blood on that fateful night back in October of 2004. (Yankee fans, I hope looking at that hurt you right in your non-surgically sutured Yankeepridehormonesecretingorgans).



We all remember the drama, the faces, and Schill thanking Jesus for "just getting him through" the night and the pain. Speaking from a strictly baseball fan perspective, I hope Mirabelli's lying, because Schilling's a little self-important for my taste and could use to slip about twelve notches down the ladder, but I sort of doubt if this could have happened without us hearing about it until now.

That being said, I can state categorically that if he did fake it, no True Yankee would ever have allowed the situation to have reached this point. Even I, a non-Yankee fan, know that:

First of all, you don't put the thing in the Hall of Fame. That's for the other teams. You enshrine it into your own Hall of Fame, and if possible, you bury that thing under the dirt in Monument Park where it can't spill its secrets. A True Yankee would have enlisted the help of this guy, who is one of their own.





Second, a True Yankee would not use paint, which only a Red Sox would be dumb enough to use; instead, you use the blood of a Yankee of lesser stature, who is primarily affixed to the bench. These sorts of guys abound and have been found in droves throughout the years, but here are some examples: Shane Spencer, Luis Sojo, Sterling Hitchcock, or Gerald Williams.

Now I know what you're asking...why wouldn't you use the blood of someone who just happened to be on the Yankees at the time and had little or no True Yankeehood running through his veins, like Tony Tarasco or someone? Well, there is some evidence that non-True Yankee blood can be catching, and you don't want Whitey Ford turning into Brian Bruney.



Finally, and here's the big one, you rub out the messenger before he has a chance to rat on you. The Yankees know all about this, through their connections with the underworld:



Mirabelli would have been sleeping with the fishes as soon as the sock was out of Yankee hands. True Yankee fans know that he would have understood.

- Silk...

Louisiana Lightning

It’s that time of year again, folks: baseball season is upon us! A time for hope, a time for speculation and prognostication, a time for Kerry Wood and Mike Hampton to be on the disabled list. Most importantly, time to see people like Ron Guidry step out of a Skoal commercial (and the Yankee dugout) and amble out to the mound to try and convince Carl Pavano that he is not a complete failure, molestache glimmering in the sun.

But, not too long ago, Ron Guidry was a pitcher on the receiving end of such meaningless visits and, as we all know, he was nowhere near a failure. However, what we will not know until the typing stops is whether or not he is Pinstripe Worthy.

First, the numbers .

TRUE YANKEE QUALITIES:

Member of 2 World Championship Teams: +500 TYP

Before their return to glory in the mid-to-late 1990s, the Bombers popped off back-to-back World Series victories in 1977 & 1978. In those two series, all Guidry did was go 2-0 with a 1.50 ERA in 2 complete game outings. Studly. Quite studly, even.

These championships were particularly important for “us”, because it had been an unfathomable 14 years since the Yankees last reigned. If Yankees World Series wins were crack, we all would have perished from withdrawal long before 1977. When you have 26 World Championships, going through long, ringless stretches is very hard.

Clutch: +250 TYP

All told, Gator’s post-season record was 5-2 with a 3.02 ERA. More notable is the fact that over his 10 career playoff starts, he averaged 6 2/3 innings per outing, including 3 complete games. A man’s man, through and through.

Further, even when the games did not occur in October, you pretty much knew “we” were getting a win when the ball was in Ron’s left hand. He ranks 27th on the list of all-time best winning percentage for pitchers, with an astounding 65.1% success rate.

1978: +100 TYP

Yankees do not ask for their place in history. Nor do they even demand it. They just fucking take it, as Gator did in his all-time year

You pick what you like more: 25 wins, 89.3% winning percentage, 270+ innings, 16 complete games, sub-2 ERA, 9 shutouts, his 18-strikeout game or an almost 3:1 strikeout-to-walk ratio. Seriously, pick whichever you like; it’s all academic.

This season would be worth even more but for the fact that he lost to fucking Jim Rice in the MVP race.

Came Back to Coach Up the Pitchers: +50 TYP

This would be worth more, but “we” have yet to win with him in charge of the staff. Also, while his drunken stumble out of the dugout is entertaining, it also exposes “us” to potential ridicule. I can’t tell whether he looks like the Marlboro Man or a cancer patient circling the drain. Mel was a presence in the dugout; Ron is, well, there.

However, some credit must be given for service to the franchise. Just by osmosis, he will be able to impart the Yankee Way on to such uneducated souls as that of Kei Igawa and Kyle Farnsworth.

NON-TRUE YANKEE QUALITIES

Prominent Member of the Famously Incompetent Bronx Zoo: -600 TYP

While due credit is given for being a part of the team that pulled “us” out of a prolonged interruption from post-season dominance, even worse is the fact that the Yankees went 17 freaking seasons without another World Series victory. I can taste my bile. It does not taste good.

I mean, not only did Guidry figure substantially in the fate of a team that didn’t even qualify for the playoffs in his last 7 years, he was the damn co-captain (along with Willie Randolph).

Started that Insidious Standing Up with 2-Strikes Nonsense: -150 TYP

God, that annoys the shit out of me. It’s one thing when it’s the top of the 9^th and everyone is just standing up to leave, since Mariano is sure to take care of business anyway, but do I really have to stand up just because Brian Bruney had the good fortune of landing two balls within the strike zone? There is a lot of douchebaggery that occurs on a fine day at Yankee Stadium, but this one gets my goat more than most others.

Looks Like He should be Dead: -50 TYP

So much so that he has a Dead or Alive? listing. Zimmer was old, but at least he was virile. Every time I see Lightning, I feel as though he should be hooked to an IV, wearing an oxygen mask, or at least have someone who periodically holds their hand over his mouth to make sure he’s still breathing.

FINAL TOTAL: +100 TYP

No slam dunk, but he’s home. “We” have a long history of adopting hicks and rednecks as our own, and the Louisiana Lightning fits that mold to a T. To those who question why not succeeding between 1979-1988 counts more than back-to-back Series wins, I refer you back to our mantra about not losing being more important than winning.

Now that some of the obvious cases have been made, we can move into the gray and tackle some of the closer cases such as Guidry. He’s so close, that I must reserve the right to adjust his calculation should any relevant information surface anytime soon.

And Puffy, you know this...

True Yankee fans, I give you Graig Nettles, a crucial contributor to the Bronx Zoo success of the late 1970s and one of only 11 team captains in the Pinstripers' history. Seems like a lock based on that alone, but as we'll find out, there are some mitigating circumstances here, and he certainly is deserving of a look. As always, let's start with the numbers.

The first thing that jumps out here is the fact that Nettles played for six teams...but:

1. none of them was the Red Sox, and
2. I mean, really, what True Yankee fan pays attention to the Twins, Indians, Padres, and Expos? Did those franchises even exist in 1977 when Nettles was building his credentials? The Indians might have, but, well...1948. And before you point out that he also played on the Braves, a team that True Yankee fans must grudgingly acknowledge before pointing out their World Series futility in the 1990s (STFU, the 2000s aren't actually real), remember that we're talking about 1987, and they lost 92 games and finished fifth that year.

So Nettles basically was a Yankee when it mattered. He made the postseason his rookie year with the Twins in 1969, He also got to the WS in 1984 with San Diego, but since the writer is in fact not a True Yankee fan at all, but rather a lifelong Cubs fan, we're definitely not going to talk about that.



Let's just move ahead with the True Yankeehood Points, and I'd admonish the Yankee fans sniggering at my team's now century-long championship drought to kindly do the world a favor and swallow your Driven cologne.












HARDWARE - THAT'S PLURAL: +500 TYP



Nettles was a big part of the Yankee's World Series wins in 1977 and 1978, and boy, did they need them. Until '77, they hadn't won since Yogi Berra was an active member of the roster...a drought of 14 long years. The Stottlemyer era was a painful time for True Yankee fans everywhere, and Nettles helped them forget it, winning Gold Gloves in both seasons, playing in 317 out of 324 possible regular season games and making some spectacular defensive plays in both postseasons. Nettles finished 5th in the MVP voting in '77, the top Yankee to receive votes, and, really, who remembers Rod Carew's season that year? The next year, Guidry finished second thanks to his spectacular 25-3 record, but the important thing to True Yankee fans, is that the 1978 winner, Jim Rice, watched the postseason from his couch as usual.


NOT A-ROD: +500 TYP




Nettles's excellent defense and consistently gritty play have been the stuff of True Yankee overexaggeration for three decades now. Ask any Yankee fan who they'd rather have at the hot corner...Puff, or this guy, and see what answers you get.

Nettles is the number one guy, after, Jeter or Reggie Jackson, used to demonstrate Rodriguez's failings as a True Yankee. Graig, we hear, got it done in the postseason , while A-Rod hasn't delivered yet and, we are reminded, never will because he just lacks the makeup for New York (perhaps it's the purple lipstick).



THE SUPERBALLS: +200 TYP



Memo to Gary Sheffield (whatever, he's still a Yankee to me), Jason Giambi, and soon-to-be-Yankee Barry Balco: as Yogi said, "Sometimes you can learn a lot by watching." Some cheating is COOL, and Nettles's hail of superballs in 1974 definitely falls into that category. This is way cooler than steroids or greenies: this is historical baseball cheating at its best, right up there with Joe Neikro's emery board and the "refrigerator ball". And in True Yankee fashion, they kept his home run, which was the only run scored in the game, and wiped away Nettles' meaningless single to center field in the 5th. So he cheated without getting ejected AND got a win...is there anything more Pinstripe Worthy than that?

Now, I've read plenty of accounts of this game, but here's one thing I didn't know, because no one seems to have noticed it, until I researched the matter myself: it was the SECOND GAME OF A DOUBLEHEADER THAT DAY! And guess what, True Yankee fans...he homered in the FIRST game, too! Yeah, I'm SURE that the second game in a twin bill was really the first time Nettles used the bat, as he told interviewers after the game.




QUOTE MACHINE: +250 TYP And not in a weird, laughing both-with-you-and-at-you-at-the-same-time-ala-Mickey-Rivers kind of a way. No, this guy was just solid when it came to the soundbites. Here are a few representative gems from the Bronx Zoo era:

• "We've got a problem here. Luis Tiant wants to use the bathroom and it says no foreign objects in the toilet."


• "People recognize me wherever I go, where it used to be just New York. I guess people who aren't even baseball fans watch the World Series. I was driving down the freeway in Los Angeles over the winter and a guy pulled up next to me and gave me the finger."

• "When I was a little boy, I wanted to be a baseball player and join the circus. With the Yankees, I've accomplished both."

• "It's a good thing Babe Ruth isn't here. If he was, George Steinbrenner would have him bat seventh and say he's overweight."

• "What we need is a second-base coach."

• On Sparky Lyle's difficulties: "He's gone from Cy Young to Cy-anara".

• "The more we lose, the more Steinbrenner will fly in. And the more he flies, the better the chance there will be for a plane crash."




INJURED BILL LEE IN A BRAWL in 1976, EFFECTIVELY SPOILING THE RED SOX' CHANCES AT REPEATING AS CHAMPIONS OF THE AMERICAN LEAGUE: +250 TYP

Tough to do better than this...from the True Yankee viewpoint, did anyone deserve this more? Maybe Pedro, but that's about it.


Named captain in 1982: + 150 TYP

What, you ask? How can Nettles only get 150 points for joining a group so elite that Mantle, Dimaggio, Berra and Ford don't qualify for it? Well, two points, True Yankee Fans:

1. Yes, it's an accomplishment. But Hal Chase, a man who damn near destroyed baseball altogether is on that list, so don't get your pinstriped panties in a huge twist over it, and

2. Nettles nearly cancelled any captain cachet he may have earned from himself when he...

WROTE HIS WAY OUT OF TOWN: - 500 TYP




Yeah, this just looks bad. The Bronx Zoo was dysfunctional, we all know that, but you don't write a freaking book trashing the Boss and calling him fat, while painting Billy Martin as a pretty good guy, not in 1983 you don't. Not when you're the seventh Yankee captain in history, and the one directly after Thurman Munson (it's okay, True Yankee fans, you can get off your knees now). Nowadays...no problem. Everyone takes shots at George in 2007, but that was decidedly Pinstripe un-Worthy, and it led to...


GOT TRADED TO THE PADRES, AND ACTUALLY LIKED IT: - 800 TYP




Bad enough that you should leave New York, but to the Padres? Even Winfield knew it was prudent to get the hell out of there ASAP, and we have already established in this forum that Mr. May was decidedly not a True Yankee.

Aside from going to a second-class franchise, the fact that you pick one with STEVE FREAKING GARVEY as its best offensive player simply smacks on un-True Yankeehood. That guy's as Dodger Blue as one gets, although his post-playing career and Strawhowegoodenberry's are somewhat similar.

Not to mention the fact that he did better in the postseason for the Pads than he did in in Pinstripes...Oh, yeah, there's this, too... take an additional 50 points for making me think of that.

CONTRACTED HEPATITIS IN 1980, MISSING 67 REGULAR SEASON GAMES: -250 TYP

Since we don't actually know what the details were, Nettles gets the benefit of the doubt on this one. Let's assume he was either drinking Bronx water or went on one too many pub crawls up Amsterdam in the off-season. However, it must be pointed out that sharing needles is a damned good way to get Hepatitis B...ironically, his replacement was the original A-Rod, for whom the Yankees traded to the very same Padres for (what else) cash...

So here's our tally:

POSITIVE TRUE YANKEEHOOD SCORE: +1850 TYP


NEGATIVE TRUE YANKEEHOOD SCORE: -1550 TYP

TOTAL TRUE YANKEEHOOD SCORE: +300 TYP

He just makes it, mostly on the strength of kicking Spaceman's ass, which even the likes of me, a non-True Yankee fan, realizes is a good thing. But let's get one thing straight...he never had a chance at the Hall. If Santo's not in, no way either this guy or Darrell Evans gets close.

Until next time,

- Silk...