Definition of Competitive

It wasn't enough throwing the bat at Piazza...

Clemens brushes back son after giving up HR

KISSIMMEE, Fla. - Roger Clemens’ son took dad deep on the Rocket’s first pitch of spring training, crushing a trademark fastball over the left-field fence Monday.

“That was probably one of the harder fastballs I cut loose,” Roger Clemens said after throwing to Koby and other Houston Astros minor-leaguers. “He got my attention.”

Then the Rocket got Koby’s. The next time his oldest son came to the plate, Roger buzzed him high and tight with another fastball. The younger Clemens dodged the pitch, then smiled at his father.

Buzz your own kid?
Perfect for the Bronx

I have a feeling Bubba, & Bernie will be getting plenty of playing time

Gary Sheffield missed yesterday's workout due to back spasms that he and the club insist isn't a big deal.

"It bothered me [Saturday] but I kept playing through it," Sheffield said of the problem that started low in the back and worked up to between the shoulder blades. "I took extra swings after batting practice [Saturday]. It will be fine. It's really tight. I will give it a day and be ready to go (today). I just took too many swings."

He's hit the wall in Sept-Oct with injuries every year. He needs to play less and be in good shape later

Pavano on DL for Season Opener? Oh Mr. Leiter?

The possibility of Carl Pavano starting the season on the disabled list isn't all that alarming.

However, because he figures prominently in the Yankees' questionable rotation, the back problem he is battling will be significant in determining how strong the team's staff will be.

... "I am not banking on Opening Day," Joe Torre said yesterday following a Legends Field workout.

That means the incredibly inconsistent Jared Wright has to be great. Now what was A-slap humming about 'our year'?

STFU and play the game on the field

UGH !

And this kind of thing is the reason why

TAMPA — When Brian Cashman announced a lower back injury would prevent Carl Pavano from joining the regular throwing program at the start of camp, the GM hoped March 1 would be the date Pavano would be able to throw off the mound.

Well, that's Wednesday, but don't expect to see Pavano on a hill.

"They are saying he needs another week before he goes on the mound," Joe Torre said of Pavano, who has been working without a problem on flat ground.

If Pavano gets on a mound today, that would leave him with less than five weeks to get ready to open the season. Considering he was limited to 17 games a year ago due to a shoulder injury that didn't require surgery and has a lower back problem, it's not likely the Yankees will rush him just to be ready for the season — especially when they don't need a fifth starter at the beginning of the campaign.

So A-Rod, the day you outlive that stupid SLAP, you can say something about 'our year', but that day will be AFTER the season, not before it.

There is a mountain to climb. It can't be done withuot premier pitching
CANNOT.
Something the Red Sox proved time and again

I HATE to read this kind of stuff

CONFIDENT ALEX: 'THIS IS OUR YEAR'
TAMPA — George Steinbrenner has already predicted a World Series victory. Joe Torre's pre-camp speech focused on the World Series.

Now, after less than one week of spring training workouts, Alex Rodriguez senses something grand about the club as he enters his third season here.

"This is our year," A-Rod told The Post yesterday at Legends Field. "That's the feeling among the players."

How many times in baseball history have a bunch of arrogant, overconfident, smug self assured, babies been trashed in reality when the game is no longer on paper.

Boston has not gone away.
Toronto is MUCH better, and with a healthy Halliday WILL threaten
The White Sox are the champs

Shut up !
Train hard.
Play the game and acknowledge that not only are other teams as good, SEVERAL proved they were better..ON THE FIELD.

Mannyitis

So all three baseball stories in the Boston Globe are 'Where's Manny'
So all three baseball stories in the Boston Herald are 'Where's Manny'

So what's new?

1)Manny Ramirez may have agreed to arrive at spring training next week but he is still pining for an escape to the West Coast, according to ex-teammate Orlando Cabrera.
Cabrera told the Orange County Register yesterday that Ramirez said in several offseason telephone conversations that he still wants to join him with the Angels.

2)FORT MYERS — Manny Ramirez’ teammates generally agreed that he’s receiving preferential treatment for being allowed to report to spring training six days after the Red Sox’ first full-squad workout. However, they said they don’t care as long as he continues to produce on the field.

3) Ramirez, who was due to check in with the rest of the Red Sox position players in Fort Myers today, reached an agreement with the team yesterday that will allow him to remain away until March 1, apparently training on his own at his Miami-area home until making the trek across the state on Alligator Alley.

4)FORT MYERS, Fla. -- Manny Ramírez, who through an agent in October threatened to boycott spring training if he were not traded, will not arrive at spring training today, the team's reporting date for position players. Instead, according to a joint statement issued yesterday by player and team, the slugger will join the Sox March 1 ''prepared to have an exceptional season."

5) Manny Ramírez, as we all know well, has frequently exercised the right to change his mind. So nothing, obviously, is etched in stone this morning.

But if he has indeed elected to withdraw from playing for the Dominican Republic in the World Baseball Classic, that will make for an unhappy Bud Selig, the commissioner of Major League Baseball and a primary proponent of the new international event.

While word of this possibility was making the rounds of the Red Sox clubhouse yesterday, in the aftermath of the club's announcement that Ramírez would be reporting here March 1, top baseball officials said yesterday afternoon that they had not been notified by Ramírez or his agent, Greg Genske. That included Gene Orza and Rob Manfred, lawyers for the union and the commissioner's office, respectively, and Manny Acta, the manager of the Dominican team, who as recently as Monday was showing reporters a prospective starting lineup that included the Sox left fielder.

6)All is normal with the Boston Red Sox. Manny Ramírez is going to be late getting to spring training.

This is why we love the Sox. A spring training without a Sox star showing up late would be like a Thanksgiving without the Detroit Lions on television. It would be like no swallows returning to Capistrano.

We need Pedro and the midget for this scene to be complete

And in the back of Cashman's mind ...The Cubs fail to re-sign Derrek Lee

But Sheffield should know nothing has changed. If he really wants to be a Yankee, he better have another menacing, 30-100 season and stray closer to low maintenance. At that point, on a one-year deal, Sheffield would again be a good purchase at $13 million. However, if Sheffield, now 37, hits 15 homers this season or suffers a major injury or causes more angst around the team than usual, he should expect to learn how meaningless yesterday's heart-to-heart was, even if Cashman said, "He's such a great player I would be surprised if in the end we did not pick up the option."
But here is something else that would not be a surprise after this year: The Cubs fail to re-sign Derrek Lee. The Yanks win a bidding war against the Red Sox by agreeing to pay the free-agent first baseman $13 million annually for five years. That moves Jason Giambi full-time to DH, motivates the Yanks to import a solid player/citizen type such as Jermaine Dye to play right and leaves Sheffield looking for employment.

Are we getting ahead of ourselves?

Curt is ready? Gooooooood. It will be so much sweeter

If you took everything Curt Schilling said yesterday and boiled it down to a slogan he could wear on a T-shirt, it would probably go something like this:

''I'm Back . . . and Somebody's Going to Pay."

That's a considerably sunnier message than the one Schilling was wearing a day earlier, on one of those vulgar novelty T-shirts he likes to wear in the privacy of the clubhouse and would require the services of a proctologist if taken literally. That he wore it Friday, with newspaper photographers clicking away and TV cameras rolling, is their problem, he said.

''It was a closed workout," he said. ''I wasn't trying to send a message to somebody. Must have been a slow news day."

He was clearly in the message business yesterday, when he emerged from the clubhouse at the Red Sox minor league training facility wearing a black T-shirt that read, ''Cowboy Up for Christ" on the back, took a seat on a bench in front of a phalanx of cameras, and proclaimed himself as fit as he has been in two years.

''I'm expecting to go out and do what I expected to go out and do in 2004," said the man who delivered a World Series title two years ago. ''I feel good, my arm feels great, my ankle feels good. There are no real health issues for me, knock on wood, right now, and I'm just looking to moving forward."

If you are inclined to make an issue about whether Schilling or newcomer Josh Beckett will get the ball on Opening Day, no point in stopping at Schilling's locker. The 39-year-old righthander, who spent a major chunk of his morning getting acquainted with Beckett, made it clear he is proceeding under the assumption that he will be on the hill in the Ballpark at Arlington when the Sox open the season April 3 against the Texas Rangers.

The only Yanks I wouldn't be happy to see open against him are Pavano or Wright. They give me that Contreras feeling as yet.
The best thing you can ever be, is underestimated.

The biggest question in 19 games this year, and having a REAL PLAYOFF?

How is it?

Jorge is sensitive?

Guys who piss ontheir hands (on purpose) are NOT sensitive, but it's a nice line, Joe.

February 18, 2006 -- TAMPA — Jorge Posada's pride has been dented. You bet it has, he says. After all, pride is as much a part of his game as power and patience, and the catcher has endured a year when his abilities and his cherished spot as a Yankee have been under assault.

"I try to ignore it," Posada says, "but it is tough to ignore."

Of course, it is. It is in his face. The ace of the staff, Randy Johnson, did not want to pitch to him. Suddenly, his mental abilities behind the plate were being impugned. His offensive numbers fell across the board for a second straight year. Now, his physical skills were viewed as slipping with age. And then there was an offseason in which his name was more in trade rumors than any teammate's. That threatened what surges through his very veins, that the Yankees are in his blood.

"Jorge is sensitive," Joe Torre says.

This is what GM Brian Cashman has to say about Posada being on the trade market because the Yanks do not want him to start the 81 games behind the plate in 2006 that would trigger a $12 million option for 2007: "What I worry about is how are we ever going to replace Posada, not how to get out of next year's option."

AMEN. Maybe for a YOUNG, Munson, Bench, or the best clutch guy ever, Yogi, otherwise, sorry Poundstone, not even for a Carlton, or Varitek.

And in the 'you can never have enuf pitching category...' chapter 2

There were moments the Yankees staff was so shredded and the options at Triple-A so dismal that Cashman literally was authorizing his scouts to suspend their standards and recommend the least horrid of their bad alternatives. That, for example, is how Tim Redding and Darrell May ended up employed and landed in an infamous corner of pinstripe lore. Redding now has the worst season ERA (54.00) in Yankees history for anyone who has completed an inning, and May has the worst (16.71) for any Yankee who reached seven innings.

And so Scott Erickson.

Lifetime 142-136, 4.57, 38 years old, hasn't pitched since 2002, Orioles, 5-12 5.55 era.


Hey I want a fantasy tryout myself

Empire Strikes Back

Even in minors, Yanks-Sox is a major battle

BY JONATHAN LEMIRE
DAILY NEWS STAFF WRITER

The scorching Yankees-Red Sox rivalry is burning up some new turf in the minor leagues.

A Massachusetts Single-A team fired the first shot, and now the Staten Island Yankees are striking back.

The Lowell Spinners, the Red Sox affiliate in the New York-Penn League, offered last week to replace the uniforms of any Massachusetts youth team named the Yankees so the pint-sized players wouldn't be teased or booed at town parades.

"It's in good fun and we laughed, but we knew we had to retaliate," said Gary Parrone, assistant general manager of the Staten Island squad. "And, befitting the style of the Yankees, we wanted to do it with class."

So when the Spinners travel to Richmond County Bank Ballpark Aug. 4-6, they will be greeted with an array of Sox-slamming promotions.

First, any fan who gives up a Sox hat or shirt - later to be donated to a New England homeless shelter - will be given a free ticket. Any man getting a shave and haircut at the park in honor of formerly long-maned outfielder Johnny Damon, who abandoned Boston for the Bronx, also will get a free ducat.

Free tickets also will be offered to any Massachusetts Little League team that resists changing its name from the Yankees. And if any fan comes to all three Staten Island games, he will be given a talking Babe Ruth doll.

"The real rivalry is intense, but this is minor-league baseball. It's supposed to be fun," said Tim Bawmann, Spinners general manager, whose team has agreed to exchange the uniforms of 44 youth Yankee teams in the Bay State and - to stick it to its rivals - one in upstate New York.

Evil knows no bounds

Anti-Yankees fever grips youth leagues

30 teams want to change name

By Chris Forsberg, Globe Correspondent | February 16, 2006

In the future, when kids ask their parents why none of the teams in their local youth baseball and softball leagues is named the Yankees, they will be told the story of a blood-thirsty rivalry and two persistent 9-year-old girls.

Therein lie the seeds of the so-called ''Yankee Elimination" movement sweeping though the region.

The Lowell Spinners, the Red Sox Class A affiliate, announced last week that they would foot the cost of jerseys for any youth league that was willing to change the name of its Yankees squad to the Spinners.

The response has been overwhelming. At the start of the week, the Spinners had been contacted by more than 30 baseball and softball leagues from 25 communities across Massachusetts.

On Monday morning, a call came in from Rochester, N.Y., where a team wanted to join the fun and the Spinners were happy to oblige on their rivals' home turf.

The HORROR, the HORROR !