You can't tell a player without a scorecard . . .

Welcome to Opening Day 2013 at Yankee Stadium in the Bronx.  The grass is cut, the rosters are set and Baseball is in the air. 

The Bronx Bomber will be opening at home for the 111^th time Monday afternoon.  The Yankees will be wearing their home pinstripes.  Out of the starting ten only two have worn pinstripes in the starting lineup last season in 2012.  That would of course be Robinson Cano and CC Sabathia.

The Yankees open their season Monday against the Red Sox in New York as CC Sabathia faces Jon Lester at 1:05 p.m. ET. Below is the Yankees' projected Opening Day lineup.

1. CF: Brett Gardner
2. RF: Ichiro Suzuki
3. 2B: Robinson Cano
4. 1B: Kevin Youkilis
5. DH: Ben Francisco
6. LF: Vernon Wells
7. SS: Eduardo Nunez
8. 3B: Jayson Nix
9. C: Chris Stewart
SP: CC Sabathia

Due to the drastic change of the Opening Day Yankee lineup mostly caused by injury and some free agents flowing the coop.  Free scorecards will be given out to the first 10,000 fans over 18 years old in attendance.  In addition the Yankee clubhouse personnel have been working frantically to sew the names on the pinstriped jerseys for the first time in the history of the team.  You can’t tell the players without a scorecard.  More Details . . .

Bullet Bob Turley Passes On

 

They called him “Bullet Bob,” and if any proof were needed beyond the 1,265 strikeouts and 101 wins he racked up in 12 seasons in the American League, it was provided early in his career by a DuMont cathode-ray oscilloscope, whose photoelectric eye clocked his fastball at 94 to 98 miles an hour.

 

Bob Turley, who lived in Alpharetta, Ga., died of liver cancer in hospice care at Lenbrook, a retirement community in Atlanta.

      

On a Casey Stengel Yankee All Star team loaded with legends — including Mickey Mantle, Yogi Berra, Hank Bauer, Moose Skowron and Elston Howard — Turley was a mainstay of a pitching staff led by Whitey Ford and Don Larsen, whose perfect game in the 1956 World Series symbolized a golden era of Yankee dominion.

 

Terry Turley told the AP that his father, one of the last St Louis Browns as well,  will be missed all over.      

 

The 111th Opening Day

is this Monday!!!!

World Oldest Bomber Passes On!

Virgil (Fire) Trucks, who at 95 had been the oldest living former Yankee, died Saturday in his native Alabama. Trucks, a right-handed pitcher, pitched the final season of his 17-year major league career with the Yankees, when he went 2-1 with a 4.54 ERA as a 41-year-old in 1958. Overall, Trucks' record was 177-135 with a 3.39 ERA. He spent 12 seasons with the Detroit Tigers.

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The Yankees have claimed right-handed reliever Danny Otero 28, off waivers from the Giants, the team announced. Left-hander Cesar Cabral was placed on the 60-day DL to create 40-man roster space.  Danny Otero boasts a 5.84 ERA (2.77 FIP) in 12.1 career big league innings, all with the Giants last year.



Special Guest Blogger John "Scoops" Monaco

Hopefully he returns to form

Brian Ca$hman: "I don't feel like we're not having a productive winter. I feel like we're being deliberate and we are being slow."

December 6th, 2012

As of today I can't say we lost out on anyone so far we really wanted but it seems like such an un-Yankee like off season so far.

I think we made the correct choice offering $13.3M qualifying offers to Soriano, Swisher and Kuroda.

Nice job re-signing Kuroda, Pettitte and Mo.

Since we signed Mo there is no need or place on the team for Soriano. we saw how uninspired he was when he wasn't closing in 2011.

Pre GM Meeting:

I wasn't an advocate of re-signing Russ Martin. If Yanks re-signed him I could understand it. When they didn't I figured they had a backup plan. Internal competition for the job, trade for a journeyman primary catcher or simply save the $$$ and apply to Hamilton.

They have seemed to be all over the place explaining why they didn't make Martin an offer.

GM Meeting:

ARod injury. Appears that had a couple of week lead time to digest the real possibility he may need surgery. You would think they would have made a trade or signing for a short term solution before this became public.

Didn't happen. They seem all over the chart on this.

Haven't acquired a RF'r so far. Don't seem to be pursuing a FA canidate.

Josh Hamilton - no linkage to any pursuit. I'm dumfounded.

We have a lot of holes but we have almost 4 months before Opening Day.

Lets see what happens.

Read more: http://btbfansite.proboards.com/index.cgi?board=general&action=display&thread=25031#ixzz2EKLqSAxC

SPECIAL GUEST BLOGGER KYLE REAGAN

In an embarassing fashion to close out ther 2012 campaign...and what have we done?

1. Praised Kevin Long's work and assured him his job is safe...
2. Praised Girardi and assured him his job is safe..
3.  fired Billy Connors...
4. fired Nardi Contreras...
5. want to bring back Russell Martin...
6. want to bring back Raul Ibanez...
7. want to bring back Ichiro...
8. are begging Pettitte to get overpaid and come back...
9. getting Jeter healthy to return and play 160 games at SS because we dont have a suitable backup option...
10. telling AROD to hit off a tee and get healthy because we don't have a suitable backup option...
11. signed eli whiteside...
12. let swisher go.. .
13. let our closer go...
14. are hoping Mariano can come back at age 43 but have no suitable backup option...

I was 100% for sh*t-canning Cashman when he drafted and didnt sign Gerritt Cole...then i backed off a bit on him...but this Winter is hard to defend. seriously ---- what the hell are we doing?

  

A famous guy once said "whats a guy gotta do to get fired around here?"

  

If there isnt a MAJOR personnel change this Winter...then we're staring at 81 wins, TOPS!. And all we have to root for is Hal getting the payroll under some BS arbitrary $189M limit because he doesnt want to "share revenue" anymore.

  

Wake up, Cash...wake up, Yankee fans...demand more, demand better. I hardly recongize the George Steinbrenner influence around here anymore

Read more: http://btbfansite.proboards.com/index.cgi?board=general&action=display&thread=24929#ixzz2DQsEWO1N

Wait Till Next Year!

Stay or Go???

Wasn't it great when the press tried to help our teams instead of putting unneeded pressure on them?  It sucks that a feww hundred drunks that only attend a game when the team is winning could go fill the air with boo's that was influenced by booze.  Fans (and I use the term loosly) that couldn't name more than 6 players on the roster spending more time on the beer lines or the bathroom lines trying to look cool to their friends and yelling boooooo.  Heck if we were winning they would be starting the wave.  Yeah you know who you are.

 

The Daily Snooze is reporting that Granderson needs glasses.  He hit 44 homers without them this year.  They also just published their readers vote (didn't know their readers could write?) on who should stay and who should go this year.  It was pretty predictable .  The one that surprized me was that they voted Joba to be gone.  He played pretty well and was a victim of really hard luck this year.

Derek Jeter (85%), Mariano Rivera (85%) and Mark Teixeira (73%) got a lot of support, so did some new faces. Ichiro Suzuki, who said multiple times how much he cherished being a Yankee, apparently won admirers — 83% voted to keep him.  Hiroki Kuroda, the ace for much of the season while Sabathia was injured, is wanted back by 92%.
Check out the Daily Snooze for complete results.

Should prove interesting who is in Tampa this Spring.  Can life go on smoothly between A-Rod and Skipper Joe?