Rawlings Official commemorative balls for the last season in Yankee Stadium

Rawlings have released their official commemorative ball to mark the last season in the current stadium. Quite a smart effort, will no doubt go down a treat with collectors and autograph hunters. I’ll more than likely pick one up when I’m in NY over the summer! Although the $19 price tag means my fellow blogger better be nice to me if he wants another one brought home for himself!…

The Shelley Slide – Take 2!

Chad Jennings’ SWB Blog has done an excellent job of capturing another hilarious Shelley moment from this spring, in his “slide” into home plate on Thursday (see it here).

Who says the Yankees don’t have any characters in the team!? Here’s some comical evidence to the contrary….

Yanks for the memories, Part II – Graeme Lloyd

When you talk about the superb team between 1996 and 1998 virtually nobody seems to mention the contribution made by one of the most inexplicable success stories, the massive Australian Graeme Lloyd. A far from spectacular career reliever who put up a 30-36 mark with a 4.04 career ERA, the lefty specialist made a significant contribution to the Yankees successes in his brief tenure in pinstripes, most notably in the 1996 Series.

 

His role in the fantastic road sweep during that series was absolutely essential in bridging the gap between the incredibly stingy starters, and the lights out performances of Rivera and Wetteland in Atlanta. Had Torre not had someone such as Lloyd to call on, who was literally unhittable against some of the Braves most clutch hitters of the time, then the Yankees may well have ended up facing the embarrassment of a Series sweep. For his performance in these games alone he deserved to be fondly spoken of by Yankees fans everywhere. Although his successes in the remaining two years of his time with the Yankees until he was packaged in the deal for Clemens were not as noteworthy, I reckon he really deserves more than to be remembered as a footnote in such great success.

The price of Moneyball?

John Heyman made an interesting comment in his latest piece on SI about the possible availability of Huston Street. It seems that when the Yankees showed interest in Joe Blanton, they were told it would take Phil and Joba to seal the deal!!

Now we all know that other GM’s seem to think that to pull off a trade with the Yankees they need to hold a pistol to Cashman’s head and demand a hefty ransom, but surely this is a bit overly adventurous, even by Billy Beane’s standards!?

The workout of champions?

OK, so he’s not a Champion yet as such, but as an aside to his article in men’s Vogue magazine, they’ve put in a small piece on A-Rod’s offseason workout regime. Pretty impressive stuff.

Alternatively, for those who can’t take four hours a day to work out, Nick Swisher proves that manual labour can be used instead to achieve the kind of end results plenty of folk over the past 20 years have taken “shortcuts” to achieve. Although, reading that Swisher piece, I can’t help but think of the training montage from Rocky IV….