Do yourself a favor and just accept all the new allegations (yes, even the absurd ‘bitch tits’) as the truth. If you’re a Yankee fan, none of this matters much any longer. You only care about one thing - can a clean A-Rod be as good as a dirty one? And if not, would you rather have the dirty one on your team? (Think Bonds in San Francisco.)
• If it truly is the A-Rod of stadiums, then this slashing of ticket prices is like a meaningless Rodriguez home run in the late innings. Lowering prices from $2,500 to $1,250 helps who exactly?
• If a pitcher suddenly loses velocity and becomes a shell of his former self, why do we think that throwing in the eighth inning will cure him? Shouldn’t we, in the post-Mitchell Report era, at least consider that he could have been juicing? That’s what we do with sluggers who suddenly stop hitting.
• It is nearly May and the Yankees will end it exactly where they ended last season - in third place. The popular belief now is that A-Rod is going to be the savior. But we’ve heard that one every season and we no longer believe it.
Bradford Campeau-Laurion thinks it’s okay to urinate during “God Bless America” at Yankee Stadium. And he’s right - as long as he’s not doing it in a public bathroom. See, getting up and walking to a proper urinal during “God Bless America” is a punishable crime against Yankee Stadium. In fact, it violates one of the Ten Yankee Commandments: ‘Thou Shall Not Desire To Urinate During Renditions Of ‘God Bless America’, ‘Enter Sandman’, and ‘Cotton-Eyed Joe'’. How could Bradford think that his bursting, beer-bloated bladder was more important than standing honorably by as that scratchy, worn-out 45 of cackling Kate Smith blared over the loudspeakers, filling every Yankee fan with an abundance of pride in stars and stripes and pinstripes? Not only is this lawsuit bogus, Mr. Campeau-Laurion deserves the ultimate pinstriped punishment: for his one-man war on Yankee tradition, honor, and common sense he must be banned for life from The Stadium.
No offense to Joba. He is certainly a talent and could be a great player for years to come. But never has one Yankee generated so much off-the-field hype while doing so little on it. It’s part of what is wrong with the Bombers in Generation YES. The network fed into the fan hype and hysteria from the get go and produced that terrible, ostentatious interview show - filled with blubbering schoolteachers and ex-girlfriends. And every time he throws a pitch, YES broadcasters are right there to give us the radar-gun reading. As if he’s the only guy in baseball that can throw 98 mph! But that’s the problem: it’s all moving too fast. Yankee Legends are made in October, not the regular season. On this scale, Joba’s bug episode is his defining Yankeeography Moment thus far. And that’s not good news.
So here’s an idea: give the kid some breathing room and let his talent (not the hype) dictate his place in Yankee lore.
As if to temper the imminent backlash, Hal Steinbrenner goes out on a limb and declares that ’small amounts’ of tickets at the New Stadium may be priced too high. Then comes today’s hatchet job by Joel Sherman in the Post. What has become rapidly apparent is that this truly is the house that A-Rod built. The era of the big, ‘roid popping, larger-than-life slugger is over. And so is the era of the amenities-laden, over-baked, everything-but-the-kitchen-sink stadium. But now the Yankees are stuck with both because they didn’t have the foresight to realize where the game was headed. They are stuck in a permanent Yankeeography Moment, too in love with their own legacy and sheen, like A-Rod kissing himself in the mirror.
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