Lotta Yankees on this list -

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Please consider taking the following poll:

Thanks in advance. And, please feel free to add comments on your opinion in the comments section.

Not many of them:

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How cool would it be if the next guy to make this list also had the last name of “Long”?

Here is the list and those who just missed -

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A-Rod did OK as a two-hitter.

Here’s one way to list them -

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Funny, just a couple of World Series winners on this list.

Funny.

Via Rob Neyer -

Actor William Frawley, who would have turned 125 yesterday, had a unique clause in his I Love Lucy contract: If the Yankees were in the World Series, he didn’t have to work. And in those days the Yankees were in the World Series every year. So Frawley was written completely out of two episodes.

That’s a man of my own heart…

Via the Post-Gazette –

Some players get a watch when a veteran who joins the team takes their jersey number. Daniel McCutchen got a college fund.

For his unborn daughter, due in May.

A.J. Burnett, who took McCutchen’s No. 34 jersey, will start a College America 529 plan for McCutchen’s daugher, McCutchen said. Not quite yet — the child has to be born first so she can get a Social Security number — but soon.

“When a veteran comes in and takes a number, some of the guys usually get something,” McCutchen said. “I know he has kids. He asked me what I wanted, I brought that up.

“Eighteen years from now, we’ll see what the market is.”

In a way, I guess you can say that the Yankees are sending McCutchen’s kid to college…since New York is still paying a chunk of Burnett’s salary.

I’m currently reading a review copy of Marty Appel’s Pinstripe Empire: The New York Yankees from Before the Babe to After the Boss – which is due out on May 8th of this year.

Here’s some background on the book via the publisher:

It has been almost 70 years since Frank Graham wrote The New York Yankees and not since then has there been a truly narrative, traditional history of the team. Thankfully historian Marty Appel, the Yankees’ former PR director, definitively updates their storied history in Pinstripe Empire: The New York Yankees from Before the Babe to After the Boss (May 8, 2012; Bloomsbury hardcover; ISBN 978-1-60819-492-6; $28.00; 640 pages).

While the book hits every important historical milestone in the team’s history, it is the backstage anecdotes and the personalities of players, managers and executives that make the story great reading. The reader is in the clubhouse as the team finally celebrates its first championship – and in the dugout at Fenway Park when they learn their manager, Miller Huggins, has died. There is Bob Shawkey’s bitterness over being fired as manager after one season, and the romp upending tradition produced by Larry MacPhail as his three-year reign as owner ends with a punch-out. There is the day scout Tom Greenwade first laid eyes on Mickey Mantle. There is Gene Michael pondering trading Mariano Rivera for Felix Fermin to play shortstop instead of Derek Jeter. And all the while in the background is New York City – a character in its own right in the story of this colorful team’s history.

Further, here’s what Jane Leavy had to say about the book:

“An opus. Marty Appel brings a fan’s passion and a historian’s dispassion to bear on the Pinstripe Empire. He makes familiar terrain new again and uncovers original material where no one else thought to look. This is the definitive history of the New York Yankees.”

I am sincerely enjoying what I have read in Pinstripe Empire so far – and will do a full review of it when I am done with the book.

When I first started reading it, my mind flashed back to the late 1970′s, when I was a young fan visiting Yankee Stadium. I remember, at that time, visiting a souvenir stand in the bowels of the Stadium where they sold yearbooks, those plastic batting helmets, baseballs stamped with team signatures, etc. There, in the display case, among the other sundry items for sale, was a stack of Peter Golenbock’s Dynasty. Seeing the cover of that book, then with pinstripes and the Yankees interlocking “NY” on the cover, on sale in the House That Ruth Built, I thought to myself “This must be a book that every Yankees fan has to read.”

Now, reading Appel’s Pinstripe Empire, I’m thinking the same thing. I love how it tells the story and is not just a collection of hard facts. It’s a novel, not a text book. But, it’s still a great chronicle of the Yankees franchise – from its beginning through last season.

Further, I would imagine that any fan of baseball history would enjoy reading this book.

Again, I will share a complete review once I am done with the book. In any event, I wanted to share some news on this one now – in case some were not aware of its release in a couple of months. Based on what I have read so far, it’s worth having on your radar.

I recently read Stuart Miller’s Good Wood: The Story of the Baseball Bat.

Funny story: When I first started reading it, my wife and daughter saw me with it and asked “What are you reading?” And, when I told them that it was a book about the origin and history of baseball bats, they said “Only you…”

Having read the book, I hope that’s not the case.

Good Wood was very well researched and entertaining. Granted, I am a baseball junkie and perhaps someone who had little interest in the game may not have the same experience (as I did).

In any event, there’s a lot of interesting things in Stuart’s book that I never knew about before reading it. And, Stuart has a nice writing style.

I was very happy to have read Good Wood. In fact, given that it’s probably one of a kind due to the subject matter, and since it’s so well done, I would say that Good Wood: The Story of the Baseball Bat is something that you would want to have in your Essential Baseball Library.

Yeah, Mike Busch.  Well, that’s what you get when you ask for players with RBI>.2*PA with a minimum of 100 career PA -

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And, this is what you get when you move the bar to “.18*PA”-

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Joel Sherman writes about Alex Rodriguez today -

Let’s play a game. Try to imagine what Alex Rodriguez would have received had he been a free agent this past offseason.

Some teams would have abstained because they did not want the circus that comes with A-Rod. But even just the baseball — normally an asset for Rodriguez — would not have been a strong selling point.

This will be his age-36 season, and just four times in major league history has a third baseman 36 or older qualified for the batting title and produced an OPS over .900. The only person to do it twice was Mike Schmidt, but he was done as a useful player after his age-37 season. Rodriguez turns 37 in July, so how long would you want to make his contract?

Especially when you consider Rodriguez’s OPS trend line the past five years: 1.067-.965-.933-.847-.823. Then throw in revelations of a failed steroid test, hip surgery in 2009 and injuries to his shoulder, knee and thumb last season that contributed to .276 with 16 homers and 62 RBIs — his worst full major league campaign.

And Rodriguez grew less effective as the season transpired. His second-half slugging percentage was .353, which was the same as the season-long result for Tony Gwynn. Unfortunately for Rodriguez that is Tony Gwynn Jr.

Once a graceful athlete, Rodriguez was not running smoothly and, without solid legs, his swing lacked fluidity and fury.

So, of course you can see the Yankees’ problem. They have Rodriguez, from this point forward, at six years, $143 million.

So they need him to defy both his trend line and the history of the game by being really good, and not just for 2012. This became even more vital when the Yankees traded Jesus Montero.

I think Montero was a for-real hitter. I believe he would have begun the 2012 season hitting seventh or eighth in the Yankees lineup and slowly worked his way up. I think in the near future the long-term 3-4 would have been established as Robinson Cano followed by Montero.

But now Montero is gone, and the Yankees do not have another hitter of his potential on the horizon. For financial reasons pertaining to the new collective bargaining agreement, they also are determined to stay under the $189 million luxury-tax threshold in 2014. Thus, it will be difficult to obtain an outside hitter for big dollars. Heck, in part because of the presence of Rodriguez’s contract (and also those of CC Sabathia and Mark Teixeira), it will be problematic for the Yankees to stay under $189 million and keep Cano and Curtis Granderson long term after their pacts expire following the 2013 season.

Even if A-Rod does get 500 PA this season, it would not shock me to see him top out at 25 HR and 90 RBI. And, what about 2013, 2014, 2015, 2016 and 2017?

Let’s just say this: In 2016 the Yankees will be paying $67.5 million to three very old players: A-Rod, Teixeira and Sabathia. Sure, maybe they can think of way to get out of that over the next four years? Or, maybe they will be fine with that as these three wrap up what should be Hall of Fame careers? It is interesting that their G.M.’s contract is up after 2014. Maybe he doesn’t want to be around in 2016 when this all comes crashing down?

What would I do? I would pray that A-Rod, Tex and CC all perform to a high level this year and in the next two years that follow. And, if, by chance, the Yankees were not in the chase during 2013 or 2014, then I would beg a contending team to take one of them, even if it meant eating some contract, in exchange for some prospects and salary relief. Granted, it would be a hard sell. And, I’m not even sure if the players would approve a trade. So, this plan might be a waste of time…just like A-Rod is going to be for the Yankees, in the near future, and for a long time.

The list since 1901 -

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I never realized how many teams Kevin Mitchell played for…beyond the Mets and Giants.

Some story, eh?

As O.J. once said…it never hurts to lawyer up.

It’s a small list -

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I wonder if anyone will ever get six of these seasons?

Via Boston.com -

If you go to JetBluePark.com, you won’t get information about the new home of Red Sox spring training. Instead you’ll be redirected to the New York Yankees website. That’s because Eric Engelman, a Cubs fan from Fort Myers, Fla., bought the domain name for $8 before the Red Sox or Jet Blue could get their hands on it — and programmed the site to redirect to Yankees.com.

The News-Press in Fort Myers first reported the domain name debacle, prompting Sox fans to wonder whether the team could grab the name from Engelman or force him to stop directing visitors to the Yankees site.

Christopher Gibson, a Suffolk Law School professor who has been an arbitrator in dozens of domain name disputes, said that if the Sox or Jet Blue decide to take the matter to authorities, they’d probably have a case. But it might not be easy.

In order to win a domain name from someone who has purchased it, a company or person has to prove that it owns a trademark, that the domain is identical or confusingly similar to that trademark, and that the domain was registered and is being used in bad faith, said Gibson, who helped create the Uniform Domain-Name Dispute-Resolution Policy, which governs domain name and trademark issues internationally.

This case might be complicated, he said, because it’s unclear who has rights to the Jet Blue Park name — the Red Sox or Jet Blue.

As for Engelman, he said he didn’t expect any of this attention. He told us (after his grandma gave us his number) that he registered the domain last March as a joke and doesn’t mean any harm to the Red Sox.

“I really did think it was funny,” he said.

Engelman, 30, said he’s read that the Red Sox front office isn’t happy with him, but he hasn’t heard from anyone affiliated with the team. “You called my [grandmother],” he said, laughing. “I’m not that hard to find.”

We asked the Sox what the team planned to do about the domain issue, but we haven’t heard back.

Pretty funny.

It’s a fun list -

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What jumps out at you the most here?

It’s an interesting list -

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Totally forgot that Irabu closed games in his last season.

Via the Sporting News –

Brian Cashman is taking partial credit for Major League Baseball’s new playoff format.

The Yankees’ general manager on Sunday admitted what many people suspected: The Bombers essentially conceded the American League East to the Tampa Bay Rays in 2010 once it became clear that both teams were postseason-bound. New York finished a game behind in the division race and claimed the wild card.

“I’m not taking away from Tampa Bay, but we didn’t try to win the division,” Cashman told reporters at the Yankees’ spring facility in Tampa, Fla. “We tried to line ourselves up for the playoffs and that worked.

“The division title was rendered meaningless the way the set-up was. It really meant nothing more than a T-shirt and a hat.”

That, Cashman said, led to commissioner Bud Selig’s push for a second wild-card team in each league and a one-game wild-card playoff, which should motivate teams to win their division. The new format could begin as early as the 2012 season.

“Baseball took notice and made, I think, a very smart change. Bud Selig did a remarkable thing adding the wild card and I think he’s now doing another remarkable thing by enhancing the playoff push,” Cashman said. “It certainly brings back the importance of being a division winner again.”

No response from MLB was reported.

Uh, does Cashman realize that teams punted the race for first, and settled on the ‘card, long before the Yankees did it in 2010?

Look at Granderson’s Batting Runs for the last five years:

X

He was just league average (thereabouts) in 2006, 2009 and 2010.  And, in 2007, 2008 and 2011, he was way above average.

That’s down, up, up, down, down, and up – for those scoring at home.

Any guess on what he will do in 2012?

So, are Don Drysdale and Catfish Hunter the greatest “modern” pitchers to die young? See this list -