Fans are fanatical.

Steve Politi tears down some low-hanging fruit:

"Still, since Yankee fans love to consider themselves among the smartest and most engaged in professional sports, it’s only fair to point out the naïveté of what happened in the first inning Tuesday night."

Do Yankee fans really consider themselves this?

Or is it just something that sportswriters claim Yankee fans consider themselves?


"That was when those fans went from merely bitter to downright dopey."

Neither.

Perhaps the loss of Cano should have caused an emotional response from Yankee fans in general, but he was simply never a huge draw.


"That was when Robinson Cano, for the first time in his Seattle Mariners uniform, trotted to his familiar spot at second base and was serenaded this throaty chant from the once-adoring Bleacher Creatures: 

'You sold out! You sold out! You sold out!'

It was loud, it was rehearsed, and even if Cano said later that he didn’t hear it, it was all you could do not to run out to left field and check to see if the beer sales were abnormally high."

It was cold outside, so beer sales were likely abnormally low.

From a Yankee fan perspective, Cano sold out because he joined a team that wasn't the Yankees. Fan psychology is not very complicated.


"Forget, for a moment, that the fans were sitting in a stadium that cost $1 billion – a giant ATM that George Steinbrenner built to replace a baseball shrine that once sat across the street.

Forget, too, that this is a franchise built on the backs of players who, for decades, have left other teams for the nine-digit contracts that only the Yankees were willing to pay. Jason Giambi. Mark Teixeira. CC Sabathia.

Forget, finally, that the team spent nearly $500 million just this offseason on players, including $153 million on Jacoby Ellsbury – who, it should be noted, received a warm reception from the team he left, the hated Red Sox."

That is a lot of things to forget and I'm finding it more difficult to forget since you just reminded me.


"This, on a dreary night in the Bronx, was cold in every way. Cano – who had nine elite-level seasons in New York, won a championship in 2009 and was an MVP-caliber player on a bad team last season – received as rough a reception as anyone can remember for a returning Yankee player."

Get a grip. The booing was mild and good-natured and the real insult is when a returning player is completely ignored, which is what happens most of the time.


"Instead, when CC Sabathia struck out Cano swinging to end the first inning, the crowded cheered wildly. It happened again when he grounded to first, where Teixeira made a soft toss to Sabathia to record the out.

That is, when the first baseman with the $180-million contract tossed to the pitcher who opted out three years into a $161-million contract to sign a new $122 million contract."

Right.

They are our sellouts because they are currently wearing the Pinstripes.

We root for a piece of laundry, as Seinfeld would say.

The fans are not as foolish as you seem to think. They understand how their team was constructed. They understand the payroll advantage the Yankees enjoy. They understand that most players would take the money and run.

They weren't engaging in a philosophical dissertation. They were just having some fun at the ballpark. Good times.

Fans are not hypocrites because their only principle is to root for their team.

Fans are drunk and funny and enjoying themselves.

Cano was not a big star in NY simply because he was overshadowed by many other players.

The boos directed towards him were quite mild and good-natured

Speaking of the actual baseball game:

1) When will the press officially cease referring to CC Sabathia as an ace?

2) Why the heck does Brett Gardner strike out so much? It's the craziest stat on the Yankees. He strikes out as often as a power hitter and he hits less than 10 HRs per season.

Phil Mushnick is probably the funnest guy to hang out with.

"While stuck in the car with John Sterling on Saturday, listening to one of his lectures about baseball, it struck me: If he knows so much about baseball, why, for the last 25 years, has he not waited for the umpire’s home-run signal before calling it a home run?

And with 40 years of radio play-by-play experience, he always pooh-poohed fundamentals.


On Saturday, his 'At the end of 6 ½, 4-3, Yanks' — a standard Sterling cut-away — doesn’t cut it for radio. Audiences can’t see whom the Yankees are playing."

1) You weren't "stuck in your car." You were at home with the radio on listening intently to your favorite radio announcer. You don't need to make excuses. You love it and we love you for loving it.

2) You knew the whole time who the Yankees were playing.

Jesus Montero is fat.

 Pineda was traded for Montero, as we all know.

Therefore, Jon Heyman feels compelled to bring up Montero ... and mention the word "neck":

"Maybe they are guilty of not knowing how crazy he is about this stuff, of not knowing that on the maturity scale he's in a neck-and-neck (sorry) battle for the basement with even Jesus Montero, the young man with the sinking career he was traded for two years ago, the young man who admitted upon arriving in Seattle's camp this spring that the reason he looked like he weighed 270 pounds and resembled a blimp is that he couldn't stop himself from eating everything in sight.

Montero is buried in the minors for struggling Seattle, so in terms of baseball value the Yankees stand far ahead in the trade of child-like savants. They are quite a pair indeed, a couple addicts in their own way (Montero for food and Pineda pine tar). But in the race for maturity, by owning up to his sins even Montero may be a neck in front."

Teixeira's 0-for-4 with 4 strikeouts could sink the season.

Reactions are required.

Over-reactions are dumb:

"Just in case Michael Pineda never makes it as a New York Yankee, he decided to prep himself for a second career as a stand-up comic. How else can anyone explain a 'Saturday Night Live' skit disguised as a Fenway Park start against the defending World Series champs?"

No one is defending it.


"Funny? This was Kevin Hart times Steve Carell funny. The same pitcher who used pine tar on his throwing hand in his last start against the Boston Red Sox, only to get away with it, decided to apply the same PED (performance-enhancing dirt) to the right side of his neck Wednesday night, in full view of millions of viewers and, ultimately, the umpire who tossed him from the game."

Funny? No.

No one said it was funny.


"If there's even going to be an October, that is. What if the Yankees end Jeter's career by losing out on a playoff spot by one game, or two, in part because one of their most talented pitchers got himself ejected and suspended over something so impossibly foolish?

Then Michael Pineda's comedy act at Fenway won't seem the least bit funny."

Way to bring it home.

No one said it was funny in the first place.


If the Yankees miss the playoffs by one game, or two, there are thousands upon thousands of reasons why. If their garbage $20 million first baseman hits 0 HRs this season, then they won't make the playoffs and Jeter will cry. Wait, what does this have to do with Jeter?


If the Yankees don't have enough pitching depth to cover two Pineda starts, they won't make the playoffs, anyway. Besides, there's no reason to think a Pineda start is a guaranteed win. Maybe Nuno will pitch 12 shutout innings and it's a blessing in disguise ... the Yankees make the playoffs BY ONE GAME and Jeter gets a ring ... and we can all thank John Farrell, in retrospect, for saving the Yankees' season.

I searched for "PED" in this David Ortiz article.

This is what I found:

"Undoubtedly, Ortiz's legacy jumped to a different level last year."

They won. They beat the Braves. They're 9-9.

So you're the "Big G."

... and there is really no reason to think you'd have anything more than a moderately successful major league career if you hadn't taken steroids.

... and you've re-branded yourself as a positive clubhouse influence.

... and you're apparently going straight a major-league manager job when you retire.

... and you were never suspended, not even for a single game.

... and, as Alex Rodriguez pays for your sins, I'm wondering why you would even be allowed have a job in the major leagues.

Don't say Alex Rodriguez.

Can Mike Lupica go an entire week without mentioning ARod?:

"You know the best thing to ever happen to Ryan Braun, like in his whole life?"

Like, don't say, like, Alex Rodriguez.


"Alex Rodriguez."

OMG.


That's all you have to say on the matter? A missed learning opportunity. Maybe you could have explored the injustice of double standards and the media's role in fostering animus and infiltrating the legal process.

I love the Yankees' increased use of the defensive shifts ...

... and the defensive shifts surely seem to be effective.

Last night, Suzyn Waldman pointed out that the pitcher needs to throw the ball in the right place in order to properly execute the strategy.


I understand what she is trying to say.

She's trying to say that a hitter can easily punch an outside pitch through the hole ... assuming that's what the hitter is inclined to attempt.


Having said that, the notion that a pitcher needs to execute his pitches in order to be effective?

Yeah.

That's kind of known as "pitching."

J.R. Murphy

Girardi will call him Murphy-ey:

"Though Murphy had been referred to as 'J.R' for about five years, he actually goes by 'John Ryan,' he told Dan Pfeiffer of bronxpinstripes.com. 'I've always been John Ryan to my family,' he said. 'It was only a baseball thing that they shortened my name to J.R.' "

I must concede, Jeter's playing time is a topic people want to talk about.

Girardi is going to rest an elderly, injured player. That's not really a topic for discussion. I think the Yankee attendance is going to go way down next year, and the Yankees already know this.

Girardi rests Jeter.

Found someone who mentioned it.

But was Girardi really catching flak?

Baseball players not playing for the 2014 Yankees.

"This was about 11 o’clock on Saturday morning before a Red Sox-Yankees game, second Saturday of the season, and Joe Girardi wasn’t just explaining why Derek Jeter wasn’t in his starting lineup — maybe you missed it, but Jeter’s retiring at the end of the season — Girardi was also showing you why it is so easy to root for him, and how well he does handling a job as big as there is in sports."

I sure hope ths is a mindblowing quote from Girardi.


“ 'I have to manage (Jeter) with a focus of winning games and keeping him healthy, not being a farewell tour,' Girardi said. 'I wasn’t hired to put on a farewell tour.' "

Yes, Jeter is old.


"Right there, before Hiroki Kuroda threw the first pitch on Saturday afternoon or a run was scored, ..."

On account of it being about 11 o'clock in the morning and the game started about 1 o'clock in the afternoon.


" ... Girardi had given you the money quote of the day, and the headline."

Jesus, you really don't even bother watching the games, do you?

McCann's two HRs didn't surpass that quote as the headline?


"But Girardi, who wasn’t being pressed on his decision or braced in the interview room, talked about that decision as if he wasn’t just playing to those of us sitting across from him in the interview area across from the Yankee clubhouse, but playing to the bleachers as well."

Well, gee.

A manager was using the press to communicate with the fans.

Maybe if Girardi kisses Lupica's butt just enough, Lupica will write a nice article.


"So Jeter was a story on Saturday because he wouldn’t be starting a day game after a night game."

Was Jeter a story? Was this a headline? Was this a money quote?

I haven't seen mention of these things anywhere else.

It's also not the first time this season that Jeter has been rested.


"But the more intriguing absent player for the Yankees is the one — Cano — who will be missing all the games this season, and next season, and the eight after that because he is playing for the Mariners. The Yankees try to beat the Red Sox and everybody else now without their best hitter and one of the best in the game."

Errr ... nice transition.

If you wanted to write an article about Cano, why didn't you just write an article about Cano?


"The Yankees lose Jeter next season. But now they’ve lost Cano forever, because of a business decision so clearly informed by what the end of Alex Rodriguez’s 10-year contract looks like, and the disaster it has become for them, and not just financially, even with Rodriguez off the books this season because of his drug suspension.

Once Jeter stood there at shortstop at Yankee Stadium and had Rodriguez, when he could still play and still hit, on his right and Cano, with his own immense talent for baseball, on his left. Both gone from Yankee Stadium. Rodriguez’s locker, no name plate on it, is next to Jacoby Ellsbury’s now. Cano’s locker, to Jeter’s right, near the entrance to the showers, belongs to Carlos Beltran, whose job it is to supply runs and danger in the middle of the lineup the way Cano did for a long time."

Thanks for the informative update regarding the layout of the Yankee locker room.

Guess what, everybody? Beltran's locker is near the entrance to the showers.


I don't get it. Are you trying to convince us that you were inside the Yankee locker room? We believe you.

The rest of the information provided is very old news. Jeter's retiring, Cano's gone, ARod is supspended, Beltran and Ellsbury have joined the Yankees.


"Still: Taking Cano out of the lineup is like taking a Cabrera away, or a Mike Trout, or a Papi Ortiz."

If Papi is on steroids, that is.

Yes, we are in total agreement. The Yankees lost their best hitter. That was in December. This is April.


"You have to know the deal with managers and coaches, whether they’ve got long-term contracts or not: They want to do everything in their power to make sure the farewell tour isn’t their own."

Money quote, Lupica! Money quote!

So your point is ... well, I'm not sure. It sure took a long time to get there.

Jeter is old, and Jeter no long plays with Cano or ARod, whose lockers no longer house their clothes, since they're no longer on the team, so why would their clothes be in that locker if they're no longer on the team? The manager of the Yankees will have to manage the players on the team instead of managing the players who used to be on the team, and some of the current players are old, and all of the current players are inferior to Cano, who is no longer on the team. and whose locker is now occupied by Ellsbury ... I mean, Beltran ... wait, who got Cano's old locker?

In summary, Alex Rodriguez.


"Oh, I get it:

Now Alex Rodriguez just wants to be left alone."

Yes, why won't your newspaper just leave him alone?

Or can you at least write something interesting about him?

In the last week or so, I've read a lot about ARod doing nothing.

Good investigative reporting about the empty nameplate on his locker. Almost as good as the article about how ARod was not going to be a MLB TV analyst.

Answering a question nobody was asking.

Unless someone was asking whether or not Alex Rodriguez would make a good TV baseball analyst.

I knew that while ARod was under suspension that the one-trick-pony so-called sportswriters at the Daily News would stretch the story past its breaking point.

In order to keep their ARod quota, they're just make stuff up out of thin air.

Nova isn't a big mystery.

"Five years into the Ivan Nova experiment, the Yankees still have no idea what to expect whenever the big fellow climbs a mound.

The maddening version of Nova showed up again at Yankee Stadium on Tuesday, when the Yankees lost a very ugly one, 14-5, to the Orioles. His pitches strayed way up in the strike zone, he was hammered by virtually every Baltimore batter and soon enough Nova was walking off the mound to a cascade of jeers, having given up 10 hits and seven runs in 3.2 innings."

He's a good pitcher, not a great pitcher.

He's a good pitcher who had a lousy game.

Besides, I thought it was Jeter's fault.


"Maybe he could have been a bit luckier. There was a moment in the first inning, a potential double-play grounder, when Derek Jeter might have rescued Nova. Instead, Jeter looked every bit his 39 years going to his left and the ball scooted under the shortstop’s glove."

Nice.

Jeter's lack of range is a thing now.

"In the first inning, after Nick Markakis had led off the game with a single to center field, the Orioles’ designated hitter, Delmon Young, hit a ground ball toward the shortstop side of second base. After a slow couple of steps, Jeter lunged but could not snag the grounder, which went into center for a single. A shortstop with better range than Jeter’s — he is rated near the bottom in most defensive metrics — could have turned that grounder into a double play, or at least a forceout."

It's going viral.

It's a meme.

Gee, this has been a Felz meme for 19 years. This was a Felz meme before Felz even heard of memes.

What next?

Are people going to notice that Gardner strikes out too often?

Jeter posing for his statue again.

"There was no pomp or pageantry at the Yankees' second home game of the season Tuesday. Nor much performance, either. A day after the fun of Derek Jeter's final home opener and a Core Four reunion, the Yanks fell flat against Baltimore in an ugly 14-5 loss in which they surrendered 20 hits.

Ivan Nova couldn't get out of the fourth inning and Jeter couldn't get to a ground ball up the middle in the first inning that might've saved the Yankees some headaches."

The Yankees lost 14-5 and Jeter hasn't had range to his left in the past 19 years.


"With an older infield of Jeter at short and Brian Roberts at second, infield range was one of the Yankee concerns entering the season."

Right.

Still, the Yankees lost 14-5 and Jeter hasn't had range to his left in the past 19 years.

So the Daily News has identified infield range as a Yankee concern ... and Jeter misses a ground ball in a game that the Yankees lose 14-5.

I suppose if you 're predisposed to look for something, you're bound to find it.

Slag on Teixeira all you want.

Few would disagree that Teixeira should bat lower in the lineup.

I just question the timeliness of this article, what with Teixeira being on the DL and all. It's kind of like explaining why Raul Ibanez should be dropped in the order.

Pondering the definition of "justice" a couple of days after the completion of a series in which Melky Cabrera hit three HRs against the Yankees.

Kiss the ring of Bud Selig, get a smaller suspension. Extortion in the pursuit of justice.

Alex Rodriguez story.

I had a feeling the Daily News crack staff would find itself twiddling its thumbs. You know, baseball season has started.

Alex, I'll take "things a hack sportswriter might say" for $1,000.

Actual summary to Mike Lupica's Mets' game story. Makes me wonder if "they" will find Amelia Earhart before Lupica finds a funny punchline:

"Carlos Torres and Scott Rice had come out of the bullpen behind Gee in the seventh and made you wish Mayor Bill de Blasio, who’d thrown out the first pitch, could come back in to pitch; both making you wonder if they find Jimmy Hoffa on this day before he found the strike zone."

I like how Jimmy Hoffa is still his go-to "missing object" reference.

Oh, and he opens and closes with the Bill de Blasio joke. Because that joke is that damn good. But he explains that de Blasio had thrown out the first pitch, just in case you didn't get the subtle, subversive genius of the joke.