Cinderella Story

First we had the pool tournament, then in an effort to keep his pitchers from being bored, Mark Feinsand reports that Joe Girardi instituted the first annual (for his sake we hope there's more than one) WBC Ryder's Cup (with credit going to A.J. Burnett, who had the day's lone hole in one, for the idea).

Girardi split his pitchers into international teams and held a putting contest among his hurlers.

The countries were Chinese Taipei (Chien-Ming Wang), Cuba (Christian Garcia), Japan (Kei Igawa), Dominican Republic (Jose Veras), Puerto Rico (Jonathan Albaladejo), United States (A.J. Burnett), Mexico (Sergio Mitre) and “Native America” (Joba).

Since Mariano Rivera was throwing in the bullpen, Panama could not be represented. So Girardi came up with "Native America" for Joba Chamberlain.

Players had to putt between the bases using baseballs and bats. Wang and his teammates, minor league pitching coach Scott Aldred and Phil Hughes, beat Igawa, and right-handers David Robertson and Steven Jackson to take the top prize. And it was a great prize- they only had to run half as much as the rest of the pitchers. Though it only affected Hughes, since Wang isn't up to full speed yet, and, of course, Aldred doesn't have to.

Goose Gossage was asked by John Harper if Billy Martin would have come up with such a game.

“Nope,” Gossage said. “We went to the bar.”

Oh, how times have changed.