YCN: Yankees Report to Camp After A-Rodiculous Off-Season

My latest for Yahoo:

The Yankees' pitchers and catchers reported to Tampa, Florida Tuesday morning for the beginning of this year's Spring Training. Nothing seemed to out of the ordinary, but that will change once the position players report to camp by February 20 (excluding those taking part in the World Baseball Classic).

The current team will look a little different from the group that took the field the past few years and there will be players in camp that one would never expect to see in a Yankees uniform. It's the result of an odd winter-hot stove season.

Things actually started to look and feel very different before the 2012 season was over. The Yankees won the AL East, but barely squeaked past the Baltimore Orioles in the division series. Neither team hit, which was a sign of things to come when the Yankees faced the Detroit Tigers in the ALCS. The Tigers knocked the Yankees out of the playoffs for the second straight season, taking all four games in an embarrassing sweep in which the Yankees hit .157 as a team.¹

Joe Girardi pulled the trigger on the first big shake up in the Bronx when he sent Raul Ibanez up to pinch-hit for the slumping (what an understatement!) Alex Rodriguez in Game 3 of the division series. It paid off when Raul Ibanez hit a game tying home run and later won the game in extra innings with another Bronx Blast. Everyone was happy, A-Rod said all the right things, etc. Then Girardi pinch-hit for A-Rod again in Game 4 and sat him in Game 5. Suddenly things were not so peaceful.

To compound matters, Rodriguez spent some of his time in the dugout flirting with a woman behind the Yankees bench. The networks and local papers blew it out of proportion as though no player had done something like that before. But then again this was A-Rod, who might as well change his name to Lightning-Rod at this point.

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Yankees and Rupert Murdoch Not Perfect Together

If you know me, you know I hate Fox News and much of the way Fox Sports televises games. Fox Broadcasting is part of News Corporation, the mass media entity run by the 81-year old spawn of the devil, Rupert Murdoch. So you should be able to understand why I threw up in my mouth a little after I read that Murdoch is on the verge of purchasing a 49% share of the YES Network.

The team is not for sale according to an unnamed official, but at one time George Steinbrenner considered selling the team to another media dirt bag named Jim Dolan. Thankfully, Steinbrenner had a change of heart. Will Hal and Hank Steinbrenner stick to their guns at a time when the economy is hurting and the Yankees priced themselves out of packed houses with a new stadium that was aimed at those who eat pate and drink champagne?

While the NY media has been focused on the Mets money troubles and their involvement with Bernie Madoff, perhaps the Yankees are hurting as well. (Which means making less money; to you and me that's not a loss, but it is those who are a part of the lifestyles of the rich and famous.)

Selling a chunk of the network and/or the team itself is one thing, but to sell it to a scum bag like Murdoch is another. By now you know of the phone hacking scandal that News Corp was involved in, which led to Murdoch closing the doors on the 168-yr old "News of the World" and caused him to drop out of a deal to take over a satellite company that would have been worth billions of dollars. Numerous criminal charges were filed against the executives of News Corp., including Murdoch.

The Tasmanian Devil was even called unfit to run a newspaper empire by a British Parliamentary panel. Apparently the Steinbrenner family doesn't care who they deal with as long as their money is green.

This past Sunday, Murdoch caused controversy by tweeting about the "Jewish owned press" being anti-Israel. He later apologized, but pretty much said he didn't know why he was. He still felt he was right, which is no surprise. Fox News has built an empire by blatantly lying to their viewers and never having any accountability for it. As a matter of fact, Murdoch takes no responsibility for anything his companies or employees do.

Hal, Hank, Randy Levine, just say NO to the YES sale. I don't want Derek Jeter and CC Sabathia to one day get their checks from News Corp.