While we all think Red Sox fans may whine more than Yankee fans, an impartial winetaster from Canada determined yesterday that the Yanks’ charity wine is better than that of the Sox. Bobby Abreu’s Finest Merlot and Jorge Posada’s Jorge Cabernet trumped the David Ortiz and Jason Varitek vintages. In fact, Ortiz’s wine was, in the words of Paul Grieco, a dud. Sounds about right to me.

Despite throwing a successful 75-pitch outing against Minor Leaguers on Sunday, Andy Pettitte’s prospects in the early going this season look bleak. The Yankees pitching depth, it seems, will be tested early.

According to reports out of New York, Pettitte’s back did not respond well at all to the weekend outing, and the Yanks believe he could be out for as long as two months. To make matters worse in the eyes of fans, the Yankees plan to replace Pettitte with the much-maligned Kei Igawa who, just a few hours ago, was named the Scranton-Wilkes Barre Opening Day starter.

The Yankees all of a sudden find themselves with a little bit of a pitching problem. While Chien-Ming Wang will retain his place at the front of the rotation, the four pitchers behind him are anything but a given. Mike Mussina will slot into the second starter position, but he’s coming off the worst season of his career and had a shaky Spring Training. Phil Hughes and Ian Kennedy, two youngsters who may struggle at times, will follow Mussina, and Igawa will pick up the rear.

When word of Pettitte’s injury came down, I, like many of you, probably turned your thoughts to the ace in the hole the Yanks seem to carry in their bullpen. Wouldn’t Joba Chamberlain be a much better choice than Kei Igawa? Right now, the Yankees seem unwilling to move Chamberlain out of the pen. They fear that he’ll be used too much too soon and will reach his innings cap before the Yanks need to call on him in October.

While the rained out Opening Day and subsequent 7:05 p.m. rescheduling of the game took some of the damper out of the festivities that surround the start of the season, this news casts a veritable pall over what is usually a joyous time of year. This time, Roger Clemens won’t ride to the rescue. All of a sudden, the Yanks are left with a hole, and Johan Santana sure looked good in his Mets debut.

But the Yanks have overcome adversity before, and they still have the makings of a championship team. Maybe Kei Igawa can step. Maybe he can pitch effectively. That is, after all, why they play the games. And, oh yeah, Happy April Fools Day.

While Morgan Ensberg couldn’t stand the heat he got for picking out Paul O’Neill’s former number, the long-dormant 21 will return to the field this week if the Yanks ever get to begin their season. LaTroy Hawkins, in an effort to honor Roberto Clemente, will don 21 this year, and Bryan Hoch traces the feelings surrounding O’Neill’s number. It will be interesting to see how Hawkins is received for taking what many Yankee fans believe is a number that belongs in the Yankee Pantheon. Hawkins has previously worn 32 and donned 22 with the Yanks in Spring Training. He grew tired of having Brian Bruney call him “Roger.” Doesn’t that sound endearing?

It seems that Hideki Matsui has gone and gotten married to an unnamed 25-year-old Japanese civilian. What makes this story so strange is that Matsui, one of Japan’s most famous bachelors, presented his bride as a black-and-white sketches today. It seems that he won the marriage bet he had going with Bobby Abreu and Derek Jeter. What are the chances this is an early April Fool’s joke?

Over at Bronx Banter, Emma Span takes a look at one of baseball’s age-old questions: If you were a Major Leaguer,what would your at-bat music be? I’d probably go with some old-school Pearl Jam myself. The beginning of “Animal” gets the adrenaline flowing.

It’s getting to the time of year when my roommates and I start our annual whiffle ball league. It’s nothing big, just the three of us and whoever else wants to play. The rules are kind of strange, which is fitting, since there are obstacles galore between us and the home run fence. As much fun as I have, I’m totally envious of these guys:

Is that not the perfect whiffle ball set up? Fence along the edge of the lawn, faux catcher (we use one of those pitching nets), scoreboard, lights…and even a freakin’ practice pitching mound.

I’ll still have to make due with the makeshift field we use, trees and all (we’ve named them Grady and Hanley). But man, what I wouldn’t give for a setup like that.

No. 5 starter for the Yankees, and No. 1 man in the New York political hierarchy. Yep, 2008 seems to be a good year for Ian Patrick Kennedy. Apparently, the state has decided to invoke the “Best Kennedy available clause, a law allows for the “citizens of New York, at any time, [to] install any person with the last name of Kennedy into any public office, without any sort of vote or any clear inclination that said Kennedy is prepared to hold office.” Kennedy himself was elated. “I have now realized my two dreams in life,” he said. “I am a starting pitcher for the New York Yankees, and I am fighting on behalf of the American working citizen in the hallowed halls of Albany.” Fictitious democratic consultant James Michener — no relation to the author, apparently — puts it best: “Who better to bring us all together with boyish charm and perceived integrity than a Kennedy? Nobody, that’s who.”

(Yes, this is satire. I actually liked the idea of the article more than the article itself.)

While everyone appeared to have fun during this afternoon’s celebration of Billy Crystal’s birthday, one writer for The Times thinks that the Pirates blew a golden opportunity to earn some good baseball karma. Writing on the Bats blog, Richard Sandomir takes Paul Maholm to task for throwing Crystal a steady diet of sliders and cut fastballs. “Had Maholm laid it in for Crystal, he might have been reciting David Letterman’s Top 10 list on Friday. Instead, he’s the pitcher with a career 10-15 record who whiffed a comedian one day from turning into a sexagenarian,” he writes. Ouch.

Via PeteAbe comes the news that two more Yankees have lent their visages to Longball Cellars line of Charity Wines. Bobby Abreu and Jorge Posada are the latest two to have their faces immortalized in wine.

Abreu’s Finest is a 2006 Merlot from California. Money from the sale of this wines to the Police Athletic League, the charity of New York’s Finest. The Jorge Cabernet supports The Jorge Posada Foundation.

Also in this latest release is a Schilling Schardonnay. This is an over-the-hill bottle of wine that was once good but now just sits around pretending to be the be-all and end-all of baseball wines.

A little over two weeks ago, Theo Epstein criticized Mike Mussina over his complaints — from 2004 — about the Yankees’ ill-fated trip to Japan to opening the regular season. At the time, Yankee fans were a little surprised about Theo’s seeming breach of protocol. A GM’s criticizing another team’s player for comments about an unrelated incident are exceedingly rare in sports.

Today, the shoe is squarely on the other foot, and I have to wonder if this isn’t some sort of karmic retribution. The Red Sox, you see, now view their upcoming trip to Japan as a huge inconvenience. Josh Beckett, their ace, is out indefinitely with back problems and will miss the trip. Daisuke Matsuzaka’s wife is expecting, and he may miss the trip as well. The trip — two 18-hour plane rides in four days plus two baseball games that actually count — disrupts the rhythm of Spring Training and generally messes with athletes used to routine.

Publicly, in the Boston Herald, the Red Sox are saying that they’re excited to go. They say they could sit back and complain, but they’re just going to tough it out instead. Of course, reading between the lines, complaining is exactly what they’re doing, and I don’t blame them. In this case, I completely sympathize with the players.

As for Mr. Epstein, I think he should take this one as a lesson. Internally, I’m sure there will be a lot of Boston-based grumblings about this trip both before and after. Mussina just happened to share his with the world. For that, he does not deserve the criticism he received. Enjoy your flights, Theo. I hear crossing the international date line twice in 96 hours does wonders to the body.