ByScott Proctor’s Arm directs our attention to a piece in The Daily News about Roger Clemens. This time, Hank Steinbrenner opened his month and smart words flowed out: The Yankees will not be signing Clemens in 2008. Well, phew. Talk about $20 million poorly spent. · (8) ·
ByAfter yesterday’s news about the free parking spots at Yankee Stadium,
Presidential candidateMayor Mike Bloomberg expressed his displeasure with the plan. “It does sound like a large number,” Bloomberg said, as he reminded the public that he controls two of the five seats on the board that will set parking rates the Stadium. Bronx Borough President Adolfo Carrion also said that the number of free spots would be “examined and addressed” before the deal is sealed, according to The Daily News. · (4) ·
The Yankees are still not out of the Johan Santana sweepstakes, they say, and today, Hank Steinbrenner gets back to work as he attempts to figure out the team’s final decision on Santana. Or at least, final until Hank changes his mind again.
Anthony McCarron of The Daily News has more from Hank:
“I think the Twins realize our offer is the best one,” Steinbrenner said Wednesday in a telephone interview. “I feel confident they’re not going to trade him before checking with us one last time and I think they think we’ve already made the best offer.”
Steinbrenner said the offer “does not include two of the three young pitchers” – Phil Hughes and Ian Kennedy, from a group that also includes untouchable Joba Chamberlain – “but it’s still the best one. And let’s face it, we’re the best able to handle the kind of contract (extension) Santana will be after.”
Steinbrenner would not divulge the Yanks’ offer, but multiple reports have pegged it as Hughes, outfielder Melky Cabrera, pitching prospect Jeff Marquez and another prospect.
So Hank, who once said that the Yanks were completely out of the Santana sweepstakes, has once again changed his mind. In fact, he seems to feel that the offer the Yanks reportedly didn’t have on the table anymore is the best one out there. Don’t worry; I’m as confused as you are.
Meanwhile, Steinbrenner spouted off a few other contradictions. First, he noted that “a majority of fans don’t want to lose Hughes,” and then he said that the Yanks are content to “stay the way we are. We’re going to have the best pitching by far in baseball in two or three years and we’ll be tough this year.”
So what’s it going to be, Hank? Do you keep the guy projected to front what you just called the best pitching in baseball? Or do you trade him along with a few other players for one year of Johan Santana and a window to negotiate a contract extension? You all know where we stand. Hopefully, the Yanks’ brass realize what’s best for the team.
Torre issues half-hearted defense of his teams
By · CommentsOkay, okay. One more (for now) Mitchell Report story.
This time, it’s a visit with our old friend Number Six. As you may recall, Joe Torre was the skipper of all of those Yankee teams in the late 1990s and early 2000s when many members of the teams were supposedly based on the testimony of one person using steroids and other performance-enhancing drugs.
Torre, with his Hall of Fame spot all but guaranteed, did all he could to defend his team. No, wait. No, he didn’t. Torre issued a rather equivocal statement coming out in support of his favorite players but not quite picking sides. ESPN had more:
Joe Torre won’t pick sides between Roger Clemens and Brian McNamee, the former New York Yankees strength coach who accused the Rocket of using performance-enhancing drugs.
“You’re not going to get me in that jackpot,” the former Yankees manager said Wednesday. “I’d rather just stay away from making any in-depth comment about the whole steroid-HGH thing…”
“I’m very close to Roger. When I say close to him, he was a great competitor for me. Andy the same way. And I certainly know they’re two proud individuals that only like to do the right thing,” Torre said. “I’d just like to leave it at that…”
“It made it look like a lopsided report,” Torre said. “Plus, don’t forget, the Yankees have so many people coming through there on a year-to-year basis. We changed over quite often, whether it would be a player for the month of May, a player for the month of September. But I think the big part of it was the access, where these two people were both based in New York…”
“When you’re talking about 80 players that supposedly were using one thing or another, to me it may be an incomplete report,” he said. “The only thing I do know is that the most important thing for us in baseball is to make sure that when we take the field, that the fans trust us. So whatever we have to do to make that happen, I think that’s important.”
So either Joe Torre literally had no idea what was happening in his clubhouse with the players under his control or he just flat-out doesn’t want to talk about it. As always, I have no idea what the truth is; I’m just telling you what someone else said, and this time, that someone else was the man in charge for 12 seasons. Take that for what you will.
With a new year come new hopes
By · CommentsTen years ago, New York and the baseball world witnessed the pinnacle of success for the New York Yankees. The Bombers, led by no one in particular, went 114-48 during the regular season and 11-2 in October to bring home a World Series Championship in resounding fashion.
That season, Scott Brosius issued one of my all-time favorite baseball quotes. “The core of the team is the team,” he said in a July 5, 1998 article in The Times. The Yanks would go on to win the World Series in 1999 and 2000, but they never did recapture the magic of that record-setting 1998 season. With El Duque and Shane Spencer arriving in the Bronx and a David Wells perfect game in May, it was truly a season for the ages.
When the clock struck midnight a few nights ago, 2008 arrived. Ten years later, the Yanks, despite all of their wins, haven’t had as much success in the first decade of the 2000s as they did in the last decade of the 1990s. From 2001 through 2007, the Yanks are unmatched in the regular season. They are 686-445 with a decade winning percentage of .606, but when the calendar flips to the postseason, everything looks different.
2001: A heartbreaking seven-game loss to the Diamondbacks in the World Series.
2002: A four-game loss to the Angels in the ALDS.
2003: A six-game loss to the Marlins in the World Series.
2004: This did not happen. Really.
2005: A five-game loss at the hands of Bubba Crosby and Gary Sheffield the Angels.
2006: A pathetic four-game loss at the hands of the Tigers.
2007: Yet another four-game loss at the hands of Joe Torre’s inability to get the team off the field when attacked by a Biblical plague of bugs the Indians.
Considering that Yankee fans measure their team’s success in postseason wins and World Series titles, the 686 regular season wins matter far less than their 32 postseason losses since the start of the 21st Century.
But with 2008 upon us, it’s hard not to think about a new era dawning in Yankee history. We have a new stadium on the horizon and a whole slew of young, good players on the rise. We saw teh potential of Phil Hughes, Joba Chamberlain and Ian Kennedy last season, and we know the Yanks have a very loaded farm system to go with their offensive powerhouse in the Bronx.
It may not be this year; the first full season with three young kids playing vital parts can be touch and go. But you can bet that when the new stadium opens and another new year dawns, the Yanks will be right there where they’ve always been: Playing to win in October and with a very good shot at yet another title. Hope springs eternal in January right now.
A Stadium arises in the Bronx
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Last week, on the same day as my trip to the Museum of the City of New York, I trekked a little bit further north to the South Bronx. Rare are the days when I find myself at Yankee Stadium without the intention of going to the game, but that’s just what happened on Thursday.
It had been a while since I had checked out the stadium construction progress, and I thought that a vacation day when I’m already most of the way to the Bronx would be perfect. A short ride from 103rd St. dropped me off at that 161st St.-Yankee Stadium stop where I was greeted with a stadium looking much further along than it had been at the end of September when I last went to a Yankee game. With my trusty camera, I snapped a whole bunch of photos, and the slideshow is below.
But first, some highlights. All links open in new windows.
- The new stadium really looms over the subway stop. The edge of the stadium is only a few yards from the downtown 4 platform.
- With the front entrace façade in place, it seems as though the new stadium will be visually appealing from the outside.
- The old park next to the old stadium is being converted into a parking lot with a green space on top.
- The Old and the New face off.
- It certainly appears that Citifield is much further along than New Yankee Stadium is.
And now the slideshow. The next update on the photos probably won’t be until April now, and I expect a lot of progress in the meantime. I’ll miss the old stadium when it’s gone.
Parking the next aspect of the Great Stadium Swindle
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New Yankee Stadium looms over the 4 train platform. With parking prices through the roof, taking the subway is looking ever more appealing. (Photo by Ben K.)
It’s new stadium day on RAB. I’ve got a post of photos from the construction site set to hit later this afternoon at 2 p.m., but first, let’s delve into the ever-popular realm of taxpayer-funded subsidies for Major League Baseball’s richest team.
At the end of November, I looked at how the city is being bilked out of money for the Metro-North station, and it’s no secret that taxpayers are picking up more than their fair share of construction considering initial reports that the Yankees were willing to pay for much of the stadium costs. And of course, this isn’t the first time I’ve looked at parking. We know that it may cost as much as $25 to park at the new stadium. But today’s story is all kinds of special.
Via Juan Gonzalez at The Daily News comes word that taxpayers are going to fund Yankee employee parking at the new stadium. Say what?
The Yankees and hundreds of their VIPs will get free valet parking for the next 40 years, courtesy of New York taxpayers.
The startling revelation of yet another subsidy for the richest team in baseball is buried deep in the fine print of a $237 million tax-exempt bond offering that city officials quietly issued the week before Christmas.
The documents say a $70 million state subsidy for parking improvements for the new Yankee Stadium (slated to open next year) has been earmarked for a new 660-car valet parking garage where virtually all the spaces will be reserved for the free, year-round use of the Yankees and their VIPs.
But wait, there’s more: The total cost of the parking lot project is now $80 million over budget, and the Yankees will receive a total of 600 free spaces for team personnel cars, 120 gameday spaces for private cars of city cops – who could take the subway )Ed. Note: Or they could drive. We have nothing against the cops at RAB.) – and another 130 spots for days without games reserved for, as Gonazlez writes, “city vehicles on ‘official business.’”
While most taxpayers in the City won’t really feel the effects of this hit, fans of the Yankees are in for sticker shock as well. Parking at the new stadium will cost $29 in 2010 and could reach the $35 level by 2014. At this point, people coming to the new stadium just should take the subway or Metro-North. It’s much easier and cheaper to park and ride somewhere than it will be to drive to the South Bronx come 2009.
The city probably won’t recoup the projected $3.2 million in annual parking lot rents until 2014 and even then, Gonzalez and his sources estimate that parking may have to reach around $40 for the lots to realize their full earnings potential. Nothing can really halt this public fleecing right now, but we should hold public figures accountable for deals that harm taxpayers.
Update: I missed the Juan Gonzalez companion piece this morning. The company building the parking lots at Yankee Stadium has a track record of defaulting on payments. In a nutshell, this means that New York taxpayers could be out another few hundred million dollars if the Community Initiatives Development Corporation keeps up its stellar payment track record.
ByAccording to a report in the New York Post, Jim Leyritz was driving with a suspended license when he got into a fatal accident last week. According to DMV records, Leyritz’s Florida license was suspended in New York at the end of November because he failed to respond to a summons. This suspension could add up to a year to any prison sentence Leyritz receives if found guilty. · (10) ·
A-Rod, Boras really not talking
By · CommentsIn what is turning into a soap opera to rival Gossip Girls, John Harper checked in with Scott Boras and A-Rod last week. The two, he writes, are still in a fight, and Scott Boras isn’t too happy about it.
Harper notes that many in the New York media believed the whole opt-out/opt-in saga was orchestrated by Boras and A-Rod for some reason, but in reality, it seems that Boras really did make a mistake. While he’s still rolling in money enjoying his commission, Boras doesn’t like being on the outside of A-Rod’s life looking in. Harper writes:
Baseball insiders insist the hard feelings on A-Rod’s part toward Boras are genuine, that in taking over the negotiations himself he accused his agent of betrayal by misleading him about the level of interest from the Yankees. Likewise, they say that Boras is reeling from the ego blow A-Rod dealt him by telling the world on “60 Minutes” he’s not even speaking to his agent these days.
“Yeah, (Boras) made his commission,” a prominent agent said this week, “but, come on, do you know how much money he has? With Boras it’s all about being king of the jungle, the most powerful agent and the toughest negotiator in the game.
“He loves being the guy that everyone in baseball fears. He wouldn’t for a minute concoct a plan that would diminish his reputation. His image as a god to the players is too important to him. A-Rod might not be the most popular guy in the game, but don’t think he didn’t do some serious damage to Boras’ image. He basically called the guy a lying weasel on national TV. Nobody in the business is shedding any tears for Boras, believe me, but he took a serious hit.”
It’s no secret that Scott Boras wants to shape the economics of baseball in his own image. The rich would dole out more money and get all the good players while the have-nots linger in baseball purgatory — now known as Kansas City and Pittsburgh. This A-Rod debacle won’t be the end of Boras, and it’s doubtful that another agent will step up and fill the shoes seemingly left empty by Boras’ failures. But for now, Scott Boras is licking his wounds and trying to recover from a very rare and very high-profile misstep.
ByVia MLB Trade Rumors comes the news that the Yankees have their eyes — and checkbook — on 21-year-old Iranian-Japanese pitcher Yu Darvish. Darvis, according to East Windup Chronicle, is already one of the most dominant pitchers in the NPB and could command upwards of $12 million a year from a Major League team. Darvish will pitch for Japan at the 2008 Olympics — the last featuring baseball as an Olympic Sport — and the Nippon Ham Fighters could post him following the 2008 season. While the reports of the Yankees’ interest seem rather speculative, Darvish would be an intriguing pickup to say the least. · (20) ·
