Here's the world's smallest violin, Randy Levine, playing just for you!

The world's smallest violin. Playing just for Randy Levine!

Leave it to New York Yankees president Randy Levine to make the team's point on revenue sharing so poorly, that you have no sympathy for what could be a potentially be a valid point of view. Why this clown, who, to steal a line from "The Hunger Games," is about as charming as a dead slug, is the "face" of the Yankees front office is beyond me.

Let me explain the latest brouhaha. Ken Rosenthal of Fox Sports talked with Levine about the Yankees' revenue-sharing agreement. In this conversation, Levine slammed the crosstown New York Mets:

"What is very burdensome to us -- and is unfair -- is the amount of money we have to pay in revenue sharing compared, for example, to teams in our market that pay 10 times less than us,” Yankees president Randy Levine told FOX Sports. "Hopefully that is something that will get looked at in the next labor agreement."

According to Levine, the Yanks paid $90 million in revenue sharing for last year. The figure is based on each team's net local revenue, and the Mets' figure is supposed to go up next year, commensurate with their increase in attendance. The Yanks also paid $26 million in luxury tax.

Rosenthal notes that:

Levine’s comment on revenue sharing followed his response to a question about the Yankees’ home attendance, which has declined every year since 2010 with the exception of ‘14.

Oh, snap!

"The Yankee business is strong -- very, very strong," Levine said. "But we’re the Yankees. We can always do better. We always look to do better. Our attendance projections are up. All of our other revenue -- sponsorship, food and beverage – everything else is up. We expect to have a great team this year. I think it’s going to be a good year."

Very strong? I dunno about that. Whatever happened to the idea that any year without a World Series title was a failure for the Yankees? It's now been seven years since the Yankees won a title -- their only title since 2000. Heck, it's seven years since they even got to a World Series. Meanwhile, the crosstown Mets, the team Levine is griping about above, won a pennant last year, despite spending over $100 million less on payroll.

And the "we can always do better" line would have been a heck of a lot more appropriate 15 years ago, as opposed to now. Eight years in a row, the Yanks have spent over $200 million a year in payroll. In one of those years -- 2009 -- they won a World Series. In three of those years, they didn't make the playoffs at all. In the other four years, they had ignomious defeats in the postseason, like getting beaten by the Astros in last year's Wild Card game, and getting swept by the Tigers in the 2012 ALCS. Not only is that a terrible ROI (return on investment) for the money, but it means that there is a LOT of room for improvement.

At any rate, you can't brag about how much money you're bringing in, and then complain about how much you're paying on revenue sharing. That does not compute. Also, on what planet are their attendance projects up? Is there, you know, actual hard evidence showing that?

Here's the thing, though. Theoretically, there is a valid point here. As Rosenthal notes, "Another concern of high-revenue teams is that the money acts as a disincentive for low-revenue clubs to increase their own revenue -- in effect, becoming a permanent subsidy." But Randy Levine is the last person in the world who should be bringing up that point. Why he continues to be the voice of the Yankee brass is beyond me.

Shocker! We ended up with $200 in Mets tickets for free! (And we can print them at home if we want to!)

Remember how Squawker Jon and I waited in the cold for two hours on Presidents' Day to get free Mets tickets? And how I almost froze my tuchis off, the day after running a 10-mile race in single-degree weather and getting hypothermia? Anyhow, you may remember that the Mets ended up giving us a better deal on free tickets than we expected. And today was the first day we could redeem our free ticket vouchers.

We had a choice of field-level box seats in the outfield area for most Monday to Thursday Mets games from April through June. So Jon and I chose two games: Tuesday, May 17, Mets vs. Nationals (Daniel Murphy's first game back at Citi Field!) and Thursday, June 30, Mets vs. Cubs (only time Cubs come to town this year.) The Nationals tix are in Section 130 and retail for $37 each. The Cubs tix are in Section 131 and retail for $63 each. So, yes, we ended up with $200 in tickets for waiting in the cold that day. Not too shabby!

Anyhow, there is something else I noticed about the Mets' ticket policies. You can either print the tickets at home, or add them to Apple Wallet so you can show them on your mobile phone! Imagine that! Also, we don't have to worry that we'll get kicked out of our field-level seats, or that somebody will wonder if we really belong there. Amazing.

Funny that the Mets don't seem to be worried about that massive ticket fraud problem that the Yankees are so concerned about. Or, maybe it's that there is no problem at all in the first place! Gee, ya think?

Shocker! Yankees new ticket policy causes a disaster for Stadium soccer game

I was looking at SportsSpyder.com, one of my go-to sites (if you want to see the latest articles on whatever team you follow, go there!) to see the latest on the Yankees. And I just saw this article from Deadspin, about the repercussions of the Yankees' new ticket policy.

The New York City Football Club (NYCFC), who plays at Yankee Stadium, decided to change their ticket policy two days ago, before today's season opener, to ban print-at-home tickets. This, after they had told fans previously that this would be a Yankee-only policy. My guess is that Lonn Trost and Randy Levine pressured them to do so and they had to listen, given that the Yankees are part-owners of the team.

And guess what? Hilarity did not ensue! Instead, a disaster ensued. It was a hot mess.

Thanks to member [Albany] for the pic. 8 minutes out! pic.twitter.com/wqaKJ9UmQ2

— NYCFC Forums (@NYCFCForums) March 13, 2016

@StraightRedPod @NYCFC machines that scan tickets stopped working and they're not letting anybody into the stadium pic.twitter.com/VppM31IW8x

— James Coker (@JamesWCoker) March 13, 2016

Yankee Stadium doesn't care about its customers, the ticket-holders. overtly disrespects them. @Yankees @NYCFC pic.twitter.com/pQOCmT0Jud

— Daniel Roberts (@readDanwrite) March 13, 2016

Roberts is a writer for Yahoo! Finance. He said in another tweet that it took him 49 minutes to get into the ballpark after getting on the security line. He and others also said that the game had started, with much of the crowd still outside. Yikes!

I went to an NYCFC game last summer and had a great time. But if I were on a line like that, and missed some of the game, it wouldn't exactly make me want to come back.

I wonder if this is a harbinger of things to come when the Yankees' season starts. One thing they have not thought out is what it's going to be like when many tens of thousands of people all try to use the Internet on their phones at the same time to pull up their tickets. Last week, I was at Staten Island's St. Patrick's Day Parade, and my phone's Internet was extremely slow. And this was only with a few thousand people, if that. Imagine what it will be like with many more folks.

Things are not going to end well for the Yankees, if this becomes the scene at every game! Good grief.

Message to Randy Levine and Lonn Trost: When you're in a hole, quit digging!

I really was going to write today about something else in Yankeeland besides the team's ticket debacle. Honest. But as long as team president Randy Levine and COO Lonn Trost keep on saying and doing dopey things about it, I've got to keep Squawking about it!

The gruesome twosome have said even more ridiculous things in the last two days to extend this story into even more news cycles. This, at the very same time the team is attempting to sell individual tickets for the 2016 season. Unbelievable.

I woke up this morning to see that Levine had run his mouth about Bronx Borough President Ruben Diaz Jr. because Diaz is taking the fans' -- and StubHub's -- side in this ticket issue. Diaz's spokesman, John Desio, told the New York Daily News:

“The borough president is a lifelong Yankee fan. The borough president’s favorite player was Graig Nettles. He lives and dies by the Yankees as do many people in the borough, the city and the world. This new policy on tickets combined with their COO’s elitist comments are not very fan friendly for the borough president or anyone else who loves the Yankees.” 

So how did Levine respond? In a mature, adult fashion befitting his reputation. By which I mean, he lashed out like a frat boy with anger management issues, the way he usually does. (How is this guy in a position of authority, anyway? I wouldn't trust him to run the fry station at McDonald's without spilling grease on himself when flying off the handle!)

Levine told ESPN's Darren Rovell, who first reported on Diaz' stance:

“It doesn’t surprise me given that we’ve stopped his endless funding requests. It does surprise me because the only time he showed up to Yankee Stadium was when he was on official business when he was comped. I guess there are no greater problems in the Bronx, that he needs to spend time on, than ticketing.” 

How is this comment possibly productive? It doesn't even make any sense. What, exactly, would be the "endless funding requests" a Bronx borough president would ask the Yankees for? Wouldn't it be the other way around?

And you can't complain that Diaz rarely shows up at Yankee games, and then whine that "I guess there are no greater problems in the Bronx, that he needs to spend time on, than ticketing." Well, most of us would think that enabling his constituents in the poorest borough in the city to get decently priced tickets is kind of important.

UPDATE: Shortly after writing this Squawk, I received an email from Diaz's office containing a copy of a letter the borough president sent to Levine, criticizing the policy. It's a pretty strongly worded missive! Read it here. 

That isn't the only time in recent days that Levine has flapped his gums. He and Trost recently talked to Bloomberg View sports columnist -- and Yankee fan -- Kavitha A. Davidson about the ticket policy. She writes about a less-discussed aspect of using mobile tickets. Fans will have to sign up at Ticketmaster, give the company personal information, and download an app in order to use the Yankees' mobile ticket feature. (I wrote about this last week, but she went to much greater detail on the new system and tried it out herself. "It seems there are still a few bugs to work out," she wrote.)

Anyhow, both Levine and Trost dismissed any concerns over the new policy. Levine insisted to the writer that third-party ticket brokers and StubHub are, Davidson writes, as "the source of much of the backlash against the new mobile system." Um, no, dude. Your team's fans are the main source of the backlash. Remember them?

In addition, according to the article, "Levine said Trost's comments were taken out of context and stressed that the Yankees' position is 'if you buy a legitimate ticket you're welcome to sit at Yankee Stadium,' whether or not you paid full price." Well, isn't that nice of them! And at any rate, we didn't take Trost's comments out of context. We took them in context. That's the problem!

Trost made let yet another elitist remark in insisting: "In today's world of millennials, I can't imagine anyone who's not smartphone savvy who wants to come to the ballpark," he said. "But when they do, they can get a hard-stock ticket." Oy. He needs to get out more.

Remember how Trost talked about Yankee fan ticket buyers who spent "a buck and a half" for premium tickets? I wrote that there was no way people were paying $1.50 a ticket for the fancy seats. But I missed an even more elitist remark that Trost was making with that. I have a friend who is a ticket broker. And he said that "a buck and a half" is a term in the business meaning $150. So Trost is looking down at fans who "only" spend $150 per Yankee ticket. For the rest of us, that sort of money for a three-hour regular season game is a splurge for a milestone birthday or something. In Trost's world, these people are the riff raff!

My friend Jason Keidel, who writes about sports for CBS New York, interviewed me this week about how a decision by the Yankees on February 15 to ban print-at-home tickets has morphed into a PR disaster for the team that is like the Energizer Bunny. It just keeps on going, and going, and going.

I talked about my part in that -- Squawking the next day about how the decision was about smashing StubHub and taking away fans' ability to buy tickets on the secondary market. Then I was interviewed for the New York Post the following day, and showed how Yankee fans were unhappy about this, at the very same time the team's spokesperson claimed that fans were thrilled over it. The very next morning, Yankees COO Lonn Trost popped up on WFAN to defend the policy, and blurted out his elitist opinion about Yankee ticket buyers.

This story has gone about as disastrously for the Yankees as anybody with a brain and common sense could have predicted. It's been raging for 10 days now, and shows no sign of abating. Are there any grownups in Yankeeland who will step in and stop this? Where is Hal Steinbrenner? What could possibly be more important for him to be doing than stopping this PR disaster? Good grief.

Yankee press office tells players to be more like Russell Wilson than Cam Newton. But what about Yankee brass?

Isn't it ironic? (Cue Alanis Morrissette song!) The Yankees' PR/media team recently held their annual training sessions advising players how to act in front of the press. In the very same week that the biggest story in Yankeeland is how team COO Lonn Trost made elitist remarks that alienated most of the fan base, and then team president Randy Levine insulted fans' intelligence with his comments about StubHub. Seems like the execs need that training more than the players! Not to mention the fact that this story is still percolating among Yankee fans this week, while nobody from the front office has stepped in to clarify the remarks or apologize for Trost. Talk about bad PR!

Anyhow, Ryan Hatch of NJ.com got the inside scoop on the players' training from media relations director Jason Zillo. Yankees saw videos featuring clips featuring ESPN's Britt McHenry's infamous argument trashing a tow truck employee, as well as Lawrence Taylor's media meltdown back in the day. Derek Jeter pops up on the video to advise the ballplayers that everything in their lives is fair game these days. And A-Rod (!) is actually cited as a positive example of how to handle the press, when he deflected talk of his home run numbers.

The players saw clips of Cam Newton's and Russell Wilson's respective post-Super Bowl press conferences, with the idea that Newton's behavior was bad, and Wilson's was good. But I kind of agree with Big League Stew's Mike Oz, and his take on this:

Cam's presser you know well by now: He grumbled and sulked, giving abrupt answers before walking out. It's almost like he felt emotion after losing the big game of his life. Imagine that....And Wilson's presser from a year earlier was pretty much the opposite....

It was textbook, so the Yankees are right wanting their players to be like Wilson — if you want players to say the predictable thing and not show a lot of emotion. And, let's be real about what the Newton/Wilson dichotomy is really implying these days: We want you to be safe and dull, not polarizing, not making yourself an enemy of Middle America. 

He then writes about how it applies to the Yankees:

They have one player, C.C. Sabathia, who is coming back this season after admitting he had a problem with alcohol and seeking help. He has a story that's worth telling, emotion and all. They have another player, Alex Rodriguez, whose image is as far from clean-cut as possible and has been criticized most of his career for being too robotic. Considering, his against-the-odds comeback from a year ago, he has a reason to finally open up. Is it the worst thing to let them and their teammates be real people with real emotions? 

You're right. Considering this is baseball, where you can't celebrate a home run for more than a split second or risk breaking the unwritten rules, the answer is probably, "Yes. We don't want real emotions. Just say the boring stuff that everyone wants you to say."

Oz then brings up Lonn Trost and suggests, like I just did, that he is the one who needs the media training.

I get the Yankees' point on the media training. I do. But I also get Oz's point. There's something to be said for genuine emotion. While Newton should have stayed longer at the presser so all the reporters could have gotten their questions in (they're funny that way), I cannot fault him for looking as devastated as he did. Isn't that what you want as a fan? For your team's players to care? To be as upset as you are over losing the big game?

You also want your team's front office to care. Not just about the team winning and losing. But about the fans. And Trost's and Levine's remarks have emphasized an "us vs. them" mentality instead of a "we're all Yankee fans together" attitude. I have seen so many fans online over the past few days wonder why they should even bother going to games at all any more, given the contempt the front office has for them.

It's now been five days since Trost's elitist remark. Still no apology, or statement from the team, or olive branch to the fans. Meanwhile, individual tickets have gone on sale. Way to sell the brand, Yanks!

Shocker: Randy Levine reveals the Yankee Ticket Exchange is a huge failure

Would you buy Yankee tickets
from this man?

Both the Wall Street Journal and the New York Times have interviews this weekend with New York Yankees president Randy Levine. He's doing damage control for Lonn Trost's elitist comments when the COO tried to do damage control over the team's ticket kerfuffle. This is like Yasiel Puig advising Jonathan Papelbon how to be a good teammate. Like David Ortiz telling Jose Bautista to tone down his home run celebrations. You catch my drift. 

When are the Yankees going to learn the first rule of holes? When you're in a hole, QUIT DIGGING!

Instead, Levine is out there, shovel in hand, still trying to justify the Yankees' new policy as protecting the fans against fraud. But, just as Trost's damage control went awry, so did Levine's, as he inadvertently confirmed the real reasons for the new policy -- that the team doesn't believe in the free market when it comes to showing the true value of tickets. And that the Yankees Ticket Exchange is a big fat flop.

He told Billy Witz of the Times: “We strongly believe that we have the right to maintain control over our inventory as long as the market provides ample opportunity to have choice in other ways.”

Levine told Jared Diamond of the Journal: “This is our product and our inventory. We have the ultimate right to protect the value of our inventory as long as it’s done in the free-market society.” 

He also admitted to the Journal that only fewer than 10% of the tickets sold on the resale market go through the Yankees Ticket Exchange. And the Journal's story also revealed that, according to StubHub, 40% of their Yankee ticket sales occur in the 72 hours before the event. Which this new ticket policy would not-so-coincidentally negatively affect.

Ding, ding, ding, we have a winner!

Levine is confirming what Yankee fans like myself have been saying all week. This is all about increasing the resale value of Yankees tickets, and nothing about protecting fans from alleged "fraud."

Like all too many people in Yankeeland, Levine is living in the past. He wants a monopoly on ticket sales, at the very same time he's claiming he's all about the free market. Child, please.

Fans understand economics better than Levine does. The tickets are overpriced, and the free market, as evidenced by the secondary market, is showing that. The proof is in the pudding. The one secondary ticket venue with a price floor is the Yankees Ticket Exchange. And even though they are the easiest for season ticket holders to use, with integration with the team's ticket system, and even though they are integrated into Yankees.com, the exchange, by Levine's own admission, has only captured under 10% of the secondary market. That is an amazingly bad number.

This is why Levine and Trost are pushing this ban on print-at-home tickets and trying to stop fans from using StubHub for these last-second ticket sales. Because three years ago, they sold team owner Hal Steinbrenner on the idea that StubHub needed to be smashed. And they had the Yankees spend the money on this rival ticket exchange, figuring fans were so stupid, they would go to it because it was the official one. 

Yet it is a colossal failure. So now, the Yankees are trying to smash StubHub in another way -- by preventing their own fans from getting good deals on tickets.  They love the free market when it comes to corporations spending big bucks for boxes, but not so much when it shows that their ticket prices are too high.

That's not all that Levine said about the ticket brouhaha. From the Times:

After Lonn Trost, the Yankees’ chief operating officer, was lambasted as elitist for suggesting in a Thursday radio interview that some fans do not belong in premium seats, the team president, Randy Levine, in an interview Saturday, said StubHub had stoked the controversy, accusing it of putting out a narrative “that’s completely fraudulent and completely false.” 

1. What did StubHub have to do with Trost insulting the Yankee fan base? (Incidentally, it's been 72 hours and counting, and the Yankees still haven't apologized for what Trost said. Shows how much the front office cares about the fans.)

2. What part of the narrative, exactly, of what the Yankees are doing by banning print-at-home tickets is “completely fraudulent and completely false”?  That the Yankees has been on a vendetta against StubHub for the last three years? That the Yankees sued to force StubHub to move their Last-Minute Ticket Center from 68 East 161st Street, across the street from the Stadium, to the Bronx Terminal Market at 651 River Avenue and 151st Street? That despite the narrative that Lonn Trost pushed, that StubHub is not the entity holding up them being able to access mobile tickets -- the Yankees are? (And Levine even admits that the Yankees are holding this up, but still blames StubHub for it.)

Individual Yankee ticket sales for 2016 start tomorrow. But the team's brass has spent the last week doing the worst PR you could imagine for selling their own product. Good grief.

You know what's missing from the Yankees-Red Sox rivalry these days? Witty trash talk!

We all know that the Yankees-Red Sox rivalry is not what it used to be. And an article in the Boston Globe reminds me of the more fierce days of The Rivalry.

The Globe's Dan Shaughnessy got Yankee president Randy Levine to weigh in on the retirement of Larry Lucchino, his counterpart on the Red Sox. He talked about when both teams went after Jose Contreras in 2002 -- then-GM Theo Epstein rented out all the rooms in a Nicaraugan hotel to keep the Yanks out, but the Bombers still won Contreras. Lucchino then called the Yankees the "Evil Empire" for the first time, saying: “The Evil Empire extends its tentacles even into Latin America.’’ That's a Hall of Fame-worthy trash-talk remark!

(An aside: as I have said before, I still think the Yanks should play the Evil Empire music for themselves, and not the opposition, before games. Why not revel in it?)

Lucchino's coining of the Evil Empire moniker for the Yankees is part of his legacy, and it is pretty memorable. When was the last time anybody involved in The Rivalry got off a line like that?

The article also talks about something Levine allegedly said after the 2003 ALCS:

When the Yankees won that series in the Bronx on [Aaron] Boone’s walkoff homer, Levine allegedly was overheard shouting, “Take that, you 1918 pieces of [expletive]!’’

“I don’t think I ever said that,’’ Levine said Wednesday.

C'mon, Randy! Own it! That's the best thing you ever said! I smiled just reading about that again.

Levine also talked about what George Steinbrenner felt about Lucchino, and where The Rivalry stands today:

“George used to call Larry ‘the chameleon.’ When Larry was with the Orioles, he took the issues one way, and then when he went to San Diego, it was another way. Then he came back to Boston and had a transformation. 

“At the end of the day, the Red Sox and the Yankees have a lot more in common than they are apart. Sometimes they have Yankee-phobia. They’re too conscious of trying to separate themselves from us. I think they’re more like us.’’

Ain't that the truth!

David Ortiz's whining aside, you don't really see the trash talk any more between the teams' players. Nor do you see it with the teams' front offices. I really miss that!

* * *

So Luis Severino looks like the real deal for the Yankees -- seven strikeouts and only one earned run over five innings. He seemed poised and confident and ready for the big leagues. 

Too bad the Yankees couldn't get him run support last night. What a heartbreaking game.

Is Zack Hample, the guy who caught A-Rod's 3000th hit, a righteous dude or a jerk?

Zack Hample hold's A-Rod's 3000th hit ball.

So, I have been on record advocating over and over that if a fan catches a historic ball at a game, whether it be Derek Jeter's 3000th hit or Alex Rodriguez's 660th homer or 3000th hit,  that he or she should make as much money as possible out of it. Sorry, but if it were me catching such a historic ball, I would want some cold hard cash in return. Getting some trinkets wouldn't cut it.

The only exception is what happened to Frank Burke, the person who caught San Francisco Giant Travis Ishikawa's pennant-winning home run. Burke, as I noted in an article for Guideposts.org, got to throw out the first pitch at Game 3 of the World Series that year. That is something unique you would not be able to buy on your own with the money you would get from selling the ball.

That being said, Zack Hample is really testing my patience. He is the professional ballhawk (or, as I call him, ballhog) who caught A-Rod's 3000th hit, which was a homer. Today, when he was whining online about A-Rod not following him on Twitter, I pointed out what he said earlier in the week, when somebody asked what he would do if he caught #Arod3k.

Hey, @AROD, I'm the guy who snagged your 3,000th hit. Any chance for a follow back? It would mean a lot to me.
— Zack Hample (@zack_hample) June 23, 2015

.@zack_hample You mean the guy you said you would give the finger and a dummy ball to if you caught 3000? https://t.co/VLN6ZhEkyj

— Subway Squawkers (@subwaysquawkers) June 23, 2015

Folks, what is problematic for me is that Hample is, pardon my French, a world-class douche bag. Seriously, if you type his name into Twitter, the first search terrn that comes up is "Zack Hample douche." (Sorry, I try to keep the Squawks G-rated, but sometimes the truth must be told here!)
I have heard too many stories from various people about how Hample knocks down children to snag balls before games to disbelieve them.

Not to mention the way he conducts himself. Squawker Jon pointed out Friday that the spotlight would not be kind to Mister Hample, and he was right. And I really have an issue with a 37-year-old man trolling for balls like this. Leave the glove at home, dude.

Anyhow, Hample, who apparently comes from a wealthy family, is now talking with Yankee front office bigwigs Randy Levine and Lonn Trost about what he might want for the ball. Talk about a meeting of the minds -- or, more to the point, of the d-bags! Sorry, pardon my French again, but the truth must be told here! (Squawker Jon said that me using this term burned a bridge to Yankeeland here. I said that bridge was napalmed long ago!)

At any rate, how ironic is it that the team that won't pay A-Rod for the 660-homer milestone is negotiating on his behalf for another milestone! Jon said that Hal Steinbrenner authorized the front office's pursuit of the ball. Hilarious!

In his negotiations, Hample brought up a "wish list," including donations to charity, to try to make it seem as if he isn't a jerk. Won't work, dude! You pretty much emanate jerkitude. You wear an umpire's cap to games, for goodness sake! But own it! I say go for that cold hard cash, and forget pretending that this is about charity or any such other high-minded pretense. They need to show you the money.

However, that also means giving the Yankees a simple price, and not doing these drama queen negotiations. If Hample doesn't want to negotiate with the Yankees, then sell the ball at an auction house and be done with it. But please, put an end to this drawn-out saga already. Good grief.

I'm calling it now: A-Rod will hit HR No. 660 against Matt Harvey and the Mets this weekend!

Squawker Jon and I were getting a bite to eat on Friday night when we heard that Alex Rodriguez had hit home run No. 657. It was almost as if the homer were a statement against Joe Girardi batting him sixth (!) that night, even though Alex was the hottest hitter on the team. I quickly did the math in my head and declared: "A-Rod's gonna hit 660 off Matt Harvey!" in the Subway Series next weekend. I also posted my declaration on social media for posterity.

Later on that evening, A-Rod hit No. 658, and it seemed, given him hitting four home runs in 10 days, as if he could get two more homers this weekend. No matter. Given how much A-Rod has a flair for the dramatic, I just couldn't see him matching Willie Mays when the Yankees were on the road. No, I think he is going to do it at home, most likely in the Subway Series, and most likely against Matt Harvey, the biggest name on the New York Mets. And now that the Mets are the hottest team in baseball, with 10 wins in a row, this will make him setting the record even sweeter! Of course, I could be wrong, and A-Rod could go hitless for the weekend (and Squawker Jon could mock me mercilessly!), but I am still sticking to my prediction!

In this morning's New York Post, Ken Davidoff had some conflicting "inside details" about what will happen when Alex hits 660.

According to two sources familiar with the situation, when Rodriguez goes deep with number 660, the Yankees will have a precise period of time — two weeks, as per one of the sources — to declare this as a marketable milestone. If they were to do this, then Rodriguez would sign over the rights to his image and associated branding for the price of $6 million. 

I don't buy this, and here's why: If you were to be selling branded stuff revolving around this, you would need it ready to go at the time that people would buy the items. That would mean having it made up at the time A-Rod hits #660. Remember how Derek Jeter wore a hat and t-shirt with a logo of himself honoring his hitting #3000 in the post-game press conference after he got his 3000th hit? Remember how Steiner Sports was selling autographed merchandise before that milestone, which Jeter signed when he skipped the All-Star Game? Two weeks after #660 is ancient history.

Brian Cashman (l.) and Randy Levine spotted
visiting their attorney to discuss the
A-Rod milestone controversy.

Davidoff also writes that "another person involved in the dispute claims Rodriguez is entitled to his $6 million bonus money immediately upon hitting home run 660." This seems much more likely. The rest of this stuff is Yankee spin, like the way that they think that not mentioning the home run milestone in their press materials will keep it from being a milestone. Who is advising the Yankees -- Lionel Hutz?

Another leak to Davidoff concerns the idea that the Yankees could bring up in the arbitration hearing "past transgressions, including some that have yet to be affirmed," like A-Rod's relationship with Anthony Galea. But couldn't A-Rod's people bring up stuff on the Yankees, like the likelihood that they knew that he (and other players) were juicing? Or bring up the fact that the Yankees are marketing Andy Pettitte, an admitted PED user, even giving him a retired number, a plaque in Monument Park, and his own day?

Aside from A-Rod's flair for the dramatic, I think Alex will hit 660 at home, whether against Matt Harvey or some other pitcher, because of the fact that he will get a huge ovation and a curtain call when he does so. And it is going to be hard for the Yankees to claim that they cannot market his home run milestone if a big crowd, many of them wearing A-Rod shirts, roar in approval of his achievement! Not to mention if A-Rod's teammates celebrate it on the field.

But then again, the leadership of this team is known to talk out of both sides of their mouth. Like this gem in today's paper from Girardi to George King of the Post about A-Rod's steroid suspension: "He paid the consequences and we had to struggle through it because we didn’t have him."

Let me get this straight: Girardi and Cashman and Levine and Hal Steinbrenner have been trying to marginalize A-Rod and get him off the team for years now, but they are somehow the victims here, struggling through the 2014 season without Rodriguez? The same A-Rod that Girardi has had bat sixth and seventh this season, while he had the washed-up Carlos Beltran bat third? Really? Good grief.

In other news, did you see ESPN's Andrew Marchand's entertaining recap of A-Rod sparring with an out-of-town writer? The reporter kept on asking Alex over and over about A-Rod being a "villain" and being booed on the road, to which he finally responded:

A-Rod: I've been booed for 15 years, buddy. I don't know if you haven't been around. It's been one long boo for 15 years.

Love it -- especially his use of "buddy." I do the same thing! If I have called you "buddy" or dude" when I'm talking to you, it is not a compliment!

Yankees-Red Sox feud: Randy Levine issues lame rejoinder to Larry Lucchino

So there was a bit of a kerfuffle this weekend, after Boston Red Sox president Larry Lucchino dissed the New York Yankees' freee-spending approach to building a team. Unfortunately for Yankee fans, team president Randy Levine was the humorless prig issuing a response. If you are going to get into a war of the words with the guy who coined the Evil Empire remark, you had better have something resembling a quick wit, not a knucklehead still muttering about ghosts a decade after 2004.

Here's what happened. Lucchino said the following about the Yankees (emphasis added):

"We're very different animals. I'm proud of that difference. I always cringe when people lump us together. Other baseball teams sometime do that. They are still, this year at least, relying heavily on their inimitable old-fashioned Yankee style of high-priced, long-term free agents. I can't say I wish them well. But I think we've taken a different approach.

"If you compare what we did last year in the offseason to what they've done this year, there's quite a contrast there. I'll quickly say we do keep open the prospect of signing a long-term deal with a free agent, paying a sizable amount of money to attract a star in his prime. We haven't ruled that out. There's just a rebuttable presumption against doing that. But you can rebut it. The circumstances can allow for you to go ahead and do it. The Yankees do it more often it seems to me as a matter of course."

  Lucchino got a little rambly towards the end of that, and he kind of ignores the big money the Sox spent on Carl Crawford et al, but he is stating some true facts -- the Yankees are totally dependent upon spending for free agents to restock their team. When you spend $500+ million on your free agents, you can't really complain about others noticing that, can you?

Well, if you are Randy Levine, you can! Instead, Levine gave the following cringeworthy response:

“I feel bad for Larry; he constantly sees ghosts and is spooked by the Yankees. But I can understand why, because under his and Bobby Valentine’s plan two years ago, the Red Sox were in last place. Ben Cherington and the Red Sox did a great job last year winning the World Series, but I’m confident Cash and Joe and our players will compete with a great Red Sox team to win a world championship this year.”

Here are my thoughts on this:

1. Everybody in Yankeeland needs to stop with talk of "ghosts" forever. This should have stopped forever in 2004, when the Red Sox beat the Yankees in Game 7 of the 2004 ALCS on Mickey Mantle's birthday, after the Yanks decided that they would bring out Bucky Dent to throw out the first pitch and somehow spook Boston. How'd that work for the Yankees again?

2. Love how Lucchino is responsible for Bobby V, but Cherington is responsible for Boston winning the World Series last year. Sounds like the way Brian Cashman brags about his "five" rings, like he did in the Roger Clemens trial, but every bad decision made in Yankeeland is blamed on Tampa.

3. Unlike the Red Sox, the Yankees do not have a viable farm system, and do have to spend a gazillion dollars on free agents. in order to be competitive. And even with that, they still didn't re-sign Robinson Cano, and still don't have a viable infield this year. To complain about Lucchino pointing out the Yankees' spending is like Miley Cyrus complaining about people noticing that she sticks out her tongue all the time.

4. The Red Sox have won three rings in the past decade to the Yankees' one, and they are the defending World Champions. As insufferable as Lucchino is, he has unfortunately earned the right to trash-talk. If Levine couldn't come up with something funny or clever, he should have kept his mouth shut.

5. Yeah, hiring Bobby Valentine was a disastrous move. But Boston realized quickly that he was a disaster, and got rid of him after one year. Then they won the World Series the following year. If Valentine had been signed by the Yankees, they would keep him forever, just because Hal Steinbrenner doesn't want to look like his father and ever fire anybody. You know, kind of like how Randy Levine still gets to keep his job as team president, long after he has done anything worthwhile!

What do you think? Tell us about it!

Why A-Rod's angry lawyer may actually have a point about the Yankee brass

It's an A-bomb for A-Rod -- and his attorney! Joseph Tacopina, one of Alex Rodriguez's attorneys, started a new war with the Yankees -- or maybe just continued the current war -- when he unleashed some pretty strong accusations against the team, and against Major League Baseball. Here's a link to the New York Times article with the accusations. And here's what I think of each main charge.

Among Tacopina's claims are the following:

Accusation:

"that baseball’s commissioner is determined to brand Rodriguez as the 'poster boy' for doping."

My thoughts: TRUE! This is a no-brainer. Nobody else involved in the Biogenesis scandal got any of the incessant leaks from MLB. Nobody else came even close to the 211-game punishment. And there has never been an explanation as to why Bartolo Colon, who had already tested positive, and who was also named in the Biogenesis scandal, did not get the scrutiny that A-Rod did, even though the fact that he is having arguably his best year at the age of 40 ought to have brought on more investigation. Instead, we're apparently supposed to think Colon only did PEDs that one lone time. Spare me.

Accusation:

 During the 2012 playoffs, Tacopina said, the Yankees hid from Rodriguez that a magnetic resonance imaging test had revealed that he had a torn labrum — essentially a hole in his hip — and continued to play him, even though he was struggling mightily.

“They rolled him out there like an invalid and made him look like he was finished as a ballplayer,” Tacopina said.

My thoughts: MAY BE TRUE! Here's why I cannot dismiss this charge -- my own eyes. I said all along during last year's postseason that I thought A-Rod looked injured. And I couldn't understand why Joe Girardi and Brian Cashman were so publicly adamant that he was not injured, when it clearly seemed like he was. It seemed to me very petty and mean-spirited to not offer him that fig leaf of the possibility that he was hurt, instead of just stinking for no reason. And the Yanks seemed more motivated by destroying what was left of A-Rod's reputation last year than in actually winning in the playoffs.

Accusation:

Rodriguez learned the extent of his injuries in the off-season, and the Yankees sent him to Dr. Bryan T. Kelly, a prominent surgeon at the Hospital for Special Surgery in Manhattan. Tacopina said Kelly later told Rodriguez that before the operation, Levine told Kelly, “I don’t ever want to see him on the field again.”

“It sent chills down Alex’s spine,” Tacopina said.

My thoughts: MAY BE TRUE! Randy Levine isn't exactly known as a nice guy. He was hired to be a jerk, and he continues to be a jerk. Nothing would surprise me when it comes to him. And why he still has a job is beyond me -- he screwed up bigtime on the StubHub stuff. In fact, I'm surprised he didn't find a way to blame StubHub for A-Rod!

Tacopina said he had copies of “very damaging” e-mails between Levine and Rodriguez. Those e-mails, along with recordings and affidavits gathered by Rodriguez’s advisers, will help Rodriguez in his suspension appeal hearing, Tacopina said.

Levine, however, said his e-mail communication with Rodriguez, over a period of years, would show that he was one of Rodriguez’s biggest supporters, encouraging him to get healthy and to play better.

My thoughts: TRUE. The only way I can see Levine writing the way he claims he did is if he wrote "You little bleep, you better bleeping get healthy and play better, you worthless bleep bleep bleep." I can buy Joe Girardi doing the warm and fuzzy thing. Randy Levine, no bleeping way!

Accusation:

Beyond Bosch, Tacopina accused baseball investigators, some of them former police officers, of serious misconduct. For example, he said, investigators were captured on video flashing what looked like police badges to gain access to a gated community where they wanted to speak with a witness. He said investigators also threatened to turn witnesses’ names over to the news media or call in law enforcement if they did not cooperate.

My thoughts: THIS WOULDN'T SURPRISE ME. MLB has been intent on drumming A-Rod out of baseball, and they made legal threats to Bosch to get him to cooperate. No shenanigans they may have done would surprise me.

Accusation:

Tacopina said he believed that baseball officials were “working in conjunction” with the Yankees to void Rodriguez’s lucrative contract.

“You don’t need to look much further from the top to figure out where this all comes from,” Tacopina said, referring to Selig, the commissioner.

My thoughts: TRUE. And MLB and the Yankees' damage control on this has been laughable. Levine told ESPN that the Yanks were kept "in the dark" about the pending disciplinary action for A-Rod. Puh-lease. Who believes that, especially given that A-Rod just happened to get cleared to play on the day the suspension was going down.

Sorry, folks, but for the past year or so, we have heard leak after leak from Yankeeland about how they want to get out from under A-Rod's contract, and in the last few months, we heard how MLB wants to ban A-Rod for life, and how they've been trying to punish him for years on various shenanigans, but have been unsuccessful. Now we're supposed to believe that this isn't really true, and that they weren't working in cahoots? I'm not buying it. A-Rod may have been a cheating jerk, and MLB and the Yankee brass are not exactly saints here. Maybe they should have thought first, before providing all those damaging leaks, whether true or untrue, to the Bill Maddens of the world.

Accusation:

Tacopina said: “The legacy of George Steinbrenner would be horrified. This is the New York Yankees. This isn’t some thug-culture club.”

FALSE! This would be right up The Boss' alley, especially given what he did with Dave Winfield by hiring Howie Spira. This was the most ridiculous part of Tacopina's claims!

Denial is not just a river in Egypt -- It's the state of the Yankees

History's greatest unexplained mysteries include Easter Island, the disappearance of Amelia Earhart, and why the Yankees got swept in the ALCS. At least that's what Yankees president Randy Levine seems to be claiming. He told the New York Times that "there was a total collapse in the A.L.C.S. that was very surprising. Why did that happen? Nobody will ever know." Really? We will never be able to figure this out, no matter how many sabermaticians and baseball historians pore over the numbers? Ridiculous.

Brian Cashman also treated this debacle as some sort of great mystery. He told Ian O'Connor on ESPN Radio that "I'm not sure if I can ever give you a tangible, realistic, honest, this-is-what-I-know from (what) CSI New York has provided. ... I just don't know." Are you kidding me? It's not that complicated, Brian!

Cashman also said this:

"It was kind of like a Yankee flu went through five of our guys in the lineup. ... I do think there is a mental component that really crept in on us, and all of a sudden & you hear our players talking about passing the baton. Well, I wonder if the baton that was passed was one of pressure and tightness and it started going throughout our entire lineup, that, 'Oh jeez, he didn't get it done; I've got to get it done.' And they started getting us out of our game.

Gee, you'd almost think that Joe Girardi's indefensible panic in the playoffs, where his only answer to any dilemma seemed to involve somehow benching/humiliating a player, whether it be Alex Rodriguez, Nick Swisher, or Curtis Granderson, may have had a ripple effect. And that instead of projecting calm, Girardi projected instability and lack of trust in the players who got him to October in the first place by putting up a spring training-style lineup in a postseason game. Nah, that's too out there, right? Who would ever think that a manager showing such lack of faith in his players would have such consequences?

It is interesting that Cashman used the term "Yankee flu." Because there is a term called "blue flu," which describes when police officers, who are not allowed to go on strike, call in sick en masse to express their displeasure with their contract and work situation. Is Cashman suggesting that the Yankee bats deliberately went on strike?

Of course, Cashman still refuses to acknowledge that there is anything wrong with the team he assembled as far as having a season-long inability to hit with runners in scoring position, as well as generally only winning when they hit homers. Mix in some angry boos from the hometown crowd, and add a little missing leadership on the team thanks to Derek Jeter getting hurt in Game 1 of the ALCS, throw in the lack of faith Girardi and Cashman showed in their team, which led to tightness and panic, and it shouldn't really be a big mystery as to why the Yankees lost.

I do have to ask this: have Cashman or Girardi ever read a modern management book? Ever given some thought about how to motivate people? For that matter, reading a classic book like Dale Carnegie's "How to Win Friends and Influence People" would have served them better than what they did. Because their actions in the postseason seem to show not just lack of baseball skills (sorry, Joe, Derek Lowe is not a good option when the game is on the line!), but a lack of people skills. At this point, I wouldn't trust either of them to plan a one-car funeral, let alone run a baseball team.

Unfortunately, they work for the Steinbrenner kids, who are just as unaware of good management as they are. So they will all pretend that this was just some big mystery as to why the Yankees lost in the postseason. Heaven forbid anybody actually be held accountable for this disaster.

What do you think? Tell us about it!

What's going on with Yankee ticket sales? Subway Series tickets are being discounted by the team!

New York Yankees president Randy Levine can blather all he want about the evil StubHub somehow lowering attendance, but what does he have to say about this? Goldstar, with the full permission and cooperation of the New York Yankees, is marketing discounted tickets to the Subway Series! Yes, you heard that right. Not only is the Subway Series, usually a perennial hot ticket, not sold out at Yankee Stadium this year, but the team is having to market tickets for below face value in order to get fans into the ballpark!

Right now, field level, main level, and terrace level tickets are available at a 20% discount for Friday and Sunday. These are some of the better seats in the ballpark. The tickets are going for $48-$72 for Friday, and $64-$180 on Sunday.

Goldstar is a discount ticket service that works more like Theatermania than StubHub in that the entities themselves market direct tickets for their newsletter and website. For example, Squawker Jon and I went to a concert at Avery Fisher Hall last week, which had discounted tickets through the service. The Yankees have sold some of their Audi seating and other more expensive seating in the past through Goldstar, but this is the first time I have seen them market big games like the Subway Series through the service.

The thing of it is, though, that this is one series where StubHub prices are being sold for above face value -- at least the less expensive seats like the grandstand and bleachers and standing room only. So it's very interesting that the Yanks are doing this for this series, but telling, in that these are pricey seats that have never moved from Yankees.com, due to lack of interest. Hmmmm, maybe the Yanks ought to realize that those seats are overpriced in the first place.

In other news, Andrew Marchand of ESPN New York had an "exclusive" story where some unnamed Yankee official fulminated about how StubHub was unfair to season ticket holders. Oh, please. The next time the Yanks care about the Joe Average season ticket holder -- especially those holding partial plans -- will be the first time. As Squawker reader EateggsEveryMorning put it:

Thank you, great post. I agree on every point. I had the 15-game Sunday plan for many years and loved it. Then they built the new stadium and switched my plan to a Monday-Tuesday plan without telling me. I couldn't go to most of the games, and could barely sell them for $5 on StubHub. Now they've taken all the premium Sunday games out of the Sunday plan and added 3 mid-week games, so it's not even really a Sunday plan. That, the no-post-season-guarantee thing, higher ticket prices and higher parking fees makes it a non-seller. Basically less for more. I've been contacted 3 times this year by the Yankees begging me to buy the plan. Not a chance.

The unnamed Yankee official also claimed that professional ticket brokers were "shorting" the sales, and claimed that StubHub was allowing tickets to be put on sale before they were printed. Um, guys, season ticket holders know what seats they have, which is how they listed them. Why is that so difficult for them to understand?

I've heard and read all sorts of horror stories about how the Yankes have messed with those with partial plans -- making their tickets worse, taking away Opening Day and Old Timers' Day, adding games they don't want, and taking away games they do want, and raising prices. Now we are supposed to believe that Randy Levine et al are just concerned about their season ticket holders? Puh-lease.

There is a lower demand for tickets this year, which is why prices are dropping. But instead of examining why that is so, Randy Levine and his crew would rather come up with conspiracy theories about the evils of StubHub, the entity that has done a heck of a lot more to make reasonably priced tickets affordable and available to the average fan than the Yanks have.

This is one of the down sides of being a Yankee fan -- an arrogant front office with entitled people who, at best, take their fans for granted, or at worst, screw their fans over time and time again. And we're stuck with all of them for the foreseeable future, because the Steinbrenner kids, unlike their father, never see the need to ever fire anybody. Lovely.

What do you think? Tell us about it!

Boo bleeding hoo: Randy Levine and the Yankees whine about StubHub

Home attendance is down 3.6 percent for the New York Yankees this season, and team president Randy Levine is pointing a figure at...StubHub. Really? Not uninspiring play this year, or a bad economy, or even the prevalence of HDTV, but a ticket service?

Here's the scoop. When asked about declining attendance, Levine tells the New York Post that "we believe there are serious issues with the StubHub relationship," saying that "we are actively reviewing more fan-friendly alternatives for next year.”

Josh Kosman of the Post parrots Levine's opinion, writing:

The Yanks and other teams claim tickets are priced too low on StubHub.

The StubHub effect this year — combined with a lousy economy and a poorer on-field performance — has produced an average crowd of 40,949 through 25 games, compared with 42,491 last year.

So having super-low-priced Yankee tickets available is contributing to lower attendance, not higher attendance? What bizarro world do they live in? Not to mention the fact that the tickets on StubHub contribute to Yankees attendance even if they are never re-sold or used; after all, they are already counted towards attendance because they have been purchased by season ticket holders.

It sounds like Levine is getting business advice from the clowns who run the Yankees parking garages. They were the knuckleheads who raised the rates in 2011 to $35, instead of lowering them, when few people parked there, with even fewer people parking there now.


And Levine's insinuation that StubHub is somehow not "fan-friendly" is ludicrous. Right now, there are tickets as low as $1.95 on StubHub for grandstand seats for the Yankees-Rays series, seats that retail for around $25 or so. What could be more fan-friendly than that? 

The StubHub effect is really that in the modern era, you can get great seats at costs much below face value, something you couldn't do even 10 years ago. When Squawker Jon and I went to a Yankees game a few weeks ago, we sat in the upper deck right behind home plate for just $8.00 each, a terrific deal for tickets with a $28 face value. But Randy Levine is mad that instead of buying tickets on Yankees.com for $28, I bought tix from a season-ticket holder for so much cheaper. Give me a break!

Now, you can't always find tickets below face value on StubHub -- we just had to spend a little above face value to get Subway Series tickets for this Friday -- but you can usually find great deals there. That's because there's this weird thing going on called "supply and demand" -- something Levine doesn't understand. He also doesn't understand the whole "what the market will bear" concept. There is a deeper issue with the pricing being this low, in that there is less demand for Yanks tickets. Levine ought to figure out why that is happening instead of bashing StubHub.

Look, I get that the existence of StubHub and other resale sites have contributed to fewer people buying full-season or partial season ticket plans, because now fans can find deals for most games on the resale sites But you know what else contributes to fewer fans buying such plans? When the Yankees stopped guaranteeing access to post-season tickets for those fans who bought the partial plans. Other than being able to say that you have a partial season ticket plan, there is no good incentive to do so anymore.

At least the Mets offer perks for those fans who buy even the partial season ticket plans. What do the Yankees offer? I'm not aware of any. Maybe they should, instead of Levine whining about the evilness of StubHub.

Here's the thing -- I get that baseball is a business, and that high food and drink prices are par for the course at Yankee Stadium. But then don't turn around and whine when fans are able to find good deals for games, and that they make the rational business decision of buying $25 tickets for $2, instead of paying face value for them.

I don't know what's more disturbing -- that Levine peddles this nonsense, or that the Post uncritically reports it -- but StubHub is a great innovation for the average fan, and it's as "fan-friendly" a business that there is out there.  

So what is Levine's solution going to be instead of StubHub? Banning season ticket holders from reselling their tickets, like the Yanks used to do a few years ago? Forcing there to be a higher price on re-sold tickets?

No matter what the Yankees try to do instead of StubHub, it is bound to result in less money for them. Because every ticket that is sold but not used means that the person will not be in the ballpark to spend money. Too bad Levine can't seem to grasp that simple economic concept.


What do you think? Tell us about it!

Who Is Promoting Brian Cashman as Red Sox GM -- Brian Cashman?

I should be used to Yankee GM Brian Cashman's constant need for whining, puffery and self-promotion by now -- after all, just last month, he complained to ESPN New York's about how his current job required "a price of time, effort, expectations, pressure, stress levels, all that different stuff." You know, kind of like how every other job in the universe does, but at a close to $3 million a year salary. Boo bleeding hoo.

Anyhow, I was still taken aback by the "rumor" that Cashman could be in the running for taking over Theo Epstein's GM position in Boston. Who fed the media the rumor -- Cashman himself? (Incidentally, remember this summer, how Cashman's name was included as a possibility to be the new Cubs' GM? Yet it looks like Chicago only talked to Theo Epstein for the job? Funny how that works.)

It wouldn't be the first time Cashman threw his hat in the ring to be Boston's GM. Remember that New York Magazine profile of him from the summer of 2004, where his wife Mary said, “Brian would like to go to Boston and win the World Series as general manager of the Red Sox. That would be any man’s dream, to go up there and become the god of Boston." That was the same profile which had Brian talking about how smart he was in getting Javier Vazquez over Curt Schilling, and had some anonymous agent praising his trade of Jeff Weaver for the immortal Kevin Brown. At any rate, the fact that Cashman never even got called on the carpet in Yankeeland for that interview showed that the days of the Big Bad Boss were long over. But I digress.

Anyhow, aside from the fact that it's very likely, given how much he has been included in postseason postmortems, that Red Sox assistant GM Ben Cherington is going to be the next GM of the Boston Red Sox, what, exactly, would convince Boston ownership that Brian Cashman would be the right man for the job? What would make their fan base accept somebody who has spent his entire career in the Yankees organization?That at least the Yanks' overpriced free agent pitcher A.J. Burnett stays in the dugout and watches his team during games, unlike fried-chicken eating, beer-drinking, video-game playing John Lackey? (Incidentally, if you haven't read the Boston Globe's investigation of what went wrong, please do so. It is absolutely delicious reading for Red Sox haters!)

I also had to laugh of the ridiculousness of Yankee president Randy Levine's own puffery in declaring that the 2011 Yankees season was a failure, then talking in the same interview about bringing back Cashman. Remember, Levine said: "We are the Yankees. That is the way The Boss set it up. When you don't win the World Series, it is a bitter disappointment and not a successful year." So, when is Levine handing in his own resignation? Or looking for a new GM? Gee, you'd think that all this talk of "World Series or bust" is just a sop to the rubes, since nobody ever actually loses his job or anything! Not even a general manager who once looked longingly at being Boston's GM!

What do you think? Tell us about it!

Why the Yankees' offseason is in the Schlitter

Well, the Yankees didn't get Cliff Lee, or even get Andy Pettitte back, so far this offseason. But hey, they did re-sign Sergio Mitre, give Mark Prior a contract, and now they've claimed Brian Schlitter off waivers from the Cubs. Whoo-hoo!

I know I sound like a twelve-year-old boy here, but the fact that the Yanks have picked up a pitcher named Schlitter makes me laugh and laugh. Sorry for mocking your name, Mr. Schlitter, but it pretty much sums up the Yankees offseason.

Speaking of which, Bryan Hoch of MLB.com interviewed Brian Cashman earlier this week, and he had this to say:

"We've got a lot of time left on the clock. Who knows?" Cashman said. "The bottom line is, there's a reason we haven't done anything up to this point."

Um, no. There are six weeks to pitchers and catchers, and Sergio Flipping Mitre is in the starting rotation for the New York Yankees. That's a big problem. And don't tell me I'm impatient or "saber-rattling" -- an insult Cashman throws out later in the interview -- for saying so. There's a guy named Andy Pettitte out there. Why the Yankees don't make him an offer he can't refuse (no, not that he's sleeping with the fishes, but that he gets a big payday for 2011) is beyond me.

Besides, even if the Yanks can't get Pettitte back, don't tell me there isn't a single pitcher in baseball available out there who would be better than Mitre. That's just silly.

Cash also had this to say about Pettitte:

"I could just tell you that he has been very good about it," Cashman said. "He informed us about, 'Don't wait on me, I'm leaning toward retirement. As of right now I'm not playing, and if I change my mind I'll let you know.'"

You know, I've gotten a lot of grief from readers over harping on this, but why is it that Cashman can't say anything remotely passionate about wanting Pettitte back? Why can't he make him a big offer? Every time he speaks on this, he shows all the spirit of a wet noodle.
Compare and contrast with what Yankees President Randy Levine (yes!) had to say about Pettitte last week:

"Andy's a great Yankee and a great person and I know he'll give it thought and follow his heart and we'll respect his decision. But we're out there, all of us, hoping every day that he comes back," Levine added. "I think he knows we need him. I think he knows how much we respect him and what a great leader he is."

I'm not a big Levine fan -- all too often, he has said the wrong thing -- but he hit a home run with this statement. Is it too much to expect the same from the Yankees' GM?

What do you think? Tell us about it!

Where's Derek Jeter going to end up -- Cincinnati?

In a recent piece on Derek Jeter's contract negotiations with the Yankees, ESPN New York's Wally Matthews claims that the two parties are at odds, with Jeter supposedly turning down a generous three-year offer at $21 million a year.

Anyhow, Matthews quotes an anonymous source "inside the Yankees' hierarchy" who is "urging the front office to play hard ball with Jeter":

"Tell him the deal is three years at $15 million a year, take it or leave it," the person taking the hard-line approach said. "Wait him out and he'll wind up taking it. Where's he gonna go, Cincinnati?"

My guess is that the source is Hank Steinbrenner -- remember his line wondering whether A-Rod wanted to be a Yankee or a Toledo Mud Hen? And Big League Stew's David Brown thought the same thing as me about Hammerin' Hank being the source.

Yankee team president Randy Levine seemed to be speaking a tough stance, saying yesterday:

"Derek Jeter is a great Yankee and he's a great player," said Levine. "With that said and done, now is a different negotiation than 10 years ago."

Anyhow, shows you the Bizarro World we're in, that giving a 36-year-old shortstop $21 million a year is somehow deemed an insult, even though his actual value last year, according to Fangraphs, was just $9.8 million. (Incidentally, for those who make the inevitable comparison with the Yankees breaking the bank for A-Rod after 2007, Rodriguez had the best hitting season by a Yankee in 50 years; his value that season, according to Fangraphs, was $37.7 million. As ridiculous it was to give Rodriguez a ten-year contract, he was coming off two MVP seasons in the previous three years.)

It's going to be interesting to watch what happens. I've heard a lot of fans say "just give Jeter whatever he wants." But where does it end? If the captain is Mr. Team, Mr. Yankee, how much do the the Yankees have to overpay him in order to show that they value him?

I've also heard his 3,000 hit record, which he should achieve sometime in the first half of next year's season, as another reason to keep him on. That makes sense, but it is funny to hear the same people who said for years that Jeter was about intangibles and team, not about so-called "stat-padding" individual numbers, all of a sudden get excited about individual milestones with Jeter.

The conventional wisdom has been that the longer this contract negotiation drags out, the worse the Yankees will look. I think it will be the opposite. For one thing, what are Jeter's negotiating options -- is there some other team out there willing to pay him more than $21 million a year? Doubtful.

As for Cincinnati, given that the Reds declined a $4 million option on Orlando Cabrera, the 35-year-old shortstop, don't think that they're actually a realistic option for Jeter, either.

What do you think? Tell us about it!

Who's the biggest "embarrassment"? Yankee fans, Chuck Greenberg, or Randy Levine?

There was a whole to-do in the media today over Texas Rangers owner Chuck Greenberg criticizing New York Yankee fans. According to an ESPN New York report, he called them "awful," an "embarrassment," and "either violent or apathetic." But I have a different reaction than many Yankee fans did reading these quotes from the article:

"I think our fans have been great," Greenberg said on The Ben and Skin Show on 103.3 KESN. "I think particularly in Game 3 of the World Series they just blew away anything I've seen in any venue during the postseason. I thought Yankee fans, frankly, were awful. They were either violent or apathetic, neither of which is good. So I thought Yankee fans were by far the worst of any I've seen in the postseason. I thought they were an embarrassment."

Are all Yankee fans "either violent or apathetic"? Of course not; he's painting with way too broad a brush here, partly, I'm sure, to get Cliff Lee to stay in Texas.

But does Greenberg have a point? I believe he does. As I complained during the ALCS, way too many fans for my tastes left these games early when the Yankees were losing, like fleeing during the sixth and seventh inning after Game 4. And then there was that brouhaha about Cliff Lee's wife during Game 3, with some Yankee fans acting like knuckleheads, and some real security concerns.

Is it surprising that an another team's owner would bring up these points, especially when he's trying to keep from answering a question about fans in his own ballpark yelling at others for standing during two strikes? Not really.

So I'm not gonna be a hypocrite and be all "how dare he say this," when I've complained over the same things myself. For all the monetary support (ticket sales, memorabilia purchases, etc.) Yankees give their team, there are some fans who are fairweather fans, and some who are jerks.

However, no fan base is perfect; there are knuckleheads everywhere. Greenberg didn't bring it up, but I know Yankee fans have yelled drug-related insults at Josh Hamilton and Ron Washington, which is tacky. Much like it was tacky when I personally heard Ranger fans yell drug-related insults at Darryl Strawberry in the 90s, when he was on the Yankees. One of the times, he shut the Rangers fans up by hitting a massive homer!

As for Greenberg's comments, Yankee president Randy Levine was asked to respond, but he declined to do so. Instead, he had a spokesman issue this statement: "At this time, we are honoring the commissioner's policy regarding respecting and not distracting from the World Series." Huh? You mean like announcing Joe Girardi's new deal during World Series Week?

And this is the second time in a week that Levine's done the no-comment thingy with the Rangers. See this from an article from last week about fans acting up against Cliff Lee's wife:

Yankees president Randy Levine, called to pinpoint precisely where the visiting players' wives were sitting -- inside the moat, in the expensive seats with the supposedly "better-behaved'' crowd, or outside the moat, with the riffraff like you and me -- refused to come to the phone and referred all inquiries to a Yankees publicist.

At any rate, Levine ought to have some reaction as to what Greenberg said, as his comments are an opening salvo in the battle for Cliff Lee, as well as an indictment of the team's security. Last time I checked, I thought the Yankees wanted to sign Lee.  Why is Levine so blase on this?

Back in the day, George Steinbrenner would either have said something withering about Greenberg, or had his press agent, Howard Rubenstein, write a sarcastic statement. Now, we get "no comment." Boring!

What do you think? Tell us about it!

In defense of Randy Levine

Yankee President Randy Levine is not exactly on my BFF list - the way he helped push the new Yankee Stadium into being the playground for the rich was disgusting - but I thought he was spot-on in his recent comments about revenue sharing.

Here's the story. In a USA Today article about baseball salaries, one owner griped about the Yankees salaries:

"We're struggling to sign (first baseman Prince Fielder)," Milwaukee Brewers owner Mark Attanasio said, "and the Yankees infield is making more than our team."

Levine lashed out at Attansio, pointing out the flip side of the Yankees' spending - that they have to contribute to revenue sharing and luxury tax funds to keep the smaller teams afloat:

"I'm sorry that my friend Mark continues to whine about his running the Brewers," Levine told ESPNNewYork.com in a phone interview Tuesday morning. "We play by all the rules and there doesn't seem to be any complaints when teams such as the Brewers receive hundreds of millions of dollars that they get from us in revenue sharing the last few years. Take some of that money that you get from us and use that to sign your players.

"The question that should be asked is: Where has the hundreds of millions of dollars in revenue sharing gone?"

Oh, snap!

Squawker Jon and I argue about this subject a lot - he concedes that the Yankees are indeed playing by the current rules, but thinks there should be a salary cap - and a salary floor - in baseball.

I think Levine is absolutely right - the Yankees do spend a lot, but they also do, indeed, pay hundreds of millions into the system. If anything, Levine didn't go far enough in enumerating how much money these small-market teams get before selling a single ticket.

So how much are they getting? ESPN's Jayson Stark estimates that all these numbers add up to at least $80 million per small-market team each season, before they even sell a single ticket. He figures that the Central fund which "includes national TV, radio, Internet, licensing, merchandising, marketing, MLB International money," adds up to "slightly over $30 million per team if you deduct the $10 million in pension and operations fees, or just over $40 million if you don't." And keep in mind that even though the Yankees (and the Red Sox, of course!) may draw the lion's share of interest there, they still each only get that 1/30 share.

Levine is right to wonder, "Where has the hundreds of millions of dollars in revenue sharing gone?" All too frequently, it looks like that money has bought a whole heap of nothing. As Stark noted this winter, after Scott Boras brought up the subject:

We count a minimum of a dozen teams, depending on how you define "total payroll," that aren't spending that same number -- $80 million -- on their major league payroll. So it isn't just Scott Boras who has the right to ask: What's up with that?

You may remember that the MLB players union went after the Florida Marlins this winter to get them to increase payroll, and that the Marlins worked out an agreement with them to do just that.Will that happen with other teams? It should.

Because what is a bigger danger to the game? The Yankees overspending - yet putting hundreds of millions into the baseball coffers that goes to the smaller teams? Or those smaller teams - most of which have owners way richer than the Steinbrenner family could ever dream to be - pocketing that money, and crying poverty?

I know which side I'm on. But what do you think? Tell us about it!

Phil of the Future shows Yankees' future

Last night's game may only count as just one out of 162, but I still found it incredibly satisfying to watch. As Subway Squawkers reader Roger9 put it:

Finally, a night where we don't have to walk away in disgust. It all came together...young pitching, hitting...everything! Will it carry over and become infectious? Only time will tell.

Seeing Phil Hughes pitch so well was thrilling to watch. So was that 10-run inning! Loved seeing the look on Jose Molina's face after his grand slam - talk about looking happy to be there!

Finally, Phil of the Future ended up being Phil of the Present. And Mark Melancon looked pretty nifty as well. Oh, and A-Rod is getting closer to returning to the field. This is all great news for the Yankees, after a lousy week.

One question, though - what happened to Hughes' glasses? There was a whole to-do that he needed glasses last season. Is he wearing contacts now?

* * *

I was thinking some more about the Yankees lowering ticket prices. I have to say that I find it delicious to see the front office humiliated into doing this. Does that make me a bad person?

Here's the thing - Randy Levine and Lonn Trost had such hubris. They somehow thought that they could get away with charging literally thousands of dollars more for their top tickets than any other team. This, during the worst economic times since the Great Depression. Talk about out of touch.

Today's New York Times talks about why the prices were lowered:

“It was starting to hurt the overall brand,” said Donny Deutsch, chairman of Deutsch Inc., an advertising agency, when asked about the original pricing strategy. “People start asking whether you care about the fans.”

Yep. Why is it that most baseball teams, including top draws like the Red Sox, Dodgers, and Cubs, noticed the economic climate six months ago, and instituted price freezes? Some teams, like the Giants, even lowered some of their prices this year.

Yet the Yanks kept on pushing their ridiculous ticket prices, acting like they were such great businessmen. They're not. It's not exactly surprising that the same front office who had between $300 and 500 million in cost overruns on the new stadium also butchered the ticket pricing. How is it that these folks get to keep their jobs?

While the ticket prices really should be lowered so that the average person can afford more of their seats, I do enjoy seeing Trost and Levine with egg on their faces. Heh.

What do you think? Leave us a comment!