The Yankees

[eddhead]

Not worth it for the Yankees.

Cliff Lee has already stated that he will enter the free agent market at the end of the season, so whoever trades for him will rent him for 3 months.

So Lee has no worth to a team that's not going to make the playoffs. He also has little worth to a team that's probably going to the playoffs anyway, and the Yankees are in that group. Sure, Lee would help the Yankees, but what playoff contender doesn't need more starting pitching? The question is what do you give up for a short term gain, and how does the move disrupt the team.

Seattle wants prospects, specifically a catcher. Forget about a trade of big names; Seattle is going to start over in the free agent market next season. In the meantime, they dump a salary and get future players.

Yankees have some good catcher prospects, but although he's played well, I don't think Cervelli is the future as a starting catcher. I wouldn't throw any of these AAA guys away to get a player for a few months. Also, what happens to the current rotation? Take Burnett out, and you've lost him for the duration of his contract. Yanks should just wait till the offseason, find out what Pettitte's plans are, and decide whether they should go after Lee for a long term contract.

For now, Yankees need bullpen help, and maybe a couple of veteran hitters on the bench. Last year it was Hinske and Hairston Jr.

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Mets should go after Lee. They are in the running, but clearly need another starter. I don't think Dickey is the answer.

Twins might be in the best position to work a trade. They have a good catcher in AAA, and he's blocked by Joe Mauer.

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Mostly agree with that. Lee would be a nice luxury but pricey and unnecessary. Yankee starting pitching has been very strong this year; at any point in time, 4/5 starters are solid. BTW, the Vazquez trade is looking pretty good at the moment, although I am happy to see Melky starting to hit for the Braves. Still I like the trade.

In contrast, I never did like the Granderson deal, but Austin Jackson is coming back to earth and it is clear at least to me that he has deficiencies at the plate. Coke has pitched well for the Tigers, and we could use some middle relief depth. Jury is out on that one.

Most encouragingly, Yanks have the best record in baseball despite disappointing first halves from Texiera (especially), Jeter and A-Rod, as well as injuries to Johnson, Granderson and Posada. Gardner, Swisher, and Cervelli have really stepped up, and Cano is a first half MVP candidate. It will be interesting to see if Gardner in particular can keep the pace; in the past he has worn down in the second half of seasons. Perhaps playing LF rather than CF will help preserved his endurance.

Hughes has been a God send.

Yanks need middle relief and set-up support. Marte has been decent and Joba shows signs but needs to be more consistent. Same with Robertson. They also need a left handed bat to replace Johnson. This goes under the category of tweaking. They should be able to fill one or more of these needs without ransoming the future.

[antinimby]

^ Gardner did not get "worn down in the second half of seasons." Last year was his first full season and he was injured midseason and pretty much became platooned with Melky the rest of the year. He'll be fine.

As for Lee, Al Leiter on MY9 yesterday brought up a good point. He said that if the Twins gets Lee, then the advantage goes to the Twins in a short series where they'll pitch Lee twice.

If by getting Lee just to prevent an AL contender like the Twins from getting him, I think the Yankees need to do it.

[eddhead]

^ I was thinking about 2008. for some reason, I thought Gardner had more playing time in 2008 than he did, but you are right, he only played in 42 major league games.

Good point about Lee too, but the Mariners will ask an awful lot for him, and I just do not see the Yankess paying up. Nor do I think they should.

[hbcat]

This is probably idle fantasy, but if the Yankees get Lee, it would mean the rotation would be crowded. Someone would have to be traded, sent to the pen, or the minors. None of the starters is going to the minors. Burnett has been about as bad as he could be for a month, but he's not going anywhere. He has a big contract and has always been streaky. Without him, NY wouldn't have won the WS last year. That leaves Hughes and Vasquez. Hughes is on an innings limit, but I am sure they want him to reach that limit nearly as much as they want to avoid him surpassing it. He's young and could be a top-notch pitcher for years to come.

That leaves Vasquez. He's never pitched out of the pen (he as one inning this season, and even that was a rarity), and it looks like he is righting himself. He might be a good chip in a trade -- maybe for a bat & some help in the pen.

If this algebra is correct, then the only way Lee comes to the Yankees is if Vazquez leave via a trade. There's no way Seattle would trade Lee for Vasquez, which means there would have to be a three-way trade or two simultaneous trades. That gets complicated, and my guess is one of the other contenders would be able to offer more with less risk of the deal falling apart. I think this means Lee will not be in pinstripes before next spring, if he ever is going to wear the uniform.

[eddhead]

^
not sure what Vazquez is making this year, but according to baseball reference.com, he made $11.5Mm in 2009 which is pretty steep (in comparison, Lee made $9MM) . He is pitching pretty well right now, but given his salary I doubt there would be much demand for him in a trade.

http://www.baseball-reference.com/pl...azquja01.shtml

[hbcat]

According to the URL you just linked, he's also getting 11.5 million this season, so yes, that is another major stumbling block. It seems highly unlikely Lee is coming to NY in 2010 unless it is to pitch against one of the NY teams or for the Mets.

[ZippyTheChimp]

July 11, 2010

Bob Sheppard, Voice of the Yankees, Dies at 99

By RICHARD GOLDSTEIN

Bob Sheppard, whose elegant intonation as the public-address announcer at Yankee Stadium for more than half a century personified the image of Yankee grandeur, died Sunday at his home in Baldwin, on Long Island. He was 99.

His death was confirmed by his son, Paul.

From the last days of DiMaggio through the primes of Mantle, Berra, Jackson and Jeter, Sheppard’s precise, resonant, even Olympian elocution — he was sometimes called the Voice of God — greeted Yankee fans with the words, “Good afternoon, ladies and gentlemen, and welcome to Yankee Stadium.”

“The Yankees and Bob Sheppard were a marriage made in heaven,” said his son Paul Sheppard, a 71-year-old financial adviser. “I know St. Peter will now recruit him. If you’re lucky enough to go to heaven, you’ll be greeted by a voice, saying, ‘Good afternoon, ladies and gentlemen. Welcome to heaven!’ ”

In an era of blaring stadium music, of public-address announcers styling themselves as entertainers and cheerleaders, Sheppard, a man with a passion for poetry and Shakespeare, shunned hyperbole.

“A public-address announcer should be clear, concise, correct,” he said. “He should not be colorful, cute or comic.”

Sheppard was also the public-address announcer for the football Giants from 1956 through 2005, first at Yankee Stadium and then at Giants Stadium in the Meadowlands.

He signed a new two-year contract with the Yankees in March 2008 but was not at the stadium that season, when he was recovering from illness that brought a severe weight loss. His longtime backup, Jim Hall, replaced him.

Sheppard did not feel strong enough to attend the ceremonies marking the final game at the old Yankee Stadium on Sept. 21, 2008, but he announced the Yankee starting lineup that night in a tape recording. His recorded voice still introduces Derek Jeter at the plate, a touch the Yankee captain requested to honor Sheppard.

Sheppard was chairman of the speech department at John Adams High School in Queens and an adjunct professor of speech at St. John’s University while becoming a New York institution as a public-address announcer.

“I don’t change my pattern,” he once said. “I speak at Yankee Stadium the same way I do in a classroom, a saloon or reading the Gospel at Mass at St. Christopher’s.”

On May 7, 2000, Bob Sheppard Day at Yankee Stadium, the Yankee outfielder Paul O’Neill reflected on Sheppard’s aura.

“It’s the organ at church,” O’Neill told The Record of Hackensack, N.J. “Certain sounds and certain voices just belong in places. Obviously, his voice and Yankee Stadium have become one.”

Robert Leo Sheppard, who was born on Oct. 20, gained a passion for his calling while growing up in Queens.

“My father, Charles, and my mother, Eileen, each enjoyed poetry and music and public speaking,” Sheppard told Maury Allen in “Baseball: The Lives Behind the Seams.”

“They were very precise in how they spoke. They measured words, pronounced everything carefully and instilled a love of language in me by how they respected proper pronunciation.”

Sheppard played first base at St. John’s Prep and at St. John’s University, where he was also a quarterback.

While he was in high school, two Vincentian priests put him on the path toward a career in speech education.

“The combination there of one, the fiery orator, and the other, the semantic craftsman, probably presented a blending I wanted to imitate,” he once recalled.

Sheppard earned a bachelor’s degree in English and speech at St. John’s and a master’s degree in speech from Columbia before serving as a Navy officer during World War II.

He became a speech teacher at John Adams upon his return and served as the public-address announcer for the Brooklyn Dodgers and New York Yankees of the All-America Football Conference.

He was hired by the baseball Yankees in 1951, and soon fans were hearing Sheppard’s pronunciation of “Joe Di-Mah-ggio.”

“I take great pride in how the names are pronounced,” Sheppard said. He seldom entered the clubhouses, but made certain to check directly with a visiting player if he had any doubt on the correct way to pronounce his name.

“Mic-key Man-tle” was a favorite of his, but as Sheppard once told The Associated Press: “Anglo-Saxon names are not very euphonious. What can I do with Steve Sax? What can I do with Mickey Klutts?”

He enjoyed announcing the name of the Japanese pitcher Shigetoshi Hasegawa and the names of Latin players, particularly pitcher Salome Barojas and infielder Jose Valdivielso.

Sheppard feared he would trip over his pronunciation of Wayne Terwilliger, an infielder who played at Yankee Stadium with the Washington Senators and Kansas City Athletics in the 1950s. “I worried that I would say ‘Ter-wigg-ler’ but I never did,” he remembered.

But there was at least one flub.

When the football Giants played their first game at the Meadowlands, against the Dallas Cowboys in October 1976, Sheppard told the crowd: “Welcome to Yankee Stadium.”

On Bob Sheppard Day -- during his 50th year with the Yankees -- he was honored at a home-plate ceremony in which Walter Cronkite read the inscription on the plaque being unveiled for Monument Park behind the left-field fence. It stated in part that Sheppard “has announced the names of hundreds of players -- both unfamiliar and legendary -- with equal divine reverence.”

He leaves behind his second wife, Mary, two sons, Paul and Chris, and two daughters, Barbara and Mary. His first wife, Margaret, the mother of all four children, died in 1959. He also leaves four grandchildren.

Sheppard had his imitators, most notably the ESPN broadcaster Jon Miller.

“One day when my wife and I were down in St. Thomas, we went into a restaurant,” Sheppard told The Village Voice in 2002. “I told the waitress, ‘I’ll have the No. 1. Scrambled eggs, buttered toast and black coffee. No. 1.’ “My wife looked at me and said. ‘You sound like Jon Miller’s imitation.’ I wasn’t conscious of the fact that I was ordering the same way I’d introduce Billy Martin.”

Joseph Berger contributed reporting.

Copyright 2010 The New York Times Company

[eddhead]

I have been a Yankee fan since roughly 1966. I lived through the CBS Mike Burke era, the demise of Mantle and Ford, pre-renovated Yankee stadium, George, Munson, Messersmith, Catfish, Reggie, Mattingly, Jeter and a couple of dynasties along the way. The two mainstays throughout were Rizzuto and Sheppard; they were the keepers of the tradition and now they are both gone. It just ain't the same

Rest in Peace.

[antinimby]

R.I.P. George

[eddhead]

Say what you will, but his was an amazinrg run.

He bought the team in 1973 for $10MM - $3.2MM less than what CBS for the team when they purchased it in 1964. The franchise is now worth an estimated $1.6BN.

During his reign, the Yankess won 7 world championships and 11 pennants

First Shepperd, now Steinbrenner. Truely the end of an era

RIP

[ZippyTheChimp]

The two mainstays throughout were Rizzuto and Sheppard

The Scooter kept Yankee TV fans entertained throughout the Dark Years [Horace Clark, et al].

From the beginning, a trip to the Stadium began with:

Good afternoon ladies and gentlemen. Welcome to Yankee Stadium. Here are the lineups for today's game.

The admonitions about stadium rules were authoritative, but kindly. He was like the facade, part of the stadium itself; you didn't imagine that he actually spoke that way.

As I grew up and began to visit other ballparks, it was sort of a shock that the PA announcer wasn't a Bob Sheppard.

He would visit first-time players at the ballpark, and ask them how to pronounce their name. He asked Robinson Cano, "Is it Robinson or Robby, and I have to tell you I prefer Robinson."

[ZippyTheChimp]

My Father's Day present is tickets to TB, on Oldtimers Day. Gotta find my #7 tee.

Added significance this year.

I used to curse Steinbrenner, especially for the bonehead things he did in the 80s; but no doubt, he rescued the Yankees from insignificance. Sports, especially one with a long season, needs a villain. Steinbrenner made them the Damn Yankees again.

@eddhead: If you haven't already,

Steinbrenner
The Last Lion of Baseball

Bill Madden

Longtime fans will find out things they never knew; young fans will learn how they got from there to here. The way he came to buy the team is pure Steinbrenner. And then manager Ralph Houk and haircuts.

Madden has covered the Yankees since 1978, so a lot of inside stuff.

[eddhead]

Thanks for the recommendation. I'll check it out soon.

EDIT: Your comment on Horace Clark reminded me of how he used to take the DP pivot from short left field. LOL

[hbcat]

Zippy, we'll need a report. Have a good time.

[ZippyTheChimp]

^
It was steamy hot; no Yogi; they lost. Had a good time though.


If Arod doesn't hit #600 soon, I'm going to have Michael Kay kidnapped until the end of the season.