September 7, 2004: Evil Empire Shows True Colors
On Monday, September 6, the Yankees asked the commissioner's office to award them a forfeit over Tampa Bay after the Devil Rays failed to arrive in time because of travel problems due to Hurricane Frances. The following is the BMTG's take, as well as coverage and commentary from Tampa Bay and New York press.
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The heartless and soul-less Yanks have shown their true colors again, this time by ignoring the impact of the Florida hurricane and asking for a forfeit win over the Tampa Bay D-Rays for not be able to make the first game of a double header on Labor Day. Tampa Bay’s home games on Saturday and Sunday had been postponed and Tampa Bay officials had made it clear that they were not going to fly to New York until Sunday night or Monday morning.
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D-Rays general manager Chuck Lamar said, “We decided, and we made the right decision, we’ll stick by that decision, to stay with our families. We wanted to stay in the Tampa Bay area, wait out the storm with our families.”
Yankee officials insist that the D-Rays should have come up Saturday and want to be given a free win. It should be obvious to any rational mind that in a case of a natural disaster, making sure your family is secure comes first and foremost. Baseball is still just a game in the grand scheme of things.
To make matters even more absurd, the arrogant and selfish Yanks are suggesting that if the game were to be rescheduled for this week, they might refuse to play. This is another Yankee decision that makes no sense. The D-Rays are scheduled to play three more nights in the Bronx (Tuesday through Thursday). The easiest and most obvious solution is to just make one of those days a double header. What is the difference? The Yanks are suggesting that the game not be played at all and that they should only schedule it for the day after the regular season, and then only if it is needed to decide a postseason race.
What are the Yankees afraid of? Have they lost so much confidence that they have to resort to begging for a forfeiture instead of playing the “powerhouse” Tampa Bay Devil Rays, who have lost eight straight games and have long been repeating the line, “Wait until next year”? Is Boss George upset that he had to give out free hot dogs and sodas to the 1,000 fans on hand when the gates opened? Are the surging Red Sox in the head of the Yankees to such a degree that they will steal a win any way they can?
There are times when it is appropriate to continue on despite significant events that are shaping our lives and changing the world we live in. The BMTG, after an appropriate moment of silence, continued playing wiffle after the 9-11 attacks to show that terrorists will not change the way we go about biz-nasty. If the wiffle games were scheduled near the Twin Towers, however, play would have been suspended and BMTGers would have joined in the relief efforts.
The devastation and disruption caused by Hurricane Frances is different in that those affected ought to be able to ensure their families’ safety before participating in a game. That is just common decency, which the Yankee organization has again shown it has none of.
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I suspect the Yankees don't want to play a makeup game this week because they want more time to smooth out their rotation with Brown recently injured. The Yankees already taint the game with their ridiculously lopsided payroll and since even that can't guarantee victory (although it does make it likely) they make every attempt to steal the pennant. The language of the rule that they referenced for the forfeit may be on their side but the intent of the rule is not. Now more than ever, it can be said that God is on the side of the Sox and the Yankees are nothing more than evil men.
"The path of the righteous man is bisect upon all side by the inequities of the selfish and the tyrannies of evil men. Blessed is he who in the name of charity and good will shepherd the weak through the valley of darkness. For he is truly his brother's keeper and the finder of lost children. And I will strike down upon thee with great vengeance and furious anger to those who attempt to poison and destroy my brothers and you will know my name is the lord when I lay my vengeance upon thee."
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Evil Empire's Compassion Shines Through
By Martin Fennelly, The Tampa Tribune
Maybe they are evil.
How touching it was to see George Steinbrenner and New York Yankees hearts go out to the Devil Rays during Hurricane Frances.
The Empire, ever sensitive, made a mighty wind. Even as it dished out free hot dogs and Cokes to inconvenienced Yankees fans, it demanded that baseball force the Rays to forfeit a game after a Labor Day doubleheader in New York was ruined when the impudent Rays didn't leave Tampa Bay soon enough because, boo hoo, they were worried about their families and homes.
George about had Labor Day twins. His double dip upstaged. Yankees management would have put a fist through a wall if pitcher Kevin Brown hadn't already done it. All part of their devolution into world champion crybabies.
Six years ago, the Yankees won 125 games. Now they're a pathetic case, falling so fast they crave a 9-0 forfeit by the Rays, whom they could beat 9-0 with their eyes closed. All to prop up their ailing dynasty. The big bully. I'd dock the Yankees two wins for arrogance alone.
Centers Of Their Own Universe
Not even baseball was dumb enough to award the forfeit. The entire episode was enough to make you a Devil Rays fan. Here were the Rays, in the middle of a seven-game losing streak, and a hurricane, stuck with five games in New York, which they gladly would have played on time, only the hurricane didn't cooperate.
The Yankees don't want to hear it. To them, this is another example of the monkey-like Rays screwing up the works, interfering with the professional operation of a death star. It's like the lions complaining because the Christians were late. If only it was funny. If only Frances was funny.
You see, the Yanks assumed baseball only allowed the Rays to scrub the last two games of their home series with Detroit so they could get to New York right away because, as you know, the world revolves around the Yankees. Frances revolves around them, too.
Those silly Rays. They rode out Frances with loved ones. Only Frances stalled. By the time the worst passed, they were stuck. They didn't reach Yankee Stadium until 6 p.m. for a 7 p.m. game. They came off the bus hitting.
How dare they mess up George's doubleheader. The gall. Didn't they know the Yankees were in a pennant race? And what was Rays slugger Aubrey Huff doing missing the plane? So his house is near the water in the Westshore area. So his house was in the water in the Westshore area on Monday. Why do bad things always happen to the Yankees?
Baseball commissioner Bud Selig reportedly also was furious the Rays did not hurry to New York. Wouldn't you have loved to have chained Selig and Steinbrenner to the Gandy Bridge on Sunday night?
We pay so much lip service to sports not being an end-all, then this. And this: Last Friday, the NFL forced Miami's Dolphins to New Orleans for an exhibition game while a storm the size of Texas bore down on Florida.
By the way, Frances wiped out the final three games of the Florida State League season, making Steinbrenner's Tampa Yankees, up by two games, West Division champion by default. Nobody in New York complained about that, did they?
Yankee-Hating Made Easy
I stand by the Rays. I back the boys for staying home. Rays GM Chuck LaMar said he'd do it again. Bully for him. There's a whole world out there without the NY brand on it.
This Yankees arrogance is glorious to Yankee haters. Steinbrenner's solid-gold legions are racing around like rats in heat. Last week, the Yankees lost a game 22-0. They see Red Sox in their soup. Brown, the 39-year-old infant, made his hand go splat.
This is the Yankees answer? Pulling the wings off our fly? George trying to wack-a-mole brother raccoon Vince Naimoli?
Monday, the Devil Rays arrived at Yankee Stadium in time to lose 7-4. They'll be there today, Wednesday and Thursday. They'd better be. Think of those poor Yankees. Here's hoping justice prevails and the pinstripers exact a pound of flesh and drink gallons of Rays blood. That's what baseball is all about.
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Yankees squall over forfeit, but come off as blowhards
By Mike Lupica, New York Daily News
The
last time Randy Levine, underboss to George Steinbrenner, looked like this
kind of yahoo in public, it was during the last American League Championship
Series. Levine is president of the Yankees, and a crucial part of his job
description is saying what Steinbrenner tells him to say. So after Pedro Martinez
put Don Zimmer to the ground and there was that big fight in the Yankees bullpen,
Levine stood sweating in front of television cameras afterward and made Fenway
Park sound more dangerous than Baghdad that day. Which it certainly was not.
Anybody who sat in the stands that day, as I did, knew it was a lie.
The truth is that the only person unsafe on that particular Saturday was a Fenway Park groundskeeper, who got jumped by some of Levine's baseball players.
Yesterday Levine was back, demanding that the Devil Rays should forfeit the first game of what was supposed to be a doubleheader because they weren't able to get out of Florida because of Hurricane Frances.
"The rule states that if your team is here and ready to play, and the other team isn't here and not ready to play, there should be a forfeit, and we believe there should be a forfeit," Levine said yesterday.
Levine doesn't just sound cheap here, he sounds desperate. If the Yankees are still 10-1/2 games ahead of the Red Sox, do you think he would actually go out in front of the public and beg for a forfeit?
If the Yankees were still way ahead, do you think Levine and Steinbrenner would have been screaming at representatives of Major League Baseball - as they sure were in private yesterday - demanding a forfeit from a Devil Rays team that arrived at the Stadium, when it finally arrived at the Stadium, sixteen games under .500 and 24 games out of first place?
All day long, until the Devil Rays finally got off the St. Petersburg Bridge and over to the airport and up to New York, the Yankees actually worried, out loud, that rescheduling a game against a stiff team like this would put them at a "competitive disadvantage." So they kept saying they wouldn't reschedule the game, even though the Devil Rays are here tonight, and tomorrow night, and Thursday night.
"There are no plans to reschedule any games until this issue is worked out," Levine, the underboss, said.
Did the commissioner's office suggest to Vince Naimoli, the Devil Rays owner, that he ought to get his team out of Tampa before yesterday morning? It did. Did Naimoli, one of the worst cheapskate owners in baseball, mislead the commissioner's office about his plans? It looks now as if he did. Does all that merit a forfeit in the middle of what has become a terrific pennant race in the American League East between the Yankees and the Red Sox? On what planet?
The Cubs and Marlins had an extremely important series blown away by Frances over the weekend. They're playing a doubleheader on Friday to catch up and a doubleheader on Sept. 20, and they're going to do it without the kind of public whining produced by the president of a team that worries about a competitive disadvantage with a payroll of $194 million.
Did the Yankees do anything wrong yesterday, at least before Underboss Levine opened his mouth? They did not. They had first moved the first game of yesterday's doubleheader from one o'clock to three o'clock to accommodate the Devil Rays, when the Devil Rays still thought they could get out of Florida at 9 in the morning. An awful lot of Yankee fans didn't know the time of the game had been changed, and showed up at the Stadium early, and the Yankees were gracious enough to open the gates. And later they gave out free hot dogs and soft drinks to the people who hung in there all of Labor Day afternoon. Very cool.
Then they try to steal a game.
If Steinbrenner really wants a free game off Lou Piniella, he must be completely hysterical about his starting pitching. Schedule a doubleheader for one of the next two nights and shut up about it. It's not enough that they had five games scheduled with a stiff team this week when the Red Sox are in Oakland, now they want freebies.
The only losers yesterday were the fans who couldn't wait around eight hours for the game to start. Here was John Imbriani of Miller Place at a few minutes after 1 o'clock yesterday, with his son John Jr., sitting 11 rows behind home plate, the best seats the two of them have ever had for a Yankee game. The boy wore a No.2 Jeter jersey. Father and son had gotten on the Long Island Expressway at Exit 63 at 10 minutes to eight, but as they pulled into the parking lot, they started hearing that there was a problem even getting the Devil Rays to the airport.
"We come once a year," Imbriani said. "A friend of mine who's got a partial season-ticket plan gave me the tickets. I'm close enough to the plate to call balls and strikes, and now I may not see a single pitch."
When they still thought the doubleheader would start at 1, they figured they could see all of the first game and some of the second before they had to be home. See the Yankees in Yankee Stadium from 11 rows behind home plate. They stayed in the ballpark for five hours and finally went back to Miller Place.
"But I saw all those pictures from Florida this weekend," Imbriani said before he left. "So it's tough for me to cry about missing a baseball game."
The only crying in baseball yesterday was from the people who run the Yankees.