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NEW YORK - I’d meant to write a column about the nearly five innings of excellent relief Javier Vazquez gave Dustin Moseley and the Yankees in Monday night’s game versus Oakland, but for a thorough breakdown of what was working for Vazquez that hasn’t been of late, I’m going to direct you around the bend to a place on this site called Fleisher Alley, the slightly skewed lord-and-master of which is Larry Fleisher. Larry’s analysis breaks things down in terms of s ... READ MORE>

On May 4, 2009, the normally unflappable Derek Jeter and his manager Joe Girardi were ejected from a game at Yankee Stadium for arguing strikes and balls with home plate umpire Jerry Meals. In that 6-4 loss to the Boston Red Sox, Meals had drawn the ire of the Yankee dugout by calling—as confirmed by video replay—a wildly inconsistent strike zone to pitcher Phil Hughes and Yankee batters. The controversy came on a wet, raw night when people in the stands had sat through a rain de ... READ MORE>

When Mohamed Kamara was born in 1992 the civil war in his native Sierra Leone was into its second bloody year. Bordered on the north and east by Guinea and on the south by Liberia, the country is at the westernmost edge of Africa and despite its small size is among its most geographically, mineralogically and agriculturally diverse locales. Its capital city of Freetown perches on the Atlantic coast and has the largest harbor on the continent. Its inland regions are a lush green quilt of timb ... READ MORE>

At Yankee Stadium, one of the few places in the world Jane Lang says she really feels at home, she runs her hand from the neatly trimmed green grass over to the area behind home plate that is painted white with the Yankees’ famous interlocking “NY” logo. Jane, who has been sightless since birth, and came to love baseball listening to Red Sox games on the radio with her father as a young girl in Massachusetts, had wanted to see the letters with her fingers—the way she& ... READ MORE>

The New York Yankees have the best record in baseball and sit atop the American League East by half a game, but the inconsistent baseball they’ve been playing lately is troublesome. As losers of five out of their last seven games, the Yanks have lost ground to their chief division rivals. Just a few weeks ago, the Tampa Bay Rays were trailing them by three games, the injury-riddled Red Sox by eight in the loss column. Tampa is now just a half-game back, and the Sox six in the loss colu ... READ MORE>

There is going to be a lot of instant and excessive mythologizing of Friday night’s game at Yankee Stadium and that’s fine if Hollywood ever decides to produce an epic on the life of George Steinbrenner. But when those who write in the sports pages give in to that temptation, it detracts from our appreciation of the Yankees’ victory, steals the very human glory of the moment for fleeting uplift, and blurs the real actions of men with fanciful notions of supernatural interve ... READ MORE>

So much has been spoken and written about George Steinbrenner on this day of his passing, it’s hard for me to add anything significantly insightful. He was a colossus; dynamic, complex and contradictory in ways that can't easily be encapsulated or reconciled, yet possessed of inarguable and singular greatness. Like all forces of nature he transformed everyone and everything around him.  And even that seems redundant as I type it. There's a temptation to add to the stream of ... READ MORE>

Following is the second and final excerpt from my 2008 interview with Bob Sheppard, in which he continues discussing his military service, early civilian career and eventual association with the New York Yankees. (Click here for Part I.)BS: “I was in a test to become a chairman of speech in another high school. And I took that before I left [for his WW II naval service]. And I never knew the outcome. Until one day, on my ship in the Pacific, I got a note from home saying, ‘Word h ... READ MORE>

In 2008, while working on a profile of renowned New York Yankees Public Address announcer Bob Sheppard for Maple Street Press' Yankees Annual,  I was privileged to conduct what may be the final in-depth interview with him. Though weakened by a respiratory ailment that had forced him to take a leave of absence from the post he’d held the Stadium since 1951, Sheppard was in excellent spirits when we spoke over the phone, his voice strong, energetic and often punctuated with laughter ... READ MORE>

WORDSOffered without comment are some of Joba Chamberlain’s answers to media questions following Friday’s 6-1 Yankee loss to the Toronto Blue Jays. Chamberlain entered the game in the 8th inning to preserve a 1-0 lead after starter A.J. Burnett had thrown 6.2 scoreless frames, but the reliever surrendered the tying run to the Blue Jays on a one-out walk to outfielder Jose Bautista, followed by singles to  Adam Lind (.205) and Aaron Hill (.192). Asked about his approach towa ... READ MORE>

In Boston on Tuesday night, where the Red Sox had defeated the Tampa Bay Rays and hopped to within a game of the first-place Yankees in the American League East, all the quotes that sportswriters use as pillow stuffing were about the Sox’s scrappiness and ability to stare down adversity. Second baseman Dustin Pedroia was disabled with a broken foot. Also absent from the lineup was primary catcher Victor Martinez, who’d recently sustained a fractured thumb. Starting outfielder Jac ... READ MORE>

Sunday didn’t exactly start with a bang in my corner of the Twitterverse. The Yankees’ blowout loss to the Dodgers on Saturday had left me and the tweeps sort of cranky. We’d seen enough of A.J. Burnett by the time Bryan Hoch, Yankees beat reporter for MLB.com, tweeted his official line from La La Land: 3.0 IP, 6H, 6 ER, 6BB, 5K, 1 WP.I felt really sorry for gehriggirl. She’s been through a lot lately. Tornados, floods, broken windshields, you name it. I know she carr ... READ MORE>