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The plan sounded cool enough. My wife, Pamela, and I decided to take Kyle, our nephew, to a Yankee game for his 16^th birthday. We told Kyle he could bring a few friends, too. Kyle picked Sunday’s game against the Reds long before we knew CC Sabathia would oppose Johnny Cueto, a nifty pitcher’s duel that made the afternoon even more enticing.

Before we reached Yankee Stadium, I tweeted that I would be attending the game instead of analyzing the action with Bob Lorenz at the YES Network studios. Soon after that tweet, I received an invitation from Vinny Milano. Better known as Bald Vinny, he is the maestro of the Bleacher Creatures.

“My wife and kids are coming, too,” Vinny tweeted me. “You guys should join us in Section 203 for Roll Call.”

I had been

Fifteen years later, the vision of a spooked Mariano Rivera is still embedded in my cranium. One week into the 1997 season, Rivera surrendered a 464-foot homer to Mark McGwire and blew his second save in four chances. Rivera was the new closer for the Yankees, but he was failing in the ninth inning.

As Rivera fielded questions about letting a 1-0 lead disappear at Yankee Stadium, his voice cracked. He searched for the proper words, but he was really searching for the right answers, too. The more Rivera spoke, the more obvious it became that he was a bewildered soul. He was the closer who wasn’t closing.

“I think I need something to get me going,” Rivera said at the time. “I think mentally to get me going I have to try to think like last year. Just think it’s

Spotting Mariano Rivera during batting practice was never a chore. A Yankee hitter would blast a shot into the outfield gaps and a blur would bolt across the grass to grab it. That blur was Rivera, who shagged fly balls as part of his pregame routine. It was easy to watch Rivera glide around the outfield.

On a sobering Thursday in Kansas City, it wasn’t easy to watch Rivera in the outfield. It was awful. Awful to watch Rivera land awkwardly after leaping for a ball near the left field warning track, awful to see his face plastered with pain and awful to see him grabbing his damaged right knee. Rivera, the mightiest of closers, looked helpless.

A few hours later, a somber Rivera revealed that he had torn the ACL and meniscus in his knee, a devastating injury. As difficult as it was to

One day later, there was still a sobering quality to Brian Cashman's voice. He sounded forlorn and fatigued, which was apt. Thursday was a difficult day in Yankeeland, a day when Cashman announced that Michael Pineda had an anterior labral tear in his right shoulder and would miss the next 12 months.

The excitement that Cashman felt after acquiring Pineda from the Seattle Mariners in a four-player trade three months ago had been replaced by the frigid reality that Pineda won't throw a pitch in 2012. So the power pitcher who was supposed to be an essential part of a rotation that could guide the Yankees to the postseason has become a bystander.

"It is what it is," Cashman said. "And it's not good."

Cashman believes that Pineda injured himself on the final pitch that he threw in extended

As Russell Martin discussed the rekindling of the rivalry between the Yankees and the Red Sox, he had a look of anticipation on his face. It was the look of a boxer before an important bout against a despised rival. It was the look of someone who was anxious to try and spoil Boston’s 100^th anniversary celebration of Fenway Park on Friday.

“When you play Boston,” Martin said, “the only thing you care about is beating them.”

Obviously, that is the same attitude the Yankees have when they play any team. Whether it is the Red Sox, the Rays or the Rangers, the Yankees want to win every game. But Martin meant that the conquests between the Yankees and the Red Sox are a bit different. There is a different type of intensity when the Yankees roll 200 miles north and

The final games of spring training were disappearing off the schedule for the Yankees. So, naturally, thoughts were drifting toward the games that mattered. Well, almost everyone was thinking about the regular season. Derek Jeter was still thinking about getting hits in meaningless spring games.

When the Yankees lost to the Detroit Tigers in the Division Series last October, the defeat stung CC Sabathia for several weeks. The season ended abruptly, too abruptly for Sabathia. He was hoping the Yankees could power their way to another World Series title. Instead, the Yankees limped home.

Six months later, the Yankees are trying to replace the disappointment of 2011 with a different ending in 2012. Sabathia will throw the Yankees’ first pitch of a new season against the Rays on Friday, which is the tiniest of steps in what he believes can be a championship season. There will be thousands of pitches thrown before the Yankees can prove if they can make another title a reality.

With Sabathia, the Yankees have an ace they can trust. While every Major League team has a No. 1 starter,

Freddy Garcia is a reliable starter, a back-end-of-the-rotation pitcher who wins with guile and a fastball that averages around 87 miles per hour. Garcia isn’t someone whose presence should stunt the growth of pitchers that are at least a decade younger than him, pitchers named Ivan Nova, Phil Hughes and Michael Pineda.

When the Yankees assembled for Spring Training last month, I expected that Garcia would end up as the sixth starter and the man without a spot in the rotation. The Yankees signed Garcia to a one-year, $4 million contract last November, but then they acquired Pineda from the Seattle Mariners and added Hiroki Kuroda as a free agent. Garcia’s grip on a rotation spot vanished.

With one week left before Opening Day, I still think the most sensible thing for the

TAMPA – Andy Pettitte has ended his retirement to sign a 1-year, minor league contract with the Yankees that will pay him $2.5 million. Less than three weeks after Pettitte visited spring training as a guest instructor here, the 39-year old will soon rejoin the team as an experienced left-handed starter.

The Yankees needed starters last season and had hoped Pettitte would pitch for them, but he retired after going 11-3 with a 3.28 earned run average in 2010 and stayed retired. But the Yankees have always communicated to Pettitte that they would be interested in re-signing him if he ever wanted to rekindle his career. That is exactly what Pettitte wants to do.

When Pettitte visited here in late February, I asked him if being around some of his former teammates gave him an itch to