| Joe - Now, I've brought you boys here because we have lost all our spring training games. So I decided we need to have a little talk, because talking is what I do best. Voice - And you never stop talking, neither. Group - Ha-ha-ha! Joe - Who said that?!!! [silence] Joe - Now before we get to our lesson, I'd like to go around the room and ask the players about their individual progress. Chien -Ming Wang, I've noticed you are having more luck getting the ball into the strike zone. That seeing-eye dog we got you must be helping. Chien - Yeah, I ate him and he was delicious! Joe - Mike Mussina, how are you doing getting your fastball up to speed? Mussina - The problem is, every time I wind up to pitch, I trip over my walker. Joe - Hideki Matsui, how's the knee? Matsui - The reason it's taking so long to heal is I had to wait for the replacement parts to come from Japan. Joe - While you're here, ask your countryman, Kai Izigawa, if we can get back some of the $40 million we wasted bringing him over to this country. [Matsui talks to Igawa in Japanese, then turns to Girardi] Matsui - He say, "No return, only exchange." Joe - Forty million smackers is a lot of moolah to pay a guy whose pitching arm is made out of sushi. Johnny Damon, how are you doing in left field? Damon - Boss, I'm having trouble concentrating. I keep having nightmares in my sleep. Joe - About what? Damon - Every night I dream I'm back in Boston. Joe - That's rough! Damon - Yeah, the people are real ugly. Joe - A-Rod, how's the shoulder? A-Rod - It's a little better, Joe. Joe - How did you strain it? Throwing? A-Rod - No, I strained myself carrying my money to the bank. Joe - Next time get a caddy. A-Rod - You mean like golf? Joe - No, I mean get a Cadillac. Those cars have got a big trunk that can hold a lot of loot. A-Rod - Thanks for the tip. Joe - Joba Chamberlain, are you getting used to the bullpen? Joba - Yeah. Back in Nebraska, where I grew up, the bullpens have got live bulls in them. Joe - That sounds brutal. Joba - Yeah, and my family was so poor we couldn't afford baseballs for me to practice pitching, so I used to throw horse apples. Sometimes the horse turds would hit the bull in the eye and he would get real mad. Joe - You're lucky to be alive. How's your control coming along? Joba - A lot better since the Yankees' equipment coach rigged me up the insect netting on my baseball cap to keep the flies out of my eyes. The worst of it is, I can still hear the little flies in my ears crying "Help me! Help me!" Joe - Kyle Farnsworth, are you making progress finding the strike zone? Kyle - It's a whole lot better since you took over, Joe. Not like that nasty Joe Torre. He didn't have nothing nice to say to me. But since you been here to hold my hand, I feel a whole lot more relieved as a reliever. Look, I brought you an apple. Joe - Why, Kyle! That's real considerate of you! [takes a bite of the apple] Joe - Owww! I broke my teeth! Kyle - I forgot to tell you. That's a baseball in the shape of an apple. Joe - Ian Kennedy and Phil Hughes - how are you rookies getting along? Hughes - We want to know when we are gonna start getting paid so we can get our own apartments. Kennedy - Yeah, we're sick of sleeping in bunk beds in the Yankees bullpen. Joe - You know you get paid the minimum salary your first year. That works out to $5.00 per inning pitched. Since you only pitched 20 innings, that works out to $100 each. Anyway, we have a special treat today. Gary Sheffield is back from anger management camp, so I'm sure we all want to give him a great big welcome. Sheffield - As usual, this racist honky team is all white. No wonder you're not winning anything. Not that the Mets across town are any better. They're loaded up with undocumented aliens. They had Lastings Milledge but they got rid of him too because he was too real. Joe - Gary, you know the Boss is not going to be happy for you to be talking like that in front of these youngsters. Sheffield - Who, Steinbrenner? He lost his marbles! His eyes are rolling around in his head like a pinball machine and his tongue is hanging out of his mouth like a dog. That's why they brought in his son, another fatman! The Yankees are going down fast. The Red Sox are killing you so bad that it's a foregone conclusion. You're like a giant armored dinosaur that's sinking under its own weight. The only thing that's holding you up is all those tax breaks from the City of New York, and then you don't even employ any minority players. Shame on you! Joe - Somebody get him out of here. He's gone off his meds again. [scuffling and fighting. Door slams] Joe - Forget him! I want to pass around this Get Well card for the team to sign to send to Francisco Cervelli with a balloon. He's having his broken wrist operated on in the hospital after the Devil Rays' Elliott Johnson smashed into him at home plate. This Johnson is a monster and an animal for playing so rough in a practice game. He should have asked Cervelli "Pretty please, could you please move out of the baseline so I can get to home plate?" Never mind that Cervelli was blocking the plate! These Devil Rays don't understand the rules of etiquette. When Shelly Duncan spiked their second baseman in the groin he missed the guy's balls by a country mile, yet look how they responded - with a riot! Some people are just not fit to play baseball in civilized society. Team - Right on! You got it, Joe! Joe - Anyway, instead of spiking the guy, Shelly should have just smashed into him and busted him up like Johnson did to Cervelli. Shelly Duncan - Good point, Joe! I should've broke the guy's wrist. I wasn't thinking. Joe - We're Yankees! We got to stick together. There's millions of fans counting on us! Team - Right on! Joe - I was a good catcher but I don't know spit about managing a team of players, so all I can do is make motivational speeches. Never mind that we got exactly the same team that crapped out in the playoffs last year. That's past history. We got to get out there and not repeat our mistakes. Now I brought the Baby Boss, Hank Steinbrenner, to give you a little sermon. Hank - Thanks, Joe. I want to start off by addressing a criticism aimed at me by Red Sox reliever Jonathan Papelbon that I never played baseball, so I don't know anything. OK, I got brains OK? And the proof of it is, I was born as the son of George Steinbrenner. In this country that counts for everything. Where would Knicks owner James Dolan be if he wasn't the son of Charles Dolan? Nowhere! Now that we got that out of the way, I want to assure the team that being a fat, humengous slob in no way disqualifies me from shooting off my fat mouth. Nothing could be farther from the truth. If you're not an obese, corpulent porker nobody's going to take you seriously as a boss. I want to pay a moment of tribute to Roger Clemens, another fatman. You may think that he has brought disgrace to the Yankees by his ridiculous performance in the Halls of Congress but he performed an invaluable service to the game with all the publicity he got for Major League Baseball during the off-season. He kept us in the papers all winter long. Now, we got New York counting on us. Things are not going so good. We got the stock market collapsing. We got the Wall Street investment banks out on the street with a tin cup. We got construction cranes smashing down and killing people. We got the Knicks and the Jets. We got the governor paying for sex with a check. In short, we got a freakin disaster! Frank Sinatra sang "If you can make it here you can make it anywhere." That's because the people here are so nuts and a freaked up mess that succeeding in this city is like swimming upstream like a freakin salmon. And the only hope they got is the freakin Yankees! So get out there and don't take no spit from the Indians or the Red Sox. Play to win! And remember, we got your back! (Just don't bend over) Now, Shelly Duncan and Melky Cabrera have drawn suspensions for fighting against the Devil Rays. Not to worry! We're bringing in 60 year-old comedian Billy Crystal and Rosie O'Donnell to play the outfield, and we're working on getting Cheech and Chong and The Three Stooges as backups. So go forth and bring us to the playoffs and the World Series. And don't forget to autograph some baseballs. See you on opening day! |
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