The National League is the only league left anywhere that pitchers still bat.  While I'm of a younger generation, I still consider myself a big time historical baseball aficionado.  And I can see both sides of the argument, strategy and purity and tradition vs. offense and entertainment, I get it.  That being said its really stupid and boring to watch pitchers bat.

I say this coming from the perspective of a Yankees fan, American League baseball fan and as someone who has known nothing but the DH in the AL growing up.  And to that #### Steve Phillips (are the Seattle Mariners going to rally back and make the playoffs this year Stevie?) over at ESPN who talks about the "tradition of the game," I've got news for you.

If baseball stuck to tradition Chien-Ming Wang wouldn't never gotten hurt running the bases.  Know how I know how?  Because if baseball stuck to tradition and never installed inter-league play, American and National League teams wouldn't meet until the World Series in October and hence Wang never would've been running the bases because the Yankees wouldn't have been playing in Houston, but maybe in Arlington you know against a team in their own league who they've still yet to play this season! 

Does this come off a bit as sour grapes?  Sure.  Could Wang have gotten hurt as easily running sprints in the outfield warming up?  Possibly.  Say what you will of how fluky the injury was or how asinine it is that anybody would come up lame like that just simply running the bases, but the point is Wang should've never been on the bases to begin with.

I've voiced my opinion in previous posts about my feelings on instant replay and the wild card and while NL owners stick with the pitcher batting for financial reasons, I have no use for it as a fan.

Nobody wants to see a pitcher bat in the All-Star Game, but it can still happen in an NL park.  Sure it makes things interesting in the 6th or 7th inning strategy wise, but in the 3rd or 4th inning with runners at the corners and two outs, nobody in their right minds wants to see the pitcher come up to the plate.  One could even argue that in a close game in the AL, the manager of the team with the lead has to make more of a decision strategically.  Do I leave my starter in to face the power hitting DH or do I go to my pen, or do I go to my pen because there's basically no easy automatic outs in the lineup.  In the NL if I'm a manager with the lead and the pitcher comes up, there's no way my starter is coming out, so I sit there and say ok go strike 'em out kid! 

If you enjoyed watching Billy Crystal batting in Spring Training, then knock yourself out, because like him most pitchers are an automatic out, but the sad thing is these guys aren't 60 years old either.

And you thought the New York Yankees were done with fat, moody, booze bag, washed up head cases as pitching solutions right?  Except this time it won't be David Wells but apparently Bombers brass thought it poignant enough to give Sidney Ponson a second go-around before say I don't know Sidney Crosby? 

Ponson is 4-1 this year with a 3.88 ERA, but if you're a pitcher not named Edison Volquez and the Texas Rangers get rid of you, that's not a good sign.  If one wants to argue he'd be able to eat up some innings if nothing else in the interim, fine.  But you can't tell me that David Wells wouldn't have been a better fit.  Plus Wells is a lefty to boot, something the Yankees really can't boast at the moment. 

Just to note, Ponson in his first stint with the Yanks in 2006 had an ERA of 10.47, yikes!

Is this insane or what, the United States Congress wasting our time and tax dollars on steroids in baseball?  You know it wasn't too long ago, ten years to be exact that Congress actually investigated worthwhile things of importance, you know like whether a sitting President was screwing around with an intern.  But seriously folks, baseball gets destroyed on this while in the AFC Championship game this Sunday Rodney Harrison and Shawne Merriman, both suspended for steroids previously, will be playing without so much as a peep.

I really don't want to veer off into politics on this blog, but seriously there are much more important issues facing this country and Congress is worried about steroids in baseball, could they possibly be anymore out of touch?  There is a load of other important issues facing this country and yet there is this fixation and fascination on this why?  Seriously, when you go back to your constituents and congressional districts and they ask what legislation you've introduced and passed concerning the price of oh I don't know, EVERYTHING, like goods, food, gas, oil and energy prices, the economy possibly heading towards recession, healthcare, immigration, people losing their jobs and you'll tell them what exactly?  Did you see me, I really grilled that Rocket Roger Clemens, boy oh boy!  Guuuh.

I am not implicating him, but do you think that now would be as good a time as any to put President George W. Bush under oath to see if he could help in getting to the bottom of this as he stated in his State of the Union Address a few years back?  I mean he was owner Texas Rangers when Jose Canseco and Rafael Palmeiro played there, you think the man might be able to offer some insight into what was going on during this era?  Plus Democrats could actually claim they finally got him to testify under oath, as they have been so cowardly been unable to thus far, but that's for another blog at another time.

Honestly though this is the biggest joke and the most astonishing amount of grandstanding ever, really what are they going to get out of this?  They clearly aren't sending these guys to jail just on the basis of steroids, I mean Raffy Palmeiro blatantly lied right in their faces and nothing happened to him.  As far as Barry Bonds and Marion Jones go, they're being investigated by the feds for things far greater than this whole steroid thing.

If nothing is going to come of this then why should we as baseball fans be dragged through it?  Nobody is going to be kicked out of the game, nobody's records are going to be erased.  Most of these sports writers, columnists, talking heads and vultures who are eating this stuff up at the end of the day have said they'll still vote for Barry Bonds and Roger Clemens when they come up for the Hall of Fame, so sanctimony is abound am I right? 

Bud Selig and Donald Fehr, both of whom I haven't been able to stand since the baseball strike of 1994 are just as if not more responsible for this mess than any of the players.  Clearly baseball fans who are coming out in the millions and making MLB billions are somewhat annoyed but for the most part couldn't care less.  So ESPN can get Roger Cossack off my #### TV and show some damn highlights already!

Maybe this baseball era goes down like the music era of the 60's which also had a drug culture to it, lots of great music, lots of great baseball.  There's a lot of worse things going on in other sports than steroids, like say the NFL's great example to kids, Michael Vick, Pacman Jones and oh I don't know the entire Cincinnati Bengals roster!  I'm not condoning steroid use and I'd like to know that what I'm watching is legit, but in the end it really is all he-said-he-said and we are all left to judge for ourselves if we trust what we are seeing is true greatness or inflated garbage.

Peter Angelos says that despite complaints from the Toronto Blue Jays and Tampa Bay Rays, steroids have done nothing to "diminish our 4th place dynasty."  Angelos' Baltimore Orioles have finished in 4th place every season since 1998 except for 2004 when they "miraculously" or "su####iously" ended the season in 3rd. 

Rays owner Cheapskate McDouchebag, whose team has only finished out of the AL East cellar once (2004) since their inception in 1998, said "no wonder we can't compete, not only are we playing against Major League teams, but now they feel they have to cheat and beat us by 30 runs instead."  The O's owner also dismissed complaints from the Rays only to say, "if you're not cheating you're not trying and its only cheating if you get caught, besides we're the one's who got creamed 30-3 by the Texas Rangers this past season for crying out loud, so get off our backs!" 

As for that 2004 season, coincedentally enough that was the year former New York Yankees bench coach Lee Mazzilli brought all of his steroid needles from the Yankee clubhouse and green-tea from Joe Torre to manage the O's.  Rafael Palmeiro, Miguel Tejada, Brian Roberts, David Segui, Larry Bigbie, Jay Gibbons and Jason Grimsley among others played for Baltimore that season as well.  I mean seriously just because the O's roided up in 2004 doesn't mean their 3rd place finish does anything to disparage their 4th place dynasty.  I mean Roberts' 50 two-baggers and Miggie's 150 Ribbies were just career years right?

After all it wouldn't be until Sammy Sosa joined the club in 2005 that they would resume their 4th place dynasty and that is some kind of record that baseball will never be able to take away from Mr. Angelos' legacy.

Super-agent Scott Boras likes to pull out all of these fancy charts and numbers concerning all of his clients, especially A-Rod.  However when it comes to his numbers, he seems to be using the same so called "math" Karl Rove said he had concerning the 2006 mid-term elections. 

Myth # 1: Before A-Rod came to the Yankees they only drew over three million fans, with A-Rod they've suddenly drawn over four million.  True the Yankees have drawn over four million with A-Rod, but attendance is up everywhere in Major League Baseball.  For 2007 MLB set an overall attendance record of 79,502,524, a 4.5 % increase over the 2006 season which was at the time also a record breaking 76,042,787.  Average attendance for MLB during the 2007 season was 32,785 also the largest in MLB history.  In fact the overall MLB attendance record has been shattered every year for the past four years.  A-Rod has been a Yankee for the past four years, but the rise in attendance has to do more with the increased popularity of baseball over A-Rod's impact. 

To further my point, eight teams set new attendance records in 2007.  Ten teams pulled in more than three million, 16 more garnered 2.5 million and 24 others brought in over two million people.  In addition six clubs averaged over 40,000 per game, while 12 teams averaged 35,000 per game.  Even the minor leagues saw a huge spike once again.  To give you an example the team from my area, the Tri-City ValleyCats, a short-season Single-A affiliate of the Houston Astros based in Troy, N.Y. just outside of Albany, who finished dead last with the league's worst overall record, drew a franchise record 136,809 fans in 2007.

Myth # 2: Team performance has improved as a result of A-Rod.  Yes A-Rod has been a part of some great ball clubs, was even the driving force of why the Yankees got to the playoffs this season.  In A-Rod's last season with the Seattle Mariners in 2000 they won 91 games and reached the ALCS.  However in 2001 the M's won an AL regular season record 116 games, reaching the ALCS.  And while they didn't make the playoffs, they still won 93 games each of the next two seasons while A-Rod was still languishing in Texas.

Speaking of Texas, they won only two more games with A-Rod there in 2001 and lost 89 or more games in every season he played there.  In 2004 the year after A-Rod left, the Rangers won 89 games.

In 2003 the Yankees won 101 games, won the A.L. Pennant reaching the World Series.  In 2004 with A-Rod they won 101 games and lost in the ALCS.  In 2005 the Yankees won 95 games and a season series tie-breaker with Boston which game them the division and they lost in the ALDS.  In 2006 they won 97 games and again lost in the ALDS.  In the 2007 season they won 94 games, finished as a Wild Card and once again lost in the ALDS.

No one is denying A-Rod has a marketable quality to attract even the most casual of fans.  And more of his team's failures have had to do with the fact that he can't pitch and neither can anyone else on his team.  A-Rod is a big part of the attendance and winning, just not in the way Scott Boras would make one believe.

The New York Yankees are engaged in a "Cold War" of sorts.  Well armed with pitching to be sure, it's all a matter of whether the Yankees fire off any of their missles in a trade or if they can get them to fire for themselves down the stretch.  Back in the 1980's the Yankees dealt away the likes of Jose Rijo, Doug Drabek and Bob Tewksbury and ended up with little or nothing to show for it.  However in the 1990's they held onto the right guys in Andy Pettitte, Mariano Rivera and Ramiro Mendoza and turned prospects such as Sterling Hitchcock, Eric Milton and Matt Drews into Tino Martinez, Jeff Nelson, Jim Mecir, Chuck Knoblauch and Cecil Fielder.  Now the Yankees must decide on what they'd like to do with a plethora of prospects which include: Phil Hughes, Joba Chamberlain, Ian Kennedy, Alan Horne, Tyler Clippard, Jeff Karstens, Darrell Rasner and Jeff Marquez.

If I'm the Yankees, I'm not letting any of these guys go at the deadline period.  Not that I'm writing off the division just yet, but if this team as currently constructed with enough talent, can't catch the Cleveland Indians who are just four games ahead of them presently in the Wild Card standings, then they don't deserve to make the playoffs. 

What the Yankees should do is unload Kyle Farnsworth on somebody, call up Phil Hughes to replace the recently demoted Kei Igawa (which will happen assuming all is right, this Saturday), call up Jeff Karstens to be their long-man/spot starter out of the pen and call up Joba Chamberlain to pitch out of the pen.  The worst case scenario is for the Yankees to remain stagnant, the best case is that their moves aid them much like the 2002 Anaheim Angels where Phil Hughes becomes John Lackey and Joba Chamberlain mirrors Francisco Rodriguez. 

Would a guy like Eric Gagne, Chad Qualls or Octavio Dotel be an upgrade over Farnsworth?  Yes.  But worth the prospects?  No. 

What is all comes down to is that the Yankees can't be afraid to trust their own guys, especially their heralded prospects.  Over the last three years (2005-07) the Yankees have called up players that weren't initially on many people's radars nor were they trusted until injuries or poor play necessitated their call-ups.  It was Robinson Cano and Chien-Ming Wang who were called up two years ago to replace failures like Tony Womack, Kevin Brown and Jaret Wright.  Last year it was Melky Cabrera getting called up due to the injuries of Gary Sheffield and Hideki Matsui.  This season it's Andy Phillips getting the every day nod in place of the off-season disaster situation at 1st.  In summary, Cano, Cabrera and Phillips while pumping life into this club as every day regulars are all hitting around or over .300 on the season and Wang has 12 wins as the ace of the staff after missing almost a month of the season. 

While it would be nice for the Yankees to also further upgrade their bench at the deadline, they'll likely have to hope that Jason Giambi can come back at full strength either as a power bat off the bench or as a DH.  If Giambi can come back at 100% it would do wonders for the type of protection A-Rod needs.  Because A-Rod knows that he has to be the guy to knock in runs consistently given the fact that others usually don't and thus with opposing pitchers knowing that, they aren't giving A-Rod anything to hit, which in turn is frustrating A-Rod and making him impatient at the plate.  A healthy Giambi would curb that.  However what a healthy Giambi should not curb is the playing-time of the surging Melky Cabrera.

Hall of Fame Perspective: Anyone happen to notice about 70,000 fans descended upon Cooperstown this weekend?  This was for two guys in Tony Gwynn and Cal Ripken Jr. who transcended the game, were class acts and were guys who you could just respect and admire watching as a fan no matter what team you rooted for.  Imagine then given the proximity of New York Yankees and New York Mets fans state and city wide with Cooperstown in their own backyard so to speak, just how jam packed that place will get when players like Derek Jeter, Mariano Rivera, Alex Rodriguez, Roger Clemens and Mike Piazza all get inducted one day?  Perhaps we'll get a barometer and a small taste for that next year when Goose Gossage is finally enshrined at Cooperstown.