FIRE JOE MORGAN: Fire J. M.

Fire J. M.

Jay Mohr, that is. Thanks to reader Sal for the link to this article.

You know exactly what you're in for when you start reading an article written by Jay Mohr and its title is:

True calling
Some guys are meant to be Yankees and some are not

Hmm. Things I'm not looking for in this article: rigorous analysis, new insights, or facts. I'm not even expecting a single interesting opinion, actually.

When the Yankees failed to re-sign Andy Pettitte, my stomach got a little queasy and I sensed a changing of the guard. Pettitte, to put it simply, was a Yankee.

>> Buddy Groom, to put it simply, was a Yankee. Hideki Irabu, to put it simply, was a Yankee. Aaron Small, to put it simply, is a Yankee.

You don't trade, waive or fail to re-sign guys who were born to be in pinstripes.

>> Jay Mohr, of course, being the ultimate arbiter of who is and isn't born to be in pinstripes.

Wade Boggs won his only World Series ring with the Yankees, but he will never be half the Yankee Scott Brosius was.

>> Obligatory Brosius mention.

Some men are just not cut out to play in the Bronx. Many thought Tino Martinez was on the express train to this list after his first two months trying to replace Don Mattingly in 1996. Now, after stops in St. Louis and Tampa Bay, a true Yankee has come home.

>> That true Yankee has come home to the tune of, quite frankly, an embarrassing .222 batting average and an OBP of .310. Is that frank enough for you?

True Yankees are born, not made, and for some, such as Paul O'Neill, they just happened to have had a long layover in another city before realizing their true calling.

>> Obligatory Paul O'Neill mention. And Mohr still hasn't named one thing that makes a guy a true Yankee. Not one.

I doubt if anyone in Chicago is wondering if Joe Girardi was a true Cubbie. Yankee fans won't have to think twice while reading this because a synapse has already fired off in their brains reading out "Yankee."

>> Obligatory Joe Girardi mention. Still no criteria for true Yankee status.

Here is a list of players who are not Yankees compared to guys who were born to be Yankees:

2B Tony Womack -- should have been -- 2B David Eckstein
3B Alex Rodriguez -- should have been -- 3B Eric Hinske
SP Randy Johnson -- should have been -- SP Pedro Martinez

>> Amazing, amazing list. Eric Hinske? Eric Hinske??

Eric Hinske 2005 WARP2: 1.7
Alex Rodriguez 2005 WARP2: 6.7

The Yankees would lose five games in the win column with the old A-Rod-Hinske straight-up trade. Probably worth it for the intangibles, though.

There are other guys floating around the bigs who don't realize yet that they have the potential to be "True Yankees." Let this article serve as a memo to John Lackey, Coco Crisp, Chris Capuano, Jason Bay, Ryan Drese, David DeJesus and Dontrelle Willis. Your invitations are waiting, we have the money and you can thank me when you are all trying on your rings.

>> That is the most random, crazy list of players I've ever seen.

Still no criteria for what makes a true Yankee.

Oh. The article is over.

I would say that Jay Mohr should stick to comedy, but no one wants that either.

Labels: jay mohr, scott brosius, true yankee, yankees

posted by Junior # 7:10 PM

Comments:

Of all of the things that bother me here, the #1 is that Pedro Martinez "should have been a Yankee." Oh my God. Even though Jay did not list a single criterion for being a true Yankee, I can tell you that Pedro Martinez does not possess any of them. Or, perhaps better put: he possess all of the things that prohibit him from being one. Or, to rephrase: Pedro Martinez is all about fighting the Yankees, not joining them. Or, to put it another way, what the hell is Jay Mohr talking about?

To be fair, I bet this will be really funny when Jay goes on "Cold Pizza" and reads it out loud as Christopher Walken.

# posted by

Unknown : 8/04/2005 1:23 AM

OHMIGOD THAT WOULD BE SO FUNNY U SHOULD WRITE FOR JAY MOHR!!!

# posted by

Junior : 8/04/2005 4:52 AM

In your great haste to make fun of the esteemed former "Lip Service" host, you guys miss the underlying point that Jay Mohr manages to capture perfectly. True Yankee fans are the sort of petulant, fair-weathered, wake-me-when-they're-winning fans who will only register players as "true Yankees" if they played on at least two of their recent four championship teams. That's the criterion you were searching for. Notice he didn't include Mel Hall or Jimmy Key or even Tanyon Sturtze, who seems to embody every gritty, scrappy, scritty, maximize-your-low-talent-ceiling trait as Brosius, O'Neill, et al. Did Oscar Azocar give less than his best to this team, such that he will always be associated with the Padres? Soriano? Kevin Maas??? This column provides a pretty standard look into the mind of a NYY fan in my book. Bad as sports journalism, pretty unsurprising as a sociological comment.

And this part:
I doubt if anyone in Chicago is wondering if Joe Girardi was a true Cubbie. Yankee fans won't have to think twice while reading this because a synapse has already fired off in their brains reading out "Yankee." is the most meaningless thing I have ever read. When a TRUE St. Louis Blues fan hears the words "Wayne Gretzky," their true-fan synapses should all be firing "St. Louis Blues." That's what being a true fan is all about.

And Lookner dunked on this guy once.

# posted by

Coach : 8/04/2005 10:55 AM

Excellent points, Coach. It is worth noting that although many Yankee fans love Don Mattingly, they rarely mention him when they are talking about "true Yankees." They would hastily agree with you if you brought him up, but they would not mention him in their initial list, which usually goes: Jeter, Rivera, Tino, O'Neill, Brosius, Bernie, Posada, Girardi. (Bernie used to be higher, but being a true Yankee somehow diminishes with poor offensive seasons, I guess.) Also, it is worth noting that no one -- NO ONE -- ever mentions John Wetteland, who won them the 1996 title. Why does no one mention him? Because no one remembers he was even on that team. Because many of them started being fans in 1997.

Ed Jurak is a true Red Sox.

# posted by

Unknown : 8/04/2005 11:24 AM

FIRE JOE MORGAN

Wednesday, August 03, 2005

Fire J. M.

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