You’ve heard the talk all around the Street: the big trade that got bollixed up by boiler-room monkey boy Chuck Lamar, the huge, huge deal that would have had Manny Ramirez in a Mets uniform and Red Sox fans crying in their Boston Lagers, ground market activity to a halt around the trading deadline. So […]

Dear Friends, This week, our beloved national pastime experienced a period of great turmoil. One of the game’s most gifted players was exposed as a user of performance-enhancing drugs. His team subsequently collapsed into turmoil, leading to the impeachment of the team’s chief clubhouse executive, who was outed as an absent-minded dilettante. Meanwhile, the normal […]

It was not without some sorrow that I learned the management of the New York Yankees, the team that I have called my brothers for lo these many years now, had decided they would decline their option on my contract for 2006. To say that a tear welled up in my eye would be true; […]

Just how far is it from Point A to Point B? Throughout world history, this has been an important question: well before any of us arrived on this humble blue sphere, the Marshall Islanders made stick charts to use in navigation. Then, the Ancient Babylonians pressed maps onto clay tablets. Mercator devised his famous Projection […]

The following e-mail from former Bush administration press secretary Ari Fleischer to the Baltimore Orioles’ public-relations department was obtained by the Yard Work staff just minutes ago: Date: Mon 1 Aug 2005 11:43:53 -0400 From: “Ari Fleischer” < ari_is_so_hot @gmale.com > To: public_relations@orioles.com Subject: This Raffy Thing Hey folks, So I heard about the whole […]

What’s it like to leg out a double in someone else’s cleats? I found out the answer to that question in 1981, when a mix-up at the airport meant that I had to wear Gorman Thomas’s shoes (and socks! – ugh) for a Memorial Day weekend series at Fenway. Talk about trials of life! To […]

Under a funeral moon last night in Texas, the dark masters of the Evil Empire cast a frost-laden cloud of witchery and spells over the Texas Rangers. Rendering those pale riders of the morbid plains frail and aged, and drawing power from the depths on the haunted night, the Unholy Nine again claimed their rightful […]

I must have missed the memo — the one that explained why the 2005 baseball season was shaping up to be the greatest year in the history of the game. Bud Selig couldn’t stop talking about it during the All-Star Break. Everyday, he called a press conference or scheduled a TV interview to announce it. […]

Over the weekend, baseball history was made with eleven first-time starters voted into next week’s All-Star game. Unfortunately, what should be a watershed moment in the lore of our national pastime has been ruined by Republican corruption. This season, Mark Teixeira emerged as a credible candidate for the starting job at first base. On the […]

Talk of lighting a fire under a struggling Yankees squad turned tragic early Friday morning when the corpse of an unidentified man was found aflame in a Yankee Stadium parking lot. While details about this incident are still being uncovered – ABC7 reports the man is of Hispanic origin, while NY1 News reports that the […]