Hello, Yankees fans! This is – what? We’re not what?… Well then, somebody’s gotta tell me when we’re…

Oh, I see. I get it now… No, whenever you’re ready. You just give the, uh… the signal. Whenever you’re… Was that it? What? Oh. Okay.

Hello, Yankee fans! We hope you’re getting ready for another exciting season, as Joe Torre and the Bronx Bombers start down the road towards what they have to hope will be the Yankees twenty… -sixth championship? Or is it only twenty-four? No! They tell me it’s twenty-six. I got it right the first time. That’s the problem when you win so many… sometimes you lose track, and you gotta guess at it. You know, they say that your first guess is almost always right? I read that. Or Cora told me, I forget. Something like 80, 90 percent of the time. Instinct. It’s never wrong, instinct. Never fails.

These Yankees, this is a good-looking team, I gotta say. Maybe the best in a while, but you know what the story’s been the last few years… good team, makes the playoffs, then boom! Down the drain. I tell you, it’s heartbreaking for these guys, Jeter, A-Rod, Posada, O’Neill…

What? He’s… what? Oh, okay. Well, he was on the team recently. Tough customer, that O’Neill. Very intense. Even if he wasn’t on the team, I bet those losses in the playoffs were tough on O’Neill. When did O’Neill leave the team? Really? Unbelievable.

Anyway, like they do every year, the Yankees got a good shot. This team is loaded. Sometimes, you look at ’em, you wonder how they ever lose. But then, they do. I gotta say, it’s the weirdest thing. Look at the guys they put out there every day. All up and down that lineup. Jeter, A-Rod. Johnny Damon. Matsui. I think that’s how you say it. That Robinson Cano. That Abreu! This guy out of nowhere… Bernie. Bernie Williams. Posada…

What? He did?… Son of a gun, that’s right. Retired. You know, I totally forgot? 100 per cent. First O’Neill, then Bernie. Unbelieveable.

So no Bernie! The Yanks are going to have to do it without Bernie. Which is too bad, ’cause he was a heck of a ballplayer. Bernie Williams. Oh, you bet we’re gonna miss him. Fantastic guy.

But jeez, even without Bernie, this is a bunch of guys you don’t want to face. These guys know how to score some runs. If there’s a problem, it’s the pitching. They got rid of… Randy Johnson. Kind of a… a bust, I guess. Got back this kid, what’s his… you know, a paisan…

What?

Pavano! They get back Pavano… who knows what’s up with him. Pettitte is back, is that right? Unbelievable. So that’s good. They got… Chien-Ming Wang. I tell ya, I can barely believe that’s a guy’s name. I know that’s, what, that’s… politically incorrect. But really, I think that was the name of the guy who did our laundry in Canarsie. You think I’m kidding! Mister Wong! It’s almost like… a… making fun of a… a… stereotype! That’s the word. I couldn’t think of it, and then I got it. Chien-Ming Wang. Doesn’t it sound like a stereotype? Like what…? Like central casting. Chien-Ming Wang. Yeah, right?

Young man sure can pitch, though. Unbelieveable. Between this guy and that Matsui… that Matzuki… That kid up in Boston. The Chinese have really overtaken… What?… And Japanese. Japanese, too. All the… you know, what’s the…? Orientals! They’ve really… What?

Okay.

Mariano Rivera. What more can you say about that guy? I remember when he just got started, setting up for… who was it? Was it Righetti? Who was that guy? Who?… Wetteland. John Wetteland. Whatever happened to that guy? I remember he had that… that cap. It was filthy! Holy cow, that thing was awful looking. I wanted to go out there and grab it off his head, and take to my dry cleaner. Could you imagine Don Mattingly going out there with that kind of cap? Or Munson? Or Graig Nettles? What?

Okay, maybe Nettles. To tell the truth, that’s just the sort of thing he would do. Intense guy, that Nettles. Could he ever handle that hot corner, though. Unbelievable.

It’s funny, I thought about Nettles last year, when A-Rod was going through that horrible slump… striking out, making all those errors… Holy cow, that was some kind of slump. I don’t know if I’ve ever seen anything like that. But it was one of those games where A-Rod was just throwing the ball all over the place – and there was about a week there where it was like every game was like that, remember? – and I was thinking how the Yankees always managed to have good gloves at third… Nettles, Brosius… that other guy, remember? Another paisano…

Pagliarulo! Pags, they called him. Mike Pagliarulo. He would dive for that ball like it was a grenade, and he was trying to save the whole platoon. He was something.

Boggs. Boggs was nothing special. But he wasn’t there for his glove, everyone knew that. But even Boggs never hit a slump like A-Rod. And I don’t know, with the fans booing him and all, really giving him the business out there… You start to think – I know he’s a great player… unbelievable talent – but maybe, you know, maybe some guys just weren’t meant to be Yankees.

Like what was his… you know, we were just talking about him before… Randy Johnson! The Big Unit. What can you say about that guy? Fantastic pitcher. Hall of Famer, first ballot. But just not a Yankee. No shame in it. Doesn’t take anything away from him… well, I guess it does take something away from him, “˜cause he had a rotten year. But in the big picture… what can you say? Great pitcher, just not a Yankee.

And so I wonder if A-Rod isn’t the same way. And even some of the other guys, over the past bunch of years. Sheffield. He’s gone now, but yeah… didn’t it seem like he never quite fit in? Or who was that guy they paid all that money to? I know, there’s like a million of them. Righthander. Intense guy. A little… a little scary, that guy… What was his…?

Brown! Kevin Brown! Another bust. And that other guy who totally fell apart… Chuck Knoblauch. They’d hit a ball to him and everybody just knew he was gonna throw it towards Hoboken. So those guys, you know, maybe they just weren’t meant to be Yankees. And to be honest, I look at some of the guys out here… Johnny Damon, Abreu, A-Rod, Pavano… even Jason Giambi, sometimes. And it’s like I can’t believe it. Are these guys really Yankees? They’re great players, all of ’em… well, maybe not that kid Pavano, but you know what I’m saying. I don’t know, they just look funny out there to me. And I wonder if that’s not the Yankees’ big problem, why they haven’t won the World Series since… when? I tell you, it seems like forever.

You know you… you just know when someone’s a Yankee. Look at Jeter. That man looks fantastic in that uniform. Mariano… same thing. But Johnny Damon… that whole look he’s got or whatever… It’s like, any minute, and the whole thing is gonna pop right off him, and there’ll be a Red Sox uniform underneath. You ever get that feeling? No?

So that’s the Yankees. Like I said before, you know these guys are gonna score some runs. The pitching, I guess it’ll be okay… Mussina and Pettitte and Wang, hard to go wrong with those guys…

But you never know. It hurts me to say it, but you gotta wonder if it’s gonna happen again. You get to the playoffs and the whole bunch of ’em just seem to kinda… give up. Not give up… you know what I’m talking about. Everyone just seems… they seem to go on vacation or something. Permanent vacation… Who said that, “permanent vacation?” Is that from somewhere? I didn’t just make that up. At least I don’t…

What?

Hall of Famer Phil Rizzuto eats cannolis from the Ferrara Cafe, located on Grand Street between Mulberry & Mott. You huckleberry.