Youk's Teammates Hate Him Too!

Well, some of them do, anyway:

So why, then, is this Everyman not unequivocally embraced and revered by his teammates? Why, when a reporter approaches another key Red Sox player to speak about Youkilis does he respond, “I’d rather refrain’’?

It should be Youk’s team, his clubhouse, and it might be some day, but some of his peers believe Youkilis still has some growing to do. They’d like to see him filter some of his strongly held opinions. They’d like him to respect the veteran protocol that has long been a part of baseball’s fabric. And they want him to control his temper.

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“At one point some of the veterans came up to me and said, ‘Can you talk to this guy?’ ’’ manager Terry Francona said. “What I tried to tell them was Youk just needs to get it out of his system. Watch him sometime. Thirty seconds after his outburst, he’s screaming for his teammates.

Isn't that fackin' chaaahming? The dood's like a fackin' fwah yeah old!

This quote from Jackie MacMullan was also pretty amusing:

He does not look like an MVP candidate; more a refrigerator repairman, a butcher, the man selling hammers behind the counter at the True Value hardware store.

To that I would add:

• Fishmonger
• Car stereo salesman
• Longshoreman
• Mason
• Ice road trucker
• HVAC technician
• Short order cook
• Plumber
• Dickhead bouncer at a college bar
• Elementary school janitor
• Harley Davidson mechanic
• Mover
• UPS guy
• Short bus driver
• Hot tar roofer
• Landscaper
• Electrician
• Garbage man
• Road paver
• Street sweeper
• Finish carpenter
• Carpet installer
• Park ranger
• Chicken farmer
• Sausage stuffer
• Coal miner
• Steel worker
• Forklift operator
• Mr. Clean stand-in
• The guy with the awful beard from the Sam Adams commercials.

I might even admit that the article is actually a good read if I wanted to jeopardize the stranglehold we've developed on Kevin Youkilis hatred over here, but you know I can't do that.

Game 158: Promised Land

Despite their best efforts last night, the Yankees actually beat the Royals and will attempt to continue their climb past 100 wins this evening. The highest they can get is 106, but it would only take three more wins to reach 104, their highest total since 1998. The last time they won as many as 104 games (save for '98) was way back in 1963, when the league had just recently expanded. It's an attainable goal, but obviously won't take precedent over aligning their rotation and getting everyone well rested for the playoffs along the way.

A.J. Burnett takes the hill for the Yankees tonight, fresh off two pretty solid outings. He didn't make it through the sixth inning his last time out against he Angels, but that was largely because he racked up 11 of the 17 outs he recorded via strikeout. He threw 65 of his 101 pitches for strikes but did allow ten baserunners over that span. This will be his second to last outing before the postseason rolls around, so he's still got a little time to work out the kinks. Tonight against the punchless Royals should be a good opportunity to do so.

For the Royals, Anthony Lerew gets the call. The 26 year old righty was up for a quick cup of joe in both 2006 and 2007 with the Braves but had Tommy John Surgery an was released after some rehab starts in 2008. The Royals picked him up off the scrap heap in the beginning of this year and signed him to a minor league deal. He posted pretty marginal numbers in AA this year but was recalled to make a start against the Red Sox last week. He gave up 4 runs (only 2 earned) in 4.2 IP but also surrendered 10 baserunners, threw 108 pitches and struck out just 2.

Unlike Luke Hochevar yesterday, Lerew will be facing pretty close to a full strength Yankees line up. Robinson Cano, Jorge Posada and Melky Cabrera were given the night off, but A-Rod, Jeter, Teixeira, Matsui, Swisher, and Damon are all back in action.

Also, as Matt mentioned early today, tonight is also Peter Abraham's last night on the Yankees beat before he heads off to the fackin' Boston Globe. Be sure to head over to his game thread and wish him well.

We already did a tribute to Pete when the news first came down, but wanted choose a song to commemorate his ascent to what is one of the premier sports pages in the country. While the glory days of Ray Fitzgerald, Will McDonough, Peter Gammons, Bob Ryan and the like are gone, the Globe still represents the top of the world of sports journalism. Congrats Pete and best of luck.

There's a dark cloud rising from the desert floor,
I packed my bags and I'm heading straight into the storm.

Afternoon Quick Hits

It's Minimal Effort Day here at Fack Youk. It's Friday, we're all just trying to keep our eyes open.

From our graphical/interactive department:

• How many Yankee captains can you name? (via the B-R blog) I got 7/11. If you get either of the first two or the guy between Ruth and Gehrig, I'll be really impressed.
  
  
• Q: How often does the team with the best regular season record win the World Series?
  
  A: Not that often.

Some Yanks vs. Sox links:

• Tony Massarotti breaks down the Yanks vs. Sox season series into three phases and hopes there will be a fourth.
  
  
• Nick Cardafo lists five areas each team needs to address heading into the postseason.
  
  
• PeteAbe surmises that at least one team will be celebrating this weekend. The Post (as always) takes it one step further.
  

Other stuff:

• Octavio Dotel would like to play for the Yankees. Unfortunately for him, the Yanks aren't going to give up a first round draft pick for a 35 year old reliever.
  
  
• Get out your Bunsen Burners and Erlenmeyer flasks, it's time to measure clubhouse chemistry!
  
  
• Here's something new, instead of the Mets getting robbed by their players, now their players are getting robbed.

We'll be back with the preview in a little while.

PeteAbe Puts In His Two Weeks

Good morning, Fackers. According to reseach recently conducted by the FYISB (Fack Youk Institute Of Sports Bloggery), given that you are reading this blog, there is a 99.887% chance you also read Peter Abraham's LoHud Yankees Blog as well. Furthermore, there is a 25.446% chance that the first you've heard of this little establishment came from Pete as well, via this post back in February. It was the biggest day in the history of our site at the time, thanks mostly to that link.

He was the first beat writer in the New York market to have a blog in any sport, and his readership reflected that. He crossed the million comment mark not to long ago, had 29,000,000 pageviews way back in February and routinely topped 100,000 PVs in a single day.

Since it was an off night, you might not have checked LoHud, but Pete dropped bit of news from out of the blue:

So here it is: I’m leaving The Journal News after nearly 10 years and going to work for The Boston Globe.

I’ll be covering baseball — yes, the Red Sox — and blogging for Boston.com. The Globe approached me in August, right around the time my newspaper was going through some painful restructuring that you all heard about.

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I have two weeks left and I’m not going to waver in my commitment to get you as much news as I can on the Yankees.

It's a shame that Pete won't be covering the Yankees anymore. Despite what the LoHud.com and Gannett might like to think, the readers of his blog weren't loyal to the paper as much as they were loyal to his diligent coverage. He might pull some of his readership over to the Globe (I'll probably subscribe to the feed), but similar to the above, his readers weren't as loyal to him as they were to the Yankees. Had he switched to another New York paper and still covered the team, he could have taken essentially he entire online readership with him.

The LHYB was the first Yankee blog I ever read, starting sometime in the 2007 season. My friend and occasional contributor to this site, Joe, used to send me links from time to time, but it didn't initially stick.

At first, the format of a blog was confusing and it took me a while to realize that I could depend on it for a steady stream of Yankee-related content. If you spent a good amount of time on LoHud, you knew that Pete was cool with the Big G and the Moose, and not too fond of A-Rod. Pete had his opinions and certainly didn't always agree with him, but we were only aware of them because he was so candid with them on the site, something beat writers can't really be in their newspaper columns. He was always timely with Yankees news and gave me as much information and blog fodder as Michael Kay and John Sterling combined.

Like most good bloggers, he was active in the comments and responded to every email I can remember sending him. He didn't have to do that, and he didn't have to maintain the blog as well as he did. Will all due respect to Tyler Kepner, Mark Feinsand, Marc Carig or any other Yanks beat guy I'm forgetting (and whose blog I don't read), PeteAbe's online coverage was by far the best.

The guy has two weeks left, so I don't know why I'm talking about him work in the past tense, but chances are, I'm not going to feel like writing an ode to the dude 14 days from now.

I doubt the Pete is going to read this but he deserves to be recognized for defining what a beat writer's blog could be. Maybe there are other guys in other cities who do a better job with their blog than Pete but I tend to doubt that. The way that he maintained the LHYB was above and beyond the call of duty.

As such, I think this would be an appropriate time to re-air his Yankeeography which created for him by the fine folks at IIH, IIF, IIc but never linked to on his blog for various reasons (mainly the editorial policies at the Gannett Corp.).

Enjoy: Peter Abraham: LoHud Of The Rings.

Best of luck to the Yankee Quipper in his future endeavors.