AP Photo
The Yankees' great season wasn't quite that neat and tidy, though. The most significant number about this ballclub, and one that more neatly gets at the sheer strangeness of the 2009 Yankees, is $84 million. That's how much the team paid Jeter, Pettitte, Mariano Rivera, Jorge Posada, Johnny Damon, and Hideki Matsui. None of them should be any good at all, and yet without them the team wouldn't have even made the playoffs.
The first four of these players, all veterans of the team's dynastic run under Joe Torre, are really, truly old. Leave their greatness aside—men their age usually can't take the field at their positions. In 2009, Posada became one of just 16 catchers ever to play 100 or more games at age 37. Jeter became one of 44 shortstops to play 100 or more games at...
If a man can make walking with crutches look effortless, well, who else but Mariano Rivera? Here he was, practically gliding across the clubhouse on his new crutches, when he noticed everyone studying his every move. “I didn't... more »
You want to take something meaningful away from Andy Pettitte’s first time back on a major-league mound in a year and a half? Then you go right ahead. Go ahead and break down Pettitte’s 6⅓-inning, 94-pitch... more »
Based simply on numbers, you can make the case the Yankees look desperate here, calling up Andy Pettitte to start Sunday in the Bronx before he’s truly ready. But that’s a silly way of interpreting a decision they had to... more »
Yankees outfielder Nick Swisher likes to call Tampa Bay Rays Manager Joe Maddon “the mad scientist,” and with good reason. When the two teams met, in St. Petersburg, Fla., on the opening weekend of the regular ... more »
Email
Print
Share