New York Yankees

This is a much larger issue than simply Yankees-Red Sox, of course. The issue is that the pace of baseball is apparently too slow and the need to decision to establish rules to speed the game up.

Umpire Joe West should take this idea and apply it to his country singing. Talk about painfully slow and dull. But I digress. We need to quit trying to find fault with the game.

When the Yankees got Curtis Granderson in the winter, some people weren't totally sold on the center fielder.

"He only hit .249 and he can't hit lefties and he strikes out too much," were some of the things I heard about why trading for Granderson wasn't a good move.

After this past series with the Red Sox, I'm sure most of those critics will be silenced.

One of the most common things heard about new players is having them "earn their pinstripes." The way Granderson played this past series, he's earned them.

Rammy Manuel has rooted for the Los Angeles Dodgers since he came to the United States.

He is too young to have seen Bill Bevens' one-hitter in the 1947 World Series, but his father used to talk about that game whenever Rammy mentioned the New York Yankees, the one team that the elder Manuel really didn't like.

My father was at Ebbets Field on Oct. 4, 1947 to see the fourth game of the World Series between his beloved Dodgers and the hated, haughty New York Yankees.

Curtis Granderson’s leadoff home run in the top of the tenth inning off of Jonathan Papelbon broke a 1-1 tie, as New York won their second straight with a 3-1 victory over Boston Wednesday night at Fenway Park.

It’s likely that we are already seeing Kevin Towers influence on the Yankees as they have claimed former Padre outfielder Chad Huffman on waivers according to Buster Olney of ESPN.

Huffman, 24, is expected to start the season in Triple-A. He spent the entire 2

Earlier today I pointed out one of my favorite blogs, Mike Ashmore’s Thunder Thoughts. There is another blog you should be reading called Confessions of a She-Fan written by Jane Heller.

She isn’t the tireless reporter in the vein of Ashmore, but she does have something in common with him: great writing. Her insights and humor are second to none. Aside from her great writing, you should be reading her blog these days because she’s running a contest in which the winner will receive cookies.

For those of you who don’t know who he is, Mike Ashmore runs a Trenton Thunder blog for the Hunterdon County Democrat.

He’s also one of the better, and more hard working bloggers out there, covering the Yankees organization.

Well, I’d say he topped himself yesterday as he interviewed at least nine members of the organization during the Thunder’s media day.

Here are the interviews:

After getting two hits in the season opener on Sunday night, Brett Gardner did not start in Boston last night.

Not only had Gardner gotten the two hits, he also made two very good baserunning plays, going from first to third on a Derek Jeter single that did not get very far into left-center field and stealing home easily when Jeter broke for second.

But for reasons that can be found only in the dark recesses of Joe Girardi's mind, Gardner did not start the second game of the season.

Sunday night’s loss was a tough one for the Yankees and the bullpen, but they turned it around last night as they beat the Red Sox 6-4 to improve their record to 1-1.

Here are some notes:

The Yankees needed this win in order to stay with the pack in the AL East. This game was very important.

Of course there are 160 games left and we don't know what the impact of some of those games will be on the playoff picture. But game two in Fenway was where the Yankees had to address some of their weaknesses from game one.