The Futility Infielder

Damn, it felt good this weekend to turn on the TV and catch sight of the Yankees and Red Sox playing ball in Florida. With the ALCS Game Seven and a winter of roster one-upsmanship on everybody's mind, this might have been the most overhyped Grapefruit League game of all-time. Add "Evil Empire" trophy Jose Contreras on the hill for the Yanks and Alex Rodriguez appearing in pinstripes against the team which just couldn't pull the trigger for it's own A-Rod deal, and you've got the makings of a matchup with plenty of story lines to get the juices flowing. Typically overheated, YESman Michael Kay said that somebody paid $1000 for tickets on eBay, but a quick search shows that he's probably off by an order of magnitude.

All the hype couldn't drain the fun of catching the two teams going through the rites of spring. Even clad in their strange-looking batting-practice jerseys and running around a Class A ballpark, it didn't take too much squinting to imagine these two squads playing a minimum of 19 times for supremacy in the AL East, if not the entire American League. The grass was green, the ball sounded right coming off of the bat, and the mere sight of even the most mundane moments of the game -- baserunner and first-baseman making small-talk, batter adjusting batting gloves -- was enough to warm my stomach.

I tuned in to find the Yanks down 4-0 after three innings, but that wasn't nearly as disorienting as watching Mariano Rivera, who was pitching the third in relief of Contreras, walk off the hill without shaking the catcher's hand, since there was still the better part of a ballgame to play. Kay remarked on this, hearkening back to the sight of Rivera collapsed on the mound while Aaron Boone circled the bases with his pennant-winning home run, and I couldn't help but smile. I didn't actually watch the game too closely, instead milling around the apartment to the tune of Kay and Ken Singleton calling the game. Preparing my tax stuff to send off to my accountant, filing the precarious stacks of CDs strewn around my pad -- a two-month-old, ever-growing play pile -- it was as if having baseball in the air inspired an industriousness to conquer even the more odious tasks.

The Yanks put up a six-pack in the fourth, including homers by Derek Jeter and Tony Clark, and they added four more in the sixth as Clark and Ruben Sierra homered off of former Yankee washout Ed Yarnall. In that fourth inning I got my first glipse of Rodriguez as a Yank, legging out a questionably-called infield single. Other Yanks I saw for the first time in.. well, not pinstripes, but at least the interlocking NY caps included Kenny Lofton, Travis Lee, Miguel Cairo (who had three hits), and hot catching prospect Dioner Navarro. The 20-year-old switch-hitting Navarro spent time in the AA Eastern league with Sox catching prospect Kelly Shoppach (who alos played) and Twins catching prospect Joe Mauer (the consensus #1 prospect in the game), and the announcers said that the Yankee brass compares their man favorably to the other two. Well, of course they do -- who do you think they're trading when they need pitching help this summer?

Speaking of pitching help, one of the more interesting things that Kay and Singleton discussed was the story that Sox reserve David McCarty is planning to give the two-way player role a go this season, a la Brooks Kieschnick of the Brewers. Unlike Kieschnick, who starred as a pitcher at University of Texas and , McCarty hasn't pitched much since high school, though he did some mop-up work as a Royals farmhand. I hope he does pitch this season -- preferably at the tail end of a 19-1 Yankee blowout.

As is common in spring training, not everybody was in the lineup. Nomar Garciaparra -- who strained his Achilles tendon -- and Trot Nixon were among the missing Sox, while neither Jason Giambi nor Gary Sheffield made the trip from Tampa for the Yanks. Sheffield has apparently aggravated a hand injury that's serious enough for GM Brian Cashman to call himself "officially worried" as he sent his new slugger to New York to see a hand expert. Gulp.

Back to the subject of pitching help -- this time back to the Yankees: over the weekend they reached a contract agreement with Orlando Hernandez, the wily Cuban defector known as "El Duque". After being traded by the Yanks to the Montreal Expos last winter, Hernandez missed the entire season with a torn rotator cuff, and he won't be ready until midseason. His deal is a one-year, $500,000 contract with incentives -- $3,000 per day on the active roster, $45,000 per start and $12,500 per relief appearance. While El Duque's disdain for pitching in relief marked his first tour of duty here, he's not in a position to argue this time around, having signed the deal knowing that the Yanks have five able-bodied starters -- Mike Mussina, Javier Vazquez, Kevin Brown, Jose Contreras, and Jon Lieber -- ahead of him. Given Brown's litany of injuries, not to mention the fact that Conteras spent a considerable amount of time on the DL last year and Lieber missed the entire season with Tommy John surgery, the Yanks need the depth. If El Duque gets healthy, he'll be a nice option for Joe Torre to have at hand, and his presence may help fellow Cuban defector Contreras come into his own. Joe's not the only one who's missed the man with the knee-high socks, the flamingo leg-kick, and that cap pulled down all the way over his eyes. Welcome back, El Duque.