A list of the people and things that made the cut for @Yankees instead of A-Rod

In case you didn't know it, Alex Rodriguez has had a pretty impressive spring training so far. His slash line is .455/.538/.818, which is tops among big-league Yankee starters. And he had his first home run of spring training Wednesday -- a moment that got a huge ovation from the crowd.

But you wouldn't know any of this from the Yankees' Twitter account. In an embarrassing episode, the account completely ignored the home run, and never even mentioned it in a Twitter game recap. Yet they did have room to mention Jacoby Ellsbury's and Carlos Beltran's RBIs and even Slade Heathcott's homer in the game.

This omission got a lot of attention on social media -- so much so that the Yanks had to address it. So an unnamed team spokesman told the New York Daily News, the house organ of the team when it comes to Rodriguez: "It was very much an unintended error," and that “Alex is and will be treated like every other Yankees player.” 

Really? Let's take a look at the Yanks' Twitter feed and see when they last mentioned A-Rod. It was this one, talking about the team's meeting with A-Rod before spring training:

Joint statement regarding Yankees meeting with Alex Rodriguez: http://t.co/feC3VJSy6O
— New York Yankees (@Yankees) February 10, 2015

Prior to that, here is the last tweet @Yankees made about @Arod, 18 months ago:

.@AROD leads off the 8th with a single. Here we go #Yankees!
— New York Yankees (@Yankees) September 22, 2013

Obviously, there were no A-Rod game-related results to mention for 2014, but why not mention his return in 2015?

Somehow, this "unintended error" kept Rodriguez off the Twitter feed, other than his last name in lineup listings, for this entire spring training. Not for his first game, not his first hit, nothing.

To put this in perspective, here are some of the non-A-Rod people and events mentioned in Yankee tweets this spring training (you can see the full list by clicking here:)

People:

Aaron Judge
Nathan Eovaldi
Jared Burton
Greg Bird
Cole Figueroa
Luis Severino
Jose Pirela
Rob Refsnyder
Nick Noonan
Bryan Mitchell
Didi Gregorius
Ramon Flores
Garrett Jones
Tyler Austin
Cito Culver
Luis Torrens
Chris Capuano
Andrew Miller
Jacob Lindgren
Dellin Betances
Masahiro Tanaka
Ron Guidry
Adam Warren
Chase Whitley
CC Sabathia
Mark Teixeira

Hideki Matsui

Reggie Jackson

Chase Headley
Michael Pineda
Brett Gardner
Ivan Nova
Brendan Ryan
Brian McCann
Joe Girardi
Chris Young
Stephen Drew
Justin Wilson
Scott Brosius
Mariano Rivera

Things and Events:

Honoring Little League Challenger players
Jeter Final Season clothing sale
Mormon Tabernacle Choir ticket information
Discount ads for Lyft
Man walking from Tampa to New York for charity
Rob Refsnyder's bat
Michael Pineda's glove
Yankees photo day
Remembering when Bernie Williams and Derek Jeter were on "Seinfeld"
Yankees kids camp
Mark Teixeira's gluten-free diet
Paul O'Neill's birthday
Promotion for the Derek Jeter bobblehead
Remembering Bobby Abreu's debut as a Yankee
CC Sabathia and Victor Cruz at Fashion Week
Promotions for MasterCard ticket sales
Announcement of latest members of Monument park
Acknowledgement of Jason Giambi's retirement
Remembering Yankees' White House visits

In case you still think this omission of A-Rod was just an oversight, consider this: @yankees posted hundreds of photos of players on the Twitter feed this spring, including dozens of photos for Photo Day. There was not a single one of Alex Rodriguez.

Supposedly, MLB Advanced Media, and not the Yankees themselves, run the Twitter feed. But who decided to mention pretty much every player on the 40-man roster except for A-Rod? That seems like an awfully interesting "unintentional error." So much for the quote that "Alex is and will be treated like every other Yankees player.”

Jon Heyman Criticizes Nick Swisher Over Slide, Tweet

It was great to see the Good A.J. Burnett pitch for the Yankees yesterday -- he's now 2-0. There was one sad thing in the win, though. Nick Swisher's slide into Minnesota Twins second baseman Tsuyoshi Nishioka (you can see the video here.) ended up knocking the player out of the game -- and breaking his leg. It seemed like a clean slide to me, and the Twins agreed. But it's a tough blow for the Japanese-born player in his first week of MLB.

Anyhow, Swisher did all the right things, as the Minneapolis Star-Tribune notes:

Swisher visited Nishioka in the X-ray room.

"The first thing I said was, 'I'm sorry, man. I thought you were going to jump,' " Swisher said. "And he said, 'It was my fault. I should have gotten out of the way.' I was just trying to break up a double play. I didn't mean to do that. Especially with a guy like that, just trying to make his mark over here."

Nishioka said he appreciated Swisher's apology but didn't feel it was necessary.

Added Gardenhire: "[Nishioka] just got caught a little flat-footed. Swisher's a clean player. That's just a good baseball slide, trying to break up a double play. There's no intent there."

The article also notes that Nishioka even apologized to Gardenhire for the play!

It looks like there's no bad blood between the Twins and Yankees over this, and best wishes to Nishioka on a full and speedy recovery. But there is at least one sportswriter who took issue with Swisher -- Jon Heyman of SI.com. On Heyman's Twitter account, he first wrote:

I'm sure all the yankee honks will come after me, but I didn't love that swisher slide. Too late. Best wishes to nishioka

Then he wrote this, retweeting a Swisher tweet after the game:

wheres the remorse? remember nishi? RT @nickswisher Great series win for the Bombers today ... Off to Boston baby!

I like Heyman -- he's emailed me replies when I've written to him, and tweeted back several times. He talks to fans a lot, and is accountable, which is good. And I do like his writing, and I enjoy hearing him on the radio.

All that being said, I think he is way off base here. He has a right to his opinion on the slide, but to gripe about Swisher not showing remorse is a bit much. (Heyman later acknowledged the possibility that it might not have been Swisher himself writing the tweet. But he still thought the post was wrong.)

Are journalists going to start demonizing players not just for not talking for them, but not showing what they deem to be sufficient remorse on their Twitter accounts? Good grief.

And, as I wrote Heyman on Twitter last night, plenty of journalists in newsrooms make black-comedy jokes about tragedies that are much worse than what Swisher did. When I first visited a newsroom in college (my professor was a TV weatherman who gave us a tour during a broadcast) he warned us that we might hear some offensive jokes, because that was the way journalists sometimes coped with horrible stories -- by cracking wise. And Swisher didn't even do that -- he just posted an innocuous tweet about winning the series and getting ready for the Red Sox.

It's a touchy thing when something bad happens. When my father died, I laughed at something somebody said during the wake, and was also delighted to see an unexpected face. Would somebody view that as not sufficiently mourning?

I suppose Swisher could have specifically tweeted his apology. But really, it makes no difference -- he apologized in person, which is the important thing. Whether or not he referred to it on Twitter is irrelevant to me.

At any rate, I don't want Swisher dwelling about what happened, if it constrains him as a player. What if, the next time he is supposed to slide, he is unable to do, because he's afraid of inadvertently hurting another player?

There are a lot of dopey things athletes do on Twitter. What Nick Swisher did wasn't one of them.

What do you think? Tell us about it!

Buzz Bissinger, Roy Halladay, and Twitter

I will write about tonight's great Yankee win in the morning -- I need to collect my thoughts more on this dramatic game, and rewatch the clips! In the meantime, I wrote something for The Faster Times tonight about Roy Halladay's playoff no-hitter (his second no-no this year -- he had a perfect game in May.) And I noted how back in May, "Friday Night Lights" author Buzz Bissinger denigrated  Halladay's perfect game achievement on Twitter, calling him "Hackaday" and a "douche juice bottom feeder."

Anyhow, it's a really weird phenomenon on Twitter, where some sportswriters think that the site is some cosmic playpen, and normal rules of decorum in their profession don't apply to them. Bissinger has a Pulitzer Prize to his name. He would never talk about athletes in his books the way he did with Halladay. Yet he seems to think it's okay to use Twitter to call people he covers profane names like "douche juice." Remember, this is the same guy who told Bob Costas about how bloggers were offensive!

Read the article here, and tell me what you think. 

How I argued with a New York Times writer - and lived to tell about it

Today's New York Times' sports section features a front-page article by new Yankee beat writer Ben Shpigel about Alex Rodriguez . That's not exactly shocking, but the tone of the piece - and the pictures, headlines, and pull quotes to go along with it - is something out of the National Enquirer, not the Gray Lady.

The print edition's headline is entitled "EVERYBODY HATES A-ROD," while the online edition calls him "The Man Baseball Loves to Hate." The print version of the piece features three photos of A-Rod - all unflattering. There are also eight (!) negative pull quotes about Rodriguez from everybody from Joe Torre (of course!) to Curt Schilling to Jose Canseco. The 950-word article continues that negative tone, featuring additional quotes from others, including Paul LoDuca and Matt Mantei. There are exactly two positive quotes in the story - one from Joe Girardi, and one from Torii Hunter.

As I wrote in a piece for The Faster Times criticizing the article, it seems like the writer might have been channeling Earth Day with the way he recycled years-old quotes and grievances to make his point about how, well, everybody hates A-Rod!

And he missed the real story on this - the way that this time around, everybody from Joe Girardi to Derek Jeter to CC Sabathia, Mark Teixeira, Andy Pettitte and Joba Chamberlain have all had A-Rod's back here.(Read their quotes in my Faster Times piece. Jeter's, in particular, is hilarious!) That is the real news here, not what Trot Nixon said five years ago.

Contrary to Shpigel's insistence that "it has become a fashionable phenomenon to bash Rodriguez, something as popular as the Rally Monkey or the Phillie Phanatic," the reality is that the attacks on A-Rod have decreased over the past few years, due in no small part because he has kept his nose clean - and done fewer stupid things - over that time. Before Dallas Braden, when was the last time an opponent had something bad to say about A-Rod? It's been a while. Heck, with Teixeria spurning Boston for the Yanks last year, A-Rod wasn't even the most hated Yankee at Fenway!

I wondered why Shpigel didn't include the recent quotes, and took such a one-sided - and outdated - tone. So after writing my article about the piece, I joined the many Yankee fans on Twitter who asked him what the deal was:

"Your A-Rod piece is way off base," I wrote. "He has more, not fewer, people in his corner than 5 years ago, especially since Torre is gone." I included a link to my article and also asked him, "Why did you do a 950 (word) piece recycling old quotes, and not new positive ones? Paul LoDuca makes cut, but Jeter/CC/Andy/Joba don't?"

Anyhow, I heard back from Shpigel - I'll give him a lot of credit for that. He responded:

"Story wasn't about right/wrong or bashing/condoning his actions. No one else gets ripped more often than A-Rod. Simple."

Oh, come on now, I thought! How could anybody not think that was a one-sided negative article! So I wrote back, "The headline says EVERYBODY HATES A-ROD. U used every single old negative quote u could find, and only 2 positive. Not bashing?"

Shpigel shortened and retweeted my comment (it actually reads better shorter - thanks, Ben!), and added a statement of his own at the beginning:

Sigh. To each his own. RT@ subwaysquawkers @benshpigel The headline says EVERYBODY HATES A-ROD. Not bashing?

Ha! I made a New York Times reporter sigh! My day is complete!

Although I still disagree with Shpigel, I do appreciate his taking the time to respond to me. But will he be more fair to A-Rod the next time out? If he isn't, I'll be the one doing the sighing.

Momentum, schmomentum - Don't think the Twins will win because they had a sizzling September

I knew it. As soon as I saw the Twins beat the Tigers, in one of the most epic one-game playoff matchups ever, I was sure people would start talking about that discredited canard, about how the hottest team, not the best team, wins in the playoffs. (Didn't they read my Faster Times piece breaking down the numbers? Sheesh.)

Momentum, schomentum, I say. The Yankees are going to win the series. I'm not going to claim a sweep or decimation or anything like that - as Squawker reader Bob from Kiev pointed out; Orlando Cabrera and Joe Mauer are both Yankee killers. Come to think of it, so is Carl Pavano. But the Yankees are still going to win.

Yankees in four, I say. That's my prediction, and I'm sticking to it!


Yesterday's game was pretty phenomenal, though - it was the best one-game playoff I can remember in ages. Fun to watch, even if I had no rooting interest. But TBS is terrible. What's more annoying - Craig Sager's fashions, or Chip Caray's awful calls? (I wrote a piece breaking down how bad Caray was.)

I will probably be squawking on Twitter and Facebook during tonight'ts game , if you'd like to follow me.

One other note - the Poughkeepsie Journal had a good video breaking down the Yanks-Twins series. Check it out.

What are your own predictions for the series? Tell us about it!

Twittering twit John Henry is missing in action

I wrote a piece for The Faster Times today wondering when Red Sox co-owner John Henry would Twitter again. Not-so-shockingly, he hasn't written on Twitter since the David Ortiz/Manny Ramirez scandal broke. Go here to read it.

In other news, I was missing in action myself last night. After getting some sun, I got home and fell asleep just before six p.m. last night. I was so exhausted, I ended up sleeping through the game and missing the whole thing! So not only did I miss seeing the Yankees beat up Roy Halladay, I also missed seeing if the fake umpires made a return to a Yankees-Blue Jays game!

What a nightmare it was to wake up in the middle of the night, and feel like I was on another planet, after sleeping so long! Hopefully, I'll be able to stay awake for tonight's game.

What do you think? Leave us a comment!

Yankees enjoy first place to themselves, while John Henry Twitters about his 'frustrating' Red Sox

Big news in Yankeeland. No, not that the Bombers have first place all to themselves, but that the Brett Tomko era is over. When is his Yankeeography coming out?

Tomko, who was released yesterday to make room for Sergio Mitre, hadn't even pitched since July 11. On the other hand, another Yankee who hasn't played in ages, Cody Ransom, scored two runs in yesterday's victory. Until last night, he hadn't played since July 10.

Incidentally, if anything bugs me about Joe Girardi and Brian Cashman this year, it's the way that roster spaces are wasted on players who are never used. Angel Berroa was another player who shouldn't have been on the roster. But now he's a Met, which is fitting, somehow.

Speaking of the Mets, does Jeff Francouer dropping a fly ball last night make him a True Met?

I probably should give Squawker Jon and his team a break, though. They look as hapless as Teddy Roosevelt does in the Washington Nationals' Presidents' race each night!

Back to the Yankees. Mitre gave the Yanks about as much as Chien-Ming Wang had been doing in his last few starts before getting hurt. Mitre started out poorly, then settled down, then had a shaky sixth inning. He got a nice ovation from the crowd for his game. It was a positive start in the right direction, and Mitre's first win in two years. And really, anything else Mitre can provide over what Wang would have given the team will be a plus.

I also appreciated how Alex Rodriguez and the Yanks manufactured a run last night without a hit. That was a highlight of the night.

Another highlight was seeing the Red Sox's John Henry gripe about his team's lousy play on Twitter. He called the Sox's week "frustrating" and wrote, "Tough night in Texas." Boo bleeding hoo!

At least he didn't complain about the Yankees' spending $400 million in free agents this time. Thank goodness for small favors.

Speaking of big-spending teams, how come nobody gripes about how the Sox have enough money to release Julio Lugo, even though he has $13.5 million on his contract? Just wondering.

What do you think? Leave us a comment!

Red Sox co-owner John Henry needs a new Twitter target besides the Yankees

Red Sox co-owner John W. Henry recently took time out from enjoying his new marriage to slam the Yankees on Twitter. Again.

Yesterday, the Boston owner, who posts as John_W_Henry on Twitter, tweaked the Yankees over their new fan club, Yankees Universe:

News from Yankees' Universe. Big upsurge in membership. Apparently coming mostly from Pluto. Not doing nearly as well on Mars.

It's not that I find Henry's comments offensive. It's that I find them unfunny, which is arguably a bigger sin.

Dude, just because your underlings may laugh at your "jokes," it doesn't mean that those witticisms are actually funny. Leave the comedy to the trained professionals.

I will give him credit for one thing, though. At least he didn't make a Uranus joke.

But really, Henry's obsession with the Yanks is kind of sad. He writes more about the Bombers than I do about Jonathan Papelbon. But at least I have the excuse of having no life.

The Red Sox co-owner, on the other hand, is both a gazillionaire and a newlywed. Yet he appears to have nothing better to do than to complain about the Yankee playroll and suggest that the acquisition of Mark Teixeira -(MT in Henryspeak) has cursed the Bombers.

I do have a suggestion for something Henry can do on Twitter - spark an online fight with former Red Sox/Yankee/Met player Doug Mientkiewicz - aka DougieBaseball on Twitter. (Squawker Jon is still stunned by the news that Mientkiewicz refers to himself as DougieBaseball!)

Mientkiewicz recently made Twitter news by calling Yankee Nick Swisher "a turd" and saying "I think he's way way over rated." Maybe Henry and Eye Chart can get into a dispute about the 2004 World Series ball again or something. An argument between the two would be more compelling than the Red Sox owner's tired anti-Yankee rejoinders, to be sure.

Or heck, Henry could start a Twitter war with us (of course, Squawker Jon would probably take the Sox owner's side!) Our Twitter account is subwaysquawkers. Bring it on!

What do you think? Leave us a comment!

Red Sox co-owner John Henry is a Twittering twit

The Yankees may be in the tank these days, but Red Sox co-owner John W. Henry just can't stop Twittering about them - and their payroll.

The Boston gazillionaire, who raised eyebrows a few weeks ago when he wrote on Twitter that the Yankees might be suffering from the curse of "MT" - aka Mark Teixeira, is still yakking online about New York's team.

In an Internet conversation this evening with "Curb Your Enthusiasm" star Larry David about the HBO star's program, Henry tweeted about David's show, "And you didn't spend $400m during the offseason!"

This isn't the first time Henry griped on Twitter this week about the Bombers' payroll. On Sunday, Henry wrote, "Happy Fathers Day to all dads. Awful wet for a knuckler. 3 ahead of $400m offseason." Get over it, dude.

I'm guessing that $400m offseason figure is in every conversation Henry has. It really has nothing to do with Larry David's part of the discussion, but Henry can't resist tweeting the figure.

You'd think somebody worth $800 million or so would have better things to do than air their petty gripes on the Internet for the world to see, particularly when teams like the Pittsburgh Pirates and the Washington Nationals would love to have the Sox's $120 million payroll.

Then again, you would think that Mark (aka MT) Teixeira saying about Henry that "there's no reason to get into a war of words with a 70-year-old man" would have shut up the co-owner's tweeting. No such luck.

I'm just glad George Steinbrenner wasn't actively running the Yankees in the Internet era. Can you imagine what mayhem he could have caused with a Twitter account? Sheesh.

Subway Squawkers are also on Twitter, causing our own form of mayhem. Follow us here.

What do you think of John Henry? Leave us a comment.

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What a twit! Subway Squawkers are now on Twitter

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I still want to call posting there a "twit" instead of a "tweet," because I do feel a little twittish even having a Twitter membership in the first place!

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