Bronx Side Story: The Double Standard Against the Yankees

Once again: One standard for the rest of baseball, and another standard for the Yankees.

In effect, here's what happened in those two spring training games between the Yankees and the Tampa Bay Deviled Eggs:

Tampa manager Joe Maddon came came at Yankee manager Joe Girardi with a knife and cut him with it.

So Girardi shakes it off, and says, "That's not a knife." And he pulls out a dagger like the one Paul Hogan had in the movie Crocodile Dundee, and sticks it in Maddon's face, and says, "That's a knife!"

And Maddon says, "Waaaaah! No fair!"

Next, I fully expect whoever's running the Rays now to say, "Waaaah! The Yankees are rich! They can afford bigger knives than we can!"

As the great New York sportscaster Warner Wolf would say, "Come on, give me a break!"

Then again, there was a time when the Yankees would be the Norsfire thugs from V for Vendetta, and, in effect, say to the Red Sox, "Whatchya gonna do, huh? We've swept this place. You've got nothing. Nothing but your bloody knives and your fancy karate gimmicks. We have guns!" And in 2004, the Sox started saying, "No, what you have are bullets, and the hope that when your guns are empty I'm no longer be standing, because, if I am, you'll all be dead before you've reloaded."

All last season, Joe Torre was looking at the Sox as if he was saying, "Die! Die! Why won't you die?... (incredulously) Why won't you die?"

I love Joe Torre, but, as it was for Joe McCarthy once, as it was for Casey Stengel once, as it was for Billy Martin more than once, it was time to make a change.

It's about time the Yankees said, "All right, you guys wanna make it interesting? Let's make it really interesting."

Maybe a line from Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid?

Kid Curry (Ted Cassidy): "Rules? In a knife fight? No rules!"
Butch (Paul Newman, kicks Curry in the balls, making him drop the knife): "Well, now that we've established that there are no rules, somebody yell, 'One-two-three-Go!'"

Just wait until the first Yanks-Sox brawl. Jason Varitek or somebody else will start a fight, and he'll get off completely, while the guy he punches will be suspended 5 games for being so uppity as to fight back.

Screw it. It's like West Side Story. Time for Joe Girardi and the Bronx Bombers to deliver a freakin' message. Call it Bronx Side Story:

Y'see, them other teams, they believes everything they reads in the papers and sees on ESPN about us cruddy Yankees. So that's what we'll give 'em! Somethin' to believe in!

Gee, Commissioner Krupke: Krup you!