As the Subway Series roars into town this weekend, Modell’s Sporting Goods is happy to announce that New Era, the official on-field cap of Major League Baseball, has introduced a new test line of Authentic Collection Low Crown 59FIFTY® Major League Baseball® caps that are now available in Modell’s stores throughout the New York-New Jersey area.  The new “Low Crown” 59FIFTY caps are available for purchase for the New York Yankees for $34.99 SRP.

These caps are made with performance CoolBase technology and are custom designed with a low crown featuring an embroidered (raised) team logo on front and stitched Major League Baseball logo on the rear.  The caps are designed for an everyday fit that allows for optimal comfort.  Players and fans now have two options when it comes to which fitted caps they wear on the field and at the game.

Thanks to Modells we will be giving away one of these Yankees hats to a lucky ready. A contest will soon be started to determine the winner so check back often!

This offseason has had its ups and downs but as of right now, more downs. Cashman’s goal from the start was to get this team back to being a championship contender by focusing on pitching, and somehow swinging Mark Teixera to come to the Bronx. 243 million dollars later, Joe Torre comes into the picture.

Torre’s book was not notable for his exquisite metaphors, inquisitive imagery, or anything of that manner. It was revealing the team’s feelings toward Alex Rodriguez, or as the team called him, “A-Fraud”. Now, most players denied these rumors that Torre brought about in his book, but after this past week perhaps Joe wasn’t just bitter about how he went out in New York. A-Rod has been boo’d and cheered during his tenure in NY, but what fuels fans to cheer for the superstar has been his production. A-Rod has to produce to keep NYC off his back, but when he doesn’t terms like A-Fraud come about. It’s the price you pay when you are a high profile athlete in a high profile town. Manny got the same heat and Boston and eventually left. Some players just get tired of it and some players are fueled by it, and one of those players is A-Rod. Rodriguez loves the attention and will do anything to be in the spotlight, but this week I’m sure he wishes it was the late 90′s where he played in Seattle and was a rising star with absolutely no pressure.

A couple of years later he got his contract and cash he earned in Seattle and became a superstar for the Rangers. He played in Texas from 2001-03 where the Rangers finished last all three years. That is time he began juicing. He admitted this week to juicing all three years with the Rangers, but stopping after bolting for NY. Now, what I don’t understand is why would one feel more pressure to put up numbers in Texas, then in NY? Seems a little odd, but this is the Steroid Era in MLB so everything is odd and nobodies word is worth anything anymore, unless your name is Derek Jeter.

Moving forward, Torre may have stirred some people, but A-Rod testing positive for steroids stirred the entire country. With the regular season slowly creeping on us, I have to believe things in NY will not be much different for A-Rod. If he performs to the highest degree possible he’ll still be loved by the Yankee faithful, but if he gets off to a bad slump then it could be a long, draining year for Alex Rodriguez, and perhaps the Yankees as a whole.

Andy Pettitte is coming back to the New York Yankees after he and the team agreed on a new one-year contract. Pettitte will make a base salary of $5.5 million but could earn up to $12.5 million if he hits all of incentives. Pretty much if Pettitte can stay healthy for the year and make all of his starts, I’d assume he would hit almost all of those incentives.

Last season Pettitte was 14-14 with a 4.54 ERA for the Yankees. He hopes to improve on that and have a strong second half unlike in the 08 season.

Good deal for the Yankees!

It was a busty day for the New York Yankees just like most teams as upper management and players tried to work out deals before the salary arbitration deadline at noon. The Yankees signed Xavier Nady and Melky Cabrera to deals before the deadline.

Nady agreed to a one-year, $6.65 million deal, while Cabrera signed a one-year deal worth $1.4 million. Nady earned $3.59 million last season, and is likely to become a free agent after the 2009 season. He has been rumored in some recent trade talk so that could happen before the season starts. Nady at $6.65 million seems like a lot when you see that it is almost double of what he was making last season.

The Yankees will only have to goto a hearing with one player as they were unable to strike a deal with Brian Bruney who was asking for $1.55 million and the Yankees were offering him $1.1 million.

Yankees Blog

The New York Yankees just made another huge splash in the free agent market as Mark Teixeira and the team have agreed on a eight year contract that will be worth $180 million. Yes, you heard me right, $180 million! That means that the highest four players in major league baseball all will be playing for the New York Yankees.

The contract would pay Teixeira an average of $22.5 million per season. New York has spent $423.5 million in salary in the last month, with $161 million going to left-handed pitcher C.C. Sabathia in a seven-year deal and $82.5 million on right-hander A.J. Burnett for five years.

The Boston Red Sox and Washington Nationals were the two other teams that were in the final three for Tex. This was a big time signing for the Yankees, now let’s all just hope that it doesn’t backfire!

Yankees Blog

The New York Yankees made sure that starting pitcher Chien-Ming Wang was not forgetting with the recent signings of C.C. Sabathia and A.J. Burnett. The team signed Wang to a new one year contract worth $5 million as the two parties avoided arbitration.

Wang was 8-2 with a 4.07 ERA in 15 starts for the Yankees last season before spending the rest of the year on the disabled list with a sprain of the Lisfranc ligament in his right foot and a partial tear of a tendon in the same foot.

If Wang can stay healthy for the Yankees in 2009, expect him to be the number three or four starter in the rotation. Three if Andy Pettitte is not brough back, and number four if he is.

Yankees Blog

The New York Yankees made another splash in the free agent market over the weekend as A.J. Burnett agreed on a five-year deal that will pay him $82.5 million dollars. This coming shortly after the team signed C.C. Sabathia to a $161 million dollar deal earlier in the week. It looks like the Yankees are tired of not making a deep run in the playoffs and are opening up the checkbook to better their chances of getting there in 2009.

“A.J. Burnett has great stuff,” Yankees manager Joe Girardi said recently. “I think he’s matured a lot as a pitcher, as well. He’s learned to control the running game a lot better. He attacks hitters and gets hitters out quickly, throws a lot of strikes, fields his position. I think he’s much more complete as a pitcher than he was a couple of years ago.”

As long as he can stay healthy I think this is a good signing for the Yankees. He will be a great addition to the starting rotation that is for sure.

Yankees Baseball

The New York Yankees made the biggest off season splash as they will soon be signing free agent pitcher CC Sabathia to a seven year $160 million dollar contract. The Yankees have been hard after Sabathia and have been talking with him for the past three days before he agreed to become the newest New York Yankee.

Sabathia, 117-73 in eight big league seasons, will bring something to the Yankees that they haven’t had in three decades: a relatively youthful pitcher at the top of their rotation. Traded to the Brewers by the Indians on July 7, the left-hander almost single-handedly carried Milwaukee to its first postseason berth in 26 years by going 11-2 with a 1.65 ERA in 17 starts.

Sabathia had been courted by the Milwaukee Brewers, the San Francisco Giants and the Boston Red Sox. The Los Angeles Dodgers said that Sabathia, who lives in California, had expressed interest in playing there, too, although the team did not publicly make him an offer.

In the end however, Sabathia chose the Yankees and he hopes to get back into post season action this next year. It’s an exciting time to be a Yankee fan!

The New York Yankees declined to offer arbitration to any of the teams free agents in fear that they would accept and then the team would be forced to pay them a higher amount then what the would have wanted to. Bobby Abru and Andy Pettitte are the two big names that were not offered.

Even though the Yankees did not offer arbitration to both players, they can still talk about a new contract and negotiate with them.

Also not receiving arbitration offers were pitchers Mike Mussina, Carl Pavano and Sidney Ponson, plus catchers Ivan Rodriguez and Chad Moeller, and first basemen Jason Giambi.

With the Winter meetings coming up in the next week, it will be interesting to see what management decides to do about the starting pitching rotation as they would really like to get a couple of new pitchers that they could plug into the rotation.

New York Yankees

George Steinbrenner officially turned control over the New York Yankees over to his son Hal Steinbrenner on Thursday. The eldter Steinbrenner was the boss of the Yankees for the last 35 years and now all Yankee fans are hoping that Hal can take over for the next 35. If that happens, things will be going very good for the Yankees in my opinion.

The Yankees won three world series under George so Hank says “”My dad is, needless to say, a tough act to follow.”

We can also expect Hank to stay involved in the team as well as he overlooks Brian Cashman and the baseball operations.

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