This caught me (and many others) way off guard. The Pride Of The Yankees blog at NJ.com is likely done. I found this very troubling for a number of reasons, the least of which was the fact that I have known the brothers writing team since we were wee lads. I’m having trouble going to past tense here, so bear with me.

POTY is/was a great first-stop source for all Yanks baseball news, not disimilar to Buster Olney’s “blog” with all the latest news from around the league. David and Aziz are/were adept at siphoning out the noise and giving us the nuggets that would most interest us.

Besides the writing of the brothers, POTY has/had a great following of commenters who didn’t fall prey to the hyperbole, name-calling, slap fights that overtakes other large sites. They are/were smart, fact-driven, self-policing. It was a joy to watch/read.

Some 30-odd comments into the post-mortem, they posted this in a comment:

Aziz and I are working with the NJ.com staff to try and maintain this site. While the blogging will likely stop for a little while, we’re hoping to bring the blog back in the not-too-distant future — hopefully with us as contributors (only less often), and perhaps with other contributors as well.

We can only hope.

Now, D&A have given the reasons of “life” and “law school” as reasons to halt the daily production and I hope the call was theirs to make.

Nonetheless, here at IIATMS, I welcome all of the POTY readers with open arms and bountiful comments-driven debates. I will leave their links in the blogroll and daily blog circuit to keep vigil.

Another belated link, this one from Russ at Splice. Remember, before reading, that Russ is a Sox fan and hates the Yanks. He kicks it off in grand fashion:

Friends, Americans and baseball fans around the globe, lend me your eyes: I’m writing to praise the New York Yankees, not to bury them.

don’t misinterpret this message, for my Yankee-hating bona fides are second to no one. Over the decades, I’ve cursed Mantle and Munson, Martin and Maris, Jeter and Giambi, Posada and Pepitone, Reggie and Rocket, Tito and Torre, and Dent and Damon. There’s a particular loathing for Paul O’Neill, YES yes-man Michael Kay, Mike Mussina and, it hardly bears repeating, the most odious athlete of this era, Alex Rodriguez, aka A-Fraud. As a Red Sox fan I’ve been threatened and punched by creeps at Yankee Stadium, endured slings and arrows and misfortune from skunks in the stands, and once gave my sons permission to give a bow-tied afternoon drunk the finger after he hooted at my wife for the crime of cheering a David Ortiz blast into the right field seats.

Nevertheless, the recent commotion from baseball media commentators – in print, on the tube, online and at parties – after the Yankees signed free agent Mark Teixeira for $180 million has been the most knee-jerk, naive and plain dumb hyperbole that’s occurred in the past year. The Yankees are ruining Major League Baseball! The Steinbrenners Hal and Hank (and GM Brian Cashman) don’t play fair! Locking up three players – aside from Teixeira, they nabbed C.C. Cheeseburger and A.J. Burnett – for a total of $423.5 million is unseemly during a crippling recession and the world’s most famous sports franchise is once again spitting at
people with prudence and manners!

What a load of hooey.

What he said.

More reader mail, via Shysterball, so that’s doubly good. Though this is more of a guest posting and the last time we did a guest post call, I asked for a donation to a charity. I’ll contact the author Jay Gargiulo of the newly-formed FackYouk blog to see if he’d be interested in doing something. His blog is brand-spankin’ new so in honor of my blog’s first birthday, I granted Jay his wish. Particularly since he’s chatting about the Dreaded “C” Word.

Select View Full Post to continue reading.

Some reader mail for you guys, from you guys. This from joeorange31:

Gammons…..(sigh)

Must have been drunk when he wrote this article about the Yankees: My responses are below.

But the Red Sox can also resume the role of underdog, which to an organization priding itself on the flow of self-developed talent isn’t a bad thing. We have seen how well Ben Cherington, the RedSox’s vice president of player personnel, and Mike Hazen, Boston’s director of player development, have built a player development environment which has led to many seamless transitions from the minor leagues into the Fenway Park pressure cooker. And that will continue.

RESUME THE ROLE OF UNDERDOG??? Can he be serious? They’ve got the number two [EDIT: #4] payroll overall…are you KIDDING ME??? The temperature of the whole article is smarmy and stewed with angst.

We have months to see how the Yankees mesh, what scabs they develop, what injuries they must overcome, whether the expectations make the game joyless despite the joy that Derek Jeter, Mo, and Sabathia bring to the ballpark every day.

Oh. I know…because if you put that “B” on your cap, it just brings joyand love right? I suppose Manny Ramirez was a guy FULL of joy and pridewearing those socks. I suppose that Teixeira can look forward to a careerof misery now that he’ll play in NY? I suppose that it wasn’t Jeter’s lifetime goal to play in the Bronx? That’d sure make ME miserable, too.

Now they’re reminded that the Red Sox can not win the revenue war and winning will continue to depend on development of players like Lars Anderson, Jed Lowrie…

I take Umbrage here! The Red Sox are hardly among thirty-one, also-rans along with the Rays, the Marlins, the Royals, the Pirates, the poster children for Baseballs version of Public assistance. To imply that they aren’t an income generating GIANT is ridiculous. John Henry could have very easily chose to drop an additional eight million into Teixeira’scontract offer and have him signed. To say that they weren’t capable of itis an insult to any fan with a quarter of a brain.

Look….Baseball is a world of “haves” and “Have nots”. The Yankees have. We all know it. We don’t try to hide it. To say that the Red Sox “Havenot” is a slap in the face to the remaining baseball world. It’s like saying that Dale Earnhardt Jr. is just a ‘good ole boy’ Grease Jockey in comparison to Jeff Gordon who has better corporate sponsorship. Now we hear these “Have not” teams screaming for a salary cap. Guess what? TheYankees can’t sign eight hundred players. They can sign 25. (Okay…Iguess you can say that they can keep 40 on the active roster). Even if they sign the best of the best to play each position, it guarantees them nothing. Baseball isn’t football. You can’t bury your opponent. The Rays are still going to have Evan Longoria, David Price, Scott Kasmir. The RedSox are still going to have Youkilis, Beckett, Ortiz….You STILL have quality opponents.

Yeah… The Yankees have permanently priced me out of seeing their games on anything other than my new 32″ Sharp HDTV. Yeah, It does take the feeling of Slaying the giant/David vs Goliath out of winning the WS as the Yankees assume the role of the Giant. However, if the Yanks are the Giant, The Red Sox are not David. To portray them that way is unfair and biased. I was wondering if Gammons could tell me whether or not the Pirates would like Jason Bay to be patrolling left field in PNC rather than Fenway!

Act responsibly.