NY Yankees Sitting Around The Hot Stove Again

Usually Sid waited to see the light come on in the old country store before he ventured down the hill for company and conversation.  But this night, he was anxious to get out of the too quiet house and had come to sit on the front step, knowing that Mervin would come sooner or later to open the door and light a fire.

Sure enough, Mervin came soon after Sid had sat down on the stone steps.  Unlocking the door, Mervin flipped on the light and grabbed some newspaper which he crumpled into a ball to start the fire in the old pot bellied stove against the wall. 

He raked some of the ashes down through the grate, put the paper in and placed some long strips of dry bark and three pieces of kindling in on top of the paper.  Taking a long kitchen match from the metal box on the shelf above the stove, he soon had the fire going.  He opened the damper all the way and let the flames lick at the kindling as he chose one piece of cured oak to add to the fire.

Sid had taken the old rocker and watched as Mervin filled the old coffee pot with water and instant coffee. 

"Sure is gettin' colder these days, huh?"

"Yeah, but just three weeks from Christmas, I guess that's what we have to expect."

About that time, Bud came through the door carrying a laptop computer.  He said hello to the two older men and assumed one of the ladder back chairs close to the stove.  After Mervin had the coffee on he sat in the old overstuffed chair closest to the stove.

"What'd you bring that thing for?" asked Sid.

"Oh, I downloaded some stuff about the baseball talk that is going on and thought it might be good to remind myself."

As they often did the men gathered on winter evenings in the old store, which had been closed for many years, to talk about their community but especially to talk about baseball.

"Well, it seems there ain't been much going on."  Mervin was an avid fan and kept up through the local paper and ESPN.  But he had never taken on the computer age and knew nothing about the internet.

Bud agreed with Mervin that not much had been going on in the free agent market.  But he had access to New York papers on line and, being a life long Yankee fan, he tried to find out everyday as much as he could about what the Yankees' intentions were.

"No, not much shaking with the big free agents yet.  But there was some talk in the New York papers this morning that Brian Cashman was going to sit down with Scott Boras soon to try to see what could be done."

"Cashman?  He's the Yankees General Manager, right?"  Sid wasn't much of a baseball fan and came to the store for company more than anything else.  But he had picked up  a lot just by listening to the others night after night.  "Who's Boras?"

"Boras is the agent for CC Sabathia, Derek Lowe and several of the other big name free agents.  He's also the one that represented A-Rod last year when everything got crazy."

"Oh, well what do you think they are going to do?"

"Well, one writer, Feinsand, in the New York Daily News, said that Cashman was mainly going to talk to Boras about Derek Lowe." 

Mervin had already seen on ESPN some of the news about Lowe.  "But Lowe has made it perfectly plain that he wants to be back in Boston.  He practically said he would take whatever the Red Sox would give him to be back in Fenway."

"Yeah, that's the way it seems, but you never know.  Boston is already pretty loaded with young pitchers and Cashman seems determined to sign two or three of the best starters he can get."

Sid wanted to be involved.  "Well, what about Sabathia?  Isn't he the best available? What's going on with him?"

"That was also in the papers and on the Yankee web page this morning.  It said that Cashman was supposed to sit down with Sabathia before they start their winter meetings in Vegas on Monday."

"So, he's going to talk to him directly?  Not through the agent?"

"That's what the paper said.  But it's kinda hard to imagine that Boras won't at least be there." 

"Cashman probably just wants to try to make the best personal sales job he can,"  Mervin added.

"Yeah, there has even been talk that Girardi said he would personally give CC a tour of the new stadium and New York City if he wanted to come see all that."

"That new stadium has to be a big selling point, don't you think."

"Yeah, it is really going to be something from what I had read.  The best facilities that they could possibly put together.  You would think that that would make a difference to players."

"Yeah, but CC Sabathia is from California and maybe he just doesn't want the New York lifestyle."  Mervin didn't say that he really could not imagine anyone wanted to live in New York.

"But to pass up all the extra money the Yankees would pay him would be pretty hard," Bud added.

Sid wasn't sure how much money had been talked about but said, "How much money can any one person possibly spend.  I mean when you get to the millions of dollars they are talking about, what does it matter?"

"I guess to some extent that's right, but still, as they always say, 'Money talks'."

Mervin changed the subject.  "What about the offense, any word on what Teixeira is going to do?"

"No, that's been really quiet too.  There was talk early on about the Washington Nationals trying to go after him because he is from Maryland.  But they just can't compete in this kind of free agent market.  Neither can Baltimore.  It seems like the Angels are going to throw everything they can put together to keep him.  If they don't re-sign him, he is probably going to end up in Boston or New York."

"Will the Yankees really spend that kinda money for a first baseman and still get those pitchers?"  The other two men knew that Sid was baffled by the kind of money that baseball teams paid for players.

"Well, they might not get any of the pitchers and if that is the case, they better be able to score a lot of runs." 

"Yeah, they sure are losing a lot of production with Giambi and Abreau both leaving."  Mervin had been a proponent of keeping Abreau.  "But they didn't even offer Bobby arbitration.  How does that make any sense?"

"Maybe it does make sense actually.  Abreau has said publicly that he wants to come back to the Yankees.  They could have gotten burned by arbitration.  That process has almost always resulted in the players getting raises, no matter what they did last season.  Maybe the Yankees just figured they could still talk to Abreau and sign him to a two year deal cheaper than if they had gone to arbitration."

"But if they didn't even offer, why would he think they are still interested."

"Oh, they're talking behind the scenes.  There's so much going on that the press never even hears about, much less little people like us."

"Yeah, I guess you're right.  Well do you think the winter meetings next week are gonna shake things up and get some of these guys signed somewhere."

"You would think so.  But I watched the Hot Stove show on YES last night and nobody on there was sure that anything would get done next week."

"What did they say about what is holding everything up?"

"Well, they seemed to think that Burnett didn't want to sign too early.  If CC finally signs and the number is really high, that will set the value of the best pitchers and maybe he will get more money.  And the same thing may be true for the best offensive free agents.  They are just waiting to see what kinda money the first guy to sign gets."

"Yeah, and somebody on ESPN said that the teams are sorta playing the same game, not wanting to offer too much too soon because then they have blown the market wide open.  Seems like a cat and mouse game."

"Well, one way or another, we will have to know something two months from now because the camps are going to open for pitchers and catchers about that time."

"Yeah, one thing about the Hot Stove League.  Sooner or later, things have to get hot."

The three men sat around and drifted from topic to topic as Bud pulled things up on the laptop and read some things to Mervin and Sid.  Before they knew it two hours had passed.

As yawns began to grow so strong they couldn't be stifled any longer, the gathering broke up and each went their separate ways knowing they would reassemble in a few days to trade some more baseball players.