Yankee Links

Lupica on this weekend's showdown.

Catch the photo of Papelbon, um, frightened for himself and his wife during the Sixth Avenue parade last week.

All of sudden it's Page Six news when A-Rod doesn't get laid.

Twenty years ago, I was a grad student in Binghamton, New York. I spent the summer between the two school years of my Master's program working double shifts as a security guard at Binghamton General Hospital, making enough for gas money on the weekends to explore Upstate (Cooperstown, Oneonta) and parts of New England (Massachusetts, Vermont). Accompanying me in my car all the way were the dulcet tones of Hank Greenwald and Tommy Hutton, the Yankee announcers and a pair of pros, nearly the equal of Ernie Harwell or (gasp) St. Scully.

They were both fired after the 1988 season--in, it was rumored, a fit of Steinbrenner pique. Replacing them was John Sterling.

The first month of the 1989 season, Sterling twice said as follows, "It is high . . . it is long . . . it is gone! . . . uh, no it isn't!", thus having violated the cardinal rule of broadcasting, "Never say 'It's out of there' until it's out of there (a cardinal rule voiced, ironically, by ex-Cardinal Tim McCarver), Sterling spent the rest of both broadcasts and then a large portion of the following nights' pre-game shows talking about the "strange winds" at wherever the Yankees happened to be playing. No, it happened. I was listening.

I now get my Yankee broadcasts courtesy of YES's dependable Michael Kay and his rotating, and above-average, stable of analysts: David Cone, Al Leiter, Ken Singleton, John Flaherty. But apparently, according to the Post's Phil Mushnick, Sterling hasn't changed a bit.

Tonite: Joba v. Beckett. Please not to stink, guys.