Monthly Archives: May 2026

The last two weeks have been difficult for our Yankees, and that’s largely because of injuries and inconsistencies. (But if we’re being honest, some of the most consistent players recently have been those who have been consistently bad. More on that later.)

Consider all this…

Ben Rice, the hottest hitter on the roster, missed a handful of games with an injury I’ve never seen in the fifty years I’ve been watching baseball — he bruised his hand while catching a throw at first base.

José Caballero, who’s been a pleasant surprise even if he’s been caught stealing more times than we might like, was placed on the ten-day injured list against his wishes.

Max Fried left a start with elbow soreness, shaking all of Yankees Universe to its core with fears of losing another ace to Tommy John surgery. With Gerrit Cole due back on Friday, the internet was rife with theories that some type of curse was preventing Fried and Cole from being in the rotation at the same time. (Turns out it was just a bone bruise, but Fried will still miss at least a month.)

Anthony Volpe spent a few days in triple A purgatory after his rehab status expired, fueling the idea that this new ruthless Yankees front office means business this season, but Caballero’s injury open a space at shortstop, and Volpe returned. He hasn’t been impressive either in the field or at bat, so it will be interesting to see what happens when Caballero comes back on Friday.

Jasson Domínguez was playing well and even hitting some against lefties, and then he crashed into a wall making, of all things, an outstanding play in left field.

Spencer Jones finally made an appearance in the major leagues, and it looks like the Aaron Judge comparisons we’ve been hearing have been correct — only it’s 2017 Judge, not MVP Judge.

Trent Grisham has had a moment or two, and while there are some positive numbers, he’s still hitting well below .200 with a significant number of at bats, enough that he could be the most troubling batter in the lineup.

But if Grisham isn’t your biggest concern, there’s Austin Wells. I don’t think anyone expected him to hit like Jorgé Posada this year, but I’m fairly certain that 55-year-old Posada could hit like Wells this year.

Finally, as crazy as it is to say this about someone with sixteen home runs two thirds of the way through May, Aaron Judge hasn’t really looked like Aaron Judge at any point this season.

Oh, wait — there’s also the bullpen, which probably deserves a post of its own.

That’s an awful lot of doom and gloom, but the Yankees still have the second-best record in the mediocre American League, and there are probably more reasons to be optimistic than otherwise. Judge is the last person on the planet we should worry about, Jazz Chisholm has been hitting well, Ryan McMahon is still the best defensive third baseman we’ve seen in the Bronx in about a decade, Cam Schlittler is the front runner for the Cy Young Award, Carlos Rodón looked good the other night aside from his flukish wild pitch/jump throw combination that cost two runs, and Gerrit Cole is starting on Friday night against the Rays.

The baseball season is a rollercoaster, and there will surely be more dips and unexpected turns before we get to October. I wish I could tell you that I’ll remember that when things begin to look bleak, but I’m sure I won’t. For now, though — Let’s Go, Yankees!

[Photo courtesy of the author.]

As a fish-out-of-water Yankee fan on the west coast, it wasn’t until the dawn of the internet that I began listening to Yankee games on the radio. It was the spring of 1998, and Major League Baseball had not yet realized the potential value of their audio and video properties. New York’s WFAN was streaming all of their content 24 hours a day, and that included broadcasts of Yankee games. I still remember the joy when I discovered this.

I was at a crossroads that spring, living alone in an apartment, unsettled in my career, and generally disconnected. I wasn’t spiraling, but I was treading water and could see the vortex in the distance. It was the Yankees that kept me afloat. I’d get home from school each afternoon by 3:45 or so and immediately log into AOL (“You’ve got mail!”) to catch up with old college friends and then click over to WFAN for the game.

Sharing the play-by-play duties back then were John Sterling and Michael Kay. I had never heard of either of them. ESPN hadn’t yet picked up on Sterling’s trademark victory celebration or the home run calls, so it was all new to me, and I loved every bit of it. It helped that the Yankees were winning at a pace we’d never seen before, but Sterling and Kay were a huge part of the draw for me. That small apartment never felt like home to me; some of my boxes were never even unpacked. But when I listened to Sterling and Kay calling a Yankee game, I was home.

By the All-Star break I had fallen in love with my wife-to-be, by August I had moved out, and those daily radio games became a thing of the past. Eventually Baseball took those games away from the radio affiliates, but a couple decades later I found myself listening again, and I didn’t mind paying a few dollars a month for the privilege. Michael Kay had moved on to the YES Network, so now it was John Sterling and Suzyn Waldman, and even though there were times when I cursed Sterling for launching into his home run call on a ball that found a fielder’s mitt a few steps shy of the warning track, I could never bring myself to quit them. Sterling was a connection back to 1998 for me, that summer that changed my life forever (and not just because those Yankees were the best team I’ve ever seen).

John Sterling passed away this morning, but that connection remains for me. The tandem of John and Suzyn, or Ma and Pa Kettle as they were often called, was comfort food at its finest. I felt like I was listening to the game with my parents, if my parents had been Yankee fans. Whenever I found myself in the car while the Yankees were playing and I clicked on SiriusXM to find the game, those two voices were just what I was looking for, even more than the score of the game. Those two voices brought me home.

[Image Courtesy of WikiCommons]