Joba Chamberlain’s debut as a starter was by most measures a dissapointment. Chamberlain lasted just 2 1/3 innings Tuesday against Toronto, and Girardi pulled him after 62 pitches, about what the Yankees had planned to limit him to. He allowed two runs on one hit and four walks, striking out three.

Chamberlain’s latest start against KC was also mixed, and he will not stand to win this game. He allowed 5 hits and 2 earned runs through 4 1/3 innings.

So how good does this decision to bring Chamberlain out of his set-up role after two starts? It’s probably too early to tell, but it’s clear that Chamberlain may not be completely comfortable starting games. It does not help that he’s on another pitch count leash, which may serve a kind of distraction.

There are rumors that the yankees may be interested in Brian Fuentes of the Rockies who would potentially fill the void that Joba left in the bullpen. A deal for Fuentes would indicate the Yankees are fully committed to Joba as a starter.

Expectations for Joba are high. While he wasn’t rocked in any of his starts, he hasn’t come out of the bullpen seemlessly a la John Smoltz. Joba doesn’t look fully confident.

Unfortunately, with with Ian Kennedy ineffective and Phil Hughes injured (again), moving Chamberlain into the rotation is a clear desperation move on the part of the Yanks. With Boston pulling away in first place and the yanks continuing to play .500 ball, there may not be much more amo left short of a blockbuster deal–one that would include more than Brian Fuentes.

After a third of a season gone, how smart does the non-deal for Johan Santana look now? Not very good.

 So I made it out to Anaheim last Sunday to see the Angels play the Rangers.

I have to say, it was a bit weird to set foot in the place where so many Yanks playoff chances have gone to die. I remember being in shock back in the fall of 2002 when, after four consecutive World Series appearances, the Yanks went down in weak fashion to the Angels in four games. More recently the Yanks pushed the Angels to a five-game, winner-take-all in Anaheim back in 2005 but lost nonetheless. Neither team has not gone deeper into the playoffs since.

So with my Yankees hat firmly on my head, I went into Angels stadium preparing for some serious abuse. So what was it like to visit the home of the team with the best record vs. NYY since 2000? Honestly, not that bad. The stadium was clean and had a lot of open space. It was very fan-friendly. Did I get any crap for wearing a NYY hat? No, not at all. In fact I talked to a lot of fans there who felt no hate towards the Yanks. Maybe that’s because the Angels have owned the Yanks this decade. In this game the Rangers and Vincente Padilla held off the halos and won handily.

As I see more and more of these newer or renovated ballparks, I can’t help but notice how many distractions there are in the stadium from the actual ballgame. There are these huge playgrounds for kids, videogame stations, baseball-oriented carnival games and concessions stands as far as the eye can see. At one gaming station, I played Major League Baseball 2K8 for xbox 360, and it transported me for two whole innings.  It makes you wonder if MLB has given in to the fact that the game itself isn’t all that entertaining (or lucrative) and that to bring fans in and keep them there, a stadium should have an almost carnival-like atmosphere where, no doubt, you will spend more money on food and tee-ball than in sitting in the seat for which you paid to see the actual game.

So has MLB conceded that baseball is truly ”boring” and that fans would rather just hang out at the ballpark than watch the game going on inside? Nobody will ever admit it, but looking at these new ballparks, it’s a real possibility. I will say this: at the old Yankee Stadium, it’s all about the game. There’s not much space in there for anything else.

So the 2008 MLB season is underway. It’s been a long off-season. The Mets opened strong with a standout performance from their new ace, Johan Santana. Click here for an array of New York Mets jerseys. Who says I don’t cover the Mets enough?! And my beloved Yanks beat Toronto in a close game.

I love how already there’s analysis about how each team will perform in 2008 when there’s 161 games left on the year. Imagine forecasting how the next six months of your life will go based on what happened yesterday. But it’s still fun to kick around different scenarios about how this season will play out. Opening day is the one time in the year when all teams are on the same footing.

The combination of having the first new manager since 1996 and playing the last season in the old Yankee Stadium will make for a memorable year (and even higher ticket prices) for Bombers fans. The Mets too will say goodbye to their much-maligned Shea stadium. While switching homes for the Mets is a real no-brainer, (See plans for the new Citi Field here), replacing Yankee Stadium is much more controversial.

First off, Red Sox fans love the idea of tearing down what has been until recently their personal house of horrors. Check out the last time the yanks really stuck it to the Sox in the 2003 ALCS. Yes, the new Yankee Stadium will be adorned with the various hagiographies of its retired players and will have all the winning mementos, but it obviously will not be the same. The new Stadium will be built very intentionally to be a Boston fan’s version of hell with constant reminders of the 26 world championships. But we all know there’s no substitute for the real thing.

All this said, let’s focus on reality for a second. Yes, the old ballpark will be gone, and what can replace it? But let’s focus on all the good things the new Stadium will have (higher ticket prices notwithstanding):

1. Better access to Metro North and additional subway services is huge. Getting to/from games now is just not fun.

2. A lot more open space. The old ballpark feels in a lot of places like it really is from the 1920s. Too much old concrete and steel makes most fans feel very confined. Plus those nice old facades return in the new stadium.

3. An overall better look. Face it, the old stadium was half-torn down in the early 70s to build the monstrous upper deck. The result is a stadium that looks a bit half-baked. The new Stadium will be a unified structure that invokes all the best of the pre-renovated stadium with all the modern amenities.

I know I’ll take a lot of heat for “dissing” the old Stadium, and it’s an amazing place where I’ve had some of the best moments of my life (first home game after 9/11), but nothing’s going to bring it back. Plans for a new stadium have been in the works for decades, and now it’s finally happening. So let’s not forget the old HTRB and welcome in what’s essentially the HTSB (the ‘S’ is for Steinbrenner).

With Opening Day just a week away, what can we say about this year’s crop of Bombers that hasn’t already been said? Obviously, there questions about the starting rotation and what the new regime under Girardi will be like. There’s been a lot of talk about the brawls with the Rays. And all those non-acquisitions…

First of all, word around the campfire has it that Girardi is not messing around this season and has had zero-tolerance for guys showing up to camp not in shape or acting as if they deserve a roster spot. Word around the campfire also has it that that Yanks under Torre (at least in the last few seasons) had treated spring-training too lightly and was just plain not pushing his guys. There may be evidence for this in the fact that over the last 2-3 years, the Yanks got off to awful starts. In ‘07 they dug themselves a hole so deep early on that it probably cost them the division. Now with the yanks going 12-8 (as of March 23) in spring training, perhaps they can roar into ‘08 taking advantage of the fact that Boston will be jet lagged for the first week of the season.

As for the Yanks “questionable” pitching, I’m hearing a lot of criticism from people who predicted the yanks staff in ‘05-’06 (Randy Johnson, Carl Pavano and Jaret Wright) would be utterly dominant. It’s not an issue of if the Yank’s young staff will be good but when. Yes, once you get through Wang and Pettitte (and even here, most teams will not be very intimidated), you run into a declining Mussina and a crop of untested rookies. But these rookies: Hughes, Kennedy, Joba (and maybe even Igawa) only have upside potential. Hal and Hank must believe in these guys because they passed on Johan Santana so that they could keep Hughes and the like. I stand by this decision and believe that one or more of these kid pitchers will emerge as a rotation anchor. And what of Joba’s sophomore slump? Sure, the league will have looked at a lot more tape of him, but as long as his velocity stays up, there’s not too much hitters can “learn” about him. Nobody can hit tripple-digit fastballs consistently.

As for the brawls with the Rays this spring, you have to wonder what fight these Yanks would have put up a year ago in the same situation. Personally, I think brawls like this can galvanize a team and get players more fired up to win. I’m not advocating brawling, of course.

So how will this year’s crop of Bronx Bombers stack up? Assuming Hank and Hal get along and somehow manage this co-presidency of the team, I’m predicting playoffs. From there, who knows. We all know that October is kind of a crap shoot where hot teams like the Rockies can go pretty far on adrenaline. There too much young pitching talent and too much offense for the Yanks not to be in it in October. Obviously, with the Sox in the same division, a lot has to go right for this team to take the pennant. This is an interesting year where expectations for the yanks are relatively low and they have a fiery (and very smart) new manager calling the shots–at least on the field. The Yanks will certainly not want to disappoint fans watching their last games in the great Stadium. This may be a refreshing year where the Yanks play (gasp) underdog and spoiler to a host of teams with higher expectations–like that team that plays in that old swamp up the 95 tpk.

This is a blog not just about my two favorite teams: the Yanks and Giants, but all NY sports and sports at large. 

So what was a better NY Sports moment: the Yanks winning it all in 1996 or this year’s Giants superbowl victory over the previously undefeated NE Patriots?

First off, even though this all went down over a month ago, what a superbowl?! That was one for the ages. I still haven’t gotten over it. Honestly, any Giants fan out there who says that they fully expected the Giants to win that game is lying. It was an incredible upset. Check out some cool Giants NFL jerseys here.

But the greatest NY Sports memory I have is from 1996, which was my senior year in college. I was living in NYC, where I was born. (FYI: I grew in upper Manhattan where you just wound up routing for the Yanks, even in the dark days of the ‘80s). While the Yanks did win in ’77 & ’78, I was too young to remember any of that, least of all the Bucky Dent moment. So my whole life up until 1996, I had to endure the fact that my favorite team’s best days were way behind it. The Red Sox were fielding much better teams in the late ‘80’s, winning two divisions from 1986-1989, while the Yanks seemed destined for perennial mismanagement and dysfunctionalality.

But things did turn around towards the middle of the ‘90s, and the Yanks became true contenders thanks to packing a good farm system while King George was temporarily banned from the game. They clinched their first playoff birth in 14 years in 1995. But while they were a good team, they were not the dominant team of the era, which was the Atlanta Braves. The Braves had arguably the best starting staff in the modern baseball era: Smoltz, Glavine and Maddux. The Braves also had an intimidating offense led by a much younger Andruw (and Chipper) Jones. They were the defending champs in 1996 and heavily favored to repeat World Series victories. Frankly speaking, the yanks weren’t given much of a chance in ‘96, and many people don’t realize that Yanks played the scrappy underdog role quite well that year. Put another way: they weren’t the ‘evil empire’ (yet). Click here for yankees hats.

The Yanks dropped games 1 and 2 AT HOME. (I was actually at Game 1, which was my first and still only World Series trip. It all felt like Christmas Day, until the game started. The Yanks were shellacked 12-1.) They then had the very daunting task of having to beat that great staff in Atlanta for at least two games. They did win a rather unexciting Game 3. But it was games 4 and 5 that I will always remember, especially the comeback from a 6-1 deficit in game 4 via that Jim Leyritz homerun. But few people seem to remember Game 5, which was a rare pitchers duel that resulted in a 1-0 Yanks win. That game showcased Andy Pettite as a true big-game pitcher. I was more on the edge of my seat for that game than for any other game in any sport in my life. When people say baseball is boring, they never watched this sports masterpiece.

So the bottom line is that the Yanks win in ’96 was more exciting than this year’s Giants win for two reasons: 1) the Yanks hadn’t won any kind of title in a generation—remember the Giants had been to the playoffs several times over the years and were in Superbowl XXXV and 2) the edge-of-your-seat excitement in fall ’96 went on for a week: imagine 2-3 Superbowl XLIIs in as many days. What’s also interesting is that the Giants victory was so unthinkable that there was really little expectation of a championship, and this somehow blunts the experience. You need some level of expectation of winning to make a championship run more intense and sweeter for the fan. There were people who predicted in ’96 that the Yanks could go pretty far, and there was thus some expectation, which the Yanks validated in ’96.