Report: Yanks' Jeter favors blood testing for performance enhancers

"While union chief Don Fehr has opposed blood testing of Major League Baseball players for steroids and substances like HGH, one of the sports biggest stars disagrees.

Jeter

"You can test for whatever you want to test for," New York Yankees captain Derek Jeter told Bloomberg News. "We get pricked by needles anyway in spring training, so we have a lot of blood work to begin with."

Jeter, an eight time All-Star, also went on to say that blood testing for banned substances isn't an invasion of privacy.

Several players, including Jeter's current and former Yankee teammates Andy Pettitte and Roger Clemens, were named in the Mitchell report as having used HGH. Pettitte admitted his use while Clemens vehemently denied taking any performance enhancing substance."

That's right, the Captain's not a cheater and wants to ensure that baseball is as steroid-free as possible.

This post sponsored by the song Thunderstruck. Feel the Joba Fever. It's almost showtime.

The wait is over

Too lazy to actually write stuff, so more YouTube! This one is thanks to the fine folks at Deadspin.

Kids are stupid

Thanks to a tipster who shall remain nameless until he actually calls into the finest radio show alive, comes this video of Kanye West singing with Tina Fey on SNL.

Dwight Howard is freaking dangerous

I am proud to say I have seen every dunk in the Slam Dunk contest, either watching live, or on replays/YouTube/whatever. Dwight Howard last night did 4 dunks. Each of these dunks was absolutely sick. The 1st 3 were 3 of the greatest I've ever seen, definitely all in the top 10, with the behind the backboard windmill and the "tap to himself off the backboard" in the top 5. Moon's 1st dunk was verrrry impressive, Gay was solid, and Green was very good too (the cupcake shtick was cute, and considering McCants gave him a bad pass it was even cooler), but Howard was insane.

Congratulations to Team San Antonio, and my girl Becky Hammon, friend of the show.

In non-NBA news, Pavlik beat Taylor again last night, not surprised, although I was surprised it wasn't a KO.

And in the big news, Morgan Ensberg will be wearing #21. I'm shocked, I thought it was getting retired. Technically it still can because there are plenty of numbers that were worn in between the player's retirement and the number's retirement. But it's a little weird that no one wore this popular number for 6 years, and now all of the sudden it's being given out.

IT'S FINALLY HERE!!!

Happy Pitchers and Catchers Day!

Your Yankees news updates

The huge news of the day, Phil Hughes no longer has a retarded number. In a related story, the number 34 will be retired in about 20 years.

Doug Mientkiewicz signed a minor-league deal with the Pirates. If something out of Betemit/Ensberg/Shelly works out, he will not be even remotely missed.

Also, today's Kige is up there among the all-time greats. I believe.

Joba

Not sure if I blogged about this already and I'm too lazy to check but I think Joba should stay in the bullpen. I'm well aware of the numbers involved, and how 200 innings of Joba are better than 100, but we're still better off with Joba the freaking dominant set-up man.

Since 1996, Mariano Rivera has been the pitcher any sane Yankee fan would want on the mound with everything on the line. He pitches 1 inning a game, maybe 2 in the playoffs (or 3 if it's the epic 2003 Game 7). Now, if you translated his numbers into the role of a starter, obviously they would be better than the crappy 5th starters we've had through these last few years, but then in the later innings we'd be forced to rely on someone less than the best, and why would we want to do that.

With that said, we can apply the same to Joba and the 8th inning (or in the playoffs Joba in the 6th-7th, Mo in the 8th-9th, Jeter Christ that sounds sweet). I would rather have Moose start, go 5 or 6 giving up whatever he does, but then if we make a comeback, know that we have Joba and Mo to lock things down, than have Joba go 7 innings giving up 1, and then watch The Hawk or The Farns compete to see who can blow a 5-1 lead faster (note: Farns is my boy and I like the Hawk signing, but let's try to use them in the 7th, mmkay?).

30-40 years ago, when starters went 9 (and even pussy starters went 8), then Joba in the rotation would make sense. Now, baseball has changed; the best starters only go 7 (while the pussies and Igawas go 3), maybe 8 on a special occasion.

Remember 1996? Wasn't that fun with our solid starters going 6, Mo in the 7th-8th, Wetteland in the 9th? Or 1998-2000? Mendoza, Nelson, Stanton, Mo shutting things down routinely? Joba/Mo (plus Farns, Hawk, Veras, Edwar and Ohlendorf et al.) would make ours the best bullpen in the league. (But if Michael Kay tries to QuanGorMo them with some FarnsJobMo crap, I and many others might finally snap and light his oversaturated liver on fire.)

Also, for the last few years the prevailing worry had been what the Yankees would do when Rivera retires. We've been blessed to have the best closer of all-time, and it seemed there was no way anyone could fill his shoes. We found the guy, his name is Joba, his dad's really nice, and he'll be a sick set-up man until Mo retires, at which point he'll do what he can to become the new best closer of all-time.

In other news:

Dachs & Elie may be making their return tonight, depending on how Elie's feeling, so WYUR it at midnight.

Britney's still alive, so that's good news.

Position-by-Position breakdowns and other previews coming up in the next few days and weeks, so that's definitely something to look forward to since no one else will be doing it.

And finally, I always say click on the ad, but I've noticed that the current ads are for crappy NJ Giants apparel. Feel free to not click on the ad, wait for something that doesn't suck.