The New York WAAAAAAAAAAAANKEES

NEW YORK (AP) -- The New York Yankees withdrew Tuesday their request that a postponed game with the Tampa Bay Devil Rays be forfeited, and Major League Baseball announced the game would be made up as part of a doubleheader Wednesday.

``It was the only option unless you wanted to play it at the end of the regular season,'' Yankees manager Joe Torre said Tuesday.

On Monday, the Yankees asked the commissioner's office to award them a forfeit over Tampa Bay after the Devil Rays failed to arrive in time for a scheduled doubleheader because of travel problems due to Hurricane Frances.

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Commissioner Bud Selig made it clear that he had no intention of awarding a forfeit.

``We appreciate the continuing accommodation of the New York Yankees and their fans and apologize to them for any inconvenience that the delays may have caused,'' Bob DuPuy, chief operating officer of the commissioner's office, said in a statement Tuesday. ``As the commissioner made clear, it is critical that the outcome of the pennant races be determined on the field.''

The Yankees were 2 1/2 games ahead of Boston in the AL East heading into Tuesday night's games.

DuPuy added that any issues involving the Devil Rays' travel was a matter of review between the commissioner's office and the team only.

``Obviously, I didn't want to play a doubleheader tomorrow. I'm sure (Tampa Bay manager Lou Piniella) didn't want to play a doubleheader tomorrow,'' Torre said. ``The only thing that bothers me about the whole thing is that we were ready to play a doubleheader yesterday. We had our guys out here all day.''

The teams were originally scheduled to play two games Monday starting at 1 p.m., but the start time was pushed back two hours on Sunday. Because of the delay in Tampa Bay's arrival, the commissioner's office told the teams to play one game at 7 p.m. and said it would decide later on when to reschedule the second game.

Wednesday's doubleheader is scheduled to begin at 4:05 p.m, though rain is in the forecast. Esteban Loaiza (9-7) will start the first game for the Yankees against Mark Hendrickson (8-14). Brad Halsey (1-2), recently recalled from the minors, will pitch Game 2 against Tampa Bay's Dewon Brazelton (6-6).

Excuse me did I hear one quote correctly

``We appreciate the continuing accommodation of the New York Yankees and their fans and apologize to them for any inconvenience that the delays may have caused,'' Bob DuPuy, chief operating officer of the commissioner's office, said in a statement Tuesday. ``As the commissioner made clear, it is critical that the outcome of the pennant races be determined on the field.''

I did, how did the Yanks accommodate the situation by demanding a forfeit. And who is Joe to tell us what Lou thinks, according to ESPN Lou was blue in the face when that comment was said.

D-Ray delay
may stall twin bill





Despite being ordered by Major League Baseball to travel to New York on Friday night or yesterday morning to avoid weather issues caused by Hurricane Frances, the Devil Rays were unable to do so and now may wreak their own havoc on the five-game series with the Yankees, which is scheduled to begin tomorrow.
The Rays remained in Tampa last night, saying they couldn't secure hotel rooms in New York, and were hoping to arrive late tonight or tomorrow morning in time to play a doubleheader at Yankee Stadium at 1:05 p.m. tomorrow. MLB officials spent yesterday trying to get the Rays out of Tampa.

"We've been working with the Devil Rays all day in an effort to get them a charter," Katy Feeney, MLB's vice president for scheduling and club relations, said last night. "But the problem now is the storm and how it's going to affect everyone. There's also a concern for the players and their families."

For their part, according to sources, the Rays spent yesterday trying to have the games moved to Thursday or rescheduled for later in the season, but the Yankees, who have sold 45,000 tickets for the twin bill, informed MLB that if the Rays don't show up, they'll seek a forfeit.

That, of course, would throw the division race between the Yankees and Boston into chaos and would surely cause even more ill will on the part of the Red Sox: A forfeited game, according to MLB rules, would result in an automatic 9-0 Yankee win over the Devil Rays for each game not played.

Can I get somemore WAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAA's. Ok I know that some of my readers are going to say, Chag, if you weren't in Boston then you would see this another way, well here is what a NY Paper had to say.

Yankees squall over forfeit,
but come off as blowhards





The last time Randy Levine, underboss to George Steinbrenner, looked like this kind of yahoo in public, it was during the last American League Championship Series. Levine is president of the Yankees, and a crucial part of his job description is saying what Steinbrenner tells him to say. So after Pedro Martinez put Don Zimmer to the ground and there was that big fight in the Yankees bullpen, Levine stood sweating in front of television cameras afterward and made Fenway Park sound more dangerous than Baghdad that day. Which it certainly was not. Anybody who sat in the stands that day, as I did, knew it was a lie.
The truth is that the only person unsafe on that particular Saturday was a Fenway Park groundskeeper, who got jumped by some of Levine's baseball players.

Yesterday Levine was back, demanding that the Devil Rays should forfeit the first game of what was supposed to be a doubleheader because they weren't able to get out of Florida because of Hurricane Frances.

"The rule states that if your team is here and ready to play, and the other team isn't here and not ready to play, there should be a forfeit, and we believe there should be a forfeit," Levine said yesterday.

Levine doesn't just sound cheap here, he sounds desperate. If the Yankees are still 10-1/2 games ahead of the Red Sox, do you think he would actually go out in front of the public and beg for a forfeit?

If the Yankees were still way ahead, do you think Levine and Steinbrenner would have been screaming at representatives of Major League Baseball - as they sure were in private yesterday - demanding a forfeit from a Devil Rays team that arrived at the Stadium, when it finally arrived at the Stadium, sixteen games under .500 and 24 games out of first place?

All day long, until the Devil Rays finally got off the St. Petersburg Bridge and over to the airport and up to New York, the Yankees actually worried, out loud, that rescheduling a game against a stiff team like this would put them at a "competitive disadvantage." So they kept saying they wouldn't reschedule the game, even though the Devil Rays are here tonight, and tomorrow night, and Thursday night.

"There are no plans to reschedule any games until this issue is worked out," Levine, the underboss, said.

Did the commissioner's office suggest to Vince Naimoli, the Devil Rays owner, that he ought to get his team out of Tampa before yesterday morning? It did. Did Naimoli, one of the worst cheapskate owners in baseball, mislead the commissioner's office about his plans? It looks now as if he did. Does all that merit a forfeit in the middle of what has become a terrific pennant race in the American League East between the Yankees and the Red Sox? On what planet?

The Cubs and Marlins had an extremely important series blown away by Frances over the weekend. They're playing a doubleheader on Friday to catch up and a doubleheader on Sept. 20, and they're going to do it without the kind of public whining produced by the president of a team that worries about a competitive disadvantage with a payroll of $194 million.

Did the Yankees do anything wrong yesterday, at least before Underboss Levine opened his mouth? They did not. They had first moved the first game of yesterday's doubleheader from one o'clock to three o'clock to accommodate the Devil Rays, when the Devil Rays still thought they could get out of Florida at 9 in the morning. An awful lot of Yankee fans didn't know the time of the game had been changed, and showed up at the Stadium early, and the Yankees were gracious enough to open the gates. And later they gave out free hot dogs and soft drinks to the people who hung in there all of Labor Day afternoon. Very cool.

Then they try to steal a game.

If Steinbrenner really wants a free game off Lou Piniella, he must be completely hysterical about his starting pitching. Schedule a doubleheader for one of the next two nights and shut up about it. It's not enough that they had five games scheduled with a stiff team this week when the Red Sox are in Oakland, now they want freebies.

The only losers yesterday were the fans who couldn't wait around eight hours for the game to start. Here was John Imbriani of Miller Place at a few minutes after 1 o'clock yesterday, with his son John Jr., sitting 11 rows behind home plate, the best seats the two of them have ever had for a Yankee game. The boy wore a No.2 Jeter jersey. Father and son had gotten on the Long Island Expressway at Exit 63 at 10 minutes to eight, but as they pulled into the parking lot, they started hearing that there was a problem even getting the Devil Rays to the airport.

"We come once a year," Imbriani said. "A friend of mine who's got a partial season-ticket plan gave me the tickets. I'm close enough to the plate to call balls and strikes, and now I may not see a single pitch."

When they still thought the doubleheader would start at 1, they figured they could see all of the first game and some of the second before they had to be home. See the Yankees in Yankee Stadium from 11 rows behind home plate. They stayed in the ballpark for five hours and finally went back to Miller Place.

"But I saw all those pictures from Florida this weekend," Imbriani said before he left. "So it's tough for me to cry about missing a baseball game."

The only crying in baseball yesterday was from the people who run the Yankees.

Ok so see it isn't only just me. And do you think that if the Sox weren't 2.5 games back that Georgie wouldn't have pushed the issue. They're saying this because they're running scared of the Sox. Yanks just shut up and play the game, just because you think that you have the most money you can push people around. Thank You Bud for making a good call.

~Chaggy
Some material was taken from the Associated Press