(EDITOR’S NOTE : from time to time, noted baseball executive Randy L. visits CSTB to weigh in on the important matters of the day, sporting and otherwise.  After Sunday morning’s announcement that Alex Rodriguez would end his playing career this coming Friday night at the Nu Stadium, assuming a tutorial role from Spring Training 2017 onward, Randy offered, well, he demanded to have his say – GC)

Greetings members of The Yankee Universe and those who wish in their most personal moments-in-the-dark they could somehow be a part of it. But hey, maybe in two years’ time, Jay Bruce. Enjoy playing out the string surrounded by a Triple-A lineup andundocumented laborers struggling to move 2016 National League Champs swag marked down to 80% off.

But enough about our (alleged) crosstown rivals. Listen, I realize the narrative is that our organization’s “baseball” people somehow prevailed upon yours truly to trade assets like Aroldis Chapman and Andrew Miller for a boatload of prospects, but do you really believe, in your heart of hearts, that such cunning moves didn’t really have my fingerprints all over them?  The only thing harder to comprehend than the local media’s love affair with our oversexed General Manager is his inability to think with his brains instead of his dick, but I know my readers aren’t nearly that gullible.  Everyone from Baseball America to Tom Verducci to Meredith Marakovits assures me our future is blindingly bright and by this time in 2018, the entire sports universe will once again be KISSING MY ASS, 24-7 as we run away with the American League East.

Of course, you can’t start a new era with closing the door on the old one, and as I’m sure you’ve heard by now, our lineup will soon be free of the single biggest clubhouse cancer/contractual albatross in modern sports history.  Some may call it unbecoming to gloat over vanquishing a rival, but I’ve worked tirelessly the last few years to make this day a reality. Allow me to gloat.  It’s not as though you’ve accomplished anything with your pathetic lives.

(illustration courtesy Tim Cook)

Cynics will point out that Alex Rodriguez will still be paid the remainder of his 2016 and 2017 salaries, but that’s assuming he doesn’t manage to do something so embarrassing, so shameful, he’d sooner leave those tens of millions on the table than allow a certain accomplished executive to release a certain video recording he’s hoped against hope didn’t really exist.

So make no mistake, A-Rod’s merely “retired” from putting on the pinstripes and facing major league pitching.  His days of LOOKING OVER HIS SHOULDER are only beginning, however, and I’m not at all inclined to kiss that money goodbye. While the intensely creepy Brian Cashman is trying to pick up librarians on social media claiming his name is Ryan Moneyperson (for fuck’s sake, was “Dick Tate” already taken?), I’m the one person in these offices who is working late into the evening, trying to figure out how we’re gonna be able to afford Giancarlo Stanton, Bryce Harper and Noah Syndergaard.  Hypothetically, I mean.  It’s not tampering if no one reads this blog anymore, right?

Good seats are still available for Friday night, and I’m told there’s a pregame concert hosted by a local celeb who has some sort of irrational dislike of trios.  All of these math nerds in the office and not one of them could point out The National aren’t a trio?

yours in returning-to-dominance,
Randy L.