(EDITOR’S NOTE : From time to time, Bronx baseball executive Randy L. weighs in at CSTB on the major events of the day, sporting or otherwise. Following this week’s outcry over Turing Pharmaceuticals’ decision to raise the price of a single dose of toxoplasmosis drug Daraprim from $13.50 to $750.00, Randy requested, no, he demanded to have his say – GC)

Greetings, Yankee Universe and all those who gaze upon it wishing, hoping, they could somehow manage not to get blown the fuck out on national television. But enough about our (alleged) crosstown rivals and the way they’ve beaten up on baseball’s worst division on their path to one of the flimsiest pennant victories in recent memory. No, instead, I’d rather concentrate on an entirely different breed of opportunist.

Turing Pharmaceuticals’ Martin Shkreli has raised the price of a drug that assists AIDS patients some 5000% and then has the unmitigated gall to masquerade his greed as some sort of research fund-raiser. If you want to put Shkreli’s pricing scheme into some kind of perspective, for what he’s charging for one little pill, you could take a date and your personal assistant to a 2015 Yankees postseason game and still have enough left for parking (provided you park at home and hitchhike to the Stadium).

Look, I’m no socialist but Shkreli’s me-first behavior is far too typical of the kind of callousness I’ve come to expect from the younger generation. I mean, it’s almost uncanny that a cursory glance at social media today turns up smug, sickening portraits of Shkreli wearing Brand New t-shirts, Shkreli brandishing the former credit card of the late idol-to-the-confused Kurt Cobain. I’m almost certain our own oversexed General Manager was in the bidding for that particular item, and I feel pretty comfortable in saying both of the punks in question have demonstrated poor judgement and blatant immaturity.

Shkreli doesn’t seem like the sort of person to take advice from a businessman many years his senior, but he’s gonna get it just the same. For starters, this fixation with “emo” music is not befitting an adult with professional aspirations (and you’ll note you’ve not read a word about any fans of The National gouging the sick or needy). Secondly, if Shkreli wants to torpedo his reputation with high-risk internet tomfoolery and twisted vendettas, he can be my fucking guest. But perhaps that particular skill set could be better directed towards assisting The World’s Greatest Professional Sports Franchise in carefully tracking the activities of a preening, supercilious, self-absorbed fraud that we (currently) owe a lot of money over the next two seasons. I mean, who’d know the type better?

I guess what I’m really trying to say is, it’s part of a Yankee tradition to offer second chances to those who’ve disgraced themselves elsewhere. And while you probably don’t see Martin Shkreli in a pinstriped pantheon of Darryl Strawberry, Dwight Gooden or Steve Howe, that’s why I’m a rainmaker extraordinaire and you’re a schnook reading sports blogs on a stained futon at 3am surrounded by roaches, vermin or both.

The internship’s yours if you accept the challenge, Martin. And don’t show up at my office in a Thursday hoodie.

PEACE OUT,
Randy L.