'Yank'ing a Familiar Chain

It's Red Sox, it's Yankees, it's cliche time!

Starting the counting:

• Teddy Ballgame
• Bucky Dent
• King George
• The House that Jeter Built
• Pedro Martinez tossing aside Don Zimmer

Wait, that's it? Nothing about Johnny Damon, The Rocket, Wade Boggs or Jacoby Ellsbury? Zippo on Nomar sitting out or Manny striking out?

Even The CHB is getting bored with the charade, it seems.

One Final Time

Shank churns out one last Derek Jeter column. Why bother sampling from the story when you've already read it twice?

Waving Goodbye - II

Shank gets another column out of the Derek Jeter Retirement Tour.

It’s the same ballpark where Babe Ruth played his rookie season in 1914. It’s the same hardball theater where Ted Williams homered on his final big league swing, Sept. 28, 1960. It’s where Mickey Mantle made his last out on the same date in 1968.

And on Sunday, it’s where Derek Sanderson Jeter will finish a 20-year major league career that defined a game and an era.

Will Shank go 3 for 3 with yet another Derek Jeter retirement column tomorrow? Stay tuned!

Waving Goodbye

As the season winds down for the 2014 Boston Red Sox, as well as Derek Jeter's career, Shank devotes today's column to the retiring Yankees shortstop. Sort of!

Tongue firmly in cheek and dripping with sarcasm, Shank uses the first few paragraphs to take his patented dump on the Olde Town Team:

Welcome to Jeter-palooza. Hub Fans Bid Jetes Adieu. Three final sellouts and more eyeballs diverted from the train wreck of the 2014 Red Sox.

The Red Sox are truly blessed. They’ve managed to finish in last place in two of the last three seasons, but everybody’s still having a swell time singing “Sweet Caroline’’ before the home half of the eighth.

Nobody’s mad at the Local Nine. After all, they’ve won the World Series three times in 10 years and they won it last year and they’re going to bring Jon Lester back (OK, I made that one up) and everybody is happy just to enjoy another day in America’s most beloved ballpark.

Fenway fans don’t mind paying the highest prices in baseball to watch the Pawtucket Red Sox stagger across the finish line in the basement of the once-proud American League East. Now, thanks to Derek Jeter, the ready-for-golf Red Sox and Yankees are the feature game on Fox today, and seats behind the Yankee dugout Sunday are fetching something north of $20,000.

The rest of the column is in fact devoted to Jeter, and the obligatory comparison to Ted Williams is made.

And in case you needed to be reminded about the Red Sox' performance in recent years, Mr. Sunshine drives the point home to wrap things up:

The Red Sox, meanwhile, continue to enjoy the widespread notion that they are a perennial contender. They are not. Since losing the 2008 ALCS to Tampa in 2008, the Sox have won a playoff game in only one of six Octobers. They have not made the playoffs in four of the last five years. Since Sept. 1, 2011, they are an aggregate 24 games under .500.

But never mind all that. Pay no attention to those AL East standings on the Green Monster. The sun is shining and Derek Jeter is here to say goodbye. It’s going to be a great baseball weekend.

Interview with Yankee Captain Leaves CHB Feeling 'Jeted'

Besides being a future Hall of Famer and best-in-class skirt-chaser, Derek Jeter is apparently smart.

Well, smart enough, anyway, to get the best of The CHB, who tries to goad him into saying he might blow off his career-ending series in Boston. (Although most would agree that it doesn't require much gray matter to outsmart Dan Shaughnessy.)

In a piece that's as much about Ted Williams as the Yankee Captain, Jeter deftly parries Shank's weak attempts to get him to say he might not make the trip: "I don’t know what Ted’s situation was and I didn’t know him well enough to comment on it. Don’t dissect this. It’s not complicated. Don’t complicate things for yourself." As if.

Even better, Jeter gets in a shot of his own, pointing out that The CHB had the chance to ask The Kid whether he planned along to skip his final series (aptly enough, in New York), forcing Shaughnessy to admit that he wussed out. Classic.