Spanking the Yankees

The baseball campaign is only six months long, but hating the Yankees is a year-round affair. That's fine, because when you throw in spring training, the playoffs, and winter wheeling and dealing, it s clear that pinstripe putridness knows no season. In what might have been the ultimate labor of authorial love, lifelong Yankees hater and baseball historian Gabriel Schechter has researched books, newspaper archives, and game and police logs to assemble more than 550 of the worst losses, most heinous front office affronts, and most embarrassing moments in Yankees history. Truth be told, it was easy work. There is no end to the worthy material. Enough for another book was left on the cutting room floor, but you have to draw the line somewhere! Every day of the year is covered, even February 29th. Spanking the Yankees begins with Opening Day disasters and works its way through each month of the season, then the playoffs and World Series, to the mother lode of Yankee Pankee, the off season, where the ugly spirit of New York's lamest is on greatest display. Postseason sections include Bad Trades, Bad Free Agents, Bad Behavior, Salary Squabbles, Ugly Exits, and Doing Business the Yankees Way. The narrative then moves to spring training so the cycle can begin all over again! All the usual suspects are here, from Ruppert to Weiss to Martin, from Whitson to Winfield to Ellsbury, but so are hundreds of others along the spectrum of humanity and inhumanity, from The Babe, The Mick, and The Boss, down to trainers, ushers, and batboys. Delectable on-field disasters range from humiliating blowouts to painful late-inning collapses to playoff and World Series losses that Yankees lovers still complain about. To help navigate the vast ocean of Yankees flops, fights, and affronts, Spanking the Yankees includes three separate indexes so you can quickly find the awful moments you most want to relive or read about the Yankees you love to hate the most. --The Names, Ranks, and Serial Numbers index is organized by the offensive and the offended --The Index of Infamy offers access by atrocity --The Dates Index allows for a daily dose of noxious nuggets Thrill to the disdain, disgust, and large dose of schadenfreude provided by Spanking the Yankees. Even mere Yankees dislikers can gorge happily on the orgy of odiousness. And the indifferent may evolve to the anti-Yankees camp where they will instantly improve their chances of going to heaven.