Jimmy Sez

I recently attended the Pinstripe Pride autograph show in north Jersey, making it four straight years of meeting guys that I wrote about in The New York Yankees All-Time All-Stars . This year I secured the signatures of two more All-Time All-Stars, one a Hall of Famer, and one a favorite of my youth that had me a little star struck. Of the 17 living All-Time All-Stars in the book, those two bring me to ten signatures and over the halfway mark on this journey I started in 2023. It'll be tough sledding from here to get the remaining seven. In addition to those two I also snagged the signature of one more Honorable Mention that was in attendance this year and had the honor of meeting a fan favorite and playoff hero of the 90's. It was a great experience, as usual, and I just hope that more guys in the book continue to show up at this event. Without further ado, here's the rundown. Goose Gossage I fully expected Goose to be a bit of a curmudgeon given his public persona about...

Last year I embarked on a journey to definitively rank the plaques that adorn the walls of Monument Park, lurking behind centerfield in Yankee Stadium. After a long pause, we're ready to bring you the thrilling conclusion and reveal the top eight pieces of bronze that thousands of Yankee fans flock to go see each year. I know the suspense has been killing you... One thing I learned in doing this project is that there is no perfect plaque in Monument Park. Much like the plaques in the Baseball Hall of Fame, even the best ones have their flaws. Regardless, if you have the time to stroll through them during your next trip to Yankee Stadium, these are the can't-miss plaques you should tell your friends about. A view inside Monument Park in New Yankee Stadium. Most of the plaques covered in this series sit behind the wall of retired numbers in the foreground. PVSBond/Wikimedia Commons As was the case previously, I won't share a picture of every plaque because they tend to run...

Over the past couple of years I've had the privilege of meeting some of the former Yankee players that I included in The New Yor Yankees All-Time All-Stars  and secured their signature in a copy of it. Earlier this month I was able to keep that going at the latest Pinstripe Pride show near Giants Stadium. This time around I went squad deep with my son Seamus, my brother Sean, and my nephew Tommy. Not only was it nice to have non-strangers to talk to while waiting on the lines, but they seemed to enjoy themselves as well. There was only one All-Time All-Star signing during the day we attended, but the lineup included three players that are in the book as Honorable Mentions, so we met them as well. As in the past, I gave each player we met a personalized, signed copy of the book before they signed what I'll now call the Master copy. In that book I now have autographs from eight of the 17 living All-Time All-Stars and three of the nine living Honorable Mentions. Sadly, I won...

Last month we began our review and rankings of the plaques on display at Monument Park. We're back with a new batch of bronze. The eight plaques featured here are a notch above the group we looked at last time, but they're not anything to write home about either. Rest assured that things will be looking pretty good from here on out. Ground-level view of the original Monument Park in Old Yankee Stadium. wallyg/Wikimedia Commons As was the case last time,  I won't share a picture of every plaque because they tend to run together and get redundant as you scan through them. For any that I don't have a picture of below, it's relatively easy to find via google . 24. Lou Gehrig - dedicated on July 4, 1941 A minimilast approach here for Lou, whose plaque was the second one commissioned by the Yankees after Miller Huggins. The first bit reads just like Babe Ruth's plaque, and awkwardly starts with this sentence: "A man." His consecutive games streak is mention...

Last year I told the story of meeting Don Mattingly and from there committed to the quest of getting the rest of the living Yankees All-Time All-Stars to sign a copy of the book. Luckily, the folks at Hall of Fame Signings hosted another Pinstripe Pride event earlier this month in north Jersey. There, I was able to get the autographs of five more legends, which means seven of the 17 living All-Stars have now signed. While it was thrilling to meet each of the five who signed this year, I won't have nearly as much to say about the encounter as I did with Donnie Baseball. Ya know, you only get to meet your childhood hero for the first time once. So here's a brief description of each exchange with a picture of my ugly mug next to some guys that you'd much rather see. Before digging in, I do need to give a shout out to Hall of Fame Signings for a dramatically improved experience at the event for 2024. There was far more space at the venue, organization, and predictability wh...

The Baseball Hall of Fame recently announced the candidates that will be included on the 2024 ballot for the Contemporary Baseball Era Committee to consider. The eight-person ballot is comprised of those who contributed to baseball as a manager, executive, or umpire since 1980. Of those eight, two candidates have strong ties to the Yankees. As is usually the case with these Veterans Committees, it will be difficult for any of the eight to be voted in since the electorate will be limited to just four votes, and 75% of that vote will be needed for election. Obviously, I'll be pulling for the gentlemen detailed below when the results are announced on December 3rd. Lou Piniella Sweet Lou spent 15 years of his long baseball career as a Yankee in some way, shape or form. A former Rookie of the Year and All-Star with the Royals, Piniella was traded to the Yankees prior to the 1974 season. For the next 11 years he was a key contributor to the Yankees mainly in a hybrid fourth outfielder/d...

Talk about your all-time duds. The Yankees opened 2023 with championship aspirations, yet here we are at the end of September and they are a lost franchise with no direction, identity, or clear path back to respectability. Recent history tells us that there's no reason to have faith in Yankee leadership this offseason, so let's instead re-live the glory days. I have an aunt and uncle that live in Maine. If you haven't been, I highly recommend it, any part of the state will do. Anyway, in my younger days my family used to visit them each summer and one of those years we got to talking to their neighbors who discovered that we were a family of Yankee fans. For some reason, they had a collection of framed photos of Yankee legends in their basement. As Red Sox fans, they had no use for them and offered them to us for the bargain price of zero dollars. Who said Red Sox fans aren't sweethearts? Of course, we took the photos home and put them right in our basement where they r...

When writing The New York Yankees All-Time All-Stars , one of the hardest decisions I had to make was who to put in the last outfield spot on the bench. It was so tough that in the end I kept Hall of Famers Rickey Henderson and Dave Winfield as well as Yankee legends Roger Maris and Paul O'Neill on the outside looking in. Ultimately, I chose Reggie Jackson to round out the lineup. A controversial choice to be sure, but then again, controversy was kind of his thing. By the end of his Yankee tenure, Reggie Jackson was all smiles. tradingcarddb.com/Wikimedia Commons/Public Domain It's no surprise, then, that earlier this year Jackson was the subject of a documentary covering his brilliant, tumultuous career, even if we're now more than four decades past the prime of it. While Reggie does hit all the familiar notes that you'd expect in a story about Mr. October, it aims to dig deeper into the man behind the big ego and mostly hits the target by letting Jackson tell his own ...