Video Break: Yankees roll call from May 1 game against Angels

God I love Nick Swisher (He was the only Oakland A's player I ever liked). Pay attention to his reaction to the crowd when they chant his name. No wonder Yank fans love this guy so damn much.

Look, I am no New York Yankee fan. In fact, I was ecstatic that they got swept by the Red Sox tonight and are currently 0-8 for the year against them. However, what I do appreciate, whether I like the team or not, are traditions. I'm really just a sucker for them, whether I like the team or not. The reason I'm so fond of real, legitimate (I don't like using the shortened version "legit" on a side note. It reminds me of someone and brings up bad memories) traditions is that nowadays they are so rare to come by. It's easy for something to be a fad, but rarely do fads become traditions. We see it all the time. The Giants fans in 2000 had this stupid trend of barking when there were two outs in the ninth inning because they played "Who let the dogs out" after each win. It only lasted though in 2000 and was never done again because the Baha Men, or Boys or whatever the hell their names were, became stupid and Giants ownership feared fans would start murdering people in their seats because of how much it had irritated people after it had been played a billion times on the radio and through other sporting events (Okay, I'm lying, but not much. It's only 95 percent true). In 2002, the Anaheim (excuse me...Los Angeles-Anaheim) Angels brought in a custom of a Rally Monkey (properly dressed in a cute, but incredibly idiotic mini-Angels jersey) to spark their 2002 World Series run. After 2002, they must have killed the monkey for fear of something happening like in the movie "Outbreak" (e.g. Monkey screwing over the entire human race through a virus) because we never saw that damn animal ever again at an Angels game.

And to be honest, I could list more but I would be deviating from my point. The fact of the matter is, you really have something special for it to become a tradition year after year after year. The Yankees roll call from the right field Bleacher Creatures is it. Basically, as you will see in the video, the right field chants each players name out in the field and chants the name until the player gives them some kind of reaction and then they move onto the next player. It's a really cool thing, and it shows that all that talk about how players drown fans out is hoopla. They're listening, they know what's up, they just choose to ignore it. They don't have special mechanisms like in "For Love of the Game."

Some of the players' reactions are pretty typical (you can tell Derek Jeter has been through this one time too many), but some of the players' responses to the Bleacher Creatures calls are actually quite hilarious. Like I said, I am no Yankees fans, but I must have watched this clip about a two dozens times in the last 24 hours. Great clip, and whether your a Yankee fan or hater, you have to appreciate the fan traditions like this one, mostly because there aren't many, especially in a day and age where most fans are on their laptops or reading books because a baseball game isn't good enough for them (God I hate those people. Do us all a favor and just watch the game on home or listen to it on a radio. You make going to a baseball game less enjoyable for everyone with your goddamn apathy).

Video Break: Francesca blows up about Joba, podcast update

A Yankee caller thought Joba Chamberlain was a good starter. Let's just say Mike doesn't feel the same way...

Heard about this while listening to the BS Report podcast with Jack-O and Dave Jacoby (two of my favorite guests on Simmons' podcast). So, being the curious cat that I am, I checked it out on YouTube and was quite surprised. I've actually become kind of a newborn fan with the "Mike and the Mad Dog" radio show and was only able to catch it during its tail end. I mostly have listened to archives and I must say I'm very disappointed that a.) I didn't live in the East Coast and b.) that I didn't know about the show for so long. Another disappointing thing too with their breakup is that they both really have struggled with their own respective radio shows. Mike seems to be making up for Mad Dog's absence and the YouTube video above shows that he has gone a little "Mad Dog-ish". As far as Russo, I don't know. I've listened to a couple of his Sirius shows and really haven't been that impressed. Maybe it will get better, but so far, I'm just not that optimistic about it.

Speaking of radio shows, a new episode of the podcast is up. I get my former Bulletin colleague and the recently engaged Steven Sandberg on the line and we get to talking about a variety of subject, mostly venting on how bad the NBA draft is going to be. It's a pretty good one I think, and there is a lot of good stuff in there. You can check it out on the sidebar of this blog, where it will link you directly to the podbean hosting site. You can also subscribe to it with ITunes at the Podbean page. Thanks again to Steve for coming on and doing the podcast.