The LoHud Yankees Blog and many others have the details…

A list of the highest paid players on each team in 2010 would include such luminous names as Alex Rodriguez, Johan Santana and Ryan Howard. Perceived underachievers like Carlos Lee, Alfonso Soriano and Barry Zito are there as well.

But Aki Iwamura?  His $4.85 million salary, which would rate in the bottom half of many teams’ rosters, topped the lowly (and low-paying) Pittsburgh Pirates, and the expectation was that the 31-year-old would recapture some of his 2008 form and anchor the young Bucs’ infield.

A .181/.292/.267 line through the first 54 games doomed that idea, and with Pedro Alvarez on the way up and Andy Laroche moving to a utility role at five years younger and 1/10 the salary, Iwamura’s roster spot became the one tabbed for Alvarez.

The Pirates, like other teams in their payroll range (only San Diego, at $37.8 million, is within $15 million of Pittsburgh’s MLB-low $34.9 opening day mark), can’t afford mistakes like this one.  But rather than compounding the error by keeping Iwamura out there, the Pirates have chosen to move Iwamura, either through a trade, or if no one claims him, back to the minors.  Teams are less willing to keep unproductive, higher-salaried players around, even bottom-10 payroll organizations like the Rays (Pat Burrell) and Nationals (Brian Bruney).

Which brings me to the commemorative Memorial Day caps teams sported in yesterday’s games.  Last year, the Yankees were forced to wear hideous red caps which looked terrible against their road grays and home pinstripes.

Yesterday’s white caps fit the uniform quite a bit better (even if Brett Gardner, as noted in today’s Star-Ledger, noted that it was worse than his Little League cap).  I suppose I had put the red cap disaster out of my mind, forgetting about the new Memorial Day “tradition,” but of course immediately noticed the white lids when the team began stretching.  To me, it recalled the look of some of the very early Yankees teams.  To others, it might have recalled the Good Humor man, an apt connection on such a hot day in the Bronx.

I like that the Yankees don’t have alternate jerseys, Sunday jerseys, or other alterations to their uniforms, even though I enjoy seeing teams wearing “throwback” or Negro Leagues jerseys from time to time.  I recall only one game that the Yankees wore Negro League jerseys, I believe it was at Detroit in 1996 when they donned N.Y. Black Yankees uniforms.  I think once a year, maybe Old Timer’s Day or another weekend game, or even a road game against a classic rival, I wouldn’t mind seeing them in a Highlanders jersey (say, 1911 next year) or revive the Black Yankees, since they played at the Stadium on occasion.

My three favorite on-field alterations:
- Jackie Robinson 42’s (but one day only, please)
- pink bats, sweatbands for Memorial Day
- occasional throwback jerseys

• The Texas Rangers have declared bankruptcy as part of the deal to sell the team to Chuck Greenberg, Nolan Ryan and others. [Ballpark Digest] Amusingly, A-Rod is apparently the team’s top unsecured creditor. [via WasWatching]
• Tyler Kepner has a great post about how John Fogerty came up with the song “Centerfield.” [NYT's Bats Blog]
• Our own Jerry Milani has the lowdown on where the American League All-Star voting is as of today, with Joe Mauer and Derek Jeter leading the voting by a wide margin over their fellow league-mates. [Baseball Digest]
• Given the Yanks’ off day today, Rebecca Glass took a moment to break down the team’s season so far. [This Purist Bleeds Pinstripes]
• Landon Evanson is looking for baseball’s ultimate gamer. Go vote. [Bugs and Cranks]
• Some thoughts on the passing of Jose Lima from Landon Evanson, Ben Shpigel and Bill Ivie.

When reached earlier today, a New York Yankees spokesperson informed Bats Both that the team had no further comment, but that they had spoken with the Associated Press on Monday regarding this issue. Tonight, the AP published this story, which states that the team’s policy is due to “a security-and-safefy [sic] issue.” It also goes on to state that policies on iPads are a “team-by-team” decision, which surely makes it tricky to even consider bringing the device with you to a game without clarity from each and every team.

While ESPN’s iScore application might not have caught on with every iPad user just yet, it’s surely an attractive option for those fans who enjoy scoring the game – but it looks like the printed program or paper scorebook will live another day – at least at Yankee Stadium.

[update 5:48pm] Aside from the Mets, Angels, and Mariners being three teams the AP story states would allow iPads in their stadiums, CenterNetworks reported on May 20 that the Boston Red Sox also let fans bring them in.

In fact, a team of Major League players born on my birthday is a mediocre lot at best:

C – Wiki Gonzalez (b. 1974, .239 avg., 17 HR, 103 RBI from 1999-06)
1B – Carlos Pena (b. 1978, .245, 207, 590 from 2001 to present)
2B – Lou Chiozza (b. 1910, .277, 14, 197 from 1934-39)
SS – Harry Riconda (b. 1897, .247, 4, 70 from 1923-30)
3B – Ozzie Virgil (b. 1932, .231, 14-73 from 1956-69)
LF – May (b. 1948, .274, 90, 536 from 1968-77)
CF – Dick Smith (b. 1939, .218, 0, 7 from 1963-65)
RF – Jose Guillen (b. 1976, .271, 203, 835 from 1997 to present)
DH – Jack Voigt (b. 1966, .235, 20, 83 from 1992-98)
SP – Hal Carlson (b. 1892, 114-120, 3.97 ERA from 1917-30)
RP – Billy Hoeft (b. 1932, 97-101, 33 saves, 3.94 ERA from 1952-66)

Let’s just say that, in my adulthood, the Yankees have more than made up for it.

First came David Wells‘ perfect game on May 17, 1998, which I missed because my friends and I were celebrating something even more important than my birthday – our college friend’s ordination as a Catholic priest.  Then four years later, Jason Giambi had his “welcome to the Yankees” moment, a 14th-inning Grand Slam between the raindrops to beat the Twins.  I was at that game, thought not the 14th inning, having left after 13 to catch the last train to Newark.

Carl Pavano actually pitched a complete-game, five-hit shutout with no walks and seven strikeouts on May 17, 2005, in Seattle, in what must have been his finest performance as a Yankee.  I don’t recall that one at all, and since it was a late-night West Coast game I doubt I saw the finish.

Three straight walkoff wins in a three-game series with the Twins last year culminated in Johnny Damon’s game-winner on May 17.  And on Monday night, Alex Rodriguez and Marcus Thames brought a finish to an exciting win over the Red Sox with two-run home runs in the ninth.

Three years back, it was hair tonic ads featuring someone named Giuseppe Franco and “stars” like Gary Busey that YES viewers were treated to endlessly.  “Hey, I’m Giuseppe Franco.  I’m not putting my name on something that doesn’t work.” For such a scammy advertiser to get such play, there must be a lot of 40ish and 50ish guys falling for it.

Then YES upgraded to Ford’s Derek Jeter commercials, the ubiquitous “That Jeter, he’s got an Edge” phrase annoying fans as the Yankees closed out the old Stadium.

Last year didn’t have a “signature” ad that I can recall easily, but this year the Jeter Edge ads are back.  But not just on YES.

I’ve seen the ads played a lot on SNY during Mets games.  Now, if I were a Mets fan, I’d be chapped.  If as a Yankee fan I saw David Wright sugar water ads over and over on YES, that would hardly ingratiate me towards that company.

I asked a couple of Mets fan friends at Foley’s the other night what they thought of it, as the commercial played on the screen above us, and while one agreed with me I was surprised to find that the other wasn’t too upset.

Only this time, they weren’t serving as they did in 2009, as a barrier between the sidewalk and the old Stadium.  They were instead blocking a huge open construction expanse.

I wasn’t until I crossed the street to wait for my friend at Babe Ruth Plaza that it hit me.  It’s really gone.  All that’s left of the old Stadium as I write this is a small segment, maybe six seating sections worth in what used to be the right field corner, about where my friends and I shared a season package for the past decade.  The rest has been demolished by the wrecking cranes.

It’s been 33 years since I went to my first game there, a year after the Old New (or is it “New Old?”) Yankee Stadium opened in ‘76.  The past few years it had become more and more obvious that the House that Ruth Built (not the “REAL House that Ruth Built,” as proclaimed the Stan’s Bar tshirts on the young ladies giving out fliers in front of the namesake’s Plaza) was at the end of its life cycle.  It’s only a building, I’ve told myself, and pretty much believed it.

True enough, but as I looked at the remnants across the street, in the context of the fans streaming past, on their way to the huge new facility behind me, I reflected more on why the building was so significant.  It’s because people lived through happy moments, sad moments, but mostly uniting moments there.  It’s where history happened, the kind that brought friends together, that brought fathers and sons together, that introduced sweethearts, that made memories.

I’m fine with the new Stadium, like watching the game there just as much, enjoy the experience as much.  Reflecting on the old place isn’t an indictment of progress, or of what had to happen.  It’s the Yankees’ new home.

Somehow, though, it won’t ever quite be mine.

I still hate the move.

Vazquez is a 13-year veteran, having thrown 200 or more innings in the past 10, except for 2004, when he threw 198.  He’s coming off his best year (15-10, 2.87 ERA, 238 K, 181 H in 219.1 IP).  He’s had five starts, all of them mediocre or worse, and has incurred the wrath of fans and talking heads who remember that 2004 season in Pinstripes, which was among his worst as a pro.

Vazquez is even getting the label as someone who can’t “handle the pressure” in New York, and some feel that pitching in the cauldron of Fenway Park on Friday would do more harm than good.

Not that Detroit on Monday will be a picnic; the Tigers are fourth in the league in runs scored (averaging about a run per game more than the Sox).  But Yanks-Red Sox is a different animal, and along with Yankees-Mets is the closest thing to a playoff atmosphere there is.

Which is exactly why I think Vazquez should pitch Friday.

The Yankees’ starting staff is shaping up to be as good as anyone’s in baseball, top to bottom, if Vazquez can veer back towards his 2009 numbers.  But he’s going to have to pitch in big games somewhere along the line; he’s one of the team’s five starters, he should go in regular rotation, particularly after just five appearances.  A great outing on Friday at Fenway would do more for his confidence — and that of the team and fans in him — than the same in Detroit.

Sandomir’s light-hearted piece gives a bit of the history of both and catches up with the original writers, and the BATS post asks fans to submit their own, updated lyrics in the comments.

Written out, the original lyrics — especially those of the Bombers’ song — seem a bit comical nearly a half-century later.  (“We’re gonna scream, ‘Put it over the wall,’” “Oh, the butcher and the baker and the people on the streets, Where did they go?”).  They probably seemed a bit comical in the 1960s as well…

But, then, so do college fight song lyrics written in the early 1900s.  Like fight songs, the Yankees tune is more timeless than the lyrics.   The “Meet the Mets” lyrics have proven to be more enduring, even if “…step right up and BEAT the Mets” probably followed minutes after the first Yankees fan heard the famed first line.

When I used to hear the Yankees tune before and after broadcasts in the 1970s, they were already using the instrumental version.  I just assumed that the song had been around for many years, and it wasn’t until years later that I found out that it had lyrics and that it was actually written during the team’s dry spell, which lasted more than a decade from the mid-60s through the mid-70s.

I have the full version of “Here Come the Yankees” on my iPod, and it shuffles in every so often.  For both songs, their corniness is part of the charm.  They don’t need updated lyrics or new versions, as “unofficial anthems” like Sinatra’s “New York, New York” or Jay-Z and Alicia Keys’ “Empire State of Mind” finding their own place in Yankees lore, the latter helping the team keep up with the times.