In an extremely surprising turn of events, New York Yankees' manager Joe Girardi revealed to a YES reporter as he left the field after tonight's 8-0 victory over Baltimore, that setup man Joba Chamberlain is being converted to a starter for this season. Many, including Hank Steinbrenner, had been pushing for this move but the conventional wisdom was that converting a promising young arm like Chamberlain's from the bullpen to the rotation in the middle of a season was ill-advised, if not foolish. Yet, according to Girardi, the Yankees are in the process of doing just that. The Yankees have been greatly disappointed by the performance of their two other young phenoms, Phil Hughes and Ian Kennedy, both winless this year.

I hesistate to write this given that the pitching manuevers of a last place ballclub are more the fodder of Fantasy Baseball sites than the world's fastest growing sportsmut blog. But I think this story merits a mention here just for those of us who are old enough to remember back when the Red Sox and Yankees had a rivalry that counted for something. Back when the Yankees were relevant and personnel moves they made were matters of interest. In those days, if someone in the Yankees front office said something like "We have the best young pitchers in the game, even better than Boston" the way Hank Steinbrenner did in December, only to have them collapse like a tent you bought at Building 19, that would've been something of interest to Sox fans. If the batshit crazy owner demanded their prized reliever be moved into the rotation, and the manager and GM said that was a bad idea and then by Memorial Day they did exactly that, we would've talked endlessly about power struggles and the manager being on the hot seat and it would've been great fun.

Now, it's all just kind of sad and unimportant. New York is scrambling for relevance while the first place Sox are adding a good-as-new rebuilt Bartolo Colon to a showroom that's already displaying the factory-new Jon Lester, Clay Buchholz,Justin Masterson and Jonathan Papelbon. So pardon me if I'm just posting this because I'm nostalgic for the Good Old Days when the Yankees still mattered.