It Is with the Deepest Regret that We Announce the Passing...

of Aaron Small. In 2005, he reminded us all of the good old days when the pinstripes made a major leaguer out of any cast off, wannabe mook who put them on (remember Danny Doyle or Charlie Hayes? How about the never to be forgotten Phil Linz or, more recently, Jim Leyrich?) In any event, Small was a gas, a thirty something career minor leaguer who popped up for a cup of coffee and went 10-0, without any discernible stuff whatsoever. For one brief shining moment, he was like the right-handed Jamie Moyer or a Greg Maddux without the ridiculously oversized strike zone umps awarded him as a handicap.

But now he's given up 9 homers in 22 innings, which means his HRA is nearly 4.00. His ERA of course is considerably higher, pushing double figures. And he doesn't seem to be improving. Nor should we expect him to. He is getting pasted precisely the way a 30-something career minor leaguer with no discernible stuff should get pasted. But now the better (if not especially good) Shawn Chacon is returning and we should and presumably will see no more of Aaron, unless we happen to be passing through Ohio of a summer evening and pause to catch an Int. league game. I can't see the Yankees putting him in the bullpen, where he was really bad. I mean how many guys fit for nothing but mop-up work (Meyer, Proctor, Smith, and sometimes Farnsworth) does one team need. So it is good-bye to Mr. Small, who would have lingered in the collective memory of Yankee fans forever had the Bombers been able to win it all last year. As it stands, he had a brief, funky, altogether lucky, but not undeserving fling with acclaim; he earned his million dollar contract for this year, last year; and now he can resume earning whatever they were paying him last year, in what promises to be the twilight of a career that almost never was.

See you later Aaron. You were among the very few Yankees on this team--Jeter, Bubba, Cano, Rivera, Matsui --whom I never cursed.