What to write?

So… anything interesting happen at the ballpark today? Oh, not much.

Where do we begin? The moment when Shelley Duncan slid into Akinori Iwamura here at Progress Energy Park, you knew this was going to be a wild one. Unfortunately I wasn’t able to update in-game due to all the craziness, but we had updates going pretty regularly on the yankees.com site. It’s not often in Spring Training that I’m firing quotes to the bullpen from the clubhouses on my cell phone while all madness ensues on the field, but hey, that’s part of the job.

My thoughts are that Duncan really does believe what he’s saying about sliding in spikes high. You watch Shelley play and he’s the kind of guy who lets adrenaline get the best of him in certain situations — maybe he saw an opportunity to get even for the Francisco Cervelli collision, maybe not. But everything probably doesn’t get to that level if the umpires don’t thumb Heath Phillips for an up-and-in fastball that barely grazed Evan Longoria’s jersey.

Trust me, we’ll have plenty of fallout to chase on this for the next few days. Billy Crystal who? By the way, Stump Merrill is resting comfortably at an area hospital after being hit above the lip by a thrown ball during batting practice. Best wishes to him.

This day began with a Hollywood actor carrying a black bat into the clubhouse and lockering up, and a $16 million pitcher coming down with a mysteriously mild forearm injury; then featured a coach leaving the field on a stretcher to a standing ovation and a pitcher thumbed for a wild fastball; then the crescendo came with a right fielder wrapping up a player at second base and two coaches being tossed — one, Bobby Meacham, for keeping the peace in a bench-clearing melee.

Only on the Yankees beat.