Yankees vs Orioles brawl from 1998

Oh to think that in 1998 I was just an eight year old kid, who was still claiming to be a Marlins fan and my favorite players were Gary Sheffield and a young Derek Jeter.


That season the Yankees had a year for the ages and set team records. They also got into a big fight with the Orioles that to this day is one of the better baseball brawls.




A few notes :
Armando Benitez would later be a closer with the Mets and even had a short stint with the Yankees in 2003. Ironically Benitez was traded from the Yankees to the Mariners for Jeff Nelson who he fought with in the brawl.

I can remember watching the 1998 season Yankeeography and they talked about the brawl. Gene Monahan said that the tissue in Tino's back was damaged from the fastball he recieved from Benitez.

Its really strange to see the stadium that empty, heck in the clip Bernie hits a homer into the upper deck and not a single fan is in view. Boy how times have changed, I'm shocked now when the Yankees draw a few thousand under capacity of the new stadium.

Why Tino !?!! Why !?!

While reading the NY Daily News yesterday, I came across this ad in the sports section.Yankee favorite Tino Martinez doing a corny ad for Bay Ridge Toyota. So my question is why Tino ? I don't think he needs the money, he got paid so much while in the majors and is currently paid by the Yankees to be a special assistant. Tino has worked for ESPN and the YES Network since he has retired from baseball. I was always a big Tino fan growing up and was upset in 2002 when they picked Giambi over him. But I'll admit that Tino in the booth is awful, his voice just doesn't sound right and he seems so nervous. Maybe they can try and get him to be in studio with Bob Lorenz, anything to prevent him from being in lame ad's like the one above.

(Sorry for the bad cell phone camera pictures)