Thursday, May 29, 2008

I'm Not Buying It

A guy named Alexander Martinez swears that the Yankees promised him the moon in exchange for giving back Hidecki Matsui's 100th home run ball:
Martinez said he turned over the milestone Matsui ball to Yankees security man Bill Shaw. In return, Martinez said, Shaw promised him an autographed Matsui ball, the bat Godzilla used to hammer the historic homer and 15 tickets to this season's All-Star Game - the last at Yankee Stadium. Martinez got an autographed ball and bat but hasn't seen any All-Star tickets or an authentication letter for the bat . . .

. . . Martinez said he asked Shaw to put their deal in ink. But he quoted Shaw as responding: "We are the New York Yankees. When we give our word, we will do it." A Yankee spokesman insisted the team never agreed to what Martinez says. "Bill Shaw absolutely, positively denies that he ever offered him any All-Star Game tickets or ever agreed to it," said Howard Rubenstein.

This sounds like a Seinfeld episode. Just replace Martinez with Kramer and throw in Jackie Chiles. "My client was promised 15 All-Star Game tickets. To not proivde said tickets is outrageous! It's preposterous! It's the biggest miscarriage of justice I've ever seen!" Things go well until Martinez caves and accepts a Jeter t-shirt to drop the whole thing.

OK, I mock Mr. Martinez, but he is a sensible guy. According to the article, he says he's not going to sue over it, which goes to show you that unlike some wackos, most people won't get the justice system involved when they know they're full of it.

(link via BTF)

6 comments:

Mark Runsvold said...

The Yankee Dream Police came to me with an offer of 2 luxury boxes (for life) in the new stadium and the ownership of the Scranton/Wilkes-Barre Yankees in exchange for a dream I had of A-Rod hitting his 800th. And guess what?! They reneged on that too. Truly an outrage.

Anonymous said...

As soon as I saw FIFTEEN all-star game tickets, I knew this guy was full of sh-t.

Alex Brissette said...

Yeah, truly, 15 is a bogus number. Everyone knows tickets come in groups of 4, so he should have been offered 16 tickets!

Anonymous said...

Well, the guy obviously had to count how many friends wanted to go to the game before he came forward with his alleged "deal." Conversation -

Alex to the Yankees rep: ...and you promised me 14...(cell phone rings - Alex answers in a hushed voice) what? Oh you CAN make it? Ok ok, I'll see what I can do. (hangs up the phone)...15 All Star game tickets! We had a deal!

Scaevola said...

I disagree with the consensus. It is common procedure for teams to pressure fans into giving away historic balls, etc. and then giving them nearly nothing of what they promised. From some accounts, it almost sounds like a police interrogation.

tHeMARksMiTh said...

I seriously doubt that Hideki's 100th HR is historic in any way other than the nice round number. I'd be curious to get a pole from Yankees fans on whether they like him or not anyway.