Today’s news is powered by “The City of New Orleans” (reason for this found at the end of this post)

• Chien-Ming Wang is getting closer to making a return:

Chien-Ming Wang will start Tuesday for Triple-A Scranton against Charlotte. He is cleared for 100 pitches.

If he pitches well, Wang could earn his return to the majors. Joe Girardi indicated that he is close.

• Xavier Nady is also making progress (albeit slowly) towards a return:

Guarding a partially torn ligament in his right elbow, Nady has been limited to light exercises in his activity as he attempts to avoid season-ending Tommy John surgery. He is looking forward to being cleared to resume hitting off a tee and soft toss when the Yankees return home. . . .

Nady said that he believes he could begin a rehabilitation assignment as soon as May 25 and hopes to rejoin the Yankees as at least a designated hitter in early June. The fact that the Yankees have thus far declined to put Nady on the 60-day disabled list speaks to their optimism.

“There’s progress here,” Yankees manager Joe Girardi said. “You have to wait and see how he feels once the right arm gets involved. The time has passed where we feel that he’s safe to do it, and that’s a good thing.”

• Bill Madden writes an open letter to Boss George regarding the new Stadium:

Sadly, Boss, your ballpark is a monument to the rich and is the epitome of wretched excess. Take the scoreboard, or rather should we call it the “ad-board” engulfed by the $14.3 million jumbotron? Never has there been a bigger waste of space than the 59-x-101 foot TV screen that’ll show A-Rod’s new nipples in High Def but barely a glimpse of something as relevant as the batter’s count: God forbid, should you try to find that piece of information anywhere (hint: it’s at the very bottom of the tiny auxiliary scoreboards underneath the huge ad billboards in right and left field).

And once again, there is no out-of-town scoreboard in your new palace, Boss. Just those mostly-useless flashboards with confusing team logos instead of team names that stay up for a couple of seconds, then move on to another set of scores, all the while giving you the baserunner diagram that also disappears in a flash. In between innings, there are no scores anywhere – just more ads. But then, only the fans care about what the count is, Boss, or what the Red Sox or Mets are doing. The rich folks in the suites, Trost’s revenue generators, are too busy socializing over their martinis and $54 steaks to bother about such trivial pursuits.

And speaking of food, Boss. It’s strictly pedestrian short-order stuff for the common fan in the upper deck. No restaurants for them. Not a place anywhere upstairs where the common fan can take the family for a moderately priced sit-down meal before the game. Trost will tell you this is what the Mohegan Sun restaurant in center field is for, but that would be the restaurant that costs $100 a seat – or $400 for a family of four before you order any food (it also juts out and obstructs the view of the Bleacher Creatures). Just another brilliant stroke on Trost’s part.

At least the fans in the upper deck can see Monument Park, supposedly the most beautiful visual feature of the new Stadium. Sadly, however, nobody else can.

In Trost’s wisdom, Monument Park was moved to center field without any consideration given to the fact that it would now be an impediment to the batters’ eyes. As a result, a blue wall had to be constructed in front of it that obscures the monuments from the view of three-quarters of the ballpark, making it look like a giant dumping ground. People now call it “Monument Cave.”

• One-time Yankee catcher Rick Cerone, on Reggie Jackson versus Alex Rodriguez:

Cerone, who met Rodriguez when the Yankee third baseman was a high school star, still sees him occasionally at events, and has followed his career.

Cerone knows about the pressure to succeed in New York. He had to replace Munson, a Yankee legend.

“Just play hard and let your talent take over,” he said.

“Alex always had tremendous talent,” Cerone said. “He was a nice kid. It just seems he can’t do anything right now.”

He compared him to Jackson.

“Reggie always played hard and so does Alex.” he said.

“And like Alex, he was a little insecure and needed all the attention.”’

But the difference, according to Cerone was the big-game performances.

“But when the lights were shining the brightest Reggie shined the brightest,” he said. “He played in October and played well.

“I think A-Rod is a great player, a super talent. But you have to perform on that big stage and Reggie did that over and over again. You’ve got to win the World Series in New York. Then Alex he will be accepted.”

• William Rhoden on A-Rod, the ballplayer:

On Friday, he talked about looking in the mirror and growing up.

I’m not sure how many fans really care about all of that. Not that fans don’t care about truth, justice and character. It’s just that most fans acknowledge that we all are flawed, some more than others. Some lives are examined more than others, some in greater depth and detail.

The larger question for New York fans is whether Rodriguez can consistently hit home runs for the Yankees. For the short term, can he be the plug that stops the leak? He couldn’t help Saturday, when he went 0 for 3 in the Yankees’ 12-5 loss to the Orioles.

But if the answer is yes more often that no, he will be the first hero of the new Yankee Stadium. If the answer is no more than yes, Rodriguez will continue to be derided and booed. The Yankees will be criticized for paying too much for what they got.

What fans want to know is simple: can he get around on the fastball?

Can A-Rod do what the Yankees are paying him to do?

Can he hit? Can he field?

Everything else is history.

• In an article for “The Nation“, Dave Zirin has some choice comments for those wagging their fingers at Manny Ramirez:

. . . We have billionaire owners making scapegoats of millionaire players to soothe our anxieties about the game and our lives. Meanwhile these same owners sit like pashas in a baseball palace that could be called the House That Steroids Built.

The man who wrote Juiced knows when a cycle has run its course. Canseco said that he believes the coverage on steroids in baseball has become “overkill” and the spotlight should now be on MLB and the players association. He called it “a complete conspiracy.” He’s absolutely correct. Baseball owners love conspiracies. For more than twenty years they have conspired to attain public funds for ballparks. In 2008, they collectively conspired not to sign the best hitter in the game, Barry Bonds. Now they are committed to the project of keeping the focus on the players, and off of themselves. We shouldn’t let them. If Manny Ramirez is guilty of anything, it’s being caught in between baseball’s clubhouse culture and public sanctimony.

During the baseball’s Summer of Love in 1998, when Mark McGwire hit seventy home runs and Sammy Sosa smacked sixty-six, the money came pouring in. No one cared that McGwire and Sosa looked like a pair of defensive tackles. Soon publicly funded stadiums were included in budgets for Washington (DC), New York City and Minnesota. The home run became the most marketable baseball item since peanuts and crackerjacks and no one wanted to look behind the curtain. It was sports. It was entertainment. It was an escape. Then came 2001, when Barry Bonds hit seventy-three, and all of a sudden we were supposed to be collectively sick at the thought of a home run. As baseball writer Adrian Burgos (Playing America’s Game: Baseball, Latinos, and the Color Line) said, “What continues to fascinate me is how MLB leadership is willing to allow individual players to take the full brunt of the collective failure of leadership. Today, pundits have ranted in at times rabid tones about the players who make millions for their role while those who make the hundred of millions (and even have billion-dollar stadiums constructed for them on the public dole) continue to profit. How many stadiums have been built since then and at what cost? All the wealth that has been accumulated at that level is in my mind just as, if not more, offensive, since the owners act as if they were not enablers and co-dependents as their players shot up, ingested and otherwise partook in performance-enhancing drugs.”

We should always remember that former Texas Rangers owner George W. Bush made steroid persecution a recurring theme of his time in office, as long as owners were spared the spotlight. The hypocrisy should shame owners toward contrition–but they will happily crack some golden eggs, as long as it means that the goose that laid them lives. Even though come contract time, it’s all about the numbers on your stat page, and not the number of clean tests. As baseball fan and poet Martin Espada told me, “Baseball is the Main Street of sports. (Think Cooperstown.) It’s full of history and nostalgia, and paved with the bricks of hypocrisy. Now it’s the rhetoric of the ‘drug war,’ handed down from the Nixon White House forty years ago to MLB and ESPN today.”

• Baseball Prospectus’ John Perrotto has some interesting Joba Chamberlain factoids:

Yankees right-hander Joba Chamberlain had 12 strikeouts in 5 2/3 innings Tuesday against the Red Sox, becoming just the fifth major league pitcher since 1900 to have that many strikeouts in that few innings, and the first since the Phillies‘ Cole Hamels had 12 strikeouts in 5 1/3 innings against the Braves in 2006. The others: J.R. Richard of the 1978 Astros, Kevin Appier of the 1994 Royals, and Curt Schilling of the 1997 Phillies.

Chamberlain also allowed four runs in the first inning before recording an out to become the third major league pitcher since 1900 to strike out at least 12 in a game in which he gave up at least four first-inning runs, joining Herb Score of the 1959 White Sox and Steve Carlton of the 1973 Phillies.

Furthermore, Chamberlain became the first pitcher to get at least nine called strikeouts in a game since Mike Mussina with the 2001 Yankees against the Red Sox.

• Walt Terrell turns 51 today.  Known for being a workhorse, innings-eating pitcher in the 80s, Terrell spent an inauspicious half-season with the ’89 Yanks, going 6-5, with a 5.20 ERA (102 hits, 24 walks and only 30 Ks  in 83 IP).
• On this date in 1919, Walter Johnson of the Washington Senators pitched 12 scoreless innings in a duel with Jack Quinn of the Yankees at the Polo Grounds. Johnson allowed only two hits and retired 28 batters in a row. Future football star George Halas, batting leadoff for the Yankees, went 0-for-5, striking out twice.
• On this date in 1990, Dave Winfield rejected a trade that would have sent him from the Yankees to the Angels in exchange for pitcher Mike Witt. A no-trade clause in Winfield’s contract gave him the right to turn down the deal. Five days later, Winfield will reach an agreement with the Yankees and give his permission for the trade to take place.
• On this date in 2006, Hideki Matsui broke his left wrist and his consecutive-games streak ended in a Red Sox 5 – 3 victory at Yankee Stadium. Going back to his days in Nippon Pro Baseball, he appeared in 1,768 consecutive games. Matsui had played in 518 consecutive games (a record for the start of a career) since joining the Yankees in 2003 after playing in 1,250 straight for the Yomiuri Giants from August 22, 1993, through 2002.

I’m going on vacation until May 21.  I’ll be enjoying the food and fun in New Orleans, and following the Bombers on MLB.com.  Take care of yourself . . . and be kind to Alex, Cliff and the rest of the crew.