There's nothing quite like a little newcomer hazing to put the rookies in their place. (Unless you're in a frat and they make you do an elephant walk. Or maybe have you chug so much alcohol that you end up in the hospital. That's not so cool.)But the idea behind it is pretty simple: the rookies get hazed and that is that. Retaliation is frowned upon. Retaliate and well, you're going to get it way worse the next time around.
Just ask Yankee newbie Andrew Brackman.
He walked to his locker yesterday morning to find that all of his sliders, his baseball underwear, had been slit down the middle.
Brackman's Yankees cap suffered a similar fate. Brackman tossed it in the garbage and then saw the worst of the damage. Six pairs of workout shoes, including brand new spikes, had their shoelaces cut by a Pinstriped Jack the Ripper. The laces were sliced tongue to toe right down the middle, so Brackman, who signed a $4.5 million deal, spent a good part of the day re-lacing his shoes.
[ ... ]Pssh, all they did was cut his free clothes in half? Please. Let's face it: until they get in the league of this Yankee prank, it's all just child's play -- good, innocent fun. Although, I suppose that's all it should be.
The prank war escalated because Brackman fired back on a veteran player.
"If you get hit by a veteran and fire back," one Yankee insider noted, "they come at you 10 times harder."
The word is that you don't mess with relievers LaTroy Hawkins or Brian Bruney. Ian Kennedy told Brackman to "wave the white flag," but the right-hander has yet to do it.
"It's only going to get worse," Kennedy warned.
