They got to take it down after the Yankees produced one of the most dramatic comebacks in Major League history.
The story came to mind this week with the revelation that a fourth Texas Tech football player had suffered a season-ending knee injury. Cam’Ron Valdez joined Dylan Spencer, Joseph Adedire and Vinny Sciury — two starters and two top backups — in being done for the year in the first month.
This past Monday, 13 players were on it: the four who are out for the season, two who are out for Saturday’s game against Arizona State and seven more listed as questionable.
Seeing them grouped together and categorized has triggered an unexpected development: It’s caused people to freak out. When we screen-shotted and posted this week’s injury report on X, the old Twitter, two dozen of you replied. Several had some variation of a response offered by Mark: “Is it a turf issue? Strength and conditioning?”
In “The Bronx Zoo,” Sparky Lyle and Peter Golenbock’s irreverent tell-all book on the 1978 New York Yankees, Lyle observed a “P” fashioned from tape was stuck to a wall of the athletic trainers’ room in the Yankees clubhouse. The Yankees’ lefty relief pitcher casually wondered for weeks about the letter’s meaning, not learning its origin until the team had rallied from 14 games behind to win the division.
Trainers Gene Monahan and Herman Schneider put it up in response to a midseason rant by Yankees owner George Steinbrenner.
“It turns out the P stood for probation,” Lyle wrote near the end of the book. “Right after the All-Star break, when (six players) got hurt, George called the trainers up to his office and said, ‘These injuries have to cease. One more thing happens and you two guys are gone. Fired. You’re on probation right now. One more injury and it’s see ya.’ So they put the P up on the wall to remind them of their status.”
The Texas Tech football team will get a nighttime contest for their second Big 12 Conference game of the season against Cincinnati on Saturday in Jones AT&T Stadium.
The Red Raiders and Bearcats will kick off at 7 p.m. CT, the conference announced on Sunday. The game is set to air on ESPN2.
Texas Tech and Cincinnati are both coming off home wins and share identical 3-1 overall records, each winning their Big 12 openers on Saturday. The Red Raiders defeated Arizona State 30-22 while the Bearcats mauled Houston for a 34-0 victory.
